Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

‘As I see it, we’ve got two options: I refund your mortgage payments and we get the title deeds transferred into my and Elaine’s names, or we buy you out at the current market value and you pay off half the mortgage.’

Or maybe they hadn’t been happy at all. Maybe he ’d been happy, but Elaine was miserable. Maybe she was already shagging Powel behind his back. The pair of them laughing at how stupid he was.

‘Though, if I were you I’d go for the first one. The market being what it is, you’d probably end up losing out on the deal. At least if you take the cash you’ll get something out of it.’

Poor stupid gullible little Callum. Buying twee lamps, when everything around him was lies .

‘What do you say, have we got a deal? Like adults?’ Powel stuck out his hand for shaking.

Callum stared at it, then at the lamp.

Bared his teeth.

Slammed the lamp back down, grabbed the nearest box, and marched out of the flat.

Callum loaded the last box of books into the back of the Mondeo. Looked up at flat 3F-1.

Standing out here, you’d never guess—

Sodding hell. Callum pulled out his phone. ‘What?’

Nothing.

He checked the caller display: ‘NUMBER WITHHELD’.

Not this again.

‘Look, whoever you are, I’m not in the mood, OK? I’ve had a crappy day, so you can take your phone and jam it up—’

‘Piggy?’ A little girl’s voice, broken and jagged. Her breathing jerky and trembling, punctuated by damp gurgling sniffs.

‘Willow?’

‘He’s here! He’s... he’s come... he’s come back.’

Callum closed the Mondeo’s boot. ‘Who’s come back?’

‘Dad. Dad’s come back...’

The man who’d broken his four-year-old daughter’s arm as a farewell present.

Right.

Callum marched around to the front of the car and climbed in behind the wheel. ‘Where are you?’

‘He’s in there with Mum and Pinky and the baby!’

‘OK. You stay away from him. I’ll be there soon as I can.’ Callum turned the key and put the Mondeo into drive. Stuck his foot down. The fingers of his good hand reached for the ‘999’ button mounted on the dashboard, and the car’s siren wailed into the rain, blue-and-white lights flickering behind the radiator grille — reflected back by the wet road.

Callum fumbled his Airwave handset out, the thing lumpy and awkward in his broken hand, working the buttons with his thumb. ‘DC MacGregor to Control, I’ve got report of a domestic at forty-five B Manson Avenue, Kingsmeath.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Yes, “Oh aye”. There’s a grade one flag on that property, I need backup—’

‘I’m going to stop you there, Detective Constable. There’s no flag on that house.’

‘I asked for one days ago!’

‘Aye, well I’m looking at the system now, and there isn’t.’

‘Oh for God’s sake...’

Shops and cars and cones flashed past the Mondeo’s windows. Then the industrial span of the Calderwell Bridge.

‘Who have you got in the area?’

‘Dawson and Cooper, but they’re dealing with an assault.’

Right at the roundabout, the tyres screeching on the wet tarmac.

‘Soon as they’re done, get them over to Manson Avenue.’

‘Aye, well, I’ll do my best, but—’

‘But you can’t promise anything. Yeah, I know.’ He let go of the button. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

Callum swung the car hard left onto Munro Place, tearing up the hill, over the top and down the other side. Threw the Mondeo around onto Manson Avenue.

The depressing rows of flat-faced houses with their tiny weed-strewn gardens reared up on either side, the road lined with parked cars in various stages of decay.

Thirty-nine. Forty-one. Forty-three. There: forty-five.

He jammed on the brakes and slid the car to a halt, right outside. Clambered into the rain, just in time to see a big black Mercedes disappear into the distance.

‘PIGGY?’ That same little girl’s voice, shouting over the wailing siren, sounding so much younger than the last time they’d met.

He turned and puffed out his cheeks. ‘YOU OK?’

Willow peered out at him from behind a parked VW Beetle. ‘YOU CAME.’

‘SAID I WOULD, DIDN’T I?’ Callum reached back into the Mondeo and killed the lights and siren.

A couple of curtains twitched on the other side of the road, but other than that Manson Avenue was silent.

Callum nodded at the house. ‘He still in there?’

She shook her head. Bit her top lip. ‘I wasn’t scared or nothing.’ A sniff and a shrug. ‘Just called you, you know, for Pinky’s sake, like. Cos Benny was worried bout her, yeah?’

‘Course he was.’ The small drift of plastic toys had disappeared from the front garden, leaving it to the weeds. Callum marched up the path.

The front door lay wide open.

He knocked anyway. ‘Hello?’

No answer.

The hallway was cold, the wallpaper stained and peeling in the corner above the door. A selection of brightly coloured kids’ coats rainbowed a rack on one side. A cracked mirror on the other, reflecting back a spider’s-web kaleidoscope.

‘Hello? Anyone in?’ Callum turned back to Willow. ‘What’s your mum’s name again?’

A shrug.

Yeah, because when you’re that age, ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ was all the name they needed. Assuming you were lucky enough to still have parents.

A flight of stairs sat beyond the mirror. He rested a hand on the newel post, staring up at the landing. ‘Hello? Miss Brown? Are you all right?’

No answer.

A little face appeared around the balustrade: sticky-out ears and flat monkey nose. That would be the brother, Benny. AKA: Baboon Boy. Only this time there was no hooting, just a damp-eyed stare.

‘Is your mum up there?’

He wiped his face on his sleeve and shook his head.

OK, search downstairs first.

One door at the end of the hall, one on the right. He tried the handle and it opened on a living room just big enough for a saggy armchair covered in throws, a small TV sitting on a tatty sideboard, a stack of kids’ toys, two threadbare beanbags, and a flimsy-looking playpen covered in cartoon characters.

Willow’s mum was in the corner, sitting with her back to the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, blonde hair hanging over her face as she rocked. The toddler — Pinky? — was holding on to her, face a big flushed tear-stained knot of gristle and snot.

Callum peered into the playpen.

The baby was lying on its back, sooking one of its feet, surrounded by yet more plastic tat.

OK, so at least everyone was still alive.

He squatted down in front of the woman in the corner. ‘Miss Brown? It’s PC MacGregor. I was the policeman who brought back Mr Lumpylump? You remember?’

She peered out at him from behind her curtain of hair. Looked away.

Callum tried a smile. ‘I came because I was worried about you. Are you OK?’

She rested her forehead on her knees, voice soft and mushy — as if she’d been drinking. ‘Go way.’

‘Willow and Benny’s dad’s been here, hasn’t he?’

No reply.

‘Did he hurt you?’

No reply.

‘If he hurt you we can do something about it.’

No reply.

Honestly, it was like interviewing a career criminal. Callum settled on the edge of the lone armchair. ‘I know this is hard. It’s not easy when someone you love hurts you. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’ He stared down at the filthy fibreglass cast covering his right hand. ‘But, you know what? If they hurt us this much, maybe they never really loved us at all? Maybe they don’t deserve to be with us. Maybe they never did.’