Free Still Midnight by Denise Mina Page A

right.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Omar, the son? Smokes fags like he’s smoking a joint. Aleesha wears jeans and T-shirts, Meeshra’s embarrassed about it, but kind of suggested that they’ve only recently become very observant. They’re from Uganda originally. Traditionally that’s a pretty assimilated pro-British community.”
    “Are they recent converts?”
    He wasn’t listening to her. “No. They’re not converts, just become more observant.”
    Now he wasn’t even looking at her. “Yeah, great, Morrow: local knowledge. Let’s get them to the station.”
    Omar couldn’t look back at Billal. He seemed to be shrinking under his brother’s gaze.
    “We’re all going to the station,” Bannerman called to him.
    “The boys saw the van,” she said. “They tried to get a squad—”
    “Yeah,” he cut her off and called Billal over to his side. “Let’s get the boys into a car. We’re going to the police station, right?”
    “Have I to come too?” Mo was asking Billal.
    “We’re all going,” Billal said sternly.
    Bannerman waved the boys to a car door and they trotted obediently over. As Omar came past, Billal reached out a meaty hand and grabbed his arm, with unnecessary force. “Just tell the truth,” he said loudly. Omar didn’t look at him.
    Bannerman watched approvingly, as if he had located the biggest boy in the class and made friends with him.
    “Tell them the truth.” But Billal was talking in exclamations, so loud he wasn’t really talking to Omar.
    The two boys got into the backseat of the squad car and Billal shut the door on them.
    Morrow sidled over to him, touching his elbow gently, guiding him away for a moment. “Billal, I’m DS Alex Morrow. Can I just ask you quickly: why were they waiting outside the house while it all went on?”
    Billal looked at her as if he had misheard. “What?”
    “The guys,” said Morrow, pointing back to Mo and Omar, “they were waiting in the car for twenty minutes before they came in.”
    Billal looked shocked. “Really?”
    Bannerman hurried, came back around the car, possessive of the brother, slipping in almost between them.
    “Yeah,” said Morrow.
    Billal looked at the police tape, along the road, to the open front door of his house, frowning as he tried to answer the question. “Where?”
    Morrow pointed up the road. “There, where those markers are.”
    Billal imagined it for a moment. “But the gunmen were parked down there.” He pointed around the corner to the garden path.
    “That’s right.”
    Billal frowned. “So, they might not have seen them?”
    “They said they didn’t see anything.”
    “And that’s possible?” Billal looked at Bannerman, asking him if his younger brother could be telling the truth.
    “Yeah,” said Bannerman, trying not to smile, “it is perfectly possible.”
    Billal looked angrily at the window of the squad car. “Good. Good.”
    He turned back to look at Morrow and nodded back at the house. “Meeshra help you?”
    “Yes, thanks, she was very helpful.”
    Billal arched his back slightly at that. “She didn’t see very much. She was in the bed the whole time,” and he nodded, a strange pecking nod, slightly out of time. Morrow didn’t know what it meant. Billal looked at Morrow’s shoes, curled his lip, and turned, walking away without saying good-bye.
    Bannerman backed up to Morrow’s side as they watched Billal fold his big frame into the backseat next to Mo. “Yeah,” he said as if Morrow had expressed her reservations out loud. “What did the daughter-in-law say?”
    “Not much. Do you still think they got the wrong house?”
    “Dunno. They rang nine-nine-nine. Neighbors put the shot thirty seconds or so before all the calls so, they rang immediately…”
    Innocents call for the police, generally. It meant they didn’t feel responsible for the attack. Or else they were criminal but had a grotesque sense of entitlement. There were families who knew whole shifts by their