A Dark So Deadly

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘That’s right: take her word for it. Elaine couldn’t tell the truth if you paid her thirty pieces of silver.’ He thumped back in his seat. Folded his arms. ‘After I collected my stuff from my flat, I got a call to a domestic assault in Kingsmeath. I rushed straight over there. If I’d attacked Powel, I’d be covered in blood, wouldn’t I? Ask the householder: Irene Brown. Ask her and her children if I looked like I’d just beaten someone half to death.’

  ‘Callum, you have to see how bad this—’

  ‘Ask them. And I’m not saying another word without a Federation rep and a lawyer.’

  Wee Angie Northfield grimaced, then popped a roll-up in her mouth and set a lighter to the end. Sooked in a lungful, setting the tip glowing bright orange. Then let it out in a long hard sigh. ‘You shouldn’t have agreed to the first interview without representation, MacGregor. That was stupid.’

  Rain played a staccato drum roll on the smoking shelter, running down the curved roof in rippled sheets. Splashing on the paving slabs.

  Streetlights rocked in the wind, their thin yellow glow swallowed by the downpour, leaving Peel Place washed out and anaemic in the darkness. The war memorial on the other side of the street was a statue of three First World War soldiers, bayonets fixed, kilts billowing out as they charged. Someone had taken pity on them and provided each with a traffic cone hat to keep their heads dry.

  Callum scowled out at the overflowing gutters. ‘I didn’t touch Powel, OK? Well, yes, I punched him once on Thursday night, but I didn’t attack him on Friday. And I didn’t dump him in the woods.’

  ‘Worst-case scenario: the Procurator Fiscal thinks there’s enough to charge you with attempted murder and you’re off to the cells till it comes to court. Could be months.’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘Best case: they decide you might be telling the truth and go after Ainsley Dugdale for it. Either way you’re looking at an immediate suspension pending investigation. Probably without pay.’

  He let his head fall back till it boinged off the Perspex wall. ‘Oh joy.’ Then he dug a hand into a pocket and produced his wallet. Checked the contents: a fiver, two used bus tickets, and buy-one-get-one-free voucher for Big Bernie’s Pizza Palace on Wallace Lane. ‘So I’ve got to live on five quid and some pocket smush till they clear me?’

  ‘Yeah well, that’s how it’s going to—’

  ‘Constable MacGregor!’ McAdams’ voice boomed out from the main doors, cheery as a drunken accountant.

  Even better. Now, on top of everything else, here came some sarcastic gloating wrapped up in half-arsed poetry.

  Callum bounced his head into the Perspex again.

  McAdams limped down the stairs, leaning heavily on the balustrade, and hobbled over to the smoking shelter. Grinned as he stepped inside. He looked as if someone had taken a skeleton and dressed it in an inexpensive suit: cheekbones prominent and sharp, eyes sunken and dark. ‘I just heard the news.’ Heat radiated off him in sour waves.

  ‘You look like crap.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m dying, in case you didn’t hear?’ The smile got bigger and more cadaverous. ‘Angie, my darling. Can you get our wee boy off, or is he now doooooomed?’

  She shrugged, cigarette cupped in her hand. ‘Fifty–fifty.’

  ‘Then I have just the thing that may help.’ He thumped Callum on the back. ‘You, dear Constable Useless, can drive.’

  ‘I can’t go anywhere till they decide what’s happening. Charge or release.’

  ‘Oh, they’ve already done that. I’ve just come from Mother’s office with the happy news: you’re suspended without pay, pending an investigation.’

  Wee Angie Northfield nodded. ‘Told you.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Callum boinged his head off the smoking shelter’s wall again.

  ‘Ah yes, but I have a plan.’ He flashed his death’s head smile again. ‘To the Misfit-Mob-Mobile!’

  66

  Rainswept buildings slid past the car windows, turned an unhealthy yellow-grey by the streetlights. Callum took a right, over Dundas Bridge. ‘This would go a lot quicker if you told me where we were going.’

  The Kings River stretched out on either side, swollen, dark, and angry.

  Nothing from McAdams.

  Off in the distance, Montgomery Park was lit up like a Wurlitzer. Spotlights raked the low clouds, making the huge inflatable spider glow every time they touched it. Colours flickered and burst out from the giant screens – too far away to make out any detail, just a changing smear of brightness that glittered back from the river.

  ‘Sergeant McAdams!’

  ‘Mmmph?’ His head jerked up, eyes blinking. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, where – are – we – going?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ A long puffed-out breath and a little shake. His face gleamed in the dashboard light, greasy and unwell. ‘We, my dear Callum, are going hunting for one Detective Constable John Pain-In-The-Backside Watt. Mother’s worried.’

  ‘You do remember I’ve been suspended?’

  ‘Pff …’ He waved a hand. ‘Suspended is as suspended does. Besides, we’re not undertaking an official investigation here, we’re just out looking for a colleague, so I can kick his arse halfway up his back for him.’ The sentence ended with a hacking cough that rocked McAdams back and forward in the passenger seat, leaving him panting and slumped.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK to do this?’

  ‘He’s not answering his mobile or his landline, so we’ll try his flat first. With any luck he’s accidentally handcuffed himself to the bed in his favourite gimp suit.’

  ‘Only you seriously look like you should be in hospital.’

  ‘And if he’s not there, we widen the search. I’ve been through his spreadsheet and we’ve got all properties accounted for. The only ones not searched by other teams are the two he did on his own: the old Patterson-Smith Warehouse in Wardmill, and Thaw Cottages out by Holburn Forest. We’ll try those too.’

  ‘I’ve seen post mortems on healthier looking people than you.’

  ‘I’ve already checked with all the hospitals and both mortuaries.’

  Well, no one could say Callum hadn’t tried. ‘Where’s his flat, then?’

  ‘Take a right at the roundabout.’

  The old lady from number 5 lowered the keys into McAdams’ palm. ‘You sure I can’t make you a nice hot cup of tea, dear? Only you look like you need one. It’s no trouble.’

  ‘I’d love to, but we’re on duty.’ He stood on the landing and waved at her until she went back into her flat and closed the door. Then McAdams slumped. Wiped the sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. Sighed. And passed the keys to Callum. ‘You can go first, I just need to catch my breath for a bit.’

  OK.

  Callum knocked on the door to number 6. Waited.

  The only sound was McAdams wheezing.

  So he took the spare keys and let himself into Watt’s flat. Clicked on the lights. ‘Hello? John?’

  The hallway was small, but spotless: a wonky rhomboid with four doors leading off it. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room. All neat, all clean, all tidy. Strange, would’ve put money on Watt being a Pot-Noodle bachelor, with posters of wrestlers on the walls and an impressive collection of used pizza boxes. Instead, it was like something out of a decorating magazine.

  A row of sympathy cards were lined up on the mantelpiece in the living room, beneath a cheesy posed photo of Watt and a woman so pale she was almost see-through.

  Callum picked up one of the cards: ‘WE WERE SO SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT MARY. OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU ALWAYS, BILL AND AGGIE.’

  He put it down again. As if holding it any longer would make it grubby.

  The answering machine flashed a red light in the corner. Callum pressed the button.

  ‘Have you had a bank loan or credit card in the last six years? Unsure if you’re due PPI compensation? Well—’

 
He hit delete.

  Marched back out to the landing. ‘He’s not here.’

  Callum’s torch beam wandered across the large breezeblock wall, catching the faded lettering: ‘PATTERSON-SMITH ~ QUALITY FURNITURE YOU CAN DEPEND ON’. And now there was nothing left but dust and the dirty gritty scent of mildew and stagnant water.

  McAdams limped out of a door through to the old office, brushing cobwebs from his suit jacket. ‘There are spiders in there big as Yorkshire Terriers. I kid you not.’

  ‘Sod-all out here either.’ He did a slow turn on the spot. ‘Have you tried getting Voodoo to put a lookout request on Watt’s car? He jumped out of Dotty’s – no way he slogged all the way out here on foot.’

  ‘She’s looking.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’ So much for that. ‘Holburn Forest, then.’

  ‘Holburn Forest.’

  ‘Of course, what I don’t get, is why he has to be such a dick the whole time.’ McAdams held onto the grab handle above the passenger door as the Mondeo rocked and growled from pothole to pothole along the track, sending up arcs of water.

  ‘Hello, Pot? I have Kettle on line one for you.’

  The car’s headlights caught the broom and whin crowding the road, sending jagged shadows racing ahead of them.

  ‘That’s different. I’m dying, I’m allowed to be a little—’

  ‘Dicklike?’

  ‘I was going to say, colourfully eccentric.’ He shifted in his seat as a grating noise sounded somewhere under the car. ‘You try being eaten alive by tumours, young Callum. See how altruistic you are then.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  The sky was a solid blob of orangey-grey, but a thick black stripe loomed on the horizon. That would be Holburn Forest, lurking in the darkness. Still no sign of any cottages.

  ‘And don’t get me started on the chemotherapy …’ A thick, rattling sigh. ‘You know, I wish I hadn’t. Started on it, I mean. I could be dead by now, instead of lurching about like a broken clothes horse.’ He nodded. ‘But Beth won’t let go, so I’ve got to hold on too.’

  The headlights pulled tree trunks from the gloom as they reached the forest’s edge. The track disappeared into it, but another track sat at right angles, skirting the boundary.

  McAdams pointed. ‘Left here, it’s at the end of the road.’

  Callum took the turning, thumping through another set of waterlogged potholes. Off in the distance, the city lights glittered through the rain. A blanket of stars, draped across the landscape. ‘Aaaargh!’ The Mondeo lurched like a rollercoaster, setting free another grinding scrape from beneath their feet. ‘Be lucky to have any bottom left on the car, after this.’

  ‘You want a bit of advice, Callum?’

  ‘Not you as well.’ Why did everyone think he needed their sodding opinion?

  There – up ahead – a line of three cottages, sitting between the track and the forest. Grass shone in the rowans, one of the chimneys looked on the verge of collapse. The gardens were full of weeds.

  ‘Live your life like the future’s never going to happen. Because before you know it: plop. It isn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘Spent my whole life doing the right thing – being responsible, working hard – when I should’ve been out there enjoying life. Thought there would always be time for that later. Now look at me …’ McAdams sighed. ‘I’m down to my last few chapters, Callum. I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end of the book …’

  Three cottages: two semidetached, one standing on its own. Callum parked outside it. Killed the engine and sat there as the hot metal pinged and ticked. The rain got louder, battering off the car roof. ‘We should probably check the graveyards.’

  McAdams unclipped his seatbelt. ‘You’d think, if someone buried him, they’d invite us to the funeral so we could dance on his grave.’

  ‘There were sympathy cards in his flat. You ever hear him talk about someone called Mary?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know anything about his home life. He’s always too … bleccccch to spend that much time with.’

  ‘If she’s died recently, he could be visiting her grave. Or out getting hammered somewhere.’

  A nod. ‘Definitely worth a try.’ Then McAdams levered himself out into the rain. ‘Are you coming, then?’

  Callum grabbed his high-viz from the back and hauled it on. Hunched his shoulders as he followed McAdams up the path to the front door. ‘He’s definitely been here.’ Pointing at a line of trampled grass and weeds leading around the side of the building.

  ‘Of course he was. I saw him here, remember? Honestly, nobody pays any sodding attention.’ McAdams pushed through into the house. ‘He’d finished searching the cottages, I think. Or just about.’

  The hallway smelled of long-dead mice, tainted with the sharp musky odour of fresh rodent urine, and the thick cloying tickle of dust. Other than them and Watt, it looked as if no one had been in here for years.

  Callum slid his torch beam through the open door and into a living room. ‘This is a complete waste of time. Why would he still be here?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ McAdams limped past, playing his torch across the peeling wallpaper. ‘It was all I could think of to do. He’s not at home, he’s not at the station, Dotty’s not seen him since she turfed him out of her car. He’s got to be somewhere.’

  The bedroom floor sagged towards the corner, where a hole as big as an armchair was rotted through the floorboards. A pair of dark shiny eyes glittered in the torchlight, then disappeared.

  ‘If you’re that worried, send out a lookout request. Get the media department issuing statements and posters. Mobilise the nightshift.’

  ‘It’s probably nothing. You know what Watt’s like – law unto himself, that one. Thinks he’s too good to check in with anyone or clock off at the end of the day.’ McAdams disappeared down the corridor. ‘Nothing in the bathroom.’

  The other bedroom was empty too. And the kitchen.

  Callum’s torch picked out manky worktops and kitchen units, little trails of footprints scrawled through the dust and mouse droppings. It sparkled back from the window above the sink. He opened the back door and ran it around the garden. ‘There’s outbuildings. A bothy and a big shed-barn thing.’

  ‘I don’t understand him, Callum, I honestly don’t. You? You’re a simple soul – a bran-flakes-and-marmalade kind of guy. But Watt?’

  ‘Screw you. I’m plenty complicated.’ He stepped back out into the rain.

  ‘I thought I’d finally got through to him. “Don’t be a dick,” I said. “You need to work as a team,” I said. “Oh yes,” he says, “I promise I’ll be a good boy from now on!”’ McAdams spat into the wet grass. ‘Dick.’

  The bothy was a squat blocky thing with a rusty corrugated roof. Something had been at the mortar, eating it away, exposing the rocks that made up the walls. It smelled even more of mouse than the house had.

  McAdams followed him from room to room. ‘See when I get my hands on Watt? I’m going to throttle the life out of him. You’re going to have to alibi me. Kid-on he was already dead when we found him.’

  An ancient kitchen with a lumpy range that was like a solid heap of decaying metal, floral wallpaper smeared with mildew. The ceiling had collapsed, exposing the roof beams, leaving chunks of plaster all over the floor.

  ‘No, I won’t throttle him. I’ll tie him to the back of the car and make him run all the way back to Divisional Headquarters. Maybe drag him for a couple of miles too. That’ll teach him to do what he’s bloody well told.’

  A line of swallow or house-martin nests lined the join between ceiling and wall in the next room. Stacks of old tiles and the rotting remains of kitchen units – probably dumped here when they did up one of the cottages decades ago.

  McAdams wheezed. Leaned against the horrible wallpaper. Let his head hang.

  Callum checked the last room – about the same size as the kitchen, only without the charm. Someone had dr
awn crude pornographic figures on the walls in crumbling chalk. And there was no way half of it was physically possible.

  But no sign of Watt.

  Back in the hall, McAdams hadn’t moved.

  ‘Right: soon as we’ve checked the barn, I’m dropping you off at the hospital.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital.’

  ‘Tough. You think Mother’s upset about Watt going AWOL? How do you think she’ll feel if I let you snuff it out here?’

  ‘I’m not going to the sodding hospital!’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that.’ Callum marched back out into the rain. Another trampled path led through the grass and weeds to the barn. So Watt had searched it too.

  He took the path anyway, right up to the barn door. Flicked the catch open, pushed the door, and stepped inside.

  Stopped.

  Everything stank of wood smoke.

  ‘McAdams?’ Deep breath. ‘MCADAMS! IN HERE!’

  The room was split into two bits – one set out with a wooden frame above a pile of ash and burnt logs. The other was a little room, built of rough-hewn wood. Just like the smokehouse they’d found at Creel Lane.

  A pile of old wooden fish boxes sat in front of it, still fresh enough to ooze the acidic tang of old seafood.

  ‘MCADAMS!’ Callum struggled his good hand into a blue nitrile glove and crept over to the sealed-off section. The door was slightly ajar. He eased it all the way with his foot. Then lurched back a couple of steps, covering his mouth and nose with his fibreglass cast.

  The billowing, unmistakable, greasy stench of death collapsed out of the room.

  Behind him the barn door thumped.

  ‘Callum?’

  ‘Over here.’ He took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

  A rusty metal tank gleamed in the torchlight. There must’ve been water in it, because it sent reflections sparkling across the wooden roof. He swung the beam right …

  OK, that explained the smell.

  A woman’s body was slumped on the floor by the wall, held upright by the chain around her neck. Callum set the beam on her dark, swollen face. Abby Gossard. Definitely dead.