Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘Are we having a great time, or what?’

More cheering.

Callum frowned down at the cast on his right hand, little pink fingertips poking out of the end. ‘I know. But it doesn’t help, does it?’

‘That’s right-a-roonie, campers: we’re not going to let a little rain spoil our fun. And now, are you ready for your next act?’

Cheers.

The pool car wheeched down the dual carriageway, heading south, back into town.

‘I can’t hear you!’

Cheers.

On the right, the tight spirals and cul-de-sacs of Blackwall Hill. On the left, the necrotic miserable sprawl of Kingsmeath.

‘One more time!’

Cheers, going on and on and on.

‘Callum—’

‘I know, OK? I was only five. But...’ He rubbed his good hand over his face. ‘Maybe Shannon will come up with something. I mean, the trail’s only been cold for twenty-six years. What could possibly go wrong?’

‘Darn tootin’ you are. Let’s give a great big Oldcastle welcome to Overture for a Riot!’

And the crowd go wild.

A slow, thumping drumbeat wove its way between the screams.

Franklin shook her head. ‘You haven’t twigged it yet, have you? Yes: the initial incident is twenty-six years cold, but someone dumped your mother’s head in the woods Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. That’s current. Something’s happened to bring him out of retirement.’

She had a point.

The drums got louder. Faster.

She reached across the car and thumped him on the arm. ‘So?’

‘So we chase up the SEB. Fingerprints on the bag, any foreign DNA found on...’ He cleared his throat. ‘On the remains.’

Not his mother’s head. Remains .

‘Correct. Then you put out an appeal for witnesses: anyone in the vicinity of the woods. Dog walkers, courting couples, maybe it’s a dogging hotspot? Get Traffic to stick up a couple of those “Were you here on the eighth or ninth?” sandwich board things they leave at the site of an accident.’

A single guitar chord sounded, long and trembling.

‘Yeah... Only they won’t do it for me: I haven’t got a budget to give them. It’s Blakey’s case and he’ll do sod-all for as long as he can get away with it.’

‘So go round him. Talk to his boss. Get him slapped down.’

Another chord, building on the first.

Callum stared at her for a moment. Then burst out laughing. ‘His boss is the one who got my girlfriend pregnant !’ He held up his cast. ‘Whose face do you think I broke this on? Powel’s not going to help.’

‘HELLO, OLDCASTLE!’

Nothing on the radio but cheering.

Franklin pursed her lips for a moment, then nodded. ‘You’re buggered, then.’

Might as well get that tattooed across his forehead. Save time.

The Blackburgh Roundabout loomed up ahead, the library in the middle dark and lifeless, while lights blazed in Montgomery Park — just past it, on the right. Marquees and anti-aircraft spotlights, a blimp shaped like a massive tartan spider. Its legs trembled in the rain. Yeah, because that wasn’t going to give all the kids within a three-mile radius nightmares for months.

‘Wicker Man, Wicker Man, they’re dancing while you burn inside, / Run and hide, Wicker Man, your heart’s pumping formaldehyde...’

Franklin’s phone rang and she dug it out, tossed it across the car to Callum, then killed the radio. ‘Put it on speaker.’

He did, holding the mobile out and keeping his mouth shut.

‘Rosalind? It’s Mother. Where are you? We’ve been worried.’

‘Coming up to the Calderwell Bridge, just heading back to the shop now. Did you get your warrant to search Tod Monaghan’s home?’

‘Change of plan — I need you at Kings Park, east entrance.’ Pause. ‘And you can tell Callum he can come too.’

Franklin raised an eyebrow. ‘Callum? I don’t—’

‘They didn’t make me a detective inspector just because I’m pretty, Rosalind. Now, bottoms in gear, children. We’ve got ourselves a body.’

Franklin hunched her shoulders, rain drumming on her Crimestoppers umbrella, picking her way down the gravel path from the car park.

Callum limped along beside her, bundled up in a high-viz jacket, sticking close to stay dry.

Wet grass glistened in the fading light, big rhododendron bushes lurking in the gloom, leaves just starting to turn on the trees. The fancy sandstone bulk of Dundas House lorded it over the manicured grounds — a massive Brideshead Revisited tribute act, covered with pillars and twiddly carved bits — caught in the glare of a dozen spotlights, making it glow beneath the dark sky.

But that was nothing compared to the light show on the opposite side of the river.

Montgomery Park was lit up like a Ferris wheel. Marquees bright as lightbulbs. That looming spider dirigible. Spotlights raking the low grey cloud, the beams solid in the downpour. The pulsing thump and rumble of drum and bass pulsing out across the water like a giant heartbeat.

‘Which way?’

Callum pointed.

A line of blue-and-white ‘Police’ tape turned and whirled in the rain, blocking off the path a hundred yards further on, where the ground fell away towards the river.

They ducked under it and picked their way down the damp stairs to another gravel path, this one bordered by a knee-high stone wall. Probably there to stop the dog walkers and joggers from tumbling down the six feet of muddy bank and into the Kings River.

An aluminium ladder was tied to a couple of metal cleats sticking out the far side of the wall.

Callum peered over the edge.

Down at the bottom of the ladder, two SEB technicians in blue Tyvek Smurf suits squatted beside the broken-ragdoll figure of a man. He’d lost his T-shirt somewhere along the way and gained a deep gash across his back, but the faded prison tats on his arms and wrists were all the ID needed. It was ‘Tod’ from Strummuir Smokehouse, skin all pale and blotchy in the fading light, face buried in the mud of the river bank.

‘Hrmmm...’ Franklin’s face puckered. ‘That him?’

‘Yup.’ Callum stuck two fingers in his mouth and battered out a harsh whistle.

One of the techs turned and looked up, face completely hidden by the facemask and safety goggles. ‘What?’

‘Have you gone through his pockets yet?’

‘One smartphone, deceased. One wallet full of papier-mâché receipts, two soggy fivers, a couple of sodden business cards, and an Irn-Bru-flavour condom. One handkerchief. A pound eighty-six in change. And a set of keys.’

Callum turned and grinned at Franklin. ‘And you know what keys mean, don’t you?’

He pulled out his phone and called Mother.

Bellfield Road stretched away into the distance, a long straight street of three-storey terraced granite. No front gardens, just a slab of pavement in front of the slab-faced buildings. A wee shop on the corner was boarded up, tentacles of black soot reaching out across the grey stone. The corner opposite was an aromatherapist’s with bars on the windows.

And three doors down, in a block acned in satellite dishes, was number 39. It was one of the few buildings with an attic conversion — an ugly Dutch-barn-style lump of black slate stitched to the top floor. Dirty windows in dirt-streaked UPVC surrounds.

An intercom unit hung by a couple of brightly coloured wires, but the flat numbers on the panel still had names attached. ‘TOD MONAGHAN’ was printed in green ink next to ‘TOP FLOOR LEFT’.

Callum struggled his way into a blue nitrile glove, not easy with one hand in a cast, and slipped the keys out of their evidence bag. ‘We ready?’