Denise Mina - Still Midnight

Many thanks to Peter, Jon, Jade, and everyone who helped me get this done, particularly Reagan and Michael and Jayne in the United States. And to Stevo, Mum, Tonia and Ownie and Ferg for support.

ALSO BY DENISE MINA

SLIP OF THE KNIFE

THE DEAD HOUR

FIELD OF BLOOD

DECEPTION

RESOLUTION

EXILE

GARNETHILL

Denise Mina is the author of Slip of the Knife, The Dead Hour, Field of Blood,Deception, and the Garnethill trilogy, Garnethill, Exile, and Resolution. She won the John Creasey Memorial Award for best first crime novel. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her family.

An orange Sainsburys plastic bag in full sail floated along the dark pavement. Belly bowed, handles erect, it sashayed like a Victorian gentleman on a Sunday stroll, passed a garden gate, and followed the line of the low rockery wall until a sudden breeze buffeted it, lifting the fat bag off its heels, slamming it into the side of a large white van.

Air knocked from it, the bag crumpled to the floor, settling softly under the vans back wheel.

The van, barely three weeks old, had already been stolen and bore false number plates. It was parked carefully at the curb, still warm from the heat of the engine, and in six hours time it would be found smoldering in woodland, all forensic traces of the men inside obliterated.

Three men sat in the van, faces turned in chorus, watching the bungalow across the road.

The driver, Malki, leaned over the steering wheel. He was junkie-thin. From deep inside the dark hood of his tracksuit his sunken eyes darted around the street like a cat hunting a fly.

The two men next to him moved as one animal. Eddy in the middle and Pat sitting by the far door. Both in their late twenties, theyd worked for seven years as a two-man door crew on the graveyard shift. Theyd watched films together, met and dumped women together, went to the gym together, and, in the manner of married couples, their style had harmonized. Both were meaty, dressed identically in brand-new black camouflage trousers, high lace boots, flak jackets, and balaclavas rolled up to their foreheads. All the gear was fresh from the packet, the display creases still discernible.

A longer look would identify the differences between them. Eddy in the middle drank too much since the wife and kids left. He ate greasy takeaways late at night when he got in from work, undoing all the good hed done himself in the weights room, and had become bloated and bitter. His eye was forever fixed on what he didnt have.

It had long been a bone of contention between them that Pat was handsome. Worse, he looked younger than Eddy. More moderate in his character, he didnt eat or drink as much and fumed less. He was blessed with a head of lush yellow hair, appealingly regular features, and had a stillness about him that made women feel safe. His nose had been broken but even that served only to make his face look vulnerable.

It was Eddy who had come up with the scheme and he had bought the gear. Belligerently, he had bought both sets in the same size, in his size. As theyd dressed together in Eddys messy bedsit hed brought out a tin of black camouflage makeup for them to smear on their faces, like they did when they went paintballing. Softly, almost tenderly, Pat said no and made him put it away. Theyd be wearing balaclavas; it wasnt necessary and that stuff dried out and made Pats skin itchy. The glee with which Eddy had produced it worried Pat. It was as if they were putting the final touches to a surprising Halloween costume instead of planning a home invasion that could lead to a twenty-year stretch. Pat had never even done an overnight. Now he fingered the flattened bridge of his nose, covering his face with his hand, hiding his doubt looking up at the target.

He looked down now at the gun in his lap. It was heavier than he would have thought, and he was worried about being able to hold it up with one hand. He glanced at Eddy and found him glaring at the bungalow as if it had insulted him.

Pat shouldnt be here. He shouldnt have volunteered Malki to be here either. This wasnt about trying to cheer Eddy up anymore. This was dangerous, this felt like a mistake. He looked away. Eddy had been through too much recently. Not big stuff but sore stuff, and Pat felt as if a single reproachful glance might snap him in half. Still, he looked up at the neat little garden path, at the quiet glowing house, and thought that a twenty-year stretch was an awful lot of sorry-about-your-wife.

It was a nice family bungalow, well proportioned, with a shallow garden stretching all the way around the corner into the next street. The current owner, pragmatic, without thought for aesthetics, had bricked over the lawn and flower beds to create a car park. A blue television tinge flickered on the living room window and a warm pink shone through the glass front door into the hall.

See? Eddy said softly, keeping his eyes on the house. Single hostile in living room. Small, possibly female.

A woman in her own home. Nothing hostile about that. Instead of saying it Pat nodded and said, Check.

Were going in along the back wall, member to stay in the dark, until we get to the front door.

Check. Pat didnt really know the military patter and was wary of straying from that one word. Eddy was enjoying it, the whole special ops thing, and Pat didnt want to spoil it for him.

Then Eddy broke off into quasi-militaristic signs. He pointed at Pat, indicated forwards, touched his own chest, and swiveled his head to show hed be on lookout. He mimed Pat knocking on the front door, his eyes widened with warning as an imaginary hostile opened it, and his hand chopped a Go! Go! Go! through the air. His hand got into the house and then, zigzagging like a fish through reeds, looked into all the rooms off the hall, circling all the hostiles they had gathered in the hallway.

Then we ask for Bob. Not before. Not before. Dont give the cunt warning while he could still be concealed. And no names once we get in. Clear?

Check.

Eddy turned and slapped the jittery drivers arm with the back of his hand. When the door opens for the second time, were coming out. You start the engine, pull up over there. He pointed to the garden gate. Got it?

Malki stared steadily into the street, his face slack, his eyes glazed over.

Malki. Pat leaned across Eddy and touched Malkis forearm gently. Hey, Malki-man, dye hear Eddy just then?

Malki came alive. Aye, no worries, man, like, soon as I see the lightdoof! Up there, right? Straight there, man. He held the steering wheel tight and nodded adamantly, half affirmation, half wired-junkie tremor. His eyelashes were as ginger as his hair, as straight and long as a cows.

Pat bit his lip and sat back, looking out of the side window. He could feel Eddys reproachful glance burning his cheek. Malki was there because he was Pats young cousin. Malki needed the cash, he always needed cash, but he wasnt fit for it. Neither was Pat, if he was honest.

For a moment all three looked back at the bungalow, Pat chewing the inside of his cheek, Eddy angry and frowning, Malki nodding and nodding and nodding.

The wind picked up.

Below the vans back wheel the stunned plastic bag was stirring. As the breeze streamed below the car the bag filled at one corner and began tugging its feet free until it slid out from the undercarriage.

In the wide, still street the bag rose to its feet, performed an elegant cartwheel across the road, towards the house, and took flight in a sharp cross-draft at the corner. It parasailed ten feet into the air, an orange moon, up and up, drifting out of sight of the van, around the corner to the other side of the bungalow, and over the roof of a blue Vauxhall Vectra.