A Dark So Deadly

by Stuart MacBride

  Franklin pulled out her pepper spray. ‘What if he’s got a dog? Or a gun?’

  ‘Then we probably get bitten and shot. Try not to, though.’

  ‘And that’s our plan, is it? Try not to get bitten or shot?’

  He jerked the wheel left, taking them uphill onto Lehman Road. ‘Do you have a better plan?’

  ‘Just saying.’ She put one hand over the clip of her seatbelt.

  Lehman Road was a bit more exclusive than the previous streets, and a bit more rundown too. A cul-de-sac lined with big detached houses – large front gardens secured behind waist-high brick walls topped with six-foot iron railings. Weeds growing out of the cracks in the pavement. Old drooping trees, their leaves already yellowing. A couple of cars crusted with sap and dirt that looked as if they hadn’t moved in decades.

  Mrs Georgina Mason must’ve been worth a fair bit before she snuffed it.

  McAdams pointed. ‘Count it down.’

  Franklin nodded. ‘Number six … number eight … number ten … twelve … Go!’

  The Shogun put on a burst of speed, the front end swinging to the right – up across the pavement and onto the weed-strewn blockwork driveway. Screeched to a halt right in front of the house.

  Bang – Franklin was out.

  Callum did the same, hooley bar clutched in his good hand, and sprinted up the stairs to number fourteen’s front door. Only a few wisps of paint still clung to the wood. He swung the pointy end of the bar at the Yale lock, sank the tip in just in front of it and wrenched the whole bar forwards. A pop and crack, then the lock sprang free of the wood. He twisted the hooley bar round forty-five degrees and swung again, burying the wedge into the gap between the door and its frame. Shoved.

  BOOOM …

  The door flew open and Franklin rushed past, extendable baton clacking open in one hand, pepper spray in the other. Callum charged in after her.

  She stuck her head in through an open door. ‘Clear!’

  He did the other side – an ancient music room, coated in a thick duvet of dust, the chairs sagging and mouse-eaten. ‘Clear!’

  By the time he’d got out again she was doing another room. ‘Clear!’

  A wide set of stairs snaked up towards a landing, chairlift rusting away on one side.

  The kitchen cabinet doors hung squint in their frames. A collapsed chair lurked by the back door. But a clear line of tracks snaked through the dirt to the sink and back – the dust around the draining board almost non-existent. ‘Clear!’

  McAdams appeared in the hallway, shaking the rain from his shoulders. He took a quick look around.

  ‘Clear!’ Franklin stepped out of the bathroom and made for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  But McAdams marched right past her, to a small door part-hidden under the stairs. Wrenched it open …

  A mop, a broom, and a collection of cleaning things collapsed out in a huge billow of grey dust. ‘Gah …’ He backed away, coughing, one hand waving at the impromptu smokescreen. ‘It’s an old house: there’s got to be a basement somewhere. Find it!’

  Callum went back to the kitchen. What looked like a utility room led off from one side, behind the rusted remains of a big round-cornered fridge. Twin-tub washing machine, more sagging cupboards, a collection of rotting wellington boots slumped by a Belfast sink. And a door.

  He grabbed the handle and twisted.

  Locked.

  Well, the hooley bar would soon see to that.

  Callum smashed the wedge into the doorjamb and shoved, setting the wood cracking and splintering. Then the door sprang open, bounced back off the wall as he took the first step into darkness.

  Should’ve brought a torch …

  Instead, he made do with his mobile phone, holding it out in his good hand, the hooley bar tucked under his other arm. ‘Ashlee?’

  The wooden steps creaked beneath him as he crept down into the depths.

  His phone lit up the wall beside him – brickwork streaked with white where the salt had leached out of the mortar. The air tasted of raw mushrooms, smelled of vinegar and mouse droppings.

  ‘Hello?’

  His screen cast a pale-grey glow that barely reached a foot from his hand. Picking out strange rounded shapes all around him. He reached out and brushed a sheet, probably draped over a piece of furniture. His fingertips sent up a little cloud of dust that danced and twirled like midges in the thin light.

  The basement was big, had to be about the same length and breadth as the house above. And it was full of unidentifiable stuff.

  ‘Callum?’ McAdams creaked his way down the stairs. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Too dark to tell.’

  ‘Luckily …’ A muffled click and a beam of light swept across the room. Shining through the sheets and pulling the shapes of dining chairs and bicycles from within. McAdams played his torch around the weeping brick walls, then down to the floor at their feet.

  A clear path was scuffed through the dirt, heading around a stack of tea chests and disappearing behind a supporting wall.

  Callum followed it. ‘Ashlee? Can you hear me?’ Around the edge of the wall. ‘Ashlee, it’s the police. We’re going to get you out of here.’

  Assuming the path through the dust wasn’t just a well-trodden route for rats.

  It took a right, behind another supporting wall …

  He froze.

  A wooden door. With a brand-new hasp and padlock. A perfectly clean quarter-circle on the floor where it’d been opened outward.

  ‘Well?’ McAdams shoved him forward. ‘Don’t just stand there!’

  Callum jammed the hooley bar’s claw in under the hasp and shoved his full weight against it.

  A groan, a squeal, then a crack as the whole thing ripped free of the wood and clattered to the floor.

  He pulled the door open. Wood smoke enveloped him, slipped down into his lungs. Warm and inviting.

  Orange light flickered low to the ground inside. Pale and indistinct, but definitely there.

  Callum’s footsteps echoed up and away, reverberating back from the walls.

  The screen on his phone cast just enough of a glow to pick out the brickwork. It was a room, about six foot by twelve. Flagstone floor. It wasn’t that warm, even with the fire smouldering away in the middle. He swung his phone up, but all that did was make the smoke glow.

  And then a harsh white beam burst into life beside him, turning the smoke into a solid thing as McAdams stepped inside. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing.’

  Something patted against Callum’s shoulders. Like tiny raindrops in the dark.

  He looked up.

  Another drop hit his cheek and he wiped it away. Oily. Greasy between his fingertips. He stuck his phone in his pocket. ‘Give me the torch.’

  ‘No chance. Get your own—’

  ‘Give me the bloody torch!’ He snatched it out of McAdams’ hand and kicked at the fire, scattering the glowing embers. Stood in the middle of the room pointing the beam straight up.

  Drips pattered against his face.

  Whether it was the door being open, or him kicking the embers out of the way, didn’t matter. But something changed and the smoke swirled around his torch, thinning enough for the beam to reach up into the heights.

  Rows and rows of filleted fish – tied together at the tail and hooked over the wooden rods that ran from one side of the room to the other – stretched up above him. And above them, a shadow.

  And then the smoke cleared.

  It was a person, or what was left of them, their skeletal remains hanging head-down, arms dangling free.

  ‘Jesus …’

  They’d finally found Ashlee Gossard.

  74

  McAdams hacked and wheezed on the top step, face buried in an oxygen mask as Dotty’s Vauxhall screeched up at the kerb. Mother clambered out into the rain and staggered over to Callum, breathing hard.

  He shifted, making room beneath the tw
isted warty tree, just behind the ambulance. ‘Boss.’

  ‘Is Ashlee …?’

  ‘She’s so dehydrated they can barely find veins to get fluid into her.’

  The ambulance’s back doors hung open, both paramedics hunched over the emaciated figure on the trolley. Fighting to get wires and needles and drips fitted. ‘Ashlee? Can you hear me, Ashlee?’

  ‘Yes, but will she live?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe. It’s possible …’ He puffed out a breath.

  Franklin marched out through the front door, paused to pat McAdams on the shoulder, then joined them under the tree. ‘The only room not covered in eight foot of dust is the DIY smokehouse in the basement. No one’s lived here for decades.’

  Mother rubbed her hands across her face. Turned her back on the struggling paramedics. ‘Good work, both of you.’

  ‘No.’ Callum shook his head. ‘It was Franklin who got the Land Registry to search for properties belonging to Paul Jeffries, otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here. I just went along for the ride.’

  Franklin’s cheeks went a shade darker. She shrugged. ‘Team effort.’

  There was a clunk and the Vauxhall’s roofbox hinged open, the mechanics inside whirring and bleeping as a black metal arm brought Keith out from his storage bay and lowered him down beside Dotty’s open door. Then the arm retracted back out of sight again. As if there was some vast metal spider lurking in the roofbox.

  ‘Well: we’ve got Ashlee Gossard, that’s the important thing. And she’s alive.’ Mother glanced back at the ambulance. ‘Just.’

  Dotty popped Keith open, then levered her legs out and swung herself into the seat. Wheeled her way over to them, squeezing under the shelter of the tree. ‘Is she alive?’

  Callum pointed at the ambulance. ‘We’ve just done that bit.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Mother walked up the path and settled onto the top step beside McAdams. Put an arm around his shoulders. Talking in a voice too low to hear.

  Franklin crossed her arms and leaned in close to Dotty. ‘Did you know the silly sod’s been ducking his chemo sessions?’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ She shrugged. Then grinned and slapped Callum on the bum. ‘I hear you found your twin brother, and he’s alive!’

  ‘He’s also an egotistical narcissistic drug-taking misogynist dick who can’t decide if he’ll help me catch one of the guys who killed our parents. Needs to consult with his lawyer first.’ A sigh tore its way free. ‘I don’t know, Dotty, I genuinely don’t. All these years …’

  Dotty gave his leg a wee squeeze. ‘Give it time.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘So: are we any closer to catching Imhotep? Well, I suppose it’s more like Imhotep Part Two, “Son of Imhotep!”, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  Dotty pulled a face. ‘Didn’t think so.’

  One of the paramedics hopped down from the ambulance and closed the doors. ‘Ashlee’s very weak, and I’d be shocked if her internal organs haven’t started shutting down, but we’ve managed to get a little fluid into her. Maybe …?’

  Callum handed him a Police Scotland business card. ‘If anything happens.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’ Then he climbed into the driver’s seat, set the lights going and the siren wailing. Pulled away from the house. Getting faster towards the end of the street. Flooring it on the way out.

  Rain pattered on the leaves above them. Gurgled in the guttering.

  Dotty stared off into the distance.

  Franklin fidgeted.

  Callum cleared his throat. ‘OK, the question we should be asking is: why didn’t Paul Jeffries sell this house to Northeast Ecclesiastical Trust Holdings? He turned the rest of them over, presumably for a tidy chunk of cash, why not this one?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t need the money?’ Dotty shrugged. ‘Or maybe he was planning on living here?’

  ‘He’s got that place out in the middle of nowhere, no neighbours to see what he’s up to. Why move into town and risk getting caught?’

  Franklin pulled out her phone and poked at the screen. ‘According to the Land Registry, Mrs Georgina Mason left the property to him thirty-five years ago. Maybe that’s when he was killed? He couldn’t sell it, because he was propping up a shallow grave. And eight years later, the trust finally notice he’s not cashing the cheques any more, and another seven to have him declared dead.’

  Dotty smiled. ‘Ahoy, hoy – the Smurfs are here.’

  A battered Transit van grumbled its way down the road, three faces peering out through the smeared windscreen. They parked in the spot vacated by the ambulance and Cecelia wound down the driver’s window. ‘This the right address?’

  Callum hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Top to bottom, we need to know who else has been in there.’

  She climbed out into the rain. ‘We’ll do what we can, but the labs …?’ Her two colleagues went round the back and unlocked the rear doors. ‘I swear on Jools Holland’s grave, I have never had this many lab-result cock-ups in my life. We’ve got to send about half of them back for retesting.’

  One of her minions reappeared, already kitted out in his blue oversuit, and handed another one to Cecelia. ‘You want us to start with the basement and work our way up?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me.’ She pulled the fresh suit out of its plastic wrapper and grabbed Callum to help her stay upright as she wriggled into the thing. ‘You think them mixing up the internal and external samples from your mother’s head was bad? That isn’t even the foothills of Cock-Up Mountain.’

  Callum stayed where he was until she’d got herself sorted. ‘Well don’t let them cock this one up. Whoever Monaghan was working with, they’re going to abduct someone else. Soon. We need an ID.’

  The minion reappeared. Handed her a facemask and some safety goggles. ‘Hi ho?’

  ‘Hi ho.’

  He turned and marched off, picking up his mate along the way, the pair of them whistling the tune from Snow White as they disappeared with their kit into the house.

  Cecelia gave Callum a pained smile. ‘We’ll do everything we can.’

  Why did everyone keep saying that?

  ‘Here.’ Callum put the mug of tea down in front of McAdams, then settled into the seat beside Franklin.

  Condensation ran down the inside of the Tartan Bunnet’s window, mirroring the rain outside, the steamy air redolent with the round brown scent of frying bacon as the owner worked her sinister magic on a half pack of smoked streaky. All the other tables lay empty, their tops wiped to a sticky gloss, waiting for the next unwary diner to wander in. Like red-and-white checked carnivorous plants.

  Dotty hunched forward in her wheelchair, working her way through a huge pile of chips with grim determination and lots of tomato sauce.

  A grunt, then McAdams wiped himself a drippy porthole in the steamed-up window and peered out at the street. ‘She doesn’t look happy.’

  From here, Mother was just a dark blob with an orangey bit on the top. Pale arms jabbing and poking as she spoke on the phone.

  Franklin added two sugars to her coffee. ‘What about going back to the psychiatric ward and forcing them to give us Brett Millar?’

  Dotty sighed. ‘Here we go.’

  ‘He’s the only eyewitness we’ve got and we’re not allowed to interview him?’ She waved her spoon at them. ‘Who does this Professor Bartlett think he is? We’re trying to catch a serial killer and he’s playing doctors and nurses! It’s—’

  ‘Impossible.’ McAdams turned away from the window. ‘We need a court order to get Millar’s treatment suspended, and no sheriff worth his silly white wig will give us one. And believe me, we’ve tried.’

  ‘They’re keeping him doped up so he won’t attack the staff or patients, right? Well, we lock him in a cell and he can shout and scream all he wants. Eventually the drugs will wear off and he’ll tell us who Monaghan was working with. We need to—’

  �
��Detective Constable Franklin,’ McAdams reached across the table and took one of her hands, ‘with the deepest and most sincere respect, in the words of Mother’s dear old nan: hud yer wheesht. It’s not happening. What we need is another plan.’

  Dotty pushed her plate across the table. ‘Have a chip, Rosalind. It helps with the feelings of frustration, helplessness, and existential doom.’

  There was a pause, then Franklin helped herself to two.

  ‘And Callum, sulking. Tell us pray, what news from court? Your brother, sent down?’

  ‘Yeah, they say, “Bite me, Sergeant McAdams.”’ Callum took a sip of his own tea, hot and sweet. ‘Pleaded guilty. They released him on bail, pending sentencing.’

  ‘He’ll be on the first private jet to the Bahamas, if he’s got any sense. You’ll not see him again.’

  Franklin scowled around another stolen chip. ‘Don’t, OK?’

  McAdams fluttered his eyelashes. ‘Moi?’

  ‘Yes, you. Try a bit of compassion for once in your life. Can you even imagine how difficult this must be to deal with?’

  Dear Lord, was Franklin actually sticking up for him?

  ‘Ah, my dear Rosalind, you’re probably right. It’s force of habit. Winding up DC MacGregor is one of the few pleasures I have left, in these my twilight chapters.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Callum. To lose a brother to prison, having only just found him, must be—’

  The café’s front door banged open and Mother stomped in, shoulders down, fists clenched, cheeks and nose red, eyes narrowed, hair smeared flat by the rain. ‘Useless, half-arsed, idiotic, pain-in-the-backside, moronic, turdwardens!’ She threw herself into the last remaining seat at the table, setting the rubber feet squeaking. Sat there and glowered at her latte.

  McAdams grinned. ‘Good news?’

  ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-RRRRRGH!’ The scream echoed back from the walls, setting the cutlery ringing, then faded away into nothing.

  The proprietor didn’t even look up from her frying pan.

  Mother slumped. Grabbed a handful of napkins and dried her face. ‘I’m sorry, children, but I am more than a little upset.’