Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Yeah... no way that didn’t sound like a last will and testament.

Collar up, Callum jogged for the car and slid into the passenger seat. Ran his good hand through his hair and flicked the water off into the footwell. ‘That was McAdams. He says Watt has, and I quote, “refined the list”.’

Franklin groaned and rolled her eyes. ‘He rigged it, didn’t he? So he’d be the one who found Ashlee.’

‘Doesn’t matter. He’s done the right thing now.’ Callum hauled on his seatbelt. ‘And you and I have got a new address to search. Kettle Docks, and this time let’s have a little mood music to help us on our way.’ He reached out and poked the 999 button on the dashboard, setting the Mondeo’s siren wailing and its lights flickering.

She grinned at him. ‘About sodding time.’

Creel Lane: narrow and cobbled, lined on both sides with ancient, thick-walled buildings. Three and four storeys tall. The windows were small, the walls coated in harling and painted various shades of crumbling beige. The road curled away to the right, following the line of the river. One set of buildings facing the water, the other crammed in between the road and a steep hillside, with another set of houses above that.

All very quaint and picturesque in the sunshine. But in the rain? Claustrophobic and grim.

A couple were cloaked in scaffolding, probably on their way to becoming extremely expensive flats.

Number 6 wasn’t. It was on the inland side of the road, a flat-fronted building with an archway in the middle — big enough for a Transit van — sealed with a heavy wooden gate that went all the way up. All the windows boarded up. An official-looking notice scowled out from the wall, ‘WARNING! PROPERTY IS UNSTABLE AND DANGEROUS!’ in big unfriendly letters.

Franklin killed the siren and parked right outside. ‘What do you think?’

‘Maybe.’ Callum hopped out and pulled on his high-viz jacket — the one with ‘POLICE’ on the back. Hurried around to the gate as Franklin joined him. He pointed at a big brass-coloured lump of metal securing both sides of the gate together. ‘That looks like a brand-new padlock to me.’

She snapped on a pair of gloves and ran a finger along the hasp. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a crowbar?’

He snapped on his own gloves. ‘Kick it in?’

‘Kick it in.’ She braced herself. ‘In three, two, one, go!’

A booming thump rattled out into the rain. But the door didn’t budge.

‘Right, wait here.’ Franklin turned and marched across the road to the nearest scaffolding-clad building. She was back a couple of minutes later clutching a claw hammer. ‘Might want to stand back.’

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The metal head battered down on the padlock, achieving exactly sod-all. Then she flipped the hammer round and dug the claws in behind the hasp and yanked it down. Wood splintered. Metal groaned.

‘Come on, you wee bugger!’ Putting her weight into it.

And they were in.

The detached cottage is empty. Well, except for the dust. And the mouse droppings. And the massive wasp byke in the kitchen. Which only leaves the bothy and the barn.

John picks up the brolly and does his elbows-out march through the long grass and nettles in the back garden, clambers over the drystane dyke at the bottom, and brushes himself down on the track.

A bent piece of thin metal pipe is hooked through a hasp on the bothy door, keeping it shut. The wood’s pale-blue paint is crackled and flaky. The guttering’s missing. And this is a sodding waste of time.

He pulls out the pipe and pushes into the bothy.

Dark in here. And the floorboards look about as trustworthy as an angry toddler.

John creeps inside, testing the way before committing each foot.

It’ll be just his luck if the floor completely—

‘AAAAARGH!’

Sodding hell!

He drags his phone out and the music gets louder. Flips it open and presses the button. Takes a deep breath. ‘Hello?’

‘Watt? It’s DS Hodgkin.’

Maybe it’d be better if the floor did collapse and swallow him. ‘Sarge.’

‘I got a call from DS McAdams. He says you came up with a new priority order for the houses.’

‘Yeah, this isn’t...’ He rubs a hand across his forehead. McAdams was right: Don’t let the petty stuff get in the way. ‘Yes. I’m sorry about earlier.’

See, that didn’t hurt, did it?

‘Do you, you know, want to meet up and be a team again?’

John puffs out a breath. You’ve got to work with your team, not piss them off so much they ditch you and drive off on their own. No matter how much of a pain in the ring they are. ‘You sure?’

‘Course I am. Not as if I can do a lot of searching on my own, is it? Not in a wheelchair.’

‘Cool. Where are you?’

‘Shortstaine Business Park. The chandler’s yard.’

‘Give me...’ Five minutes to finish searching, maybe ten minutes to get there if the traffic isn’t too bad. ‘Call it twenty minutes tops.’

‘We’ll find Ashlee. You and me: heroes.’

‘I know. Be there soon as I can.’ He hangs up. Lets his chin fall against his chest. ‘Pfff...’

The first step is always the worst, though, isn’t it? That horrible feeling the ground’s not going to be there when your foot goes down and you’re just going to fall and fall and fall...

‘Here.’ Callum handed Franklin a torch, and clicked on his own.

Daylight barely made it over the threshold, swallowed by gloom and shadows.

She swept the cold white beam of her torch across the floor. More cobbles, uneven and buckled, giving way to cracked paving slabs.

Callum did the same for the walls and roof: bare stones and crumbling mortar. A dangling wire with a broken lightbulb hanging from the end.

A single door off to one side.

She pointed at it, then clenched her fist — pumping it once, then flattening her hand out. Nodded at him for confirmation.

‘You look like an idiot, you know that, don’t you?’ Callum marched over and tried the handle. The door was stiff, but a bit of shoulder made it groan open.

Her voice was a hissing whisper, ‘We have no idea what’s in there.’

‘We know Tod Monaghan’s dead. And we know the gate was padlocked from the outside, with no way to open it from in here.’ Callum stepped through the door. ‘So unless you’re worried about ghosties and ghoulies, maybe we could get on with it?’

The torch beam picked out an empty room with decaying plaster walls, the lathe exposed like ribs on a carcass. Two doors and a staircase.

‘There’s nothing wrong with taking precautions.’

‘Don’t drag me into your SWAT team fantasies.’ He put a foot on the stair. The wood creaked. ‘What do you think, safe?’

‘We should sweep the ground floor first. Work up level by level.’

‘Fine.’

Door number one: a kitchen, complete with rusty range cooker and units buried beneath a duvet of grey dust. Door number two: another empty room with skeletal walls. Another door in the far corner.

Franklin held up a fist again. ‘Padlock.’

It glinted in the torchlight.

She squared her shoulders, took a step back, then rammed her boot into the wood beneath the hasp. BOOM — but this time the door sprang open in a flurry of crackling splinters. Dust turned their torch beams into solid things.

A stairway led down into the darkness.

Franklin flattened herself against the wall. ‘You ready?’

‘Seriously, stop it.’ Callum squeezed past and hurried down the stairs and onto a bare earth floor. A basement. Bare stone walls. Little archways set into them, lined with brick, the colour of blood in the torchlight.