Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘I see.’ Powel held his hands out in a pantomime shrug: all just a silly misunderstanding. Nothing to worry about. ‘Then would you like to explain how YOUR DNA GOT ON THE BLOODY REMAINS?’

‘My what ?’

‘Your DNA. On a severed woman’s head!’

Mother looked away. ‘Did you kill her?’

Callum just stared.

‘Did — you — kill — her?’

‘No, of course I didn’t! Why the hell would I kill—’

‘Then did you dump the remains for someone else?’

‘How... What...’ He threw his arms out. ‘ No ! I had nothing to do with any of it.’

‘You see, Callum,’ Gilmore took off his evil scientist glasses and huffed a breath on them, drawing it out as he polished the lenses on a hanky, ‘you have something of a reputation for compromising crime scenes, don’t you?’

‘I haven’t been to Holburn Forest for years, how could I contaminate anything?’ He jabbed a finger at Powel. ‘This is the lab cocking things up again. They couldn’t find an angry squirrel in a bean bag, never mind pick out DNA. Just because they buy a machine doesn’t mean they know how to use it.’

Powel pulled out another sheet of paper. ‘The DNA’s degraded, but your name came straight back from the database. Why? Who was she? Why did you kill her?’

‘I DIDN’T KILL ANYONE!’ Though that might change in the next thirty seconds. The blood thrummed at the back of his skull, pins and needles filling his throat, hands clenched into tight fists.

Mother stood. ‘All right, Callum, that’s enough.’ She pointed at the spare armchair. ‘Sit down.’

He stood there, trembling.

‘Sit — down. Now , Constable.’

Callum lowered himself into the seat. ‘I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t interfere with the crime scene. I didn’t do anything. It’s a mistake.’ Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe it was deliberate? Of course it sodding was. ‘Someone’s trying to fit me up.’

Powel went back to his folder and pulled out a photograph. Held it out so everyone could see. ‘Who was she?’

‘I told you: this is nothing to do with me...’

The woman in the photo had to be mid-twenties, early thirties tops. Her long blonde hair, so pale it was almost white, lay plastered against her head — glistening as if it was wet; dark circles around her unfocused blue eyes; skin like the thinnest bone china, speckled with freckles; puffy blue lips; a heart-shaped face; and a neck that ended three or four inches below her chin in a jagged dark-red line.

But that wasn’t what made Callum’s breath thicken in his throat, made his chest contract. It was her ears.

‘Oh God...’

A Long, Long Time Ago

‘Last one there’s a bumhead!’ Alastair was off running before he’d even finished speaking. Cheating bumhead. Sprinting across the pebbly beach, flip-flops sticking out of his back pocket, bandy net slung over his shoulder.

Callum ran after him, lumbering a bit because of the fish-and-chips sloshing about in Fanta in his tummy. ‘Cheater!’

Sunshine sparkled across the water, hissing in and out against the little round stones.

A big fat crab — easily the size of Callum’s palm — scuttered across the bottom of the rock pool, between the raspberry-jelly anemones and the floaty bright-green seaweed. All legs and nippers.

Loads of sand and shells and stuff lined the bottom of the pool, along with dull pebbly things that Dad said were bits of glass the sea had ground and ground till it couldn’t cut anyone any more.

Alastair dug his hand into the pool and scooped up a bunch of bits. Then Callum reached in and did the same. The pair of them squatted at the pool’s edge with dripping handfuls of shells and sand and grit, grinning at each other.

Mum was going to love this.

The lady in the little hut smiled as they tipped their handfuls onto the table. ‘Well, let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?’

The wooden walls were clarted with picture frames and animals made of seashells and bits of driftwood. Lots and lots of shelves covered in things covered in more shells: lamps, lumps of rock, more driftwood. Which was kinda cool and kinda dumb, all at the same time.

A sort of ray-gun thing sat in a wee stand, dribbling clear plastic goo from the barrel, making the air smell like the inside of Dad’s car on a hot day.

Alastair pointed at a crab claw, still crunchy with sand. ‘That one. Use that one.’ His hair was full of sand too, his legs sparkled with it.

It was everywhere : in Callum’s flip-flops, gritty between his toes, itchy on the back of his knees where it’d started to dry.

The lady made a ‘Hrmmmm’ing noise. ‘It’s a lovely crab claw, but it might be a bit big. How about...’ She moved her fingers through the piles and pushed a shell from each — one with a blueish edge, the other pink, both all ruffled and ridged like crinkle-cut chips, both no bigger than Callum’s thumbnail. ‘I think they’ll be very pretty, don’t you?’

‘Oh come on, David, stop sulking — they’re beautiful!’ Mum tucks her hair behind her ears and flashes the tiny shell earrings. ‘Aren’t they beautiful? I have the bestest little boys in the whole wide world.’ She kneels and wraps Alastair and Callum up in a big hug. ‘I’m never taking them off. Never ever.’

Dad scowls. ‘All I’m saying is, I got you a gold bracelet and a bottle of that Priscilla Presley perfume.’

‘Well, I love all my presents.’ She stood and spanked Dad on his bottom. ‘Now get that barbecue fired up, Chief Chef Caveman, the Mighty Empress Birthday Girl demands a sausage-and-steak sacrifice!’

‘Callum?’ Mother leaned forward and poked him.

He jerked back in his seat. Blinking at the photograph.

Powel nodded. ‘You recognise her, don’t you, Constable MacGregor? Who is she? Who did you kill?’

Wasn’t easy keeping his voice level, but Callum did his best. ‘Is this supposed to be some sort of joke?’

‘Oh I can assure you, Constable MacGregor, nobody’s laughing.’

‘Is this supposed to be funny ?’ He lunged, grabbed the printout from Powel’s fingers and thumped back down again. Fumbled his wallet out with thick slippery fingers. Opened it and stared.

There, in the photo — Mum, with her big smile and her freckled cheeks. Her cartoon cat T-shirt. Her pale blonde hair, bleached by a week in the sunshine at Lossiemouth. Her earrings, made by a woman in a shed on a caravan site and paid for by two little boys who’d saved up their pocket money.

And the head in the other photograph — Powel’s photograph — its ears were two delicate curls of translucent skin and cartilage, with a seashell earring in each lobe. One blue, one pink, both ridged like crinkle-cut chips.

Powel stood. ‘You know her, don’t you? Who — did — you — kill?’

But it couldn’t be.

The walls pulsed in and out in time with each breath.

It was twenty-six years ago. Mum would be in her fifties by now.

He grabbed the photo tighter, as if that would stop the thump-and-hiss of blood in his ears as the room got hotter and hotter.

Maybe... Maybe it was a cousin, or something? A relative he didn’t know he’d had.

His mouth flooded with saliva, but he couldn’t swallow — his throat was full of brambles.

Which meant there’d been someone who could’ve taken him in. He didn’t have to grow up in a care home. But they hadn’t bothered their backsides to help a wee five-year-old boy abandoned by his whole family...

The whole world shrank to the size of the photograph in his hand.

But she was wearing Mum’s earrings .