Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Callum squinted, forcing the image out of focus, letting it... There. OK, those were the eye sockets, there were the cheekbones, difficult to pick them out from the leg bones, but not impossible. That made those the nasal cavities, and they would be the teeth.

Oh.

He sank into the office chair. Of course: it was obvious now. ‘The hard white blobs in the mouth.’

‘Yup.’ Lucy grinned at him, eyebrows way up her forehead. ‘I’m no expert on ancient Egyptian burial rituals, but I’m pretty sure Tutankhamun didn’t go to his grave with a mouth full of NHS fillings.’

‘Are you actually hiding in here?’ Franklin stood in the doorway, holding the door to the disabled toilets open with her foot.

Callum gave her a grunt, then went back to the sink. Stuck a folded paper towel against the open neck of the disinfectant bottle and upended the thing till it soaked into the off-grey paper. ‘I’m not hiding, I’m busy.’ He dabbed the damp tissue against the wallet, blotting away a stain.

‘Mother’s here.’

‘Course she is.’ More blotting. The stuff was working even better than Lucy had promised. OK, so his dad’s wallet would never look new again, but at least it didn’t stink like the inside of whatever bin Willow Brown had fished it out of.

‘Callum?’

‘It was covered in cigarette ash and something I’m hoping was mayonnaise.’

‘She’s told Dr Jenkins she wants both mummies post-mortemed ASAP. Our bath body’s gone back into the fridge till they’re done. He’s starting the first one in fifteen minutes.’

‘Good for you.’ Callum dumped the paper towel in the bin and moistened another with disinfectant.

‘Well? Aren’t you coming? Thought you were SIO?’

‘What’s the point?’ He opened the wallet and started on the inside surfaces. Wiping the square of clear plastic covering the faded photo that took up the whole left-hand side: a happy family, all four of them grinning away at the camera, those bright summer colours faded to autumn tones of brown, orange, and yellow. Not quite in focus. Posed around a picnic table, blue sky, sea, and white sand just visible behind them.

‘So you’re sulking ?’

‘Like you can talk.’ He dabbed away at the other side. ‘They’re never going to let me be Senior Investigating Officer for a triple murder. A detective constable running down a serial killer? No chance.’

Franklin shook her head. ‘You’ve been inhaling too much of that disinfectant, there’s only two murders, not—’

‘The mummies have been smoked. That’s probably to dehydrate and preserve them. And what do you do before you smoke something? You salt it to draw out excess moisture. You brine it.’ He wiped off a crusty smear of red that looked more like tomato ketchup than blood. ‘And what did we find floating in a bathtub full of brine?’

When he looked up, Franklin was standing there with her mouth hanging open.

One last go with the soggy paper towel. ‘Exactly.’ He wiped the wallet dry with a fresh sheet, then dug into his pocket for the cash he’d begged out of the building society yesterday. Slipped it into the slit where the lining was hanging out. ‘Our victim was a work in progress.’

‘Sodding hell.’

‘And God knows how many more bodies he’s got out there.’ The plastic window was cool beneath his fingertips, its surface scratched in a few places, enough to blot out small sections of the photo beneath. All four of them, just out of focus, smiling their last recorded smile together. ‘Mother’s going to have her work cut out holding onto the case, never mind me. They’ll fly in an MIT from Strathclyde and we’ll be back where we started — low-level drug dealers, loan sharks, and pimps.’

Franklin peered over his shoulder. ‘Whose are the ugly kids?’

Cheeky sod.

He pointed. ‘That’s my brother Alastair and me.’ Two little boys with matching haircuts and freckles. ‘We were five. Mum and Dad at the back.’ Mum with her long pale-blonde hair and heart-shaped face, kind blue eyes. Dad with his dark curly mop-top, dimpled chin, and big broad smile. The whole family was dressed for the beach in shorts and flip-flops. T-shirts with cartoon animals on them. A fox for Alastair, an owl for Callum, a cat for Mum, a dog for Dad. Sunburn for everyone. ‘Two weeks on a caravan site just outside Lossiemouth.’

Franklin gave a low whistle. ‘You’ve got an identical twin?’

All those years ago...

‘Da-ad, he’s touching me again!’

Dad just sighed and turned the radio up, singing along with Mum. Both of them belting it out at the top of their voices as countryside slipped by the car windows. Green fields beneath a dark-grey hat of clouds.

Sitting in the back seat, Alastair grinned his gap-toothed grin. Then reached across and poked Callum again.

Rotten little bumhead.

‘Da-ad!’

Dad didn’t look around. ‘If you two don’t cut it out, I’m going to pull this car over. That what you want? You want me to pull over? Because you know what’ll happen if you make me do that.’

Alastair stuck his tongue out. His shaggy bowl-shaped haircut was paler than usual, more freckles on his nose and cheeks. A cartoon fox on his brown T-shirt. Tartan shorts and grass-stained knees. Bare feet all sparkly with sand, just like Callum’s.

The song on the radio finished, Mum joining in right to the very end. She put her hand on Dad’s leg. ‘I love that one.’

The man on the radio sounded like he’d eaten a whole nest of bees. ‘An oldie, but a goodie — Jimmy Perez and the Mareel Boys, with their breakthrough hit, “Mothcatcher Blues”. For an extra five bonus points, name the year that topped the charts.’

Mum snorted. ‘Easy: 1986. Give us a hard one, Scotty.’

‘Da-ad?’ Callum leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

‘And don’t forget we’ve got — and I’m mega excited about this — the one, the only, the Krankies! They’ll be here in fifteen minutes to tell us all about Monday’s heee-larious episode of K.T.V. It’ll be fan-dabi-dozi!’

‘What did I tell you, Cal?’

‘I’m Scott Kennedy and you’re listening to the Golden Oldies Quiztime Special on Castlewave FM...’

‘No, but I need to go wee-wee. I really do.’

‘Now then, my little Quiztronaughts, who was the lead singer on this hit from two years ago? It’s the Bangles, and “Eternal Flame”.’ Some sort of horrible old-people music jingled out of the radio — weird pings and things, with a woman being all soft and soppy over the top.

‘We’re half an hour from home, so you’ll have to tie a knot in it.’

‘But, Da-ad, I’m bursting .’

Mum shook her head, setting her pale-yellow hair swinging. ‘Told you it was a mistake to buy him that tin of Fanta. It goes right through—’

‘Don’t start.’

‘I’m just saying.’ She pointed through the windscreen at a lumpy blocky building at the side of the road. ‘Look, there’s a public toilet. Stop.’

‘I’m not stopping.’

‘Fine. Well, you keep on driving, David MacGregor, and when Callum wees himself, you can clean it up.’

The lady on the radio sang about easing the pain. Which would’ve been nice, because right now there was a big balloon of pee swelling up in Callum’s insides, sending stabby twinges all through his tummy right down to the end of his willy. ‘ Please , Dad?’

‘All right!’ Dad thumped his hand on the steering wheel. ‘All right, I’ll stop. You happy now?’

‘David, please, for once can we not—’