by David Mark
Praise for David Mark
‘Dark, compelling crime writing of the highest order’ DAILY MAIL
‘Brilliant’ THE SUN
‘Exceptional… Mark is writing at the top of his game.’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
‘A wonderfully descriptive writer’ PETER JAMES
‘A class act. Utterly original and spine chillingly good, when it comes to crime fiction, David Mark is in the premier league.’ ABIR MUKHERJEE, AUTHOR OF A RISING MAN
‘One of the most imaginative crime writers in the business, David Mark knows how to tell a good story – usually one that will invoke feelings of extreme horror and awe… in a good way, of course!’ S J I HOLLIDAY, AUTHOR OF THE LINGERING
‘Aector McAvoy, Mark’s gentle giant, is one of the most fascinating, layered characters in British crime fiction. Mark is an outstanding writer.’ M W CRAVEN
‘Masterful’ MICHAEL RIDPATH
‘A true original’ MICK HERRON
‘To call Mark’s novels police procedurals is like calling the Mona Lisa a pretty painting.’ KIRKUS REVIEWS
‘Mark writes bad beautifully’ PETER MAY
Also by David Mark
Novels
The Burying Ground
A Rush of Blood
Borrowed Time
Suspicious Minds
Into the Woods
The Guest House
The DS McAvoy series
Dark Winter
Original Skin
Sorrow Bound
Cruel Mercy
A Bad Death
Dead Pretty
Fire of Lies
Scorched Earth
Cold Bones
As D M Mark
The Zealot’s Bones
THE GUEST HOUSE
David Mark
An Aries book
www.headofzeus.com
Author’s note
Some of the locations in this book are real. Some of the houses actually exist. However, the events going on within are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real people or genuine events are entirely coincidental, and a bit bloody worrying.
This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Aries, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © David Mark, 2021
The moral right of David Mark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781800244023
ISBN (PB) 9781800246324
Cover design © Lisa Brewster
Aries
c/o Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
www.headofzeus.com
For Cal, whose spirit is mirrored in the land where she spent too short a life.
Raw, forbidding, darkly beautiful, Cal is forever Ardnamurchan.
Contents
Welcome Page
Author’s note
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Two
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part Three
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
From ‘Thanatopsis’, by William Cullen Bryant
Prologue
January 18, 2.14am
56°44'07.0"N 6°32'17.0"W
A sea of smashed glass.
Snow and ice, ocean and darkness: a barbed frieze of ash and teeth and steel.
Five miles from the West Coast of Scotland, the elements become a maelstrom of power and violence. The Atlantic has saved its fury for this final stretch of water: a final, lethal punch thrown by a fading adversary. Here, nearing the wild, saw-toothed peninsula of Ardnamurchan, the sea and sky seem to conspire. The snow becomes a blizzard; the stormy waters now almost Biblical in their fury. Where the water meets land it attacks as if trying to claw great chunks of earth within its embrace.
A metal tube, crow-black, moves like a sluggish torpedo towards a serrated curve of land. Ahead, the glow of the lighthouse: yellow light transforming the tumbling snow into lace handkerchiefs and shredded bridal gowns.
Soft light bleeds in through dirty glass, illuminating a space that reeks of petrol and unwashed flesh; an assemblage of metallic squares, each black with shadow and grime. This is neither a ship nor a submarine; it is partly submerged, its single turret and tail visible above the foaming tide. The belly of the vessel droops below the waterline. It is fifteen feet from bow to stern.
A wave hits hard. Slaps at this tiny machine as if it were a tick burrowing into flesh. The craft rocks. Sways. Ploughs onward, rivets and plates shuddering as if beaten with hammers.
To the men within the belly of the black, Orca-like vessel, it is as if God has plunged His fists into the frigid waters and begun to stir.
Inside: four men. Sweaters, cotton undershorts and bare feet, shivering and grumbling, their lips moving around the butts of glowing cigarettes. They move with the gait of those more accustomed to the movement of the ocean than of the land. They are sure-footed, despite the ice and snow and the up-down-up-down surging of the sea. They have seen far worse weather than this. Have known nights so cold that each breath is an agony; nights when they have felt as though their skeletons had transformed into an assemblage of icicles and their skulls no more than packed snow beneath a layer of meat. Their limbs ache. Their bellies growl. They stink of fish guts and oil, of smoke and brine. They do not complain.
At the tiller is Aroldo. He’s thin, but there is a strength to his wiry, featherweight physique. Beneath his scratchy, ill-fitting clothes, is a frame that is all ridges and hollows; muscles sliding over one another like the protective plates of a suit of armour. Here, in the darkness of the cabin, he is little more than two eyes and a glowing ember. He is smoking, pushing out lungful after lungful of grey smoke, pressing his lips to the crack in the glass so tha
t the nicotine does not taint his cargo. It billows up to join the snow-filled clouds above. He sucks in a final drag then forces the butt through the hole. He cannot permit an untended flame within the craft.
The vessel lurches as it hits a gathering wave. Aroldo has time to steady himself. The three other men do not. They swear and grumble as they clatter, painfully, against the metal hull of the ship. He glances back at them and they fall silent. Despite their days and nights at sea, they are still strangers to one another. They have not formed a bond of shared misery. Though they have defecated in the same bucket and breathed in one another’s foulness, there remains a hierarchy. Aroldo finds it better this way.
He carries a crew of three men. He does not know their names and they have been instructed not to tell. One is responsible for the shipment in the hold. Another is tasked with maintaining the engine and generator. The third is here to report back to their paymasters and to ensure that if they are spotted by the authorities, they do as instructed and pull the scuttle lever, sending the vessel and its cargo of Class-A narcotics to the bottom of the sea.
Aroldo has never seen Scotland before. He has captained three narco subs on trans-Atlantic runs. Each time he has put in at Spain and made his way home via cargo ship. This is the first test of the route that they will be taking from now on. There are few eyes on this stretch of abandoned, rugged coastline. Nobody watches for South American drug runners at Britain’s most westerly point.
Aroldo glances at the flimsy console desk in front of him. He is an experienced sailor and has coaxed this ramshackle vessel across the ocean in a way that makes him proud. He knows himself to be worth far more than the 50,000 US dollars he will receive upon his return to Guyana, but he also knows that the men he works for do not appreciate their workforce haggling over payment. He has lost a brother to the cartel. Saw what they did to him. He’s heard that the video is available online but he has no wish to see for himself if the descriptions of what occurred are actually true. He does know that they took his brother to pieces. They kept cutting him up long after he was dead, and at the end, in a vindictive codetta, one of the balaclava’d narcos held up his head and stared into the sightless eyes, then dropped it like it had already begun to smell.
‘We nearly there, boss-man?’
Aroldo ignores the question from the engineer. He has been asking it hourly for the past twelve days. Of the three men he is bringing to their deaths in this remote land, it is the engineer he will grieve for least.
None of the passengers know that they are so very much more than crew. They are as much a cargo as the heroin and cocaine in the hold.
‘Take your medicine,’ growls Aroldo, over his shoulder. He hears a rustling, as the trio of passengers do as they are bid. Aroldo doesn’t know what they are taking. He told them it was seasickness medication. It’s not. It’s some form of preoperative blood oxidiser, guaranteed to ensure they are in as presentable a condition as their long passage across the sea will allow.
They hit another swell, and suddenly he can see the triangular outline of the vessel that they are here to meet. He has been told not to talk. Not to offer handshakes or to press for information. He is to deposit the cargo. He is to tell the three men that they have done their jobs well. And then he is to turn the sub around and head for the prearranged rendezvous, where it will be scuttled, and he will be picked up. He knows he is opening himself to risks by taking on such a dangerous job, but as long as he keeps his mouth shut he will be useful to the cartel. If he were to talk, word would soon get around that the drug runners are diversifying. They have found a market for meat.
‘That it, boss-man?’
He glares through the glass at the approaching vessel. He fancies he knows the name of the man at the tiller, but he will not offer it in greeting. It is an overheard name: a snatched utterance spoken as they loaded the cargo, two narcos at the helm of a pleasure craft near the mouth of the Essequibo River. They had said the name “Bishop”. And Aroldo, a God-fearing Christian, had taken note.
He glances over his shoulder. Six white eyes in the darkness, staring back. He does not let himself think about what awaits these eyes. What they will see. Their corneas alone are worth 25,000 dollars each. But their hearts – they are what makes this journey so important, and so very lucrative.
Aroldo says a prayer as the craft comes near. He feels certain that God will understand. These three men are worth more dead than alive. He is just the ferryman – just the navigator. He is simply the captain of this ship of souls.
Outside, the sound of surf, the swirl of snow, and the distant outline of an unknown land.
PART ONE
1
Now…
January 23, 7.54am
Murt Gorm Croft, near Salen, Ardnamurchan peninsula
‘Daddy!’
‘No, Lilly. Mummy. Say “Mummy”. Mummy’s here. Mummy’s trying.’
‘No. Daddy. Daddy!’
‘Daddy’s busy, Lilly. Busy… somewhere else. I’m doing my best, just push… wiggle your foot…’
‘Not Mummy. No. Not Mummy! Mummy hurts.’
‘Please, Lilly. It makes Mummy sad when you say that. I’m trying, I promise. It still fits – you just need to push…’
‘Mummy mean. Mummy hurt toes. Daddy nice…!’
‘He’s not here, Lilly!’
‘Where Daddy gone?’
‘Away, Lilly!’
‘Where, Mummy!’
‘Fort William, Lilly! He’s banging Kimmy, because she’s twenty-three and doesn’t have stretch marks and because she eats up all his bullshit with a spoon!’
There’s a pause, as Lilly considers this. ‘What banging?’
‘Something you do to a drum…’
A crease appears between her eyebrows: a coin-slot in a jukebox. ‘Eat thit with thpoon?’
‘Oh bloody hell.’
It’s somewhere between breakfast and elevenses and already I’m looking forward to bedtime. Bedtime’s the best moment of the day. Not at first, of course – that’s a nightmare of crying and begging and emotional abuse: a general symphony of anguish that sees my nipples treated the same way a Rottweiler treats a rubber chicken. But I’m usually a little bit drunk by bedtime and when I’ve taken the sharp edges off life with a gin and tonic, the things that Lilly says make me giggle more than they make me cry.
Tonight there’s a chance she’ll be sleeping in her shoes, just so we don’t have to go through this again tomorrow. It shouldn’t piss me off but it does. Why do kids have to keep growing? She’s had these new peach-coloured brogues for precisely one month and already they’re squeezing her toes into points and Mummy is the bitch-queen-from-Hell for trying to get her money’s worth out of the damn things. I’m starting to think that the practical benefits of foot-binding might outweigh the moral concerns. The damn things aren’t going to go on unless I butter her socks.
‘Please, baby.’
‘Mummy eyes wet.’
‘It’s just dust. And the smell of your feet.’
‘Mummy not funny.’
I’m trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. My hair’s in my eyes, and I’m getting sweaty and prickly and it feels like there’s salt and pepper underneath my top layer of skin. I’m not going to lose it – I’ve promised myself. Whatever happens today, I’m going to roll with it. Bowl smashed at breakfast time? Not a problem. PE kit shrunk in the wash? Okay, could be worse. Full nappy stuck to the glass doors like some sort of spatchcocked diarrhoeic albatross? Just keep it together. Count backwards from ten, then forwards from one. Draw a mandala with the pen of your mind’s eye. Breathe. Just breathe. Make fists with your toes.
‘One last push, baby girl. We’ve got things to do. You can’t run around barefoot and I haven’t time to hoover and I know your sister smashed a glass and hasn’t told me…’
‘Mummy sad?’
‘No. Well, yeah. A bit.’
‘Mummy sad. Mummy cross.’
Then she d
oes it. Says it. Wins me back around as easily as her bloody father used to. Puts one clammy pink hand on my cheek and looks into my eyes, her blue mixing with my brunette. ‘Love you, Mummy.’
I melt: a snowman in a sauna. ‘You are the best,’ I say, and I swear the knots in my back straighten themselves out. I’m three inches taller in moments. ‘You’re brilliant.’
‘Mummy blirriant. Play Fairy Garden? Do painting?’
And I’m grinning again. Hugging her to me and pressing her forehead against mine. It’s not easy, looking into eyes that are absolute replicas of the person I’d most like to punch. She’s every inch her father’s daughter. Twenty-six months old now, and taller than the other two were at her age. I tell her she’s a chunky monkey whenever I’m sprinkling talc on her lovely pink puppy fat and I do have a habit of telling her she’s a big lump when I’m trying to carry her and do the shopping at the same time, but it’s meant with love. I should probably stop that before it starts causing emotional damage. I’ve certainly not got round to extricating my parents from my psyche. I don’t know anybody who has.
‘Fairy Garden?’ she asks again, tactfully, as if querying whether I’d like a glass of wine. Then she wriggles her toes and her foot slips effortlessly into her left shoe. She gives me the cheekiest look I’ve ever seen. ‘Yes, Mummy. Fairy Garden.’
‘Oh you little rotter,’ I say, laughing, and she giggles as I tickle her. She slips down from the chair and runs to the sliding doors, presses her face to the glass and leaves a perfect Rorschach of smudges.
Fairy Garden is her favourite game. There’s a patch of rockery and wildflowers at the top end of the garden, covered by a parasol of interlinking trees and the sort of creepers that look as though they’re waiting for a chance to grab you by the ankle. We’ve made it pretty. Her brother and sister like sitting there too but they only go outside when I cut the plugs off all the electrical gadgets, so by and large, it’s Lilly’s.
