Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

The kitchen cabinet doors hung squint in their frames. A collapsed chair lurked by the back door. But a clear line of tracks snaked through the dirt to the sink and back — the dust around the draining board almost non-existent. ‘Clear!’

McAdams appeared in the hallway, shaking the rain from his shoulders. He took a quick look around.

‘Clear!’ Franklin stepped out of the bathroom and made for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

But McAdams marched right past her, to a small door part-hidden under the stairs. Wrenched it open...

A mop, a broom, and a collection of cleaning things collapsed out in a huge billow of grey dust. ‘Gah...’ He backed away, coughing, one hand waving at the impromptu smokescreen. ‘It’s an old house: there’s got to be a basement somewhere. Find it!’

Callum went back to the kitchen. What looked like a utility room led off from one side, behind the rusted remains of a big round-cornered fridge. Twin-tub washing machine, more sagging cupboards, a collection of rotting wellington boots slumped by a Belfast sink. And a door.

He grabbed the handle and twisted.

Locked.

Well, the hooley bar would soon see to that.

Callum smashed the wedge into the doorjamb and shoved, setting the wood cracking and splintering. Then the door sprang open, bounced back off the wall as he took the first step into darkness.

Should’ve brought a torch...

Instead, he made do with his mobile phone, holding it out in his good hand, the hooley bar tucked under his other arm. ‘Ashlee?’

The wooden steps creaked beneath him as he crept down into the depths.

His phone lit up the wall beside him — brickwork streaked with white where the salt had leached out of the mortar. The air tasted of raw mushrooms, smelled of vinegar and mouse droppings.

‘Hello?’

His screen cast a pale-grey glow that barely reached a foot from his hand. Picking out strange rounded shapes all around him. He reached out and brushed a sheet, probably draped over a piece of furniture. His fingertips sent up a little cloud of dust that danced and twirled like midges in the thin light.

The basement was big, had to be about the same length and breadth as the house above. And it was full of unidentifiable stuff .

‘Callum?’ McAdams creaked his way down the stairs. ‘Anything?’

‘Too dark to tell.’

‘Luckily...’ A muffled click and a beam of light swept across the room. Shining through the sheets and pulling the shapes of dining chairs and bicycles from within. McAdams played his torch around the weeping brick walls, then down to the floor at their feet.

A clear path was scuffed through the dirt, heading around a stack of tea chests and disappearing behind a supporting wall.

Callum followed it. ‘Ashlee? Can you hear me?’ Around the edge of the wall. ‘Ashlee, it’s the police. We’re going to get you out of here.’

Assuming the path through the dust wasn’t just a well-trodden route for rats.

It took a right, behind another supporting wall...

He froze.

A wooden door. With a brand-new hasp and padlock. A perfectly clean quarter-circle on the floor where it’d been opened outward.

‘Well?’ McAdams shoved him forward. ‘Don’t just stand there!’

Callum jammed the hooley bar’s claw in under the hasp and shoved his full weight against it.

A groan, a squeal, then a crack as the whole thing ripped free of the wood and clattered to the floor.

He pulled the door open. Wood smoke enveloped him, slipped down into his lungs. Warm and inviting.

Orange light flickered low to the ground inside. Pale and indistinct, but definitely there.

Callum’s footsteps echoed up and away, reverberating back from the walls.

The screen on his phone cast just enough of a glow to pick out the brickwork. It was a room, about six foot by twelve. Flagstone floor. It wasn’t that warm, even with the fire smouldering away in the middle. He swung his phone up, but all that did was make the smoke glow.

And then a harsh white beam burst into life beside him, turning the smoke into a solid thing as McAdams stepped inside. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing.’

Something patted against Callum’s shoulders. Like tiny raindrops in the dark.

He looked up.

Another drop hit his cheek and he wiped it away. Oily. Greasy between his fingertips. He stuck his phone in his pocket. ‘Give me the torch.’

‘No chance. Get your own—’

‘Give me the bloody torch!’ He snatched it out of McAdams’ hand and kicked at the fire, scattering the glowing embers. Stood in the middle of the room pointing the beam straight up.

Drips pattered against his face.

Whether it was the door being open, or him kicking the embers out of the way, didn’t matter. But something changed and the smoke swirled around his torch, thinning enough for the beam to reach up into the heights.

Rows and rows of filleted fish — tied together at the tail and hooked over the wooden rods that ran from one side of the room to the other — stretched up above him. And above them , a shadow.

And then the smoke cleared.

It was a person, or what was left of them, their skeletal remains hanging head-down, arms dangling free.

‘Jesus...’

They’d finally found Ashlee Gossard.

McAdams hacked and wheezed on the top step, face buried in an oxygen mask as Dotty’s Vauxhall screeched up at the kerb. Mother clambered out into the rain and staggered over to Callum, breathing hard.

He shifted, making room beneath the twisted warty tree, just behind the ambulance. ‘Boss.’

‘Is Ashlee...?’

‘She’s so dehydrated they can barely find veins to get fluid into her.’

The ambulance’s back doors hung open, both paramedics hunched over the emaciated figure on the trolley. Fighting to get wires and needles and drips fitted. ‘Ashlee? Can you hear me, Ashlee?’

‘Yes, but will she live ?’

‘Don’t know. Maybe. It’s possible...’ He puffed out a breath.

Franklin marched out through the front door, paused to pat McAdams on the shoulder, then joined them under the tree. ‘The only room not covered in eight foot of dust is the DIY smokehouse in the basement. No one’s lived here for decades.’

Mother rubbed her hands across her face. Turned her back on the struggling paramedics. ‘Good work, both of you.’

‘No.’ Callum shook his head. ‘It was Franklin who got the Land Registry to search for properties belonging to Paul Jeffries, otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here. I just went along for the ride.’

Franklin’s cheeks went a shade darker. She shrugged. ‘Team effort.’

There was a clunk and the Vauxhall’s roofbox hinged open, the mechanics inside whirring and bleeping as a black metal arm brought Keith out from his storage bay and lowered him down beside Dotty’s open door. Then the arm retracted back out of sight again. As if there was some vast metal spider lurking in the roofbox.

‘Well: we’ve got Ashlee Gossard, that’s the important thing. And she’s alive.’ Mother glanced back at the ambulance. ‘Just.’

Dotty popped Keith open, then levered her legs out and swung herself into the seat. Wheeled her way over to them, squeezing under the shelter of the tree. ‘Is she alive?’

Callum pointed at the ambulance. ‘We’ve just done that bit.’

‘Oh...’

‘Excuse me.’ Mother walked up the path and settled onto the top step beside McAdams. Put an arm around his shoulders. Talking in a voice too low to hear.

Franklin crossed her arms and leaned in close to Dotty. ‘Did you know the silly sod’s been ducking his chemo sessions?’

‘Didn’t you?’ She shrugged. Then grinned and slapped Callum on the bum. ‘I hear you found your twin brother, and he’s alive!’