Читать книгу A Dark So Deadly - Stuart MacBride - Страница 13

Wet bin-bags shifted beneath his feet, popping and crackling, crunching and slithering in the rain. Hard not to imagine the surface opening up and swallowing them whole. Pulling them further and further down to drown in its reeking depths.

God that was cheery.

Mother and McAdams struggled on beside him, clinging on to each other to stay upright on the bin-bag sea. They must have made quite a sight: all three of them, dressed in matching blue outfits that were about as flattering as a dose of dysentery, shuffling their way through the rubbish towards the SOC tent.

It stood, a grimy shade of white, poking out of the bin-bag ocean like an iceberg. Or some vast grubby tooth.

Mother sniffed behind her mask. ‘What do we know about our victim?’

‘Nothing.’ McAdams picked his way past a slimy mass of something. ‘DCI Powel was even more inscrutable than usual. Probably got his nose out of joint because he had to hand it over to us.’

‘Poor darling. Still, as long as it’s a murder and we’re investigating it, I’m happy.’

McAdams let go with one hand and placed it against his chest, launching into a wobbly but not unpleasant baritone:

‘People dismembered with axes and chainsaws,

Someone’s been strangled with wire or some string,

A stabbing, a beating, a fresh torture victim,

These are a few of my favourite things …’

‘Oh, very good. I like that.’ She struggled on a couple of steps. ‘Thought you were on haikus today.’

‘Decided to branch out a bit.’

A cordon of yellow-and-black tape encircled the SOC tent, the words ‘CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER’ rippling and spinning in the wind. Every gust making the plastic tape growl. Water ran down the tent’s walls, dripping off the sagging roof.

Mother motioned to Callum and he held up the cordon so she could duck under and slip inside. McAdams stopped right next to him, voice low, just audible through the facemask. ‘In the three weeks you’ve been here, you’ve done nothing but moan, whinge, and disappoint. But if you compromise my crime scene, I’ll make you wish Dugdale still had your balls in his fist. Understand?’

Callum just stared back.

‘Good.’ He turned and pushed through into the tent.

Count to ten.

Don’t let him get to you.

Deep breath.

Callum pulled his shoulders back and followed McAdams inside.

Rain thudded against the tent’s roof. The wind moaned through the gaps in the plastic, making the walls shudder. Technically, you could have parked a couple of patrol cars in here and still had room for a police motorbike, but instead it was home to a small diesel generator and four workplace lights on six-foot stands.

The stench was something special – so thick it was almost chewy, trapped by the tent’s walls and roof, amplified by the warmth of decomposition, and soured with diesel exhaust fumes.

Four figures in the full Smurf kit were kneeling around a hole dug into the rubbish, right in the middle of the tent.

Mother joined them and clapped her hands, raising her voice over the rain and the generator. ‘Come on then, what have you got for me?’

One of the figures straightened up with a groan, both hands pressed into the small of his back. ‘Mummy.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t mind a little informality, young man, but that’s going a bit too far.’

‘Not you.’ He pulled down his facemask, showing off a round sweaty face with tiny pursed lips. Like someone had pumped a cherub up on steroids and pies. ‘In the hole: it’s a mummy. Your actual, curse-of-the-Pharaohs, from-the-leathery-mists-of-time, mummy.’

‘Really?’ Mother inched her way to the very edge and peered down.

‘Or it might be a daddy. Difficult to tell without unfolding the limbs, and I get the feeling they’ll snap off if we do that. Teabag tends to frown on our dismembering corpses before he’s had a chance to post mortem them.’ He dug out a scrap of cloth and dabbed at his shiny face. ‘Gah. Like a sauna in here.’

McAdams stepped up beside Mother. ‘Ah …’

Callum crept around to the opposite side of the hole, bin-bags shifting beneath his blue-booteed feet, and leaned out over the edge.

The SOC team had shored up the sides of their excavation with sheets of corrugated iron, which held back the mass of garbage, but did nothing to stop the grey-brown liquid seeping out underneath it.

Their body lay on its side at the bottom of the hole, about eight feet down, where the liquid was deepest. Elbows tight in against its ribs, hands drawn up to its chest, knees hard up against them, feet tucked in to the body. Its neck was bent hard forward, so the face was completely hidden by the hands and knees. So far, so murdery, but it was the skin that gave it away. Instead of being all blotched with mould and falling apart it was creased and leathery. Darkened to a dirty mahogany. The only ear visible had shrivelled up till it resembled a dried apricot, clinging to the side of its bald head.

Callum raised his eyebrows. ‘Now there’s a sight you don’t see every day.’

Mother’s fists clenched at her sides. ‘That rotten, two-faced, lying bastard!’

The oversized sweaty cherub in the SOC suit wiped his glistening forehead. ‘At a guess, it’s got to be about, what … a thousand years old?’

‘I should have known! Thought they’d finally given me a proper murder, but no. That was asking too much, wasn’t it?’ She turned and stomped out of the tent.

McAdams didn’t follow her, just shouted over his shoulder instead. ‘Where are you going?’

Her voice faded away into the distance. ‘To tell DCI Powel exactly where he can stick his thousand-year-old mummy!’

The only sound in the tent was the hammering rain and the growling generator.

‘Hmmm …’ McAdams squatted down, one hand on the bin-bag next to him. ‘The body’s naked. Wonder what happened to all the bandages.’ He glanced up at the Cherub. ‘It’s a mummy, it should be all wrapped up.’

‘Don’t look at me.’

Callum eased himself down to his haunches, holding onto the top of a corrugated sheet. No way he was risking an eight-foot plummet into a paddling pool of rancid bin water. ‘They’ve got a mummy just like it in Elgin Museum. On display, naked in a big bell jar. Some Victorian bloke brought it back from Peru: suppose he unwrapped it so the viewing public could get a good look at a real-life dead body.’ A small smile shifted against his facemask. ‘We used to go there when I was a wee boy. Me and Alastair would …’ Yes. Well. The less said about that the better.

McAdams grunted, then stood. Turned to face the sweaty cherub. ‘Don’t suppose we’ve got any clue who dumped it here, do we?’

One of the other Smurfs looked up from the contents of a ruptured refuse sack. ‘Nah. Back in the good old days, there’d be envelopes and letters and newspapers all through this stuff – dates and addresses in every bag. Now?’ He shook his head. ‘Recycling: bane of our lives.’

McAdams wiped his hands together. ‘Soon as Dr Twining’s seen the remains, get them bagged, tagged, and down the mortuary. And if he gives you any grief about it being a waste of his valuable time, tell him tough. Don’t see why we should be the only ones.’ A click of the fingers, held high overhead, as if McAdams was summoning a waiter in a sitcom. ‘Constable MacGregor: we’re leaving. Turns out this is more of a short story than a fully-fledged novel.’

Callum stayed where he was, sniffing the air. ‘Can you smell that?’

‘I said, “We’re leaving.”’

‘No, underneath all the rotting rubbishy smell, there’s something else. Wood smoke? Like there’s been a fire?’

‘Don’t look at me.’ The Cherub shook his head. ‘Fifteen minutes in here and you go nose-blind. Can’t smell a thing.’

McAdams’ voice boomed from outside the tent: ‘CONSTABLE MACGREGOR! HEEL!’

The Cherub shrugged. ‘His master’s voice.’

Don’t suppose it mattered anyway. What was one extra smell on top of all the others?

Callum stood, wiped his gloves on his legs, and slipped back out into the rain.

Halfway back across the slippery bin-bags, his phone launched into its default ringtone. Sodding hell. He peeled off his right glove and fought the bare hand into his SOC suit. Pulled out his phone. Kept on walking. ‘Hello?’

‘Ah, hello. Am I speaking to Detective Constable Callum MacGregor?’

He checked the number. Nope, no idea who it was. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Good, good. This is Alex from Professional Standards, we’d like you to pop in for a wee chat.’

Oh God.

‘How does tomorrow morning sound? I know it’s taken us a while to get round to it, but better late than never, yes?’

No.

‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘Excellent. Let’s say … Oh, that’s lucky: I can fit you in at seven. First thing in the morning, then you can get on with your day without having to worry about it.’

Might as well get it over with – like ripping off a sticking plaster, wrenching all the hair out with it. ‘Right. Yes. Seven tomorrow morning.’

After all, what was the worst that could happen?

They could fire him. Prosecute him. And send him to prison.

‘Good, good. See you then.’ Alex from Professional Standards hung up.

It would be fine. It would.

Callum put his phone away. ‘Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.’

He crunched his way through the bin-bags to McAdams’ shiny new Mitsubishi Shogun. The lanky git was leaning on the roof of Mother’s scabby Fiat Panda, one hand making lazy circles in the air as she peeled herself out of her Smurf outfit. Probably working on new ways to make Callum’s life even worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough already.

Professional Standards.

Gah …

He yanked open the passenger door and pinged his blue nitrile gloves into the footwell. Tore off his SOC suit and bundled it up.

They didn’t have anything on him.

They couldn’t – he hadn’t done anything.

Yeah, but when did that ever stop anyone?

He scowled at his crumpled suit. What was the point taking it back to the station and sticking it in the bin, it was just going to end up right back here anyway. Callum hurled it away. It spun, unfurling in mid-air like a shed skin, before tumbling to the filthy ground.

And when he turned back to the car, there was Dugdale grinning at him from the back seat.

‘Oh … sod off.’

The municipal tip shrank in the rear-view mirror. McAdams shifted behind the wheel, dug a packet of gum from his pocket and crunched down a little white rectangle. ‘Right, you know what’s coming next, don’t you?’

Sitting behind him, Dugdale scowled out of the window. ‘I want a lawyer.’

‘Not talking to you, Ainsley, I’m talking to our special little friend, Constable Crime Scene here.’

Callum folded his arms. ‘If it’s more haikus, I’m putting in for a transfer.’

‘Don’t let me stop you. First call all the museums. See whose mummy’s gone.’

He stared across the car. ‘Oh you have got to be kidding—’

‘One of them’s lost a mummy. I’ll bet if you beaver away super hard for the next two or three months, you’ll find out which one.’ He smiled. ‘Unless you’re too busy resigning, of course? Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.’

‘Oh for … Why can’t Watt do it?’

‘Because, dear Constable Useless,’ McAdams turned a smile loose, ‘I don’t like you even more than I don’t like him.’ The smile widened. ‘It’ll be good for you: character building.’

Callum turned to face the passenger window. ‘I’d like to build your character with a sodding claw-hammer.’

‘Did you say something, Constable?’

‘I said, “Yes, Sarge.”’

‘Good boy.’

And a nail gun.

Dugdale was still wearing the same scowl, but he’d swapped his clothes for a white SOC suit, bare toes sticking out of a pair of manky grey flip-flops. And he’d washed the dried blood off his face. That would be a bonus when his duty solicitor finally appeared.

Callum stood on the concrete apron and waved him goodbye as a Police Custody and Security Officer led him away, steering Dugdale down the corridor and into the cell with ‘M6’ stencilled on the thick blue door.

The cell block rang with the sound of someone screaming what sounded like passages from the Bible. All ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and that.

Raw breezeblock walls painted a tired magnolia, with a blue line all the way around it, straddling the bright-red panic strip. A dozen cells in this block, most of them occupied, going by the A4-sized whiteboards mounted next to each closed door. Three assaults, two indecent exposures, a theft from a locked-fast place, a shoplifter, one breach of bail conditions, an attempted murder, and Dugdale.

‘VERILY, SAYETH THE LORD, FOR YE SHALL FEAR MINE WRATH!’

The PCSO stepped back out into the corridor and clunked the cell shut. Printed, ‘RESISTING ARREST, ASSAULT, ARMED ROBBERY’, on the custody board, each word smaller than the last as she ran out of space, finishing with a scrawled ‘& CONSPIRACY 2 PTCOJ’.

‘AND YE SHALL BE SORE AFRAID IN THE TIME OF DARKNESS! FOR LO, IT IS THE WORD OF THE LORD THAT COMES FOR THEE!’

‘Oh shut up, you fruitcake.’ The PCSO stuck her marker-pen back in her top pocket and looked Callum up and down. ‘Something we can do for you, Constable?’

‘YEA, FOR HE IS THE DARKNESS AND HE IS THE LIGHT!’

‘Can you give me a shout when his solicitor gets here?’

‘AND ALL SHALL KNOW HIS WRATH! THESE ARE THE END OF DAYS, AND—’

She clicked down the viewing hatch on M3. Tutted. Then, ‘Come on, Phil, I thought we had an agreement.’

A muffled, ‘Sorry.’ came from the other side of the door.

‘Should think so too, disturbing all our other guests. Poor Ken’s trying to sleep.’ She clicked the hatch up again. Turned to Callum. ‘They picked him up on Chamber Street, “The End Is Nigh” placard in one hand, his “original sin” in the other.’

Lovely. ‘So, Dugdale’s solicitor …?’

She shook her head. ‘Now Kenneth, on the other hand, tried to smash his mother’s head in with a china dog from the mantelpiece. Spaniel, I think it was. She wouldn’t let him go to the pictures. He’s forty-six.’

‘Yeah, but Dugdale …?’ Eyebrows: up, winning smile: on.

‘I can’t.’ A sigh. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, it’s orders. “DC MacGregor is not to be given access to custodies or their representatives without a superior officer being present.”’

‘You are kidding me!’

‘All contact is to be managed through DS McAdams or DI Malcolmson.’

‘I can’t talk to anyone without McAdams or Mother holding my hand?’

‘Nothing to do with me, it’s …’ She turned away. ‘If you were them, would you want to risk it?’