Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

‘Noooo...’

Scratches, dents, gouges. The rear bumper buckled and hanging off. The exhaust battered and dragging on the ground.

‘My car...’

More dents and a huge scrape down the driver’s side.

‘Bloody King!’

Logan grabbed the driver’s door and hauled it open, but there was no one inside.

‘I’ll sodding kill him!’ He poked the boot release and it clunked open. But when he checked, there was nothing in there either. Well, except for the pair of high-viz vests King had turned his nose up at.

Logan slammed the boot shut and leaned on it, scowling down at the damage. The chipped paint. The huge dents. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’

Steel stuck her hands in her pockets. ‘You need a moment? Maybe have yourself a wee weep?’

He marched around to the front of the car and tested the bonnet. ‘It’s cold.’

‘Aha!’ A nod from PC Greeny. ‘Been here a while, then.’

Steel hit him. ‘Aye, thank you, Constable Obvious.’

The lane twisted away to the left, the brambles blocking out whatever it led to. Logan took a couple of steps in that direction, then stopped and turned to Greeny. ‘Where’s your mate... Greg?’

‘Glen. He went up the castle.’ Greeny took hold of the Airwave handset fixed to his stabproof vest, pressed the button and talked into his own shoulder. ‘PC Low, safe to talk?’

A tinny voice, amplified by the handset’s speaker: ‘Aye, aye, Greeny.’

‘Any sign of DI King?’

‘Give us a chance, min. Any idea how big Slains Castle is? Gar-sodding-gantuan, that’s how big.’

Logan pointed off down the lane. ‘Where does this go?’

A sniff from Steel. ‘Somewhere sharny, is my bet.’

Probably.

He waved for Greeny’s attention. ‘Go, back your mate up. But if you find something, you don’t take any risks, OK? Mhari Powell’s armed and extremely dangerous.’

The constable nodded, then loped off, down the road towards the castle, talking into his shoulder again. ‘Hold fire, Greg, I’m coming to give you a hand...’

Right. Let’s try this way then.

Logan followed the lane, between the towering waves of spiny brambles.

There was a big pantomime sigh, then Steel shuffled after him. ‘I could be home eating pickled onion Monster Munch and drinking ice-cold Chardonnay...’

‘Well, you’re not. Now earn your fish supper and call Control. I want a dog unit, firearms team, and anything else they can give us, ASAFP.’

She rolled her eyes at him, then dug out her phone. ‘Aye, Shuggie?... Steel... Listen up, I’m after Dogs, Thugs, Guns, and anything else you can get me. Top priority.’

They kept going, past the remains of an agricultural building that had succumbed to time and gravity.

‘Well I don’t know, do I?... Get your finger out and do it, you wee turd!... Thank you.’ She hung up. ‘Shuggie’s on it.’

‘He give you an ETA?’

‘If they floor it out here with lights and music? Half an hour? Maybe forty minutes?’

‘Great. That’s... marvellous.’ The sky was darkening, the shadows on either side of the lane growing deeper and bluer with every minute that passed.

‘So, you want to wait for them in the car?’

‘Yes.’ Logan pulled in a deep breath and sighed it out. ‘But if King’s in trouble—’

‘Aye, which he better be, after all this.’

‘If he’s in trouble, half an hour could be too late. Could be bleeding to death right now, like Haiden did.’

The lane curled around a stand of trees, the canopy thick and dark above their heads.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too.’ Steel pulled the corners of her mouth out and down, like an angry toad. ‘But see if he’s no’ dying when we find him? Bags I get first go kicking him in the nadgers till they pop out his lugs.’

‘After what he did to my Audi? Join the queue.’

They emerged from the trees and stopped. A rundown house lurked straight ahead: two storeys of crumbling dirt-streaked granite in the process of being digested by ivy and brambles. House martins wheeled and curled out from the eaves, chasing the evening’s bugs in simulated dogfights. Elegant feathered arrows, out hunting in the dusk. No cars. No sign of life.

The house’s dead windows stared out at them from its grey and green face.

Steel grabbed Logan’s arm and pulled him to a stop. ‘ Promise me you’ll no get stabbed this time.’

‘Promise.’ He pulled out a pair of blue nitrile gloves and snapped them on, dropping his voice to a whisper as they started towards the house again. ‘Just checking: you’ve got your pepper spray on you?’

‘Course I have. And no: you can’t.’ She snapped on gloves of her own. ‘Should’ve come prepared, shouldn’t you?’

‘Fine.’

He picked up a fallen branch from the edge of the trees. About the size of a baseball-bat, only less elegant and more lumpy. Heavy enough to cave someone’s head in.

Hopefully...

Logan hunched over and scurried across the rutted lumpy grass, battering-branch clutched in both gloved hands.

Steel hurried along beside him, keeping her voice down. ‘You want front or back?’

Probably both as bad as the other, but at least this side was closer. ‘Front.’

‘King better appreciate this...’ She crouch-jogged away, around the side of the house and out of sight.

OK.

He slunk up the steps to the front door. Had to be half a dozen Yale locks there, the brass fronts all new and shiny... But the door wasn’t even shut — it hung open an inch, letting out the grimy scent of mildew and rotting wood.

He nudged the door with his stick. It swung open, creaking and moaning on ancient hinges.

The scent of decay got thicker as he stepped over the threshold.

Dark in here. Shockingly enough, what with it being after sunset.

Should’ve brought a torch, you idiot.

Yeah, well it was too late for that. He’d have to improvise.

Logan dug his phone out and opened the torch app. Swept its pale grey glow around the grubby hallway. Not great, but it would have to do.

He crept forward.

A floorboard creaked under his feet.

God, it was manky in here: the whole place filthy and crumbling. Holes in the floorboards, the foul black Tic-Tac shapes of rat droppings scattered along the skirting. Drifts of leaves had blown in through the broken windows, gathering in the corners like trolls. What was left of the wallpaper peeled off in sagging curls. Dry and brittle after the hottest June on record.

He peered through a hole in the wall to what must have been the kitchen — collapsing units and curling linoleum. No King.

OK, try the open doorway on the right.

It led into a bedroom. Childish drawings scrawled their way across the walls in ancient crayon, a sagging metal-framed double bed rusting against the wall, its mattress little more than decaying skin and spring bones. No King.

Logan turned back towards the hall and a thundering clatter erupted in his face. Forcing him backwards. Stumbling. Battering down against the ancient floorboards, hands raised in self-defence, heart thudding like a blowout on the motorway, phone skittering away.

The house martin squeaked, wings crackling as it did a circuit of the gloomy room, then swooped out through the broken window.

Oh God...

He shuddered, forcing his breathing to slow down. ‘Bloody hell.’

It was only a bird. Not Mhari Powell with her dirty big knife.

Still alive.

He pushed himself up to his knees. Then his feet. Pulse pounding at the base of his throat as he bent to pick up his phone. Cracks spidered out from one corner, reaching across the screen. ‘Wonderful.’ Because the car getting ruined wasn’t bad enough. Things had to get worse.