Clunk. The door closed, and Callum was alone again.
‘And screw you too, Guv.’
Powel’s voice echoed up from the landing below: ‘I’m still here, Constable.’
Of course he was.
6
Callum logged off his steam-powered computer, stretched, yawned, slumped in his seat for a moment, then hauled himself to his feet.
The office’s fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead, giving everything the warm and welcoming ambience of a horror film. Shame he was the only one there to enjoy it.
One more yawn, a sigh, and a rummage in the bottom drawer of his desk for the paperback-sized Tupperware box he’d stuck in there first thing this morning. He went back in for the dog-eared hardback copy of The Monsters Who Came for Dinner. Checked his watch. Just gone two. With any luck the lunchtime rush at the building society would have petered out by now, but if it hadn’t at least he’d have something decent to read.
Callum pulled on his jacket and stuffed his sandwiches in one pocket, crisps in the other. Right, time to—
The office door swung open and McAdams loomed into the room.
Sod.
McAdams frowned. ‘And where, exactly, do you think you’re going, Constable MacGregor?’
So near, and yet so far. ‘Lunch, Sarge.’
‘Lunch? Off to hide in the park reading … What is that, a kid’s book?’
‘It’s a classic.’
‘Maybe if you’re six years old.’ He checked his watch. ‘And you don’t have time. That mummy needs its home found. Get your arse to work.’
Again with the sodding haikus.
‘I’ve been working.’ Callum picked up the list, all eight pages of it, and shoogled it. ‘Now, I’m going to waste my contractually mandated lunchtime in the building society, trying to get them to give me some of my own money, so I can buy food for my pregnant girlfriend. That all right with you?’
McAdams snatched the list from his hand and flicked through the sheets. Frowned. ‘Constable, why do these museums have the word “dick” written next to them?’
Ah …
‘I’m waiting, Constable.’
Right. Yes. Er …
Ah, OK: ‘It’s not “Dick”, Sarge, it’s “D.I.C.K.” Database Incomplete – Currently Checking. Most of them don’t have an electronic register of all the exhibits in storage, so they’re getting back to me.’
McAdams raised an eyebrow, making a line of wrinkles climb its way up his forehead. ‘“Checking” doesn’t start with a K, Constable.’
Innocent face. ‘Doesn’t it, Sarge?’
‘But I appreciate the creative effort.’ He pointed at the empty desks. ‘Where’s Captain Sulky and The Wheels?’
‘DC Watt’s off to a deposition – that schoolteacher they caught rubbing himself against old ladies in the big Waterstones. DS Hodgkin has a doctor’s appointment.’
‘Hmmm …’ McAdams’ mouth pulled down at the edges. ‘Ah well, I suppose it can’t be helped.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘You, with me. Mother’s office. Now.’
What?
They weren’t going to fire him, were they? They couldn’t. Professional Standards hadn’t even questioned him yet. They couldn’t fire him till after that, surely?
Or maybe they could.
Callum took one last look around the miserable little office – with all its stains and dusty surfaces – then followed McAdams out into the corridor, across the hall, and in through the door opposite. The one with a small brass plaque on it, marked: ‘DETECTIVE INSPECTOR MALCOLMSON ~ DIVISIONAL INVESTIGATIVE SUPPORT TEAM’.
Mother’s office was a bit nicer than her team’s, but not by much. It was just big enough for a scarred Formica desk, a line of filing cabinets down one wall, a whiteboard on the other surrounded by pictures of cats cut out of an old calendar, and a single chair for visitors.
Mother was behind her desk, sooking on the end of a biro, but a uniformed PC stood in the middle of the room, at attention: black trousers; big black boots; black fleece with her ID number on the epaulettes; black, police-issue bowler under one arm. Her curly black hair was pulled back in a bun, exposing the dark skin at the nape of her neck.
OK … Maybe they weren’t going to fire him. Maybe they were going to arrest him instead.
Mother wrinkled her mouth around the pen and stared at Callum. ‘Is this it?’
McAdams propped himself up against a filing cabinet. ‘Everyone else is out.’
‘Suppose he’ll have to do.’ She turned. ‘Constable Franklin, this is Detective Constable Callum MacGregor. Not the brightest spade in the undertaker’s, but he’s all ours. For our sins.’ Another grimace. ‘Callum, this is Constable Franklin. She’s joining us from E Division. That means you’re no longer the new boy. You will show her the ropes. You will be nice to her. And most of all,’ Mother poked the desk with the sooked end of her pen, ‘you will not lead her astray. Are we crystal?’
Babysitting. Even more joy.
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘Good.’ Mother plucked a sheet of paper from her in-tray and held it out. ‘Now, if neither of you have anything better to do—’
Callum stuck up his hand. ‘Actually, Boss, I—’
‘—and I know for a fact that you don’t, you can chase this up.’
Constable Franklin took the piece of paper. ‘Ma’am.’ The word was forced out, resentment dripping from that one syllable like burning pus.
‘Tell me, Constable, do you have a fighting suit?’
‘A fighting …?’ It must have dawned, because she nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Good. You’re a DC now: change out of that uniform. You look like you’re about to arrest someone.’
A twitch, a tightening of the hands into fists. A breath. Then: ‘Ma’am.’
Oh yeah, babysitting this one was going to be bags of fun.
‘Off you go then.’
Franklin turned on her heel, face all pinched and flushed. Narrowed her dark-brown eyes and bared her teeth at Callum. ‘Do we have a problem, Detective Constable?’ Voice like a silk-covered razorblade.
Wow. She was just … wow. Completely … like a model or something. Not just pretty, but totally—
‘I asked you a question.’ She curled her top lip, exposing more perfect teeth. ‘What’s the matter, never seen a black woman before?’
‘I … It … No.’ He blinked. Stood up straighter. ‘I mean: no. No problem. Welcome on board.’ He stuck out his hand for shaking, but she just pushed past and marched from the room, slamming the door behind her.
‘Bloody hell …’ Callum leaned against the wall.
‘I know. Magnificent, isn’t she?’ McAdams grinned at the closed door, then laid a hand against his chest. ‘Skin like warm midnight. Her eyes are moonlit rubies. Her heart: frozen steel.’ A sniff. ‘See if I hadn’t already ticked “threesome” off my bucket list?’
Mother smiled. ‘Congratulations. Anyone I know?’
‘Nah: Beth got someone from her work. Miranda. Nice lady. Presbyterian, but very open minded.’ He frowned at Callum. ‘Still here, Constable? Haven’t you got an angry detective constable to babysit?’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
Sodding hell.
Bright yellow diggers and tipper trucks lumbered about on the massive Camburn Roundabout, rearranging it’s grass and earth into swathes of rutted mud. The Vauxhall’s windscreen wipers made dying-squid noises as Callum took the first exit. He snuck a glance out the corner of his eye at the simmering lump of resentment sitting in the passenger seat.
She’d ditched the uniform in favour of a black suit with weird puffy shoulders, a white shirt, and thin black tie. As if she was on the way to someone’s funeral. ‘What the hell are you staring at?’
He snapped his eyes front again. ‘Nothing.’ Yellow-brick cookie-cutter houses stretched out on either side of the road. Bland, safe, and predictable. ‘Actually …’ He bit
his lip. ‘If you don’t mind my asking …’ Deep breath. ‘What did you do?’
She turned and gave him the kind of look that could strip flesh from the bone.
‘I mean, you know, to end up working for DI Malcolmson?’
DC Franklin faced front again.
‘Only, it’s not usually—’
‘Do you always talk this much?’
‘Just thought, if we’re going to be working together, we—’
‘Let’s get something perfectly clear, Detective Constable MacGregor: I am not your friend. I am not your colleague. I am someone who will be out of here very, very soon.’ She shot her cuffs, making them exactly the same length where they stuck out of the sleeves of her shoulder-padded jacket. ‘I don’t intend to spend the remainder of my career lumbered with a bunch of dropouts, has-beens, and never-weres.’
The houses gave way to greying fields and austere drystane dykes. All hard edges softened by the incessant drizzle.
Franklin pulled out her phone and poked away at the screen. Glowering down at it in silence. Ignoring him.
OK, well no one could say he hadn’t tried.
About three miles south of Shortstaine, a pair of dark lines swooped out from the tarmac, dug through the roadside verge and punched a hole through a barbed-wire fence. A patrol car sat twenty yards further down, parked up on the side with its flashers going.
Callum indicated and pulled in behind it. ‘There’s a couple of high-viz jackets in the boot, if you want to … OK.’
She was already out of the car, stalking her way across the verge and down into the field beyond.
‘Fine. Catch your death of cold, see if I care.’ He helped himself to one of the fluorescent-yellow monstrosities and followed her. Arms out to keep his balance on the slippery grass slope.
A hatchback sat about a hundred yards into the field, on the other side of the fence, at the end of those curling dark lines. Its front end had made friends with a chunk of rock, leaving the bonnet twisted like a sneer.
Franklin was halfway there already, back straight and rigid. Presumably because the stick rammed up her backside was of the extra-large variety.
Callum picked his way down the hill until he stood beside her.
The hatchback was an old Kia Picanto – the kind that looked like a roller-skate on steroids. Originally blue, it was now a muddy grey, with deep scratches along both sides where the barbed wire had raked it. A ‘Police Aware’ sticker covered most of the driver’s window.
Franklin stared at the car, then pulled out a sheet of paper and stared at that instead. Then back to the car. ‘Is this it?’
Callum walked over to the back window and peered in through the rain-flecked glass.
Inside, the car was a mess. Not just the usual burger wrappers and sweetie papers, but splashes of paint and crusts of what looked like plaster dust. A tool bag lay in the rear footwell, next to two drums of flooring adhesive and a packet of slate tiles.
A voice behind them: ‘HOY!’
Callum turned.
A young bloke in uniform was stomping his way across the field towards them, one hand holding the peaked cap on top of his head. ‘YOU! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? GET AWAY FROM THERE!’
Franklin waited till he was six feet away, before hauling out a standard-issue warrant-card holder. ‘Constable. Care to explain why I’m wasting my time with a road traffic collision?’
PC Shouty peered at her warrant card, then pulled a face. ‘No offence, but could you not have introduced yourself back at the roadside and saved me a trip down …’ The expression on Franklin’s face must have finally worked its magic, because he shut his mouth with an audible click. Blushed. ‘Sorry?’
Her voice got even colder. ‘I’m listening.’
‘Yes. Right.’ He pointed at the car. ‘Someone called it in this morning, no sign of the driver or any passengers.’
She stepped closer, looming. ‘And I give a toss, because?’
‘The boot! There’s a body in the boot and we thought … well, I thought – thinking isn’t exactly Tony’s forte – but—’
‘There’s a body in the boot?’ Her eyes widened. ‘YOU BLOODY IDIOT! Why haven’t you cordoned off the scene? Where’s the common approach path? Why aren’t you logging visitors? And where the buggering hell is the SEB?’
He backed off a couple of paces, hands up. ‘Whoa. It’s not like that. I mean, it’s not fresh or anything, it’s just, you know, dead, and we—’
‘THERE ARE HUMAN REMAINS IN THAT CAR, YOU MORON! Call the pathologist, now!’
‘No, it’s like … Look.’ He sidled around to the boot of the car and popped the hatchback lid. Swung it up with a gloved hand. ‘See?’
Callum leaned forward and frowned.
There, nestled in amongst the dustsheets and a bucket full of plasterboard fragments was a human body. It lay on its side, arms folded so the hands were pressed against its chest, knees hard up against the hands, feet hard up against the bottom. Head bent forward sharply, so the face was almost completely hidden by the knees. Skin shrunken and wrinkled, the colour of ancient leather.
He groaned. ‘Not another one.’
Franklin bared her teeth. ‘Is this supposed to be a joke, Constable?’ She poked Callum in the shoulder with a rock-hard finger. ‘A bit of a laugh at the new girl’s expense?’ Gearing up for a good bellow. ‘WELL, IS IT?’
And there it was again, that smell. Much stronger here than it had been back at the tip, where it had to fight with the stench of a hundred million rotting bin-bags. The rich, warm, but slightly bitter tang of wood smoke, so strong you could taste it at the back of your throat.
‘Constable! Constable MacGregor, I’m talking to—’
‘Will you shut up a minute?’ He snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. Reached in and prodded the body. Solid, as if it’d been carved from a chunk of oak, then dipped in the peatiest whisky in the world.
When he straightened up, Franklin’s eyes were wide, her whole person trembling as if she was about to pop.
Before she could get started, he dragged out his Airwave handset and called Control. ‘Aye, Brucie? I need a check on a Kia Picanto.’ He rattled off the registration number and colour, then clunked the boot shut in the intervening silence.
Franklin squared her puffed-up shoulders. ‘Now you listen to me, Sunshine, I will not be spoken to like that! How dare—’
‘Okeydokey.’ A thick Dundonian accent crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘Yer car’s registered to a Glen Carmichael, eighteen Walsh Crescent, Blackwall Hill. Twenty-four years old. Ooh, looks like he lives with his mum. You wanting the postcode?’
‘Has he got prior?’
‘Couple counts of housebreaking-and-robbery when he was twelve. Suspended sentence. And an ex-girlfriend got herself a restraining order when he was fourteen. Sounds like a lovely wee lad.’
‘OK, thanks, Brucie.’ Callum put his Airwave away. Grinned at Franklin. ‘We turned up a mummy at the tip this morning, just like this one. Probably nicked from a museum. The Kia’s owner has form for breaking into places he shouldn’t and helping himself to things that aren’t his. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘I see.’ She shot her cuffs again. ‘Well, don’t just stand there – let’s go pick him up.’
7
‘Shhh, you’re doing great.’
Is he? Then why does he feel so terrible? Why does he just want to lie down and die?
The water around him is cold, but that’s not why he’s shivering.
A sponge dips into the dark brown liquid, then runs gently across his chest, clearing away the thin white rime of salt. Dissolving the crystals back into the brine.
The wall whispers over the sound of trickling water. ‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’
Then the sponge dips into the water again, presses against his forehead sending rivulets running down his lined face.<
br />
‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’
‘Are you thirsty?’ The voice is kind, worried. ‘Do you want something to drink?’
He tries to shake his head, but can only tremble. No. No more of the foul water.
‘I know it’s bitter, but it’s good for you. Full of herbs and minerals. Here …’
‘You’ll be a god. You’ll be a god. You’ll be a god.’
A metal cup presses against his cracked lips, and he hasn’t got the strength to keep his jaw clenched shut. Sour liquid fills his mouth, catches the back of his throat. And he coughs, splutters the water out, feels it dripping from his chin onto his chest.
‘They’ll worship you.’
His body rocks back and forward, sending out little waves across the bath.
Why can’t he cry?
Only it’s not really a bath, is it? It’s a large metal trough, big enough for three people, let alone one living skeleton. All the joints are rusty, dark brown as if the thing is bleeding, rivets standing out like nipples on its cold metal skin.
Why can’t he just die?
‘You’ll be a god, and they’ll worship you.’
‘Shhh …’ A warm hand on his forehead. A gentle touch and a soft word. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’
8
Walsh Crescent curled in on itself like a snail shell. Mostly bungalows, but every now and then a second storey sprouted from a converted attic. Box hedges, gravel driveways, nameplates on the garden walls. Pretensions of grandeur. One even had a pair of three-foot-high lions perched either side of the drive, their whitewashed surfaces cracked and showing the concrete below.
No view to speak of, but a nice enough street.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Franklin scowled out at the suburban enclave.
Callum pulled up outside number 18. Killed the engine. Sat there with his wrists draped over the steering wheel. ‘Look, I know arresting idiots for stealing mummies from museums probably isn’t what you signed up for, but this is all they let us do.’
She didn’t move.
‘And trust me, this is a lot more interesting than what we’re usually lumbered with. At least there’s genuine dead bodies involved. Even if they are a thousand years old.’
A Dark So Deadly Page 5