Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘Of course it was! He was staying in my flat. Sleeping in my bed. Sitting on my couch. Of course he’s covered in my DNA!’

Gilmore popped his glasses back on again. ‘Then there’s the question of your... crime-scene indiscretion. I hear rumours that you now claim it wasn’t you who messed up the evidence, it was Elaine. You took the blame so she wouldn’t be blamed and fired. You destroyed your career to protect her maternity pay, so you could afford a baby that wasn’t even yours.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps you can see why you come top of our list?’

Callum gritted his teeth. ‘It wasn’t me.’

‘He was found an hour ago, by two young girls out playing in the woods. Can you imagine how horrible that must have been for them? And even worse for DCI Powel — the SEB think he’d been lying there for at least a day and a half. Outside. In the rain.’

‘I didn’t do it. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do it. I fantasised about doing it, but I — didn’t — do — it.’

Mother folded her arms. ‘I was just getting to like you as well.’

‘How many times do I have to say this?’

Gilmore leaned forwards. ‘You were there, at the flat, the night DCI Powel was attacked. You had very good reason to attack him. You’d already attacked him the night before.’

‘IT WASN’T ME!’ Callum wiped a hand across his sticky forehead. ‘I’m not the only one who...’ A frown. ‘Dugdale! Ainsley Dugdale — it must’ve been him.’

‘Ainsley Dugdale?’

Mother leaned in. ‘Big, bald, bad-tempered. Runs loan-sharking and protection rackets for Big Johnny Simpson.’

‘He’d threatened Powel. I know, because Powel came round to warn us about it on...’ Warmth flushed Callum’s face. ‘Powel was already in the flat when I got home from work, Wednesday evening, wasn’t he? He’d been with her . Pretended he’d only dropped by with a warning: Dugdale was shooting his mouth off about getting revenge on the pair of us.’

Gilmore made a note. ‘On you and Elaine.’

‘No. On me and Powel .’ Idiot. ‘Ask Elaine. Ask her, she’ll tell you. Dugdale threatened Powel. That’s who attacked him, not me.’

Mother stared at him. ‘Elaine returned from Dundee at six o’clock today. She’d been staying with her parents for a couple of days, hadn’t she? Keeping out of the way so you could collect your things. Wanting to avoid another fight.’

‘I wasn’t the one having an affair, OK?’

‘She let herself into the flat and called nine-nine-nine to report that something horrible must have happened. Furniture overturned. Ornaments smashed. Blood on the floor. And DCI Powel was missing.’

‘Then it must’ve been Dugdale!’

‘She says you’ve been acting strange for weeks. You’re prone to violent outbursts. She’s frightened for her safety.’

‘That’s right: take her word for it. Elaine couldn’t tell the truth if you paid her thirty pieces of silver.’ He thumped back in his seat. Folded his arms. ‘After I collected my stuff from my flat, I got a call to a domestic assault in Kingsmeath. I rushed straight over there. If I’d attacked Powel, I’d be covered in blood, wouldn’t I? Ask the householder: Irene Brown. Ask her and her children if I looked like I’d just beaten someone half to death.’

‘Callum, you have to see how bad this—’

‘ Ask them. And I’m not saying another word without a Federation rep and a lawyer.’

Wee Angie Northfield grimaced, then popped a roll-up in her mouth and set a lighter to the end. Sooked in a lungful, setting the tip glowing bright orange. Then let it out in a long hard sigh. ‘You shouldn’t have agreed to the first interview without representation, MacGregor. That was stupid.’

Rain played a staccato drum roll on the smoking shelter, running down the curved roof in rippled sheets. Splashing on the paving slabs.

Streetlights rocked in the wind, their thin yellow glow swallowed by the downpour, leaving Peel Place washed out and anaemic in the darkness. The war memorial on the other side of the street was a statue of three First World War soldiers, bayonets fixed, kilts billowing out as they charged. Someone had taken pity on them and provided each with a traffic cone hat to keep their heads dry.

Callum scowled out at the overflowing gutters. ‘I didn’t touch Powel, OK? Well, yes, I punched him once on Thursday night, but I didn’t attack him on Friday. And I didn’t dump him in the woods.’

‘Worst-case scenario: the Procurator Fiscal thinks there’s enough to charge you with attempted murder and you’re off to the cells till it comes to court. Could be months.’

‘It wasn’t me!’

‘Best case: they decide you might be telling the truth and go after Ainsley Dugdale for it. Either way you’re looking at an immediate suspension pending investigation. Probably without pay.’

He let his head fall back till it boinged off the Perspex wall. ‘Oh joy.’ Then he dug a hand into a pocket and produced his wallet. Checked the contents: a fiver, two used bus tickets, and buy-one-get-one-free voucher for Big Bernie’s Pizza Palace on Wallace Lane. ‘So I’ve got to live on five quid and some pocket smush till they clear me?’

‘Yeah well, that’s how it’s going to—’

‘Constable MacGregor!’ McAdams’ voice boomed out from the main doors, cheery as a drunken accountant.

Even better. Now, on top of everything else, here came some sarcastic gloating wrapped up in half-arsed poetry.

Callum bounced his head into the Perspex again.

McAdams limped down the stairs, leaning heavily on the balustrade, and hobbled over to the smoking shelter. Grinned as he stepped inside. He looked as if someone had taken a skeleton and dressed it in an inexpensive suit: cheekbones prominent and sharp, eyes sunken and dark. ‘I just heard the news.’ Heat radiated off him in sour waves.

‘You look like crap.’

‘Thank you. I’m dying, in case you didn’t hear?’ The smile got bigger and more cadaverous. ‘Angie, my darling. Can you get our wee boy off, or is he now doooooomed?’

She shrugged, cigarette cupped in her hand. ‘Fifty — fifty.’

‘Then I have just the thing that may help.’ He thumped Callum on the back. ‘You, dear Constable Useless, can drive.’

‘I can’t go anywhere till they decide what’s happening. Charge or release.’

‘Oh, they’ve already done that. I’ve just come from Mother’s office with the happy news: you’re suspended without pay, pending an investigation.’

Wee Angie Northfield nodded. ‘Told you.’

‘Bloody hell.’ Callum boinged his head off the smoking shelter’s wall again.

‘Ah yes, but I have a plan .’ He flashed his death’s head smile again. ‘To the Misfit-Mob-Mobile!’

Rainswept buildings slid past the car windows, turned an unhealthy yellow-grey by the streetlights. Callum took a right, over Dundas Bridge. ‘This would go a lot quicker if you told me where we were going.’

The Kings River stretched out on either side, swollen, dark, and angry.

Nothing from McAdams.

Off in the distance, Montgomery Park was lit up like a Wurlitzer. Spotlights raked the low clouds, making the huge inflatable spider glow every time they touched it. Colours flickered and burst out from the giant screens — too far away to make out any detail, just a changing smear of brightness that glittered back from the river.

‘Sergeant McAdams!’

‘Mmmph?’ His head jerked up, eyes blinking. ‘What?’

‘I said, where — are — we — going?’