Eddy undid his seat belt and Pat felt suddenly panicked and hurried to undo his. ‘No worries mate, I’ll do it.’
‘Naw.’ Eddy had that face on him, the let’s-have-a-big-fucking-fight face. ‘I’ll do it.’
Pat stared him out and slid his belt buckle back into the clip. ‘Go on then.’
Eddy’s jaw jutted once, a small punctuation mark to the fight they hadn’t had, and he turned and got out, slamming the door. Pat knew Eddy would be doing his hard man swagger. As a petty act of spite he didn’t watch Eddy stride across the road. He knew the walk well enough: shoulders up, head wheeling left and right, looking for the fates that defied him.
This was the sort of thing Morrow excelled at, looking, seeing, processing. She pulled her office door shut, set her chair at a good distance from the monitor and clicked on the first of Omar’s files.
It was an Excel spreadsheet of meaningless figures, the years at the top, starting with the present, and in the columns below gradually increasing numbers following a starkly straight trajectory. She snorted a laugh when she saw that rounded figure of £80,000 in the final column. Not a penny less, no odd bits of change. It was a joke, a fiction, a bedtime story to himself.
Hurriedly she looked through the other files: badly scanned VAT forms. He didn’t have any capital, or income, didn’t even know how to fill out the form. It was as if he’d heard a rumour about the scam but hadn’t listened properly.
‘Malki Tait’s ma says he was out till two last night.’ Bannerman was smiling at the door, standing a little outside so that she wasn’t really sure he was talking to her. She’d expected him to be annoyed at her for crashing his glory meet with MacKechnie but he seemed quite calm.
‘Where is he now?’
‘Doesn’t know.’
‘Did he just walk out of the house this morning?’
‘Left the house in a minicab this morning. Gobby and Routher called around the local firms and found the cab that attended the address. They’re tracking down the driver for a destination. Anyway,’ he fell back into the corridor, ‘move it. We’ve got Omar upstairs. His lawyer’s with him. I want you with me.’
She looked at the thumbnail images on her screen. ‘I don’t think he’s doing a VAT fraud, Grant, to be honest-’
‘Yeah, let’s go up and find out.’ Bannerman wasn’t looking at her. He was smiling down the corridor.
28
Omar didn’t look up as his lawyer shepherded him down the corridor to the interview room. He didn’t look worried so much as exhausted. His eyes were red, like someone who’d been eccied, up all night, and had just started coming down. Morrow saw him shut them tight a few times, as if trying to coax moisture across them. She felt a bit that way herself. She thought of home and hoped Omar’s interview would drag on and on, that they’d uncover information that would spark an urgent new course of investigation. She was overtired now and felt too delicate to go home.
It was teatime, shift change at the station, and the interview rooms were all empty. Bannerman chose Four, a slightly larger room than Three, with a newer camera lower down on the wall so that their faces would be seen in the viewing room. The lawyer was aware of the camera and tried to get Omar a seat with his back to it. It was a sharp move. A video of even a slight inconsistency in evidence, a sarcastic remark, an unpleasant manner, could go a long way to conviction if it came down to a jury trial. Morrow wondered what Omar had told her.
Bannerman was aware of what they were doing, though, and insisted that they take the side of the table facing the camera. When the lawyer asked him slyly why he said it was because he wanted them facing the camera and he was questioning them, not the other way around.
She conceded and they took their seats, the lawyer on the outside, unpacking her papers and pens, Omar by the wall, shifting about in his seat, wringing his hands under the table, getting them out again. Morrow watched him from the corner of her eye. He didn’t seem unduly nervous, not guilty-nervous, just appropriately uncomfortable.
Lord of them all, Bannerman was the last to take his place at the table. He stood behind his chair and undid his jacket button, flapping the front panels back as if clearing the reach for his guns. He looked at Omar, who looked innocently back and grinned. Then Bannerman sat down.
He and Morrow busied themselves with cassette tapes, fitted them, turned the machine on and waited for the beep to notify them that the recording had begun. Bannerman told it who was here, the date and made the lawyer say her name.
The lawyer was young, a pretty blonde woman with an enormous amount of make-up on. Pearly pink blusher was drawn in thick stripes across her cheeks and eyelashes glued into black sticks.
Omar looked even thinner than yesterday but that was due to his clothes. They weren’t baggy like the traditional dress he had worn the day before but western clothes, a black T-shirt of thick cotton, a yellow ‘Diesel’ slogan on it. It was fitted around his narrow waist and broad shoulders, and his baggy jeans sat halfway down his hips with white underpants showing above them. He looked like a model, not cut-glass handsome but one of those daring models who straddled the ugly/handsome boundary.
When they were all settled he looked up and recognised Morrow from the night before. ‘Oh, hi again,’ he said, eyes open and hopeful, pleased to see her, not at all like an accused.
Both Bannerman and the lawyer put their hands on the table in front of him to stay the conversation. ‘Let’s do the formalities,’ prompted the lawyer nodding at Bannerman who cleared his throat.
‘Omar, in the course of our investigations we have uncovered some facts that we would like to ask you about. In relation to that you’re being detained here and I’m going to read you this caution, OK?’
Omar answered at the same time as his lawyer’s formal response that he was willing to cooperate in any way: ‘Oh, ’course, aye, yeah. Fine.’
Bannerman held the laminated sheet up and read the formal caution slowly. He looked at the lawyer at the end to make sure she’d witnessed it. She gave him a noncommittal nod. Bannerman asked Omar, ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I do,’ said Omar, whose attention seemed to have wandered a little during the recitation.
‘Well, Omar, first of all, you said in the interview last night that the gunmen were looking for-’
‘Rob, I know.’ Omar covered his eyes with his willowy hand and cringed. ‘I know, sorry. I spoke to Billal and he said you knew it was Bob. Sorry about that.’
‘… not be flippant,’ muttered the lawyer.
Omar straightened his face and opened his giant hands towards them in appeal. ‘No, I know, I am sorry. I am. We just, you know, thought it would be better if you were looking for those guys instead of thinking it was something to do with me.’
‘When did you decide to lie?’
Omar frowned as if he thought Bannerman was being rather rude dwelling on it. They didn’t need to know the details but Morrow knew Bannerman was taking charge, drumming home that he was the man and Omar shouldn’t fuck with him.
Coldly Bannerman repeated, ‘At what point in the evening did you decide to tell us a lie?’
Omar dropped his gaze. ‘Well, um, after we called 999. When the ambulance came, just before the ambulance came.’
‘How did you decide?’
Omar’s mouth flapped once. ‘Wha’?’
‘Did you all get together and agree a version of what happened?’
‘No,’ he was adamant, ‘no, no, no, listen we were, Mum was, tying a tea towel to Aleesha’s arm, and we just sort of said, you know, might be best if we said Rob instead of Bob.’
‘You said it?’
‘I dunno, no, I think Bill said it. Said, you know, best just say Rob instead, since some folk call me Bob.’ He looked confused. ‘Is it that big a deal?’