Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Maybe...

Maybe they’d all gone for a wee too? But then he’d have seen Dad and Alistair, wouldn’t he? In the Gents?

Or maybe they were in the caravan?

The breath rushed out of Callum, replaced by a smile. Yeah, that was it: they were in the caravan making cups of tea.

What an idiot. Of course they were.

Boiling the kettle on the little gas cooker.

He ran to the caravan’s door. Twisted the handle and climbed inside. Clunked the door shut behind him.

Only there was no one there.

The smile died.

Callum checked under the table, checked the loo, he even checked the cupboards.

No one.

‘Mum?’

A flash of white turned the caravan’s insides black-and-white, then the thunder roared, rain clattering against the roof. Callum blinked. Rubbed a hand across his eyes. Stared out through the window at the front of the caravan — where the folding table and the benches that turned into Mum and Dad’s bed were.

Someone was out there. A figure in the rain: big and hunched, moving with slow lumbering steps.

The Slug.

Callum ran for the caravan door and hauled the handle up, locking it. Backed away.

Another flash, followed by a deafening crash, like someone had jammed a metal dustbin over his head and battered it with a hammer.

He dropped to his knees and scrambled under the table. Curled up against the wall.

Don’t move. Don’t make any noise. Quiet and still as a mouse.

Outside, something scratched along the caravan’s walls. It started over by the chemical loo, grinding and squealing across the metal, working its way slowly around, behind him, and past to the caravan’s door.

Stopped.

Callum stared.

The handle twisted. Not far. Just a teeny weeny bit, till the lock stopped it. Twisted again. Then silence.

Maybe the Slug had given up? Maybe he’d gone away? Maybe he’d—

The whole door shook — banging and clattering in its frame.

‘No!’ Callum wrapped his arms around his head and bit his bottom lip till he could taste pennies. ‘Go away, go away, go away...’

Then the noise faded, leaving nothing behind but the battering drone of rain on the caravan roof.

The Slug had given up.

He had to.

The caravan was locked , he couldn’t get in.

A trembly sob rattled its way out of Callum. Safe.

And then that dark slimy voice crept through the caravan wall, as if the Slug’s lips were right up against it. ‘Your mummy and daddy don’t love you any more. They say you’re ugly and stupid and useless and they don’t want you. So they’ve given you to me.’

No. They wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t leave him.

They couldn’t...

‘You’re mine now, little boy. You belong to me.’ Scratching noises against the wall. ‘Now open the door and let me in.’

A hand on his arm. ‘Gah!’ Callum flinched.

Franklin frowned at him. ‘Are you OK?’

He let out a shuddery breath, looking down at the photo of the four of them in their holiday clothes. ‘What?’

She pointed at the photo. ‘I said, “You’ve got an identical twin?”’

He clicked the wallet closed and slipped it into his back pocket. ‘A long time ago.’

Hairy Harry loomed over the wrinkled body on the cutting table, humming away to himself. A huge breezeblock of a man, with rounded shoulders and a bit of a gut on him. He’d tucked the last six inches of his Victorian-style beard into the top of his apron. A blue-camouflage bandanna covered the top of his head, his long furry ponytail poking out the back of it. Hairy Harry’s voice was surprisingly soft and warm for someone who looked as if they ate live badgers. ‘Now that’s interesting...’

He reached into the open body cavity, coming out with a chunk of shrivelled black, holding it aloft like that baboon did at the start of Disney’s The Lion King . ‘Have you ever seen a liver look like that before, all dried out and wrinkly?’

Lucy shook her head and made another note on her clipboard.

‘Fascinating.’

They’d laid the body out on its back, not so much uncurling the limbs as snapping them off at the dry brittle joints. Legs and arms, positioned either side of the smoke-coloured ribs.

Franklin had her own arms folded, voice so low it was barely a whisper. ‘At least this one doesn’t smell as bad.’

Hairy Harry went back in, coming out with what looked like a dehydrated snake. ‘Well, well, well...’

Mother and McAdams stood off to one side, heads together, McAdams poking away at his mobile phone as she talked in hushed tones. Every now and then, she’d look up and stare at Callum. Then go back to conspiring with her poetry-spouting sidekick. Probably trying to figure out what crappy job to punish him with next.

‘Amazing, when you think about it.’ Hairy Harry stuck his gloved hands on the hips of his purple scrubs. ‘The only internal organs still attached are the heart and the lungs, everything else has been taken out, preserved, then put back in again. It’s almost impossible to tell cause of death from the soft tissue, because there isn’t any — it’s all like beef jerky.’

The mummy’s ribcage lay on a trolley against the wall, its covering of leathery skin too dried-on to remove like in a normal post mortem.

‘No external sign of trauma, other than the discolouration around the throat — which could just be pigmentation from the preservation, but looks more like ante-mortem bruising to me. And then there’s this.’ He held up a little jar full of tiny discoloured spheres and gave it a shake, making them rattle against the glass. ‘You’ll need to get it tested, but unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s silica gel. The kind of thing that comes in those little sachets they stick in bags, shoes, and handbags to sook up moisture and stop them going mouldy. His mouth was stuffed with it. More in the oesophagus, trachea, and sinus cavities. We’ll have to rehydrate the stomach to find out, but I’m willing to bet we’ll find some there too.’

Mother wandered back to the table. ‘Excuse me, Dr Jenkins, I have to borrow Detective Constable MacGregor here.’

Oh. That didn’t sound good. Whatever horror she and McAdams had come up with, it was about to spatter down on Callum’s head.

‘Please, it’s Harrison. And by all means. The young man’s a bit of a fidget anyway.’

Everyone’s a critic.

She pulled on a smile. ‘Thank you.’ Then headed for the exit. ‘Come on, Constable.’

Here we go.

Callum leaned closer to Franklin. ‘Try not to punch anyone else, OK?’ And followed Mother out, through the changing room, past the rows and rows of refrigeration units, across the reception area, and out into the rain.

She shrugged her shoulders up around her ears and hurried across the puddled tarmac to her battered Fiat Panda. Hurled herself in behind the wheel and beckoned at him from the safety of the car.

What would it be: door-to-doors in the freezing downpour? Digging into the archives for some obscure file that hadn’t been seen for three generations? Talking to small children about road safety? Or maybe she was just going to fire him?

He high-stepped between the water-filled potholes, collar pulled up against the rain, and clambered in the passenger side.

A furry penguin hung from the rear-view mirror, along with a yellow air-freshener that smelled of chemical lemons. Inside, the car was a mess. Mud, grit, gravel, and old magazines in the footwells; plastic bags, a collection of cardboard wine-carriers full of empties, and for some bizarre reason a quarter-size inflatable sheep with sunglasses, littering the back seat. Dust coating the dashboard like a furry blanket. The bottles clinked and rattled as he thumped the door shut.