Dark Blood

by MacBride, Stuart

  It hadn’t taken the local press long to nickname Donald Trump’s development ‘Trumpton’. A vast swathe of coast was due to disappear under the bulldozers: two golf courses, five hundred houses, a four-star hotel, and nearly a thousand holiday villas. Which kind of put McLennan Homes’ four hundred semi-detacheds into perspective.

  Three hundred yards further on a huge billboard sat at the side of the road – ‘MCLENNAN HOMES, BUILDING A BETTER TOMORROW FOR YOU’. Photo of a smiling nuclear family holding hands and staring mistily off into the distance. Very aspirational. Or it would have been if someone hadn’t spraypainted a big blue penis onto one of the kids.

  Logan slowed the car. According to the sat-nav, Steel’s map coordinates were off to the left. The Fiat juddered to a halt on the grass verge.

  He peered across and through the passenger window at the site entrance – a high chainlink fence, the gates held open with dented oil drums. ‘SITE PATROLLED BY GUARD DOGS’, ‘NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL’, ‘DANGER OF DEATH’, ‘WARNING: RAZOR WIRE’. A rutted mud track led away into Malk the Knife’s development.

  Logan checked the sat-nav again. ‘You sure you got those coordinates right?’

  ‘Course I’m sure.’ She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. ‘Maybe they’ve got caravans for people living on site?’

  ‘Maybe…’

  Logan eased the car through the gates. The muddy track bumped and slithered under the Fiat’s wheels, taking them closer to the rumble of heavy machinery, the beep-beep-beep of something backing up.

  Steel pointed through the windscreen. ‘Over there.’

  He pulled up beside a long Portakabin with ‘SITE OFFICE’ stencilled on the side, trying to aim for a bit that didn’t look like the battle of the Somme.

  ‘Right.’ Steel flicked her cigarette butt out of the window. ‘If anyone asks, you and me are debt collectors. I’m the boss, you’re the hired muscle. Still a chance we can salvage this cock-up, so no telling anyone you’re a cop, understand?’

  She pulled the sat-nav off the windscreen and they clambered out into the drizzle.

  ‘Which way?’

  She frowned at the little screen, trying to shield it from the rain with her coat, then did a slow three-sixty. Stopped. And pointed out across the churned-up earth.

  No caravans, no Portakabins, not so much as a three-man tent.

  Steel took a step forwards, but Logan grabbed her arm.

  ‘Maybe we should call for a search team. IB. Pathologist. If Polmont’s—’

  ‘Don’t be so wet.’ She shook herself free and stomped off into the mud.

  Logan swore, then followed her.

  The going was tough, thick clogs of brown-black earth sucking at his shoes, dirty water oozing in through the lace holes, soaking into his socks. And then his foot disappeared into a puddle, right up to the shin. ‘Fuck…’ Cold and wet, the trouser leg sticking to his skin. He limped after Steel, cursing all the way.

  She came to a halt about two hundred yards from the high chainlink fence that surrounded the site, then turned around a few times. The earth here was firmer – still covered in weeds and grass, the vegetation looking pale and unhealthy.

  Logan squelched up beside her. ‘Hope you’re bloody happy, my feet are—’

  ‘Where the hell is he?’ She turned around again, then peered at the sat-nav.

  ‘—socks are sodden and my trousers are all covered in—’

  ‘Will you shut up moaning about your bloody feet! He’s supposed to be here.’

  Logan snatched the sat-nav from her – the display read, ‘YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION’.

  Welcome to the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Well, at least we know he’s not stuck in some shallow grave.’

  Steel grabbed the sat-nav back. ‘Oh yeah, tell me Sherlock, how—’

  ‘Look at the ground. It’s not been disturbed.’ He pointed at the little black rectangle in Steel’s hands. ‘What are those accurate to, ten, fifteen feet? And the GSM’s about a hundred…’

  Logan looked out across the tufts of yellowy grass and dark-green weeds. ‘Give him a ring.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call him on his mobile.’

  She did, standing there with her phone clamped to her ear. ‘It’s ringing…’

  Logan stood as still as he could, ears straining. A faint metallic warble was coming from somewhere over to his left. He turned and marched towards it, but the sound of his squelching through the waterlogged grass was loud enough to block it out. And then the warbling stopped.

  Steel pointed at the mobile in her hand. ‘Voicemail.’

  ‘Call him again.’

  This time Logan crept across the uneven ground, the ringing getting louder with every careful step.

  ‘Voicemail again.’

  He found it on the third go: a scuffed and battered Nokia lying in a patch of greasy nettles at the edge of a burn. He snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and picked the phone up, just as it stopped ringing. The casing had been broken at one point, then stuck back together with black electrical tape.

  Steel appeared at his shoulder. ‘Is it his?’

  Logan stared at her. ‘It rang when you called it, what do you think?’

  Scowl. ‘I’ll do the sarcasm, thank you very much.’ She stuck out a hand. ‘Gimmie.’

  ‘Gloves.’

  ‘I’ll bloody “gloves” you in a minute. Give me the damn phone.’

  She went stabbing through the phone’s menu with her thumbs. ‘See what he’s got listed as home…It’s an Aberdeen number.’ She pressed another button, and stuck the phone to her ear. Listened for a bit. ‘No answer. So he’s no’ here, and he’s no’ at home.’

  ‘Probably still pissed.’ Logan offered her an evidence bag, but she just stuck the phone in her pocket and marched back towards the building site.

  Logan shook his soggy foot and squelched after her.

  The rain was beginning to pick up, the thin, leeching drizzle giving way to pattering globs of ice-cold water that kicked ripples across the dirty puddles.

  Logan followed Steel down an embryonic street: bare foundations on one side, part-built homes on the other. Wooden skeletons, with blue plastic sheeting stretched between the uprights. A couple were being skinned with pale orange brick, a radio blaring out Northsound One as two teams of brickies built up the next layer.

  Further down, half a dozen looked nearly finished – some even had doors and windows. The one at the far end had a big ‘SHOW HOME’ sign out front, a garage twice the size of the others, and a slightly surreal-looking bright green lawn. No way that could be natural. Probably Astroturf or something like that. A pair of gardeners were planting shrubs and trees around it, hacking out holes in the rubble with a pickaxe.

  Bugger that for a job.

  Logan stopped in the middle of the muddy street. ‘Where do you want to start?’

  Steel dug her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. Her nose had gone a fetching shade of pink. With a not so fetching drip on the end. ‘Where do sparkies work?’

  ‘Well…you wouldn’t want to run electrical cables till you’d got the roof on and the place was watertight, would you?’

  She shrugged and stomped through the rain towards the little clot of completed houses.

  A battered, red Berlingo van was parked outside one of them. It had a crap illustration of Robert Burns on the side, and the words, ‘MCRABBIE’S FAMILY ELECTRICALS, “YOUR LOCAL BRIGHT SPARKS”’. The address and phone number were for Stirling. So much for being ‘local’.

  Someone had keyed the paintwork, permanently engraving ‘SCABBY’ in front of the company name.

  The front garden was a mess of rubble and debris, the concrete path littered with clumps of mud. Steel bumped the front door open with her shoulder, hands at her sides, not touching anything. Inside, the house was an exposed framework of raw pine, the outer walls stuffed with pink Rockwool insulation waiting for their skin of plasterboard.
The entryway was carpeted in a layer of flattened cardboard boxes, the brown surface rippled with dirty water and muddy boot prints.

  Someone was singing upstairs: a surprisingly tuneful rendition of ‘Let Me Entertain You’, complete with ‘Wakka waaaaa, weeeeeeee-wahhh…’ guitar solos. Steel nodded and Logan took the lead, up the bare wooden stairs and onto the chipboard landing.

  The singer was hunched on top of a folding ladder in what was probably going to be a bedroom, wearing a padded orange boilersuit with that same crappy Robert Burns illustration on the back, tightening the chuck-less bit on a cordless drill. A brief pause for the chorus, then he stuck the huge drill bit against the nearest upright and screeched through it.

  Out on the landing, Logan did a quick scan of the other rooms. With no walls it didn’t take long. They were alone.

  He waved Steel forward.

  She marched into the room, drew back her foot, and kicked the ladder. The whole thing shuddered and the singing became a frightened yell. The drill clattered to the chipboard floor and the electrician grabbed at the bare roof joists, swearing as the ladder thumped from side to side. Then he got it stable, looked over his shoulder, teeth bared. ‘Are you fucking mental? Jesus…’

  His face was a map of old acne scars, nose a pink-veined golf ball. He hauled out his earphones. ‘If you bastards are here about the—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’ Steel jabbed a finger at him. ‘Looking for a sparky.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t do homers.’

  ‘Steve Polmont.’

  ‘Not seen him.’

  Logan stooped and picked the drill up off the sawdust-covered floor. ‘You McRabbie?’

  ‘Why?’

  Steel grinned up at him. ‘We represent a certain gentleman Mr Polmont has a…business arrangement with.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ Scabby McRabbie sighed. ‘Dogs or horses?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  McRabbie held his hand out. ‘Buggered off and left us in the shite, didn’t he?’

  Logan kept the drill just out of reach.

  Sigh. ‘He was a dick, OK? Barely sober, aye and that’s when he bothered to turn up. Wouldn’t trust him to change his socks, never mind a plug.’ McRabbie swung his arm around at the semi-skeletal house. ‘Spent half the day rewiring the shite job he did in the first place. Supposed to be on a team bonus, and—’

  ‘When’d you last see him?’ Steel dragged out her fags and sparked one up, then moved the burning lighter towards the nearest clump of Rockwool. ‘Be a shame if something happened…’

  ‘It’s flame retardant.’ McRabbie stuck out his hand again, and Logan passed him the drill.

  ‘Ta.’ He made the hole he’d been drilling slightly bigger, then rested the drill on its large battery pack and hauled a thick bundle of orange cables through the upright. ‘Used to be you could get away with a couple extra sockets in the living room, now every other bastard wants their whole house done with Cat-Six.’

  Logan watched the electrician pick a single strand out of the bundle and mark it with a blue plastic tag, then loop it over a ceiling joist. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Fuck knows. Haven’t seen him since…what, Monday? Probably lying drunk in a gutter, or dead in a fucking ditch. Long as the useless bastard don’t come back, I don’t care.’

  McRabbie picked up the drill again. ‘You know they make me buy my own kit now? Two-five, one-five, fucking boxes, fronts, light switches, you name it: got to claim it back on expenses. That’s Steve Bloody Polmont’s fault.’

  The drill screeched through another upright, sending a shower of sawdust flying. Then McRabbie thumped it back down on the top step of the ladder. ‘You know what…’ He dug a fiver out of his overalls and chucked it at Logan. ‘Here: you catch up with the wanker, you give him a kick in the nads from me!’

  Logan picked the note off the floor and pocketed it. ‘Deal.’

  Steel stomped down the stairs, with Logan bringing up the rear. Up in the bedroom the singing started again, accompanied by the whine of the drill.

  She stopped at the front door, looking out into the rain. ‘Well, that was a waste of sodding time.’

  ‘Look on the bright side, at least we know he was here Monday.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it does us.’ She took a long draw on her cigarette, pinching her mouth into a chicken’s-bum pout. ‘Bloody Polmont.’

  ‘Well, maybe—’

  Steel slapped a hand against his chest. ‘Shh…’ She pointed out through the open door, where a small crowd was gathering around a dented white Transit van. The driver’s door creaked open and a huge man in dirty blue overalls stepped out into the rain. ‘Here, isn’t that Wee Hamish’s right-hand thug?’

  Reuben.

  He was big in all directions – massive fists clenched either side of his straining stomach. His face was twisted with scar tissue, a patchy beard making little islands of dark fur on the swell of his cheeks. Freddy Kruger meets the Michelin Man.

  Logan took a step back, making sure he couldn’t be seen. ‘What the hell’s he doing here?’

  Reuben lumbered round the van’s side door, clunked the handle and hauled it open. Then reached inside and dragged a body out onto the muddy road. The body twitched, tried to roll over. One of its legs bent in three different directions, all at the same time. Face covered in blood. Hands curled up like deformed claws.

  Reuben just stood there.

  Silence.

  Logan flipped his phone open. ‘I’ll call for backup.’

  ‘You’ll bloody no’!’

  ‘But he’s—’

  ‘What do you think Finnie’ll do if he finds out we tried to meet up with a chiz without his approval?’

  Logan stared at her. ‘You didn’t clear it with him?’

  ‘Might have slipped my mind.’ She coughed. ‘Now shut up – can’t hear what’s going on.’

  ‘Oh that’s just…’

  Steel hit him again. ‘Three o’clock.’

  A large man emerged from the show home: six-two; arms held out from his sides, as if he was carrying a couple of beer barrels; jeans, leather jacket, bald head glistening in the rain. Something dark and muscular trotted along beside him. Pointed nose, lolling pink tongue.

  The little crowd of joiners and plumbers backed off, giving him room.

  He stopped, stared down at the body quivering in the mud, then up at Reuben. ‘Problem?’ Scottish, but not local.

  Wee Hamish’s man pointed one huge sausage finger at the battered figure. ‘This yours?’

  ‘What if it is?’

  ‘Had a bit of an accident, didn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Reuben smiled, showing off the hole where a tooth used to be. ‘Accidentally tried to sell his shit in the wrong part of town.’

  The bloke with the dog stripped off his leather jacket and handed it to the nearest bystander. No wonder he couldn’t get his arms near his sides: he was a solid slab of muscle, straining at the fabric of a white T-shirt. He cricked his head from side to side. Flexed his shoulders. ‘Think you, me, and Mauser here need to have a wee chat.’

  The dog’s ears pricked up, a rumbling growl coming from its throat.

  Reuben undid a couple of buttons on his overalls, down by his huge waistband, held one side open.

  ‘Can’t see.’ Steel shifted, peering. ‘He getting his cock out?’

  ‘Why would he be…what’s wrong with you?’

  Big-and-Bald stared at whatever was in Reuben’s overalls, then nodded. Took a step back. ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘Wee message for your lord and master.’ Reuben waved a huge hand, taking in the part-built houses. ‘Keep it legitimate and we’ll all get on fine. Disrespect,’ he paused to kick the man lying at his feet, ‘well, that’s gonnae land us all in a world of shite. We clear?’

  Mr Big-and-Bald folded his huge arms across his chest, saying nothing.

  Reuben slammed the Transit’s side door. ‘Fair enough.’ Then he c
lambered back behind the wheel and cranked the engine. The van’s tyres span in the mud before they finally grabbed traction. He drove off, slowly. Not so much as a jaunty wave.

  Logan watched him go, staring after the van like everyone else. And then Big-and-Bald nudged the man lying on the ground with his foot.

  ‘Get this fucker out of here.’ He turned on his heel and strode off towards the site office, shouting, ‘Mauser, heel!’

  The huge black dog raised its snout, sniffed, then turned and loped after its master.

  DI Steel took the last gasp from her cigarette and ground the butt out against the nearest chunk of pink Rockwool. ‘Think we’d better go pay baldy a visit, don’t you?’ She stepped out into the rain.

  The site office was divided into cubicles by chest-high partitions, each one covered with pinned-up spreadsheets. A large architectural plan covered one wall, ‘Camberwick Green’ in all its proposed glory.

  The office was tidy: no mounds of grubby paperwork, no piles of half-read tabloids, no Turner-Prize-winning installations of discarded polystyrene cups. Just laptops, graphics tablets, printers, and something classical playing from a portable stereo. All overlaid with the dirty stench of wet dog.

  A kettle sat on a wee table opposite the door, curling steam into the tidy room. Someone was making tea – blue jumper on over a shirt and tie, carefully arranged comb-over, ridiculous little beard, as if he’d drawn around his chin with a magic marker.

  He looked up as Logan thumped the door closed behind them.

  ‘Are you here about the drainage?’

  Steel sniffed. ‘I look like a fucking plumber?’

  Frown. ‘There’s no need to—’

  ‘Steve Polmont.’

  Big-and-Bald stood up from behind one of the partitions, a hands-free headset stuffed in his ear. ‘There a problem here?’ Up close he reeked of aftershave, a cloying musky smell with chemical overtones.

  Steel perched on the edge of a desk. ‘Polmont had an arrangement with our employer. But he’s no’ been keeping his end up. Know what I mean?’