A Dark So Deadly

by Stuart MacBride

  McAdams wiped his hands together. ‘Soon as Dr Twining’s seen the remains, get them bagged, tagged, and down the mortuary. And if he gives you any grief about it being a waste of his valuable time, tell him tough. Don’t see why we should be the only ones.’ A click of the fingers, held high overhead, as if McAdams was summoning a waiter in a sitcom. ‘Constable MacGregor: we’re leaving. Turns out this is more of a short story than a fully-fledged novel.’

  Callum stayed where he was, sniffing the air. ‘Can you smell that?’

  ‘I said, “We’re leaving.”’

  ‘No, underneath all the rotting rubbishy smell, there’s something else. Wood smoke? Like there’s been a fire?’

  ‘Don’t look at me.’ The Cherub shook his head. ‘Fifteen minutes in here and you go nose-blind. Can’t smell a thing.’

  McAdams’ voice boomed from outside the tent: ‘CONSTABLE MACGREGOR! HEEL!’

  The Cherub shrugged. ‘His master’s voice.’

  Don’t suppose it mattered anyway. What was one extra smell on top of all the others?

  Callum stood, wiped his gloves on his legs, and slipped back out into the rain.

  Halfway back across the slippery bin-bags, his phone launched into its default ringtone. Sodding hell. He peeled off his right glove and fought the bare hand into his SOC suit. Pulled out his phone. Kept on walking. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ah, hello. Am I speaking to Detective Constable Callum MacGregor?’

  He checked the number. Nope, no idea who it was. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Good, good. This is Alex from Professional Standards, we’d like you to pop in for a wee chat.’

  Oh God.

  ‘How does tomorrow morning sound? I know it’s taken us a while to get round to it, but better late than never, yes?’

  No.

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Excellent. Let’s say … Oh, that’s lucky: I can fit you in at seven. First thing in the morning, then you can get on with your day without having to worry about it.’

  Might as well get it over with – like ripping off a sticking plaster, wrenching all the hair out with it. ‘Right. Yes. Seven tomorrow morning.’

  After all, what was the worst that could happen?

  They could fire him. Prosecute him. And send him to prison.

  ‘Good, good. See you then.’ Alex from Professional Standards hung up.

  It would be fine. It would.

  Callum put his phone away. ‘Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.’

  He crunched his way through the bin-bags to McAdams’ shiny new Mitsubishi Shogun. The lanky git was leaning on the roof of Mother’s scabby Fiat Panda, one hand making lazy circles in the air as she peeled herself out of her Smurf outfit. Probably working on new ways to make Callum’s life even worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough already.

  Professional Standards.

  Gah …

  He yanked open the passenger door and pinged his blue nitrile gloves into the footwell. Tore off his SOC suit and bundled it up.

  They didn’t have anything on him.

  They couldn’t – he hadn’t done anything.

  Yeah, but when did that ever stop anyone?

  He scowled at his crumpled suit. What was the point taking it back to the station and sticking it in the bin, it was just going to end up right back here anyway. Callum hurled it away. It spun, unfurling in mid-air like a shed skin, before tumbling to the filthy ground.

  And when he turned back to the car, there was Dugdale grinning at him from the back seat.

  ‘Oh … sod off.’

  The municipal tip shrank in the rear-view mirror. McAdams shifted behind the wheel, dug a packet of gum from his pocket and crunched down a little white rectangle. ‘Right, you know what’s coming next, don’t you?’

  Sitting behind him, Dugdale scowled out of the window. ‘I want a lawyer.’

  ‘Not talking to you, Ainsley, I’m talking to our special little friend, Constable Crime Scene here.’

  Callum folded his arms. ‘If it’s more haikus, I’m putting in for a transfer.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you. First call all the museums. See whose mummy’s gone.’

  He stared across the car. ‘Oh you have got to be kidding—’

  ‘One of them’s lost a mummy. I’ll bet if you beaver away super hard for the next two or three months, you’ll find out which one.’ He smiled. ‘Unless you’re too busy resigning, of course? Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.’

  ‘Oh for … Why can’t Watt do it?’

  ‘Because, dear Constable Useless,’ McAdams turned a smile loose, ‘I don’t like you even more than I don’t like him.’ The smile widened. ‘It’ll be good for you: character building.’

  Callum turned to face the passenger window. ‘I’d like to build your character with a sodding claw-hammer.’

  ‘Did you say something, Constable?’

  ‘I said, “Yes, Sarge.”’

  ‘Good boy.’

  And a nail gun.

  Dugdale was still wearing the same scowl, but he’d swapped his clothes for a white SOC suit, bare toes sticking out of a pair of manky grey flip-flops. And he’d washed the dried blood off his face. That would be a bonus when his duty solicitor finally appeared.

  Callum stood on the concrete apron and waved him goodbye as a Police Custody and Security Officer led him away, steering Dugdale down the corridor and into the cell with ‘M6’ stencilled on the thick blue door.

  The cell block rang with the sound of someone screaming what sounded like passages from the Bible. All ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and that.

  Raw breezeblock walls painted a tired magnolia, with a blue line all the way around it, straddling the bright-red panic strip. A dozen cells in this block, most of them occupied, going by the A4-sized whiteboards mounted next to each closed door. Three assaults, two indecent exposures, a theft from a locked-fast place, a shoplifter, one breach of bail conditions, an attempted murder, and Dugdale.

  ‘VERILY, SAYETH THE LORD, FOR YE SHALL FEAR MINE WRATH!’

  The PCSO stepped back out into the corridor and clunked the cell shut. Printed, ‘RESISTING ARREST, ASSAULT, ARMED ROBBERY’, on the custody board, each word smaller than the last as she ran out of space, finishing with a scrawled ‘& CONSPIRACY 2 PTCOJ’.

  ‘AND YE SHALL BE SORE AFRAID IN THE TIME OF DARKNESS! FOR LO, IT IS THE WORD OF THE LORD THAT COMES FOR THEE!’

  ‘Oh shut up, you fruitcake.’ The PCSO stuck her marker-pen back in her top pocket and looked Callum up and down. ‘Something we can do for you, Constable?’

  ‘YEA, FOR HE IS THE DARKNESS AND HE IS THE LIGHT!’

  ‘Can you give me a shout when his solicitor gets here?’

  ‘AND ALL SHALL KNOW HIS WRATH! THESE ARE THE END OF DAYS, AND—’

  She clicked down the viewing hatch on M3. Tutted. Then, ‘Come on, Phil, I thought we had an agreement.’

  A muffled, ‘Sorry.’ came from the other side of the door.

  ‘Should think so too, disturbing all our other guests. Poor Ken’s trying to sleep.’ She clicked the hatch up again. Turned to Callum. ‘They picked him up on Chamber Street, “The End Is Nigh” placard in one hand, his “original sin” in the other.’

  Lovely. ‘So, Dugdale’s solicitor …?’

  She shook her head. ‘Now Kenneth, on the other hand, tried to smash his mother’s head in with a china dog from the mantelpiece. Spaniel, I think it was. She wouldn’t let him go to the pictures. He’s forty-six.’

  ‘Yeah, but Dugdale …?’ Eyebrows: up, winning smile: on.

  ‘I can’t.’ A sigh. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, it’s orders. “DC MacGregor is not to be given access to custodies or their representatives without a superior officer being present.”’

  ‘You are kidding me!’

  ‘All contact is to be managed through DS McAdams or DI Malcolmson.’

  ‘I can’t talk to
anyone without McAdams or Mother holding my hand?’

  ‘Nothing to do with me, it’s …’ She turned away. ‘If you were them, would you want to risk it?’

  5

  ‘Yes, I understand that, but I’m asking anyway: do you now, or have you at any time, had a human mummy in your museum?’

  The smell of chicken curry Pot Noodle coiled its way across the office, warring against a taint of cheesy feet and yesterday’s garlic.

  From up here, on the third floor of Division Headquarters, the view should have been a lot better than it was: the back of a billboard streaked with pigeon droppings. Rusting supports featured a dozen small grey feathered bodies, strutting about and adding to the stains.

  ‘A mummy? What, like an Egyptian one?’ The young man on the other end of the phone sounded about as bright as a broken lightbulb. ‘Nah. No. Don’t think so.’ Think, think, think. ‘Maybe?’

  Callum turned his back on the window, one hand massaging his temples, the other gripping the phone tight enough to make the plastic creak. Fighting hard to keep his voice reasonable and level. ‘Can you check for me? It’s important.’

  The room was divided up into six bits, each one sectioned off with a chest-high cubicle wall – their grubby blue fabric stained with dribbled coffee and peppered with memos from the senior brass and cartoons cut from the Castle News and Post. Six cubicles for six desks, two of which were laden with dusty cardboard boxes and teetering piles of manila folders.

  Almost every horizontal surface was covered in a thin grey fuzz of dust.

  The top of Dot’s head was just visible above the edge of her cubicle, pale-brown hair swept up in a weird semi-beehive do. Schlurping noises marked the death of yet another freeze-dried soy and noodle product.

  A tiny kitchen area sat in the corner behind her, complete with kettle, microwave, and a half-sized fridge that gurgled and buzzed. Throw in a sagging assortment of ceiling tiles, scuffed magnolia walls littered with scribbled-on whiteboards, the kind of carpet that looked as if it’d been fished out of a skip, and you had the perfect place to dump police officers while they waited for their careers to die.

  Or were too stubborn to realise that their careers already had.

  ‘Pffff … Suppose. I’ll see what I can do. Hang on, gotta put you on hold.’ Click, and an elevator muzak version of ‘American Idiot’ dribbled out of the earpiece.

  Callum printed the word ‘dick’ in little biro letters next to the museum’s name. It joined a long, long list.

  Dot wheeled her chair back till she could peer around her cubicle. ‘Callum, you on the phone?’ Her scarlet lipstick was smudged and a shiny dot of gravy glittered on one rounded cheek. For some reason she’d decided it was a good idea to dress up in what looked like a black chef’s jacket, only with shiny silver buttons and silvery edging.

  He held up the receiver. ‘On hold.’

  ‘Don’t fancy making a chocolate run, do you? Only the machine on the fifth floor’s got Curly Wurlies.’

  ‘Can’t: I’m on hold.’ He waggled the phone again to emphasise the point.

  ‘I’d go myself, but I’m avoiding Detective Superintendent Ness. She found out I scratched her new Nissan Micra with Keith. Please?’

  His shoulder slumped. ‘Dot—’

  ‘Pretty please? Got the doctor at three, need to keep my morale up.’

  A voice growled out from the opposite corner: ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Watt stood, glowering over his cubicle wall at them. He’d swept his dark floppy hair back from his high forehead, securing it there with enough product to stick a hippo to the wall. Sunken eyes. Squint teeth. A sad excuse for a beard that looked as if he’d made it himself out of ginger pubic hair. ‘Will the two of you shut up? Some of us are trying to work.’

  Dot narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Oh, I’m sorry Detective Constable Watt, are we disturbing your sulk?’

  He stuck out his chin and its wispy covering. ‘I am not sulking, Sergeant. I’m preparing for a deposition, OK? Now will the pair of you shut up and let me get on with it?’

  ‘All I wanted was a Curly Wurly.’

  ‘Fine! Fine. You know what? Here …’ He dug into his pocket and hurled a fiver in Callum’s direction. It fluttered and tumbled in mid-air, falling to the manky carpet six feet short. ‘Go. Get her some sodding chocolate. Just do it quietly.’

  Callum held up the phone again. ‘Is this thing invisible? I’m – on – hold!’

  ‘Aye, hello?’ The Scottish idiot on the other end cut ‘American Idiot’ dead. ‘Hello? … You still there?’

  Finally. ‘Hello. Yes.’

  ‘Right, I’ve had a word with Davey: he can’t remember a mummy, but he’s only been here a year longer than me. Marge’s been here for donkeys’, but she’s on holiday till the twelfth. Gone to Norwich for a BDSM festival. You want me to give her your contact details so she can drop you an email when she gets back?’

  Callum folded forward until his forehead rested against his keyboard. Don’t swear. Don’t swear. ‘That would be great. Thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ And the line went dead.

  He hung up.

  Dot’s chair squeaked across the room. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Until it was right next to him. When he looked up, she smiled. ‘So … chocolate?’ She fiddled with the wheelchair’s push rims, twisting the whole thing left and right. All coy and fluttering eyelashes. The left leg of her jeans was stitched closed and trimmed off, just below where her knee should have been.

  Suppose a little help getting some chocolate wasn’t too much to ask for.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Then nodded. ‘Yeah. Could do with a break anyway.’ He pushed back from his desk. ‘Curly Wurly, coming right up.’

  She nodded at the list sitting next to his phone. ‘No luck?’

  ‘You got any idea how many museums there are in Scotland?’ He stood, bent over and scooped Watt’s hurled fiver from the floor. ‘Then there’s all the universities and private schools with natural history stuff in display cases. Never mind private collections.’

  ‘You want a hand?’

  He blinked. Turned back to her.

  At least one person on the team didn’t treat him like something they’d stepped in. ‘Thanks, Dot.’

  ‘Don’t get all emotional about it. I’m only helping so you’ll be my chocolate monkey.’ She wiggled her fingers above her head, cackling it out: ‘Fly free, my pretty!’

  Over in the corner, Watt gave a frustrated wee scream.

  Callum slumped his way up the stairs. Two years since they stopped doing proper meals in the canteen. Two years and the stairwell still smelled of boiled cabbage.

  His phone went off as he reached the fourth-floor landing. Sodding hell.

  He dragged it out. ‘What?’

  There was a pause. Then a high-pitched man’s voice squeaked in his ear. ‘Mr MacGregor? I’m calling from the Royal Caledonian Building Society’s Fraud Prevention Department. I need to ask you a few security questions. OK?’

  Callum glowered at the wall. ‘No, it’s not OK.’

  ‘I’m sorry, have I called at a bad time?’

  ‘Someone’s just nicked my wallet, and I’ve got no idea who you are. I’m not giving you my security details. You want to help? You prove who you are by answering my security questions.’

  ‘I … I don’t think we’re allowed to do that.’

  ‘Tough. What’s the third, fifth, and first letters of my mother’s maiden name?’

  ‘Errr … Look: why don’t you call us, then? That way you’ll know it’s not a scam. You’ll find the number on the back of your cards.’

  ‘On the back of my stolen cards? The cards I don’t have?’

  ‘Ah … Right.’ What sounded like an argument echoed up from the floors below, followed by a door clunking shut. ‘Well, maybe you could pop into a branch and they can help you?’ Was that a note of hope and desperation there at the end? Please go away and
become someone else’s problem.

  ‘Yeah. Why not.’ He hung up and clunked his head against the wall. Breathed in the cabbagey smell. Then opened his eyes and swore. No wallet meant no cards. And the little sods had wheeched off with his last fifteen quid, leaving him with … He rummaged in his pocket and came out with two pounds fifty-six in change, a button, and a Mint Imperial that had gone all hairy with pocket fluff. So Elaine could have a jar of Polish pickles or a jar of Nutella, but not both. And forget the onion rolls.

  Because it wasn’t as if he could steal the change from Watt’s fiver.

  Could he?

  He puffed out a breath. Of course he sodding couldn’t.

  Callum lumbered up the stairs to the fifth floor. Pushed open the door. And froze.

  DCI Powel was standing right in front of him, mug in one hand, manila folder tucked under his arm, phone in his other hand. A big man with ears to match, silver-grey hair swept forward from his temples to cover the bald bits. Smart suit with matching tie. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Hang on a minute, Margaret, there’s someone I need to talk to.’ He lowered the phone.

  Callum backed away, into the stairwell again, but Powel followed him.

  ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t our very own answer to Mr Bean: Detective Constable Callum MacGregor.’

  ‘Guv.’

  ‘I hear you managed to catch Ainsley Dugdale this morning, Constable. He’s one of Big Johnny Simpson’s goons, isn’t he? That’s a first for you, isn’t it? Big Johnny won’t like that.’

  Don’t rise to it.

  ‘And we all know how much you love Big Johnny Simpson, don’t we?’ A massive finger rose and poked Callum in the chest. ‘Don’t think I won’t screw you to the wall for that, Constable. I don’t put up with dirty cops in my division.’

  Callum curled his hands into fists. ‘Permission to speak freely, Guv?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ He leaned in closer, bringing with him the stench of aftershave and dead cigarettes. ‘I don’t like you, Constable.’

  ‘You hide it well, Guv.’

  Was that a twitch of a smile?

  Then Powel backed off, turned and marched away down the stairs. ‘Enjoy your meeting with Professional Standards, tomorrow. I’ll bring in a cardboard box so you can empty your desk afterwards.’