Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

He sighed, slumping slightly, feeling the weight of his new responsibilities. Who was he kidding, he couldn’t afford to lose his job. Not now there was—

‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t ace paperboy, Colin Miller.’ Edinburgh accent, deep voice, right behind him.

Colin spun around to see Brendan ‘Chib’ Sutherland leaning casually against a big silver Mercedes. Oh Christ, what now? ‘Er... Mr Sutherland, nice to see you again...?’

Chib shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t think so, Colin. I don’t think it’s going to be very nice at all. Shall we go for a little ride? We can take my car.’

‘I... er...’ He took a couple of steps back, clutching the laptop bag like a shield, and bumped into a solid mass. It was Chib’s mate, standing right behind him. ‘I can’t, I have—’

Chib held up a finger. ‘I insist.’

A large pair of hands wrapped around Colin’s upper arms and forced him into the back of the waiting car. Slithering over the leather seats to the far side, he scrabbled for the handle, but nothing happened — the child lock was on. He turned to see Chib slide onto the back seat with him, closing the door with a solid clunk. ‘Now then,’ said the man he’d called a wannabe Weegie, pulling a pair of poultry shears from his coat pocket. The curved blades glinted in the grey evening light. ‘My associate is going to drive us somewhere nice and quiet, where we can be alone. I need to ask you some questions and you’ll need to scream.’

Six forty and Logan was legging it away from HQ — Marks and Spencer for a bunch of scarlet roses, back along Union Street, stopping off at Oddbins for the second time that day: sparkling Chardonnay from the chiller cabinet. Then hell for leather round the corner and down Marischal Street, getting to the flat’s communal front door with thirty seconds to spare. Puffing and wheezing, he let himself in, clambered up the stairs, and got into the flat just after the stroke of seven.

Silence.

Somehow he’d been expecting soft candlelight, romantic music, the smell of something nice simmering away on the stove. He did a quick tour of the flat, but it was cold and empty. ‘Bastard.’ He stuck the fizzy in the fridge, the roses in a dusty vase and the heating to ON. It clunked, pinged and rattled as he stripped off and clambered into the shower. Running around like an idiot had left him pouring with sweat. He could hear the phone ringing while he fought with the shampoo bottle, but let the machine pick it up. Whatever it was, it could wait. And that’s when the thought occurred to him that it might be DI Steel, calling to thank him for landing her in it with Insch. Screwing her over. After all she’d done for him — which would have been laughable yesterday, but that was before Professional Standards had bent over backwards to play down the complaint from Sandy the Snake. Why couldn’t he have come up with a nice convincing lie? Something that would have defused DI Insch, but kept Steel out of it. He groaned. She was going to kill him.

By the time he’d climbed out of the shower and into some clean clothes the flat was warming up nicely, but there was still no sign of Jackie. She clattered in fifteen minutes later, swearing under her breath and struggling with half a dozen carrier bags. ‘Ever tried shopping in town with your arm in a cast? Don’t, it’s a bastarding nightmare.’ She froze, staring past him at the vase on the kitchen table. ‘You bought flowers?’

‘And champagne. Well, not champagne-champagne: it’s Australian, but it’s supposed to be good.’

Jackie smiled. ‘You know, Mr McRae, sometimes you’re not so bad.’ She dumped all her bags on the carpet, wrapped her arms round his neck — accidentally bashing him one on the head with her plaster cast — and planted a big, soggy kiss on his lips. Logan worked his way through the buttons on her blouse, opening it wide to expose—

‘What the hell is this?’ He took a step back and stared in horror at the huge, industrial lace construct that imprisoned Jackie’s chest. ‘I thought you were going to buy some new bras and pants: this thing looks like the Forth Rail Bridge!’

‘This,’ she said, snapping the bra strap with pride, ‘is the Triumph Doreen: best-selling bra in the world. Get used to it.’

Logan flinched. ‘Are you seriously going to be wearing this?’

‘Hey, I’m running after some scumbag: you want my boobs bouncing up and down like watermelons in a sock, getting all saggy? You want me to have saggy boobs? That what you want?’ Logan had to admit that no, he didn’t. Trying not to think about the Bra From Hell, he pulled her close and kissed her.

Jackie closed her eyes, leaning into him, enjoying the heat of their bodies pressed against each other, unaware that Logan’s gaze had strayed to the little red light flashing away on the answering machine. The winking, baleful eye of a guilty conscience.

The woods were deep and dark, the faint slivers of sky visible between the trees fading from tarnished silver to graveyard black in the dying light. A cough rattled feebly in the small clearing, a wet, sick sound that finished in a dribble of blood. With a small start, Colin Miller realized it was him. He’d been somewhere... somewhere dark and warm, but now he was back. Cramp in his legs, cramp in his shoulders, numb everywhere else. He’d stand up in a minute. Just as soon as the feeling died down. Just as soon as his shoulders and legs stopped hurting. Just as soon as... darkness.

Sparks of white and yellow exploded through his head, shoving him back, tipping the lawn chair over, sending him crashing backwards into the leaves, his arms and legs still strapped to the seat. Unable to move. And then the real pain starts, not the cramp — that’s nothing, this is like fire! Like someone’s taking a blowtorch to his hands. Burning his hands! He opened his mouth and screamed.

‘Evening, handsome. Nice to see you’re awake.’ A pause, filled with Colin Miller’s screams, then, ‘Pick him up, will you, Greg? And see if you can’t get him to shut up.’

Large hands grabbed the front of Colin’s shirt, dragging him up until the lawn chair was back on its feet. He screamed again, but something hard smacked into his cheek and the taste of fresh blood filled his mouth. The cry faded to a whimper.

A face loomed out of the growing darkness: cropped white hair, perfect teeth, eyes like holes carved in marble. ‘There we go! That wasn’t so bad now, was it?’ Miller didn’t answer and the bastard from Edinburgh just shrugged. ‘OK, Greg, you can untie his hands.’

Oh God, his hands! Someone fumbled with the cable ties holding his wrists to the back of the chair, and then they were free... He pulled his hands round to see how badly they’d been burned. And screamed again as it all came flooding back. The searing pain of flesh parting, the noise of bones and cartilage snapping apart.

‘Oh Christ, again with the bloody screaming?’

This time Greg didn’t need to be told, just balled up a fist and smashed it into Miller’s face. He crashed sideways to the ground, still attached to the chair by his ankles, sprawling out on the forest floor, staring at his ruined hands. Sobbing.

‘Now then, Colin, there’s just two more items on the agenda before we’re finished here. First one is this...’ Chib dropped down and stuck a photo into Colin’s face. Blocking his view of the stumps. It was from Miller’s wallet: Isobel, standing on the balcony of a hotel in Spain. There was a smudge of blood in the top left corner, where Chib’s latex glove had touched it. ‘Good-looking woman. Now, Colin, if I even think you’ve been hanging about with the police again, I’m going to finish the job on you, and then I’m going to make her very, very ugly.’ He took the photo back, kissed it and slipped it into his inside pocket. ‘Item number two is just a wee matter of tidying things up.’ Something hard and cold bounced off Colin’s face, then another one, and another and another. Chunks of fingers, each a single bone long, raining down from the sky. ‘I want you to eat them.’