A Dark So Deadly

by Stuart MacBride

  They scrambled back up to the ground floor, through the kitchen and up the creaking wooden steps.

  Four doors leading off the landing.

  He jammed his torch under his bad arm and dug out his phone. Scrolled through to McAdams’ number. Waited for him to pick up. ‘Hello?’

  Franklin opened one of the doors and stepped inside.

  ‘Callum, my new and bestest friend, / Tell me how to make amends, / For all the cruel things I’ve done, / Like kicking you right up the bum?’

  ‘Shut up and listen. Six Creel Lane, it’s got a basement kitted out like the one at The Cloisters. Chains fixed to the walls.’

  ‘What about Ashlee, is she there? Have you found her?’

  ‘Still checking.’

  Franklin’s torch beam cast long sweeping shadows out into the room.

  ‘Well get off the bloody phone and check!’

  ‘We are. And we need an SEB team over here – tell them to get a shift on.’

  Franklin emerged from the other room, shaking her head. Marched over to one of the other doors and disappeared again.

  ‘Got to go.’ He hung up, got his torch and phone sorted. ‘Franklin?’

  No sign of her.

  Callum tried door number three – a big empty room with fancy cornices and a big ceiling rose. Probably the kind of place you hung a chandelier if you were the kind of person who owned a chandelier.

  Back out into the other room.

  ‘Franklin?’

  Nope.

  He pushed through door number two. ‘Where the hell are …’

  This wasn’t a room, it was a cavern, three storeys tall, dug into the hillside. Or maybe it was natural and they’d just built the house over the front, sealing it in? either way, it was massive.

  He’d emerged onto a landing about six foot square, with no handrail. Stone steps descended to the floor twenty, maybe thirty feet below – dim and grey at the very edge of the torch’s reach.

  There was another torch down there, though, sweeping across a set of wooden structures – like self-contained rooms, or exhibition stalls. The smell of wood smoke, warm and sweet, mingling with the pungent taint of old fish.

  Franklin’s torch swung up towards him, voice echoing back off the stone walls. ‘CALLUM!’ Callum … Callum … Callum …

  ‘ARE YOU OK?’ OK … OK … OK …

  ‘I’VE FOUND SOMETHING!’ Something … Something … Something …

  He picked his way down the stairs, hugging the wall, torch pointed at the steps beneath his feet.

  ‘WILL YOU HURRY UP?’ Up … Up … Up …

  No.

  He walked out onto hard-packed earth, stained almost black.

  She was standing in front of a big wooden box, about the size of a large shed, made from rough planks of wood. It stood right next to a big drying rack thing, a good eighteen-foot tall, criss-crossed with notched poles, like the ones they used at Strummuir Smokehouse to be all olde worlde and sustainable.

  ‘They’ve probably been smoking fish here for generations.’ Callum shone his torch across the box, setting another padlock shining. Fish, and other things.

  Franklin pulled the claw hammer from her jacket and wrenched the hasp from the door. The padlock clattered into the dirt.

  He nudged the door and it swung inwards.

  John wades through the grass to the barn door. Gah … Trousers are absolutely sodden now. But he had to take a short cut from the bothy, didn’t he? Couldn’t go the long way round, by the road, no, that would be too sensible.

  Rain batters against his brolly, rolling in, up the valley, in thick grey curls.

  Does it never stop raining here?’

  The barn has one of those old-fashioned pin-and-bar catches. He clicks it up and pushes through into gloom and the cloyingly familiar scent of wood smoke and dead fish. Nasty and sticky, like every smokehouse he’s visited with DC MacGregor.

  A smile creeps across his face. Maybe?

  The barn’s walls are stone on the outside, but wood on the inside, the space divided up into three. An area at the front where old wooden fish boxes are piled. An area on the right set up so poles can be hung at various heights over an open fire – there’s still a pile of ashes on the floor where the last burn died out. And last, but not least, an area on the left, sealed away behind a door. No lock, just a metal pin poked through a hasp to stop it opening.

  ‘PRIME MINISTER AWARDS KNIGHTHOOD TO NEWLY PROMOTED HERO COP!’

  John takes a deep breath, pulls out the pin, and steps inside.

  61

  Callum edged inside. The darkness was a solid thing, pushing against his chest and throat, thick and syrupy in his lungs. The torch’s beam sliced through it, but the mass healed again soon as the blade was gone.

  A metal tank sat off to one side, about the size of a big bathtub, its sides streaked with pale-brown rust.

  He edged over, Franklin just behind him, and shone his torch into the tank.

  The smell in here isn’t just wood smoke and fish, it’s tainted with a bitter-scented sourness and something that’s half sweet, half horror film.

  The gloom seeps out from the walls, leaving just a pale spot of light from the open door.

  Should’ve brought a torch with him.

  Too late for that now.

  John steps forward. ‘Hello?’

  Another step.

  Then another, scuffing his feet along the dirt floor.

  His foot hits something soft and he freezes until his eyes adjust a bit.

  ‘Oh crap …’

  It’s a woman, sitting on the floor slumped to one side, the chain around her throat stretched tight between there and the wall. No point feeling for a pulse, not with her eyes half-open like that, but he does it anyway. The skin’s cold and clammy beneath his fingertips.

  At least that explains where the other smell’s coming from.

  His stomach does a little lurch to one side and he huffs out a breath.

  No being sick. This is a crime scene. They’d never let him live it down.

  The rest of the room is finally seeping out of the gloom. Rough wooden walls. Another chain, dangling empty from a metal ring. And a metal tank.

  He stands. Marches over, back straight.

  ‘Pff …’

  It’s hard to tell if the body in the tank is male or female. A skeleton, coated in a thin layer of pale skin – crusted with salt just above the filthy waterline. The chain around its neck is looped around a metal pole at this end of the tank, with just enough slack to stop the head disappearing beneath the surface and drowning. Lank, greasy hair, long enough to sink under the surface.

  ‘Ashlee?’

  John drops to his knees and reaches for her neck, two fingers touching the point just beneath her jaw where—

  Her eyes snap open.

  ‘Aaaaaargh!’ He flinches back and goes sprawling on his arse. Sits there, breathing hard. Then laughs. Scrambles forward again. ‘Ashlee, my name’s John, I’m a police officer. We’re going to get you out of here, OK? You’re safe now.’ Another laugh. ‘You scared the living crap out of me, by the way.’

  She just stares at him, making little hissing noises from her cracked and bloody lips.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’ He pulls out his phone. ‘I’m going to—’

  There’s a sound, like ripping fabric. White and cold as the ground rushes up and—

  DS Hodgkin hurls a scrunched-up ball of paper at him. ‘You’re such an arsehole, Watt!’ She—

  The sun’s warm on the back of his neck, bees and wasps buzzing through the beer garden as Big Malky gets another round in, all grins and winks, no idea that he and his team are getting a visit from Professional Standards soon as—

  Everyone files out of the grubby office. Mother sighs and pats him on the shoulder. ‘Maybe you should try being a bit nicer to people, John? Might stop them—’

  His father kneels
on the sandy beach, holding out a curly shell as big as his fist. ‘If you put it up to your ear, you can hear the sea.’ He smiles—

  Waves crash against the walls and floor.

  Why is he lying down? Why isn’t—

  Mary kisses him, her body pressed hard against his as their song plays on the—

  His phone’s still in his hand, screen turned towards him, waiting for an input.

  Mary. Skin like moonlight. Soft and warm beneath his fingers. That smell of strawberries and sandalwood. A smile like sunshine on a cold winter’s—

  The light on his phone’s screen goes out.

  Darkness.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Callum ran his torch around the room again. Then back to the tank. Dirty-grey crystals twinkled in the light, all the way down the sides. The bottom of the tank lumpy with them and what looked like bits of twig. ‘Difficult to tell for sure, without the SEB, but that looks a hell of a lot like what was in the bathtub at Customs Street. Well, if you left it there for a couple of months till all the liquid evaporated.’

  Franklin did a slow three-sixty. ‘Chains on the walls, tank full of brine …’ A sigh. ‘How many more of these torture chambers do you think he has?’

  ‘Can’t be many. Too risky. What if Northeast Ecclesiastical decides to sell the property, or turn it into flats?’

  Callum stared down into the tank. ‘Maybe that’s why he abandoned it? He saw all the building work across the road and cut his losses. Found somewhere safer.’

  ‘Doesn’t help Ashlee Gossard, though, does it?’

  ‘No. But we’ve still got the rest of Watt’s list to search.’ Callum pulled out his phone. Frowned at the screen. ‘No signal.’

  Franklin turned and marched out of the makeshift wooden tomb. ‘Then we’d better get our backsides in gear.’

  62

  Justin drops the spanner and it clatters off the floor, bounces, spins, then lies on its side like a wounded bird.

  He hunkers down and stares at the fallen police officer. He’s like a wounded bird too: blood trickling out of his nose and ear.

  Hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. But hey ho. Eggs and omelettes.

  He’s still got his mobile phone in his hand, so Justin picks it up. Presses the power button. The screen is a photo of a woman with pale skin, smiling like she’s the happiest person that ever lived. Pretty enough.

  Justin holds her over the tank of sacred water … and lets go. She splooshes into the liquid, the screen flickering and fizzing as it sinks. That’s the trouble with modern electronics – nothing’s built to last.

  He grabs two handfuls of the poor lad’s jacket and drags him over to the wall, where New Mummy is. Or at least, where she was. She’s gone now, leaving nothing but a shell behind.

  Poor New Mummy.

  Justin wipes his hands, then kneels and brushes the hair out of her eyes. Blonde and pretty, just like Father wants. Wanted. Whatever.

  He shuffles a foot or two to the side, then lies down with his head in her lap. Cold and soft. Just starting to smell. Shame. It would’ve been nice to just rest here. Sleep with her hand resting on his chest. The two of them joined together in fear, waiting for Father to wake up and the nightmare to start all over again.

  He clears his throat. ‘Can you hear me, Ashlee?’

  A faint hiss sounds in the gloom.

  ‘You’re almost there, sweetheart. Soon you’ll be a god.’

  Silence.

  Justin curls his knees up. Wraps his arm around New Mummy’s legs. ‘Once upon a time, there was a little boy and he had a happy life full of ice cream and adventures. And he had a brother and a mummy and daddy who loved him very, very much. Then one day everything changed …’

  Once Upon A Time

  ‘Here you go, Champ.’ Father hands him a burger, all wrapped up in greaseproof paper, with ‘WIMPY’ written all over it.

  Seagulls wheel and scream overhead as Justin takes a big bite.

  The sun smiles down on them like a happy god.

  Father sits on the bench next to him and wraps an arm around his shoulders. ‘We’re going to visit Mrs Mason after lunch, that’ll be nice, won’t it?’

  She smells of wee and cats, and shouts cos she can’t hear anything, and never gets out of bed, but Justin nods anyway.

  ‘Soon as she signs the will, we’re in the money. New car, maybe even a holiday somewhere nice?’ He lets go of Justin’s shoulders and ruffles his hair instead. ‘And you’re not going to do anything to cock it up for me, are you?’

  The burger turns to gravel in his mouth.

  New Mummy shudders and sniffs, holding in the sobs because she’s a brave little soldier. Her naked back and shoulders quiver, one arm clutched to her front. Justin creeps down the stairs, pausing with every step to stare up at the cellar ceiling, ears stretched like a bat’s for any noise from upstairs.

  But the only sound is Father snoring.

  Justin gets the blanket from the corner and carries it over to New Mummy.

  She flinches as he wraps it around her shoulders, then she blinks up at him, biting her lip and nodding. Her eyes are red as a sunset, tears all over her cheeks and snot dripping from the end of her nose.

  The bruises had almost healed from last time.

  Justin takes the corner of the blanket and dabs at her face, drying it. ‘Shhh …’

  It’s meant to be calming, but it’s a warning too: don’t wake him up.

  She stares down at the twisted lumpy bits between her elbow and her hand, skin all purple and red and blue and yellow. Like a rainbow, only more horrible.

  Justin climbs up onto the bed next to her, curls up on his side, with his head in her lap, and he cries too.

  The pair of them sniffling away in the basement.

  Because what else can they do?

  ‘Ahhh …’ Father licks his lips and smiles, rolling the whisky around in his glass, making it sparkle. Then he picks up a tin of beer and swigs it dry. Crushes the empty in his hand.

  It’s not the usual cheap beer from the bottom shelf of the supermarket, but stuff in a white tin with a red stripe. And the whisky’s all fancy too: with a cork instead of a screwcap.

  Father is happy.

  He raises his glass. ‘Here’s to the highlife, Slugger. Think we deserve it, don’t we?’

  ‘Definitely. We deserve it.’ A big grin and a nod. Because if Father’s happy, Justin’s happy. And nobody has to get hurt …

  The only thing spoiling it is New Mummy. She’s not even hiding it, just sobbing and crying and bawling. Like she doesn’t care. Like she wants Father to go back down there.

  His face turns into an angry-dog snarl and he stamps his foot on the floor. ‘I’M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN!’

  The screaming doesn’t stop, but it goes all muffled, like she’s stuffed something in her mouth to kill the noises.

  Father holds the crushed empty out to Justin. ‘How about another beer, Kiddo?’

  Justin takes it and runs into the kitchen. Yanks open the fridge. Grabs another fancy striped beer and runs back to the living room. ‘It’s nice and cold.’

  Father cracks the ring-pull and drinks. ‘Think it’s about time you got a new mummy, don’t you, Champ?’ He takes a deep breath. ‘ONE THAT KNOWS HOW GOOD SHE’S GOT IT!’

  Another drink and he nods. ‘A nice new mummy.’ He smiles at Justin. ‘There’s this little blonde piece, works in a garage outside Ellon. Very sweet. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  Justin tries not to move. Stares at his shoes. ‘Father? Can’t we keep this one? I … I like her, she’s nice to me. The others were all angry all the time.’

  Father stares at him. Stares and stares and Justin’s going to pee himself and then the shouting and hitting and kicking and—

  ‘Why not.’ Father reaches out and ruffles his hair. ‘Just for you. We’re celebrating, right?’ He raises his tin. ‘Here’s to Mrs Mason, an
d the stroke that carried her off. Thanks for the house and all the savings. May you burn in hell, you stinking corpulent bitch.’

  Father grunts. His trousers are all muddy and dirty, the ribby bits in his shoes clogged up with earth. He’s taken off his shirt, showing off the faded blue tattoos and the little white curly hairs that grow through them. Black soil under his fingernails. Grey dust on his arms.

  He’s lined his empty tins up on the coffee table in front of him, like little soldiers waiting for orders.

  Father throws back the last mouthful of beer and hurls the empty at them, sending his soldiers running for cover. Scowls as they clatter and click. ‘Boy: beer!’

  Justin grabs another tin from the fridge and holds it out.

  He snatches it. Scowls at it. Scowls at everything.

  Downstairs, New Mummy is screaming again.

  Because she knows what’s going to happen.

  She knows why Father has been digging that big hole out in the garden.

  So she screams and sobs and moans.

  Father cracks into his new soldier and throws back a mouthful of beer. The words start out squeezed between his teeth and end up making the whole world tremble: ‘Does that bitch never SHUT UP?’

  Now the scowl comes round to rest on Justin.

  Father’s eyes are narrow and pink, one squinted up tighter than the other as he wobbles in his chair. ‘You.’

  Justin backs up a step.

  His voice goes all high and whiney: ‘“Oh, please can we keep her? I promise she’ll be good. She’s so nice to me …”’ He attacks the soldier again. ‘I kept her because of you, AND SHE NEVER SHUTS UP!’ Father stamps on the floor. ‘ALL THE BLOODY TIME! SHUT UP! STOP CRYING!’

  But New Mummy keeps on sobbing.

  Father bares his teeth. ‘I should never have indulged you. I’m too kind, that’s my problem. Too soft.’

  This is how it starts. The first rumble of thunder that brings the storm.

  ‘Well, I’m done being soft. YOU HEAR ME?’ He swigs at his beer. ‘I should never have rescued you. I should’ve left you with your stupid mother and your stupid father.’ The smile is cold and cruel. ‘That’s right, you’re not even my real son. Did you really think something as ugly and stupid as you could come from my cock? You’re just some stupid kid I kept, because I thought it’d be a laugh. You’re a joke, Justin.’ Father sits forward and laughs in his face. ‘That’s not even your real name. You don’t deserve a real name!’