Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers,

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2017

Prelims show map of Oldcastle © Stuart MacBride 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Cover design © Blacksheep-uk.com

Cover image © PlainPicture/Thomas Günther (foreground); Shutterstock.com (sky and inside cover photograph)

The quotation from the public information film Stay at Home appears courtesy of the British Film Institute © Crown Copyright (1975). The quotation from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence – The Chimney Sweeper (1789) is taken from the British Library’s first edition copy.

Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organisations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exception to this are the characters Cecelia Lynch and Robert Shannon who have given their express permission to be fictionalised in this volume. All behaviour, history, and character traits assigned to their fictional representations have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and do not necessarily bear any resemblance to the real person.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780007494712

Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780007494705

Version: 2020-10-27

Dedication

For Sue.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Without Whom

Maps

— Exhibit A —

Chapter 1

— Bodies of the Lesser God —

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

— Every Day We Live — Is a Day Closer to the Day We Die

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

— Callum —

Chapter 16

— Imhotep —

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

— The Four-Minute Warning —

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

— Protect and Survive —

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

— These Bones Beneath the Earth —

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

— Father —

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

— Open the Coffins —

Chapter 58

– Detective Constable John Watt –

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

— The Bonemonger’s Waltz —

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

— Dearly Departed, — We are Gathered Here Today

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Stuart MacBride

About the Publisher

Without Whom

As always I’ve received a lot of help from a lot of people while I was writing this book, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank: Prof. Sue Black, Dr Roos Eisma, Vivienne McGuire, and Dr Lucina Hackman, all of whom do excellent work at the University of Dundee’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification; Sergeant Bruce Crawford who answers far more daft questions than anyone should ever have to, as does Professor Dave Barclay; Sarah Hodgson, Jane Johnson, Julia Wisdom, Jaime Frost, Anna Derkacz, Sarah Collett, Isabel Coburn, Charlie Redmayne, Roger Cazalet, Kate Elton, Hannah Gamon, Cait Davies, Sarah Shea, Damon Greeney, Finn Cotton, the eagle-eyed Anne O’Brien, Marie Goldie, the DC Bishopbriggs Super Squad, and everyone at HarperCollins, for doing such a stonking job; Phil Patterson and the team at Marjacq Scripts, for keeping my cat in shoes all these years; Catherine Pellegrino, and Sandra Sawicka for translational help; and let’s not forget Cecelia Lynch, or James, Duncan, Katy, and Liz Shannon who helped raise money for two very worthy causes, and Matt Patterson whose wallet makes several guest appearances. And thank you to Tony Dykes of the British Film Institute for permission to quote Stay at Home within these pages.

Of course, there wouldn’t be any books without bookshops, booksellers, and book readers – so thank you all, you’re stars.

And saving the best for last – as always – Fiona and Grendel.

Maps

— exhibit A —

1

The wall whispers to him with splintered wooden lips. ‘They’ll worship you. They’ll worship you. They’ll worship you …’

Its words fill the gloom, rolling around and around and through him, pulsing and pulling. ‘They’ll worship you.’

Why?

Why can’t he just die?

‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’

Is this what gods feel like? Thirsty. Aching.

Every muscle in his stomach throbs from the repeated heaving. Every breath tastes of bile.

Bile and dark, gritty wood smoke. Filling the low room with its stained wooden walls.

‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’

He slumps back, making the rusty links of chain rattle and clank against each other. Heavy around his throat. Heavier where it’s bolted into the wall. The wall that talks.

‘You’ll be a god.’

He can’t even answer it, his mouth is desert dry, tongue like a breezeblock, blood booming in his ears. Boom. Boom. Boom.

So thirsty … But if he drinks the foul brown water in the jug, he’ll be sick again.

‘A god.’

He turns his face to the wall. Finds a silent crack in the wood. And stares through into the other room.

‘They’ll worship you. They’ll worship you.’

Through there, it’s bright: a mix of light and shadow as someone stands on their tiptoes to slot another pole of fish into the rack. Herrings, splayed open, tied in pairs at the tail, their flattened sides like hands. Praying.

Help me …

He opens his mouth, but it’s too dry to make words. Too burned by the bile.

‘They’ll worship you.’

Why can’t he just die?

Up above, high above the poles of praying fish, eight fingertips brush a blade of sunlight. They run their tips along its sharp edge as the body they belong to sways in the darkness. Caught in the breeze from the open door. Head down – like the fish – arms dangling. Skin darkened to an ancient oak brown.

‘You’ll be a god.’

Then the person on the other side disappears. Comes back with a wheelbarrow piled up with sawdust and small chunks of wood. Dumps the lot in the middle of the room. Stoops to light it. Stands back as pale tendrils of smoke coil up into the air. Backs away and closes the door.

Now the only light is the faint orange glow of the smouldering wood.

‘You’ll be a god.’

He slides down against the wall. Too tired and thirsty to cry. Too tired to do anything but wait for the end to come.

‘They’ll worship you …’

Why can’t he just die?

— bodies of the lesser god —

Then the little girl with the lizard’s tail jumped into the air with a whoosh! “I’ve got it!” she shrieked. “We can make an enormous pie out of all the bits of hair and beard!”

Ichabod scowled at her. “That’s a horrid idea,” he said, because it was. “No one wants to eat a cake made of hair.”

“Ah, but the hair of the Gianticus Moleraticus is magical and tastes of everything you like in the whole world! Gumdrops and sausages, baked beans and chocolate biscuits, custard and ham.” She scooped up a big handful of hair and shoved it in Ichabod’s mouth. “See?”

But to Ichabod it just tasted of hair. The little girl was clearly insane …

R.M. Travis

The Amazing Adventures of Ichabod Smith (1985)

And if some motherf*cker gonna call the police?

I’m-a grab my nine-mill and I’m-a make him deceased.

Donny ‘$ick Dawg’ McRoberts

‘Don’t Mess with the $ick Dawg’

© Bob’s Speed Trap Records (2016)

2

‘POLICE! COME BACK HERE, YOU WEE SOD!’

Only that wasn’t really right, was it? Ainsley Dugdale wasn’t a wee sod – he was a dirty great big lumping hulk of a sod, hammering his way along Manson Avenue. Ape-long arms and short legs pumping, scarf flittering out behind him, baldy head glinting in the morning sunshine.

Callum gritted his teeth and hammered after him.

Why did no one ever come back when they were told to? Anyone would think people didn’t want to get arrested.

Squat grey council houses scrolled past on either side of the street, lichen-flecked pantiles and harled walls. Front gardens awash with weeds. More abandoned sofas and washing machines than gnomes and bird tables.

A couple of kids were out on their bikes, making lazy figure eights on the tarmac. The wee boy had sticky-out ears and a flat monkey nose, a roll-up sticking out the corner of his mouth – leaving coiled trails of smoke behind him. The wee girl was all blonde ringlets and pierced ears, swigging from a tin of extra-strong cider as she freewheeled. Both of them dressed in baggy jeans, trainers, and tracksuit tops. Baseball caps on the right way around, for a change.

Rap music blared out of a mobile phone. ‘Cops can’t take me, cos I’m strong like an oak tree, / Fast like the grand prix, / I’m-a still fly free … ’

The wee girl shifted her tinny to the other hand and raised a middle finger in salute as Callum ran past. ‘HOY, PIGGY, I SHAGGED YER MUM, YEAH?’

Her wee friend made baboon hoots. ‘HOOH! HOOH! HOOH! PIGGY, PIGGY, PIGGY!’

Neither of them looked a day over seven years old.

The delights of darkest Kingsmeath.

Dugdale skittered around the corner at the end of the road. Almost didn’t make it – banged against the side of a rusty Renault, righted himself and kept on going, up the hill.

‘RUN, PIGGY, RUN!’ Little Miss Cider appeared, standing on the pedals to keep up, grinning as she flanked him. ‘COME ON, PIGGY, PUT SOME WELLY IN IT!’

Her baboon friend pedalled up on the other side. ‘FAT PIGGY, LAZY PIGGY!’

‘Bugger off, you little sods …’ Callum wheeched through the turn, into another row of grubby houses. Low garden walls guarded small squares of thistle and dandelions, ancient rusty hatchbacks up on bricks, the twisted metal brackets where satellite dishes used to be.

‘COME ON, PIGGY!’

The gap was narrowing. Dugdale might have got off to an impressive sprint start, but his long game wasn’t anywhere near as good – puffing and panting as he lumbered up Munro Place. Getting slower with every step.

‘HOOH! HOOH! HOOH!’

He crested the hill with Callum barely ten feet behind him.

The street fell away towards a grubby line of trees and a grubbier line of houses, but Dugdale didn’t stop to admire the view: he kept his head down, picking up a bit of velocity on the descent.

The wee kids freewheeled alongside him, Little Miss Cider swigging from her can. ‘RUN, BALDY – PIGGY’S GONNA GET YOU!’

One last burst. Callum accelerated. ‘I’M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN!’

Dugdale snatched a glance over his shoulder – little eyes surrounded by dark circles, a nose that looked as if it’d been broken at least a dozen times, scar bisecting his bottom lip. He swore. Then put on another burst of speed.

‘NO YOU DON’T!’

‘HOOH! HOOH! HOOH!’

Closer. Eight foot. Seven. Six.

Here we go …

Callum leapt. Arms out – rugby-tackle style.

His shoulder caught Dugdale just above the waist, arms wrapping around the top of the big sod’s legs. Holding on tight as they both crashed onto the pavement, rolling over and over. Grunts. More swearing. A tangle of arms and legs. Then something the size of a minibus battered into Callum’s face.

Now the world tasted of hot batteries.

Another punch. ‘GET OFF ME!’

Callum jabbed out an elbow and connected with something solid.

‘HOOH! HOOH! HOOH!’

‘FIGHT, PIGGY, FIGHT!’

Then the pavement battered off the back of his head and a fist slammed into his stomach. Fire roared through his torso, accompanied by the sound of a thousand alarm clocks all ringing at once.

He swung a punch and Dugdale’s nose went from broken to smashed.

‘Gahhhh!’ Dugdale reared back, blood spilling down over his top lip. He lashed out blind, eyes closed, and that massive fist came close enough to ruffle the hair above Callum’s ear.

Distance. Get some distance.

A big black Mercedes slid past, the sweaty-sweet scent of marijuana coiling out from the back windows, a deep BMMTSHHH, BMMTSHHH, BMMTSHHH of hip-hop bass rattling the air. It stopped in the middle of the road, where they could get a good view of the fight. But did anyone get out to help? Of course they sodding didn’t.

‘KILL HIM, PIGGY, FINISH HIM!’

‘HOOH! HOOH! HOOH!’

Callum scrabbled back against a rusty Volkswagen. Yanked out his handcuffs. ‘Ainsley Dugdale, I’m detaining you under Section Fourteen of the Criminal Procedure – Scotland – Act 1995—’

‘FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!’ The kids pulled up their bikes, blocking the pavement, making an impromptu brawl-pit in the space between the Volkswagen and a garden wall. ‘COME ON: KILL HIM!’

‘Shut up!’ Back to Dugdale. ‘Because I suspect you of having committed an offence punishable by imprisonment, namely the—’

‘HOOH! HOOH! HOOH!’

‘GAAAAH!’ Dugdale lunged, but not at Callum. He grabbed the wee girl by the throat and yanked her off her bike.

Her tin of cider hit the deck and bounced, sending out a spurt of frothy urine-coloured liquid. ‘Ulk …’ Eyes wide, both hands clutching onto Dugdale’s forearm, legs pinwheeling and kicking at the air.

Oh sodding hell. And things had been going so well right up till that point.

‘No, no, no!’ Callum scrambled to his feet. ‘That’s enough. Let the girl go.’

Her wee mate hurled his roll-up. It burst against Dugdale’s chest in a little hiss of sparks. ‘LET HER GO, YOU DIRTY PAEDO!’

‘Come on, Dugdale … Ainsley. You don’t want to hurt a kid, right?’ Hands out, open, nice and safe. ‘You’re not that kind of guy, are you?’

‘PAEDO! PAEDO! PAEDO!’

Callum hissed the words out the side of his mouth. ‘You are not helping.’

Dugdale stuck out his other hand. ‘Money!’

‘Come on, Ainsley, let the girl go and—’

‘GIVE US YOUR MONEY!’ He gave the girl a shake, sending her legs swinging wildly as her face turned a darker shade of puce. ‘NOW!’

‘OK, OK. Just let her breathe.’ Callum dug out his battered old wallet. The one with the threadbare lining sticking out. He took the last tenner and crumpled fiver from inside. ‘Here.’ He placed the cash on the floor.

‘Is that it?’ Dugdale glowered at the two sorry notes. ‘ALL OF IT, OR I SNAP HER NECK IN HALF!’

Baboon Boy’s chant died. ‘Paedo …?’

The kicks were getting weaker: those Nike trainers barely moving.

Her wee friend snivelled. Wiped his top lip on the back of his sleeve. ‘Please, mister. Don’t hurt my sister …’

‘That’s all the money I’ve got, OK? Now let the girl go.’

Dugdale growled, then chucked the little girl at Callum.

He ducked for the fifteen quid as Callum dropped the tatty wallet and caught her wee body before it hit the pavement. And that’s when everything slowed down.

The tatty wallet bounced off the paving slabs, spinning away, its torn lining waving like a flag.

‘Aaaggggh …’ She hauled in a huge whoop of air, both hands wrapped around her throat – as if Dugdale hadn’t done a good enough job throttling her and she was having a go herself.

But Dugdale didn’t snatch up the money, he kept on going, smashing into Callum and the wee girl, sending them slamming back into the Volkswagen. Rocking it on its springs.

A fist connected with Callum’s ribs. Arms and legs tangled. Flashes of sky, then concrete, then rusty metal, then sky again.

Then bang – everything was at full speed again.

Callum yanked the pepper spray from his jacket pocket. The little girl wriggled her way out from between them, trainers digging into his thigh as she went. Callum flipped the cap off the spray and thumbed the button, sending a squirt of burning pepper stink out at Dugdale’s face.

Missed.

Dugdale didn’t. He rammed his hand into Callum’s crotch, grabbed hold, and squeezed.

Oh God …

But when Callum opened his mouth to scream, all that came out was a strangled wheeze – eyes wide as every single ache and pain in his body disappeared, replaced by the thermonuclear explosion going off in his scrotum. It raced out through his stomach, down his legs, up into his chest – a shockwave ripping out from ground zero as Dugdale twisted his handful like a rusty doorknob.

Oh sodding Jesus …

Dugdale let go, but the nuclear war still raged.

No …

Water filled Callum’s eyes, making the word go all soft focus, but the pain remained pin-sharp. He lashed out with the pepper spray, swinging it in an arc with the button held down.

Someone bellowed in pain.

Then scuffing feet.

Argh …

The clatter of a very large man tripping over a fallen bicycle.

A dull thunk, like a watermelon bouncing off a coffee table.

Oh that hurt …

‘BLOODY PAEDO!’ Some more thunks.

‘Come on, leave him!’

Thunk, thunk, thunk. ‘BLOODY BALDY PAEDO WANKER!’

Ow …

‘Willow, come on! Before he gets up!’

The sound of someone spitting.

‘Grab the cash, Benny. No, you spaz, get the wallet too!’

Then trainers on concrete, the rattle of bicycles being dragged upright, and the growl of tyres fading away into the distance.

One last cry of, ‘PIGGY, PIGGY, PIGGY!’

The sound of that big black Mercedes pulling away now the floor-show was over.

And silence.

Callum cursed and panted and wobbled his way up to his knees, one hand clutching his tattered groin.

Sodding … for … ooogh …

Deep breaths.

Nope. Not helping.

He scrubbed a hand across his watery eyes.

Dugdale lay on his front, one hand behind his back the other limp in the gutter. His face looked as if someone had driven over it with a ride-on lawnmower.

Callum dragged himself over and slapped on the cuffs. ‘You’re nicked.’

Ow …

‘Little monsters …’ Never mind saying thank you – no, that was too much to hope for these days, he’d only saved her life, not as if it was that big a deal – but did they have to take his sodding wallet?

Dugdale twitched and groaned, eyes still closed, the blood crusting on his battered nose. A swathe of red crossed his face, following the pepper spray’s less than delicate path, swollen and angry looking. Like the lump on his head. It was going to be impressive when it finished growing – about the size and colour of a small aubergine. Probably have himself a gargantuan headache when he finally woke up. Maybe concussion too.

Good. Served him right.

Callum pulled out his mobile, staying where he was – standing, hunched over almost double, one hand on his knee, holding him upright as he dialled.

Three rings and then a woman’s voice came on the line, sounding small and concerned. ‘Hello?’

‘Elaine, it’s me.’

‘Callum? Are you OK? You don’t sound OK. Is everything OK?’

He gritted his teeth as an aftershock rippled its way through his groin. ‘No. Can you phone the bank? I need you to cancel my debit and credit card. Someone’s snatched them.’

A sigh. ‘Oh, Callum, not your dad’s wallet …’

‘Don’t start, please. It’ll be bad enough when McAdams gets here, don’t need you kicking the party off early.’

Silence.

Yeah, way to go, Callum. Smooth. Nice and understanding.

He took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, it’s … I’m not having the greatest of days.’

‘I’m not your enemy, Callum. I know it’s been difficult for you.’

Understatement of the year. ‘All I get is snide comments, nasty little digs, and crap. It’s been three solid weeks of—’

‘It’s for the best though, remember? For Peanut’s sake?’

Peanut.

He closed his eyes. Tried to make it sound as if he meant it: ‘Yeah.’

‘We need the money, Callum. We need the maternity pay to—’

‘Yeah. Right. I know. It’s just …’ He wiped a hand over his face. ‘Never mind. It’ll be fine.’

‘And we really appreciate it, me and Peanut.’ A pause. ‘Speaking of Peanut, you know what he’d totally love? Nutella. And some pickled dill cucumbers. Not gherkins: the cucumbers, from the Polish deli on Castle Hill? Oh, and some onion rolls too.’

‘They stole my wallet, Elaine. I—’

‘I didn’t ask to get pregnant, Callum.’ A strangled noise came down the phone, like a cross between a grunt and a sigh. ‘Sorry. I don’t … There are times when I need a bit of support coping with all this.’

Support? Seriously?

‘How am I not supporting you? I put my hand up, didn’t I? I took the blame, even though it was nothing to do with—’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. It’s …’ Another sigh. ‘Don’t worry about the Nutella and stuff, it’s only cravings. I’ll make do with whatever’s knocking about here.’

He limped over to the garden wall and lowered himself onto it with a wince. Took yet another deep breath. Scrunched a hand over his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Elaine. It’s not you, it’s … Like I said, I’m having a terrible day.’

‘It’ll get better, I promise. I love you, OK?’

‘Yeah, I know it will.’ It had to, because it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

‘Do you love me and Peanut too?’

‘Course I do.’

A shiny red Mitsubishi Shogun pulled into the kerb, the huge four-by-four’s window buzzing down as Callum levered himself up to his feet. His crumpled suit and crumpled body reflected back at him in the glittering showroom paintwork.

‘Got to go.’ He hung up and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

‘Constable Useless.’ A thin, lined face frowned through the open car window, its greying Vandyke framed by disappointed jowls. The chin-warmer was little more than stubble, matching the patchy salt-and-pepper hair on that jellybean of a head. ‘Do these old eyes deceive me? Did you catch Dugdale?’

Callum wobbled up to his feet, one hand on his ruptured testicles, the other holding onto the Shogun for support. ‘Oh: ha, ha.’ Another wave of burning glass washed through him, leaving him grimacing. ‘He’s been unconscious for a couple of minutes. You want to take him straight to the hospital, or risk the Duty Doctor?’

Please say hospital, please say hospital. At least there a nice nurse might have an icepack and a few kind words for his mangled groin.

DS McAdams raised an eyebrow. ‘I am shocked, Callum. Didn’t he have enough cash? No nice bribe for you?’

‘Sod off, Sarge.’ He let go of his crotch for a moment, pointing off down the hill. Winced. Then cupped his aching balls again. ‘Pair of kids got my wallet. We need to get after them.’

‘If I had to guess. The reason you’re hunched in pain. You have met The Claw!’ He held up one hand, the fingers curled into a cruel hook, then squashed an invisible scrotum. ‘Dugdale’s claw attacks. Crush and squish, the pain is great. Bringing hard men low.’

Callum stared at him. ‘They – got – my – wallet!’

The frown became a grin. ‘A well-turned haiku. It is a beautiful thing. You ignorant spud.’ He actually counted the syllables out on his fingers as he spoke.

‘For your information, Sarge, I’ve never taken a bribe in my life. OK? Not a single sodding penny. No perks, no wee gifts, nothing. So you can all go screw yourselves.’ He limped over to the back door and swung it open. ‘Now are you going to help me get Dugdale in the car or not?’

‘That’s the trouble with your generation: no poetry in your souls. No education, no class, and no moral fibre.’

‘Thanks for nothing.’ He bent down. Winced. Clenched his jaw. Then hauled Dugdale’s huge and heavy backside across the pavement and up onto the back seat.

‘He better not bleed. On my new upholstery. I just had it cleaned.’

‘Tough.’ Some wrestling, a bit of forcing, a shove, and Dugdale was more or less in the recovery position. Well, except for his hands being cuffed behind his back. But at least now he probably wouldn’t choke on his own tongue. Or vomit.

Mind you, if he spewed his breakfast all over Detective Sergeant McAdams’ shiny new four-by-four, at least that would be something. Assuming McAdams didn’t make Callum clean it up. Which he would.

Git.

Callum clunked the door shut, hobbled around to the passenger side and lowered himself into the seat. Crumpled forward until his forehead rested against the dashboard. ‘Ow …’

‘Seatbelt.’ The car slid away from the kerb.

Callum closed his eyes. ‘Think they turned right onto Grant Street. If you hurry we can still catch them: wee boy in jeans and a blue tracksuit top, wee girl in jeans and a red one. About six or seven years old. Both on bikes.’

‘You got mugged by toddlers?’ A gravelly laugh rattled out in the car. ‘That’s pathetic even for you.’

‘They’re getting away!’

‘We’re not going chasing after little kiddies, Constable. I have much more important things to do than clean up your disasters.’

‘That’s it. Stop the car.’ Callum straightened up and bared his teeth. ‘Come on: let’s go. You and me. I battered the crap out of Dugdale, I can do the same for you.’

‘Oh don’t be such a baby.’

‘I’m not kidding: stop – the – car.’

‘Really, DC MacGregor? You don’t think you’re in enough trouble as it is? How’s it going to look if you assault a senior officer who’s dying of cancer? Think it through.’ The car jolted and bumped, then swung around to the left, heading down towards Montrose Road. ‘And any time our workplace badinage gets too much for you, feel free to pop into Mother’s office with your resignation. Do us all a favour.’ He slowed for the junction. ‘Until then, try to behave like an actual police officer.’

Callum’s hands curled into fists, so tight the knuckles ached. ‘I swear to God—’

‘Now put your seatbelt on and try not to say anything stupid for the next fifteen minutes. I’ll not have you spoiling my remarkably good mood.’ He poked the radio and insipid pop music dribbled out of the speakers. ‘You see, Constable Useless, sometimes life gives you lemons, and sometimes it gives you vodka. Today is a vodka day.’

The jingly blandness piffled to a halt and a smoke-gravelled woman’s voice came through. ‘Hmmm, not sure about that one myself. You’re listening to Midmorning Madness on Castlewave FM with me, Annette Peterson, and today my extra-special guest is author and broadcaster, Emma Travis-Wilkes.’

McAdams put a hand over his heart, as if he was about to pledge allegiance. ‘Today is a caviar day.’

‘Glad to be here, Annette.’

‘A champagne and strawberries day.’

‘Now, a little bird tells me you’re writing a book about your dad, Emma. Of course he created Russell the Magic Rabbit, Ichabod Smith, and Imelda’s Miraculous Dustbin, but he’s probably best known for the children’s classic, Open the Coffins.’

‘A chocolate and nipple clamps—’

‘All right! I get it: everything’s just sodding great.’ Callum shifted in his seat, setting his testicles aching again. ‘One of us got thwacked in the balls, here.’

‘That’s right. He’s given joy to so many people, and now that he’s … well, Alzheimer’s is a cruel mistress. But it’s been a real privilege to swim in the pool of his life again.’

‘Pfff …’ McAdams curled his top lip. ‘Listen to this pretentious twaddle. Just because she’s got a famous dad, she gets to plug her book on the radio. What about my book? Where’s my interview?’

‘And it’s lovely to see these memories light up his face, it’s like he’s right back there again.’

‘Cliché. And, by the way, unless his face is actually glowing like a lightbulb, that’s physical hyperbole, you hack.’

Callum glowered across the car. ‘We should never have chipped in for that creative writing class.’

McAdams grinned back at him. ‘My heart: creative. My soul, it soars with the words. Divinity: mine.’

‘Wonderful stuff. Now, let’s have a bit of decent music, shall we? Here’s one of the acts appearing at Tartantula this weekend: Catnip Jane, and “Once Upon a Time in Dundee”.’

A banjo and cello launched into a sinister waltz, over a weird thumping rhythm as McAdams pulled out of the junction, heading left instead of right.

Silly old sod.

Callum sighed. ‘You’re going the wrong way.’ He pointed across the swollen grey river, past the docks and the industrial units, towards the thick granite blade of Castle Hill. ‘Division Headquarters is that direction. We need to get Dugdale booked in and seen to.’

‘Meh, he’ll keep.’ That skeletal grin had widened. ‘It’s a vodka day, remember? We, my useless little friend, have finally got our hands on a murder!’

3

The first drop of rain sparkled against the windscreen, caught in a golden shaft of sunlight as McAdams’ huge four-by-four slid past the last few houses on the edge of Kingsmeath. A second drop joined it. Then a third. Then a whole heap of them.

McAdams stuck the wipers on, setting them moaning and groaning their way across the glass, smearing the rain into grubby arcs. He pinned his mobile phone between his shoulder and ear, freeing his hand to change gears. Accelerating up the hill. ‘Yeah … Yeah, Dugdale was there … No … Not a word of a lie, Mother: the new boy actually caught him. That’s right: his anonymous tip-off paid off.’ He cast a glance across the car at Callum. ‘I know, I know … Ha! That’s what I said.’

Callum folded his arms and pushed back into his seat. Stared out of the window at the dull green fields and their dull-grey sheep. The ache in his groin wasn’t a full-on testicular migraine any more, it’d settled to more of a dull throbbing – each pulse marking time with the groaning windscreen wipers. ‘Oh you’re both so hilarious.’

‘What did we say about you keeping your mouth shut?’ Back to the phone. ‘No, not you, Mother: Constable Useless here … Yeah, yeah. Exactly: an actual murder. How long has it been?’

Probably never see his wallet again.

McAdams put his foot down, overtaking a sputtering Mini. ‘You on your way? … Uh-huh … Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either. Since when does the great Detective Chief Inspector Poncy Powel hand over a murder investigation to the likes of us? … Exactly.’

More fields. More sheep.

OK, so it was just a scruffy, tatty lump of leather and the lining was falling apart, but it had sentimental value.

Bloody kids.

‘Did he? … No! … No!’ Laughter. ‘And did you? … Sodding hell … Yeah, he’ll love that.’

Bloody Dugdale too.

He was just visible in the rear-view mirror, lying there with his mouth hanging open, face crusted with blood and bogies. Well, if Dugdale died in custody there was no way Callum was taking the rap for it. If anything happened it was McAdams’ fault.

Accepting blame for Elaine’s cock-up was one thing, but McAdams? He could sod right off.

‘Uh-huh. We’re about … five minutes away? Maybe less? … Still can’t believe it: a real murder! How long’s it been? … Right. Yup. OK. See you there.’ He poked a button on his phone’s screen then slid the thing back in his pocket, big smile plastered across his skeletal face.

‘Am I allowed to ask where we’re going?’

‘No.’

Git.

McAdams took one hand off the wheel and pointed through the windscreen. ‘We go where life rots. Where man’s discarded dreams die. We go … to The Tip.’ Fingers twitching with each syllable.

A large white sign loomed at the side of the road: ‘OLDCASTLE MUNICIPAL RECYCLING AND WASTE PROCESSING FACILITY’. Someone had scrawled ‘TWINNED WITH CUMBERNAULD!’ across the bottom in green graffiti.

The Shogun slowed for the turning, leaving the well-ordered tarmac for a wide gravel road acned with potholes and lined with whin bushes. Their jagged dark-green spears rattled in the rain.

It was getting heavier, bouncing off the rutted track as McAdams navigated his shiny new car between the water-filled craters and up to a cordon of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape.

He buzzed down the window and smiled at the lanky drip guarding the line. ‘Two cheeseburgers, a Coke, and a chocolate milkshake please.’

A sigh and a sniff. Then Officer Drip wiped her nose on the sleeve of her high-viz jacket, sending water dribbling from the brim of her peaked cap. ‘Do you honestly think it’s the first time I’ve heard that today?’

‘Cheer up, Constable. A little rain won’t kill you.’ He nodded at the cordon. ‘You got our body?’

‘Depends. You on the list?’ She dug a clipboard from the depths of her jacket and passed it through the window.

McAdams flipped through the top three sheets, making a low whistling noise. ‘There’s a lot of people here. All for one dead little body?’

‘Oh you’d be surprised.’

He printed two more names on the last sheet in blue biro, then handed the clipboard back. ‘There we are, right at the end. Now be a good girl and get out of the way. It’s the opening chapters: I need to draw the readers in, establish myself as the protagonist, and get on with solving the murder.’

Constable Drip frowned at their names, then into the car. Her mouth tightened as she stared at the bloodied and unconscious Dugdale lying across the back seat. ‘Looks like you’ve already got a body.’

‘Oh, this one’s not dead, it’s just resting. DC MacGregor decided to try his hand at a little police brutality.’

‘MacGregor …?’ She peered at the list again, then across the car, top lip curling. ‘So it is you.’

Callum stared right back. ‘Don’t: I’m not in the mood.’

She shook her head, stowed her clipboard away, then unhooked a length of the tape barricade and waved them through.

McAdams grinned across the car at Callum. ‘My, my, Constable. You just can’t stop making friends, can you?’

No.

‘That offer of an arse-kicking is still valid, Sarge.’

‘Yes, because people don’t hate you enough already.’

The Shogun pitched and yawed through the potholes like a boat. God knew how big the rubbish tip was, but from the wide, lumpy road, it stretched all the way to the horizon. A vast sea of black plastic, gulls wheeling and screaming in the air above – flecks of evil white, caught against the heavy grey sky.

And the smell …

Even with the car windows wound up it was something special. The rancid stench of rotting meat and vegetables mingled with the sticky-brown reek of used nappies, all underpinned by the dark peppery odour of black plastic left to broil in the sun.

McAdams slipped the four-by-four in behind a line of police vehicles and grubby Transit vans. Had to be, what, eight cars? Twelve if you counted the unmarked ones. About three-quarters of the dayshift, all out here playing on the tip.

The sarcastic half-arsed-poetry-spouting git was right: this was an awful lot of people for one dead body.

McAdams hauled on the handbrake. ‘Right, Constable, make yourself useful for a change and go fetch us a couple of Smurf suits, extra-large. Ainsley and I need to have a little chat.’

A chat?

‘He’s unconscious, Sarge. He needs a doctor. I told you he—’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ McAdams turned in his seat, staring through into the back. ‘Give it up, Ainsley, you’re not fooling anyone.’

Dugdale didn’t move.

‘Don’t make me come back there, because if I have to …’

One of Dugdale’s eyes cracked open. ‘I’m dying. Got a brain haemorrhage, or something.’

‘You have to have a brain to have a brain haemorrhage, Ainsley. What you’ve got is a lump of solid yuck wrapped in ugly. Now, Constable Naïve here is going to sod off like a good little boy and you’re going to tell me all about what Big Johnny Simpson’s up to now he’s walked free.’ McAdams made a dismissive little waving gesture in Callum’s direction. ‘Go on, Constable. Two Smurf suits, at the double. I won’t ask again.’

One punch in the face. Just one. Right in the middle of his smug, wrinkly face …

What was the point?

It wouldn’t change anything.

So Callum gritted his teeth and stepped out into the stinking mud. Closed the car door. Counted out his own muttered haiku. ‘Away boil your head. You patronising arse-bag. I hope you get piles.’

Out here the smell was eye-watering. Like jamming your head in a dead badger.

He turned up his collar and hurried through the slimy mud to the nearest Transit van, sheltering in the lee of its open back doors. From here, Oldcastle lay spread out beneath the heavy grey lid of cloud like a cancer beneath the skin. The vast prow of Castle Rock loomed out from the other side of the valley, wound round with the ancient cobbled streets of Castle Hill; the dark sprawl of Camburn Woods peered out from its shadow; the warehouses, shopping centres, and big glass Victorian train station punctuated Logansferry to the left of that. Spires and minarets stabbed up between the slate roofs on the other side of the river, like some vast beast was trapped under the surface, trying to claw its way out. And on this side: the grubby maze of council houses, high-rise blocks of flats, and derelict terraces of Kingsmeath; the rest of the city, hidden by a line of trees at the edge of the tip.

Quite a view for a rancid mass of black plastic bags and mouldering filth.

He reached into the Transit and helped himself to two large blue Tyvek oversuits, two sets of plastic bootees, a pair of facemasks and matching safety goggles. What every well-dressed Scene of Crime officer was wearing this, and every other, season.

One of them appeared from the other side of the van, the hood of her SOC suit thrown back to reveal a sweaty tangle of dark brown hair. Her thin, pale oval face shone with sweat. She took a swig from a leopard-print Thermos, the words coming out on a waft of coffee breath with a faint side-order of Aberdonian. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Don’t start, Cecelia, OK? I get enough of that from McAdams, don’t need the Scene Examination Branch chipping in.’ He tucked the suits under his arm. ‘We’re here for the body.’

She curled her top lip. ‘Which one? Started digging at nine this morning and we’ve already turned up four of the things. Seven if you count those.’ She nodded in the vague direction of a red plastic cool box and helped herself to a wad of paper towels. ‘Three left feet, severed just above the ankle.’

‘Well … maybe their owners aren’t dead? Maybe they’re limping about somewhere, wondering where their other shoe’s gone?’

‘Urgh. I’m melting in here.’ Cecelia scrubbed the paper towels across her damp face, turning it matt again. ‘Bet they don’t have this problem in G Division. Bet if you go digging in a Glasgow tip all you turn up is rubbish. Can’t open a bin-bag in Oldcastle without finding a sodding corpse.’ A sigh. ‘Have you got any idea how much work it is to process crime scenes for seven different murder enquiries, all at the same time?’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘One stabbing, one shotgun blast to the face, one God-knows-what, and I’m pretty sure the body we found over by the recycling centre is Karen Turner. You know: ran that brothel on Shepard Lane? Beaten to death.’

At least that explained why most of Oldcastle Division was in attendance, picking their way through the landfill landscape.

‘Wow.’ Callum frowned out at the acres and acres of black-plastic bags. Suppose it wasn’t that surprising the tip was hoaching with corpses – if you had to dispose of a body, where better than here? Clearly the city’s criminal element didn’t approve of littering. ‘Maybe we should set up a recycling box at the front gate, so people can dump their dead bodies responsibly?’

She puffed out her cheeks. ‘We should never have started digging here. Just asking for trouble.’

‘So, come on then: which one’s ours?’

‘Body number three: the God-knows-what. That way.’ She pointed her Thermos at the middle distance, off to the right, where a handful of blue-suited figures was wrestling with a white plastic tent. ‘And Callum?’

He turned back to her. ‘What?’

‘I know it wasn’t you.’

What wasn’t …?

She rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no point standing there looking glaikit. You didn’t cock-up that crime scene, Elaine did.’

Oh.

Heat bloomed in his cheeks. ‘No she didn’t.’

‘Yes she did. Elaine worked for me, so I know it wasn’t you. One more strike and they’d have fired her.’

He tucked one of the Tyvek suits under his arm. ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

Cecelia shook her head, sending a little trickle of sweat running into the elasticated neck of her suit. ‘You’re a daft sod, Callum MacGregor.’

True.

‘Bye, Cecelia.’ He turned and marched back to the Shogun.

McAdams was still in the car, mobile clamped to his ear, so Callum struggled into one of the SOC Smurf suits – zipping it up to the chin, hood up. Stood there in the manky mud, rain pattering off his Smurfy shoulders and head.

Come on, you lanky git. Get off the phone.

A rattley green Fiat Panda lumbered its way up the track towards them, bringing a cloud of blue-grey smoke with it. Dents in the bonnet, dents in the passenger side, a long scrape along the driver’s door and front wing. Duct tape holding the wing mirror on.

Great, because having to deal with DS Sodding McAdams wasn’t bad enough.

The Panda spluttered to a halt behind McAdams’ immaculate Castleview Tractor, and its driver peered out through a fogged-up windscreen as the wipers made angry-donkey noises across the glass.

Mother.

She looked right at him and the smile died on her face.

Oh joy.

He gave her a nod. As if that was going to make any difference.

Mother struggled her way out into the rain.

The sleeves of her black fleece were rolled up to the elbows, exposing two large pale forearms – tattoos standing out like faded newsprint against the doughy flesh. A dolphin. Two swallows holding up a little banner with ‘LOVE NEVER DIES’ on it. A thistle and a rose wrapped around a dagger. What looked like a tribute to the Bay City Rollers – all mullets and tartan scarfs. She glanced about, sending her mass of tight ginger curls bobbing. Sniffed. ‘Where’s Andy?’ Apparently completely unfazed by the rain.

‘DS McAdams is in the car, making some calls.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Have you been upsetting him?’

‘Upsetting him? He wasn’t the one Dugdale tried to neuter! Come on, Mother, how come every—’

‘Ah yes, Andy said you’d had a run-in with The Claw.’ A tiny smile. ‘And how many times do I have to tell you: you haven’t earned the right to call me “Mother”. As far as you’re concerned it’s Boss, Guv, or Detective Inspector. Are we crystal?’

‘It wasn’t a “run-in”, Dugdale resisted arrest. Violently. And for the record,’ Callum pointed at the back seat of the Shogun, where Dugdale was now sitting up, ‘I said we should take him to the hospital, but DS McAdams refused.’

The tiny smile grew. ‘Nobody likes a clype, Constable.’

A clunk and McAdams emerged from the car. ‘Mother …’ A frown. ‘MacGregor, why are you wearing that SOC suit?’

Callum looked down at his blue Tyvek body. ‘You told me to get two Smurf—’

‘One for me and one for Mother, you idiot. Why the hell would we want you messing up our crime scene?’

He clenched his fists. Stepped forwards. ‘You think I won’t—’

‘All right, that’s enough.’ Mother held a hand up. ‘Andy, we’re going to cut the wee boy some slack on account of The Claw. He can come with us.’ The hand came down again, till it pointed at Callum. ‘Don’t make me regret this.’

‘Yes, Boss.’

‘Now go find someone to keep an eye on Ainsley here,’ she nodded at Dugdale in the back seat, ‘and fetch me a Smurf suit. We’ve got a dead body to gawp at.’

4

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?’

5

‘Yes, I understand that, but I’m asking anyway: do you now, or have you at any time, had a human mummy in your museum?’

The smell of chicken curry Pot Noodle coiled its way across the office, warring against a taint of cheesy feet and yesterday’s garlic.

From up here, on the third floor of Division Headquarters, the view should have been a lot better than it was: the back of a billboard streaked with pigeon droppings. Rusting supports featured a dozen small grey feathered bodies, strutting about and adding to the stains.

‘A mummy? What, like an Egyptian one?’ The young man on the other end of the phone sounded about as bright as a broken lightbulb. ‘Nah. No. Don’t think so.’ Think, think, think. ‘Maybe?’

Callum turned his back on the window, one hand massaging his temples, the other gripping the phone tight enough to make the plastic creak. Fighting hard to keep his voice reasonable and level. ‘Can you check for me? It’s important.’

The room was divided up into six bits, each one sectioned off with a chest-high cubicle wall – their grubby blue fabric stained with dribbled coffee and peppered with memos from the senior brass and cartoons cut from the Castle News and Post. Six cubicles for six desks, two of which were laden with dusty cardboard boxes and teetering piles of manila folders.

Almost every horizontal surface was covered in a thin grey fuzz of dust.

The top of Dot’s head was just visible above the edge of her cubicle, pale-brown hair swept up in a weird semi-beehive do. Schlurping noises marked the death of yet another freeze-dried soy and noodle product.

A tiny kitchen area sat in the corner behind her, complete with kettle, microwave, and a half-sized fridge that gurgled and buzzed. Throw in a sagging assortment of ceiling tiles, scuffed magnolia walls littered with scribbled-on whiteboards, the kind of carpet that looked as if it’d been fished out of a skip, and you had the perfect place to dump police officers while they waited for their careers to die.

Or were too stubborn to realise that their careers already had.

‘Pffff … Suppose. I’ll see what I can do. Hang on, gotta put you on hold.’ Click, and an elevator muzak version of ‘American Idiot’ dribbled out of the earpiece.

Callum printed the word ‘dick’ in little biro letters next to the museum’s name. It joined a long, long list.

Dot wheeled her chair back till she could peer around her cubicle. ‘Callum, you on the phone?’ Her scarlet lipstick was smudged and a shiny dot of gravy glittered on one rounded cheek. For some reason she’d decided it was a good idea to dress up in what looked like a black chef’s jacket, only with shiny silver buttons and silvery edging.

He held up the receiver. ‘On hold.’

‘Don’t fancy making a chocolate run, do you? Only the machine on the fifth floor’s got Curly Wurlies.’

‘Can’t: I’m on hold.’ He waggled the phone again to emphasise the point.

‘I’d go myself, but I’m avoiding Detective Superintendent Ness. She found out I scratched her new Nissan Micra with Keith. Please?’

His shoulder slumped. ‘Dot—’

‘Pretty please? Got the doctor at three, need to keep my morale up.’

A voice growled out from the opposite corner: ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Watt stood, glowering over his cubicle wall at them. He’d swept his dark floppy hair back from his high forehead, securing it there with enough product to stick a hippo to the wall. Sunken eyes. Squint teeth. A sad excuse for a beard that looked as if he’d made it himself out of ginger pubic hair. ‘Will the two of you shut up? Some of us are trying to work.’

Dot narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Oh, I’m sorry Detective Constable Watt, are we disturbing your sulk?’

He stuck out his chin and its wispy covering. ‘I am not sulking, Sergeant. I’m preparing for a deposition, OK? Now will the pair of you shut up and let me get on with it?’

‘All I wanted was a Curly Wurly.’

‘Fine! Fine. You know what? Here …’ He dug into his pocket and hurled a fiver in Callum’s direction. It fluttered and tumbled in mid-air, falling to the manky carpet six feet short. ‘Go. Get her some sodding chocolate. Just do it quietly.’

Callum held up the phone again. ‘Is this thing invisible? I’m – on – hold!’

‘Aye, hello?’ The Scottish idiot on the other end cut ‘American Idiot’ dead. ‘Hello? … You still there?’

Finally. ‘Hello. Yes.’

‘Right, I’ve had a word with Davey: he can’t remember a mummy, but he’s only been here a year longer than me. Marge’s been here for donkeys’, but she’s on holiday till the twelfth. Gone to Norwich for a BDSM festival. You want me to give her your contact details so she can drop you an email when she gets back?’

Callum folded forward until his forehead rested against his keyboard. Don’t swear. Don’t swear. ‘That would be great. Thanks.’

‘Yeah, OK.’ And the line went dead.

He hung up.

Dot’s chair squeaked across the room. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Until it was right next to him. When he looked up, she smiled. ‘So … chocolate?’ She fiddled with the wheelchair’s push rims, twisting the whole thing left and right. All coy and fluttering eyelashes. The left leg of her jeans was stitched closed and trimmed off, just below where her knee should have been.

Suppose a little help getting some chocolate wasn’t too much to ask for.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then nodded. ‘Yeah. Could do with a break anyway.’ He pushed back from his desk. ‘Curly Wurly, coming right up.’

She nodded at the list sitting next to his phone. ‘No luck?’

‘You got any idea how many museums there are in Scotland?’ He stood, bent over and scooped Watt’s hurled fiver from the floor. ‘Then there’s all the universities and private schools with natural history stuff in display cases. Never mind private collections.’

‘You want a hand?’

He blinked. Turned back to her.

At least one person on the team didn’t treat him like something they’d stepped in. ‘Thanks, Dot.’

‘Don’t get all emotional about it. I’m only helping so you’ll be my chocolate monkey.’ She wiggled her fingers above her head, cackling it out: ‘Fly free, my pretty!’

Over in the corner, Watt gave a frustrated wee scream.

Callum slumped his way up the stairs. Two years since they stopped doing proper meals in the canteen. Two years and the stairwell still smelled of boiled cabbage.

His phone went off as he reached the fourth-floor landing. Sodding hell.

He dragged it out. ‘What?’

There was a pause. Then a high-pitched man’s voice squeaked in his ear. ‘Mr MacGregor? I’m calling from the Royal Caledonian Building Society’s Fraud Prevention Department. I need to ask you a few security questions. OK?’

Callum glowered at the wall. ‘No, it’s not OK.’

‘I’m sorry, have I called at a bad time?’

‘Someone’s just nicked my wallet, and I’ve got no idea who you are. I’m not giving you my security details. You want to help? You prove who you are by answering my security questions.’

‘I … I don’t think we’re allowed to do that.’

‘Tough. What’s the third, fifth, and first letters of my mother’s maiden name?’

‘Errr … Look: why don’t you call us, then? That way you’ll know it’s not a scam. You’ll find the number on the back of your cards.’

‘On the back of my stolen cards? The cards I don’t have?’

‘Ah … Right.’ What sounded like an argument echoed up from the floors below, followed by a door clunking shut. ‘Well, maybe you could pop into a branch and they can help you?’ Was that a note of hope and desperation there at the end? Please go away and become someone else’s problem.

‘Yeah. Why not.’ He hung up and clunked his head against the wall. Breathed in the cabbagey smell. Then opened his eyes and swore. No wallet meant no cards. And the little sods had wheeched off with his last fifteen quid, leaving him with … He rummaged in his pocket and came out with two pounds fifty-six in change, a button, and a Mint Imperial that had gone all hairy with pocket fluff. So Elaine could have a jar of Polish pickles or a jar of Nutella, but not both. And forget the onion rolls.

Because it wasn’t as if he could steal the change from Watt’s fiver.

Could he?

He puffed out a breath. Of course he sodding couldn’t.

Callum lumbered up the stairs to the fifth floor. Pushed open the door. And froze.

DCI Powel was standing right in front of him, mug in one hand, manila folder tucked under his arm, phone in his other hand. A big man with ears to match, silver-grey hair swept forward from his temples to cover the bald bits. Smart suit with matching tie. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Hang on a minute, Margaret, there’s someone I need to talk to.’ He lowered the phone.

Callum backed away, into the stairwell again, but Powel followed him.

‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t our very own answer to Mr Bean: Detective Constable Callum MacGregor.’

‘Guv.’

‘I hear you managed to catch Ainsley Dugdale this morning, Constable. He’s one of Big Johnny Simpson’s goons, isn’t he? That’s a first for you, isn’t it? Big Johnny won’t like that.’

Don’t rise to it.

‘And we all know how much you love Big Johnny Simpson, don’t we?’ A massive finger rose and poked Callum in the chest. ‘Don’t think I won’t screw you to the wall for that, Constable. I don’t put up with dirty cops in my division.’

Callum curled his hands into fists. ‘Permission to speak freely, Guv?’

‘Not a chance.’ He leaned in closer, bringing with him the stench of aftershave and dead cigarettes. ‘I don’t like you, Constable.’

‘You hide it well, Guv.’

Was that a twitch of a smile?

Then Powel backed off, turned and marched away down the stairs. ‘Enjoy your meeting with Professional Standards, tomorrow. I’ll bring in a cardboard box so you can empty your desk afterwards.’

Clunk. The door closed, and Callum was alone again.

‘And screw you too, Guv.’

Powel’s voice echoed up from the landing below: ‘I’m still here, Constable.’

Of course he was.

6

Callum logged off his steam-powered computer, stretched, yawned, slumped in his seat for a moment, then hauled himself to his feet.

The office’s fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead, giving everything the warm and welcoming ambience of a horror film. Shame he was the only one there to enjoy it.

One more yawn, a sigh, and a rummage in the bottom drawer of his desk for the paperback-sized Tupperware box he’d stuck in there first thing this morning. He went back in for the dog-eared hardback copy of The Monsters Who Came for Dinner. Checked his watch. Just gone two. With any luck the lunchtime rush at the building society would have petered out by now, but if it hadn’t at least he’d have something decent to read.

Callum pulled on his jacket and stuffed his sandwiches in one pocket, crisps in the other. Right, time to—

The office door swung open and McAdams loomed into the room.

Sod.

McAdams frowned. ‘And where, exactly, do you think you’re going, Constable MacGregor?’

So near, and yet so far. ‘Lunch, Sarge.’

‘Lunch? Off to hide in the park reading … What is that, a kid’s book?’

‘It’s a classic.’

‘Maybe if you’re six years old.’ He checked his watch. ‘And you don’t have time. That mummy needs its home found. Get your arse to work.’

Again with the sodding haikus.

‘I’ve been working.’ Callum picked up the list, all eight pages of it, and shoogled it. ‘Now, I’m going to waste my contractually mandated lunchtime in the building society, trying to get them to give me some of my own money, so I can buy food for my pregnant girlfriend. That all right with you?’

McAdams snatched the list from his hand and flicked through the sheets. Frowned. ‘Constable, why do these museums have the word “dick” written next to them?’

Ah …

‘I’m waiting, Constable.’

Right. Yes. Er …

Ah, OK: ‘It’s not “Dick”, Sarge, it’s “D.I.C.K.” Database Incomplete – Currently Checking. Most of them don’t have an electronic register of all the exhibits in storage, so they’re getting back to me.’

McAdams raised an eyebrow, making a line of wrinkles climb its way up his forehead. ‘“Checking” doesn’t start with a K, Constable.’

Innocent face. ‘Doesn’t it, Sarge?’

‘But I appreciate the creative effort.’ He pointed at the empty desks. ‘Where’s Captain Sulky and The Wheels?’

‘DC Watt’s off to a deposition – that schoolteacher they caught rubbing himself against old ladies in the big Waterstones. DS Hodgkin has a doctor’s appointment.’

‘Hmmm …’ McAdams’ mouth pulled down at the edges. ‘Ah well, I suppose it can’t be helped.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘You, with me. Mother’s office. Now.’

What?

They weren’t going to fire him, were they? They couldn’t. Professional Standards hadn’t even questioned him yet. They couldn’t fire him till after that, surely?

Or maybe they could.

Callum took one last look around the miserable little office – with all its stains and dusty surfaces – then followed McAdams out into the corridor, across the hall, and in through the door opposite. The one with a small brass plaque on it, marked: ‘DETECTIVE INSPECTOR MALCOLMSON ~ DIVISIONAL INVESTIGATIVE SUPPORT TEAM’.

Mother’s office was a bit nicer than her team’s, but not by much. It was just big enough for a scarred Formica desk, a line of filing cabinets down one wall, a whiteboard on the other surrounded by pictures of cats cut out of an old calendar, and a single chair for visitors.

Mother was behind her desk, sooking on the end of a biro, but a uniformed PC stood in the middle of the room, at attention: black trousers; big black boots; black fleece with her ID number on the epaulettes; black, police-issue bowler under one arm. Her curly black hair was pulled back in a bun, exposing the dark skin at the nape of her neck.

OK … Maybe they weren’t going to fire him. Maybe they were going to arrest him instead.

Mother wrinkled her mouth around the pen and stared at Callum. ‘Is this it?’

McAdams propped himself up against a filing cabinet. ‘Everyone else is out.’

‘Suppose he’ll have to do.’ She turned. ‘Constable Franklin, this is Detective Constable Callum MacGregor. Not the brightest spade in the undertaker’s, but he’s all ours. For our sins.’ Another grimace. ‘Callum, this is Constable Franklin. She’s joining us from E Division. That means you’re no longer the new boy. You will show her the ropes. You will be nice to her. And most of all,’ Mother poked the desk with the sooked end of her pen, ‘you will not lead her astray. Are we crystal?’

Babysitting. Even more joy.

‘Yes, Boss.’

‘Good.’ Mother plucked a sheet of paper from her in-tray and held it out. ‘Now, if neither of you have anything better to do—’

Callum stuck up his hand. ‘Actually, Boss, I—’

‘—and I know for a fact that you don’t, you can chase this up.’

Constable Franklin took the piece of paper. ‘Ma’am.’ The word was forced out, resentment dripping from that one syllable like burning pus.

‘Tell me, Constable, do you have a fighting suit?’

‘A fighting …?’ It must have dawned, because she nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Good. You’re a DC now: change out of that uniform. You look like you’re about to arrest someone.’

A twitch, a tightening of the hands into fists. A breath. Then: ‘Ma’am.’

Oh yeah, babysitting this one was going to be bags of fun.

‘Off you go then.’

Franklin turned on her heel, face all pinched and flushed. Narrowed her dark-brown eyes and bared her teeth at Callum. ‘Do we have a problem, Detective Constable?’ Voice like a silk-covered razorblade.

Wow. She was just … wow. Completely … like a model or something. Not just pretty, but totally—

‘I asked you a question.’ She curled her top lip, exposing more perfect teeth. ‘What’s the matter, never seen a black woman before?’

‘I … It … No.’ He blinked. Stood up straighter. ‘I mean: no. No problem. Welcome on board.’ He stuck out his hand for shaking, but she just pushed past and marched from the room, slamming the door behind her.

‘Bloody hell …’ Callum leaned against the wall.

‘I know. Magnificent, isn’t she?’ McAdams grinned at the closed door, then laid a hand against his chest. ‘Skin like warm midnight. Her eyes are moonlit rubies. Her heart: frozen steel.’ A sniff. ‘See if I hadn’t already ticked “threesome” off my bucket list?’

Mother smiled. ‘Congratulations. Anyone I know?’

‘Nah: Beth got someone from her work. Miranda. Nice lady. Presbyterian, but very open minded.’ He frowned at Callum. ‘Still here, Constable? Haven’t you got an angry detective constable to babysit?’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

Sodding hell.

Bright yellow diggers and tipper trucks lumbered about on the massive Camburn Roundabout, rearranging it’s grass and earth into swathes of rutted mud. The Vauxhall’s windscreen wipers made dying-squid noises as Callum took the first exit. He snuck a glance out the corner of his eye at the simmering lump of resentment sitting in the passenger seat.

She’d ditched the uniform in favour of a black suit with weird puffy shoulders, a white shirt, and thin black tie. As if she was on the way to someone’s funeral. ‘What the hell are you staring at?’

He snapped his eyes front again. ‘Nothing.’ Yellow-brick cookie-cutter houses stretched out on either side of the road. Bland, safe, and predictable. ‘Actually …’ He bit his lip. ‘If you don’t mind my asking …’ Deep breath. ‘What did you do?’

She turned and gave him the kind of look that could strip flesh from the bone.

‘I mean, you know, to end up working for DI Malcolmson?’

DC Franklin faced front again.

‘Only, it’s not usually—’

‘Do you always talk this much?’

‘Just thought, if we’re going to be working together, we—’

‘Let’s get something perfectly clear, Detective Constable MacGregor: I am not your friend. I am not your colleague. I am someone who will be out of here very, very soon.’ She shot her cuffs, making them exactly the same length where they stuck out of the sleeves of her shoulder-padded jacket. ‘I don’t intend to spend the remainder of my career lumbered with a bunch of dropouts, has-beens, and never-weres.’

The houses gave way to greying fields and austere drystane dykes. All hard edges softened by the incessant drizzle.

Franklin pulled out her phone and poked away at the screen. Glowering down at it in silence. Ignoring him.

OK, well no one could say he hadn’t tried.

About three miles south of Shortstaine, a pair of dark lines swooped out from the tarmac, dug through the roadside verge and punched a hole through a barbed-wire fence. A patrol car sat twenty yards further down, parked up on the side with its flashers going.

Callum indicated and pulled in behind it. ‘There’s a couple of high-viz jackets in the boot, if you want to … OK.’

She was already out of the car, stalking her way across the verge and down into the field beyond.

‘Fine. Catch your death of cold, see if I care.’ He helped himself to one of the fluorescent-yellow monstrosities and followed her. Arms out to keep his balance on the slippery grass slope.

A hatchback sat about a hundred yards into the field, on the other side of the fence, at the end of those curling dark lines. Its front end had made friends with a chunk of rock, leaving the bonnet twisted like a sneer.

Franklin was halfway there already, back straight and rigid. Presumably because the stick rammed up her backside was of the extra-large variety.

Callum picked his way down the hill until he stood beside her.

The hatchback was an old Kia Picanto – the kind that looked like a roller-skate on steroids. Originally blue, it was now a muddy grey, with deep scratches along both sides where the barbed wire had raked it. A ‘Police Aware’ sticker covered most of the driver’s window.

Franklin stared at the car, then pulled out a sheet of paper and stared at that instead. Then back to the car. ‘Is this it?’

Callum walked over to the back window and peered in through the rain-flecked glass.

Inside, the car was a mess. Not just the usual burger wrappers and sweetie papers, but splashes of paint and crusts of what looked like plaster dust. A tool bag lay in the rear footwell, next to two drums of flooring adhesive and a packet of slate tiles.

A voice behind them: ‘HOY!’

Callum turned.

A young bloke in uniform was stomping his way across the field towards them, one hand holding the peaked cap on top of his head. ‘YOU! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? GET AWAY FROM THERE!’

Franklin waited till he was six feet away, before hauling out a standard-issue warrant-card holder. ‘Constable. Care to explain why I’m wasting my time with a road traffic collision?’

PC Shouty peered at her warrant card, then pulled a face. ‘No offence, but could you not have introduced yourself back at the roadside and saved me a trip down …’ The expression on Franklin’s face must have finally worked its magic, because he shut his mouth with an audible click. Blushed. ‘Sorry?’

Her voice got even colder. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Yes. Right.’ He pointed at the car. ‘Someone called it in this morning, no sign of the driver or any passengers.’

She stepped closer, looming. ‘And I give a toss, because?’

‘The boot! There’s a body in the boot and we thought … well, I thought – thinking isn’t exactly Tony’s forte – but—’

‘There’s a body in the boot?’ Her eyes widened. ‘YOU BLOODY IDIOT! Why haven’t you cordoned off the scene? Where’s the common approach path? Why aren’t you logging visitors? And where the buggering hell is the SEB?’

He backed off a couple of paces, hands up. ‘Whoa. It’s not like that. I mean, it’s not fresh or anything, it’s just, you know, dead, and we—’

‘THERE ARE HUMAN REMAINS IN THAT CAR, YOU MORON! Call the pathologist, now!’

‘No, it’s like … Look.’ He sidled around to the boot of the car and popped the hatchback lid. Swung it up with a gloved hand. ‘See?’

Callum leaned forward and frowned.

There, nestled in amongst the dustsheets and a bucket full of plasterboard fragments was a human body. It lay on its side, arms folded so the hands were pressed against its chest, knees hard up against the hands, feet hard up against the bottom. Head bent forward sharply, so the face was almost completely hidden by the knees. Skin shrunken and wrinkled, the colour of ancient leather.

He groaned. ‘Not another one.’

Franklin bared her teeth. ‘Is this supposed to be a joke, Constable?’ She poked Callum in the shoulder with a rock-hard finger. ‘A bit of a laugh at the new girl’s expense?’ Gearing up for a good bellow. ‘WELL, IS IT?’

And there it was again, that smell. Much stronger here than it had been back at the tip, where it had to fight with the stench of a hundred million rotting bin-bags. The rich, warm, but slightly bitter tang of wood smoke, so strong you could taste it at the back of your throat.

‘Constable! Constable MacGregor, I’m talking to—’

‘Will you shut up a minute?’ He snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. Reached in and prodded the body. Solid, as if it’d been carved from a chunk of oak, then dipped in the peatiest whisky in the world.

When he straightened up, Franklin’s eyes were wide, her whole person trembling as if she was about to pop.

Before she could get started, he dragged out his Airwave handset and called Control. ‘Aye, Brucie? I need a check on a Kia Picanto.’ He rattled off the registration number and colour, then clunked the boot shut in the intervening silence.

Franklin squared her puffed-up shoulders. ‘Now you listen to me, Sunshine, I will not be spoken to like that! How dare—’

‘Okeydokey.’ A thick Dundonian accent crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘Yer car’s registered to a Glen Carmichael, eighteen Walsh Crescent, Blackwall Hill. Twenty-four years old. Ooh, looks like he lives with his mum. You wanting the postcode?’

‘Has he got prior?’

‘Couple counts of housebreaking-and-robbery when he was twelve. Suspended sentence. And an ex-girlfriend got herself a restraining order when he was fourteen. Sounds like a lovely wee lad.’

‘OK, thanks, Brucie.’ Callum put his Airwave away. Grinned at Franklin. ‘We turned up a mummy at the tip this morning, just like this one. Probably nicked from a museum. The Kia’s owner has form for breaking into places he shouldn’t and helping himself to things that aren’t his. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘I see.’ She shot her cuffs again. ‘Well, don’t just stand there – let’s go pick him up.’

7

‘Shhh, you’re doing great.’

Is he? Then why does he feel so terrible? Why does he just want to lie down and die?

The water around him is cold, but that’s not why he’s shivering.

A sponge dips into the dark brown liquid, then runs gently across his chest, clearing away the thin white rime of salt. Dissolving the crystals back into the brine.

The wall whispers over the sound of trickling water. ‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’

Then the sponge dips into the water again, presses against his forehead sending rivulets running down his lined face.

‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’

‘Are you thirsty?’ The voice is kind, worried. ‘Do you want something to drink?’

He tries to shake his head, but can only tremble. No. No more of the foul water.

‘I know it’s bitter, but it’s good for you. Full of herbs and minerals. Here …’

‘You’ll be a god. You’ll be a god. You’ll be a god.’

A metal cup presses against his cracked lips, and he hasn’t got the strength to keep his jaw clenched shut. Sour liquid fills his mouth, catches the back of his throat. And he coughs, splutters the water out, feels it dripping from his chin onto his chest.

‘They’ll worship you.’

His body rocks back and forward, sending out little waves across the bath.

Why can’t he cry?

Only it’s not really a bath, is it? It’s a large metal trough, big enough for three people, let alone one living skeleton. All the joints are rusty, dark brown as if the thing is bleeding, rivets standing out like nipples on its cold metal skin.

Why can’t he just die?

‘You’ll be a god, and they’ll worship you.’

‘Shhh …’ A warm hand on his forehead. A gentle touch and a soft word. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’

8

Walsh Crescent curled in on itself like a snail shell. Mostly bungalows, but every now and then a second storey sprouted from a converted attic. Box hedges, gravel driveways, nameplates on the garden walls. Pretensions of grandeur. One even had a pair of three-foot-high lions perched either side of the drive, their whitewashed surfaces cracked and showing the concrete below.

No view to speak of, but a nice enough street.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Franklin scowled out at the suburban enclave.

Callum pulled up outside number 18. Killed the engine. Sat there with his wrists draped over the steering wheel. ‘Look, I know arresting idiots for stealing mummies from museums probably isn’t what you signed up for, but this is all they let us do.’

She didn’t move.

‘And trust me, this is a lot more interesting than what we’re usually lumbered with. At least there’s genuine dead bodies involved. Even if they are a thousand years old.’

Franklin let out a low sigh, then unclipped her seatbelt. ‘I’m here because I punched a superintendent in the car park.’

‘In the car park?’ Callum smiled. ‘There’s a euphemism I’ve never heard before. Sounds painful.’

‘He deserved it. Next thing you know: no more Edinburgh for you, pack your bags, you’ve been posted to Oldcastle.’ Sounding about as pleased as someone who’s just discovered their routine check-up has turned into emergency root-canal surgery.

‘Welcome to Mother’s Misfit Mob.’ He pointed through the windscreen. ‘Shall we?’

They climbed out into the drizzle and hurried up the path to number 18. Stood beneath the little portico waiting for someone to come answer the bell.

‘So?’ Franklin stuck her hands in her pockets.

‘So what?’

‘What did you do?’

‘Oh …’ Well, she was going to find out sooner or later. ‘I cocked up. Contaminated a crime scene, because I wasn’t paying attention. Too busy trying to get a conviction.’ A shrug. ‘You know Big Johnny Simpson?’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Well, he walked on a murder charge. Because of me. And no, I’m not happy about it.’ At least that part was true.

‘So the team’s a dumping ground for the unwanted and the incompetent. That’s just great.’

‘I wouldn’t say—’

The door opened. ‘Hello?’ A middle-aged woman squinted out at them, hair piled on top of her head, a red pinny smeared with grey stains covering polo-shirt and cords. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel. ‘Sorry, I was in the studio. Can I …’ Her shoulders dipped as she looked them up and down. ‘I’m flattered, but I honestly don’t want any copies of The Watchtower, leaflets about the Bible being a guide to modern life, or a discussion on accepting Jesus into my heart. So if you don’t mind.’ She tried to close the door, but Callum stuck his foot in the way.

‘Mrs Carmichael? Police. Is Glen in?’

‘It’s Ms, and no.’ Her nose came up. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got clay on the wheel.’

Franklin held out her warrant card. ‘There’s been an accident: we just found your son’s car in a field south of the city. He’s not in it. We’re worried for his safety.’

A hand fluttered to her mouth. ‘Glen …’

‘Now can we come in?’

The kitchen was warm enough, every surface covered with pots and bowls and mugs. Some less wonky than others.

Callum stuck the kettle on to boil, then picked up a blue mug with a white rim. ‘These are very good. Did you make them yourself?’

Ms Carmichael sat at the small kitchen table, worrying at her clay-greyed dishtowel. ‘Is Glen all right?’

Franklin pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘We don’t know. We’ve been in contact with the hospitals and doctors’ surgeries, but nothing so far. He’s—’

‘Oh God …’ Her eyes reddened. ‘Glen.’

‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions.’ Callum pointed out through the kitchen wall in the vague direction of Shortstaine. ‘We didn’t see anything in the car to suggest he’s badly hurt. He’s probably just lying low and feeling a bit bruised and stupid.’ That, or Glen had massive internal injuries and was drowning in his own blood somewhere, but his mum definitely didn’t want to hear that. Nothing wrong with leaving people with a little hope.

Franklin sniffed. ‘Ms Carmichael, your son had something in the boot of his car that we’re concerned about. Something that didn’t belong to him.’

She stiffened. ‘My poor wee boy could be lying dead in a ditch and you’re here accusing him of stealing?’

Callum put teabags in mugs. ‘I know it sounds a bit insensitive,’ he gave Franklin a pointed look, ‘but we’ve got to investigate this kind of stuff. It’s important.’

‘It’s because of those burglaries, isn’t it?’ She poked the table with a clay-greyed finger. ‘He was twelve, OK? Just a kid. His dad, God rest his useless little soul, ran out on us the year before. Glen had a hard time adjusting.’ A shrug. ‘His therapist said he was just trying to get attention. Pushing me to see if I loved him enough to put up with all his crap.’

The kettle grumbled to a boil, spouting steam into the air.

‘It wasn’t even money he took. It was stupid things: a standard lamp from next door, a bust of Daley Thompson from the sports centre, all the cutlery from Terry’s Bistro on Minerva Road. It wouldn’t even have been a thing if the bloody sports centre hadn’t insisted on pressing charges.’

Callum fished the steaming teabags out and dumped them in the bin. ‘What happened with the girlfriend?’

‘Gah …’ Ms Carmichael stared at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Angela. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Always buying her little presents and writing her little notes. Following her home from school.’ She looked down when Callum put a mug of tea in front of her. ‘I tried to talk some sense into him, but you know what teenage boys are like – all hormones, spots, and erections. Her parents called the police, and he was in trouble again.’

The fridge was mostly full of yoghurt and chardonnay, but there was half a pint of semi-skimmed that looked reasonably fresh, so Callum stuck it in the middle of the table. ‘Nothing since?’

She wrapped her hands around her mug. ‘It took a while, but he grew up a bit. Got over his dad abandoning us for some leggy tart in the roads department. Started doing well in school again. Went to university and got an MA in business management.’

‘Sounds like a bright kid.’ Callum passed Franklin a slightly wonky green mug, but kept his eyes on Ms Carmichael. ‘Is it OK if we take a look at Glen’s room?’

‘What?’ She blinked at him. ‘Oh, yes. Right.’ She scraped her chair back and stood. Led them out of the kitchen and down a small corridor to a room at the end with ‘SECRET EVIL VILLAIN LAIR’ printed on a sign hung on the door beneath a radiation symbol. She opened it and stepped to one side, mug of tea clutched to her chest. ‘Of course, by the time he graduated no one was hiring. That’s the recession, isn’t it?’

The floor was barely visible through the patina of discarded socks, T-shirts, jeans, and pants. Walls covered in bookshelves – science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, mostly. A TV hooked up to a PlayStation. A poster of a young woman in a bikini, riding a motorbike. Never mind leathers, she wasn’t even wearing a crash helmet. Some people just didn’t take basic safety precautions. A collection of photographs pinned to the wallpaper, above a small computer desk that was heaped with envelopes and bits of paper. And a double bed covered in more clothes.

Every breath in here tasted of stale digestive biscuits and mouldering cheese.

Ms Carmichael shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me, I told him when he turned sixteen: you’re a grown-up now. You tidy your own room, or you live in a pigsty. Your choice.’

Franklin picked her way into the middle of the room. ‘Was Glen interested in museums?’

‘When he was little we’d go to the art gallery, and we’d laugh at all the statues and their naked willies, but other than that …’ A shrug.

‘Hmm …’ She leaned over the desk and pulled a photo from the wall. Held it out. ‘Is this him?’ Her finger hovered over the central figure in a group of three. It looked like a selfie: three young men, all with grins and tins of lager. Checked shirts and tan braces.

The one on the left had a full-sized Grizzly Adams beard, two squint teeth dominating his smile, all crowned by brown hair cropped close at the sides and floppy on top. He’d got one of those piercings, where they stuck a big round plug in the lobe to stretch it wide – making a dirty big hole. As if he was a Masai tribesman, instead of a peely-wally wee bloke from Oldcastle with a lumberjack fixation.

The one on the right’s arm snaked out of the picture – so he’d be the photographer – a shoulder-to-wrist tattoo of Clangers, Soup Dragon, and the Iron Chicken blurring into a colourful mush where the lens couldn’t focus. Long hair pulled back in a ponytail. A variety of studs spread about his nose, eyebrow, lip and ears.

And the one in the middle looked as if he’d inherited his great grandad’s haircut and glasses. Though where he’d got the massive soup-strainer moustache from was anyone’s guess. He was straightening his bow tie, showing off an oversized steel wristwatch on an oversized leather strap. More piercings.

Ms Carmichael squinted at the photo. ‘No, that’s his friend Ben. Glen’s the one on the left with the ridiculous beard.’ She grimaced. ‘Why these hipsters all want to look like old men from the thirties is beyond me. But there you go.’

‘I see.’ Franklin produced her notebook. ‘Can you tell me what your son was wearing when he left the house this morning?’

A snort. ‘This morning? He’s not been back here for six weeks. Him and his friends have been staying at the flat they’re doing up.’ She sighed, looking around the room with its explosion-in-a-laundry-basket décor. ‘Brett’s got a degree in environmental science, Ben’s got a BA in aquaculture, and none of them can find jobs. Recession.’

Franklin scribbled something in her notebook. ‘And where is this flat?’

‘They bought it at auction. The man who lived there killed himself in the living room – bank was foreclosing on his mortgage.’

‘Yes, but where is it?’

‘Hold on, it’ll be in here somewhere …’ Ms Carmichael rummaged through the piles of paper on the computer desk, before emerging triumphant with what looked like a council tax bill. ‘Flat twelve, one thirty-five Customs Street, Castleview, OC twenty-one, six QT.’ Then she turned and put a hand on Callum’s arm. ‘You’re sure Glen’s … not hurt?’

He gave her his best reassuring smile. ‘We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.’

‘Why did you have to lie to her?’

Callum shrugged, slowing the car at the junction. ‘What did you want me to tell her: we’ve no idea if your wee boy’s dead or not? Think that would’ve helped?’ The bridge over the River Wynd made a graceful cobbled arc above the water, marking the border between Blackwall Hill’s twisted knot of housing estates, the Wynd’s well-ordered Georgian streets, and Castleview’s functional industrialisation. All of it grey and miserable in the drizzle.

He took a left at the next roundabout, down a long drab street – blocks of terraced flats, punctuated by shopping centres with more boarded-up windows than new shops.

‘What if Glen Carmichael turns up dead from a punctured lung, or a ruptured spleen?’

‘Then he’ll still be dead whether she’s panicking about him or not. Let her have … Oh, hold on.’ He slammed on the brakes and pulled their manky Vauxhall into a space between a delivery truck and a skip.

‘What the hell do you think you’re—’

‘I’ll only be a minute.’ He scrambled out of the car. ‘Honestly, five tops.’ Callum clunked the door shut, waited for a bus to grumble past, then hurried across the street and into one of the few shops still open.

The Royal Caledonian Building Society’s carpet was going threadbare in the middle, drawing a straight line from the door to the counter. A large middle-aged lady sat behind the bulletproof glass, reading a copy of the Castle News and Post. She looked up as he reached the counter and pulled on a smile about as natural as a porn-star’s breasts.

‘How can I help you?’

Callum thumped his warrant card on the countertop. ‘Someone stole my wallet and I need you to give me some money from my account.’

She made a face, as if he’d just slapped a used nappy down in front of her. ‘I’ll have to speak to the manager …’

The sharp-faced woman pulled on her glasses and peered at her computer screen. ‘Well, Mr MacGregor, you’ll be glad to hear that we appear to have recovered your cards. Someone tried to use them to redeem a number of items at … let me get this right … at a “Little Mike’s Pawnshop”? In Kingsmeath?’

Little sods were probably trying to get hold of samurai swords, crossbows, and ninja throwing stars.

Callum crossed his fingers. ‘Did they find my wallet?’

Please, please, please, please.

She poked at the keyboard. Frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t actually have that information. But the proprietor has destroyed the cards, and as there’s been no successful purchase made on the account, there won’t be any excess to pay.’ The frown turned into an expectant smile, as if she was waiting for congratulations and a round of applause. ‘We’ll get new cards issued to you in the next couple of days.’

‘A couple of days? But I need to buy—’

‘I’m sorry, but the cards have to be reissued from head office. I’ll flag it as urgent, but it’ll still take a couple of days. Now is there anything else I can assist you with, Mr MacGregor?’

‘Yes: I need to take some money out of my savings account.’

‘Ah. I see …’ She made the same face as the woman behind the counter.

Franklin glowered at him as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat. ‘What happened to “five minutes, tops”?’

‘Don’t start.’ He hauled on his seatbelt and started the car. Pulled away from the kerb. ‘Just been bent over a bank manager’s desk for the last quarter of an hour, being shafted without lubricant. And do you know what for? Fifty-three pounds and seventy-two sodding pence.’ He held up the tiny handful of notes and coins. ‘Because that’s all the money we’ve got.’

Down to the end of the road, and right onto the main road.

‘It’s my sodding money! Why do I have to beg for my own fifty-three quid? How is that fair?’

Franklin shook her head. ‘Do you do anything other than moan?’

‘I’m not moaning, I’m ranting. It’s different.’ He took a right, into another street full of tenements, heading towards MacKinnon Quay. ‘How much did we pay to bail those thieving gits out? Billions. Whole sodding country up to its earholes in debt, people losing their jobs and their houses, all so they can enjoy their bloody yachts and champagne!’

A smile. ‘Do you honestly think the manager of a wee building society sub-branch, in a nasty little shopping centre, in a crappy corner of the mediocre cesspit that is Oldcastle, has a yacht?’

‘That’s not the point.’

Straight through at the roundabout and onto Customs Street. It skirted the edge of the docks, with their large blue cranes and towering tanks of offshore mud, all secured behind a twelve-foot-high fence topped with razor wire.

Just past the harbour, a row of small cottages – jammed in tight as teeth – lined the left side of the road, but the houses opposite were a lot less quaint. They were built into the side of the hill, about six feet above road level: the kind of buildings councils put up to punish people for being too poor to afford somewhere better to live. Long, brutalist rows of grey flats, four storeys tall.

Oh, they’d made an attempt to tart them up, put brightly coloured cladding on the top floor, arranged big concrete planters out front on the four-foot-wide strip of grass that separated the flats from the vertical drop to the road below. But the cladding was chipped and faded, the planters cracked and full of weeds, the grass a patchwork of yellow and brown – landmined by generations of terriers and Alsatians.

Callum slowed the car. ‘Which one is it?’

She checked her notebook. ‘Number one thirty-five.’ Then tapped a finger against the glass, as if she was counting time for a very small orchestra. ‘One fifteen. One sixteen. One seventeen …’

‘Glen and his mates had three university degrees between them, and they bought a flat down here? So much for modern education.’

‘One twenty-two. One twenty-three …’

‘Suppose they spend six months doing it up, who’d be daft enough to buy it when they’ve finished?’

‘One twenty-eight. One twenty-nine …’

‘Bunch of idiots.’

‘One thirty-two. Thirty-three …’ She pointed. ‘That’ll be it there. Top floor.’

Callum parked outside, next to a dilapidated Transit van with, ‘DANNY & MIKE ~ CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINERS’ on the side. Someone had daubed the words, ‘THEYZ PEEDOFILES!!!’ underneath, in what looked like blue Hammerite.

He climbed out into the rain. Locked the car soon as Franklin joined him on the pavement. ‘You ready?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a wee boy with a degree in business management, Constable MacGregor, not Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.’ Franklin climbed the steps up to ground level, disappearing from view.

A sigh, then Callum followed her.

Down at road-level, the cottages opposite acted as a windbreak, but up here the drizzle came down sideways, driven in on frigid gusts. MacKinnon Quay sat off to the left, then the grey water of Kings River, then the green line of Dalrymple Park with its big granite monument on the other side. Castle Hill lost in the low grey mist.

On a good day it was probably quite some view, but this wasn’t one of them.

Franklin jabbed a finger at the intercom. Then grimaced and pulled it clear. She sniffed the end of her finger and grimaced again. Wiped it on the rough grey wall.

Callum took out a biro and used it to press the button marked ‘SERVICES’. Holding it down until someone inside finally got tired of the noise and let them in. He smiled at her. ‘Trick of the trade.’

Inside, the corridor was lit by a single flickering bulb in a flyblown fitting. Concrete floor, walls painted magnolia above waist-height and a grubby green below it. The smell of frying onions mingled with the hospital stink of disinfectant. An open stairwell led up into the gloom.

Yeah, Glen and his mates were definitely kidding themselves if they thought anyone was going to buy their flat.

Franklin led the way upstairs.

And Callum tried not to stare at her backside, he really did, but …

Heat rose up his face, making his ears tingle. Yeah, probably better not to ogle his new teammate’s rear end. But it was magnificent.

Across the first-floor landing and up another flight of stairs. And there it was, right in front of him again.

Stop it!

Pregnant girlfriend, remember? Even if she had been off sex for the last five months.

Yeah, but …

No. No staring.

He cleared his throat. Stared at the wall instead.

The second floor was almost identical to the first – two pairs of red doors, some with welcome mats, some with browning spider-plants and dying ferns in pots. Numbers on the doors. Plastic or brass nameplates.

A little old man cracked his door and glowered out at them. ‘You from the Council? About time. Tell those bloody hooligans to turn their music down! Can’t hear myself think in here.’ He slammed the door shut again.

OK.

Callum hurried past, trying very hard not to ogle Franklin’s bum as she climbed the last two flights and stepped out onto the third floor.

She reached into her jacket, came out with a pair of purple nitrile gloves. Snapped them on. Frowned. ‘Are you all right, Constable? Your face is all red.’

‘It … I … Just, you know, the stairs and that.’ He cleared his throat and snapped on his own gloves: blue. ‘You want to kick the door in, or shall we do it the old-fashioned way?’

‘Hmm.’ She knocked.

A skylight sat in the middle of the ceiling, right above the void in the stairwell. A scuffling scratchy noise followed two blurred outlines across the cloudy glass. Seagulls?

He shifted his feet, locked his eyes on a spot six inches above her head. ‘So who’s O’Neil Gillen, when he’s at home?’

‘Osiel Guillén, not O’Neil Gillen. AKA: El Mata Amigos, the Friend Killer. Mexican drug lord.’ Franklin knocked again. ‘Hello?’

She squatted down and lifted the letterbox.

Music pulsed out onto the landing, Led Zeppelin hammering on and on about giving someone a whole lotta love.

‘Hello?’ Another knock.

Callum wrinkled his nose. ‘Can you smell that?’

Sort of a cross between rancid sausages and pine air freshener.

‘Mr Carmichael? Police. I need you to open this door. Mr Carmichael?’ She glanced up at Callum. ‘Is it just me, or does this scream “dead body” to you?’

He took a step back. ‘Two choices: we dunt it in, or we go get a warrant.’

‘Hmmm.’ Franklin let go of the flap, cutting off the music. ‘Dunt it.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’ He raised a foot and slammed it into the wood, just below the handle. The whole thing rattled in its frame. One more. Then a third and the door sprang open, battering into the wall. It didn’t bounce back.

The smell got a hundred times worse.

The music got a lot louder too – thumping away from somewhere deeper inside the flat.

Oh yeah, there was certainly something rotten in there.

Percussion solo.

Franklin gritted her teeth and stepped into the hallway. ‘THIS IS THE POLICE! I WANT EVERYONE IN THE FLAT TO STAY WHERE THEY ARE!’

Gloom filled the hallway.

A sheet of plasterboard slouched against the wall, the bottom edge bowing under its own weight, anchored there by two big ten-litre tubs of magnolia paint.

She crept through the door at the end of the hall.

Callum followed her into a reasonably sized living room. Two windows should have given a view out across the harbour and the river, instead they were completely covered with … Yup, that was hardcore pornography. What little light filtered through it picked out the shape of a platform ladder, a collection of hand tools, and a stack of paint pots. A wallpaper table in the corner bent slightly under the weight of a tool belt, three electric drills, and a small, portable CD player – not quite turned up full volume, but close to it.

Franklin switched the thing off.

Now the only noise was the droning buzz of fat lazy bluebottles making drunken circles in the rancid air. The little dead bodies of their fallen comrades crunched beneath Callum’s feet.

‘GLEN CARMICHAEL?’ She reached into her jacket and came out with an extendable baton. Christ knew where she’d been hiding that. A flick of her wrist clacked it out to full length. ‘HELLO?’

Callum pulled out his pepper spray. ‘COME ON, GUYS, LET’S NOT PLAY SILLY BUGGERS!’

Two bedrooms led off from the living room, their windows similarly coated in bits of porn mag. One of them looked almost finished – the walls smoothly plastered and painted a neutral beige. The other was stripped back to the bare breezeblocks.

The kitchen was awash with pizza boxes and takeaway containers. A bong, half-full of dirty water, sat on the unit by a sink mounded with dirty dishes. A stack of empty lager tins that was taller than Callum.

Three university graduates and they still lived like teenaged boys.

The smell had been much stronger in the corridor than it was in the rest of the flat.

He stopped in the middle of the living room. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

She frowned at him.

‘These flats didn’t go up in Queen Victoria’s time, did they? So where’s the bathroom?’

Back into the hall, where that big sheet of plasterboard leaned up against the wall.

He hefted the paint pots out of the way, then grabbed the plasterboard and pulled, dragging it over to the other side.

A flat panel door. That would be the bathroom.

Callum turned the handle and it swung open inwards. He—

Oh dear God, the smell …

It crashed out into the hall like an avalanche, the dark-sweet taint of rotting meat riding on a wave of cloying pine.

Behind him, Franklin made little retching noises.

He reached for the light switch and clicked it on.

About a million bluebottles leapt into the air, buzzing and swarming, battering at the bare lightbulb. Setting it swinging.

The room was just big enough for a white bathroom suite, which looked brand new, with a shower above the bath. Dark water filled the tub, the surface flecked with floating mats of white and orange mould. A crust of brown made a tidemark around the rim, tiny crystals that glittered in the swaying light.

There was someone in the bath, lying facedown, skin all blackened and swollen. Crawling with little white things where the body’s shoulders protruded from the water.

Franklin stepped up beside him. ‘Christ …’

Yeah.

And then some.

9

Callum stuck his notebook back in his pocket, stepping out of the stairwell and into the drizzle. The view hadn’t improved, if anything it was worse. Low cloud and mist hid everything on the other side of the river, reduced the MacKinnon Quay to little more than a collection of random shapes.

The whole world rendered in shades of grey.

Getting dark too.

Oh no … He checked his watch: just gone half six. The Polish deli would be closed. No pickled cucumbers, onion rolls, or anything else.

So much for Elaine’s cravings.

Yeah, he was going to be popular when he finally got home.

He scuffed along the path then down the stairs to road level, made his way past patrol cars and manky Transit vans. Someone had finger-painted a big willy in the dirt across the back doors of one, complete with hairs.

McAdams’ shiny red Shogun took pride of place in front of the Willymobile, engine running, inside lights on. Callum limped over to the thing and slid onto the back seat. Closed the door on the cold dreich evening. ‘God, it’s perishing out there.’

Sitting in the passenger seat, Mother took a sip of something in a large wax-paper cup. ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Detective Constable MacGregor.’

He sighed. ‘What am I supposed to have done now?’

Her sidekick turned the blowers down and turned in his seat. ‘You kicked in the door. Didn’t call for permission. You should know better.’

‘You’re very welcome, Sarge.’ Callum cupped his hands over the heater mounted between the seats, trying to get some feeling back in his fingertips. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d still be investigating odds and sods – I brought in a murder, OK?’

Mother still hadn’t turned around. ‘What makes you think it’s a murder, Callum? Man falls over in the bath, drowns, happens all the time.’

‘And did he accidentally drown in the bath, before or after dragging a big sheet of plasterboard and two tubs of paint in front of the bathroom door?’ Callum poked at the heater. ‘Can you turn this thing up?’

McAdams fiddled with the dashboard and warmth flowed. ‘What about the door-to-doors?’

He produced his notebook. ‘Sixty-three flats in the immediate vicinity. Twenty-four of them did nothing but complain about their neighbours, thirty-one wouldn’t answer the door or weren’t in, and nine want their hats re-tinfoiled. Not one of them had a single thing to say about Glen Carmichael or his mates.’ Shrug. ‘Well, other than the downstairs neighbour complaining about Led Zeppelin playing on a loop, full blast, for the last two days.’

‘Interesting …’ Mother tapped her fingers along the wax-paper cup. ‘Officially, I should reprimand you for breaking into a crime scene without authorisation, Callum, but our new girl put her hand up to it. Said you were dragged along against your better judgement.’

McAdams snorted. ‘I didn’t even know you had one.’

‘So you, my little man, may have a sweetie.’ Mother dug into her pocket and produced a bag of jelly babies. Held them out.

Callum helped himself to a green one. ‘Thanks.’

She put the bag away. ‘I always love this bit. Forensics are going through the scene, we don’t know who the victim is, there’s a killer on the loose. Excitement. Adventure. And …’ She frowned. ‘Can’t remember the end of the quote, but you know what I mean.’

McAdams nodded. ‘The main plot is unfolding. What we need now is a flashback from the killer’s perspective then some sort of investigative montage to show how much research the writer’s done.’ He clicked his fingers again. ‘Constable MacGregor, get yourself and your new best friend DC Franklin back to the lair. I want a murder board ready to go by … I’m in the mood for pizza, so call it an hour and a half. And get a lookout request on the go for Glen Carmichael and his two mates while you’re at it. Most people stick to rubber duckies in their bathtub, a dead body requires a bit more explaining.’

Ah. ‘Sarge, I was kinda hoping to go home and—’

‘Oooh.’ Mother made a sooking noise. ‘And you were doing so well, Callum. I even gave you a jelly baby.’

‘Time to be a team player, Detective Constable.’

His shoulders slumped. ‘Yes, Boss.’

Yeah, Elaine was going to kill him.

The wet road hissed beneath the pool car’s tyres.

Franklin frowned out of the window. ‘I thought Division Headquarters was that way?’

‘Technically, yes.’ Callum took a right at the roundabout, heading back along the boundary between Castleview and The Wynd. ‘Just got a quick errand to run first.’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Is this what it’s going to be like, Constable? All moaning and “wee errands”?’

‘Five, ten minutes tops. I swear.’ After all, the traffic wasn’t too bad for a Tuesday. ‘Someone stole my wallet this morning. A guy might have it at a shop in Kingsmeath.’

A sigh. A shake of the head. ‘Thought you were supposed to be a police officer.’

‘I was trying to save a little girl’s life: that OK with you?’ Up and over the Blackwall Bridge, and back into Blackwall Hill again, with its modern sprawl of cul-de-sacs and middle-class housing estates.

‘By losing your wallet?’

Past the lights, the road opened up into dual carriageway, everyone sticking to the outside lane to avoid Oldcastle City Council’s award-winning collection of potholes. ‘I didn’t lose it, it was stolen.’

‘This isn’t helping us put a murder board together.’

‘We’ll be fine.’

‘They’re only going for pizza, we—’

‘I’ve done loads of murder boards: it’ll be fine. Trust me.’

She pursed her lips. ‘And why on earth would I do that?’

Fair point.

Montgomery Park drifted by on the right-hand side, a bunch of big white marquees with tartan stripes already sprouting on the grass around the boating lake.

‘OK. Full one hundred percent honesty time: the reason everyone hates me, is they think Big Johnny Simpson bribed me to sod-up a crime scene so he’d get off. But I didn’t. Not a penny. Ever.’

She frowned at him. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you’re incompetent instead of corrupt?’

‘I’m not incompetent!’

‘Could have fooled me.’

‘Fine. I was trying to share, but why don’t you just sit there in sulky silence. See if I care.’ He clicked on the radio. Let it drown out her pouting.

‘… headline the main stage on Saturday, of course, it’s Oldcastle’s very own Donny “Sick Dawg” McRoberts! Donny, my man, good to have you in.’

A fake London patois burst out of the speaker, not quite good enough to conceal the Kingsmeath burr underneath. ‘Yah, it’s Sick Dawg, right? Donny’s what me foster mum called us, and you ain’t my mum, bro.’

‘Ha, ha. Right. Yeah, I got you, man. Respect. “Sick Dawg” it is …’

The massive Blackburgh Roundabout loomed before them. Burgh Library sat on a hill in the middle, all lit up like a 1960s idea of a spaceship – glass and concrete, curving walls and wonky rooflines. The Kingsmeath side of the roundabout was ringed by seven massive tower blocks, eighteen-storey headstones soaring above a scrubby patch of woodland. More 1984 than Star Trek.

‘So, “Sick Dawg”, welcome to Deathbed Discs on Castlewave FM, where we find out what tracks you’d take with you to the grave. And you’re kicking us off with “Stan” from Eminem’s fourth album, The Marshall—’

‘Yah, I been thinking about it, right? And I’m-a not about that no more.’

Callum swung the pool car around the outside lane, then took the first turning into Kingsmeath.

It was as if someone had turned down the lights, leaving the buildings in gloom. Rows and rows of council houses. Tenements. Grey faces and grey buildings.

‘You’re not?’

‘Nah, man. I go to my grave I’m not gonna be surrounded by stuff from the oldtimers, you know what I’m sayin’? Nah: I’m-a play my own stuff, bro. You know, from the heart.’

‘OK …’

An old couple stood on the pavement, screaming at each other, a wee dog cowering on its lead as they yelled.

‘Well, why don’t we just play the song anyway. It’ll give us time to completely abandon all the music your publicist told us you wanted to talk about and reprogramme the whole show …’

Fake rain clattered out of the speakers, followed by Dido singing over a heavy bassline.

Franklin made a little growling noise then jabbed her hand out and turned the radio off. ‘Bloody rap music.’

After that she kept her mouth firmly shut all the way through the bleak housing estates, past a dilapidated playing park – the swings and roundabouts reduced to slumped blobs of fire-blackened plastic – past Douglas on the Mound with its scaffolding-shrouded spire and vandalised graveyard …

It wasn’t until Callum pulled into a potholed car park that she opened it again. ‘Is this it?’

The car park was bordered on three sides by what were probably billed as ‘single-storey retail units with excellent potential!’ but looked more like something off the news when a riot’s just passed through. Three of the eight were boarded up; all were covered in a tattoo of graffiti; all had the kind of metal grilles over the window that were meant to roll up out of the way, but probably spent all their time firmly locked in the down position. A newsagents, a chip shop, a convenience store that looked about as welcoming as a shallow grave, a charity shop, and right at the far end: Little Mike’s Pawnshop. The sign above the frontage boasted, ‘WE BUY AND SELL ALL MANNER OF THINGS!’ ‘CASH FOR GOLD!’ ‘PAYDAY LOANS AT EXCELLENT RATES!!!’ ‘EST. 1995!’

Callum parked in front of it. ‘Won’t be long.’

‘Oh for … You’re here to redeem some manky family heirloom?’

‘Five minutes. Promise.’ He climbed out into the rain. Ducked his head and hurried inside.

The door made an electronic bleep-blonk noise as it swung closed behind him. Shelves lined the walls, packed with other people’s things. Free-standing display units turned the shop into a labyrinth. Old video game consoles, a collection of musical instruments, microwaves, hairdryers, boxed cutlery, vases, what looked like a brass urn with ‘IN MEMORY OF AGNES MAY ~ BELOVED MOTHER’ engraved on it. All of it marinating in the gritty stench of dust and mildew.

Callum picked his way through the maze to the counter, where a wee fat man was bent over a copy of the Castle News and Post. His white shirt was just a bit too big for him, the collar and cuffs stained and frayed. A maroon waistcoat with buttons missing and brown stains down the front. Bald head glinting in the shop’s dim lighting.

‘You Little Mike?’

The man behind the counter looked up, squinted, then pulled on a pair of small round glasses. ‘I am indeed, young sir, welcome to my emporium of delight.’ He swept a chubby hand from left to right, indicating his second-hand wares. ‘How may we assist you this drizzly September evening?’

The door made its bleep-blonk noise again and Franklin appeared, as if by magic. ‘Are you not finished yet?’

‘Ah, I see.’ Little Mike smiled like an indulgent parent. Then he folded his paper and moved it off to one side, revealing the glass countertop. A collection of rings and watches sparkled against dusty purple velvet. ‘An engagement ring for the lady, perhaps?’

Franklin stiffened. ‘What?’

‘Definitely not!’ Warmth bloomed in Callum’s ears. ‘Someone tried to use my credit and debit cards in here today. You destroyed them.’

He sighed. ‘A shame. You make such a lovely couple.’ A finger poked the glass. ‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you?’

‘Did they leave my wallet behind?’

‘Or, how about this?’ He grabbed something from beneath the counter and stuck it on his head then went back and fiddled a clip-on bow tie into place. ‘See? It’s a fez and bow tie. You can dress up like Doctor Who, for parties. Isn’t that fun?’

‘Have – you – got – my – wallet?’

‘No? Ah well.’ He covered the glass top with his newspaper again. ‘The young lady and gentleman concerned did have a wallet with them. A rather tatty affair, with the lining hanging out.’

Oh thank God. ‘That’s it! That’s the one.’

‘I see … Well, perhaps I can help.’ He disappeared through a door in the back.

Franklin picked the urn from its shelf. ‘Who pawns their mother’s ashes?’

‘Here we are.’ Little Mike was back, holding a shoebox. He set it down on the countertop and pulled out a couple of wallets. ‘Real leather, look at that stitching, have you ever seen anything so magnificent?’

‘What? No. I don’t want another wallet, I want the one those little sods stole from me!’

A pained smile. ‘I’m sorry, the young lady and gentleman only handed over the cards, not the wallet. But I can do you a very good deal on a new one if—’ His eyes went wide behind the little round glasses and he bustled out into the shop. ‘If I may?’ He held his hands out in front of Franklin.

She gave him the urn.

‘Thank you. Mr May would be most distressed if I allowed his mother to leave the shop without him.’ Little Mike polished a speck of dust from the urn with a hanky, then returned it to its shelf. ‘Now, is there anything else I can interest you in, while you’re here? An electric guitar, perhaps? Or how about the sensual delight that comes with an electric foot spa?’

Callum held out his hand. ‘Where are the bits of credit card?’

‘Ah, of course. You wish to make sure I haven’t indulged in anything illicit. Quite proper.’ He pulled out a carrier bag and tipped the contents of his wastepaper basket into it. ‘Don’t worry: as it’s loose items, I don’t have to charge you for the bag. Now, if I can’t tempt you with my esoteric pre-loved wares, I think I might close up for the night. So, if you don’t mind …?’ He swept a hand towards the door.

They shuffled through the maze to the exit.

Callum stopped with one hand on the handle. Frowned back into the shop. ‘The building society said they were trying to redeem something when you cut up the cards.’

‘That is correct, yes.’

‘What?’

One of Little Mike’s eyebrows made a break for freedom. ‘Ah … I’m afraid I can’t—’

‘If you’re about to invoke pawnbroker-client confidentiality, don’t bother. What did they try to redeem?’

‘Very well.’ He shook his head, then turned and led them back through the stacks and display cases to a collection of brightly coloured plastic. ‘Items F-twenty-three to F-forty-six.’

There was a sandpit, a collection of squeaky toys that looked as if they belonged in a bath, a Wendy house, a kid’s tricycle far too small for either of the little monsters to ride. An off-grey teddy bear with only one ear, scuffed button eyes, and stuffing poking out of his side. There were other bits and pieces, but nothing suitable for anyone over the age of three.

Franklin gave Little Mike one of her finest scowls. ‘You pawn wee kids’ toys?’

He sighed. ‘Some people, this is all they have. If they can’t pay their bills, their rent, if they can’t buy food for their children, what do they do? You want them to go to loan sharks?’

‘They’re kids’ toys.’

‘I know. But what can I do, turn them away hungry? Let them get thrown out on the street? So I pawn their children’s toys, and I know they’ll never come back and redeem them, and I know they’re worthless, but I do what I can.’ He took off his glasses and polished them on the frayed edge of his shirt. ‘This is what real life looks like from down here at the bottom, officers. Foodbanks and pawnshops. Who else is going to help these people?’

Callum frowned down at the collection of plastic tat.

A hand on his arm. ‘Come on, we need to get that murder board done.’

He puffed out his cheeks. ‘How much to redeem the toys? And I’ll need their address.’

10

Callum stuffed the multicoloured rocking-horse-shaped-like-a-fish thing in the boot with all the other toys. Closed the lid. Turned and leaned back against the car.

Little Mike rattled down the grille over his pawnshop’s front door. Wrestled a thick padlock into position. Then turned and lumbered away into the evening.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the heavy cloud, the low beam of golden light pulling a rainbow from the drizzle. Making the graffiti-wreathed shopping centre shine.

The car’s horn blared.

Right.

Callum peered in through the rear window and there was Franklin peering back at him, reaching over from the passenger seat to lean on the horn again.

Mouthing the words, ‘Hurry up!’

Funny how some people could start off looking extremely pretty, only to get less and less attractive the more time you had to spend with them. At this rate, by the end of the week, Detective Constable Franklin was going to resemble the underside of Quasimodo’s armpit.

He sighed and climbed in behind the wheel. Cranked the engine. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’

She checked her watch. ‘DS McAdams said an hour and a half, thirty minutes ago. We’re, what, twenty minutes from DHQ. That leaves—’

‘Plenty of time.’ He navigated his way through the potholes and back onto the road. ‘Just got a little stop to make on the way.’

‘God’s sake!’

‘It’s on the way. Won’t take five, ten minutes tops.’

‘Gah!’ She swivelled in her seat to give him the full-on glower. ‘I’ve just started with this team and I am not going to let you screw it up for me.’

‘Seriously?’ Left at the junction, onto McGilvray Place with its boarded-up terrace and abandoned building site – just foundations and pipes sticking out of the ground to mark the death throes of the local construction industry. ‘What happened to, “I’m not wasting my career with you losers”? Thought you wanted nothing to do with us.’

‘Let’s get something straight, Constable, I’m out of here first chance I get. But until then, I’m going to do the job. Properly. Not whatever half-arsed version of it you think you can get away with.’

‘It’ll take five minutes.’ A right, onto Munro Place, taking the car up the hill. ‘Then we’ll hit Division HQ and I’ll do the murder board, OK? And you can feel free to clype on me anytime you like.’ After all, it wasn’t as if Mother or McAdams could hate him more than they already did.

He slowed for a moment next to the rusty Volkswagen, where Dugdale had deployed The Claw, then over the crest of the hill and down the other side.

Left at the bottom.

Callum checked the slip of paper with ‘LITTLE MIKE’S PAWNSHOP ~ PRE-LOVED GOODS & PERSONAL FINANCE SOLUTIONS’ in flowery script along the top and, ‘BROWN : 45B MANSON AVE.’ scrawled beneath it in biro.

Number 45 was on the outside edge of a set of five identical squashed grey council-issue boxes. Each one semidetached, split down the middle – A on the left, B on the right – ten homes per block. Someone probably thought arranging them into wee groups like that would foster a sense of community pride and spirit. It hadn’t. A ruptured sofa sat outside the house next door. The one beyond that had a washing machine as a garden ornament, the porthole door open to show a collection of crumpled lager tins. Knee-high weeds from the front door to the garden wall.

Callum parked out front. Hauled on the handbrake. ‘Five minutes. You can use the time to compose your formal complaint about me.’

She just scowled at him.

He slipped out of the car, turned and stuck his head in again. ‘One of these days, the wind’s going to change.’ Then clunked the door shut and marched off before she could say anything back.

The garden gate was rusted solid, so he hopped over it onto a path of cracked paving slabs with grass growing in off-green Mohicans between them.

No doorbell.

He gave the chipped wood three loud hard knocks.

The light was on in the living room, shining through a pair of lace curtains. Shadows moved about inside.

Another three knocks.

And a voice came from the other side of the door. Young, female. ‘Go away.’

‘Mrs Brown?’

‘If you’re from the bailiffs, you can sod off. I don’t have to open the door!’

‘It’s not the bailiffs, it’s the police.’ He held his warrant card up to the spyhole. ‘See?’

A groan. Then something thunked against the door at head height. ‘He doesn’t live here, OK? I kicked him out six weeks ago.’

Callum put his warrant card away. ‘Who doesn’t live here?’

Franklin was checking her watch, making a big pantomime of pointing at the thing and then pointing at him.

‘Go away.’

‘I’ve got some stuff for you, OK?’

‘I’m not in.’

Why bother?

Callum marched back to the car, popped open the boot and hauled out an armful of kid’s plastic toys. Dumped them just over the garden wall and went back for another load. Adding to the pile until the boot was empty.

The last thing was the raggedy teddy bear, with its missing ear and herniated stuffing. Plastic tat was one thing, a well-loved teddy bear was another. No way it was getting dumped in the weed-ridden grass.

He returned to the front door. Knocked. Held Teddy up to the spyhole.

Some muttered conversation inside, then the door opened a crack, the chain glinting in the hall light. A thin face peered out at him, blonde hair pulled back tight. She didn’t look old enough to leave school, let alone have two small kids. There was a huge bruise on her cheek, dark and angry against the pale skin. She blinked at the bear. ‘Mr Lumpylump?’

She shifted, and there was child number three – a baby cradled in her arms, wrapped in a tatty Power Rangers blanket. Face a rounded pink blob, making snuffling noises.

A small child wailed somewhere behind her, sounding as if someone was removing its fingers with a blowtorch. Child number four.

The woman didn’t even flinch. ‘Shut up, Pinky.’

‘I redeemed the rest of the kid’s toys. They’re in the garden.’

Her hand reached through the gap between the door and the frame, fingers trembling. ‘Can I have him. Please?’ She licked her lips.

‘Look, all I want is my wallet back, OK? There’s no money in it anyway, it’s just a tatty old wallet that’s falling apart. Like the bear.’ He gave Mr Lumpylump a wee shoogle, making him dance. ‘It’s important to me.’

She blinked up at him. ‘I don’t have it. I don’t have any wallet.’

‘You could check, though? Ask your children?’

Behind her, the toddler wailed some more, as whoever it was turned the blowtorch on their toes.

‘They’re not here.’ She reached out until the frame and door dug into her arm. Straining for the manky teddy bear. ‘Please …?’

What was he going to do, hold a kid’s teddy to ransom?

Callum passed her the bear and she snatched it from him, yanking it back inside the house and slamming the door.

He knocked again. ‘Hello?’ Rested his forehead against the door. ‘Hello?’

Silence. Not even the wailing.

Great.

What was the point of trying to help people? Why did everyone have to be so … so selfish. And nasty. And horrible?

One last try.

He pulled an official Police Scotland business card from his pocket wrote, ‘IF YOU FIND MY WALLET, PLEASE LET ME KNOW’ on the back, and slipped it through the letterbox.

Probably be sod-all use, but what other option did he have?

Callum trudged back along the path. Clambered over the rusted gate.

‘Hoy, mister?’ A young girl’s voice, hard with defiance and a broad Oldcastle accent.

He turned.

The little monster from this morning. The one who’d swigged cider from a can. The one Dugdale had used as a human shield. The rotten wee sod who’d stolen his wallet.

She’d ditched the baseball cap and tracksuit top for a T-shirt with a vampire Womble on it, but not the attitude. ‘What you doing here, Piggy?’

He nodded at the pile of plastic things.

Her eyes widened. ‘Whoa! You got Pinky’s toys back?’ Then her internal coolometer must have kicked in, her grin turned into a bored expression and a shrug. ‘Yeah, so?’

‘Swap you for my wallet.’

‘Ain’t got no wallet, do I? Chucked it.’

His whole face crumpled. ‘Oh for …’ What was the point? Of course she chucked it, with the credit cards cut up, why would she hold onto it? Wasn’t as if there was any cash in there. His shoulders drooped. ‘Sodding hell.’

‘Don’t know what you’re greetin’ about. Just a crappy old wallet, innit?’

‘It was my father’s. Only thing I’ve got of his.’

‘Yeah?’ She spat into the weeds. ‘Well, my dad broke my arm then ran off with one of mum’s friends.’

‘Mine disappeared when I was five.’

‘I was four.’ Always had to have the last word, didn’t she? A competition for who had the crappiest childhood.

‘Well I grew up in a care home. Beat that.’

Aha, she couldn’t, could she. At least she had a mother. Though going by the bruised face, her mum’s taste in men hadn’t improved any.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s Willow, isn’t it?’ At least, that was what her wee brother had called her when she was kicking three shades out of Dugdale’s head. ‘Any idea who’s been hitting your mum?’

Willow’s back stiffened. ‘I ain’t no snitch, Piggy.’

‘Course not.’ He produced another business card, stuck his mobile number on the back, and laid it on top of the wall. ‘But if you’re worried about her or anything …’ A shrug. ‘You know.’

The lace curtains twitched open, and there was Willow’s mum, standing with a toddler on one hip. She had the tatty old teddy bear clutched to her chest like a bible.

Not the kid’s bear, hers. Pawned to pay for food, or rent.

How depressing was that?

Callum climbed in behind the wheel. Frowned. Shook his head. Then started the car.

Franklin stared at him. ‘Well?’

‘No idea.’ He pulled away from the kerb, keeping one eye on the rear-view mirror.

The little girl stood and watched them all the way to the corner, then disappeared from view.

‘This was all for your stupid wallet, wasn’t it?’

He pulled out his Airwave, poking at the buttons with one hand as they navigated their way back towards the real world. ‘Control? Can you do a PNC on a Ms Brown, forty-five B Manson Avenue, Kingsmeath? See if anyone’s been bothering her.’

‘Aye, will do. Hang on.’

‘Thanks.’ He stuck the handset on the dashboard, took them out past a dilapidated community centre – doors and windows boarded up with damp-swollen chipboard – and onto Montrose Road. Pottering along behind a Fiat Punto barely doing twenty miles an hour.

‘For God’s sake, at least put the blues-and-twos on.’ Franklin reached for the button mounted on the dashboard, marked, ‘999’.

Callum slapped her hand away. ‘Are you off your head?’

‘We’re going to be late!’

‘You press that button and the dashboard camera comes on.’ He pointed at the little rectangle of plastic mounted against the windscreen, hidden by the rear-view mirror. ‘And the GPS starts recording. And it all gets stored for the courts, or in case there’s an accident while you’re wheeching through traffic. Lights and sirens are for emergencies only, not because you’re in a hurry.’

She curled her hand against her chest, as if he’d stabbed it with a fork and scowled at him. ‘Where is it then? This magical wallet?’

A stone settled in his stomach, cold and heavy. ‘They threw it away.’

‘Waste of sodding time.’ She checked her watch again. ‘Thirty-six minutes to get back to Division Headquarters and make up a murder board.’

‘Will you stop moaning on about—’

‘DC MacGregor from Control, safe to talk?’

He picked up the handset and pressed the button. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Aye, right: your woman’s a Miss Irene Brown, twenty-three years old. Done for possession four years ago, got off with a caution … Hmm … Looks like that’s the last known address for one Jeremy Barron, Jezza to his mates, AKA: Jerome Barton, James Broughton, and Jimmy Bishop. Bit of a scummer from the look of it. Assault, robbery, assault, aggravated assault, possession with intent, serious assault, two counts of sodding about in public with a knife.’ A clicking keyboard rattled out of the speaker. ‘Looks like she’s got a bit of a history with violent scumbags. Poor woman couldn’t pick a nice bloke out of an empty room if you Sellotaped a balloon to his forehead.’

Twenty-three years old, with four kids.

And a dirty big bruise on her face.

No wonder she clung onto her teddy bear like that.

Her daughter, the horrible Willow, had to be at least seven years old, so that meant Miss Irene Brown must have been about sixteen when she’d had her.

What a life: trapped beneath a landslide of pregnancy and violence.

Callum tapped his fingers on the handset’s plastic case. ‘Do me a favour: put a grade one flag on the house, OK? Just in case this Jerome Barton comes back again.’

‘Pfff, can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thanks.’ Callum slipped his Airwave back in his jacket. Took a left at the roundabout and onto the Calderwell Bridge.

Halfway across the river, Franklin sighed. ‘OK, now can we go do this sodding murder board?’

‘And that, is that.’ Callum pinned the last photo to the corkboard and stepped back, hands on his hips.

Not a bad job, even if he said so himself.

The murder board took up a whole wall of the Divisional Investigative Support Team office. One whiteboard cut up into sections with that thin magnetic tape stuff, all headings spelled correctly, details on the corkboards to either side of Glen Carmichael and his fellow graduate property developers. Ben Harrington with his massive moustache, Brett Millar and his Clangers tattoo. Photos, potted bios, previous brushes with the law, list of known friends and associates. Schedule for the flat from the auctioneer’s website along with PNC details for the previous owner.

He checked his watch. ‘Done with five minutes to spare.’

Franklin stayed where she was, perched on the edge of her brand-new desk. ‘Is that it?’ A sniff. ‘I always thought a murder board would be more … I don’t know. Like on the TV.’

‘TV people wouldn’t know a murder board from a Christmas list.’

The door banged open and in stormed Watt, floppy fringe plastered to his forehead, mouth scrunched up into a twisted pouting sneer, wee pubey beard bristling as he hurled his soggy jacket into the corner. He graced Callum with a glare, then shifted it over to Franklin. ‘Who’s this?’

She stiffened her back. Drew herself up to full height.

But the door thumped open again before she could lay into him and Dotty wheeled herself into the office. ‘Oh don’t be such a princess, John. I said I was sorry.’

Might as well do the introductions.

Callum hooked a thumb at Franklin. ‘Watt, Dotty, this is our new recruit: Detective Constable Franklin, from E Division. Punched a superintendent, right in the car park.’

Watt wiped his hands down his face and flicked the drips at Dotty. ‘I’m bloody drenched!’

‘It was an accident.’

‘No it sodding wasn’t! You aimed for that puddle on purpose.’

‘Franklin: the soggy tit with the beard is Detective Constable Watt. He clyped on his last team at G Division, so the high heedjins had him transferred to Oldcastle. And we are graced with his presence, because none of the other teams will work with the grumpy little git.’

‘I didn’t know you were standing there.’

‘This is because I wouldn’t get you chocolate, isn’t it?’ Watt grabbed his mug from his desk. ‘Get your own damn chocolate!’

‘The young lady in the wheelchair is Detective Sergeant Dorothy Hodgkin. She’s here because some wee radge fancied a high-speed pursuit in a stolen Beamer. Dotty lost her leg above the knee in the crash. Her wheelchair’s called “Keith”: don’t ask.’

‘I will.’ Dotty bared her teeth at Watt. ‘And you know what? I was sorry, but I’m not now. You’re a sour-faced, childish, chippy, miserable scumbag, John. No wonder nobody likes you.’

Callum shrugged. ‘As you can see, we’re all one big happy family.’

‘Oh, ha-ha.’ Watt turned his scowl back on Callum. ‘I bet he’s not told you why he’s here, Franklin, has he? He—’

‘Everyone thinks he took a bribe to cock-up a crime scene. I know.’ Franklin folded her arms. ‘So is everyone on this team a reject? What about McAdams and Malcolmson?’

Dotty wriggled her way out of her jacket. ‘DS McAdams has terminal bowel cancer. They so want to send him off on the sick, but he won’t go. And DI Malcolmson is just recovering from a massive heart attack.’ Dotty held her arms up, flashing victory signs like Richard Nixon. ‘Welcome to the Misfit Mob! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ She wheeled herself across the manky carpet tiles to Franklin and stuck out a hand with a fingerless leather glove on it. ‘Dorothy. Dot or Dotty to my friends.’

After a wee pause, Franklin shook it. ‘Rosalind.’

‘Rose for short?’

‘No.’

‘Oh …’ Dotty wheeled herself back to her desk. ‘Ah well.’

Callum swept his hand around the room. ‘And that’s us. All the other departments think we’re useless, the bosses give us boring or horrible cases, and this is the first exciting enquiry we’ve had since, well, ever. But if you—’

‘Knockity, knock.’ The door swung open and in waltzed McAdams, a stack of four pizza boxes balanced in one hand. ‘Behold, little ones, Mother and I have returned. Lo, I bring succour.’ A grin. ‘Well, one ham-and-pineapple, one meat feast, a four seasons, and a pepperoni, but it’s the thought that counts.’ He dumped the boxes on the nearest desk. ‘I trust you’ve all been beavering away, advancing the plot and revealing character through action rather than exposition …’ A frown. ‘Constable MacGregor, why are you still here? Go home.’

Callum pointed at the whiteboard with all its lines and data. ‘But you said—’

‘Detective Constable Franklin!’ McAdams patted her on the back. ‘Excellent job on the murder board. Very thorough.’

Her cheeks darkened slightly. ‘But I didn’t—’

‘Nonsense. Credit where it’s due.’ He picked a sheet of paper from the nearest desk, crumpled it up and hurled it at Watt.

It bounced off his floppy fringe. ‘Hoy!’

‘What did I tell you about signing off at the end of a shift? I just checked the logs and apparently you’re still on duty from yesterday.’

Watt cleared his throat. ‘I was busy.’

‘I don’t care if you’re King Busy, ruler of all the Busy Bee people in Busy Buzzy Bee Land: sign out! I’m not authorising any overtime till you get that through your pointy wee head.’

‘But. Sarge—’

‘No.’ McAdams glanced at Callum. ‘Thought I told you to go home, Constable. You’ve got a full day tomorrow: all those museums to phone.’

‘Oh you are kidding me! I was the one who—’

‘To each man his task, according to his merits. Some more than others.’ A wink. ‘You, for example, can leave the murder investigation to the professionals.’

Callum bit his bottom lip. Arms trembling. Hands curled into fists.

‘Good night, Constable.’

He took a step forward.

McAdams grinned.

And there it was: he wanted a punch on the nose. With Franklin, Watt, and Dotty as witnesses, McAdams could go to Professional Standards and get him suspended at the very least. It wouldn’t look very good at his review tomorrow either.

Deep breath. Callum forced his hands to open. ‘Fine.’ Grabbed his coat. ‘But I’m taking one of these with me.’ He helped himself to a pizza box, warm against his fingertips, and marched out of the door.

‘Elaine? Hello?’ Callum balanced the pizza in one hand, clunked the front door shut and locked it. Slipped out of his soggy jacket and kicked off his wet shoes. Left soggy-sock footprints on the laminate flooring through into the kitchen. ‘God what a day. Utterly soaked.’

The sounds of some sort of cookery programme oozed out through the closed living room door.

At least the backpack was waterproof. Callum unloaded it onto the kitchen table, raised his voice so she’d hear him in the lounge. ‘DID YOU HEAR? THEY SAY IT’S GOING TO BE THE WETTEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD.’

No reply.

‘ELAINE?’

Nothing.

He stuck the Tupperware box for his sandwiches in the sink. Took today’s note and put it up on the fridge with all the others she’d sneaked in with his lunches over the last month – little inspirational quotes, terrible puns, and the occasional dirty joke. Most came with a drawing. Today’s was a rotund badger with teeny legs, taking a bite out of a pig, above the legend, ‘I LOVE YOU MORE THAN DESMOND THE BADGER LOVES BACON’. Which was nice to know.

Callum flicked through The Monsters Who Came for Dinner, smiling at the old familiar illustrations.

Come on: there’d be plenty of time to read it after dinner.

He emptied his pockets, stripped to his pants, and threw his fighting suit in the washing machine. Set it to tumble dry.

Stuck his head back into the hall. ‘YOU WANT TEA?’

Nope. Whatever she was watching, it had her.

Callum stuck the kettle on and the oven too. Wandered through to the lounge.

Some posh English bloke with curly hair and big nostrils filled the TV screen – wandering through a forest somewhere, banging on about how tasty squirrels were if you cooked them in a nice ragout.

Elaine was curled up on the sofa with her back to the door, wearing her comfies, a tartan fleecy blanket pulled over her enormous pregnant bulge. A bowl rested in her lap, containing a mixture of marshmallows and crisps.

It wasn’t a big living room: barely enough space to take a three-seater sofa and an armchair; a fake coal fire that groaned and flickered; a coffee table with a collection of wooden ornaments on it; a TV, complete with squirrel-mongering celebrity chef; and four floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stuffed to overflowing with novels.

Their blinds were open, the darkness on the other side turning the window into a mirror – reflecting back one thin pasty body in blue underpants. The lights in the houses opposite twinkled through Callum, making him sparkle like the world’s least scary vampire. Then the eight o’clock train to Edinburgh rumbled past, its glowing windows making rectangular spotlights sweep across the back garden. Searching.

He crossed the room and closed the blinds, before anyone on board became overwhelmed with desire at the sight of his ancient Marks and Spencer’s lingerie going a bit baggy in the elastic. ‘I got pizza for tea. Well, technically I stole pizza, and I know it’s not Nutella and pickles, but—’

A grunt rattled its way free and Elaine sat up. ‘What? M’wake!’ She blinked at the room. Then the TV. Then Callum. Brushed the long brown hair from her eyes. ‘What time is it?’ Cracked a huge yawn, showing off a proper Scottish set of fillings. ‘Why are you in your pants?’ The corners of her eyes wrinkled. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘It’s just gone eight.’

‘You look like someone ran over it with a washing machine.’

‘I’ve got pizza.’

‘Gah …’ Another yawn. Then she held out her arms. ‘I had a horrible dream. You abandoned me and Peanut because we got ugly and you didn’t love us any more.’

‘You’re not ugly.’ He hugged her and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. ‘You’re beautiful. You smell of cheese-and-onion, but other than that, you’re safe.’

Callum picked one of Elaine’s discarded mushrooms and put it on his own slice, adding to the pepperoni. Sat back on the couch and stuffed in another mouthful, trying not to get any on his tartan T-shirt and joggy bottoms.

‘Urgh …’ She grimaced at him. ‘You eat like a wheelie bin.’

‘Yronlygelous.’ The words all mushed up as he chewed.

Sitting on the bookshelf, the flat’s phone launched into a tinny rendition of the South Bank Show theme tune.

Elaine curled her top lip. ‘Sod off.’ She pointed at the plate resting on top of her bulge like a makeshift tabletop. ‘We’re eating!’

‘If it’s your mum, I’m telling her we’re not in.’

‘Let it go to voicemail. They—’

‘Can’t. What if it’s important?’ He stuck his plate back on the coffee table and hauled himself out of the couch, walked round the back to the bookcases. Sooked his fingers clean and picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello?’

Still nothing.

He checked the caller display: ‘NUMBER WITHHELD’.

‘OK, I’m—’

Click.

Elaine turned and looked over the back of the couch. ‘Who is it?’

‘No idea, they hung up.’ He put the phone back in the cradle. ‘Probably some auto-dialling PPI tossers.’

Probably.

‘Callum, while you’re up?’

‘Mmm?’ He turned away from the phone.

‘Any chance you can grab the raspberry jam from the kitchen? I think it’ll go great with these anchovies.’

He tried not to shudder, he really did …

— every day we live — is a day closer to the day we die

Sometimes, the worst thing you can imagine – and I mean the worst thing you can possibly think of – that’s just the start. Because things can always get worse, dear reader. And in my experience they usually do …

R.M. Travis

The Monsters Who Came for Dinner (1999)

Damn right you better fear me, cos I’m about to break free,

You better f*ckin’ hear me, there won’t be no all-clear: see?

I’m-a sharp like a shark, ma bite’s worse than my bark,

I attack from the dark, cos violence is ma trademark,

Think that you’re tough? You ain’t even in the ballpark …

Donny ‘$ick Dawg’ McRoberts

‘Unrequited Love Song Number 3’

© Bob’s Speed Trap Records (2015)

11

‘… another six arrests in the Holyrood sex-ring investigation. Weather now, and there’s more rain on the way, sorry, but it should clear up by the weekend for our very own Tartantula Music Festival in Montgomery Park! Fingers crossed. And if you haven’t got your tickets yet, stick around – I’ve got just the competition for you.’

Callum marched back into the bedroom, scrubbing his hair dry on a pink towel.

‘This is The Very Early in the Morning Show and you’re listening to me, Jane Forbes, on Castlewave FM, because you’re sexy, intelligent, and looking fabulous today!’

He grimaced at the naked creature in the mirror, then hauled on a pair of pants and yesterday’s suit trousers. Maybe not so fabulous. Especially now the bruises Dugdale gifted him had darkened to a deep lustrous purple, ringed with blues and greens. Lucky he hadn’t cracked a rib.

‘Right, we’ve got Sensational Steve’s Breakfast Drive-Time Bonanza coming up in thirty minutes, but that gives us loads of time for yet more stonking tunes!’

Elaine peered out from under the duvet. ‘Tmmsit?’

‘Half six. Go back to sleep.’ A clean white shirt and red clip-on tie.

‘No, m’up. M’up.’ She let loose a massive yawn. Sat up and had a scratch, long brown hair all flattened on one side.

‘Let’s kick off with a Tartantula festival favourite: Nearly Blind Vera, and their new single “Swarm”.’ What sounded like a full orchestra belted out of the speakers, swelling to a—

Elaine thumped her palm down on the clock radio and swivelled her legs out of bed. Shuffled out of the room in pink bunny slippers, rubbing at the small of her back. ‘Pfff …’

He pulled on clean socks and dry shoes, dragged a comb through his hair. Scowled at the purple stains on his forehead and chin. Wasn’t exactly the best impression to make at a Professional Standards review, but what choice did he have?

Callum knelt by the side of the bed and dragged out a big file box. Rummaged inside for the maroon half-size ring-binders buried under the flat’s insurance schedule, the mortgage documents, and the HP agreement for the telly.

Elaine’s voice belted out from the kitchen. ‘Did you stay up half the night reading again?’

‘Maybe.’ He tucked the binders into a small backpack, plucked the copy of The Monsters Who Came for Dinner from the bedside cabinet, and wandered through. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘Yes I do.’ She lumped a couple of slices of white from the bread bin onto the chopping board and slathered them with spread. ‘You want cheese-and-pickle, or egg?’

‘Go back to bed, it’s fine.’

‘Just because I’m stuck here with Peanut, doesn’t mean I’m useless.’

Callum stepped behind her and kissed the back of her neck. ‘No one thinks you’re useless.’

‘You’ll have to have cheese-and-pickle, we’re out of eggs.’

The flat’s phone launched into its semi-classical theme tune again.

She froze.

‘It’s OK, I’ll get it.’ He marched through to the lounge. Grabbed up the phone. ‘Hello?’

Nothing.

Checked the caller display. Same as last night. ‘NUMBER WITHHELD’.

‘Who is this?’

Silence.

Click.

Yeah, that was getting old very quickly.

He turned, and there was Elaine, holding out a little Tupperware box in one hand and a banana in the other. ‘Who was it?’

‘Automated-dialling PPI nonsense again.’

‘There’s a mini Mars Bar in there too. You know.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘To keep your strength up.’

He tucked the box and banana into his backpack. ‘It’s just a boring wee meeting with Professional Standards, it’ll be fine. Promise.’ That sounded confident, didn’t it? Completely unlike the lie it was. He replaced The Monsters Who Came for Dinner in its bookshelf slot, grabbed a tatty paperback at random: The Beginner’s Guide to Shoplifting, and added it to the pack.

‘Callum …’ She put a hand against his chest.

‘What can they do? They’ve got no evidence – they can’t, because I didn’t do anything, did I?’

She gave him a little pained smile. ‘We love you.’

‘I know.’ A kiss on the cheek. ‘Got to go, don’t want to be late for the rubber heelers.’

Callum shifted in his seat.

The waiting room was … disturbingly neutral. Blue carpet, magnolia walls, a row of four soft-ish chairs along one wall, a sideboard-sized filing unit thing on the other – complete with the obligatory pile of well-thumbed, ancient magazines. A water dispenser in the corner. A framed painting of Oldcastle’s skyline rendered in all manner of bright and unnatural colours.

He checked his phone – 07:13.

Oldest interview technique in the business – leave your victim to stew for a while. Let them work themselves into a state of nervous exhaustion worrying about what you knew.

Well, tough: they knew sod-all. Because there was sod-all to know.

The only thing up-to-date on the sideboard was a copy of that morning’s Castle News and Post, the banner headline: ‘BODY FOUND IN CASTLEVIEW FLAT’ above a photo of the craphole Glen Carmichael and his mates were doing up. There was an inset pic of three figures standing outside the main entrance while SOC Smurfs shuffled past in the background. McAdams, Franklin, and right in the middle – staring straight at the camera – his own face. Looking tired and fed up. So they were right: the camera didn’t lie. All three of them got a namecheck, though they’d managed to spell McAdams’ name wrong. Which was nice.

Right underneath the main story, was ‘DRUG DEN UPSTAIRS MADE LIFE A LIVING HELL’, a ‘shocking exclusive with Murder Flat’s downstairs neighbour!’ continued on page six. There was always someone.

Callum dumped the paper and dipped into his rucksack instead, pulling out The Beginner’s Guide to Shoplifting. Settled back to read the first short story. A bit heavy on the adverbs, but other than that, it was OK.

He was just starting the second one when the door through to the office opened and a middle-aged man in uniform poked his head out. His hair had abandoned its post, retreating to a defensive position around both ears, a set of jowls lightly blued with stubble. A pair of evil-scientist glasses, all narrow with silver frames. He smiled. ‘Ah, Callum. Good, good: in you come. Sorry about the wait.’ He held the door open and gestured inside.

‘No, it’s fine.’ Callum stood. Stuffed the book in his backpack. ‘Gave me a chance to catch up with my reading.’

‘Good, good.’ He moved aside, then closed the door behind Callum. ‘I know we should have done this weeks ago, but you know what it’s like. Busy, busy.’

It was a small-ish office, with a desk on one side and a round table in the middle. Some filing cabinets. A coffee machine. A small digital video camera on a tripod.

‘Please, please, take a seat. Coffee? I’m having one anyway …?’

‘Thanks. Just milk.’

‘Perfect.’ He wandered over and started pushing buttons and inserting cartridges. ‘So, Callum, I understand you’re going to be a father in two weeks’ time. How exciting. Most fulfilling thing you can do as a man.’

‘Well—’

‘There you go. One white coffee.’ He sank into the chair next to Callum’s. ‘I can’t abide all this “flat white” nonsense, can you? Oh,’ he stuck his hand out, ‘Chief Inspector Gilmore, we spoke on the phone yesterday, but you can call me Alex.’

OK …

‘Chief Inspector.’

‘Ah, almost forgot.’ He raised himself half out of his seat and pointed a remote control at the camera. A little red light blinked on. ‘There we go. Can’t do these things without a proper record, can we? The Boss would have my guts for garters. And I understand your good lady is in the job too?’

Callum closed his mouth, then opened it again. ‘Well, yes. I mean, she’s on maternity leave, but—’

‘Let me see now …’ He checked a notepad. ‘Ah, here we are: Constable Pirie. Elaine. You know, I had an Aunty Elaine when I was wee. Lovely lady, used to give us Advocaat every Christmas because she thought it wasn’t alcoholic. And I see she’s been seconded to the Scenes Examination Branch?’

What?

Chief Inspector Gilmore held up a hand. ‘Sorry, your Elaine, not my aunt. How’s she getting on? Weird cravings, I’ll bet. My Pauline used to chew the rubber hose from the spin dryer. That dates me, doesn’t it? Amazing our sons didn’t come out with two heads. How’s the coffee?’

Was the man some sort of idiot? How …

Callum sat back in his seat.

No, of course he wasn’t. Didn’t matter what crime novels and TV dramas said, you didn’t get to be a chief inspector without having a considerable amount of grey matter packed between your earholes. The rambling avuncular act was all about putting people at ease and off their game at the same time.

Well that only worked if you didn’t know he was doing it.

Callum took a sip. ‘It’s great. Thanks.’

‘Better than the stuff from the canteen anyway. So, Callum: tell me all about Big Johnny Simpson.’

‘Well …’ He cleared his throat. ‘I want to start by saying I’ve never taken a bribe in my life. Ever.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Gilmore raised an eyebrow. ‘But …?’

‘No, no buts.’ He picked his rucksack off the floor and upended the contents onto the table. Three burgundy ring-binders, a Tupperware box, and a banana. He retrieved his lunch and pushed the binders towards Gilmore. ‘Bank statements. Well, building society statements, but it’s the same thing. Feel free – go through them with a nit comb. And if you want to contact the Royal Caledonian, I’ll tell them you’ve got free rein to look at any account I’ve got.’

‘I see. That is awfully kind of you.’ Gilmore stacked them into a neat pile on one side. ‘But in the meantime,’ a smile pulled his jowls up at the edges, ‘why don’t you tell me all about Big Johnny Simpson?’

‘Urgh.’ Callum dumped the rucksack on his desk. Collapsed into his seat. Powered up his computer. Grabbed his desk phone and called the control room.

‘Aye, Aye?’

‘Brucie? Any word on my lookout requests?’

‘Hud oan, I’ll check …’

The office was empty, no sign of Dotty or Watt-the-Moaning-Dick. They’d been at the murder board, though: no mistaking Watt’s drunken-spider scrawl.

Didn’t look as if they’d made a whole load of progress. The column headed ‘OPEN TASKS’ had gained a bunch of actions allocated to the pair of them, more on the bottom waiting for someone to take them on. Mostly interviewing friends and family of the three amateur property tycoons. Franklin’s name appeared on the list only once: ‘ATTEND POST MORTAM ~ 10:30’.

God’s sake.

‘You still there? Aye: Benjamin Harrington, Brett Millar, and Glen Carmichael – no sightings. You could get yourself a warrant and see if they’ve used their bank cards?’

‘Thanks, Brucie.’ Callum hung up, then hauled himself out of his chair and over to the board. Wiped the word ‘MORTAM’ out and wrote ‘MORTEM’ in the gap. Chief Inspector Gilmore might have been putting on an act, but Watt wasn’t. He truly was an idiot.

‘And what exactly, my dear Constable Callum, are you up to now?’

Wonderful: Haiku Boy.

Callum corrected the spelling of ‘INTERVIEW COLLEEGES’. ‘I’m fixing the murder board.’

‘You keep away from that, young Callum. That’s for grown-ups.’ McAdams settled on the edge of Dotty’s desk. ‘While we’re at it: what time do you call this? It’s ten o’clock. Shift starts at seven a.m., not whenever you feel like it.’

‘You know fine well where I was.’

A grin. ‘Ah yes, Professional Standards.’ He put one hand on his chest. ‘They interview cops, who are dirty and bent, / To punish their sins, till they wail and lament, / Then cast them down low, in the dirt at their feet, / And I do hope they fired you, cos that would be sweet.’

‘Yeah, go screw yourself, Sarge.’ Callum chucked the whiteboard marker back onto Watt’s desk, then sank behind his own. ‘What happened with Dugdale, he cop to it?’

‘That’s no longer your concern, Constable.’ McAdams checked his watch again. ‘When the lovely DC Franklin gets in, you can give her a lift to the overflow mortuary. You’re going there anyway.’

Oh great.

He sagged back in his seat. ‘I am?’

‘Of course you are. As a minor character you’ve been farmed out onto a subplot: discovering which museums have lost their mummies. Mother’s even made you SIO. Isn’t that fun?’

‘Gah …’ Callum covered his face with both hands. ‘I hate you all.’

‘And they’re post-morteming your first mummy at half ten this morning. Don’t be late.’

‘No, don’t put me on hold, I just need to know if … Hello? Hello?’ A pan-pipes version of ‘Green Sleeves’ rattled out of the phone’s earpiece. Wonderful.

Callum printed the letters ‘D.I.C.K.’ next to the museum’s name. Third one in fifteen minutes.

There had to be, what, a dozen active murder investigations in the division right now? And what was he doing? Sodding stolen mummies.

The office door clunked shut.

Probably bloody Andrew McAdams, back for another gloat. Maybe he’d come up with another hilarious poem. Oh ha, ha, ha.

Dick.

Franklin’s face appeared over the top of Callum’s cubicle wall. ‘Where’s everyone else?’

He held the handset away from his head and frowned at it. ‘Is it just me? Am I hallucinating and this isn’t really an actual phone? Is that why I’m the only one who can see it?’

‘Somebody’s touchy.’

‘Yes, hello?’ A little voice replaced the pan pipes. ‘We’ve checked and we’ve never had a human mummy here. We’ve got a mummified dog and a stuffed polar bear in storage, if that helps?’

‘No. Thanks. You’ve been a lot of help.’ He hung up and stuck two lines through the museum’s name. Sat back and massaged his temples.

Franklin sniffed. ‘So?’

‘So what?’

‘So where is everyone?’

He pointed at the murder board. ‘Off interviewing Glen Carmichael’s mates.’

‘Ooh, there’s stuff on the board.’ She disappeared from view. ‘Wait a minute, how come I’m down to do the post mortem?’

Callum stood.

She was in front of the murder board, hands on her hips, frown on her face. ‘What, I’m stuck in the mortuary with a decomposing corpse while you’re all off interviewing people? Thank you very sodding much!’

He pointed at the list of tasks. ‘If you didn’t want to do it, why put your name down?’

‘I didn’t. None of this was on the board last night.’

Hmm … ‘You didn’t mark up the actions with Watt and Dotty?’

‘No. We ate the pizzas, then Mother told me to head off and not come back in till quarter past ten, as I’d been here till late.’

Lovely. So even though he’d been here three weeks longer than she had, Franklin got to call DI Malcolmson ‘Mother’ while he had to call her ‘Boss’. And she got a lie-in.

Franklin sniffed again. ‘What’s wrong with your face?’

‘Nothing.’ He picked his coat off the back of his chair. ‘Get your stuff, we’re off to the mortuary.’

The pool car slid along Camburn Road, following the edge of the woods. They made a thick blanket of green: leaves and bushes trembling in the rain. There were people in there, on the paths and tracks that wound their way between the trees – walking dogs, wheeling pushchairs, jogging. A wee girl on a bicycle …

Callum slammed on the brakes.

‘Aaargh!’ Franklin lurched forward against her seatbelt, both hands slapping onto the dashboard – bracing herself. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re—’

‘Just be a minute.’ He stuck on the hazard lights and scrambled out into the downpour. Flicked his collar up as he jogged between the puddles and in under the canopy of branches. Wiped the rain from his face. ‘Willow.’

Her dirty-blue anorak was frayed at the cuffs and shoulders, hood thrown back, gold ringlets stuck to her shiny face. Pink cheeks and Rudolf nose. ‘Sup?’

Raindrops pattered on the leaves above them, like a million tiny drummers. The occasional drip made it through the canopy, splashing into a puddle big enough to drown a toddler.

He cleared his throat. ‘Is your mum all right?’

‘Been waiting on you for ages, Piggy.’

‘Did Jerome come back and hit her again?’

Willow tilted her head on one side. ‘You perving on my mum?’

‘No.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with my mum?’

‘It’s OK, I’ll keep your name out of it. No one will know you told me who hit your mother.’

‘Get bent, Piggy. I ain’t no snitch.’ She balanced on the pedals, shoogling the bike from side to side to stay upright. ‘You got them toys for Pinky from the wee creepy guy with the pawnshop. Why?’

‘Because.’ Callum shrugged. ‘No one should have to pawn their kids’ toys just to stay afloat. No matter how much of a pain in the arse those kids are.’

She almost smiled.

‘Willow, your dad – the guy who broke your arm when you were four – what was his name?’

‘How come you always asking questions, Piggy?’ She pedalled around him in a slow circle. ‘Nosey, nosey, nosey: oink, oink, oink.’

‘Just interested.’

‘Always sticking your nose into other people’s stuff and that.’

‘Hey, it’s OK if you don’t know.’

‘Course I know.’ She did another lap. ‘You saying I don’t know?’

‘Lots of people have no idea who their dad is. No shame in that.’

‘Yeah, well I know: and I ain’t no snitch. But see if he ever comes back? I’ll break his arm.’

‘Sure you will.’ Callum turned in place, facing her as she circled.

‘Break his little bitch legs too.’

A seven-year-old girl, with blonde ringlets. And the worst thing was: she probably meant it.

‘You don’t have to be like him, Willow. You can be so much better than that. Hell: put your mind to it and you can be anything you want.’

‘You’re a nutjob, Piggy.’ She pedalled away a couple of feet, then dug into her pocket and came out with a small blue bag – the kind dog-walkers used to collect moist, soft, stinking presents – and chucked it to him.

Please don’t let it be warm, please don’t let it be warm …

It wasn’t. And what was inside wasn’t cold and squidgy either, it was a thin, flat rectangle.

Callum opened the bag, and there it was: one tatty leather wallet, the lining dangling loose from one side like a Labrador’s tongue. A smile pulled at his face, but when he looked up Willow was already fading into the distance, pedalling for all she was worth.

He took a deep breath and bellowed it out anyway: ‘THANK YOU!’

Then the car horn blared from the roadside behind him. Franklin, being her usual patient charming self.

Right.

He puffed out a breath and slipped the poo-bag in his pocket.

Time to visit the dead.

12

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. And now I’m late.’ Franklin sat in the passenger seat, arms crossed, scowling.

‘It’s only just gone half ten.’ Callum swung the pool car around the roundabout and into a shabby industrial estate. Past boarded-up business units with empty car parks and rusty chain-link fencing speckled with ancient carrier bags – their colours bleached and brittle. Through puddles the size of lochans, sending arcs of spray up onto the pavements. Windscreen wipers thumping back-and-forth across the glass. ‘It’s like going to the pictures: first fifteen minutes is all adverts and trailers.’

‘I happen to like the trailers.’

Yeah, she would.

Left, past a garage selling shiny four-by-four flatbed trucks, and down to the end of the road.

A thick line of green bushes – at least twelve foot tall – stretched out from either side of a big automatic gate topped with razor wire. An intercom unit sat in front of the gate, mounted on top of a big concrete bollard. Callum pulled up beside it and wound down his window. Pressed the button.

Its speaker crackled and popped, then hissed something unintelligible at him. So he stuck his thumb on the button again and held it there till the gates squealed and rumbled their way open.

The pool car rocked its way over a speed bump and into the compound.

If the architect was going for warm and welcoming when he designed Oldcastle’s overflow mortuary he’d done a sodding rotten job of it. The building looked like something out of a Cold War thriller – a concrete bunker with tiny windows along its length. A Transit van sat outside the loading bay, down the far end, two men in grey overalls manhandling a plain gunmetal coffin onto a gurney.

It wasn’t the only vehicle there – a handful of manky pool cars had been abandoned as close to the mortuary’s front doors as possible. Because clearly police officers weren’t waterproof.

Callum parked on the periphery of the clump. ‘There you go: five minutes. They’ll still be going on about switching off your mobile phone and getting a drink and a snack from the lobby.’

‘You’re an idiot.’ She climbed out into the rain and slammed the door behind her.

‘So people keep telling me.’ He locked the car and followed her inside.

They’d decorated since last time, the smell of fresh paint fighting against several plug-in air fresheners and the dirty-bowel-like stench of decay. All the posters were new too – motivational landscapes and quotes about peace and forgiveness. As if that was going to do any good to the poor sods who had to come all the way out here to identify their dead child’s body. The wee stainless-steel reception desk hadn’t changed, and nor had the big dusty rubber plant in the corner. Its thick waxy leaves like slabs of green liver, aerial roots searching the walls for sustenance.

A little old man lounged behind the desk, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he wrestled with the Castle News and Post crossword. The effort must have been quite something, because his wrinkles were even more tortured than normal, his hair a mixture of silver and cigarette-tar yellow.

Callum went over and had a look. Poked the newspaper. ‘Three across, “Decapitated”.’

The old man glanced up, showing off a pair of dark, glittering eyes. ‘It doesn’t fit.’

‘It does if you spell “Robespierre” properly, Dougal. Three Es, two Rs and an I.’

‘Oh.’ He made the correction, then put the paper to one side. Grinned at Franklin with a big grey wall of perfectly straight false teeth. ‘Well, well, well, when DS McAdams called to say you were coming over he didn’t tell me you were such a beauty.’

She bared her teeth back at him, but it wasn’t a smile. ‘Where’s the post mortem?’

‘Ah, straight to business.’ Dougal winked. ‘I like that in a woman.’

‘Do you also like a punch in the throat?’

‘I wouldn’t say no to a little light spanking. But maybe I should just show you through to the cutting room?’

‘Maybe you should.’

Dougal stepped out from behind the reception desk and led the way through a pair of double doors and into a long corridor with doors opening off either side. ‘We’ve got a full house this morning. Yesterday must’ve been buy-one-get-one-free on dead bodies.’ The door at the end opened on an aisle between two sets of refrigeration units – big rectangles of stainless steel, each one covered in a grid of metal hatches. Four high, eight wide. Each hatch was about the same size as an oven door, only they didn’t contain Christmas dinner.

Well, hopefully not anyway.

One of the hatches lay wide open so the two guys from the loading bay could wrestle a body bag out of the gunmetal-grey coffin and onto a sliding drawer. The contents all bendy and awkward.

Dougal waved as they passed. ‘Let’s not drop the guests, guys.’

A nod. ‘Dougie.’

‘Bodies, bodies, and more bodies.’ He glanced back over his shoulder at Callum. ‘It’s the same every time you lot go digging about in the tip. Think you’d have more sense.’

At the end of the block, Franklin stopped. Stood there on the damp grey floor with her mouth hanging open. Staring. ‘Holy mother of hell …’

From here, the full size of the room became apparent. A mini warehouse, with row after row after row of refrigerated units in it.

She gave a low whistle. ‘How many bodies have you got here?’

‘One hundred and twelve.’ Dougal stuck out his chest, sounding every inch the proud father. ‘But we’ve got space for three hundred and sixty, including the freezers. A seven-three-seven falls out of the sky at Oldcastle airport? We can take every single passenger, a full bendy bus, plus two football teams as well.’

And what a fun weekend that would be.

Callum followed the pair of them into the visitor’s changing room, with its rows of lockers, racks of blue wellington boots, boxes of gloves and other assorted paraphernalia. Slipped off his shoes and stuck them in a locker. Helped himself to a pair of size-nine wellies. ‘Who’s doing the mummies?’

‘The mummy?’ Dougal scrunched up his wrinkles, then peered at a clipboard hanging on a hook by the door marked ‘DISSECTING ROOM ~ SAFETY EQUIPMENT MUST BE WORN BEYOND THIS POINT’.

‘Mummies. Two of them.’ Callum pulled a plastic apron from the roll by the door and unfurled it. Slipped it over his head and tied the ties. ‘Came in yesterday?’

‘Right. Right. Well … OK, you’ve got Lucy Compton.’

‘Never heard of her.’ He helped himself to a pair of safety goggles.

‘New APT. This is her first week. Young lass, you’ll like her.’

Callum stared at him. ‘Can we at least pretend we’re taking this seriously, Dougal? I want a pathologist, not some wee Anatomical Pathology Technician just out of nappies.’

Franklin yanked an apron from the roll. ‘What, she’s not good enough just because she’s a woman?’

‘I don’t care if she’s a man, a woman, or a transgendered squirrel – she’s not a pathologist!’ He watched Franklin make a cat’s breakfast out of tying on her apron. ‘You’ve ripped the plastic.’

Dougal shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. All I know is we’ve got two pathologists on duty and four bodies to PM today. Four to do tomorrow, and four more the day after that. Assuming no one else dies in the meantime. You want to moan at someone? Talk to Teabag and Hairy Harry.’

‘Oh don’t you worry, I will.’

Franklin tore off another apron and tried again. Finally got herself sorted out with goggles, wellies, a surgical mask, and gloves. Crossed her arms and shuffled on the tiled floor. ‘Well?’ Looking about as comfortable as a Seventies TV star in a police interview room.

Callum snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘Have you been to a post mortem before?’

Her nostrils flared. ‘Why, because I’m a weak and feeble—’

‘Fine, sod you then.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Come on, Dougal, let’s not keep Detective Constable Franklin waiting. She’s keen to see her dead body being hacked apart.’

Dougal opened the dissecting room door and stood back to let them past.

A dozen cutting tables sat in a row down the middle, the air redolent with eau de mortuary. CCTV cameras hung from the ceiling above each one, their black bulbous eyes ready to capture the most intimate and thorough violation anyone would ever experience.

One table was surrounded by half a dozen people doing their best not to look like plainclothes police officers and failing miserably. They’d donned the same safety gear as Callum and Franklin, a couple of them laughing, two looking serious and boot-faced, two taking notes as a tall thin man in purple scrubs arranged a collection of trainers and shoes on the stainless-steel surface. Someone in green scrubs followed him, taking photos – the flash turning everything monochrome for a moment, before the colour seeped back in.

Down at the far end of the room, a dark body lay beneath a set of industrial extractor fans going full pelt. Not that it made much of an impact on the stench. But then it was difficult to imagine what would. Tip three gallons of Febreze in here and it would still stink of perforated bowels and rotten meat.

Someone in green scrubs was washing the body with a sponge, wringing out dirty grey water into a drain set into the floor.

Franklin took a deep breath and stiffened her shoulders. ‘That our victim?’

‘Shall we?’ Dougal offered her his arm, as if they were off to the ball.

She ignored it and marched off, back straight, wellington boots making week-wonk noises on the stained floor.

The far wall was home to a long line of sinks and taps, with a glass wall above them looking in on a viewing gallery. A wee bloke with a red Henry hoover shuffled about inside looking as if he was in need of a post mortem himself.

Only two other tables were occupied – as far away from Franklin’s corpse as possible – and both of them sported a mahogany-coloured body, curled up on its side. One of which was being circled by a small figure wearing pink scrubs. Dark curly hair pinned up in a lopsided bun, purple nitrile gloves, surgical mask.

That would be his brand new APT then.

Ah well.

He wandered over. ‘Hi. You Ms Compton?’

She stopped and turned to him. ‘No, I’m not, sorry, I’m not Ms Compton, who’s Ms Compton?’ She’d put her pink scrubs on over a black-and-grey stripy top. Its sleeves were rolled up just far enough to expose an inch of yoghurt-pale skin between them and the purple nitrile gloves. Not Ms Compton pointed at the curled body. ‘Sorry, I know it’s not my case, but I saw the mummies over here and I thought “that looks interesting”, I mean I always loved those films when I was little, you know with Boris Karloff all wrapped up in bandages exacting revenge on the archaeologists who dared to disturb his tomb?’ The words were delivered like machine-gun fire, in a cheery unplaceable Scottish accent. ‘To be honest, I’m supposed to be consulting on another case about some severed feet, but the heart wants what the heart wants.’ She stuck out her hand. ‘Ooh, and it’s Alice, by the way, Alice McDonald, technically it’s Doctor Alice McDonald, but that sounds a bit uppity doesn’t it, so just Alice is fine, all gets a bit confusing doesn’t it, maybe if everyone in the world wore name badges it’d be easier, what do you think?’

Yeah … this one was a freak.

He shook her hand, warm and slightly sticky through his gloves. ‘Detective Constable Callum MacGregor.’

‘Right, yes, great, good name, couldn’t get much more Scottish, could you, not with a name like that, well, I mean it could be, if your middle name was Angus or Hamish. Is it?’

‘You said you’re consulting on a case. You’re not a pathologist are—’

‘Oh no, not a pathologist at all, I’m here doing Behavioural Evidence Analysis, which is what we call profiling now, because if we call it profiling people think it’ll be just like the movies where the forensic psychologist says, “Whoever killed all these women and ate their uteruses was a white middle-aged man with one leg shorter than the other and an unnatural affinity with the music of Johnny Cash”, because it doesn’t work like that and lots of people like Johnny Cash but never kill anyone, though I’m not a fan myself. Do you see?’

No.

‘Err …’ Wait a minute. Forensic psychologist. Alice. Rambling. He lowered his own surgical mask and the dirty-brown smell of the mortuary swelled in his nostrils. ‘Dr McDonald? It’s me, Callum. I was on the Birthday Boy investigation, five years ago? You were consulting.’ No reaction. ‘I was on DCI Weber’s team?’

She lowered her own mask and shared a slightly painful smile, as if she’d got something bitter caught between her back teeth. ‘Ah, sorry, it’s nothing personal, but I tend to just see a big sea of faces when I’m up giving presentations and then there’s all the different investigations all over the country and there must have been at least three thousand police officers over the years, probably more, and I would love to be able to remember them all, but I haven’t got that kind of brain, and I get a bit nervous when I’m up there, so I’m picturing you all in your underwear if that’s—’

‘Dr McDonald?’ A figure appeared at Callum’s shoulder, green plastic apron pulled on over a smart dark-grey suit. Half of his face was hidden behind a surgical mask, but there was no mistaking the voice or sticky-out ears. Detective Chief Inspector Powel. ‘They’re ready for you.’

Alice the weirdo waved at him. ‘Hello, Reece, I was just admiring Callum’s mummies, aren’t they great, did you ever watch Boris Karloff when you were little?’

He barely inclined his head. ‘DC MacGregor. I thought they were supposed to fire you this morning?’

‘Nope.’ Callum leaned against the cutting table. ‘You’ll just have to try a little harder next time you fit me up.’

Powel cricked his head to one side, then back again – like a boxer getting ready to fight. Then turned back to the professional nutjob in pink. ‘Professor Twining’s ready to begin, so if you want to come have a look before we take the feet out of their shoes …?’

‘Yes, of course, the feet, duh, sorry got distracted. Do you think we should all have name badges, because I think we should all have name badges …’ Her voice faded into the distance, swallowed by the background growl of the extractor fans as Powel led her away.

Callum stuck two fingers up at the DCI’s back.

I thought they were supposed to fire you.

Dick.

And how could she not remember him? He remembered her. Mind you, she did stand out a bit, what with her whole ‘Day-Pass-From-The-Asylum’ shtick.

Still, it was nice she’d been interested in his mummies, because no one else seemed to give a sod.

Callum folded his arms. Searched the room for Franklin and her amazing exploding temper. She was standing in the corner, scribbling away in her notebook as the APT finished washing down the swollen corpse.

So, could be worse. At least he wasn’t marinating in the Marmite stench of a decomposing body, like Franklin. No, his remains just smelled of … What?

Callum leaned in and took a sniff, but it was just the usual ever-present stink that permeated the mortuary: bleach, bowels, and decay. Which was odd – when they’d opened the car boot yesterday there’d been a distinct smell of wood smoke. And a hint of it back at the tip, with Mummy Number One too. Unless this was Mummy Number One. Kind of difficult to tell them apart.

He inched closer and tried again.

The scent was still there, lying under everything else. Like the old armchair his grandad used to smoke his pipe in. Puffing away, getting the scent of sandalwood and cherry deep into the leather.

Someone cleared their throat behind him. ‘Can I help you?’

He flinched up. Smoothed down his thin plastic apron. ‘Just …’ Warmth tingled in the tips of his ears, as if he’d been caught snogging the remains instead of just sniffing them. ‘Callum MacGregor, I’m Senior Investigating Officer.’

‘Oh aye?’ She was a large woman, compact and powerful looking. The kind of person that could pick up a fridge and beat you to death with it. Her green scrubs looked fresh out of the packet, but her arms looked fresh out of Barlinnie – covered in DIY tattoos. She leaned on the chunk of machinery she’d been wheeling across the mortuary floor. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes. Are you Ms Compton?’

She flexed her muscles. ‘Lucy.’

‘OK, Lucy.’ He pointed at the body. ‘Does this smell of wood smoke to you?’

She pulled down her mask, revealing a mole at the corner of her mouth. Sniffed. ‘Oak. And …’ Another sniff. ‘I’m going to go with beechwood.’

‘What about the other one?’

Lucy shifted the machinery over to the other cutting table, bent over the curled body and filled her nostrils. ‘Definitely beechwood and oak. This one’s a lot stronger.’

That would be the one from the car boot. Maybe lying about in the tip for God knew how long masked Mummy Number One’s natural smell?

The APT went back to her trolley and pushed it next to the cutting table. Clunked on some sort of footbrake, then fiddled about with pins and levers until a big C-shaped arm swung out from the main unit. It had a box on either end, each about the size of small microwave.

‘Right.’ She handed him a heavy blue apron. ‘Stick that on and we’ll get some X-rays done.’

‘X-rays?’

She looked at him as if he was a very thick little boy. ‘Well we’re not going to actually post mortem them, are we? They’re mummies. Priceless relics of a long-dead civilisation. Cause of death isn’t going to do you a hell of a lot of good, is it? Or are you planning on climbing into your DeLorean and travelling back to ancient Egypt with an arrest warrant?’

Yeah, she had a point.

‘Now,’ the APT pointed at Mummy Number Two, ‘help me get it sitting up and we’ll see what we can see …’

13

‘I know it’s not nice, but you need to eat it. It’s good for you.’

The spoon is cold against his cracked lips, its contents hard and gritty.

He’d raise his hands and bat the spoon away, but his arms don’t work any more. They don’t even float in the water, just sink into its filthy depths to lie against the steel tank. Nothing works.

Can’t even hold his own head up.

So the Priest holds it up for him, a warm hand on the back of his neck.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll help.’

The other hand forces his mouth open, then pours the grit inside.

It sits there, in his mouth, like tiny stones. Sticking to his tongue and cheeks. Making him gag and cough. But there’s not enough breath left to shift anything.

The walls are louder now, singing at the top of their splintered lungs: ‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god. They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god. They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’

Their voices send a tremor rattling through him, shaking his teeth, making his ribs ache.

‘Shhh …’ A hand strokes his forehead. ‘Shhh …’

Then a kiss.

‘I think it’s time, don’t you?’

Oh God please let it be time to die. Time for the pain to go away. Please.

‘They’ll worship you, They’ll worship you …’

‘Come on.’

The water falls away and he’s being carried, arms and legs swinging in the cool air, rivulets of brackish water falling to the floor. There’s almost nothing left of him now. Nothing but skin and bone.

‘They’ll worship you: you’ll be a god.’

The singing walls swim and pulse around him, worshipping. And finally he makes the transition into the other room. The one where the fish hang in silent prayer.

Even the walls are quiet in here. Reverential. Waiting for the blessed relief.

Soon he’ll be dead and all this will be over.

‘Here we go.’ Gentle hands lay him on the stone floor.

High up above, a sliver of grey sunlight dances with dust motes. Spiralling and swirling.

There’s a pressure on his ankles, but not much more than that.

Then the squeal of wood on wood and his legs raise themselves off the ground, then his hips, his back, and finally his head leaves the earth. He sways gently, ascending to heaven with his arms dangling either side of his ears.

Swaying and rising.

Up and up into the darkness.

Up and up into death’s comforting embrace.

He opens his mouth to say thank you, but all that comes out is a cascade of little gritty pellets.

The Priest smiles up at him, a thick rope held in one hand. ‘You’ll be a god …’

A god of skin and bone.

14

‘And one more …’ Lucy stepped back and the machinery buzzed again. Then clunked. ‘OK, all done.’ The muscles in her arm rippled as she pushed the portable X-ray machine’s arm out of the way, making the tattoos dance. ‘Now all we have to do is download the data, format it, and you’ll get your glimpse into the ancient past. Might take a while, though.’

He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Thanks.’

A grin. ‘Who did you piss off?’

‘Hmm?’

‘To get lumbered with this. No one asks for a PM on a thousand-year-old mummy unless they’re being punished for something.’ She flipped off the footbrake. ‘So who did you piss off?’

Callum forced a smile. ‘Pretty much everyone.’

‘Thought so.’ Lucy took hold of the handles and shoved, setting the X-ray kit rolling. ‘You can wait here, in the smell, or you can come through to the IT lab. It’ll be warmer. With seats.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wise choice. Oh, and on the way? There’s a drinks machine in the APTs’ lounge, I’ll have a hot chocolate.’

Cheeky sod.

A dull buzzing thrum ran through the lab, mingling with the soft whirr of desktop computers, and the ping-click-ping-click of a small electric heater.

Callum took the last slurp from what the machine claimed was a white tea.

It had lied.

He stuck the empty plastic cup on the desk and shifted in his seat. Closed his book and put it down.

‘Any good?’

He looked up. ‘Hmm?’

‘The Beginner’s Guide to Shoplifting.’ Lucy pointed. ‘Any good?’

‘It was OK.’

‘I had a mate who was great at shoplifting. You name it, she could swipe it: food, booze, electric toasters. Made off with a bass guitar once.’

‘Yeah, it’s more a collection of short stories than a how-to guide.’ He stood and stretched, little knots cracking across his spine. ‘Pff …’ Sagged. Checked his watch. ‘Which way to the toilet?’

‘Use the disabled: down the hall, on the left. I’m guessing another fifteen minutes? Servers are running like treacle today.’

‘What happened to your mate, the shoplifter, she get caught?’

‘Married a Glaswegian and emigrated to Newcastle.’

Callum wandered over to the door. ‘Might make some calls too.’

Lucy went back to her computers. ‘Wouldn’t mind another hot chocolate if you’re passing …?’

‘See what I can do.’

Sodding hand dryers never worked.

He wiped his hands on his trousers as he made his way down the corridor to the far end. A window looked out over the mortuary car park – the reception area just visible in the middle distance.

Callum pulled out his Airwave and called Control. ‘Any news on Ainsley Dugdale?’

‘Give us a minute.’

The rain hadn’t let up any, it still hammered down from a slate-coloured sky trying to batter the earth flat. It sparked back from waterlogged potholes, bounced off the parked cars and …

A big man staggered out of the reception doors, both hands clutched over his face.

Was that blood?

It was.

It poured through his fingers, staining the white shirt above the disposable green apron.

‘Aye, Ainsley Dugdale: released on bail pending trial in six weeks’ time.’

‘What? How the hell could they let him out on bail?’

The big man lurched against one of the pool cars and stood there, shoulders hunched in the rain, blood turning his shirt dark pink.

‘How should I know? You want details? Speak to the officer in charge: DS McAdams. Anything else?’

‘Yes. I got a PNC on one Irene Brown yesterday, I need a list of all known associates going back about … seven, eight years?’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No.’

A sigh battered out of the speaker. Then silence.

Out front, another man joined the first – picking his way between the puddles with a newspaper, or maybe a file folder held over his head as a makeshift umbrella. He stopped beside Captain Bleedy and patted him on the back.

There, there, poor thing.

Ah well, wasn’t Callum’s problem. ‘You still there?’

‘No, I’ve jetted off to Barbados for piña coladas and a barbequed lobster.’

He headed back down the corridor. ‘Well?’

‘I’ve got eight different names on here and according to the flags there’s about another three that aren’t on the system. One armed robber, two drug dealers, one got done for raping a nurse, one unlawful remover, one attempted murderer, and two aggravated assaulters. Well, they’ve all got charges for that, but two of your woman’s mates didn’t branch out into anything else. Or they never got caught.’

Eleven violent scumbags, and Irene Brown was barely in her twenties.

Little Mike was right: this is what real life looks like from down here at the bottom.

‘Can you email me the details? Names, dates, convictions, everything you’ve got.’

‘Urgh …’ Another big put-upon sigh. ‘Fine. Anything else, Your Majesty, or can I go back to working my fingers to the bone?’

Yes. Away boil your head.

‘No. Thank you.’ Callum stuck the handset back in his pocket.

Why did everyone have to be such a prima donna?

He paused at the entrance to the technicians’ lounge. There was no point getting another tea from the machine – once poisoned, twice shy – but the hot chocolate couldn’t be all that bad if Lucy was having another, so—

The door leading through to the dissecting room burst open and DCI Powel stormed into the corridor with his monkey ears bright red. He turned and jabbed a finger at his own feet. ‘IN HERE NOW!’

Franklin stepped in after him, shoulders back, chin up, jaw clenched.

Powel’s voice dropped to a growling whisper soon as the door shut behind her. ‘I do not care what you got away with in Edinburgh, but you do not assault members of my team without serious repercussions. Do you understand?’

She glared back at him. ‘With all due respect, sir—’

‘I SAID, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?’ Bellowing it out, spittle flashing in the overhead lighting.

‘Yes, sir.’ There it was again: that burning-pus tone.

‘Now you will wait here and you will not move a muscle while I go check on the man you assaulted. And while I’m gone I want you to have a good hard think about how screwed you are.’ Powel barged past her and back into the dissecting room again, slamming the door on his way.

Franklin bared her teeth. ‘I will rip your bloody balls off, you …’ She must have realised she wasn’t alone, because she clicked her mouth shut and turned her glare on Callum instead. ‘What the hell are you looking at?’

He wandered over, hands in his pockets. ‘Let me guess: the guy with the busted face …?’

‘I don’t answer to you.’

‘Never said you did.’

She paced the width of the corridor in two steps then turned and did it again. ‘What is wrong with you people?’

‘Me people?’

‘He grabbed my arse! Of course I hit him!’

Ooh …

Callum stuck his head on one side. ‘Let me guess – big guy with sideburns and a wonky eye? DS Jimmy Blake. AKA: Blakey the Octopus.’

‘And do you know what he called me when I hit him? An “effing darkie bitch”!’ She thumped her hand against the wall.

‘No.’ Callum frowned. ‘Blakey said, “effing”?’

‘Oh shut up.’ She went back to short-form pacing again.

The door thumped open, and there was Powel, suit darkened across the shoulders and legs. He hooked a finger an inch from Franklin’s face. ‘You. With me. Now.’ Then turned and marched off.

She caught the door. Took a deep breath and went after him.

She was a pain in the backside, but still …

Callum followed the pair of them into the dissecting room’s foetid air, across the stained floor to the cutting table covered in naked disembodied feet. It was surrounded by plainclothes officers, shuffling about and avoiding eye contact. Fidgeting. Looking shifty and embarrassed about the whole thing.

Blakey was a pillar of indignation off to one side, a wad of green paper towels clutched to his nose, shirt stained a lovely Ribena red all down the front.

Powel stopped right in front of him, and did the pointing-at-his-own-feet thing again. ‘Detective Constable Franklin. You will apologise to DS Blake and you will do it now.’

She stood where she was told, muscles writhing along her jawline.

‘Now, Constable!’

Franklin took a deep breath, opened her mouth—

But Callum got there first. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Guv, but I’m sure this is all just a big misunderstanding.’

Powel didn’t even look at him. ‘This is none of your business, MacGregor.’

‘Let’s imagine for a moment that DC Franklin was the victim of a serious sexual assault in the workplace. She’d be well within her rights to defend herself, wouldn’t she?’

At that, Powel turned. ‘She attacked DS Blake.’

‘There’s a reason they call him “Blakey the Octopus”, Guv.’

Blake took the towels from his face. His left eye pointed about ten degrees off from the right one, but both of them had already gone a dark shade of pink. ‘I nebber tudged her!’

Ooh … Yeah. Mental note: never try to cop a feel of Franklin’s bum. She’d completely flattened Blake’s nose, leaving a squint lump of bloody gristle behind.

Franklin bared her teeth. ‘You lying, sexist, racist scumbag!’ She took a step forward, hands snapping into fists again.

Callum grabbed her arm. ‘We can easily check, Blakey.’ He pointed up at the dark CCTV globe mounted above the cutting table. ‘Big brother sees all.’

‘Ah …’ Blake stared up at the camera.

‘So maybe what actually happened is you slipped on the wet floor and tried to break the fall with your face?’

Blake pressed the towels against his nose again. Looked down at his feet. ‘I slibbed ad fell.’

Callum held his arms out, like he was about to accept applause for a magic trick. ‘There you go: told you it was nothing but a silly misunderstanding.’

‘What was that supposed to be?’ Franklin paced the length of the APTs’ lounge, between an off-grey sofa and a coffee table covered in tabloid magazines, one arm jabbing in the general direction of the dissecting room.

Callum poked buttons on the vending machine, setting it whirring and clunking. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘I’m welcome? Well thank you so much. He grabbed my arse!’

Oh joy.

A plastic cup clunked down in the dispenser, then the hissing and gurgling started.

‘He grabs your backside – that’s sexual harassment. If you’d reported him, that would’ve been it: Blake gets hauled up in front of Professional Standards for being a dirty sex offender. End of.’ The machine stopped its noises, so Callum extracted the scalding hot cup and pressed the buttons again. ‘But no, you had to lash out. You break his nose – that’s assault. Now it’s you in front of the rubber heelers and everyone thinks he’s the victim.’

Gurgling and hissing.

‘That what you want?’

She stopped pacing. ‘So you just swan in and save the poor powerless black woman, do you? Because you know best.’

He stared at the ceiling. ‘I give up. I really do.’

‘The Great White Saviour rides again!’

‘For God’s sake … Do you never stop? All I’ve done since you got here is try to be nice. I was just looking out for a member of my team, OK? Even though she’s hell-bent on leaping feet-first into the sodding wood chipper!’

She threw herself down into the sofa. Sat there seething. Looked away. Closed her eyes. Then let out a barely audible, ‘Thank you.’

He picked up one of the scalding cups and held it out. ‘Here.’

Franklin took it. Held it in her lap as her head fell back against the couch. ‘Why do so many white guys see a black woman and think she’s going to be an easy shag? You think it’s hard being a police officer? Try doing it when you’re a woman, you’re black, you’re attractive, and everyone thinks you’re “gagging for it” .’ She ran her spare hand across her forehead. ‘If I’m sleeping my way to the top, how come I’m still a sodding constable?’

Callum smiled. ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you’re in the least bit attractive.’ He took a sip of burning-hot chocolate. ‘Oh, I did for two or three seconds when I first met you, but soon as I got to know you? Not a chance.’

She gave a little laugh. ‘When I was fourteen my geography teacher tried to feel me up in the stationery cupboard, said he’d always wanted to try a black girl. Wasn’t the first to chance his arm and he wasn’t the last.’

‘Did you break his nose too? Or …’ Callum sniffed. Wait a minute. He sat on the other end of the couch. ‘That’s why you got lumped into Mother’s Misfit Mob, isn’t it? You said you punched a superintendent – all hands was he?’

Franklin held up her cup in salute. ‘Welcome to the world of hyper-sexualisation.’

‘Yeah: they can’t fire us. They want to, but they can’t. So they chuck us all together and drip-feed us crappy nothing cases till we get fed up and quit.’

‘And he was married.’

Callum had another sip. Lucy was right – the hot chocolate wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the tea. ‘How you getting on with our body in the bath?’

‘You know what I should’ve done? I should’ve agreed to go to that hotel with him and recorded him being a sleazy git. Then sent the tape to his wife. Let’s see Superintendent Neil Lambert slither his way out of that one.’

‘Nice to know your first thought was revenge instead of blackmail.’

She gave her forehead a little slap. ‘Blackmail. Damn – why didn’t I think of that?’ Franklin sagged in her seat. ‘Our body’s a Caucasian male, five eleven, difficult to tell how old. Turns out the water in the bath was a very heavy brine solution with leaves and flowers and herbs and spices thrown in. Little bits of bark. His lungs are full of it too, so he was alive when he went in. You think you’re a bit wrinkly after half an hour in the bath? Our victim looks like he’s about ninety.’

‘At least all that salt will have preserved the tissue.’

‘Only the outside layers. Didn’t stop his stomach bursting in the water. Gah …’ She had a little shudder. ‘God, I hate post mortems.’

He stood and wandered over to the machine again. Punched the buttons for a third hot chocolate. ‘What do you reckon to Glen Carmichael and his mates being responsible? Three of them, killing the guy in the bath together – holding his head under till he stops struggling. Or it could be one of them. They fall out, fight, same result.’ The machine hissed and gurgled. ‘Or maybe they get their hands on a load of dodgy drugs? One of them has a catastrophically bad trip so they try to sober him up in the bath. But he drowns. They panic and do a runner.’

She pursed her lips. ‘Makes sense. Three blokes, stuck in that flat for months together, the windows all covered with hardcore pornography, getting drunk and wasted. Can’t expect sensible decisions from—’

The door battered open and Lucy staggered to a halt on the carpet tiles. ‘Callum?’ A bit out of breath, but grinning too. ‘You are not going to believe it.’ She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, tattoos rippling. ‘Digital X-rays have finished processing. You’ve got to see this!’

OK.

He gathered up his hot chocolates and followed her down the corridor to the lab.

Lucy pointed at a large computer monitor sitting on a desk covered in empty Quality Street wrappers. ‘Look.’

He hunched over and squinted at the screen. It was filled with human bones, the skin reduced to pale wisps of grey around them. The X-ray had been taken from the side, showing the body curled up with its elbows in, hands against its chest and knees against them, neck bent so far forward that the front of the skull was obscured by the kneecaps. Definitely one of the mummies. ‘And?’

‘This is so cool.’ She clattered her fingers across the keyboard and the image zoomed in on the jumbled monochrome mess where the face met the kneecaps. ‘See?’

‘No.’

‘I thought it was an artefact on the machinery – some of the APTs X-ray all sorts of crap for a laugh and if they damage the equipment it shows up on the digital prints – so I checked the anterior plates.’ The tip of her tongue poked out between her teeth as she typed, and the picture changed to a close-up that was little more than a mess of white lines and grey masses. ‘Now do you see?’

Callum squinted, forcing the image out of focus, letting it … There. OK, those were the eye sockets, there were the cheekbones, difficult to pick them out from the leg bones, but not impossible. That made those the nasal cavities, and they would be the teeth.

Oh.

He sank into the office chair. Of course: it was obvious now. ‘The hard white blobs in the mouth.’

‘Yup.’ Lucy grinned at him, eyebrows way up her forehead. ‘I’m no expert on ancient Egyptian burial rituals, but I’m pretty sure Tutankhamun didn’t go to his grave with a mouth full of NHS fillings.’

15

‘Are you actually hiding in here?’ Franklin stood in the doorway, holding the door to the disabled toilets open with her foot.

Callum gave her a grunt, then went back to the sink. Stuck a folded paper towel against the open neck of the disinfectant bottle and upended the thing till it soaked into the off-grey paper. ‘I’m not hiding, I’m busy.’ He dabbed the damp tissue against the wallet, blotting away a stain.

‘Mother’s here.’

‘Course she is.’ More blotting. The stuff was working even better than Lucy had promised. OK, so his dad’s wallet would never look new again, but at least it didn’t stink like the inside of whatever bin Willow Brown had fished it out of.

‘Callum?’

‘It was covered in cigarette ash and something I’m hoping was mayonnaise.’

‘She’s told Dr Jenkins she wants both mummies post-mortemed ASAP. Our bath body’s gone back into the fridge till they’re done. He’s starting the first one in fifteen minutes.’

‘Good for you.’ Callum dumped the paper towel in the bin and moistened another with disinfectant.

‘Well? Aren’t you coming? Thought you were SIO?’

‘What’s the point?’ He opened the wallet and started on the inside surfaces. Wiping the square of clear plastic covering the faded photo that took up the whole left-hand side: a happy family, all four of them grinning away at the camera, those bright summer colours faded to autumn tones of brown, orange, and yellow. Not quite in focus. Posed around a picnic table, blue sky, sea, and white sand just visible behind them.

‘So you’re sulking?’

‘Like you can talk.’ He dabbed away at the other side. ‘They’re never going to let me be Senior Investigating Officer for a triple murder. A detective constable running down a serial killer? No chance.’

Franklin shook her head. ‘You’ve been inhaling too much of that disinfectant, there’s only two murders, not—’

‘The mummies have been smoked. That’s probably to dehydrate and preserve them. And what do you do before you smoke something? You salt it to draw out excess moisture. You brine it.’ He wiped off a crusty smear of red that looked more like tomato ketchup than blood. ‘And what did we find floating in a bathtub full of brine?’

When he looked up, Franklin was standing there with her mouth hanging open.

One last go with the soggy paper towel. ‘Exactly.’ He wiped the wallet dry with a fresh sheet, then dug into his pocket for the cash he’d begged out of the building society yesterday. Slipped it into the slit where the lining was hanging out. ‘Our victim was a work in progress.’

‘Sodding hell.’

‘And God knows how many more bodies he’s got out there.’ The plastic window was cool beneath his fingertips, its surface scratched in a few places, enough to blot out small sections of the photo beneath. All four of them, just out of focus, smiling their last recorded smile together. ‘Mother’s going to have her work cut out holding onto the case, never mind me. They’ll fly in an MIT from Strathclyde and we’ll be back where we started – low-level drug dealers, loan sharks, and pimps.’

Franklin peered over his shoulder. ‘Whose are the ugly kids?’

Cheeky sod.

He pointed. ‘That’s my brother Alastair and me.’ Two little boys with matching haircuts and freckles. ‘We were five. Mum and Dad at the back.’ Mum with her long pale-blonde hair and heart-shaped face, kind blue eyes. Dad with his dark curly mop-top, dimpled chin, and big broad smile. The whole family was dressed for the beach in shorts and flip-flops. T-shirts with cartoon animals on them. A fox for Alastair, an owl for Callum, a cat for Mum, a dog for Dad. Sunburn for everyone. ‘Two weeks on a caravan site just outside Lossiemouth.’

Franklin gave a low whistle. ‘You’ve got an identical twin?’

All those years ago …

— Callum —

‘Da-ad, he’s touching me again!’

Dad just sighed and turned the radio up, singing along with Mum. Both of them belting it out at the top of their voices as countryside slipped by the car windows. Green fields beneath a dark-grey hat of clouds.

Sitting in the back seat, Alastair grinned his gap-toothed grin. Then reached across and poked Callum again.

Rotten little bumhead.

‘Da-ad!’

Dad didn’t look around. ‘If you two don’t cut it out, I’m going to pull this car over. That what you want? You want me to pull over? Because you know what’ll happen if you make me do that.’

Alastair stuck his tongue out. His shaggy bowl-shaped haircut was paler than usual, more freckles on his nose and cheeks. A cartoon fox on his brown T-shirt. Tartan shorts and grass-stained knees. Bare feet all sparkly with sand, just like Callum’s.

The song on the radio finished, Mum joining in right to the very end. She put her hand on Dad’s leg. ‘I love that one.’

The man on the radio sounded like he’d eaten a whole nest of bees. ‘An oldie, but a goodie – Jimmy Perez and the Mareel Boys, with their breakthrough hit, “Mothcatcher Blues”. For an extra five bonus points, name the year that topped the charts.’

Mum snorted. ‘Easy: 1986. Give us a hard one, Scotty.’

‘Da-ad?’ Callum leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

‘And don’t forget we’ve got – and I’m mega excited about this – the one, the only, the Krankies! They’ll be here in fifteen minutes to tell us all about Monday’s heee-larious episode of K.T.V. It’ll be fan-dabi-dozi!’

‘What did I tell you, Cal?’

‘I’m Scott Kennedy and you’re listening to the Golden Oldies Quiztime Special on Castlewave FM …’

‘No, but I need to go wee-wee. I really do.’

‘Now then, my little Quiztronaughts, who was the lead singer on this hit from two years ago? It’s the Bangles, and “Eternal Flame”.’ Some sort of horrible old-people music jingled out of the radio – weird pings and things, with a woman being all soft and soppy over the top.

‘We’re half an hour from home, so you’ll have to tie a knot in it.’

‘But, Da-ad, I’m bursting.’

Mum shook her head, setting her pale-yellow hair swinging. ‘Told you it was a mistake to buy him that tin of Fanta. It goes right through—’

‘Don’t start.’

‘I’m just saying.’ She pointed through the windscreen at a lumpy blocky building at the side of the road. ‘Look, there’s a public toilet. Stop.’

‘I’m not stopping.’

‘Fine. Well, you keep on driving, David MacGregor, and when Callum wees himself, you can clean it up.’

The lady on the radio sang about easing the pain. Which would’ve been nice, because right now there was a big balloon of pee swelling up in Callum’s insides, sending stabby twinges all through his tummy right down to the end of his willy. ‘Please, Dad?’

‘All right!’ Dad thumped his hand on the steering wheel. ‘All right, I’ll stop. You happy now?’

‘David, please, for once can we not—’

‘No. That’s perfect. I’m stopping.’ The car pulled into the lay-by, bumping and rolling along the holey road, caravan lurching away behind it. ‘There.’

Mum didn’t sing along with the lady on the radio: she just sat there, in the passenger seat, with her arms folded, staring out of the window.

Dad’s voice was stretched and twangy, the way it went before someone got spanked for being naughty: ‘Alastair, do you need a wee too?’

‘No, Dad.’

‘Callum?’

‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’

‘Get out, Callum.’

He scrabbled with his seatbelt, pulled on his flip-flops, and pushed the door open. Hopped down onto the car park’s holey surface.

The toilets were a low grey rectangle, sitting in front of a line of trees. Filth streaked the walls and the guttering sagged in the middle. Someone had sprayed ‘TORY SCUM OUT!’ across the Ladies. There weren’t any outside doors, instead a bit of wall was missing at both ends of the building, open and gaping. A cave, full of shadows and horrible smells.

Up above, the sky was dark as an angry cat.

Mum nudged Dad. ‘Don’t just sit there – go with him.’

‘He’s not a baby, Nicola. If he wants to go to the toilet he’s damn well big enough to go on his own.’

Callum wiped his damp palms on the legs of his shorts.

Maybe he didn’t need to go after all?

Maybe he could hold it in all the way home?

But that great big balloon just above his willy didn’t want to hold it in. It wanted to pee it out, all down his leg if he didn’t—

The car horn blared, and he jumped. Turned.

Dad scowled at him through the driver’s window. Alastair grinned from the backseat.

Swallow. Turn.

You can do this, Callum.

You’re a big boy now. Big boys can go to the toilet on their own.

He took a deep breath and crept into the Gents. Into the gloom. Into the manky-vinegar stink of old wee.

White tiles covered the walls, the lines in between them all dirty and yellow. Thick scratch marks ran across the brown floor, like something heavy had been dragged from one of the cubicles. Four of them huddled along the left wall, one with its door all splintered and hanging off. Urinals on the wall opposite. Sinks at the back.

A dripping tap went plink, plink, plink.

Callum hurried across to the urinals, unzipped his shorts and stood on his tiptoes.

Nothing happened.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

‘Hello, little boy.’ The voice was big and heavy, thick and slimy. Like a huge slug. ‘You’re a pretty little boy, aren’t you?’

A thin stream of yellow piddle splashed into the urinal, wobbling up and down because Callum couldn’t stop shaking.

‘Such a pretty blond little boy.’

The Slug slithered closer, breath all heavy and panting.

‘Please, my dad—’

‘Shut up. Don’t spoil it.’ Closer. ‘Are you a good little boy?’

Callum stood there, with his shrivelled willy in his hand. ‘Please.’

‘Mmm, I’ll bet you are.’ The Slug was so close now his butter-minty breath washed over Callum’s face. ‘This is going to be our little secret. If you tell anyone, I’ll know. And I know where you live and I’ll come get you. I’ll kill your mummy and daddy and I’ll punish you. Understand?’

He nodded. Bit his bottom lip to keep the tears in.

‘Good.’ A warm slimy tongue licked its way up Callum’s cheek, slow and minty and wet. ‘Now you’re going to be very quiet and come with—

‘Nah, course Labour’s gonna win next year.’ A man stumbled into the toilets, voice echoing back from the tiles. ‘Stands to reason, don’t it?’

Callum flinched.

The warm sticky breath disappeared and the slimy slug trail on his cheek went cold. Now the only thing left was the plink, plink, plink of the dripping tap and the jaggy sour smell of wee.

He fumbled his willy back into his pants. Zipped up with shaky fingers.

‘They better win.’ Another man – dressed in the same checked shirt and scruffy jeans as his friend – long hair dangling down round his face, cigarette poking from the corner of his mouth. ‘Can you imagine another four years of these bawbags?’

No sign of the Slug.

Callum’s breath shuddered out. He sagged for a moment. Then scuffed across to the sinks and washed his hands. Scrubbed a wet hand across the cold patch on his cheek. Dried himself on a greying curl of fabric hanging from the towel machine.

Stepped over to the exit.

And froze.

What if the Slug hadn’t gone away? What if he was out there, just waiting for him? Waiting to grab him and take him away and punish him and he’d never see his mummy and daddy ever again and it would be horrible and …

The stabby pain was back. He hurried to the urinals, up on his tiptoes again, making little grunty noises as the wee went down the drain.

Then washed his hands again, cos Mum didn’t like widdly hands in the car.

Both the guys in the grungy clothes were laughing at some joke about two nuns and a donkey that made no sense at all. Peeing and peeing and peeing like they’d drunk a whole bathtub full of Fanta. They didn’t wash their hands either, just lit up cigarettes and sauntered out the exit with their hands in their pockets.

Callum wiped his sweaty hands on his shorts again.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

The sound of a car faded into the distance.

It would be OK. It would.

Dad would get angry about how long he was taking and come get him.

Then he’d shout at Callum, and maybe spank the back of his legs, but he’d scare the Slug away and everything would be OK again.

It would.

Callum swallowed.

Shifted from foot to foot in his gritty flip-flops.

Come on, Daddy. Come on …

It’d been ages now.

What if they’d got fed up, driven off and left him?

What if they’d forgotten he was here, in the toilets?

What if they never came back?

What if the Slug did?

Oh no …

Callum hurried outside.

Dad’s car and the caravan were still there.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

He’d never be naughty, ever again. He’d do everything Mum asked him. He’d tidy his room. He’d even be nice to Alastair the bumhead.

A rumble of thunder, off in the distance, mingled with the traffic noises from the road.

He ran fast as a rabbit to Dad’s car and grabbed the door handle. But it just clunked up and down. The door didn’t open.

Alastair must’ve locked it. Well, he was going to get a dead arm soon as Mum and Dad weren’t looking. It wasn’t funny: locking people out of the car when there was a horrible Slug slithering about trying to steal little boys like something horrid from a fairy tale.

Callum knocked on the window.

Tried the handle again.

Still locked.

Stood on his tiptoes, and peered in through the glass.

The bumhead wasn’t on the back seat. Or in the footwell.

‘Mum?’

She wasn’t in the passenger seat. And Dad wasn’t behind the wheel. The car was empty.

‘Hello?’

Another boom of thunder, loud enough to make him jump. They’d left him. They’d run away and left him.

How could they leave him?

Callum’s bottom lip trembled.

He backed against Dad’s car. ‘Dad?’

They couldn’t have left him. They couldn’t.

It wasn’t his fault he needed a wee …

‘Mum?’

And what if the Slug came back? A drop of rain burst against the lumpy tarmac.

What if the Slug was waiting for him?

‘Please …’

Another drop. Then another. And another. Thumping down on the car roof like the feet of a tiny monster. Soaking through his hair and his T-shirt.

Maybe …

Maybe they’d all gone for a wee too? But then he’d have seen Dad and Alistair, wouldn’t he? In the Gents?

Or maybe they were in the caravan?

The breath rushed out of Callum, replaced by a smile. Yeah, that was it: they were in the caravan making cups of tea.

What an idiot. Of course they were.

Boiling the kettle on the little gas cooker.

He ran to the caravan’s door. Twisted the handle and climbed inside. Clunked the door shut behind him.

Only there was no one there.

The smile died.

Callum checked under the table, checked the loo, he even checked the cupboards.

No one.

‘Mum?’

A flash of white turned the caravan’s insides black-and-white, then the thunder roared, rain clattering against the roof. Callum blinked. Rubbed a hand across his eyes. Stared out through the window at the front of the caravan – where the folding table and the benches that turned into Mum and Dad’s bed were.

Someone was out there. A figure in the rain: big and hunched, moving with slow lumbering steps.

The Slug.

Callum ran for the caravan door and hauled the handle up, locking it. Backed away.

Another flash, followed by a deafening crash, like someone had jammed a metal dustbin over his head and battered it with a hammer.

He dropped to his knees and scrambled under the table. Curled up against the wall.

Don’t move. Don’t make any noise. Quiet and still as a mouse.

Outside, something scratched along the caravan’s walls. It started over by the chemical loo, grinding and squealing across the metal, working its way slowly around, behind him, and past to the caravan’s door.

Stopped.

Callum stared.

The handle twisted. Not far. Just a teeny weeny bit, till the lock stopped it. Twisted again. Then silence.

Maybe the Slug had given up? Maybe he’d gone away? Maybe he’d—

The whole door shook – banging and clattering in its frame.

‘No!’ Callum wrapped his arms around his head and bit his bottom lip till he could taste pennies. ‘Go away, go away, go away …’

Then the noise faded, leaving nothing behind but the battering drone of rain on the caravan roof.

The Slug had given up.

He had to.

The caravan was locked, he couldn’t get in.

A trembly sob rattled its way out of Callum. Safe.

And then that dark slimy voice crept through the caravan wall, as if the Slug’s lips were right up against it. ‘Your mummy and daddy don’t love you any more. They say you’re ugly and stupid and useless and they don’t want you. So they’ve given you to me.’

No. They wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t leave him.

They couldn’t …

‘You’re mine now, little boy. You belong to me.’ Scratching noises against the wall. ‘Now open the door and let me in.’

A hand on his arm. ‘Gah!’ Callum flinched.

Franklin frowned at him. ‘Are you OK?’

He let out a shuddery breath, looking down at the photo of the four of them in their holiday clothes. ‘What?’

She pointed at the photo. ‘I said, “You’ve got an identical twin?”’

He clicked the wallet closed and slipped it into his back pocket. ‘A long time ago.’

16

Hairy Harry loomed over the wrinkled body on the cutting table, humming away to himself. A huge breezeblock of a man, with rounded shoulders and a bit of a gut on him. He’d tucked the last six inches of his Victorian-style beard into the top of his apron. A blue-camouflage bandanna covered the top of his head, his long furry ponytail poking out the back of it. Hairy Harry’s voice was surprisingly soft and warm for someone who looked as if they ate live badgers. ‘Now that’s interesting …’

He reached into the open body cavity, coming out with a chunk of shrivelled black, holding it aloft like that baboon did at the start of Disney’s The Lion King. ‘Have you ever seen a liver look like that before, all dried out and wrinkly?’

Lucy shook her head and made another note on her clipboard.

‘Fascinating.’

They’d laid the body out on its back, not so much uncurling the limbs as snapping them off at the dry brittle joints. Legs and arms, positioned either side of the smoke-coloured ribs.

Franklin had her own arms folded, voice so low it was barely a whisper. ‘At least this one doesn’t smell as bad.’

Hairy Harry went back in, coming out with what looked like a dehydrated snake. ‘Well, well, well …’

Mother and McAdams stood off to one side, heads together, McAdams poking away at his mobile phone as she talked in hushed tones. Every now and then, she’d look up and stare at Callum. Then go back to conspiring with her poetry-spouting sidekick. Probably trying to figure out what crappy job to punish him with next.

‘Amazing, when you think about it.’ Hairy Harry stuck his gloved hands on the hips of his purple scrubs. ‘The only internal organs still attached are the heart and the lungs, everything else has been taken out, preserved, then put back in again. It’s almost impossible to tell cause of death from the soft tissue, because there isn’t any – it’s all like beef jerky.’

The mummy’s ribcage lay on a trolley against the wall, its covering of leathery skin too dried-on to remove like in a normal post mortem.

‘No external sign of trauma, other than the discolouration around the throat – which could just be pigmentation from the preservation, but looks more like ante-mortem bruising to me. And then there’s this.’ He held up a little jar full of tiny discoloured spheres and gave it a shake, making them rattle against the glass. ‘You’ll need to get it tested, but unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s silica gel. The kind of thing that comes in those little sachets they stick in bags, shoes, and handbags to sook up moisture and stop them going mouldy. His mouth was stuffed with it. More in the oesophagus, trachea, and sinus cavities. We’ll have to rehydrate the stomach to find out, but I’m willing to bet we’ll find some there too.’

Mother wandered back to the table. ‘Excuse me, Dr Jenkins, I have to borrow Detective Constable MacGregor here.’

Oh. That didn’t sound good. Whatever horror she and McAdams had come up with, it was about to spatter down on Callum’s head.

‘Please, it’s Harrison. And by all means. The young man’s a bit of a fidget anyway.’

Everyone’s a critic.

She pulled on a smile. ‘Thank you.’ Then headed for the exit. ‘Come on, Constable.’

Here we go.

Callum leaned closer to Franklin. ‘Try not to punch anyone else, OK?’ And followed Mother out, through the changing room, past the rows and rows of refrigeration units, across the reception area, and out into the rain.

She shrugged her shoulders up around her ears and hurried across the puddled tarmac to her battered Fiat Panda. Hurled herself in behind the wheel and beckoned at him from the safety of the car.

What would it be: door-to-doors in the freezing downpour? Digging into the archives for some obscure file that hadn’t been seen for three generations? Talking to small children about road safety? Or maybe she was just going to fire him?

He high-stepped between the water-filled potholes, collar pulled up against the rain, and clambered in the passenger side.

A furry penguin hung from the rear-view mirror, along with a yellow air-freshener that smelled of chemical lemons. Inside, the car was a mess. Mud, grit, gravel, and old magazines in the footwells; plastic bags, a collection of cardboard wine-carriers full of empties, and for some bizarre reason a quarter-size inflatable sheep with sunglasses, littering the back seat. Dust coating the dashboard like a furry blanket. The bottles clinked and rattled as he thumped the door shut.

Ooh, sodding hell: it was like climbing into a very filthy fridge. Cold air nipped at his ears.

Mother stuck her hands in her pockets, her breath fogging in front of her face. ‘Callum, Callum, Callum … What am I going to do with you?’

Oh great. She’d dragged him all the way out here for a bollocking. Could they not have done it inside in the warm?

‘Thought I told you not to lead our new girl astray? And what do I find? She’s running around assaulting detective sergeants on DCI Powel’s Major Investigation Team. Care to explain yourself?’

What? ‘How is this my—’

‘I had Powel on the phone this afternoon, and he wasn’t a happy hedgehog. Says after the assault you waded in and interfered with the victim – to wit one DS Jimmy Blake. Got him to change his story and say he slipped and battered his own nose to a wee bloody lump.’

‘All I did was point out that the whole thing would be caught on the mortuary’s CCTV system.’ A shrug. ‘For some reason, Blakey wasn’t keen on anyone seeing it.’

‘Right.’ Mother nodded. Then sighed. ‘Callum, I’m all in favour of sticking up for the team, I really am …’

‘But?’

‘But probably better get a copy of the footage. Just in case Powel or Blakey decide to make it disappear. Blackmail only works as long as you’ve got the negatives.’ She grinned, then dug a paper bag out of her fleece pocket. ‘Have a jelly baby. Hell, take two.’

He did. An orange and a yellow.

Mother shoogled down a bit in her seat and helped herself to a red one. ‘And when you get the footage, pop past my office with it. About time someone tried to introduce Blakey the Octopus’s nose to his rectum by first-class fist-express; I’m going to get some popcorn in.’

‘Yes, Boss.’ He popped the yellow baby into his mouth, chewed on its lemony sweetness.

‘I don’t know what to make of you, Callum, I honestly don’t. One minute you’re this vast pain in my backside, and the next you’re saving Franklin from herself.’

He ripped the head off the orange baby. ‘I didn’t take a bribe from Big Johnny Simpson. Talk to Professional Standards – they’re looking through every penny I’ve got. Yes: I cocked-up the crime scene, but I didn’t do it on purpose.’

‘Hmmm …’ She chewed in silence for bit.

A squall of wind rocked the car, rain buckshotting the roof, setting it ringing.

Mother devoured another baby. ‘They’re going to grab this case off us if they can.’

Of course they were.

‘Two victims mummified and a third brining, ready for smoking? That spells “serial killer” in eight-foot-tall flashing neon letters. There’ll be a media outcry, public panic, press briefings, idiots hanging about outside Divisional Headquarters doing serious pieces to camera …’ A yellow jelly baby lost its life. ‘They’ll want a superintendent running it.’

Callum wrote his name in the dashboard dust. ‘Yes, but a superintendent won’t want to get their hands dirty, will they? No, they’ll want someone else to do the actual police work, in case it all goes horribly wrong. Plausible deniability.’

‘Oh goody, a poisoned chalice. My favourite.’ She held the paper bag out again. ‘We’re fighting for this one, Callum. It’ll probably be the last chance Andy gets to put a killer away. I won’t let them take that away from him.’

‘We should run a dental records match on Glen Carmichael and his two mates. Just in case.’ He popped a green jelly baby in, feet first. ‘And Powel’s got a forensic psychologist down to consult on his severed feet, Dr McDonald. She was the one they brought in to work the Birthday Boy case? We could tap her for some Behavioural Evidence Analysis.’

‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘They’re not allowed to call it “profiling” because of the TV. Might help?’

‘Not if it’s Glen and his mates who’re the killers …’ A shrug. ‘But what the hell. We’ll get DNA and a facial reconstruction on the go too. I’ll fight with our esteemed masters about the budget later.’ She put the sweeties away. ‘Anything else?’

Callum wiped the dust from his fingertip onto his trousers. ‘When you dragged me out here, I thought you were going to fire me.’

‘Did you?’ A shrug. ‘I just fancied a jelly baby – they always taste funny in the mortuary. Like death.’

Sharp salty cheese, soft claggy bread, smooth silky butter, and the tangy vinegar crunch of Branston Pickle. Callum sat in the APT lounge and chewed.

Elaine had stuck another little note in with his sandwich. Today it was a lumpy drawing of a flat fish, with a speech balloon above its head: ‘YOU’RE MY SOLE MATE!’, with the subtitle, ‘BARRY THE FISH IS TERRIBLE AT PUNS’, and a lipstick kiss.

He smiled at Barry, then tucked him into his jacket pocket – ready to join the others when he got home.

A copy of Hey You! magazine lay on the coffee table, all shiny and shallow. Apparently some plastic-faced, talentless, Z-list nonentities were celebrating the first anniversary of the renewal of their wedding vows! Picture exclusive! Oh my God! How exciting!

No wonder people turned into serial killers.

Still, it was his own fault for finishing The Beginner’s Guide to Shoplifting that morning, instead of saving it for lunchtime. Could’ve had something decent to read instead of this.

He flipped the magazine open to a big photo spread of Mrs Plastic Face and her equally gormless-looking husband of eighteen months. Eighteen months married and they’d already reached the heady milestone of a vow-renewal anniversary.

Someone grunted their way down into the couch on the other side of the coffee table.

Callum took another bite. ‘According to this, she’s just signed a publishing deal: two million quid for four books.’

‘How is that fair?’ McAdams sighed. ‘A book deal for an idiot who can’t write her own name, / The public should know better, but they’ll buy it just the same, / The publishers will lap it up, to boost their bottom line, / And if they’ll publish crap like that, why won’t they publish mine?’

Callum flipped the page again. ‘Move over Pam Ayres, we have a new Poet Laureate.’

‘Shouldn’t you be doing something?’

‘I am. I’m eating the sandwich my pregnant girlfriend made me for lunch.’ He held up a finger. ‘And before you start: I’ve already got the DNA sent off from all three bodies, got Lucy to X-ray their heads for dental chart comparisons, contacted Dundee University’s facial reconstruction bods, asked the media department to send out “have you seen these men” posters for Glen Carmichael and his mates, and Dr Alice McDonald has agreed to pay us a visit as soon as she’s finished drafting her preliminary report on Powel’s severed feet.’ Another bite of cheesy pickly goodness. ‘So yes, right now I’m eating my lunch and reading about vacuous nonentities who spent more cash on a vow-renewal anniversary celebration than you or I will make in a year.’

‘Just because Mother’s softening on you, doesn’t mean I am, Constable. And for the record: summary narrative is the hallmark of a lazy writer.’

He turned the page. ‘Ooh, look here: it says she’s bringing out a line of perfumes, that’ll be nice, won’t it? Silicone Implants à la Botox, a fragrance for women.’

‘Fine.’ McAdams stood. ‘When you’ve finished your meagre repast, I want those dental records checked. And find out who they bought the flat from. Maybe he’s the one in the bath. God knows I’d happily kill the idiot who sold us our house.’

‘Sarge?’ Franklin poked her head around the door. ‘Sorry, but there’s a Dr McDonald in the observation room asking to see the team. Says she’s consulting?’

‘That’s me.’ Callum popped the last chunk of sandwich in his mouth and sooked his fingers clean. Flipped the magazine shut and stood. ‘Feel free to tag along, if you like.’

He sauntered out, past a frowning Franklin, and down the corridor into the observation suite. It was subdivided into booths by a series of half-height partitions, each area looking out over one of the dissecting room’s twelve cutting tables. The booths all had their own whiteboard, DVD recorder, collection of uncomfortable plastic chairs, and TV screen.

Dr McDonald was sitting cross-legged on the floor right in front of the TV, still wearing her pink scrubs and stripy top, elbows on her knees, hands on her cheeks – holding her head up. Like a little kid watching cartoons. In front of her, the screen had a top-down plan view of the cutting table, a wrinkled leathery body lying dead centre curled up on its side. Figures flickered and swam around it, moving impossibly quickly, lurching in and out of frame.

She’d swapped her mortuary-issue wellies for a pair of red high-tops, and added a pair of glasses to her ensemble. The fast-forward post mortem reflected in their lenses.

She looked up as Callum walked in. ‘I’ve watched it five times now.’

He waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. No babbling. No non sequiturs.

OK …

She unfolded her legs and stood. ‘I’ll need to see the crime scene.’

‘I can probably swing that.’

McAdams marched into the room, followed by Franklin. Still no sign of Mother.

A big smile and McAdams stuck his hand out for shaking. ‘Detective Sergeant McAdams, you must be Dr McDonald.’

She looked at the offered hand as if he’d grown a vast pale hairless spider at the end of his arm.

The awkward silence stretched.

He lowered his hand. Stuck it in his pocket instead. ‘This is DC Franklin.’

‘Before we start, here’s how this works,’ McDonald walked to the whiteboard and wrote ‘VICTIMOLOGY’ on it in red marker, ‘I give you a series of educated guesses, based on the information you give me. If I don’t know something I’ll mark it as an assumption and you have to take anything based on that with a whole carton of salt. Agreed?’

‘You’re going to profile our serial killer?’

‘OFFENDER BEHAVIOURAL INDICATORS’ went on the board next.

‘No, I’m going to give you educated guesses, remember?’

‘CRIME SCENE INDICATORS’

McAdams leaned back against the partition wall. ‘Go on then, guess away.’

‘PSYCHOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY / BOUNDARIES’

‘From what we know right now, our suspect is probably a goal-orientated killer. It’s possible preserving the victims turns them into some kind of fertility totem, but I don’t think he kills them for sexual release. He kills them so he can mummify their bodies. That’s his goal – it means something to him. What is the bigger question.’

‘I’ll settle for who.’

‘Statistically it’s going to be a white male, mid-twenties. He’ll have access to a facility for smoking meat, and or fish, and experience in using it. You don’t jump right into this kind of thing without practice.’

McAdams snapped his fingers at Callum. ‘I want a list of every smokehouse in a twenty … make it fifty-mile radius.’

Dick.

Callum made a note anyway. ‘What about Glen Carmichael, Brett Millar, and Ben Harrington? Any chance the three of them are killing as a team?’

Dr McDonald looked back at the TV, with its flickering ghosts. ‘There’s a chance, but it’s not very likely. Two of them, maybe – one dominant, one submissive – but three would be very unusual. It’s hard enough getting three men to agree on what pizza toppings to order, never mind how to select, kill, and preserve their victims.’

Fair enough.

She leaned in closer to the screen. ‘Our offender’s an artisan and an artist. This kind of work takes time, care, and skill. He’s probably unattached, lives alone where no one can interfere with his work. He’ll drive a big car, or a van – he needs to be able to transport the bodies.’

Franklin shook her head. ‘We found one of them in the boot of a wee Kia Picanto – small four-door hatchback. You don’t need that much space.’

‘Not when they’re mummified, but while they’re still alive? You need more room.’

And Franklin explodes: in three, two, one … But she didn’t. She just nodded.

‘His post-murder activities are highly ritualised too. Removing the organs and preserving them separately, then stitching them back into the body cavity.’ She wrapped the fingers of one hand into her hair, fiddling with the curls as her eyes narrowed and her voice dropped off to a murmur. ‘You don’t just mummify people for fun, do you, no you don’t, you do it because you want them to live on in the afterlife, you deify them …’ She let go of her hair and straightened. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of religious upbringing.’ She pointed at the whiteboard, where ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY / BOUNDARIES’ was written. ‘I need to know where the victims came from before we can work out where he’s likely to live.’

Callum nodded. ‘We’re working on it.’

‘Also,’ McAdams took a marker from the shelf beneath the board and uncapped it, ‘we need to decide what we’re calling our boy. Can’t have a serial killer novel with an unnamed antagonist.’ He printed ‘IMHOTEP’ right in the middle. ‘Before the tabloid newspapers come up with something more lurid.’

‘Ah …’ Dr McDonald bit her top lip. ‘It’s a nice thought, I mean I know we’ve got to call him something, but “Imhotep” doesn’t actually work, does it, because Imhotep was Egyptian and Egyptian mummies are always preserved lying flat, and the curled body posture our suspect uses to pose his victims is more reminiscent of ancient Peruvian burial techniques, which results from a completely different cultural and religious background.’ She shrugged. ‘“Paddington” would probably be more accurate, you know, strictly speaking, because of the Peru connection, I think we should definitely call him Paddington, it just makes a lot more sense.’

‘And one final thing.’ McAdams smiled. ‘Aren’t you going to say it?’

Dr McDonald wrote ‘PADDINGTON’ on the board. ‘Aren’t I going to say what?’

‘It’s a cliché of the genre, but the profiler always says it at the end of the briefing.’

A frown. ‘Nope, you’ve lost me.’

‘He will kill again!’

‘Of course he will.’ McDonald stuck the lid back on the marker pen. ‘He’s a serial killer, it’s what he does.’

— Imhotep —

“Well, well, well,” the God Wolf growled, “if I’ve not just caught the tastiest little morsel in the whole dark world.”

“You can’t eat me!” gasped Imelda. “I’m made of bones and stones and glass and groans, and if you eat me you’ll get a terrible tummy ache and die!”

The God Wolf smiled at her. “I’ll take my chances,” he said. And swallowed Imelda whole.

R.M. Travis

Imelda’s Miraculous Dustbin (1999)

Stay away from ma b*tches, they ain’t down with no snitches,

I got me my riches, givin’ punks like you stitches!

Donny ‘$ick Dawg’ McRoberts

‘Livin’ Free Or Dyin’ Tryin’’

© Bob’s Speed Trap Records (2014)

17

The God-In-Waiting sways gently in the smoke, head down, hands making delicate figure-eight patterns as it swings. No movement of its own, just that final rattling breath, then peace and stillness. Grace and purity.

It’s time.

The racks beneath the God-In-Waiting are full of fish, hanging from their poles like the divinity above. He removes the poles, stacking them on the rack next door to cool. It’ll be a good batch of smokies. They always are when a new god comes into being. Must be the air.

Or maybe it’s the cleansed body, hanging above them as they smoke? Maybe it’s the juices that drip like tears from the body as it takes on its final form? Whatever it is, the result is excellent fish.

Next is the scraper – just a plank of wood fixed on the end of a broomstick – he uses it to push the smouldering embers away, heaping them up against the far wall. Then stands beneath the God-In-Waiting.

It’s beautiful …

Once Upon A Time

The man hanging on the wall has got nothing on but a kind of nappy, wrapped around his waist. His skin is a dark, rich wood, polished so much it glows against the cross. Someone’s made him a hat of barbed wire, which must hurt something horrible.

A wobbly voice fills the air, echoing back off the church’s stone walls. ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth …’

It’s a pretty sound – even if the words are just made-up – floating above the pews, wrapping around the big wooden man. Maybe it makes him happier if people sing to him? He looks very sad.

Father’s over by the altar, talking to the priest man. Both of them dressed in black, like crows – though the priest man’s got on a kind of dress. Both are wearing those little white things around their necks. Dog collars. Both pretending to be something they’re not.

‘Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis …’

The man’s been stuck to the cross with big metal nails, and there’s holes in his side. Maybe that was mice? There’s mice in Father’s house and they eat holes in everything. Scurrying about in the dark. Leaving their little black presents behind.

‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis—’

‘NO! NO! DAMN IT, OLIVER!’ A man’s voice, not pretty and floaty, but hard and grating. ‘How many times? It’s pronounced, “ex-chel-cease”. We’re going to stay here and do it again and again until – you – get – it – right!’

Father looks up at the gallery that runs above the back six rows of pews, where the organ is. Then down at him. ‘Justin, thumb out of the mouth, eh champ?’ He smiles. ‘You’re a big boy now.’

Justin’s not his real name: it’s from Father’s favourite album, about a little boy who turns into a rabbit and has to save the world from the king of dead things. And Justin’s as good a name as any.

He takes his thumb out of his mouth and wipes it dry on his T-shirt. ‘Sorry, Father.’

‘That’s my boy.’ Then Father shakes hands with the priest man and wanders down the apse. Ruffles Justin’s hair. ‘Come on, slugger, time to go home.’ He turns and waves at the priest man as they leave the church.

‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth …’

Down the steps in the warm sunshine, one hand on Justin’s shoulder. Steering him to the car with its little Scottish flag fluttering on the end of the aerial. ‘In you get.’

Justin does what he’s told.

Gravel scrunches and crunches under the wheels as they leave the church grounds.

‘Did you hear the singing, Father? Wasn’t that—’

The slap is as hard as it is quick, snapping his head to the side, the sound like a gunshot going off.

‘Don’t you dare embarrass me like that again. Sucking on your thumb like a baby. That what you are? A baby?’

He blinks the tears back. Bites his lip. Lets the burning needles sink into his cheek. Don’t cry. Feed off the heat. Don’t cry. It’ll only make it worse.

‘You want to wear nappies and sit in your own filth again? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?’ Little flecks of spit settle against the dashboard. ‘ANSWER ME, DAMN YOU!’

Justin takes a deep breath.

Don’t cry.

Feel it burn. Own it.

He stares down at his hands, curled in his lap. ‘No, Father. Sorry, Father.’

‘Good boy.’ And just like that the storm passes, the clouds’ shadows slip away and Father smiles at him again. ‘Come on, why don’t we go get some ice cream? We can bring some back for Mummy, she’ll like that, won’t she?’

Justin nods, even though it’s not true. New Mummy doesn’t like anything. She just cries all the time.

‘And, slugger?’ Father ruffles his hair again, the fingers warm and hard where they dig into his scalp. ‘You stay away from church music, it’s nothing but lies. See these?’ He lets go of Justin and unhooks the white band from around his throat. Shakes it like a dead mouse. ‘They call them a “dog collar” for a reason. They choke you. There’s a chain that clips onto them, so you can go walkies. Because it’s all lies: the churches, the hymns, the bible, the whole God-bothering holier-than-thou, deviant filth-mongering lot of them. Lies and liars.’

Justin doesn’t move.

This can go one of two ways, and one of them ends with screaming and bruises and getting locked in the Naughty Cupboard – peeing blood for a week.

Father clicks on the car stereo, and the album picks up where it left off. A hissing of drums, then the man’s voice comes over the top, quiet as treacle. ‘You have to hide right here, right now, you have to stay so still, / Cos Justin, little rabbit boy, the night-time means you ill, / There’s monsters here, there’s monsters there, and they’re prowling through the gloom, / Stay still and oh so quiet, or these woods will be your tomb …’

Father squeezes his shoulder. ‘Come on, champ, let’s go get that ice cream.’

But not this time.

Now

He stares up at the God-In-Waiting. It’s not as beautiful as the wooden man on the cross, not yet, but it will be. It’ll be better. So much better than a dead thing carved from a dead tree, hanging in a dead building.

It’ll be a god …

He unhooks the rope from its cleat on the wall and takes the strain. Lowers the body, hand over hand, until it rests on the freshly cleared floor. Picks it up off the hot stone slabs – it isn’t hard, the cleansed remains weigh almost nothing. The weight of sin is gone, purged, purified.

The God-In-Waiting is pale and soft, but that will change.

Everything will.

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