Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Mother and Franklin nodded from beneath the Crimestoppers brolly. Standing off to one side, McAdams grunted, rain thumping on the wide brim of his brown leather hat. His face was paler than usual, the lines deeper across his forehead and chin. As if yesterday’s chemotherapy had been carved there with a Stanley knife.

‘OK.’ Keys one through three didn’t work, but number four did.

Inside, the building didn’t live up to its grim exterior. Instead it was painted a cheery shade of sandy yellow. Bright hall lights in fake-Tiffany lampshades. Pot plants curling out across the landing windowsills.

Callum led the way up the stairs.

By the time they reached the top floor, McAdams was puffing and wheezing, one hand pressed against his stomach. Face pale and shiny.

Top Floor Left had a green door with a welcome mat out front and a potted lily growing in a stand.

Callum knocked.

Mother rubbed McAdams’ back as he hunched over. ‘There, there. It’s OK. You just catch your breath.’

Another knock.

Still nothing.

So Callum went through the keys again. Number Three unlocked the green door with a click .

He eased it open with his gloved hand.

Gloom.

‘Boss?’

She shook her head. ‘You and Rosalind can go first. Andy and me — we’ll wait here for a minute. Rest our old bones.’

He stepped over the threshold.

A small irregular-shaped hallway with a coat rack by the door. Leather jacket. Parka with furry hood. Dog lead hanging like a noose.

‘Hello?’

A door led off to the right: bedroom. Shrouded in shadow, but clean, tidy, bed made.

Franklin looked back, over her shoulder. ‘He shouldn’t be out here.’

‘Who shouldn’t?’

Next door: a galley kitchen, barely wide enough to turn around in. Mugs hanging from hooks beneath the wall units. Plates, bowls, and glasses lined up in the dishrack on the draining board. Spotless cooker.

‘DS McAdams. Why haven’t they forced him to go off on the sick? He’s clearly not coping. Should be at home, or in hospital.’

‘He doesn’t want to go home; he wants to make a difference before he dies. What’s wrong with that?’

Straight ahead: bathroom. Dancing penguins on the shower curtain. Wooden toilet seat. Splodge-free mirror on the medicine cabinet. The sweet lemony scent of bathroom cleaner.

‘He needs help. Look at him. How is that healthy?’

Callum glanced down the hall towards the landing. McAdams was still bent double, Mother rubbing his back and talking in a voice too low to make out.

‘What are they supposed to do, suspend him? Even if they say they’re doing it for health reasons, it’d be a PR disaster: “Police Scotland sack brave cancer hero!”’

‘He’s going to die here.’

Probably.

One door left. It swung open on a living room.

Oh...

The rest of the flat might have been immaculate, but the living room? Not so much.

Franklin squeezed past him. ‘Bloody hell.’

One window gave a view across the rain-slicked rooftops to the vast steel and concrete bird’s nest of the City Stadium. The setting sun turned everything to fire and darkness as it burned its way through the gap between clouds and earth. Painting the living room in warm shades of bronze and amber.

The other window didn’t give any view at all — it was completely covered in hardcore pornography. Sheets and sheets of it, Sellotaped to the glass. The couch was pushed back against one wall, clearing a space in the middle of the room for a wooden coffee table covered in plastic sheeting. And right in the middle of that , a mahogany-coloured body, curled up on its side, hands against its chest, knees against them, head bent forward at an impossible angle so the face was hidden.

The air was thick with the cosy enveloping smell of wood smoke.

Callum licked his lips. ‘Yeah...’

Franklin puffed out a breath. ‘Bloody hell. It was him. Tod Monaghan was Imhotep.’

And now he was dead, washed up on the river bank, facedown in the mud.

It was over.

No one else was going to die.

Ashlee’s head made a dull ringing noise as it thumped back into the metal tank. She sniffed. Blinked. Stared up into the darkness. ‘And I’m sorry, Billy. I’m sorry I made fun of your lisp in Mrs Roslin’s class. I’m totally, totally sorry.’

The rats were asleep again, but they’d hollowed her out. Now the only things left were the jabbing pain in her stomach and the throbbing fire in her skull. It washed against the back of her eyes, like waves on a pebble beach. Hissing . In and out. And in. And out. And in. And out...

‘And I’m sorry, Mr Khan. I’m sorry I used to steal Mars Bars from your shop. I’m sorry, I was stupid, and I’m sorry.’

There weren’t many tears left, and the words were getting more and more difficult to make with her scorched-earth mouth and sandpaper throat. A tongue like a strip of cork matting, like they used to have in the kitchen before Dad ripped it out. Before he ripped everything out.

The words hurt, but what else could she do?

Dying.

All alone.

Here in this tub of manky water that she can’t drink without being sick.

Dying.

In the dark.

There was nothing left, but to say sorry. Sorry for every horrible thing she’d done in her thirteen long horrible years on this cold horrible earth.

Saying it over and over. Grinding through her life: full of lies and petty hurts and jealousies and spite and spit and cruelty. Again and again. Remembering new horrors with every repetition.

Like binge-watching the worst box-set ever.

‘And I’m sorry, Marline. I’m sorry for everything.’ She scraped in a deep, gritty breath. ‘I’m sorry for not being a better friend. I’m sorry for saying you looked like a fat minger all those times. I’m sorry for stealing your lunch money in primary seven. I’m sorry for breaking your hair-straighteners and blaming it on Sarah MacIver. I’m sorry I told everyone you had herpes in second year when it was just a cold sore. I’m sorry for snogging Peter and saying I didn’t. I’m sorry for shagging Peter and saying I didn’t.’

A little laugh turned into a sob. ‘He was crap, by the way.’

The darkness blurred, and when she blinked, the shapes lurking out there refused to come back into focus. Her mother was little more than a fuzzy blob, slumped against the wall, chain tight around her neck.

‘And... and I’m sorry, Mummy. I’m completely utterly sorry. I was so horrible to you and you didn’t deserve it and I’m a horrible bitch and I lied all those times and I stole and I cheated and...’ Her breath rattled like a half-empty cereal box. ‘And I let him in! Oh God...’ The metal tub rang with the sound of her slamming her head back against it. Once. Twice. Three times. The chain around her neck rattling and clanking. Smashing her head back harder and harder till it drowned out the burning waves inside her brain. ‘I let him in and now you’re dead and I’m sorry . I’m sorry, Mummy. It’s all my fault...’

But her mother couldn’t forgive her, because her mother was dead.

So Ashlee waited till the sobbing stopped, and the stabbing pains in her stomach faded to a muffled scream, then went back to the start.

‘I’m... I’m sorry, Mrs Buchan, for... for stealing money from your purse when you babysitted me...’

Because what else could she do?

Callum’s phone finally went to voicemail. He gave the old man in Flat Six a pained smile. ‘Sorry about that.’

Heat pervaded the living room, throbbing out of the fake coal fire beneath the fake mantelpiece. A single standard lamp glowed in the corner, fighting against the dark rainy night and losing. Not one picture or photo on the wall. No books on the shelves, just a collection of dusty porcelain cat ornaments.