Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Oh, they’d made an attempt to tart them up, put brightly coloured cladding on the top floor, arranged big concrete planters out front on the four-foot-wide strip of grass that separated the flats from the vertical drop to the road below. But the cladding was chipped and faded, the planters cracked and full of weeds, the grass a patchwork of yellow and brown — landmined by generations of terriers and Alsatians.

Callum slowed the car. ‘Which one is it?’

She checked her notebook. ‘Number one thirty-five.’ Then tapped a finger against the glass, as if she was counting time for a very small orchestra. ‘One fifteen. One sixteen. One seventeen...’

‘Glen and his mates had three university degrees between them, and they bought a flat down here? So much for modern education.’

‘One twenty-two. One twenty-three...’

‘Suppose they spend six months doing it up, who’d be daft enough to buy it when they’ve finished?’

‘One twenty-eight. One twenty-nine...’

‘Bunch of idiots.’

‘One thirty-two. Thirty-three...’ She pointed. ‘That’ll be it there. Top floor.’

Callum parked outside, next to a dilapidated Transit van with, ‘DANNY & MIKE ~ CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINERS’ on the side. Someone had daubed the words, ‘THEYZ PEEDOFILES!!!’ underneath, in what looked like blue Hammerite.

He climbed out into the rain. Locked the car soon as Franklin joined him on the pavement. ‘You ready?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a wee boy with a degree in business management, Constable MacGregor, not Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.’ Franklin climbed the steps up to ground level, disappearing from view.

A sigh, then Callum followed her.

Down at road-level, the cottages opposite acted as a windbreak, but up here the drizzle came down sideways, driven in on frigid gusts. MacKinnon Quay sat off to the left, then the grey water of Kings River, then the green line of Dalrymple Park with its big granite monument on the other side. Castle Hill lost in the low grey mist.

On a good day it was probably quite some view, but this wasn’t one of them.

Franklin jabbed a finger at the intercom. Then grimaced and pulled it clear. She sniffed the end of her finger and grimaced again. Wiped it on the rough grey wall.

Callum took out a biro and used it to press the button marked ‘SERVICES’. Holding it down until someone inside finally got tired of the noise and let them in. He smiled at her. ‘Trick of the trade.’

Inside, the corridor was lit by a single flickering bulb in a flyblown fitting. Concrete floor, walls painted magnolia above waist-height and a grubby green below it. The smell of frying onions mingled with the hospital stink of disinfectant. An open stairwell led up into the gloom.

Yeah, Glen and his mates were definitely kidding themselves if they thought anyone was going to buy their flat.

Franklin led the way upstairs.

And Callum tried not to stare at her backside, he really did, but...

Heat rose up his face, making his ears tingle. Yeah, probably better not to ogle his new teammate’s rear end. But it was magnificent.

Across the first-floor landing and up another flight of stairs. And there it was, right in front of him again.

Stop it!

Pregnant girlfriend, remember? Even if she had been off sex for the last five months.

Yeah, but...

No. No staring.

He cleared his throat. Stared at the wall instead.

The second floor was almost identical to the first — two pairs of red doors, some with welcome mats, some with browning spider-plants and dying ferns in pots. Numbers on the doors. Plastic or brass nameplates.

A little old man cracked his door and glowered out at them. ‘You from the Council? About time. Tell those bloody hooligans to turn their music down! Can’t hear myself think in here.’ He slammed the door shut again.

OK.

Callum hurried past, trying very hard not to ogle Franklin’s bum as she climbed the last two flights and stepped out onto the third floor.

She reached into her jacket, came out with a pair of purple nitrile gloves. Snapped them on. Frowned. ‘Are you all right, Constable? Your face is all red.’

‘It... I... Just, you know, the stairs and that.’ He cleared his throat and snapped on his own gloves: blue. ‘You want to kick the door in, or shall we do it the old-fashioned way?’

‘Hmm.’ She knocked.

A skylight sat in the middle of the ceiling, right above the void in the stairwell. A scuffling scratchy noise followed two blurred outlines across the cloudy glass. Seagulls?

He shifted his feet, locked his eyes on a spot six inches above her head. ‘So who’s O’Neil Gillen, when he’s at home?’

‘Osiel Guillén , not O’Neil Gillen. AKA: El Mata Amigos, the Friend Killer. Mexican drug lord.’ Franklin knocked again. ‘Hello?’

She squatted down and lifted the letterbox.

Music pulsed out onto the landing, Led Zeppelin hammering on and on about giving someone a whole lotta love.

‘Hello?’ Another knock.

Callum wrinkled his nose. ‘Can you smell that?’

Sort of a cross between rancid sausages and pine air freshener.

‘Mr Carmichael? Police. I need you to open this door. Mr Carmichael?’ She glanced up at Callum. ‘Is it just me, or does this scream “dead body” to you?’

He took a step back. ‘Two choices: we dunt it in, or we go get a warrant.’

‘Hmmm.’ Franklin let go of the flap, cutting off the music. ‘Dunt it.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’ He raised a foot and slammed it into the wood, just below the handle. The whole thing rattled in its frame. One more. Then a third and the door sprang open, battering into the wall. It didn’t bounce back.

The smell got a hundred times worse.

The music got a lot louder too — thumping away from somewhere deeper inside the flat.

Oh yeah, there was certainly something rotten in there.

Percussion solo.

Franklin gritted her teeth and stepped into the hallway. ‘THIS IS THE POLICE! I WANT EVERYONE IN THE FLAT TO STAY WHERE THEY ARE!’

Gloom filled the hallway.

A sheet of plasterboard slouched against the wall, the bottom edge bowing under its own weight, anchored there by two big ten-litre tubs of magnolia paint.

She crept through the door at the end of the hall.

Callum followed her into a reasonably sized living room. Two windows should have given a view out across the harbour and the river, instead they were completely covered with... Yup, that was hardcore pornography. What little light filtered through it picked out the shape of a platform ladder, a collection of hand tools, and a stack of paint pots. A wallpaper table in the corner bent slightly under the weight of a tool belt, three electric drills, and a small, portable CD player — not quite turned up full volume, but close to it.

Franklin switched the thing off.

Now the only noise was the droning buzz of fat lazy bluebottles making drunken circles in the rancid air. The little dead bodies of their fallen comrades crunched beneath Callum’s feet.

‘GLEN CARMICHAEL?’ She reached into her jacket and came out with an extendable baton. Christ knew where she’d been hiding that. A flick of her wrist clacked it out to full length. ‘HELLO?’

Callum pulled out his pepper spray. ‘COME ON, GUYS, LET’S NOT PLAY SILLY BUGGERS!’

Two bedrooms led off from the living room, their windows similarly coated in bits of porn mag. One of them looked almost finished — the walls smoothly plastered and painted a neutral beige. The other was stripped back to the bare breezeblocks.

The kitchen was awash with pizza boxes and takeaway containers. A bong, half-full of dirty water, sat on the unit by a sink mounded with dirty dishes. A stack of empty lager tins that was taller than Callum.