A Dark So Deadly

by Stuart MacBride

  The racks beneath the God-In-Waiting are full of fish, hanging from their poles like the divinity above. He removes the poles, stacking them on the rack next door to cool. It’ll be a good batch of smokies. They always are when a new god comes into being. Must be the air.

  Or maybe it’s the cleansed body, hanging above them as they smoke? Maybe it’s the juices that drip like tears from the body as it takes on its final form? Whatever it is, the result is excellent fish.

  Next is the scraper – just a plank of wood fixed on the end of a broomstick – he uses it to push the smouldering embers away, heaping them up against the far wall. Then stands beneath the God-In-Waiting.

  It’s beautiful …

  Once Upon A Time

  The man hanging on the wall has got nothing on but a kind of nappy, wrapped around his waist. His skin is a dark, rich wood, polished so much it glows against the cross. Someone’s made him a hat of barbed wire, which must hurt something horrible.

  A wobbly voice fills the air, echoing back off the church’s stone walls. ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth …’

  It’s a pretty sound – even if the words are just made-up – floating above the pews, wrapping around the big wooden man. Maybe it makes him happier if people sing to him? He looks very sad.

  Father’s over by the altar, talking to the priest man. Both of them dressed in black, like crows – though the priest man’s got on a kind of dress. Both are wearing those little white things around their necks. Dog collars. Both pretending to be something they’re not.

  ‘Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis …’

  The man’s been stuck to the cross with big metal nails, and there’s holes in his side. Maybe that was mice? There’s mice in Father’s house and they eat holes in everything. Scurrying about in the dark. Leaving their little black presents behind.

  ‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis—’

  ‘NO! NO! DAMN IT, OLIVER!’ A man’s voice, not pretty and floaty, but hard and grating. ‘How many times? It’s pronounced, “ex-chel-cease”. We’re going to stay here and do it again and again until – you – get – it – right!’

  Father looks up at the gallery that runs above the back six rows of pews, where the organ is. Then down at him. ‘Justin, thumb out of the mouth, eh champ?’ He smiles. ‘You’re a big boy now.’

  Justin’s not his real name: it’s from Father’s favourite album, about a little boy who turns into a rabbit and has to save the world from the king of dead things. And Justin’s as good a name as any.

  He takes his thumb out of his mouth and wipes it dry on his T-shirt. ‘Sorry, Father.’

  ‘That’s my boy.’ Then Father shakes hands with the priest man and wanders down the apse. Ruffles Justin’s hair. ‘Come on, slugger, time to go home.’ He turns and waves at the priest man as they leave the church.

  ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth …’

  Down the steps in the warm sunshine, one hand on Justin’s shoulder. Steering him to the car with its little Scottish flag fluttering on the end of the aerial. ‘In you get.’

  Justin does what he’s told.

  Gravel scrunches and crunches under the wheels as they leave the church grounds.

  ‘Did you hear the singing, Father? Wasn’t that—’

  The slap is as hard as it is quick, snapping his head to the side, the sound like a gunshot going off.

  ‘Don’t you dare embarrass me like that again. Sucking on your thumb like a baby. That what you are? A baby?’

  He blinks the tears back. Bites his lip. Lets the burning needles sink into his cheek. Don’t cry. Feed off the heat. Don’t cry. It’ll only make it worse.

  ‘You want to wear nappies and sit in your own filth again? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?’ Little flecks of spit settle against the dashboard. ‘ANSWER ME, DAMN YOU!’

  Justin takes a deep breath.

  Don’t cry.

  Feel it burn. Own it.

  He stares down at his hands, curled in his lap. ‘No, Father. Sorry, Father.’

  ‘Good boy.’ And just like that the storm passes, the clouds’ shadows slip away and Father smiles at him again. ‘Come on, why don’t we go get some ice cream? We can bring some back for Mummy, she’ll like that, won’t she?’

  Justin nods, even though it’s not true. New Mummy doesn’t like anything. She just cries all the time.

  ‘And, slugger?’ Father ruffles his hair again, the fingers warm and hard where they dig into his scalp. ‘You stay away from church music, it’s nothing but lies. See these?’ He lets go of Justin and unhooks the white band from around his throat. Shakes it like a dead mouse. ‘They call them a “dog collar” for a reason. They choke you. There’s a chain that clips onto them, so you can go walkies. Because it’s all lies: the churches, the hymns, the bible, the whole God-bothering holier-than-thou, deviant filth-mongering lot of them. Lies and liars.’

  Justin doesn’t move.

  This can go one of two ways, and one of them ends with screaming and bruises and getting locked in the Naughty Cupboard – peeing blood for a week.

  Father clicks on the car stereo, and the album picks up where it left off. A hissing of drums, then the man’s voice comes over the top, quiet as treacle. ‘You have to hide right here, right now, you have to stay so still, / Cos Justin, little rabbit boy, the night-time means you ill, / There’s monsters here, there’s monsters there, and they’re prowling through the gloom, / Stay still and oh so quiet, or these woods will be your tomb …’

  Father squeezes his shoulder. ‘Come on, champ, let’s go get that ice cream.’

  But not this time.

  Now

  He stares up at the God-In-Waiting. It’s not as beautiful as the wooden man on the cross, not yet, but it will be. It’ll be better. So much better than a dead thing carved from a dead tree, hanging in a dead building.

  It’ll be a god …

  He unhooks the rope from its cleat on the wall and takes the strain. Lowers the body, hand over hand, until it rests on the freshly cleared floor. Picks it up off the hot stone slabs – it isn’t hard, the cleansed remains weigh almost nothing. The weight of sin is gone, purged, purified.

  The God-In-Waiting is pale and soft, but that will change.

  Everything will.

  18

  Callum shuffled the printouts together, then slipped them in a plastic folder. ‘Thanks.’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘No probs.’ A grin widened her face. ‘Tell you the truth, I thought this was going to be a waste of time, but no way. My very first serial killer!’

  He tucked the folder under his arm. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more where that came from.’

  Franklin was in the hallway, outside the lab, standing with her back to the world – forehead resting against the wall, phone clamped to her ear. ‘No … Because I don’t … How am I supposed to know, Mark? I’m not a mind reader … No … I didn’t … Urgh. Just forget it. Doesn’t matter.’ A sigh. ‘OK, OK. I’ll call you when I find out.’ She hung up and stayed where she was.

  Callum cleared his throat. ‘You ready?’

  She stiffened. Put her phone away. Turned. ‘Do you eavesdrop on all your colleagues?’

  He shook his head and marched off down the corridor. ‘Don’t know why I bother.’

  Franklin didn’t catch up to him till the car park, weaving her way between the puddles in the rain. She came to a halt in front of Mother’s manky Fiat Panda. ‘Is her face normally that colour?’

  Mother was on the phone, eyes scrunched up, cheeks all flushed. Her mouth kept starting in on sentences, but never seemed to get more than a word or two into them before shutting again. Her other hand dug its fingers into her forehead, as if she was trying to force them through the skin into the bone beneath.

  ‘Yeah …’ Callum sidled towards the pool car they’d arrived in. ‘Whatever that is, there’s goin
g to be repercussions and fallout. Don’t know about you, but I want to be long gone before then.’

  Franklin pushed past him to the pool car’s driver’s door. ‘Keys.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Keys. Give me the keys, I’m driving.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You want to drive?’

  ‘Just give me the damned keys.’

  ‘So I’m going to sit in the passenger seat, and you’re going to drive me around? Like I outrank you?’

  ‘I’m not spending the rest of the day being dragged all over Oldcastle so you can run “little errands” like yesterday. Now: keys.’

  Fair enough. He dug them out of his pocket and tossed them across to her. Walked around to the other side and climbed in out of the rain as she slipped behind the wheel.

  Callum settled back in his seat. Stretched out a little. ‘I could get used to this.’

  Franklin took them through the rolling sea of ruptured tarmac and out into the industrial estate again. Past the boarded-up units, and onto the main road, heading back along the dual carriageway. The City Stadium loomed above the houses on the left, a lopsided bird’s nest of steel, concrete, and glass, lording it over the 1950s-style rows of semidetached two-up-two-downs.

  It was nice not having to do all the driving for a change. Just sit back and watch the scenery slip by. Even if it was all grey and rain-streaked.

  He dug his leprechaun-sized Mars Bar out of his pocket and took a tiny bite. Sweet, sticky, and chocolatey. ‘This your first serial killer?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Number four for me.’

  Franklin looked at him across the car, one eyebrow raised. ‘Four serial killers? Yeah, right.’ She took them around the roundabout, the granite blade of Castle Hill just visible between the tall concrete buildings ahead. ‘I’m not an idiot, constable. There’s absolutely no way you’ve already worked three serial killer investigations.’

  A big flat-fronted building went by on the left, little windows in a big granite façade.

  ‘That’s Woodrow Hospital. Four years ago, we got complaints of missing dogs in the area. Didn’t really pay all that much attention.’ He scooted down in his seat, following the hospital in the wing mirror as it faded into the distance. ‘Then someone’s granny disappeared. Thought it was dementia to begin with, happens a lot with older people: they get confused and they wander off. Then another one went missing. And another. Took us six little old ladies to realise something was wrong.’

  The looming green mass of Camburn Woods poked out above the rooftops, getting bigger.

  Callum finished off his micro Mars Bar. ‘Who’s Mark?’

  Franklin’s jaw tightened. ‘Mark is none of your business.’

  ‘Turns out Pawel Sabachevich’s parents moved over here from a little village outside Krakow when he was six years old. They brought his maternal grandmother with them. She wasn’t very nice to Pawel. And twenty-three years later he abducted, raped, and strangled eight old ladies, dismembered their remains and fed them into the incinerator at Woodrow Hospital. He worked there as an assistant radiologist.’ Callum crumpled up his chocolate wrapper and stuck it in his pocket. ‘Nice guy. Well, if you overlook the whole murderous raping scumbag bit.’

  The diggers were still at it on the huge flanks of Camburn Round-about – making mountains of mud, while a crane erected a lopsided metal trellis and high-viz figures sank into the mire. ‘Then there was Ian Zouroudi.’ Another shudder followed in the footsteps of the first. ‘Gah … The whole team needed therapy after that one.’

  ‘Just because I’m new and a woman, it doesn’t make me an idiot.’

  ‘Never said it did.’ Camburn Woods reared up and swallowed the car, the thick branches reaching out over the dual carriageway on either side, leaves dark and dripping. ‘From what I heard, it’s all the mercury in the ground around here. Too big a dose and it screws with brain development.’

  ‘Mercury.’

  ‘We made most of Britain’s mustard gas, right here in Oldcastle, for the First World War. Apparently it took a lot of mercury. And now we’re the serial-killer capital of Europe. Pretty high on the list for birth defects too.’ He sniffed. ‘That was a fun day at antenatal class.’

  Ruined buildings lurked in the woods to either side of the road, slowly dissolving into the bushes and ivy.

  She frowned across the car at him. ‘Three serial killers?’

  The world opened up in a blast of grey as the road emerged from the depths of Camburn Woods.

  ‘Straight through the next roundabout and it’s the third road on the right.’ Two parallel lines of shops and flats followed them along the road, at least a quarter of them boarded up. Bookies and charity shops rubbing shoulders with places to sell your gold or pawn your kids’ toys.

  Callum pointed through the windscreen. ‘That’s us at the traffic lights.’

  Franklin pulled into the turning lane and they sat there with the indicators clicking, waiting for the filter. ‘So who was number three?’

  ‘The Birthday Boy. You must’ve heard about that one: it was in all the papers. Sicko snatches girls just before they turn thirteen, takes photos as he tortures them to death, then turns the pics into homemade cards and sends them to the girls’ parents every year on their birthday.’

  She glanced across the car. ‘And it’s all because of the mercury?’

  ‘Meh, what do I know?’

  The lights changed and they pulled across the dual carriageway and into a curving street with a collection of cafés, hardware shops, a Sue Ryder and a British Heart Foundation, a newsagent, and finally the reason they’d come.

  Franklin nodded. ‘There we go.’

  The McKibben Dental Practice had a frosted shop window, presumably so you couldn’t see their victims writhing in agony, with posters either side of the main door depicting unfeasibly attractive people grinning away with unfeasibly white teeth. Franklin grabbed the nearest parking space, three doors down. ‘I can’t believe you’ve worked three serial killers.’

  He clambered out into the rain. ‘Go have a rummage in the archives at DHQ, there’s stuff in there that’ll make your hair curl …’ He bit his lip. ‘I didn’t mean that to be—’

  ‘I know what you meant.’ She locked the car. Followed him down the pavement to the dentist’s. ‘And yes, it is naturally this curly.’

  He shrugged. ‘I quite like it.’

  ‘Are you remembering what happened to Blakey the Octopus?’ Franklin pushed through the door and into a warm reception room with seats around the walls of a little waiting annex off to one side. The faint aniseedy tang of oral disinfectant tainted the air. A rack of magazines was mounted on the wall – all the issues considerably newer and classier than the ones Professional Standards had – surrounded by more posters of halogen-white teeth.

  ‘For your information, Detective Constable Franklin, I have a partner I love and she’s pregnant with my child. So don’t flatter yourself. I’ve got no intention of groping your backside or anything else.’

  An unfeasibly blonde receptionist showed them her unfeasibly perfect teeth in a broad smile. Her voice was unfeasibly cheery too, but nearly as shrill as a dentist’s drill. ‘Welcome to the McKibben Dental Practice, how can I help you today?’

  Callum flashed his warrant card. ‘I phoned earlier. We need to speak to someone about Glen Carmichael’s dental records.’

  ‘Boss? We’ve got a match.’ Callum switched his phone to the other hand and tucked the folder under his arm again. Rain dripped off the concrete portico that covered the shopping centre’s rear doors, darkening the steps down to the car park. ‘Took us three lots of dentists to get there, but according to the Leighton Road Dental Association in Blackwall Hill, our body in the bath is Ben Harrington. He’s the one in the photo with the auld mannie haircut, glasses, and walrus moustache.’

  Silence from the other end of the phone.

  ‘Bo
ss?’

  The shopping centre car park was nearly empty, just a handful of old cars and a Shopper-Hopper bus picking up a load of OAPs with their wheelie trollies and battered umbrellas. Franklin was down there too, marching about in the rain, one hand making violent stabby motions in the air as she dumped a shedload of angry into her mobile.

  Mother’s voice sounded far away, muffled, as if she was talking to someone else. ‘You can shift Harrington from the suspect column to the victim one. No, he’s definitely dead.’ Then she was back. ‘He was a Blackwall Hill boy, and seeing as you’re in the neighbourhood …?’

  Oh joy. ‘Death message?’

  ‘Good lad.’

  ‘Dr McDonald wants access to the crime scene.’

  ‘Meh. The Smurf Patrol have finished with it, so why not? Make sure she comes up with something useful though.’

  ‘Do my best.’ He hung up.

  The Shopper-Hopper gave its diesel roar and pulled into the traffic.

  Franklin did another lap, jabbing away like she was trying to stab and bludgeon someone all at the same time.

  With any luck she’d get it out of her system and there’d be none left to batter him with.

  But just in case …

  Callum nipped back into the centre and grabbed a couple of fancy pieces and two takeaway teas from the Costa by the lifts. Hunched his shoulders and hurried through the doors, into the rain.

  By the time he reached the pool car, she was behind the wheel again, dripping and glowering.

  So much for getting it out of her system.

  He slipped into the passenger seat and held out his peace offering. ‘Here. Tea, milk no sugar, and … Tada!’ One paper bag. ‘Got a billionaire’s shortbread and a rocky-road brownie. You choose.’

  The frown didn’t shift. ‘What’s billionaire’s shortbread?’

  ‘Like a millionaire’s, but there’s bits of broken-up Crunchie in there too.’

  She went for the shortbread, chewing with her shoulders dipped as the rain thumped down on the car roof. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but Mark is my partner.’

  Poor sod. Living with Franklin must be like trying to cross a minefield on a pogo stick every day. Blindfold. While sadists threw burning squirrels at you.