Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘Yeah...’ Callum sidled towards the pool car they’d arrived in. ‘Whatever that is, there’s going to be repercussions and fallout. Don’t know about you, but I want to be long gone before then.’

Franklin pushed past him to the pool car’s driver’s door. ‘Keys.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Keys. Give me the keys, I’m driving.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘ You want to drive?’

‘Just give me the damned keys.’

‘So I’m going to sit in the passenger seat, and you’re going to drive me around? Like I outrank you?’

‘I’m not spending the rest of the day being dragged all over Oldcastle so you can run “little errands” like yesterday. Now: keys.’

Fair enough. He dug them out of his pocket and tossed them across to her. Walked around to the other side and climbed in out of the rain as she slipped behind the wheel.

Callum settled back in his seat. Stretched out a little. ‘I could get used to this.’

Franklin took them through the rolling sea of ruptured tarmac and out into the industrial estate again. Past the boarded-up units, and onto the main road, heading back along the dual carriageway. The City Stadium loomed above the houses on the left, a lopsided bird’s nest of steel, concrete, and glass, lording it over the 1950s-style rows of semidetached two-up-two-downs.

It was nice not having to do all the driving for a change. Just sit back and watch the scenery slip by. Even if it was all grey and rain-streaked.

He dug his leprechaun-sized Mars Bar out of his pocket and took a tiny bite. Sweet, sticky, and chocolatey. ‘This your first serial killer?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Number four for me.’

Franklin looked at him across the car, one eyebrow raised. ‘Four serial killers? Yeah, right.’ She took them around the roundabout, the granite blade of Castle Hill just visible between the tall concrete buildings ahead. ‘I’m not an idiot, constable. There’s absolutely no way you’ve already worked three serial killer investigations.’

A big flat-fronted building went by on the left, little windows in a big granite façade.

‘That’s Woodrow Hospital. Four years ago, we got complaints of missing dogs in the area. Didn’t really pay all that much attention.’ He scooted down in his seat, following the hospital in the wing mirror as it faded into the distance. ‘Then someone’s granny disappeared. Thought it was dementia to begin with, happens a lot with older people: they get confused and they wander off. Then another one went missing. And another. Took us six little old ladies to realise something was wrong.’

The looming green mass of Camburn Woods poked out above the rooftops, getting bigger.

Callum finished off his micro Mars Bar. ‘Who’s Mark?’

Franklin’s jaw tightened. ‘Mark is none of your business.’

‘Turns out Pawel Sabachevich’s parents moved over here from a little village outside Krakow when he was six years old. They brought his maternal grandmother with them. She wasn’t very nice to Pawel. And twenty-three years later he abducted, raped, and strangled eight old ladies, dismembered their remains and fed them into the incinerator at Woodrow Hospital. He worked there as an assistant radiologist.’ Callum crumpled up his chocolate wrapper and stuck it in his pocket. ‘Nice guy. Well, if you overlook the whole murderous raping scumbag bit.’

The diggers were still at it on the huge flanks of Camburn Round-about — making mountains of mud, while a crane erected a lopsided metal trellis and high-viz figures sank into the mire. ‘Then there was Ian Zouroudi.’ Another shudder followed in the footsteps of the first. ‘Gah... The whole team needed therapy after that one.’

‘Just because I’m new and a woman, it doesn’t make me an idiot.’

‘Never said it did.’ Camburn Woods reared up and swallowed the car, the thick branches reaching out over the dual carriageway on either side, leaves dark and dripping. ‘From what I heard, it’s all the mercury in the ground around here. Too big a dose and it screws with brain development.’

‘Mercury.’

‘We made most of Britain’s mustard gas, right here in Oldcastle, for the First World War. Apparently it took a lot of mercury. And now we’re the serial-killer capital of Europe. Pretty high on the list for birth defects too.’ He sniffed. ‘That was a fun day at antenatal class.’

Ruined buildings lurked in the woods to either side of the road, slowly dissolving into the bushes and ivy.

She frowned across the car at him. ‘ Three serial killers?’

The world opened up in a blast of grey as the road emerged from the depths of Camburn Woods.

‘Straight through the next roundabout and it’s the third road on the right.’ Two parallel lines of shops and flats followed them along the road, at least a quarter of them boarded up. Bookies and charity shops rubbing shoulders with places to sell your gold or pawn your kids’ toys.

Callum pointed through the windscreen. ‘That’s us at the traffic lights.’

Franklin pulled into the turning lane and they sat there with the indicators clicking, waiting for the filter. ‘So who was number three?’

‘The Birthday Boy. You must’ve heard about that one: it was in all the papers. Sicko snatches girls just before they turn thirteen, takes photos as he tortures them to death, then turns the pics into homemade cards and sends them to the girls’ parents every year on their birthday.’

She glanced across the car. ‘And it’s all because of the mercury?’

‘Meh, what do I know?’

The lights changed and they pulled across the dual carriageway and into a curving street with a collection of cafés, hardware shops, a Sue Ryder and a British Heart Foundation, a newsagent, and finally the reason they’d come.

Franklin nodded. ‘There we go.’

The McKibben Dental Practice had a frosted shop window, presumably so you couldn’t see their victims writhing in agony, with posters either side of the main door depicting unfeasibly attractive people grinning away with unfeasibly white teeth. Franklin grabbed the nearest parking space, three doors down. ‘I can’t believe you’ve worked three serial killers.’

He clambered out into the rain. ‘Go have a rummage in the archives at DHQ, there’s stuff in there that’ll make your hair curl...’ He bit his lip. ‘I didn’t mean that to be—’

‘I know what you meant.’ She locked the car. Followed him down the pavement to the dentist’s. ‘And yes, it is naturally this curly.’

He shrugged. ‘I quite like it.’

‘Are you remembering what happened to Blakey the Octopus?’ Franklin pushed through the door and into a warm reception room with seats around the walls of a little waiting annex off to one side. The faint aniseedy tang of oral disinfectant tainted the air. A rack of magazines was mounted on the wall — all the issues considerably newer and classier than the ones Professional Standards had — surrounded by more posters of halogen-white teeth.

‘For your information, Detective Constable Franklin, I have a partner I love and she’s pregnant with my child. So don’t flatter yourself. I’ve got no intention of groping your backside or anything else.’

An unfeasibly blonde receptionist showed them her unfeasibly perfect teeth in a broad smile. Her voice was unfeasibly cheery too, but nearly as shrill as a dentist’s drill. ‘Welcome to the McKibben Dental Practice, how can I help you today?’

Callum flashed his warrant card. ‘I phoned earlier. We need to speak to someone about Glen Carmichael’s dental records.’

‘Boss? We’ve got a match.’ Callum switched his phone to the other hand and tucked the folder under his arm again. Rain dripped off the concrete portico that covered the shopping centre’s rear doors, darkening the steps down to the car park. ‘Took us three lots of dentists to get there, but according to the Leighton Road Dental Association in Blackwall Hill, our body in the bath is Ben Harrington. He’s the one in the photo with the auld mannie haircut, glasses, and walrus moustache.’