Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

He glowered at her. ‘You’re not funny.’

‘No’ my fault the man’s a dick.’ She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, frowning. ‘Honestly: sodding off like the Lone Ranger. Supposed to be a team, here.’ As if that had ever stopped her from doing all the crap she’d got up to over the years. A sigh, then she released the handbrake and set off down the long straight road again at a less hell-for-leather pace. ‘Come on, we’ll have a wee search for him. He’s got to be somewhere .’ Steel shook her head. ‘But between you and me: see operation King-Logan? It’s a sodding disaster.’

Yeah, he was well aware of that.

Logan got his phone out again and called Control.

‘Air Ambulance ETA is five minutes.’

‘You can cancel that — victim’s dead. Better get the Pathologist, Procurator Fiscal, and duty undertakers out instead.’

‘Oooh, OK. Will do.’

‘And while you’re at it, ping the GPS on DI King’s Airwave handset. I need to know where he is, and I need to know now .’

Steel slowed at the next side road, peering off down the track, then speeding up again.

‘OK, system says DI King is at Divisional Headquarters. Do you want me to patch you through?’

Logan covered his eyes. ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ The silly sod had left it behind, at the station.

‘If you need DI King, we can probably still find him through GPS. Which pool car does he have?’

Gah...

‘He’s not in a pool car, he’s in my car.’

Bloody Detective Bloody Inspector Frank Bloody King.

‘Sorry. If he calls in, I’ll tell him to give you a shout.’

It wasn’t easy forcing the words out between gritted teeth, but Logan did it anyway. ‘Thank you.’ Then he hung up and put his phone in his pocket. Straightened the seam in his police-issue itchy trousers. Took a nice deep breath. And bellowed a scream into the passenger footwell.

Steel sniffed. ‘Yeah... Kingy has that effect on me too.’

Frank parked halfway down a narrow lane. Brambles loomed on both sides, hemming the car in. He opened the door and clambered out.

Yeah... Logan wasn’t going to be very happy when he saw what had happened to his beloved Audi. A deep gouge wormed its way along the driver’s-side wing, through the door, and off to the rear wheel arch and panels, ringed with bright scrapes of raw metal where large chunks of the paintwork had come off. Dents in the wheel arches. A big one in the bonnet. And, let’s be honest, the exhaust sounded like a smoker’s lung and the engine wasn’t much better.

He reached in, turned it off, and plucked the wheel brace from the passenger seat. Creaked the door shut and limped down the lane — every step making his right knee and ribs hiss — keeping low to avoid being seen.

At the end of the lane he hunkered down behind a low wall and peered around the corner.

The two-storey house was nearly buried by the weight of ivy growing up the dirty granite walls — green tendrils reaching up beneath the eaves and into the roof. Poking out through holes in the tiles. Probably looked impressive at one point, with its bay windows and portico, but not now it’d decayed to a crumbling wreck.

A rusty grey Transit van sat next to it, its bodywork slowly succumbing to green and black mould. Marooned in a sea of brambles. Didn’t look as if it’d moved in years.

Right. He tightened his grip on the wheel brace and limp-jogged across the tussocked grass to the front door. Flattened himself against the wall. So far so good. If he could—

His phone launched into its generic ringtone.

Sodding hell...

He fumbled it from his pocket, fast as possible before it started ramping up the volume. The words, ‘INSP. MCRAE’ filled the screen. Of all the stupid times to call.

He hit ‘IGNORE’.

And just to be safe, switched it off as well. Stuffed it deep in his pocket.

Trying to get him killed.

Honestly.

Frank stood on his tiptoes and peeked in through the nearest window.

A bedroom — collapsed metal bedframe and the decayed remains of what used to be a mattress. Holes in the walls and ceiling. No sign of a knife-wielding maniac.

The window on the other side of the door was too buried in bramble-barbed-wire to look inside. Which left only one option: the door.

He crept up the stairs.

Huffed out a breath.

This was definitely the right place — no one installed six shiny Yale locks on an abandoned building unless there was something inside they wanted to hide. The wood was wasp-eaten and bloated. Probably wouldn’t take much to boot it in. But then Mhari Powell would know he was there and going by what she’d done to her brother, that wasn’t a great idea.

A brass plaque sat above the letterbox, the metal pitted and stained: the words ‘RENFIELD HOUSE’ half consumed and obscured by verdigris. Someone had a sense of humour, naming their house after Dracula’s bug-eating minion, when Slains Castle was just over the hill there. Oh yes, Whitby might claim Bram Stoker wrote and set the whole thing down there, but that was the English for you, wasn’t it? Always stealing what was rightfully Scotland’s.

He reached for the door handle. After all, you never knew your...

The door swung open as he touched it.

Six Yales and not one of them locked.

About time his luck changed.

Frank slipped inside.

Gloomy in here, even with the evening sun beating down outside. Cool too. The air tasted grey with dust and mould, the sharp mucky scent of rodents. A hole in the plasterwork showed off the room he couldn’t look into from outside — a fusty kitchen with sagging units and a broken table. Straight ahead: a bathroom with black-and-white tiles littered with jagged chunks of collapsed plaster. A staircase off to one side, reaching up to the first floor, the wood rotten and treacherous, untouched beneath a thick film of pristine dust.

Which left the cupboard under the stairs and—

He froze.

Was that singing ?

It was — a woman’s voice with no accompaniment:

‘And so we came to Branxton Hill, and raised our pikes on higher ground,

The guns they roared the archers shot, but dirty weather spoiled the lot,’

It was coming from down the corridor, on the right.

He inched his way over, sticking to the wall.

‘The wind and rain fought harder still, but King James’ courage, well renowned,

He led the charge at Surrey’s flank, panic spread through English ranks,’

There was a door at the far end, its paintwork blistered and peeling. The singing was coming from the other side.

‘Vengeance ours, this day, would be, for Henry’s bloody treachery,

Vengeance ours, praise God we’d see, another Scottish victory.’

He stuck his ear against the door.

‘We bathed in blood, the fields ran red, the English foe we routed,

A slash of blade, and on we rushed, Surrey’s men would soon be crushed,’

OK, she definitely hadn’t heard him coming — wouldn’t be singing away to herself otherwise. He raised the wheel brace, took hold of the door handle, and burst through into what was probably once a living room, looking out over the cliffs towards the sea. Should have been bright in here, with the sun blaring down outside, but somehow it made the room gloomier. The view through the broken windows like a vision from a past life.

‘The cowards ran, the battle fled, as we our war cries shouted!

And brave King James he spurred us on, the English ranks their courage gone.’