Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

He curled over his keyboard, face inches from the screen as he typed. Opening up programs, setting things running, clicking and clicking and clicking. ‘You might want to grab a cup of tea, this is going to take a while.’

Callum took a sip of scalding hot tea, wandering the corridors. ‘No, I just wanted to see if there was any news.’

Mother’s voice crackled out of the earpiece as if she were on the other side of the planet, not the other side of the river. ‘Well, Dorothy and John are off looking into Roger Barrett. Probably won’t add anything to the stew, but it’s better to err on the safe side, isn’t it? I want us to have a good squint at Ashlee and Abby Gossard’s movements in the run-up to the abduction. Monaghan must’ve bumped into them somewhere, and far as we know they’ve never been to Strummuir Smokehouse. Which reminds me: we’ve still not had anything back from the CCTV team, so if you wouldn’t mind giving them a prod, that’d be nice.’

‘I’m there now.’

‘Good. And tell Voodoo that Jack and I would love to come to Ian’s party. I’ll be bringing my famous spinach and artichoke dip. Jack will bring his infamous peapod burgundy.’

‘Will do.’

The CCTV control room door was open, offering a view into a dim room lined with screens — each one displaying a different view of Oldcastle. Half a dozen support staff sat at the long central desk, working the joysticks that moved the cameras and eating cake.

‘Callum?’

‘Yes, Boss?’

‘I hear someone broke Blakey this morning.’

That was one way to put it.

‘Yes, Boss.’

‘He’s been signed off on the sick. Stress.’

‘Oh for...’ Callum closed his eyes and thunked his head off the corridor wall. ‘So there’s no one running the case?’

‘I hear you think this paedophile, Gareth Pike, saw what happened to your parents?’

‘How can there be no one running the case? Blakey was useless, but at least he was there !’

‘When you get back to the station, we’ll see what we can do, OK?’

His shoulders sagged. ‘Yes, Boss.’

‘Good. Now, in the meantime, go chase up Voodoo. And remember: spinach dip.’

Callum hung up, put his phone away. Thunked his head off the wall again.

Bloody Blakey. Thunk . Bloody useless half—

‘I hope you’re not putting dents in my lovely headquarters, Callum.’

He picked his head off the wall and turned, faked a smile. ‘Voodoo.’

She was dressed in Police Scotland black, complete with shiny boots and epaulettes on the shoulders of her T-shirt. A small woman, with close-cropped grey hair and arms like a marathon runner. A big broad smile that made the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. ‘I hope you’re here to accept my party invitation?’

‘Thought it would be wise to see a photo of your daughter first.’

‘Cheeky sod.’ Voodoo dug into her pocket and produced her phone, swiping away at the screen. ‘I know you didn’t come all the way over here for that, so what’s the real reason?’

‘Mother wants to know how you’re getting on with the vehicle check for our Johnson Crescent abductions. Vans and big four-by-fours?’

‘Ah yes. Walk this way, young man.’ She turned and marched off, still fiddling with her phone. ‘We’ve run through every ANPR camera in a half-mile radius, and the security footage from all public spaces in the area.’ At the end of the corridor, Voodoo pushed through the double doors and hammered up the stairs, taking them two at a time. ‘Keep up, Callum.’

It wasn’t easy. ‘Did you... did you get... anything?’ Puffing and panting all the way. Tea slopping from side to side in his mug.

She stopped on the landing and held out her phone. ‘There you go.’

A young woman smiled out of the screen: long brown hair, big brown eyes, long thin nose, suntan, huge smile, and a tiny blue bikini.

‘That’s our Becky. Still swithering about coming to the party?’

‘Well, if I wasn’t breathing heavy already...’

‘Good boy. She likes sauvignon blanc.’ And Voodoo was off again. ‘I’ve got a long-list of about a hundred vehicles, but we’ve narrowed it down to three likely targets: a small grey Peugeot Bipper, a rust-brown Bedford Rascal, and a green Fiat Fiorino. There’s a lot of four-by-fours, but these are the vans that get my juices flowing.’

A young man emerged into the corridor, did a double-take. ‘Chief Inspector.’ Then flattened himself against the wall as Voodoo strode past.

‘Get the kettle on, Williams. I’m gasping.’ She kept on going.

‘Yes, Chief Inspector.’

She swung through a door near the end, and into a large office with one whole wall given over to at least two dozen TVs. A coffee table and a couch sat in front of them, along with a phone and a wireless keyboard. Voodoo perched herself on the edge of the couch and fiddled with the keyboard.

Pictures sprang into life across the screens: a curling cobbled street in Castle Hill, the bus station on Dalrymple Street, three views of Harvest Lane’s rows of nightclubs, the car park just inside The Swinney, two views of Camburn Woods, then MacKinnon Quay, the school on Preston Row, Montgomery Park with its collection of marquees and big inflatable spider... On and on, peering into other people’s lives — like being God, or GCHQ.

‘Take a seat, Callum, you’re making my office look untidy.’

‘Sorry.’ He sank into the couch next to her and stuck his mug on the coffee table as she did some more fiddling. ‘Don’t suppose any of these vehicles were registered to a Tod Monaghan, were they?’

‘No.’

‘Oh...’ Well, it was never going to be that easy, was it? Monaghan would be driving someone else’s van. Maybe without them even knowing.

The monitors divided up into three huge pictures, stretched across multiple screens. A green van in one, a manky orange-brown van in another, and a grey van in the third. All small vehicles, nowhere near as large as a Transit, and all waiting to go through a different set of traffic lights.

Their number plates sat in a caption box at the top of each image.

‘We’ve got them going into the vicinity of Johnson Crescent between seven and eight, and coming out again between quarter past eight and twenty to nine. And by the way, you owe me six bags of doughnuts — getting my team to drop everything and slog through all that footage required bribery.’ She poked at the keyboard again and the images on the screen pulsed like a slideshow as each of the vehicles were picked up on various CCTV and ANPR cameras across the city. ‘We followed them as far through the system as we could, but...’ a shrug, ‘sadly the powers that be won’t let me put cameras on every street in the city. If they did, just imagine what we could achieve!’

‘Constant and total surveillance, an Orwellian nightmare, only instead of “Big Brother” you’d be “Little Sister”?’

Voodoo smiled. Sighed. ‘Ah well, a girl can dream, can’t she?’ Then jogged over to her desk and pulled a sheet of paper from a tray. Held it out. ‘All three vehicles’ registered owners and addresses, plus first and last confirmed locations on camera.’

Callum stood and took the sheet. ‘Thanks, Voodoo, you’re a star.’

‘I am, aren’t I?’ She frowned at him. ‘Callum, do you want a little friendly advice?’

No.

‘You’ve had a bad run of late. Don’t let it colour everything that happens to you.’ She gave him a small hug. ‘And come to my party: Becky’s a yoga instructor. Very flexible.’

Winston Smith peered out over the top of his glasses. ‘Well, yes, Winston did say you should go away and get a cup of tea, but the key part of that sentence is that you should go away .’