Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

The only other person in the room was leaning back against one of the work surfaces, poking away at his phone. Blakey looked up as the mortuary door clunked shut behind them, scowling around that big plastic guard thing taped over his ruined nose. A nod. ‘MacGregor. Hodgkin.’ Then back to his text, or game of Angry Birds, or whatever.

Dotty parked herself in the middle of the room. ‘Come on then, DS Blake, where’s your organ grinder?’

Blakey kept on poking. ‘Conference call in the office.’

A half-glazed door sat off beside the sinks, the glass frosted like a public lavatory. The word ‘PATHOLOGIST’ graced a brass plaque with ‘PROFESSOR MERVIN TWINING CBE’ printed across a laminated sheet of A4 beneath it. The sound of muttered voices was just audible over the chilly drone of the fridges.

‘Callum?’ Blakey stopped poking, but kept his eyes on the screen. ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother.’

‘Thanks.’

Dotty wheeled herself over to the opened body. ‘Who’s your boyfriend?’

Silence.

‘In your own time, Blakey, we’ve nothing better to do.’

He pressed a couple of buttons then put his phone away. ‘Fat Archie Benton. Bunch of public-minded citizens decided they didn’t fancy their children sharing a tower block with a convicted kiddy-fiddler, so they invited him round for drinks to talk it over.’

Dotty wheeled Keith on a slow lap of the remains. ‘Very nice of them.’

‘Don’t think Fat Archie would agree. They pinned him down, jammed a funnel in his gob and treated him to all the bleach he could drink.’

A clunk and rattle from the office door and Teabag stepped out, flicking the dark floppy hair out of his eyes. ‘Detective Sergeant Hodgkin!’ He gave Dotty a smile, making the dimple in his square-jawed chin deeper, light glinting off his little round glasses. He smoothed down the top of his purple scrubs, then leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

‘Professor Twining.’ She reached up and put a hand on Callum’s arm. ‘We’re here about the female remains that came in yesterday?’

‘Ah yes, the severed head!’ His smile grew. ‘ Completely fascinating. Let me show you.’ He strode across the cracked black tiles to the wall of refrigerated units. Opened a door and rattled out the stainless-steel drawer inside. A small body bag sat on the surface, the kind used for children. He scooped it out and placed it on one of the empty cutting tables. ‘Here we go.’

The zip hissed open, then Teabag pulled the plastic sides down, exposing the contents.

The breath solidified in Callum’s throat. Spread down into his chest like setting concrete.

After all this time.

They’d closed her eyes. Which somehow made it... better . Better than the thought of her lying in that plastic bag, with her eyes open, staring into the darkness, in a mortuary drawer, buried deep beneath Castle Hill Infirmary. Her skin was impossibly pale, the freckles looking as if they were fading away. Someone had washed her hair, or at least cleaned the gunk out of it, leaving it like silk. The hideous stump of her neck: wide and purple and gaping.

Callum swallowed something bitter. Stared.

‘Now, the truly interesting bit is this.’ Teabag snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and picked her head up, turning it over and brushing the hair away from her ear. ‘The remains were covered in some sort of gelatinous residue. Took us ages to figure out what it was.’

Dotty looked away. ‘Actually, Professor—’

‘If you freeze any sort of meat for long enough, it’ll end up with freezer burn. Doesn’t matter if you put it in a bag or not, if there’s any air in there the meat will eventually dehydrate and oxidise. I’m sure you’ve seen it yourself lots of times: sausages, joints of pork, steaks, they go all pale and gritty looking?’

Twenty-six years...

‘That’s why producers put an ice glaze on prawns. But ice sublimates , so over extended periods the water molecules will migrate to the coldest spot, leaving the remaining surface exposed, and you get freezer burn again.’

All that time, while he was being shuffled from care home to care home, there she was. Hidden away in someone’s freezer.

‘ However , if you’re smart about it, you can get round that by preserving your severed head in aspic before freezing. That’s what the residue was: aspic. Isn’t that fascinating?’

Dotty’s hand tightened on his arm. ‘Callum? Are you OK? You look pale.’

‘We had to clean it out of the aural, nasal, and sinus cavities with a syringe. Every available orifice was full of it. That’s why the remains are so well preserved.’

All those years...

The room went grey around the edges, all colour focused on the head in Teabag’s hands.

‘Callum?’

‘Something like this takes practice. Skill too — you’d probably have to fill all the cavities one at a time and let them set before doing the next one, or the aspic would just ooze out.’

Locked away in the frozen darkness...

‘I suppose if you had a big enough bucket you could do it all at once, but you’d have to make sure you didn’t leave any air pockets. Not easy.’

All that time...

Behind him, someone coughed.

‘Constable MacGregor?’ That was Powel’s voice. Wonderful. Because things weren’t bad enough. ‘Callum. I... I can only imagine how difficult this is.’

The words wouldn’t come out, blocked by the knot of barbed wire twisting itself at the base of his throat. Callum swallowed and tried again: ‘What happened to her earrings?’

‘I’m sorry, but we need you to formally identify the remains.’

‘They were in the photograph. Tiny shell earrings. One blue, one pink.’

‘Is this your mother?’

‘WHAT HAPPENED TO HER BLOODY EARRINGS?’

Silence.

He looked up, and there was Powel, staring at him with a look of utter pity on his bruised face. Left cheek all puffy and purpled at the side of his mouth. A scab on his split lip.

Powel nodded. ‘They’re in evidence. Don’t worry: they’re safe, nobody’s stolen them.’

At least that was something.

Callum closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. ‘It’s her. It’s my mother.’

The curtain clattered on its rail and Powel stepped into the little treatment booth. ‘We need to talk.’

Callum eased his right hand into his jacket sleeve, taking it slow. When he’d finished, a wodge of fibreglass cast poked out of the end. They’d left his thumb free, but all four of his fingers were imprisoned to the tips — partially curled as if he’d been caught in the act of cupping something. ‘You’re pressing charges.’

Of course he was.

‘You chipped two of my teeth and knocked a crown off.’

‘Good.’ Callum stood. ‘You deserved it.’

Powel stared at him. Then looked away. ‘Possibly.’

‘And this’ll be the perfect opportunity to get rid of me, won’t it? Polish off your little vendetta.’

A sigh. ‘It’s not a “vendetta”, Constable MacGregor. I don’t know how you managed to fool Professional Standards, but you took a bribe and—’

Callum barked out a laugh. ‘No. No I didn’t.’ He fumbled with his jacket zip, not easy using just a thumb and a wodge of fibreglass. ‘She didn’t tell you, did she?’

‘This has nothing to do with Elaine.’

‘You’ve got no idea what she talked me into.’

That pulled a half-smile onto Powel’s unbattered side. ‘If this is about International Women’s Day, it—’

‘I didn’t take a bribe to cock up that crime scene, and do you know why? Because I wasn’t the one who cocked it up. But Elaine couldn’t take the blame, could she? Noooo. Not when she was pregnant . With all that baby stuff to pay for? We couldn’t afford it without her maternity pay.’