Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Franklin waved a hand across the car. ‘Kill the siren!’

He clicked the button and she hit the brakes, just before the corner, swinging around onto Walderswell Court at a sensible thirty miles per hour. The police vehicular equivalent of whistling a casual tune to kid on you’re not up to something.

The houses here were just a bit smaller than the ones on the road outside, jammed in just a bit tighter too. Number 32 was down the far end, next to a building plot. From the signage fixed to the site fencing, someone was chucking up two blocks of ‘LUXURY STARTER FLATS!!!’ where a pair of wee bungalows used to be.

Yeah, good luck selling those, stuck on the border between Blackwall Hill and Kingsmeath. You could see the dual carriageway from here... Wonder if that was where Brett and his mates got the idea to do up their flat on Customs Street?

Franklin coasted the last twenty feet, engine idling. ‘How can we be first on the scene?’

‘You drive like a maniac, what do you expect?’ Callum popped open the glove compartment and took out the box of nitrile gloves, pulling two from the slot in the top like rubbery blue tissues. Tossed the box across to Franklin. ‘Well, come on then.’

He climbed out into the drizzle and snapped his gloves on. Pulled out his pepper spray.

Across the road, a little old man peered out from between a pair of net curtains. Walking stick in one hand, phone in the other. That would be their informant.

Callum half crouched, half ran across the pavement and up the driveway to Brett Millar’s house. No sign of forced entry on the front door. The handle was cold in his fingers... and it wouldn’t budge. Locked.

Franklin flattened herself on the other side of the door, extendable baton extended. ‘Well?’

‘Doesn’t look like he got in the front way.’

She nodded at the other side of the road. ‘Then how did Nosey Norman see it to call it in?’

Good point.

Callum pointed. ‘Round the side.’

A six-foot wooden fence marked the boundary between number 32 and the building site, leaving just enough space for a narrow gravel path and a full-height gate. It was hanging off its hinges.

On the other side, a bush was flattened, as if someone had fallen into it. A smear of blood on the harling, probably left by sticking their hand out to break their fall. Oh yeah, this one was a master criminal. With any luck they’d be in the kitchen making themselves a bacon buttie.

Round the back.

The kitchen door was wide open, the glass in the bottom section smashed into regular safety-sized cubes.

Franklin held up a fist, then stuck one finger up and swept it in the direction of the back door. Clenched her fist again.

Callum stared at her. ‘Are you off your head? This isn’t the A-Team.’

A sigh, then she slipped in through the broken door, bent almost double.

God help us.

He followed her inside.

The kitchen was ground zero for a whirlwind of tins and smashed mugs, jagged shards of plate covering the lino floor, blood-spatters of tomato ketchup on the tiles above the cooker. A shattered jar of mayonnaise lying spent against the dented fridge.

Callum crunched through a drift of Special K. ‘Wow. Someone’s behind on their housework.’

Franklin did the ridiculous SWAT team signs again, then crouched her way out into the hall.

He wandered after her.

The hallway was a mess of thrown coats and hurled boots, the plasterboard dented where they’d hit the walls. Franklin did a slow three-sixty, then froze and pointed down the hall. Four doors: three shut, one wide open — bangs and crashes thumping out of it. Then a computer monitor bounced off the hall carpet, the display a spider’s web of fractured glass.

She crept down the hall, baton raised and ready.

It would be a druggie, off his proverbials on coke, or crack, or jellies, or smack. Sees the house is empty and bingo — tries his hand at a bit of DIY Bargain Hunt ...

Or maybe it was someone who knew Brett, Ben, and Glen? Someone who knew they might have a stash lying about. Or, going by the destruction, someone they owed money to.

Callum flicked the safety cap off his pepper spray. ‘Shall we dance?’

Franklin raised an eyebrow. Looked at him for a moment, then smiled a nasty smile. ‘Foxtrot or tango?’

Good. He smiled back. ‘Let’s see where the music takes us.’

She barged in through the open door. ‘POLICE! ON YOUR KNEES, NOW!’

He thumped through less than a breath behind her, into the heart of a disaster. The wardrobe doors were ripped off their hinges, clothes everywhere; a computer desk smashed almost beyond recognition; single bed overturned, the slats cracked and splintered like broken ribs; a disembowelled games console, spilling its electronic innards across the floor; posters torn from the wall.

And there, in the middle of the hurricane, was a man — long greasy hair dangling down his back, sunken eyes, cheekbones you could carve granite with, wrists like two bones wrapped in pink cling film. Skin so pale every vein popped out like a blue-green worm. A solid ring of love bites around his neck. Filthy hoodie, filthy tracksuit bottoms, bare, filthy feet speckled with blood.

Full-on junky chic.

He had both hands above his head — probably not helping with the rotting-cabbage stink of sweat and that stale spicy base-note of old marijuana — holding a desktop computer covered in stickers, cables and a keyboard dangling from the ports in the back.

Captain Filthy just stood there, staring at them.

Franklin whipped the baton back into first-strike position. ‘PUT THE COMPUTER DOWN AND GET ON YOUR KNEES!’

He bared his brown-grey teeth.

‘I’M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN: KNEES, NOW!’

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ The computer went flying, hurled full force at Franklin’s head.

She ducked left, but it still caught her on the shoulder, spinning her one way while it went the other, cables flapping.

Captain Filthy lunged for Callum, arms out, hands like claws.

So he got a face full of pepper spray.

Oh crap...

Might as well have sprayed him with lavender floor polish, because Captain Filthy just kept on coming.

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’

Sodding hell.

A claw whipped past Callum’s face, close enough for every dirt-caked fingernail to stand out in perfect focus. And then Captain Filthy was on top of him, snarling, little flecks of stinking saliva spraying against his face.

‘Get off me!’ He grabbed the guy’s ear and twisted: nothing.

A dirty hand raked down Callum’s cheek.

The stench of pepper spray was like a mask, choking off the air, blurring his vision as the tears started.

Captain Filthy wrapped his manky fingers around Callum’s tie and pulled, trying to throttle him. Must have got a bit of a surprise when the whole thing just pinged free of its clips and came off in his hand, because he reared back, staring at it. Maybe he was distracted by all the pretty colours?

So Callum took a leaf out of Dugdale’s book and grabbed Captain Filthy’s crotch, digging his fingers into the tracksuit bottoms and crushing the contents. Twisting them.

Still nothing.

Then Captain Filthy threw the tie away and lunged.

Oh dear Jesus, this was it, he was going to die.

Those brown-grey teeth flashed in front of his face, dirty fingers digging into his cheeks.

Callum heaved upward, and the guy’s head lurched past his, bashing into the bedroom floor, enveloping his face with that stinking greasy hair. Then knives and bees exploded through Callum’s left ear, jerking him to the side, and warmth trickled down and around the back of his head.

‘AAAAAAAAARGH! GET OFF ME!’