Still Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

their DS answered weakly, “she’s just had a baby. A week ago or something.”
    “How’s she bedridden?”
    “She’s not to get up. Said she could hemorrhage.” The sergeant was embarrassed and laughed. “I’m not qualified to check her stitches, am I?”
    She watched as they all giggled together. Even MacKechnie had a titter. Bannerman looked away. The sergeant opened his mouth to add to the joke, say something crude, but he saw the look on Morrow’s face and bottled it.
    “Anyway, that’s us done,” the sergeant said, giving Bannerman a sympathetic look about Morrow. “We’re off.”
    They watched the gaggle of big men pick their steps carefully down the far stem of the T junction, tiptoeing until they were carefully beyond the tape and out of the crime scene. They climbed back in their shiny black van.
    Morrow wished she was alone and could bite herself again but she took a breath and asked the cop, “What’s the story?”
    The plod drew a breath to speak but Bannerman cut him dead. “Family, at home after Ramadan prayers in the mosque—”
    “Which mosque?”
    “Central for the kids, Tintagell Road for the daddy.”
    Morrow nodded, it made sense. Central was a citywide mosque, young people from all over the city got to check one another out. Tintagell was smaller, local, had a tighter community feeling about it. If the kids were going to Central, then they weren’t territorial, weren’t gang-marked. Good kids.
    “Gathering back at the house,” Bannerman continued, “doorbell rings, thinking that a family member had forgotten their keys, daughter opens door, father in hall. Two masked gunmen enter shouting threats, looking for someone called Rob. Demanded money and ordered them not to call us—”
    “Much?”
    “Two million.”
    “ Pounds ?”
    “Aye.”
    They looked back at the house, valued it. MacKechnie said, “Worth about three hundred K, do you think?”
    Morrow and Bannerman nodded in agreement.
    “Two million in cash? Did they get it?”
    “There was no one called Rob here.”
    “What color were the gunmen? Were they Asian?”
    “White. They had balaclavas on but they were white.”
    “Who’s Rob?”
    “Dunno. Everyone’s Indian, I mean, has Indian names at least, so… no one called Rob.”
    “No lodgers? No dodgy boyfriends?”
    “No one. Money not forthcoming,” continued Bannerman, “left with father as hostage.”
    Morrow was puzzling at the house still. “Could it just be a matter of the wrong address, then?”
    “As yet undetermined,” said Bannerman, meaning he didn’t know.
    “It’s not a case of the wrong address,” she spoke to MacKechnie, making him look up the road, “because Albert Drive’s just over there—”
    “Millionaires’ row,” interrupted Bannerman, leaning between them and nodding as if he’d thought of it.
    She plowed on. “If they were just looking for a family with money they’d go there and smash a door in.”
    “So?” MacKechnie encouraged her to draw a conclusion. Bannerman’s nodding became manic.
    “So, they came here deliberately, sir. They had intel about someone here that made them think there was money here. Ready money, maybe.”
    “Unless…” Bannerman had to get MacKechnie’s attention back on him, “unless, they went to go to another house, set off the alarm or something, and turned back? I mean, we should check it out…” His voice faded halfway through the sentence, his confidence waning.
    It was a fucking stupid suggestion.
    “If armed men had burst in anywhere else tonight incident room control would have notified FAU, I think.” MacKechnie’s voice was softer, correcting.
    Morrow looked back at the squad cars littering the street and asked, “D’ye say they were warned not to call us?”
    Bannerman shrugged uncomfortably. He should have thought of that.
    The cop answered, holding his witness statements up for support. “Yeah. ‘Call the cops and this fu—’ ” He thought better of a