Stuart MacBride: A Dark So Deadly

McAdams stepped up beside Mother. ‘Ah...’

Callum crept around to the opposite side of the hole, bin-bags shifting beneath his blue-booteed feet, and leaned out over the edge.

The SOC team had shored up the sides of their excavation with sheets of corrugated iron, which held back the mass of garbage, but did nothing to stop the grey-brown liquid seeping out underneath it.

Their body lay on its side at the bottom of the hole, about eight feet down, where the liquid was deepest. Elbows tight in against its ribs, hands drawn up to its chest, knees hard up against them, feet tucked in to the body. Its neck was bent hard forward, so the face was completely hidden by the hands and knees. So far, so murdery, but it was the skin that gave it away. Instead of being all blotched with mould and falling apart it was creased and leathery. Darkened to a dirty mahogany. The only ear visible had shrivelled up till it resembled a dried apricot, clinging to the side of its bald head.

Callum raised his eyebrows. ‘Now there’s a sight you don’t see every day.’

Mother’s fists clenched at her sides. ‘That rotten, two-faced, lying bastard !’

The oversized sweaty cherub in the SOC suit wiped his glistening forehead. ‘At a guess, it’s got to be about, what... a thousand years old?’

‘I should have known! Thought they’d finally given me a proper murder, but no . That was asking too much, wasn’t it?’ She turned and stomped out of the tent.

McAdams didn’t follow her, just shouted over his shoulder instead. ‘Where are you going?’

Her voice faded away into the distance. ‘To tell DCI Powel exactly where he can stick his thousand-year-old mummy!’

The only sound in the tent was the hammering rain and the growling generator.

‘Hmmm...’ McAdams squatted down, one hand on the bin-bag next to him. ‘The body’s naked. Wonder what happened to all the bandages.’ He glanced up at the Cherub. ‘It’s a mummy, it should be all wrapped up.’

‘Don’t look at me.’

Callum eased himself down to his haunches, holding onto the top of a corrugated sheet. No way he was risking an eight-foot plummet into a paddling pool of rancid bin water. ‘They’ve got a mummy just like it in Elgin Museum. On display, naked in a big bell jar. Some Victorian bloke brought it back from Peru: suppose he unwrapped it so the viewing public could get a good look at a real-life dead body.’ A small smile shifted against his facemask. ‘We used to go there when I was a wee boy. Me and Alastair would...’ Yes. Well. The less said about that the better.

McAdams grunted, then stood. Turned to face the sweaty cherub. ‘Don’t suppose we’ve got any clue who dumped it here, do we?’

One of the other Smurfs looked up from the contents of a ruptured refuse sack. ‘Nah. Back in the good old days, there’d be envelopes and letters and newspapers all through this stuff — dates and addresses in every bag. Now?’ He shook his head. ‘Recycling: bane of our lives.’

McAdams wiped his hands together. ‘Soon as Dr Twining’s seen the remains, get them bagged, tagged, and down the mortuary. And if he gives you any grief about it being a waste of his valuable time, tell him tough. Don’t see why we should be the only ones.’ A click of the fingers, held high overhead, as if McAdams was summoning a waiter in a sitcom. ‘Constable MacGregor: we’re leaving. Turns out this is more of a short story than a fully-fledged novel.’

Callum stayed where he was, sniffing the air. ‘Can you smell that?’

‘I said, “We’re leaving .”’

‘No, underneath all the rotting rubbishy smell, there’s something else. Wood smoke? Like there’s been a fire?’

‘Don’t look at me.’ The Cherub shook his head. ‘Fifteen minutes in here and you go nose-blind. Can’t smell a thing.’

McAdams’ voice boomed from outside the tent: ‘CONSTABLE MACGREGOR! HEEL!’

The Cherub shrugged. ‘His master’s voice.’

Don’t suppose it mattered anyway. What was one extra smell on top of all the others?

Callum stood, wiped his gloves on his legs, and slipped back out into the rain.

Halfway back across the slippery bin-bags, his phone launched into its default ringtone. Sodding hell. He peeled off his right glove and fought the bare hand into his SOC suit. Pulled out his phone. Kept on walking. ‘Hello?’

‘Ah, hello. Am I speaking to Detective Constable Callum MacGregor?’

He checked the number. Nope, no idea who it was. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Good, good. This is Alex from Professional Standards, we’d like you to pop in for a wee chat.’

Oh God.

‘How does tomorrow morning sound? I know it’s taken us a while to get round to it, but better late than never, yes?’

No.

‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘Excellent. Let’s say... Oh, that’s lucky: I can fit you in at seven. First thing in the morning, then you can get on with your day without having to worry about it.’

Might as well get it over with — like ripping off a sticking plaster, wrenching all the hair out with it. ‘Right. Yes. Seven tomorrow morning.’

After all, what was the worst that could happen?

They could fire him. Prosecute him. And send him to prison.

‘Good, good. See you then.’ Alex from Professional Standards hung up.

It would be fine. It would.

Callum put his phone away. ‘Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.’

He crunched his way through the bin-bags to McAdams’ shiny new Mitsubishi Shogun. The lanky git was leaning on the roof of Mother’s scabby Fiat Panda, one hand making lazy circles in the air as she peeled herself out of her Smurf outfit. Probably working on new ways to make Callum’s life even worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough already.

Professional Standards.

Gah...

He yanked open the passenger door and pinged his blue nitrile gloves into the footwell. Tore off his SOC suit and bundled it up.

They didn’t have anything on him.

They couldn’t — he hadn’t done anything.

Yeah, but when did that ever stop anyone?

He scowled at his crumpled suit. What was the point taking it back to the station and sticking it in the bin, it was just going to end up right back here anyway. Callum hurled it away. It spun, unfurling in mid-air like a shed skin, before tumbling to the filthy ground.

And when he turned back to the car, there was Dugdale grinning at him from the back seat.

‘Oh... sod off.’

The municipal tip shrank in the rear-view mirror. McAdams shifted behind the wheel, dug a packet of gum from his pocket and crunched down a little white rectangle. ‘Right, you know what’s coming next, don’t you?’

Sitting behind him, Dugdale scowled out of the window. ‘I want a lawyer.’

‘Not talking to you, Ainsley, I’m talking to our special little friend, Constable Crime Scene here.’

Callum folded his arms. ‘If it’s more haikus, I’m putting in for a transfer.’

‘Don’t let me stop you. First call all the museums. See whose mummy’s gone.’

He stared across the car. ‘Oh you have got to be kidding—’

‘One of them’s lost a mummy. I’ll bet if you beaver away super hard for the next two or three months, you’ll find out which one.’ He smiled. ‘Unless you’re too busy resigning, of course? Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.’

‘Oh for... Why can’t Watt do it?’

‘Because, dear Constable Useless,’ McAdams turned a smile loose, ‘I don’t like you even more than I don’t like him .’ The smile widened. ‘It’ll be good for you: character building.’

Callum turned to face the passenger window. ‘I’d like to build your character with a sodding claw-hammer.’