Стюарт Макбрайд: Now We Are Dead

Steel dumped her pen on the dashboard and took both. ‘Sorry, Susan, got to go. Official business.’

‘You do know I can hear him, don’t you?’

‘OK, love you.’ She hung up and opened her paper bag. Took a big bite of butty: an instant hit of flour and tomato sauce, silky butter and soft bap, then the dark-brown savoury crunch of deep-fried sausages. Ooh, hot. But tasty. She chewed around the words ‘Any news?’

Tufty unwrapped his own butty. Bacon from the look of it. ‘They haven’t seen Kenny Milne round here for about a month. Sodded off and didn’t pay his tab, so if he turns up again they’ll definitely tell us. After he’s fallen down a few times.’

‘He didn’t pay his tab? God, Milne’s a braver man than me.’ Another bite of rich sausagey goodness. ‘You do not screw with Alice Johnston and her girls.’

The car’s radio crackled. Bleeped. Then, ‘Control to DS Steel, safe to talk?’

‘No. Sod off.’ Creaking the lid off her coffee.

But Tufty had to go ahead and pick it up anyway, didn’t he? Twit. ‘Go ahead.’

‘You’re in Cornhill, aren’t you? We’ve got a call — vulnerable adult not been seen for a few days. Can you check in on her?’

Roberta grabbed the handset off the soft sod. ‘Get uniform to do it. We’re busy.’

‘Can’t. There’s a riot kicking off at the crematorium, a four-car pileup on South Anderson Drive, and we’re still searching for that old dear with Alzheimer’s. Tag: you’re it.’

‘Gah...’ Rotten bunch of sods. But it wasn’t as if she had a choice. ‘Fine. But I’m finishing my butty first!’

The tower block loomed over the surrounding housing estate, monolithic and grey. Sixteen storeys of miserable Lego, dirty streaks leaking down from the corner of every single window. The other three blocks in the development were just as slab-faced, but at least they were clean. This one was like the stinky kid at school no one wanted to be friends with.

Tufty locked the car and held a hand above his eyes, blocking out the sun, counting his way up from the ground. ‘Ten. Eleven. Twelve. That’s us: Cairnhill Court, twelfth floor.’

Steel scowled at him. The effect was a bit undermined by the sausage butty’s aftermath: a tomato sauce smile over flour-whitened cheeks. Like the Joker had really let himself go. ‘How much do you want to bet the lifts don’t work?’

The lifts did work. Well, one of them anyway. Yeah, it was covered in graffiti, but it was working. Not very quickly, though. It creaked and groaned upwards, the little lights above the door marking their snail’s pace up to the twelfth floor.

A lurch, then the thing gave a particularly loud groan.

Steel curled her top lip, nostrils twitching. Trying to hide a smile. ‘That better no’ have been you.’

Tufty pulled on his best offended look. ‘Of course it wasn’t!’ Then leaned to one side and squeezed one out. Grinned. ‘But that was.’

‘Urrrgh! You filthy wee sod!’

Tee hee.

The lift doors pinged and Steel stumbled out. ‘Air! Fresh air!’

Someone had painted the corridor institution-green at some point long, long ago. Now it was cracked and scuffed. Peeling in the corners. A patch of magnolia almost managing to conceal some spray-paint graffiti. ‘ENGLISH SCUMMERS ~ FREEDOME!!!’

Think if you were going to be a bigoted arsehole you could at least get a friend to check your spelling.

Steel turned and thumped him on the arm. ‘What the hell have you been eating?’

‘You’ve got to admit the timing was lovely.’ He led the way down the corridor to the flat at the end. The front door was gouged and darkened around the bottom. Like it’d been given a stiff kicking. ‘And the embouchure! A perfect middle C.’ He knocked on the door, raised his voice to carry through the dented woodwork. ‘Mrs Galloway? Hello? Can you come to the door please?’

‘It’s no’ wholesome.’

‘You started it.’ Another knock. ‘It’s the police, Mrs Galloway. We just want to check you’re all right.’

‘I did not!’

‘Did too. Mrs Galloway? Can you hear me? Mrs Galloway, can we come in and speak to you please?’

A rattle, and a tracksuited wifie poked her head out of the flat opposite, puffing away on a rollup. A large woman with yoghurt-pale skin and her ponytail hauled back in a Torry facelift. But when she opened her gob it was like your favourite aunt: full of care and concern. ‘I’ve not seen her for three days. Normally she’s out walking her wee dog, regular as clockwork. And they haven’t seen her down the shops either, I checked.’

Tufty tried a jaunty, friendly rat-tat-a-tat-tat knock. ‘Mrs Galloway?’

Steel nodded at the door. ‘She got family? Maybe she’s staying with them?’

‘Got a son, but he’s in P.R.I.S.O.N.’ Spelling it out nice and quiet. ‘Drugs. Very sad.’

One last go. ‘Come on, Mrs Galloway, please open the door! Pretty please?’

Steel sidled over to the neighbour. ‘Haven’t got a key, have you?’

‘Give us a second.’ And she disappeared.

Steel sniffed. ‘I still say there’s something wrong with your bumhole if it produces smells like that.’

‘You’re just jealous.’

‘If smells like that came out of me, I’d be straight down the doctor’s demanding—’

‘Here you go.’ The neighbour appeared again, a toddler balanced on her hip. Holding out a key with a little rubber bone as a fob.

‘Thanks. We’ll take it from here.’ Steel gave her a smile, took the key, then slipped it into the lock. Twisted. Pushed. Whistled. ‘Wow...’

Tufty peered over her shoulder.

The hallway was a complete and utter tip. If a tornado had touched down in here it couldn’t have made more of a mess. Pictures torn from the walls. Coats and shoes hurled around. Holes gouged in the plasterboard.

Steel backed up a step. ‘You better go first. In case it’s dangerous.’

Oh that was fair . Because detective constables were a hundred percent more disposable than detective sergeants, weren’t they? Even saggy old wrinkly ones.

He squeezed past and crept down the hall, feet crunching on broken glass from the picture frames. Scuffing through a duffle coat. ‘Mrs Galloway?’

A door led off to one side. Tufty pushed it open: bathroom. The medicine cabinet lay in the middle of the floor, its contents spilled out like pill-bottle confetti.

Another door opposite: bedroom. The mattress was up on its side, blocking the window, its underside exposed and slashed, nylon fibre guts hanging out in long dangling swathes.

One door left, at the end of the hall.

Sobbing filtered through from the other side.

Tufty eased it open. ‘Mrs Galloway?’

It was a living room, or at least it used to be. Now it was more like a day at the dump. Even with the curtains closed, the devastation in here was obvious. Broken furniture lay sprawled across the floor. The smallest member of a nest of tables poked out of the smashed screen of an old-fashioned cathode ray tube TV.

That sobbing was coming from a little old lady, sitting on the floor in the corner, surrounded by her wreckage, rocking back and forwards with one hand clasped against her chest and the other clenched over her eyes.

He squatted down next to her. ‘Mrs Galloway, are you all right?’

OK, so it was a stupid question, but what else was he supposed to say?

Steel picked her way through the debris and pulled the curtains open.

Light flooded in.

Mrs Galloway flinched back into the corner. ‘Aaaaaaagh...’ Almost every visible inch of skin was covered in dark purple bruising, already starting to yellow and green around the edges.