Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘Is it OK if we ask you a few questions about Ben?’

The lips curled on that slab of a face. ‘My son’s name is Benjamin .’

‘OK. Yes, Benjamin.’ He took his own tea and settled on the front edge of the other armchair. ‘Benjamin bought a flat with his friends, Brett Millar and Glen Carmichael.’

‘Gah.’ Ben’s dad stared down at the mug. ‘The Millar boy was always trouble. I should’ve expelled him, but his parents were just as bad. It didn’t matter that their horrible son was a bad influence on our boy, they made it very clear what would happen if I took the appropriate action. Drugs, on school premises!’

He made himself smaller in his chair, knees coming up against his chest. ‘Of course they were the Millar boy’s drugs. Benjamin didn’t do drugs, we brought him up better than that, and now these jumped-up little nobodies are standing in my office telling me they’ll go to the papers and say it was all Benjamin’s fault.’ Ben’s dad grimaced into his tea. ‘I should have expelled them: Bret and Benjamin. I should have expelled them both . A headmaster has to have principles. He has to be uncompromising. He has to be the rule of law.’

Callum nodded. ‘But you didn’t.’

‘How could I? Christine would have died from the scandal. So I made the whole thing go away, and the Millar boy continued to be a bad influence. It’s amazing Benjamin got into university. A BA in aquaculture: it should’ve been law, or medicine. And does he use his degree? No, he buys a worthless flat in a horrible part of town with his two useless friends and thinks he’s going to be the next big property magnate.’

‘And did Benjamin mention anyone else? Maybe someone he’d met recently? Someone new to their circle?’

‘What, a woman?’ Ben’s dad shook his head. ‘We should be so lucky. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he isn’t gay or anything like that. He’s just too busy being a conceited selfish little child to have a proper relationship.’

Franklin cleared her throat. ‘Can we look at Benjamin’s room, Mr Harrington?’

He wrapped his arms around his knees. ‘It’s upstairs, down the hall, at the end.’ Then he laid his forehead on them and cried.

‘Getting dark out there.’ Franklin stood at the window, one hand on the Star Wars curtains, looking out at the rain.

The bedroom was immaculate: no oil slick of socks and pants on the floor; all the books in neat little rows on the bookshelf; a fancy workstation with a big monitor, printer, and ergonomic keyboard, all lined up perfectly square; bed made, with the Pokémon duvet cover tucked in tight like they did in hotels.

‘You think he tidies up himself, or does his mum do it for him?’ Callum snapped on a pair of blue nitriles and tried the bedside cabinet. Socks. Pants. Hankies. Mickey Mouse watch.

‘His father’s lovely .’ Franklin put on a slightly deeper voice, mimicking the clipped accent. ‘“He’s not gay or anything like that.” Homophobic dick.’

‘Check the wardrobe.’

She opened the doors and squatted down in front of it, rummaging through the neat rows of shoeboxes arranged in the bottom. ‘Do you buy that whole “everything was Brett Millar’s fault” act?’

‘Yeah, well Brett Sodding Millar isn’t exactly on my Christmas card list this year.’ Callum pulled the drawers all the way out and checked the undersides. Nothing Sellotaped there. But there was a pair of socks in the gap beneath the bottom drawer. Probably fell out and popped down the back. ‘Wasting our time here.’

‘Probably.’

He pulled the socks out, frowned. There was something hard in the middle, something stuffed inside them. They got turned inside out on the bedspread, covering Pikachu’s smiley face. ‘Or maybe not.’

‘You got something?’

‘Flash drive shaped like a Lego man, and a wee ziplock baggie of pills.’ He held the bag up. The contents looked like small green jelly beans. ‘I’m guessing Benjamin was into Temazepam. Don’t know about the flash drive, though.’

She pointed at the tower unit sitting under the workstation. ‘Could find out easily enough.’

‘And compromise the chain of evidence? No thanks. Whatever’s on there, I want it admissible in court.’ He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and slipped the flash drive inside. Scribbled down the time, date, location, case number, and both of their names. Did the same with the pills. ‘Probably won’t go anywhere, but you never know.’

Callum stuck the bags in his pocket. Frowned at the room: the Pokémon duvet cover, the Star Wars curtains, the shelf covered with little SpongeBob SquarePants figurines mounted above a row of kids’ books. The framed Finding Nemo print on the wall. ‘It’s all a bit... childish, isn’t it? Like Ben’s mum and dad are infantilising him. Keeping him young so they can control him.’

Franklin rolled her eyes, then stuffed the shoeboxes back in the wardrobe. ‘You’ve never met a hipster before, have you? All this crap is “ironic”. Watching My Little Pony and getting cartoon characters tattooed all over your body. Listening to bands no one’s ever heard of and wearing glasses you don’t need just because the frames are “retro”. Beards. Haircuts. Tight trousers.’

Callum slid the drawers back again. ‘When I was a kid, people dressed up as goths. Or grunge was still a thing. Just.’ He stood. ‘Not me, obviously.’

‘Too cool, were you?’ She rifled through a stack of vinyl records.

‘The home wouldn’t let us wear make-up, or grow our hair. Not even the girls.’ His blue nitrile gloves snapped off, got bundled in with the evidence bags. ‘Billy Jackson came home from school one day with a pierced ear. Someone did it for him at break-time with a needle and a strawberry Mivvi. Mr Crimon beat the living hell out of him and made him sleep in the bath for a week. Couldn’t stand up straight for ages.’

‘I mean, look at these bands: Sui-psychedel-icide, the Burning Yesterday Collective, Gerbils from Saturn, Stalin’s Wardrobe... Who listens to stuff like this?’

‘He runs a garage in Kingsmeath now. Still got a bit of a hunch on him.’

‘Ooh, spoke too soon.’ Franklin held up an album with a woodcut illustration of a rabbit and a cat dancing in a graveyard on it: Open the Coffins . ‘Mind you, Harrington’s probably only listening to it ironically .’

‘Meh, the book was better. And speaking of which,’ Callum pointed at the bookshelf, with its collection of textbooks and YA novels, ‘how about we give this lot a quick rummage, then head?’

‘Might as well.’ She plucked a thick book from the middle shelf. ‘Urgh. Listen to this: Adaptive Governance , colon, The Dynamics of Atlantic Fisheries Management , brackets, Global Environmental Accord , colon, Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation , close brackets. Sounds fun .’ She turned it spine-side up and riffled through the pages. Nothing fell out. ‘This home you grew up in: did you have to spend nights in the bath?’

‘If you were really bad, they half-filled it with cold water first.’ He flicked through something about a teenaged spy. ‘I guess some people just love working with kids.’

She dumped the textbook and tried another one. ‘You report them?’

‘You think no one listens to women?’ The next book was about the same teenaged spy. How was an eleven-year-old boy supposed to disarm a nuclear weapon? ‘Try being the kind of kid that gets labelled “challenging”.’

‘Hmmm...’ Another textbook.

‘R.M. Travis came to our school once. Signed my copy of Ichabod Smith and the Circus of Doom and drew a little picture of a rabbit too... I was so nervous I nearly wet myself.’ In the next one, Junior Superspy was foiling a global plot to wipe everyone out with Ebola. ‘Course, I was too stupid to keep my mouth shut when I got back to the home. All puffed up and proud and showing the book off to all the other kids. So Mr Crimon confiscated it. Never saw it again.’