In the Cold Dark Ground

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Grab an arm, we’re leaving.’

  ‘Soddig hell. Towd you we should’ve god straid to the hosbidal.’

  They took hold of Mr Fife and steered him towards the exit. His testicles seemed to have recovered a bit, because he was able to limp along without having to be dragged.

  Logan stayed where he was as the door clunked shut behind them.

  ‘The same argument, every Thursday night.’ The PCSO shook her head. Then frowned at him. ‘You all right, Sergeant? Only if you aren’t: would you mind buggering off and not bleeding on my nice clean floor?’

  ‘What?’

  She pointed. ‘There’s a sink in the back if you want to wash up.’

  Logan hunched over the sink in the tiny galley kitchen off the side of the custody processing area – barely enough room for a grown man to stand sideways without brushing the units on one side and the wall on the other. He splashed water on his face. Tiny pink droplets fell onto the stainless steel.

  He prodded his left cheek – the skin was already tightening as it swelled, red flushing across the growing lump. A gash ran sideways across it, not far below his eye. Going to be a decent bruise. Nicholas Fife had a really hard head.

  The water eased the stinging throb for a couple of breaths, then it was back again, digging its claws through Logan’s face and into his skull.

  Sod this. Samantha was right: Steel could find her own way back to Banff.

  He patted his face dry with paper towels. Then applied a sticking plaster from the first-aid kit. Little red dots showed through the beige plastic.

  A thump behind him, and the PCSO was back. Denise looked him up and down. ‘You still here?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Cupboard at your knees – dig in there and find us a red, a brown, and a blue.’

  Logan bent down and something large and burny throbbed through his brain. He opened the cupboard, revealing stacks of microwave meals in coloured boxes. Red, brown, blue: shepherd’s pie, chicken and vegetable madras with rice, and an all-day breakfast. He turned the blue box over. ‘“Beans in a rich tomato sauce, with potatoes and two succulent pork sausages.”’ He handed it to Denise. ‘This lot eat better than I do.’

  ‘He doesn’t usually.’ She pulled the black plastic trays from the cardboard boxes, stabbed the film lids with a fork, and slid the lot into a battered grey microwave. ‘Don’t think the poor sod’s seen solid food since last time he was in here.’ Denise beeped the buttons. ‘How’s the head?’

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t make a mess, I don’t care.’ She curled a lip. ‘Been mopping up sick all evening. Why you lot have to arrest people with dodgy stomachs I’ll never know.’

  The microwave dinners buzzed and hummed around in a circle.

  ‘Thought you didn’t allow drunks.’

  ‘Oh, he was very apologetic about it, but it didn’t stop him barfing everywhere.’

  Buzz and hum.

  She shuddered. ‘We had a cat once, soon as its shoulders started going you knew what was coming.’ Denise hunched her shoulders up and down a couple of times, then made ‘ack’ing noises. ‘All over the place. Couldn’t just stand still and throw up: much more fun to back away and make sure there was a big long line of the stuff.’

  Buzzzzzzzzz…

  ‘Worst was when he got into the knicker drawer. Urgh… All over my thongs.’

  Now there was an image to put you off your chicken curry ready-meal.

  Hummmmm…

  It’d be really nice to go now, but there wasn’t any room to squeeze past Denise and her pukey pants.

  She produced a polystyrene cup and made some milky tea in it.

  Buzzzzzzzzz…

  Ding.

  Denise picked up the tea then pointed at the microwave. ‘Grab those for me, will you? There’s a tray over there.’

  He tweezed them out of the microwave with sizzling fingers, dumping them on a round brown tray that looked as if it’d been half-inched from a pub.

  She turned and marched from the room, leaving him to follow.

  What was it with women? Why did they all expect him to run around after them? Did he have ‘DOORMAT’ printed across his forehead in two-inch-high letters only they could see?

  Logan picked up the tray and followed her.

  Denise produced a bunch of keys, flipping through them as they walked past the entry corridor and right, past the female cells, and through into the new bit where two rows of big blue doors stretched away in front of them. They each had a slide-down hatch, safety notice, intercom, and a little whiteboard mounted on the metal surface. Someone had scrawled prisoner warnings on those, like: ‘BEWARE!!! HE BITES!’, ‘DIABETIC’, ‘SPITS’, and ‘ALLERGIC TO WHEAT’.

  She stopped outside one marked, ‘NEEDS FEEDING UP’ and slid down the hatch. Peered through the plastic viewport. Then unlocked the door. ‘Felix? How you feeling?’

  A stench of mouldering garlic and dead mice oozed out into the cellblock.

  ‘You hungry? Bet you are. Got you a lovely cup of tea too.’

  What looked like a mound of dirty laundry stirred on the blue plastic mattress. Then Felix rolled over.

  His skin was a mottled grey brown, the wrinkles darkened with dirt. There wasn’t much hair on his liver-spotted head, but what he had was yellow and straggly. He blinked at them with rheumy eyes. ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Come on, Felix, see what we’ve got for you? All your favourite foods.’

  Thin trembling fingers reached for Logan’s tray, a smile cracking the skeletal face.

  Logan put it on the blue plastic mattress next to him. ‘Watch, they’re hot.’

  He dug into the chicken curry with a plastic spoon. Shovelling it into his ragged mouth.

  Denise smiled. ‘There you go.’

  Logan leaned against the blue strip, painted halfway up the wall. ‘Anyone exciting in tonight?’

  ‘Usual collection of Thursday-night drinkers. Couple of druggies in for possession. A lovely young lady, in the other block, stabbed her granny in the leg because she wouldn’t buy her a new iPhone.’ A sniff. ‘“Stinky Sammy” Wilson’s back again. Thinking of giving that boy a season pass.’

  Felix polished off the last chunk of curry, licked the plastic tray clean, then started in on the all-day breakfast. Getting bean juice all over his stubbly chin.

  ‘What did he do this time?’

  ‘Cheese and bacon, same as every other druggy.’ She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t even make any sense, does it? Shoplifting cheese and bacon. Who’s going to buy a slab of gouda and a pack of smoked-streaky from a smackhead in a pub? You’d have to be mental.’

  Beans and sausages and potatoes disappeared.

  Logan glanced out into the corridor, with its rows of heavy blue doors. ‘What about Martin Milne?’

  ‘Ah yes. Mr Milne.’

  Felix slurped the last of the breakfast from the tray and polished it with his tongue. Only the shepherd’s pie to go.

  ‘Giving you trouble?’

  ‘I can understand why someone gave him a spanking, put it that way.’ She turned back to their resident garbage disposal unit. ‘There we go, is that nice?’

  Felix kept on shovelling.

  ‘Which one’s he in?’

  ‘Course it is. You eat up.’ Then up to Logan. ‘Number five. If you want to fall him down the stairs a couple of times, let me know and I’ll nip out for a fag.’

  Logan raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Joking.’ A shrug. ‘Kind of.’

  He stepped out into the corridor and wandered across the hall to the cell door marked ‘M5’. The whiteboard had ‘PAIN IN THE HOOP’ scrawled on it. Logan slid the hatch down halfway – until it clicked into the viewing position.

  Martin Milne sat on the edge of his thin blue mattress, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. A shudder rippled across the shoulders, setting them quivering. He wiped a hand
across his nose and stared at the silvery pink line it left on his forearm.

  Then he looked up and round. Stared right back at Logan. Wiped his eyes dry.

  Logan slid the hatch back up again.

  Turned to go.

  There was a knock on the other side of the door – three light bangs, muffled by all that metal. ‘Hello?’

  Logan clicked the hatch into the viewing position.

  Martin Milne stood on the other side of the little Perspex window, blinking at him with swollen bloodshot eyes. ‘Hello. You were there. At the house.’ He sniffed. Wiped away the tears. ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘See who?’

  Milne turned his face away. ‘Peter. Can I see him?’

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough, Mr Milne?’

  ‘I need to. They wouldn’t let me say goodbye.’ He leaned his bruised forehead against the window. ‘I just want to say goodbye.’

  ‘You want me to ask Detective Superintendent Harper if you can see the body of the man you killed? I can ask, but I know what she’ll say.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. I…’ Deep breath. ‘I loved him.’ Milne cleared his throat. ‘About those photographs, at Pete’s place. My wife doesn’t need to find out about them, does she?’

  ‘They’ll probably be used in evidence.’

  ‘But…’ Milne looked up, straight into Logan’s eyes. ‘They’re not important. Pete liked to watch the slideshow while we… It’s not illegal. Everything was consensual. Everyone was over eighteen. If someone didn’t want their face on camera they could wear a mask.’ He bit his bottom lip. ‘It’d break Katie’s heart. Please?’

  Should have thought of that in the first place.

  Logan shook his head. ‘It’s out of my hands. You’ll have to…’ Wait a minute. ‘Who? Who wouldn’t let you say goodbye?’

  ‘Please. I’m begging you.’

  ‘No, you said someone wouldn’t let you say goodbye. You weren’t talking about Detective Superintendent Harper, were you? Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Milne turned around and slid down the inside of the door – still visible in the convex mirror mounted on the cell’s ceiling. ‘None of it matters any more.’

  OK…

  Logan went back to the other cell, where Denise was collecting up all the licked-clean ready-meal containers and humming ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’. Felix was curled up on his mattress with his back to the cell, looking like a pile of dirty laundry again.

  ‘Denise, have you—’

  ‘Shhh!’ She stuck a finger to her lips, then put the Styrofoam cup on the tray and crept out of the room. Eased the door shut behind her. ‘Only just got him off.’

  ‘Are you two…?’ Logan pulled his chin in and pointed at the cell.

  ‘The poor sod’s got dementia. He hates his care home, so he disappears for a couple of weeks at a time.’ She slid the hatch up, hiding the sleeping Felix away. ‘But he gets confused and too hot and takes all his clothes off – which is when we get a phone call from some distraught mother of two, because he’s done a strip in the local Post Office, or Asda. And he ends up in here for the night.’

  ‘Can you open up number five?’

  ‘Least we can do is feed him up. He’s skin and bones under them rags.’ She dug out her keys. ‘Why do you want into five? Seriously, I was only joking about the “falling down stairs” thing.’

  ‘Need to ask Mr Milne a couple of questions.’

  There was a pause, then a shrug. ‘Don’t see why not. Long as you sign for him.’

  17

  ‘No.’ Martin Milne hunched into himself on the other side of the interview room table. His fingers twitched themselves into knots and out again. ‘No recordings.’

  Logan pressed the button on the machine, setting the digital camera running. ‘It’s for your own protection, Martin. This way everyone knows it’s all aboveboard and no one tried to make you say anything.’ The unit gave a bleep. ‘Interview with Martin Carter Milne, of number six, Greystone View, Near Whitehills. Present, Martin Milne and Sergeant Logan McRae. It’s …’ he checked his watch, ‘twenty-one forty, Thursday the twelfth of February—’

  ‘No comment.’

  Great.

  Try not to sigh. ‘Martin, if you don’t want to talk to me, why are we—’

  ‘No comment.’

  Well, it was pretty obvious why they’d written ‘PAIN IN THE HOOP’ on his cell whiteboard.

  ‘Martin, can we—’

  ‘I said, “no comment”. I have no comment to make.’

  Complete waste of time.

  ‘Interview suspended at twenty-one forty-two.’ He pressed the button and switched it all off. ‘Let’s get you back to your cell.’

  The lines around Milne’s eyes deepened. He spread his hands out on the tabletop. ‘They’ll kill me if they find out.’

  Here we go.

  ‘Who’ll kill you, Martin?’

  ‘They made me watch.’ His eyes glistened. ‘They wouldn’t let me say goodbye, but they made me watch.’ Tears sparkled on his eyelashes. ‘They said if I told anyone about it, they’d do the same to me and my family. To Ethan. They’re going to kill my wee boy.’

  Logan sat back in his seat. Slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Felt for his mobile. ‘It’s OK, Martin, you’re safe here. Why don’t you— Damn it.’ He hauled his phone out and poked at the screen. ‘Sorry about that: got it on vibrate.’ Then placed the thing facedown on the table. ‘Should have switched it off earlier.’

  Outside the room, the floorboards groaned like a dying dog, the noise fading as whoever it was passed down the corridor.

  ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell me what happened and we’ll try to sort it out together, OK?’

  Milne nodded. Wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘It was just meant to be a meeting. We turn up and hand over the cash and everything’s done.’ He swallowed. ‘Only, when we got there, they started screaming about more money. They said two hundred and twenty-five thousand wasn’t enough. They wanted an extra hundred grand.’

  ‘The money you borrowed from the bank.’

  A nod. Then a sniff. ‘We told them we didn’t have it. It’d take some time. And this big guy, he starts hitting Peter and screaming at him: “We want our money, Bitch. We want our money.” And I tried to stop him, but they jumped me and they’re kicking and punching…’

  Milne hauled in a deep, rattling breath. Stared down at his twitching fingers. ‘Then this other guy comes in and he says that if we want to get out of this alive, we’re going to have to sign GCML over to them. We’re going to have to start doing favours.’

  Sounded familiar.

  ‘Course Peter says, “No way. Deal was for a loan, not this.” And they start in on him again. They’re stamping on his chest and his head and he’s crying and…’ Milne ground tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘They tied his hands behind his back and stuck a bin-bag over his head. I promised them. I promised them anything they wanted, but they … they…’ He bit his bottom lip. ‘They taped it tight around his neck. And he’s thrashing against the floor, and he can’t breathe, and I can’t breathe, and they’re laughing, and…’

  Milne folded forwards, until his forehead rested on the tabletop. He put his hands over his head, pressing down, as if he could force it through the scarred Formica. Muscles bunching in his thick arms. Shoulders trembling. Then the sobbing started.

  Logan sat back and watched.

  Somewhere outside, a patrol car’s siren burst into life. Then faded off into the distance.

  He reached across the table and put a hand on Milne’s lurching shoulder. ‘Shh… You’re safe here. You’re safe.’

  Milne didn’t look up, the words coming out jagged and torn. ‘If I … if I don’t do what … what they want, … th … they’ll kill me and my … my wife and my little boy.’ A wail grew from somewhere deep inside his t
orso. ‘Like … like they … they killed Peter.’

  Detective Superintendent Harper scowled up from her desk. ‘This better be important, Sergeant, some of us have work to do.’ She pulled back in her chair. ‘What happened to your face?’

  The office had the same bland, flat-pack elegance as the rest of the station. Two desks along one wall, one in the middle of the room. Harper had commandeered that one, while Narveer had the one nearest the door. Both of them poking away at fancy laptop computers, rather than the usual hamster-wheel-powered lumps of ancient plastic everyone else had to fight with.

  Logan folded his arms, shoulders back. ‘Martin Milne claims he was present when Peter Shepherd was killed.’

  ‘Does he now?’

  ‘Their container business was failing, they needed new contracts. Peter Shepherd came up with the idea of bribing officials in Nigeria to let them bid for a bunch of oilfield logistic projects off the coast there. Only they needed the money in a hurry. So they went to one of Malcolm McLennan’s goons.’

  ‘Hmmm…’ Harper closed her laptop. ‘Narveer?’

  Her sidekick swivelled his seat around to face them. ‘It’s a connection.’

  ‘Apparently Shepherd wasn’t just into true-crime books, he liked to kid-on he was connected. A little bit dangerous. When he bumped into someone he recognized from The Blood-Red Line at a fundraiser, he let it slip they needed two hundred thousand for something dodgy.’

  ‘I see.’ She picked up a pen and wrote something in her notebook. ‘And we should believe you, because?’

  Logan held up his phone. Pressed his thumb against the button marked ‘PLAY’.

  Martin Milne’s voice burst out of the speaker, slightly distorted and tinny. ‘…from the bank, but he said we couldn’t get the money fast enough. We had to get these guys bribed by Wednesday or—’

  He pressed ‘PAUSE’.

  ‘I accidentally set my phone on voice-memo mode and left it on the interview room table. Might not be admissible in court, but that doesn’t mean we can’t act on the information till he agrees to make a formal statement.’

  She tilted her head to one side and stared at him in silence.

  Narveer adjusted his tartan turban. ‘So that’s why they needed those loans from the bank. They had to pay off Malk the Knife.’