Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

How?

‘Are you OK?’ Mother held out a mug of tea, steam curling from the surface, rain thrumming on the black skin of her umbrella.

From up here, on the station roof, most of Oldcastle was laid out like a tortured Monopoly board. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred pounds. Do not hope or dream.

Low cloud hid the upper reaches of Blackwall Hill and Kingsmeath. Scratched at the crest of Castle Hill. Even the tops of the hospital’s twin incinerator towers were gone, the red warning lights at their top reduced to a faint bloody Sauron glow in the gloom.

Callum shifted his bum on the metal support and huffed out a breath — opaque in the cold air as rain dripped off the communications array and onto his shoulders. ‘Thanks.’ He took the mug. Sipped at the scalding liquid. Glanced up at the big metal and plastic drums above his head. At the Airwave transmitters. At the civil defence warning systems. ‘Four minutes’ warning. If it was you, would you set the siren off, or let the end come as a surprise?’

‘You’ll catch your death of cold.’

‘Four minutes to panic and scream, knowing you’re about to die, or blissful ignorance followed by a flash of light and poof . You’re nothing but a shadow, burned into a concrete wall.’

She sighed and settled onto the support next to him, sheltering them both with her brolly. ‘Professor Twining’s finished the post mortem. Do you want the details?’

He raised one shoulder in a half-arsed shrug. ‘What can you do in four minutes anyway?’

‘Twining says the histology proves the remains have been frozen, apparently he can tell from the way the cell walls are ruptured. But we won’t know for how long until they’ve finished the isotope analysis.’

All these years...

A severed head in a plastic bag.

‘Say you’re at work, or you’re in Asda, or you’re arresting some scumbag, or maybe you’re breaking up a fight when the sirens go off. How are you supposed to spend your final moments? Not as if you can teleport home and be with your loved ones, is it?’

‘I had the head of the laboratory on the phone, desperate to apologise for getting it wrong the first time. Someone mixed up the internal and external samples, so it came back looking like a degraded match.’ Mother blew out a long slow breath. ‘Anyway, Cecelia says your mum’s DNA isn’t on file; it was the Nineteen Nineties, they had different rules back then. And everyone thought it was a case of child abandonment. If they’d treated it as a murder, or an abduction... but they didn’t.’

‘So what do you do, phone them? “Sorry, love, it’s the end of the world and we’re all going to die.” Only everyone’s trying to call their husband or their wife or their kids or their parents at the same time, the network goes down and you spend your last four minutes on earth swearing at your phone.’

‘We’re reopening the investigation. Well, Powel is. He’s putting an MIT together right now to look into it.’

‘Not exactly how I’d want to go out: lonely, pissed off, and scared.’

‘Callum.’ Mother put a hand on his leg, warmth seeping through the wet fabric to the skin beneath. ‘It’s OK to be upset.’

He frowned down into the depths of his mug. ‘I’d leave the sirens switched off: let people live their last four minutes in blissful ignorance. No one wants to know they’re about to die.’ Not going by the look of utter horror on Mr Hand Truck’s face as the river dragged him away.

How could anyone sane cope with that?

Here comes Death, and he’s shouting your name.

Callum ran a hand through his wet hair. ‘What about the guy who went in the water?’

‘You’ve had a horrible shock and I want you to take some time off.’

‘Let me guess: they haven’t found his body. He’ll be trapped against the river bank somewhere, or wedged under something beneath the surface, or on his way out to sea.’

‘Callum, I’m serious: go home.’

‘Yeah...’ A fat raindrop dripped from the umbrella’s edge and made ripples in the tea’s beige surface. ‘You’ve wanted rid of me from the start. Might as well carpe the diem .’

‘You’re a silly sod, you know that, don’t you?’

‘So people keep telling me.’

‘I’m not getting rid of you, Callum.’ Mother let go of his leg and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. ‘Not when I’m just starting to like you.’

Rain thumped on the brolly. Dripped from the communications array. Hammered down on the buildings and the people and the streets.

She gave him a little squeeze. ‘And I’d leave the sirens off too.’

Callum wheeled his bike in through the door, locked it up in the rack beneath the stairs. Stood there for a bit with his eyes closed, dripping, blood hissing in his ears like waves on a pebble beach.

All those years...

Deep breath.

Come on.

He flicked through the pile of letters, fliers, and leaflets on the windowsill — took the ones for the top floor and squelched upstairs.

Didn’t matter what the weather forecasters said, it was never going to stop raining. Not until they were all drowned and dead.

Mrs Gillespie’s cats had been at Toby’s pot plants again, black soil spread out in a fan around a wilting rubber plant. A Mylar balloon bobbed in the breeze, the string tied around Mr and Mrs Robson’s door handle. ‘HAPPY 20 THANNIVERSARY!’

Glad someone had something to celebrate.

Callum posted their mail then let himself into the flat.

‘Elaine?’ He peeled off his wet jacket — sodding thing didn’t deserve the term, ‘Waterproof’ it leaked like a teabag. ‘Christ, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.’

He dumped his backpack next to the non-waterproof jacket. ‘I need a drink.’

The TV was on in the lounge. Some sort of soap opera, probably. Lowered voices and ominous muttering coming through the closed door.

He unlaced his shoes and squelched through to the kitchen. Hauled open the fridge door and helped himself to a Tesco own-brand continental-style lager. Clicked the metal tag and had a good long swig. Not much else in there. Some open jars of pickles and olives, bit of cheese going blue at the corners, some butter, a wilting lettuce... Leftover tuna casserole. He clunked the door shut. ‘I’m ordering takeaway. I know we’re meant to be saving money, but sod it.’

He peeled off his soggy socks and slapped them into the washing machine.

Took his beer through to the bedroom.

There were two bags, sitting on the bed. One was his battered old suitcase with its wonky wheel and the strip of green fabric tied around the handle so it’d be easy to find on an airport conveyor belt. The other was an aluminium hard-shelled job big enough to fit a small child. Not a scratch on it, so probably brand new.

Callum’s shoulders dipped even further.

Great. There he was, worrying about ordering takeaway and Elaine’s busy buying expensive luggage off the internet. As if they were going to let her take something that size into hospital. You could give birth in it, it was that—

‘Callum?’

He turned, and there she was, wearing a baggy black T-shirt with some sort of communist-chicken design — stretched tight over the bump — and a pair of baggy grey joggy bottoms.

‘New luggage? Seriously? I thought we were trying to save up for Peanut’s—’

‘I’m sorry.’ She bit her top lip and stared down at her bulge. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

He ran a hand over his face. Sighed. ‘OK. Look, it’s only a suitcase, not the end of the world.’

Someone appeared in the doorway behind her. Someone with sticky-out ears and silvery hair. DCI Powel. Wonderful. Just what the doctor ordered — a pain-in-the-arse.