A Dark So Deadly

by Stuart MacBride

  A TV, mounted high in the corner, was tuned to some auction/car boot sale competition rubbish, with the sound muted and subtitles on, while a radio by the counter burbled out some cheesy pop tune from the eighties.

  An auld mannie sat on his own in the corner, buried in that morning’s Castle News and Post: ‘BEST FRIEND’S PLEA FOR MISSING ASHLEE’ above the photo of a painfully thin teenage girl.

  Other than that, they were alone.

  Powel poured a third sachet of sugar into his mug and stirred it. ‘We’ll do everything we can, but I won’t lie to you: it’s a cold case from over twenty-five years ago and we’re stretched thin as it is. They won’t let me stick a huge team on this while we’ve got modern-day killers on the loose.’

  Callum sat back with his arms folded. ‘So that’s that, is it? Nothing happens?’

  ‘No. It’s going to take time, that’s all I’m saying. DS Blake will—’

  ‘Oh well, that’s OK then. If Blakey the Octopus is on the case we’ll get an arrest by teatime!’

  A sigh. ‘Callum, you can’t just—’

  ‘This is because I punched you in the gob, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’ Powel jabbed a finger at him. ‘I don’t do “half-arsed”, understand? I’m putting Blake on it because he’s worked abduction cases before. I do not cock-up investigations out of spite.’

  A saggy woman in a checked apron appeared at their table, a plate in each hand. No smile. Mouth surrounded by the kind of wrinkles that suggested she never did. Shiny forehead daubed with thin grey hair. ‘Who’s gettin’ the sausage?’

  As if there was any question.

  Powel took a breath, then pointed. ‘Sausage for him, booby-trapped for me.’

  She clattered the plates down in front of them, then shuffled off.

  Powel opened the soft white bap on his plate, revealing a thick smear of melting butter and a fried egg – brown and crispy at the edges, bright-yellow wobbly yolk. ‘I know you don’t think much of DS Blake, but he’s like a pit bull with a small child. Once he sinks his teeth in he won’t let go.’ Salt and pepper on the egg. ‘He’ll do a good job.’

  Callum slathered the inside of his buttie with tomato sauce. ‘He’s an idiot.’

  ‘For God’s sake …’ Powel burst the yolk with a fork, spreading it around. Closed his buttie and took a bite. ‘Elaine and I didn’t set out to hurt you, Callum. It just happened.’

  ‘What, and you think buying me a cup of tea and a sausage buttie, and saying “sorry” makes it all right?’

  ‘No. It … We’d been working that murder/suicide and it was tough, OK? They drowned the kids in the bath first: two beautiful little four-year-old girls. Then Mummy and Daddy took turns eating a shotgun. Blood and brains everywhere.’

  The ketchup bottle was the old-fashioned kind: glass. Nearly full. Heavy in Callum’s hand. Just the sort of thing for battering Poncy Powel’s head in.

  ‘Elaine was upset and we went out for a drink, and it just happened. We—’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Powel frowned at him over the top of his buttie, voice soft and concerned: ‘Callum, I’m only trying to—’

  ‘Well don’t.’ Callum thumped the sauce bottle down on the sticky tabletop. Stood. ‘You want me to what, forgive you? Say it’s all fine. All’s fair in love and war?’ He grabbed his buttie and tossed it across the table, sending the sausages spilling out to roll off the edge of the table and onto the floor, leaving a smear of blood behind them. ‘Lost my appetite.’ He marched for the door, grabbed the handle.

  Powel’s voice cut across the room. ‘Word of advice, Constable.’ He reached out a foot and stood on one of the sausages, grinding it into the lino. ‘DI Malcolmson’s right: you should take a few days off. You don’t look well.’

  And whose fault as that?

  ‘Callum?’

  He looked up from the bench and there was Franklin, wearing yet another Blues-Brothers-tribute-act suit – complete with white shirt and black tie. She’d wangled herself an official Police Scotland golf umbrella with the Crimestoppers’ 0800 number emblazoned all over it. It trembled in the downpour.

  She had a quick glance around. ‘What are you doing, sitting out here in the rain?’

  St Jasper’s Cathedral reached up into the stained clouds, austere granite walls topped with sandstone spikes and gargoyles. The sandstone wasn’t the genteel, pale, creamy-coloured stuff they used in the Wynd, but a dark dirty red like old blood. And nearly five hundred years of sleet and rain had made it bleed into the grey beneath. A big brown scab of rusty scaffolding covered the circular stained-glass window, the sound of a workman’s radio burbling out promos for the music festival in Montgomery Park.

  Callum toasted her with his can of Fanta. ‘Detective Constable.’

  Headstones stretched out all around him, most crumbling, many illegible. All those lives: their owners rotted away and forgotten, feeding the massive oak tree that dominated this part of the graveyard.

  ‘I’m … sorry about your mother.’

  He nodded. Stared out across the rows of the dead. ‘You want to guess what I’ve spent the last two and a half hours doing? Trying to disentangle myself from Police Constable Elaine Pirie. Bank accounts, council tax, mortgage, electricity bill, BT, hire purchase on the TV …’ He rested his elbows on his knees, the cast on his right hand tucked into his sleeve. ‘I’d go home and drink a bottle of Bell’s in the bathtub, but I don’t have a home.’

  Franklin stared up at the ribs of her umbrella, voice a low mutter. ‘Why do men always have to be such babies?’

  ‘Great, thanks for the pep-talk.’

  ‘Fine, you sit there wallowing in self-pity.’

  ‘Self-pity? My girlfriend’s pregnant with someone else’s child, I’ve been thrown out of my own flat, my career’s in the crapper, my mother’s severed head is lying in the mortuary, and they’ve put DS Blake in charge of catching her killer. Blakey the Racist-Sexist-Scumbag-Octopus. The halfwit you punched in the face is now the only person looking into my mother’s murder. I think I’ve got every right to complain!’

  A seagull landed between two graves, paddling its big orange feet on the grass, trying to lure a worm to its doom.

  Franklin shrugged. ‘So just sit there, then. Catch pneumonia. Play the tragic jilted hero. See if anyone gives a single toss about it.’

  Rain pattered on the shoulders of Callum’s jacket. Soaked into his wet hair. ‘Feel free to spread your special brand of sunshine and joy somewhere else.’

  ‘Or you can get off your moaning backside and do something about it.’

  40

  The smell of boiled cabbage haunted Division Headquarters’ stairwells. Callum squelched his way down to the locker room, where it was joined by the ghosts of cheesy feet, eggy farts, and cloying deodorant.

  Full-length metal lockers lined the room, each one with a number, nametag, and assortment of dents. Some were plastered in headlines and photos culled from newspapers. Some with celebrity photos from the tabloid magazines. Others austere and bare. Nothing to see here: move along.

  More lockers made an island in the middle of the room, surrounded by a knee-high wall of slatted benching. Heavy-duty clothes rails were hung with stabproof vests and high-viz waistcoats.

  A young PC sat in the far corner, folded forward with his elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands. Shoulders quivering. Making little sniffing noises.

  Callum took out his keys and unlocked locker 322. Opened it. Stared at the wall of photos Sellotaped to the inside of the door.

  Most of them were selfies of Elaine: grinning for the camera, making pouty duck-lips, flashing the peace sign, pulling faces, going from flat-stomached to swollen pregnant bulge. All nice and normal. A happy little family in the making.

  There was even a printout of the sonogram – looking like a radar image. A fan of streaked grey, surrounded by black, and just off the centre of the image
, a small dark kidney-shaped blob. Elaine had drawn a circle around it in red crayon and an arrow labelled ‘GOD, IT LOOKS LIKE A PEANUT!!!!’ surrounded by hearts.

  He reached out with his good hand and ran his fingertips along the sonogram’s smooth surface. Then curled them into claws and tore it from the door. Raked the photos down after it, letting them flutter and spill across the tiled floor. Peeled off his sodden jacket and wrung it out.

  It wasn’t easy with one hand in a cast, but he struggled through.

  Water spattered down on Elaine’s selfies. Soaked into Peanut’s first picture.

  He did the same with his shirt, trousers, socks and pants. Stood there in the nip, staring down at the puddled photos. Then swept them all up and dumped them in the nearest bin.

  Done. Over. Finished with.

  A wooden rack sat outside the door through to the showers. He helped himself to a towel from the pile – greying and frayed around the edges, sandpaper-rough to the touch. Scrubbed himself dry on the way back to his locker. Dumped it on the floor to soak up the wrung-out water.

  His spare fighting suit was a little crumpled, but at least it wasn’t damp. No idea when he’d last had it on. Been a while since someone was sick all over him. They tended to gloss over that bit in the recruitment posters.

  Callum bundled up his soggy suit and shoved it into a bin-bag. Tied a clumsy knot in the top.

  Then marched out of the room, leaving the PC to cry in peace.

  Callum stomped his way up the stairs. Through the double doors and into the MIT’s palatial abode. Marching down the corridor, past the meeting rooms, past the open-plan offices, past the mini-canteen.

  Poncy Powel’s door was shut – probably off getting someone else’s girlfriend pregnant.

  Good. The chance of Powel getting another punch in the face was about ninety-nine point nine percent. And there were far too many of his team knocking about for that to happen – they weren’t exactly going to stand about tutting while Callum battered their boss into a squishy mess.

  Across the corridor from Powel’s lair was another door with ‘SERGEANTS’ OFFICE’ engraved into its brass plaque. Callum didn’t bother knocking.

  Inside, six desks were arranged around the walls, all with laptops and monitor stands, ergonomic keyboards and fancy mice. An electronic whiteboard above each desk, displaying photos and timelines.

  A large woman with a pixie haircut had her feet up, swivelling back and forth, a mobile phone pinned between her shoulder and her ear as she picked at her fingernails. ‘No … Because I say it isn’t, Limpy … Well, guess what: I – don’t – care.’

  Two desks down, a tall thin bloke was hunched over his keyboard like a praying mantis, squinting at the media player on his screen.

  And there, right in the far corner, was DS Jimmy Blake: elbows on his desk, hands propping up his face so he could do some industrial-strength frowning at the stack of paper in front of him.

  Callum nicked the office chair from the next desk, wheeled it over, and sat. Dumped his bin-bag on the nice new carpet tiles. ‘Blakey.’

  He didn’t look up. ‘Go away.’

  Mantis Boy must’ve set his player going, because a young girl’s voice crackled out of his computer’s speakers. ‘You want to get wasted for my birthday next week? I can utterly rob a bottle of voddy from my gran.’

  A slightly muffled answer, dripping with teenaged indifference: ‘Yeah, why not. You only turn fourteen once, right?’

  Callum poked Blakey in the shoulder. ‘Have you made any progress yet?’

  A long-suffering sigh. Finally he turned and looked up, showing off the big plastic guard covering what was left of his nose. Eyes like a panda that’d been on a three-day bender. ‘Do you have any idea how many cases I’m working right now?’

  ‘My step-dad wants to have a party down the bowling alley. Laser Quest, dodgems, and burgers, like I’m, I dunno, six years old or something. He’s such a complete spazmoidal—’

  ‘Yeah, hang on, Marline.’

  ‘Have you at least looked at the file?’

  ‘What am I, Dr Who? When am I supposed to have the time?’

  The muted sound of a doorbell rang out from the speakers.

  ‘OK, OK. Jesus.’ Clunks and rattles. ‘What?’

  Callum poked him in the shoulder again. ‘Make the time.’

  A man’s voice, barely audible: ‘I’m sorry, but I’m trying to find my son.’

  Blakey stared at him. ‘You want me to just drop everything and rake through the ashes of a cold case from twenty-six years ago? No chance.’

  The praying mantis swivelled around in his seat. ‘Can the pair of you belt up? I’m trying to listen to this.’

  ‘—his name’s Sam. He’s only four.’

  ‘It’s my mother, Blakey. Understand? It was her head in that carrier bag.’

  Blakey looked away. ‘You sure you want to know what happened?’

  Was he deaf or something? ‘Of course I sodding do!’

  ‘Oh, you poor man. Please, come in.’ A woman’s voice this time. ‘You said his name’s Sam?’

  ‘Sam. Yes.’

  ‘Callum, you know well as me: nine times out of ten, when the wife gets murdered it’s the husband that did it. That’s how people work.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘Right now your dad’s probably sodded off to the Costa del Sol, or Australia, or something like that. Living under an assumed name with your brother and his grandkids.’

  Because Alastair would be able to get his girlfriend pregnant. Wouldn’t need some greasy Detective Chief Inspector to come in and do it for him behind his back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The woman’s voice again. High and panicky this time. ‘No! Leave her alone!’

  Screams ripped out of the speakers.

  ‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’

  Callum stood. ‘You’re an idiot, Blakey. And I’m glad Franklin battered your nose to a pulp. Hope it hurt.’

  He marched out to a soundtrack of screaming.

  How anyone was supposed to find anything down here was a mystery. Rows and rows and rows of shelving units stretched away into the gloom, each one crammed full of brown cardboard file boxes. The air slightly crunchy with the earthy taste of mildew and dust. They’d followed the same lighting design as Camburn Woods – less than one in three strip lights worked. Most were completely dark, the odd one pinging and buzzing, letting out an intermittent flicker before going out and starting all over again.

  Callum hauled another box from the shelf and wiped a finger through the thick fur of dust covering the ‘CONTENTS’ sticker. Checked the crime number. Nope. Stuck it on the floor, and tried another one. And another. Put them all back where they’d come from and tried the shelf below.

  Twenty minutes of raking through years’ and years’ worth of ruined lives and horror.

  Still, at least this lot seemed to be in the right kind of era.

  His mobile jangled into life and he pulled it out. Who would’ve thought you’d get a signal down here, in the basement of DHQ? Wonders never ceased.

  He hit the button. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  ‘NUMBER WITHHELD.’ glowed in the middle of the screen.

  Great.

  This again.

  ‘Willow, if someone’s hurting your mum you need to—’

  ‘Callum.’ Not Willow Brown, DCI Reece Scumbag Powel.

  He clenched his face. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve just had Elaine on the phone.’

  He pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder and pulled out the next box. ‘Well, I’m sure that makes a difference from having her in the bed I bought.’

  Nope.

  The next box joined it on the concrete floor.

  Nope.

  ‘You still there?’ Wouldn’t be a loss if he wasn’t.

  Next box.

  ‘You cancelled the mortgage paymen
ts. You know fine well, her maternity pay—’

  ‘Get stuffed. The pair of you manoeuvred me out of my own sodding flat, do you really think I’m going to keep paying the mortgage so you can shag in it?’

  The last one was tucked away at the back of the shelf. Ah. That looked a lot more promising – no crust of dust. Someone had checked it out recently.

  ‘You can’t just—’

  ‘I’ve been paying your bills, Powel. Who do you think bought that crib, or the Winnie-the-Pooh mobile, or all those sodding baby clothes?’ Getting louder and louder. ‘Who bought the Nutella and pickled cucumbers for the last nine months? COS I DON’T REMEMBER IT BEING YOU!’

  His words managed a brief echo, before being swallowed by the ranks of shelves and boxes.

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘Damn right I am: finished being your idiot. Pay your own bloody mortgage.’ He thumped the clean box down on the pile and checked the crime number. Had to be at least a dozen of them printed on the sticker in careful blue biro. And third from bottom was an exact match for the reference he’d dug out of the computer.

  ‘This isn’t productive, Callum. We are where we are and throwing tantrums isn’t going to change that.’

  ‘OK, I’m hanging up on you now. Feel free to take your phone and ram it up—’

  ‘You need to collect your things from the flat.’

  Right.

  His back stiffened. ‘And will Elaine be there?’

  ‘I … don’t think that would be wise, do you?’

  Definitely not. ‘I want my books back.’

  ‘She’s staying with her mother for a couple of days. Come over any time after eight.’

  ‘I’ll turn up when I feel like it. It’s my flat.’

  ‘We’ve changed the locks, Callum. After eight. I’ll be there to make sure you don’t do anything foolish.’ Powel hung up.

  Callum lowered his phone, knuckles white, the plastic creaking as he squeezed it. Then he snatched his arm back, ready to hurl the thing into the darkness … Hissed a breath out through his nose. Turned away.