Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Franklin’s head fell back against the rest, eyes screwed shut. ‘Not again!’

‘Knew I shouldn’t let you drive.’ Franklin scowled out of the passenger window.

‘Hey, you told me to get off my backside and do something. Remember?’

The pool car crested the hill and there was Fiddersmuir, sulking at the bottom of a wide dip in the landscape, bordered on one side by a dense swathe of dark-green woods. An irregular grid of streets sat around an oversized town square with a dirty big monument in the middle. A church and town hall on opposite sides, facing each other down in a competition of who could look the most joyless.

The dour grey buildings got smaller the further away from the square they were, three-storey merchant houses giving way to austere Edwardian terraces, and finally miserable wee cottages. Someone had stuck a small housing estate on the far side, all pantiles and cream harling. Looking about as out of place as a vegan in a slaughterhouse.

Franklin kept her face to the glass. ‘I meant on your own time.’

‘This is my own time. I’m on compassionate leave, remember?’ Callum checked the address and took them down a wide road lined with unhappy buildings, around the horrible monument to Prince Albert, and onto Leveller Road.

‘You’re impossible.’

Right at the end, just before the limits sign, was a large cottage set behind a long stretch of drystane dyke. A small conservatory sat out front, along with a collection of water butts. Tidy garden, thankfully devoid of gnomes. The words ‘CANARIES COTTAGE’ sat in bright-yellow letters on a green sign.

‘Ten, twenty minutes tops.’ He pulled up onto the driveway.

‘You said that twenty minutes ago!’

‘Well, there you go then.’ Callum grabbed a high-viz jacket from the back and climbed out into the rain, holding it over his head like a cape. Hurried up the path.

A little laminated notice hung in the glazed panel by the front door: ‘IF YOU’RE DELIVERING PARCELS, TRY THE POLYTUNNEL ROUND THE BACK.’

Fair enough.

Franklin appeared with her Crimestoppers umbrella, following him around the side of the house. ‘This is a complete waste of my time. I should be back at DHQ, working on—’

‘Oh stop moaning. It’ll take McAdams at least an hour to get a warrant sorted. Probably longer on a Friday night. All you’d be doing is twiddling your thumbs, listening to Dotty and Watt snipe at each other.’

The back garden was huge: a vast expanse of neatly mowed lawn, peppered with trees and bushes, meandering paths and flowerbeds. Off to one side, the grey arched shape of a polytunnel sat beside a row of beech trees, the plastic quivering in the downpour.

Callum jogged along the path, feet crunching on bark chips. ‘Anyway, shouldn’t you be more worried about missing your boyfriend’s work’s do?’

‘Ten minutes, then we’re heading back to headquarters if I have to drag you there by the balls. Understand?’

Music oozed out through the plastic, something old-fashioned and familiar, turned up loud.

He opened the door and bundled into the warm moist air, full of the toasted bready scent of soil and compost.

Dear God, this thing was bigger than his whole flat. It stretched on and on and on, full of green. Raised beds ran down both sides, packed with sprawling courgette plants, trailing cucumbers, dreels of tatties, rows of spinach, ranks of fancy lettuces...

Come the Zombie Apocalypse you could feed a family of four for a year in here.

Inside it was obvious why the radio was turned up so loud — the whole tunnel rang with every raindrop that thumped into its plastic skin. Thrumming and vibrating like an outboard motor. Fighting against a soft-edged bouncy song about some woman wanting to be with Callum everywhere. Which was a lovely offer, if a bit presumptuous.

Unless she was singing about the only other person in the polytunnel?

He was halfway down, on his knees, footering about with some sort of bean plant. Blue jeans, trainers, grey T-shirt with ‘1902’ across the back in big letters, a swathe of pink skin showing through the top of his close-cropped grey hair.

Callum reached out and clicked the radio off.

The guy stopped footering and turned, frowning at them through a pair of gunmetal-framed glasses. A well-spoken English accent cut through the rain’s drumming din, slightly higher-pitched than expected. ‘I was listening to that.’ His beard was every bit as grey and short as the hair on his head.

‘Robert Shannon?’ Callum dug out his warrant card. ‘We need to talk to you about a child abandonment case you worked in CID.’

‘CID?’ He levered himself to his feet, brushed the dirt from his hands on a little paunch belly. ‘I haven’t worked CID for... ooh, has to be twenty-five years now. And it’s Bob, not Robert.’

‘I was the child.’

‘Ah.’ Call Me Bob nodded. Turned. And pointed down to the far end of the polytunnel. ‘You’d better take a seat.’

The cast-iron patio furniture was comfortable enough: a small round table and four chairs — each with a green-and-yellow cushion, bordered by some recycled chests of drawers on one side and a row of beetroot on the other. Above their heads, the plastic skin trembled.

Franklin checked her watch. ‘Why didn’t you say this was what we were here for?’

‘Would you have come?’

‘You should’ve told me.’

‘Blakey hadn’t even looked at the crime file. I checked the archive register. He’s meant to be SIO and he can’t be arsed to read the file?’

Not that it would have done him a lot of good, given how little was actually in there. But he could have put the effort in.

She puffed out a sigh. ‘Don’t suppose your ex-DS Shannon’s done a runner, do you?’

Callum leaned forward in his seat, staring at the polytunnel door. ‘Speak of the Devil...’

Shannon hobbled in from the rain, cardboard file box in one hand, brolly in the other. ‘Here we go.’ He limped his way down to the table and stuck the box in front of Callum. Shrugged his way out of his jacket. Eased himself down into his seat. ‘Sorry it took so long; it was right at the back of the attic.’

Franklin raised an eyebrow. ‘Sore leg?’

‘Hip replacement. Doesn’t usually bother me, but all this rain?’ A shrug. He took the lid off the box and dumped it on the empty chair. Smiled at her. ‘Have a look in the chest of drawers behind you, should be a bottle of red and some glasses.’

‘I’m on duty.’

‘I’m not.’ Callum dipped into the file box, coming out with an overstuffed Manilla folder held together with elastic bands. They crumbled beneath his fingers.

‘Men.’ She shook her head and went rummaging. Came back with two large wine glasses and a bottle of Malbec. Folded her arms and sat back.

Inside the folder were a bunch of statements from what looked like Dad’s work colleagues and the neighbours. More from people who’d been at the caravan park that week.

Shannon opened the wine and poured out two hefty measures. Held one glass out. ‘They were going to destroy everything, so I took it home.’

Callum accepted the glass and took a sip. Soft and jammy. ‘The Great Clear-Out of Ninety-Five?’

‘No.’ He settled back in his seat, swirling the wine round and round the glass. ‘We’ve met before, do you remember? Maggie and I interviewed you about a dozen times after it happened. She had a sort of giraffe glove-puppet for you to talk to?’

‘I don’t...’ A frown. There was something there: a soft kindly face with a beauty spot on one cheek. A splotchy orange-and-white animal that talked with an Irish accent. ‘Sort of.’