Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘Callum? Are you OK?’ Mother stood in the Bart’s doorway, hands deep in her pockets, breath curling out into the rainy night.

‘Yeah. Fine.’ Callum tried a smile. ‘Just...’ He picked at the lining of his fibreglass cast — hadn’t even been on a day and already the thing was getting filthy, all greyed and blotchy. Getting it soaked at regular intervals throughout the day probably wasn’t helping. ‘Elaine and DCI Cock-Face want me to move all my stuff out. Today.’

‘Ah.’ She winced. ‘I heard Reece had left his wife. Didn’t know it was for your Elaine. Sorry.’

‘She’s not my anything.’

Mother nodded.

Water rushed in the gutters like filthy little rivers, washed across the paving slabs, hissed against the sign above the pub door, turned the streetlights into glowing spots — septic and angry.

A taxi grumbled past, a couple screaming at each other in the back seat.

‘Callum, do you want a hand moving? It’s not going to be easy with just a bicycle.’

He looked the other way. ‘Actually, I thought I might borrow one of the pool cars. You know, without telling anyone.’

‘Hmmm... Better take the Mondeo, then. You’ll get more in the back of an estate.’

‘Thanks, Boss.’

She made a tutting noise, then patted him on the back. ‘Have you got anywhere to store your things?’

Ah.

There was that.

Because if Powel and Elaine thought they were keeping all the furniture and kitchen stuff he’d bought for the flat, they could carve that thought on a six-foot granite slab and shove it up their collective backsides. And there was no way it was all going to fit in Dotty’s spare room. Never mind all the books.

Mother rolled her eyes. ‘Men: you’re sweetly pretty things, and we wouldn’t be without you for the world, but your little heads just aren’t suited to the practicalities of life.’ She pulled a jailer’s bundle of keys from her fleece pocket and worked a small Yale from one of the many rings. ‘Here. My Jack has a lockup in Cowskillin: twenty-three Washington Lane, round the back of the processing plant. I’m sure it’s all pornography and empty whisky bottles in there, but try not to make too much of a mess.’

Callum took the key. ‘Thanks.’

A small green Toyota hatchback pulled onto the street, headlights shining back from the wet road. It parked four buildings up, outside ‘DOUGIE’S “FAMOUS” CHIPPER! ~ PIZZAS KEBABS & BAKED TATTIES TOO’. The Toyota switched off its headlights and sat there with the engine running.

‘And if you finish before midnight, come back and have a proper drink. No more of that orange-juice-and-lemonade nonsense. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Good.’ Another pat. ‘Better get going: I’m doing “Somethin’ Stupid” with Andy in a minute.’ She headed back inside. And thirty seconds later, the car parked outside the chip shop flashed its lights and pulled away from the kerb.

Slid to a halt outside the Dumbarton Arms, right in front of Callum.

The driver’s window buzzed down, filling the night with Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison imploring a postal worker not to sod off without checking their bag again.

Callum hunkered down with his hands on his knees and peered into the car. ‘Can I help you?’

Ex-DS Bob Shannon smiled out at him, voice raised over the Beatles. ‘Detective Constable MacGregor. You and I have an appointment with a child molester.’

Shannon paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, face flushed and shining. ‘Urgh. The smell ... Why does everyone have to pee in the stairwell? Do they not have toilets here?’ He mopped his forehead with a green-and-yellow scarf.

Callum lurched to a halt next to him, breathing hard. Thirteen floors of climbing through the eye-watering reek of other people’s urine and his throat burned. The air even tasted of it: sharp and bitter. ‘He better be in after this.’

Faulkner Heights had to be the mankiest of the seven tower blocks that enclosed this side of the Blackburn Roundabout. Oh, it didn’t look manky from the dual carriageway, or the library, because the council had painted the sides of the building that faced that way. But they’d left the other two sides as dirt-streaked concrete, with all the windows boarded up on the bottom three floors — about as high as a wee scroat could chuck a rock.

They hadn’t bothered painting the inside either. Or dousing it with disinfectant. Though, to be honest, setting fire to the place was probably the only hygienic option.

A pile of bin-bags sat by the lift — beneath the ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign — leaking rancid brown liquid across the floor. A dull yellow stain marked the wall in the corner, flowing down across pale crystalline growths to the ground — the burning stink of fossilised piddle mingling with the bin-bag’s gritty stench.

Graffiti scrawled across the walls: generations of the abandoned, marking their territory in a slightly more permanent way than by peeing on it.

Shannon bared his teeth. ‘About time they pulled this block down and stuck up something nicer. Like a crematorium. Or an abattoir.’ He pointed at Callum. ‘Before we do this, we need some ground rules.’

Callum wiped his good hand across his damp forehead. ‘Go on then.’

‘One: I know you want to kill this guy, but you don’t. Agreed? No beating the living hell out of him, no breaking his fingers, not so much as a Chinese burn.’

‘He—’

‘No. That can’t happen. We’re police officers, or at least I used to be, and that means something. If he’s the one who killed your mother, he goes to prison for a very, very long time. He doesn’t walk free because you played “Batter the Suspect”.’

Callum blew out his cheeks. ‘Fine.’

‘Two: we’re going to Good Cop, Bad Cop it, and you’re playing the good cop.’

Seriously? ‘Come on, you can’t—’

‘No. Non-negotiable. If you’re playing Good Cop you’re less likely to twat him one.’

Callum stared at him. Then away down the dull grey corridor with its graffitied walls. ‘Agreed.’

‘OK, then.’ Shannon leaned on the doorbell, but nothing happened: not so much as a bing-bong from inside. So he drew his fist back and gave the door three loud hard knocks. The kind that let everyone know the police were outside and they were not sodding happy.

Which was probably par for the course down here.

Or, strictly speaking, as they were on the thirteenth floor, up here.

Shannon gave the door another three bangs.

No one came out of the other flats for a gawp. The police hammering on someone’s door had clearly lost its novelty a long time ago.

Callum checked his watch. ‘Maybe he’s out?’

‘Doubt it. From what I’ve heard, Pike’s pretty much a shut-in these days.’ Shannon rolled his shoulders. ‘Think we should kick it in? I’ve not done that in donkeys .’ A grin tugged his grey beard out of shape. ‘I was listening to Radio Four the other day and this guy from the Met said modern UPVC doors can stand up to a battering ram for over half an hour. This thing? One good boot and it’s in.’ He rapped his knuckles against the tatty wooden door. Someone had stolen the numbers off it, leaving just the dents in the paint to spell out ‘13–15’.

‘We haven’t got a warrant. Thought you wanted to do things by the book?’

‘I used to love dunting someone’s door in. It was like opening a present on Christmas Day, never knowing what you were going to get. Would it be a selection box, a pair of leather football boots, or a druggie with a shotgun?’ A sigh. ‘Strange, the things you miss when you retire from the force.’