Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Blakey stared at him. ‘You want me to just drop everything and rake through the ashes of a cold case from twenty-six years ago? No chance.’

The praying mantis swivelled around in his seat. ‘Can the pair of you belt up? I’m trying to listen to this.’

‘—his name’s Sam. He’s only four.’

‘It’s my mother , Blakey. Understand? It was her head in that carrier bag.’

Blakey looked away. ‘You sure you want to know what happened?’

Was he deaf or something? ‘Of course I sodding do!’

‘Oh, you poor man. Please, come in.’ A woman’s voice this time. ‘You said his name’s Sam?’

‘Sam. Yes.’

‘Callum, you know well as me: nine times out of ten, when the wife gets murdered it’s the husband that did it. That’s how people work.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Right now your dad’s probably sodded off to the Costa del Sol, or Australia, or something like that. Living under an assumed name with your brother and his grandkids.’

Because Alastair would be able to get his girlfriend pregnant. Wouldn’t need some greasy Detective Chief Inspector to come in and do it for him behind his back.

‘What are you doing?’ The woman’s voice again. High and panicky this time. ‘No! Leave her alone!’

Screams ripped out of the speakers.

‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’

Callum stood. ‘You’re an idiot, Blakey. And I’m glad Franklin battered your nose to a pulp. Hope it hurt.’

He marched out to a soundtrack of screaming.

How anyone was supposed to find anything down here was a mystery. Rows and rows and rows of shelving units stretched away into the gloom, each one crammed full of brown cardboard file boxes. The air slightly crunchy with the earthy taste of mildew and dust. They’d followed the same lighting design as Camburn Woods — less than one in three strip lights worked. Most were completely dark, the odd one pinging and buzzing, letting out an intermittent flicker before going out and starting all over again.

Callum hauled another box from the shelf and wiped a finger through the thick fur of dust covering the ‘CONTENTS’ sticker. Checked the crime number. Nope. Stuck it on the floor, and tried another one. And another. Put them all back where they’d come from and tried the shelf below.

Twenty minutes of raking through years’ and years’ worth of ruined lives and horror.

Still, at least this lot seemed to be in the right kind of era.

His mobile jangled into life and he pulled it out. Who would’ve thought you’d get a signal down here, in the basement of DHQ? Wonders never ceased.

He hit the button. ‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘NUMBER WITHHELD.’ glowed in the middle of the screen.

Great.

This again.

‘Willow, if someone’s hurting your mum you need to—’

‘Callum.’ Not Willow Brown, DCI Reece Scumbag Powel.

He clenched his face. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve just had Elaine on the phone.’

He pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder and pulled out the next box. ‘Well, I’m sure that makes a difference from having her in the bed I bought.’

Nope.

The next box joined it on the concrete floor.

Nope.

‘You still there?’ Wouldn’t be a loss if he wasn’t.

Next box.

‘You cancelled the mortgage payments. You know fine well, her maternity pay—’

‘Get stuffed. The pair of you manoeuvred me out of my own sodding flat, do you really think I’m going to keep paying the mortgage so you can shag in it?’

The last one was tucked away at the back of the shelf. Ah. That looked a lot more promising — no crust of dust. Someone had checked it out recently.

‘You can’t just—’

‘I’ve been paying your bills, Powel. Who do you think bought that crib, or the Winnie-the-Pooh mobile, or all those sodding baby clothes?’ Getting louder and louder. ‘Who bought the Nutella and pickled cucumbers for the last nine months? COS I DON’T REMEMBER IT BEING YOU!’

His words managed a brief echo, before being swallowed by the ranks of shelves and boxes.

‘Are you finished?’

‘Damn right I am: finished being your idiot. Pay your own bloody mortgage.’ He thumped the clean box down on the pile and checked the crime number. Had to be at least a dozen of them printed on the sticker in careful blue biro. And third from bottom was an exact match for the reference he’d dug out of the computer.

‘This isn’t productive, Callum. We are where we are and throwing tantrums isn’t going to change that.’

‘OK, I’m hanging up on you now. Feel free to take your phone and ram it up—’

‘You need to collect your things from the flat.’

Right.

His back stiffened. ‘And will Elaine be there?’

‘I... don’t think that would be wise, do you?’

Definitely not. ‘I want my books back.’

‘She’s staying with her mother for a couple of days. Come over any time after eight.’

‘I’ll turn up when I feel like it. It’s my flat.’

‘We’ve changed the locks, Callum. After eight. I’ll be there to make sure you don’t do anything foolish.’ Powel hung up.

Callum lowered his phone, knuckles white, the plastic creaking as he squeezed it. Then he snatched his arm back, ready to hurl the thing into the darkness... Hissed a breath out through his nose. Turned away.

Then back again, slamming his foot into the nearest file box — sending its contents spraying out across the dusty floor.

‘Something foolish.’ Yeah, like battering Powel’s head in.

His shoulders dipped.

There were files and evidence bags everywhere.

He sighed, squatted down, and cleaned it all up.

Powel might have been an adulterous two-faced slimy scumbag, but he was right about one thing: the case file was virtually useless.

Callum flipped to the end of the file and back again. Which didn’t take long as it was only two sheets. They had Mum, Dad and Alastair’s names, the date they abandoned Callum, a brief note about social services taking him into care, and scribbled on the back in pencil: the name of both officers who worked the case.

No interview notes, no witness statements, no sightings. Nothing of any practical use whatsoever. Not even the name of the rest area they’d left him in.

Either the Great Clear-Out of Ninety-Five was incredibly efficient, or PC Gibbons and DS Shannon hadn’t bothered their backsides doing any investigating at all.

Callum jotted their details into his notebook, stuck the file back in its box, and the box back on its shelf.

He signed himself out of the archives and collected his bin-bag full of wet suit. Draped it over his bad arm, freeing his good hand to pull out his phone. Dialled as he slogged up the cabbage-scented stairs. ‘Brucie? It’s Callum. Do us a favour and run a check on a couple of oldies for me: PC Gibbons, DS Shannon.’

‘You got shoulder numbers?’

‘Nope. But they worked here twenty-six years ago.’

‘Give us a minute...’

Callum paused on the landing. Rain battered the window, rattling it in its frame. The flickering blue-and-white lights of a patrol car faded in the distance, siren wailing. A double-decker bus grumbled past, going the other way.

‘Right, you got Police Constable Maggie Gibbons — transferred to Strathclyde in 1999. And Sergeant Robert Shannon. Retired twenty-two years ago.’

‘You got an address on Shannon?’

‘What did your last slave die of?’