Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘Gagh...’ Callum stepped over the threshold and squelched his way along the parquet flooring and into the tiled dining-kitchen. All slate and black granite, beech units, a big fridge and another one right next to it just for wine.

Must be nice to marry someone with a trust fund.

‘Perhaps, dear Constable MacSoggy, / You should change out of your clothes so damp? / You look just like a half-drowned moggy, / You sopping squishy squelchy scamp.’ Then there was a wobble. A grimace. And McAdams lowered himself into one of the dining chairs. ‘Help yourself to tea, coffee, or a nice glass of wine.’ He waved a bony hand at the fridges. ‘The Sancerre is particularly good. Far too expensive, but it’s not like I can take it with me.’

Callum dumped the plastic bag on the draining board, wriggled out of his sodden jacket and wrung it out in the sink. Hung it over the back of a chair. Kicked off his shoes and poured their contents down the drain. ‘This better be important.’

‘I’ll take a glass, if you don’t mind? I’d get it, but my legs don’t seem to be cooperating right now.’

His socks splatched and squished against the slate tiles all the way to the kettle. He clicked it on. ‘Mother wants you to start your chemotherapy.’

‘The glasses are in the cupboard on your right.’

‘I’m serious. She’s worried about you.’ He pulled a white wine glass from the cupboard and stuck it on the countertop. Had a rummage till he found the mugs and stuck one next to it. Opened the tin marked ‘TEA’.

Curled his lip.

The tin was full of bits. ‘Gah... Don’t you have any proper tea?’

McAdams smiled. ‘That is proper tea. Beth gets it from a little shop in Aberdeen. One spoon for you, one for the pot.’ He pointed at the wine fridge. ‘Now: there should be an open bottle of Sancerre at the front.’

Callum pulled the bottle out. Unscrewed the cap. ‘Stop being a dick and go to your bloody chemo.’ He filled the glass and squelched over to the table. Stuck it in front of McAdams.

‘Oh, Callum.’ The smile softened at the edges. ‘It’s too late for that. All the coughing? My lovely cancer has metastasised. I’m riddled with it. Like an old building with rats. Eating the wiring, making holes in the skirting boards, and covering everything in crap.’

The kettle bubbled and growled.

‘How long?’

‘A week. A fortnight. A month. Does it matter?’ McAdams took a sip of wine, eyes closed, then sighed. ‘You sure you don’t want a glass? It’s lovely.’

‘You should be in hospital.’

‘I’m lucky. The drugs keep most of the pain at bay, for now. And I’ve still got all my marbles.’ A wink. ‘For now.’

‘Matter of opinion.’ A click and the bubbling subsided. Callum dumped two spoons of grey-black bits into the pot. Drowned them with boiling water. ‘And for your information: proper tea comes in a teabag. It doesn’t look like something you scraped out of the vacuum cleaner.’

‘Philistine.’ He produced a little notepad and flipped it open to a page covered in cramped handwriting. ‘I’m making my bequests while I still can. Dotty’s getting a case of Bowmore, because she loves her whisky. Mother’s getting a cruise: the Norwegian fjords, because she likes pickled herring and deserves a decent holiday. Watt...’ A frown. ‘I wasn’t sure what to get him. We don’t even know if he’s going to live now. Maybe his own electric wheelchair, if he pulls through? Or I could send him on holiday too, so he can recuperate?’ McAdams took another sip of wine. ‘Rosalind gets a diamond necklace. Nothing too flashy, but something dangly that will nestle between those magnificent breasts of hers. Because, let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to do that?’

Callum stirred the tea. ‘What about your wife?’

‘Oh, Beth’s off to Edinburgh for the week. Apparently I’ve been a bit more colourful than usual and it’s getting on her nerves. Or did you mean, “what does she inherit”?’ He took another sip of Sancerre. ‘She gets the house and the car and the bank account and the timeshare in Tenerife. Which is peanuts compared to what her dad left her, but there you go.’ McAdams put his glass down. ‘Which brings us to you , Callum.’

‘I’d settle for a towel and a go in your tumble dryer.’ He filled his mug from the pot, then pulled a four-pint carton of milk from the plastic bag on the draining board. Sploshed in enough to turn his tea beige.

‘It was surprisingly difficult to find something appropriate to leave you. You’re a simple soul, yes, but you’ve got dark depths, don’t you? A compelling backstory for crime fiction: family abducted, growing up in care, unlucky in love, rumours of corruption. A mediocre officer in a troubling world, who spends his life trying to get justice for his mother, father, and brother.’

‘Hmph.’ The fridge was packed with jars and bottles and Tupperware containers. A whole shelf dedicated to kippers. He stuck the milk into the door pocket. Frowned at the shelves. ‘You’ve got enough kippers here to feed an army.’

‘And that’s why you’re so hard to buy for.’

‘I didn’t, by the way: spend my life trying to get justice.’ He unclipped his tie and draped it over the taps. ‘Everyone said my family abandoned me: dumped me in the lay-by and sodded off. All my life I thought I’d done something wrong.’

‘But I think I finally got you the perfect gift.’

‘I became a police officer, because I grew up in the care of people who shouldn’t have been allowed within two hundred yards of children. I joined the job, because I wanted to put scumbags that prey on the weak behind bars.’

McAdams nodded. ‘Indulge a dying old man and look in the drawer by the toaster.’

Callum did. It was a brown paper parcel, about the size of a ream of paper, only twice as thick. It flopped like a ream of paper when he picked it up too. He held it out. ‘This?’

‘That.’

Someone had printed the words ‘A DARK SO DEADLY’ across the front, in black Sharpie. ‘I’m guessing it’s not a holiday.’

‘It’s my book.’

Oh joy.

Dotty got a case of whisky, Franklin got a diamond necklace, Mother and Watt both got fancy trips, and what did he get?

‘Oh, don’t look like that. Everyone else got material stuff, but you: you’re a reader. There’s so few of you about these days, Callum. So I give you my book. My life’s work, distilled into one hundred and ninety-four thousand, five hundred and twenty-eight words. Single-sided double-spaced on A-four.’

Callum put it down. ‘You got me to drive all the way across town, on a scooter, in the pouring rain, because you wanted to give me a copy of your book? You said it was urgent!’

‘I also needed milk. And how was I to know you’d be on a scooter? What happened to the car Mother lent you?’

Ah...

‘Nothing. Thanks for the book.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now, any chance of that towel?’

Rain.

It pounded the garden on the other side of the window, battering the bushes into submission, hurtling down from a charcoal sky, turning everything grey. The floral scent of fabric softener filled the utility room, mixing with the tickly smell of warm dust.

Callum tightened his borrowed towelling dressing gown and leaned back against the whomp-whomp-whomp of the tumble dryer. Warmth stroked the back of his legs. ‘He what?’

Franklin sounded as if she was sucking on a wasp. ‘You heard me: Finn Noble’s dead.’

‘How the hell did that happen?’ Callum pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder, freeing up his good hand for a sip of tea. ‘Was it an—’

‘We sent a patrol car round his house: No answer. So the uniform peers in through the windows, and there’s Finn Noble: hanging from a noose in the hall. He’d tied one end to the balustrade and jumped.’