Through the glass they could see Aleesha was asleep, propped upright against puffed-up pillows. Her left hand was heavily bandaged but the shape still discernibly distorted: three of her fingers were missing, only the index finger still clearly outlined, the others stubs after the first knuckle. The dressings on the stubs of her two middle fingers were discoloured with a translucent yellow fluid.
She was terribly pretty, Morrow thought, young and vulnerable, with the perfect skin and effortless grace that no one ever appreciates until they’ve lost them.
They stepped into the room. The lights were calmingly low but vicious strip lighting outside the room kept it bright and clinical. On the nearside of the bed, between the window and the patient, Sadiqa was dozing in a big purple recliner armchair, covered to her neck in a pink cellular blanket. She was very overweight, a heavy wattle of fat pooling around her chin, her massive round stomach splayed to the sides.
The chair was upholstered in waterproof plastic and reclined so that the footrest rose and the back dropped down. Morrow had slept on those chairs and knew how fantastically uncomfortable they were.
Sadiqa half opened her eyes, saw their feet, realised they weren’t hospital staff and looked up.
‘Mrs Anwar, I’m DS Bannerman and this is DS Morrow from CID. We were at your house last night.’
Befuddled with sleep Sadiqa’s hand rose to her chest under the blanket. Morrow stepped forward and reached out to shake. ‘I don’t think I met you last night, Mrs Anwar, I’m Alex Morrow.’
Sadiqa reached her hand out from under the cover. She was still wearing her nightie. ‘Nice to meet you…’ said Sadiqa, lost for forms of address in the strange circumstance.
‘We wondered if we could have a word with you?’
She tried to sit up suddenly, as if she had just remembered. ‘Aamir?’
‘No.’ Alex held her hand up. ‘We haven’t come with any news. We just wanted to ask you about a couple of details that might help us find him.’
‘OK, let me get…’ Sadiqa struggled to get out of the chair. She kicked her heels at the footrest but her weight pinned her to the chair. She had to use her arms to hoist her bottom off the chair and haul the chair into the upright position. She was embarrassed, gestured to her stomach, blaming it as if it was a separate entity. ‘Fat,’ she said and stood up.
The blanket fell to the floor revealing her pink nightie, still splattered with dried blood. She slipped her feet into her shoes.
‘Wouldn’t you like to change, Mrs Anwar?’ said Morrow.
‘Into what?’ Sadiqa wasn’t pleased by that. ‘I haven’t anything to change into.’
‘Couldn’t your sons bring you something?’
It was impertinent, a reproach to those only Sadiqa had the right to reproach. She gave Morrow a steely stare and muttered something about the baby.
‘I’m sure it’s been a huge shock for all of you,’ said Bannerman, making it all right.
‘Yes.’ She looked at him. ‘Yes, it has.’
She glanced at her sleeping daughter and ushered them both out ahead of her into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind her. They stood outside the window, Sadiqa tugging them around by the elbows so that their backs were to the window and she could keep her eye on her daughter.
Bannerman looked around for a chair. ‘Couldn’t we go and sit down somewhere?’
‘No,’ she crossed her arms over her chest, ‘I’m not leaving. We’ll stay where I can see her. You can ask me questions here, can’t you?’ It was the accent from the emergency calclass="underline" prim, proper, like a fifties movie siren.
‘Well,’ Bannerman looked back at Aleesha sleeping in the bed, ‘we’d really prefer to speak to you so that you can concentrate, maybe somewhere private. We could get the nurses-’
‘No.’ Sadiqa had her hand up to his face, as if she was ordering a child to sit down again. She saw the expressions on their faces and her knee buckled in dismay. ‘Please excuse me, my manners…’ She covered her mouth with a hand, drew a shuddering breath in, nodded as if she had decided something. ‘OK. OK.’ She dropped her hand, stood straight and looked at them. ‘Sorry. I’ll concentrate. Ask me anything.’
Bannerman looked at his notebook. ‘Just going over what you said last night… who were the men asking for?’
She nodded, as if affirming a decision she had already made. ‘Yes. They asked for Bob.’
Morrow was surprised. ‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’ It was hard for her to say that and she blinked as she did, nodding significantly. ‘Bob.’
Morrow was impressed. Sadiqa seemed to understand the significance of what she was saying, knew there was an alternative to telling the truth and implicating her son, but she was doing the right thing anyway. She clasped her hands over her bulging stomach and nodded at them to ask her another.
‘OK.’ Morrow looked at Bannerman but he was pretending to look at the statement again. ‘Can you tell us the course of what happened?’
Sadiqa hesitated, still staring at her daughter. ‘What happened chronologically?’
‘Yes.’
Sadiqa took a breath and stepped back. ‘We were in the house, I was in the kitchen. I hear shouting and go out into the hall to see what it is. There are two men there, I didn’t… I wear reading glasses, I was reading in the kitchen, and I took my glasses off, didn’t have my other ones, when I went out to the hall I couldn’t see properly, just shapes by the door. One of them,’ she circled her wrist indignantly with her hand, ‘he grabbed me and dragged me back up the hall. ‘They were asking for Bob. Shouting. The shot went off…’ She looked up to where the wall would have been, reliving the shock. ‘Then Omar comes in, one of them shouts, “You’re Bob,” and to Mohammed, “You’re Bob.” ’ Sadiqa came out of her trance and her eyes focused on them. ‘Then he grabbed Aamir and left. The other one followed him out.’
‘What were you reading?’ asked Morrow. She seemed confused. ‘In the kitchen,’ said Morrow. ‘You said you were reading, what was it?’
‘Oh, a test: it was a poetry collection. The Rattle Bag.’
Morrow liked her honesty. ‘Who in the family is called Bob?’
Sadiqa averted her gaze. ‘No one: Billal, Omar and Aleesha.’
‘No, Sadiqa,’ said Morrow softly, ‘I didn’t say which of your children, I said who.’
Sadiqa nodded sadly at the floor, understanding that they knew already. ‘Don’t make…’ The conflict was unbearable. The fat on her cheeks began to tremble.
Morrow threw a hand out, cuffing her clumsily on the forearm, ‘’S OK.’
Sadiqa nodded at her arm and muttered, ‘Thank you.’
‘’S OK,’ she repeated and fell back a step, embarrassed in front of Bannerman at having bottled it and cut the moment off.
Sadiqa rubbed her nose and looked up. ‘But where is my Aamir?’
‘We don’t know.’ Bannerman took over.
‘Is he alive, do you think?’
‘We don’t know that either. We’re trying very hard to find him but we need your help,’ said Bannerman who didn’t seem to appreciate how much she had helped them already and how conflicted she was about it. Them and us. Typical cop. ‘Omar is sometimes called Bob, isn’t he?’
She bit her lip, couldn’t look at them. ‘I don’t, well, I call him Omar. That’s the name we chose…’
Morrow would have thought less of her if she had given her son up happily. ‘Sadiqa, how long have you been married?’
She had to think about it, moving her lips as she counted. Aamir wasn’t one for big anniversaries then. ‘Twenty-eight years.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Forty-eight.’ She didn’t have to think about that.
‘Aamir’s older than you?’
‘By twelve years. Met him when I was sixteen.’ She glanced in at Aleesha. ‘Her age.’