‘Get in the fucking motor.’

‘No need for rudeness, my friend. We’ve all got our troubles.’

Pat rolled his eyes. ‘Malki-’

Malki raised both hands. ‘Polite. That’s all I’m saying… Us and the animals, man.’ He opened the back door and slipped his skinny hips in next to the pillowcase, shutting the door before Pat had the chance to tell him off again.

Heavily, his head throbbing slightly from the fumes, Pat made his way around to the other rear door and got in. The pillowcase was slight as well as small: Pat’s hips didn’t even touch him. It was like sitting next to a child.

Eddy started the engine and his eyes met Pat’s in the rear-view mirror. Pat blinked and looked away.

When they hit the motorway, Pat looked back to where the van was burning. A calm smoke plume drifted up into the clear night, it could pass for insignificant, unless a local was passing and knew there was no house over the shoulder of the hill.

They drove on in silence as before but now Malki was content, having had the release of setting fire to something, on his way to a midnight assignation with his beloved scag. And Eddy was happy at the wheel of the Lexus, imagining a future where he owned such a car and could look at himself in the mirror.

But the pillowcase was rigid with fright and Pat looked out at the dark fields and wished himself someone else, somewhere else. He should have refused to get out of the van.

Rain fell softly in the dark street, regular and rhythmic, like a comforting pat on the back. Beyond the tape the boys watched Morrow’s feet as she came towards them, their cigarettes were polka-dotted with drizzle. Neither could bring their eyes up further than her knees.

Young, slim and handsome, their clothes were expensive and well laundered, ironed.

She stopped in front of them. ‘Are you…?’

For a moment neither spoke until the friend said, ‘I’m, eh, I’m Mo. This is Omar. He lives, eh, it’s his house.’

‘Right?’

They sagged like sacks, brought their cigarettes to their mouths. Omar opened his mouth to speak but shut it again, stunned. He struggled to look up at her and seemed very young.

‘You’ve had quite a night,’ she said.

Mo told the tarmac, ‘Aye, then we got almost arrested for asking the police for help.’

The hope that Bannerman had fucked up made her ask, ‘What happened?’

‘We drove off after the van,’ said Omar, ‘and lost it and then when we saw a police car we stopped them and they arrested us.’ His words were slurred, bizarrely languid, as if he was already stoned. After-effect of shock: massive slump in blood sugar after an adrenalin rush.

‘They arrested you?’

‘Yeah,’ Omar smirked at Mo, ‘for a BB offence.’

She didn’t understand. ‘You had a BB gun with you?’

‘No, BB offence: Being Brown.’ Omar became embarrassed, as if he was growing out of the adolescent sentiment while he was saying it.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said formally, feeling defensive. ‘I sincerely hope you don’t feel that race has been an issue in the investigation. We really are trying our very best to help.’

‘No, sorry, no.’ Mo looked shamefaced too. ‘Sorry, it’s just a daft thing they say, you know, see, they looked at our clothes and, you know, think stuff about you…’

‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘if anyone here has given you the impression that race was any kind of an issue for them I do hope you’d feel free to tell us. We certainly wouldn’t want politics like that interfering with an investigation like this.’

They were mortified now, caught out in an unsupportable myth between them and Morrow leaned in and went kindly for the kill. ‘You know, you weren’t arrested. If you’d been arrested you wouldn’t be here now, you’d be in a station somewhere being questioned. It creates a lot of paperwork, they don’t just do it for a laugh.’

‘You know what?’ Omar’s knee buckled and he looked at her. ‘We’re being stupid. It was my fault, we did an emergency stop, leapt out at them. I forgot, you know, what we’d look like to…’ he scratched his head hard and sighed, ‘and I said a series of key words… that would alarm anyone really, I suppose.’

‘Like what?’

‘Guns. Van. Took my daddy.’

‘ Afghanistan!’ interjected Mo, as if it was a guessing game.

‘Why did you say Afghanistan?’

‘Well, they said it, the gunmen, as they were leaving: “This is for Afghanistan,” but it didn’t sound right.’

Mo nodded. ‘Yeah, it didn’t sound kosh.’

‘Sounded like some bullshit Steven Seagal tagline. Like someone who watches a lot of action movies and is in a fuckin’ – sorry – is like in a dream or something.’

They were talking to each other, not her, and their speech speeded up, took on colour and motion.

‘Aye, yeah, but shit action movies,’ confirmed Mo and affected a Schwarzenegger accent: ‘This-is-pay-back,’ but his joke was half-hearted, addressed to no one but the pavement.

Omar smiled dutifully and echoed, ‘Pay-back. Anyway, we jumped out and they were just asking questions and then I saw the van going under the bridge and I forgot and I ran off towards it. They must have got a fright and they grabbed me in a hold. Hurt my shoulder a bit, actually.’

Mo reached out and patted his pal’s back. They were close, she liked that, and Omar had an insight and honesty rare in a young man.

‘You saw the van?’

‘We were on the bridge over the motorway and we saw it going underneath and I ran over to it but they stopped me.’

‘On the bridge?’

‘At Haggs Castle.’

‘Great,’ She pulled out her notebook and wrote it down. ‘We can get the CCTV footage and trace it.’

‘They hurt my shoulder…’

‘Well, I can only apologise for that.’

‘Yeah and we were shitting ourselves anyway, buzzing because of the blood and Aleesha and that anyway.’

‘She’s been taken to hospital.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m sure she’s fine.’ She didn’t actually know how Aleesha was doing, she’d heard someone else say it but hadn’t spoken to the hospital herself. ‘In the right place…’ She was slipping into hollow clichés as a barrier to empathising. Bitter night streamed down the road, chilling their ankles. ‘Were you in the hall when the men came in?’

‘No.’

‘Where were you?’

‘In the car outside.’

‘Where?’

They pointed up to the evidence markers for the cigarette butts. She looked and saw that the cigarettes they had in their hands now were brand matches for the stubs she had seen in the road and she was pleased, found she wanted to trust them, whatever the story.

‘What sort of car?’

‘This car.’ Omar pointed to a blue Vauxhall parked behind him. ‘The Vauxhall. His Vauxhall.’

‘What were you doing out there?’

‘Chatting.’

‘Where had you been?’

‘Mosque.’

Morrow read Omar’s face. What she had taken for guilt could have been shock and tiredness. He looked drained and spent, but there was something else there too, a reticence. ‘Did you see the van waiting in the road?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Were around the corner. Couldn’t see it.’

‘It’s a one way street. You must have passed it when you drove up.’

‘We’d been there for twenty minutes. Must have arrived after us.’

‘What were you doing there for twenty minutes?’

Omar drew himself up, straightening his back, looking at her properly for the first time. She felt plain. The suit made her look tidy but not attractive. No elegant details, no statement stitching or anything that would draw the eye, make a casual viewer wonder about her as a person. Bland was the look she was going for.

‘Shouldn’t you wait until there’s another officer here before we speak to you?’

Morrow was surprised. ‘Why – what makes you say that?’

‘For corroboration, for if the case comes to court.’