A Dark So Deadly. Stuart MacBride

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.

       18

      Callum shuffled the printouts together, then slipped them in a plastic folder. ‘Thanks.’

      Lucy shrugged. ‘No probs.’ A grin widened her face. ‘Tell you the truth, I thought this was going to be a waste of time, but no way. My very first serial killer!’

      He tucked the folder under his arm. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more where that came from.’

      Franklin was in the hallway, outside the lab, standing with her back to the world – forehead resting against the wall, phone clamped to her ear. ‘No … Because I don’t … How am I supposed to know, Mark? I’m not a mind reader … No … I didn’t … Urgh. Just forget it. Doesn’t matter.’ A sigh. ‘OK, OK. I’ll call you when I find out.’ She hung up and stayed where she was.

      Callum cleared his throat. ‘You ready?’

      She stiffened. Put her phone away. Turned. ‘Do you eavesdrop on all your colleagues?’

      He shook his head and marched off down the corridor. ‘Don’t know why I bother.’

      Franklin didn’t catch up to him till the car park, weaving her way between the puddles in the rain. She came to a halt in front of Mother’s manky Fiat Panda. ‘Is her face normally that colour?’

      Mother was on the phone, eyes scrunched up, cheeks all flushed. Her mouth kept starting in on sentences, but never seemed to get more than a word or two into them before shutting again. Her other hand dug its fingers into her forehead, as if she was trying to force them through the skin into the bone beneath.

      ‘Yeah …’ Callum sidled towards the pool car they’d arrived in. ‘Whatever that is, there’s going to be repercussions and fallout. Don’t know about you, but I want to be long gone before then.’

      Franklin pushed past him to the pool car’s driver’s door. ‘Keys.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Keys. Give me the keys, I’m driving.’

      He raised an eyebrow. ‘You want to drive?’

      ‘Just give me the damned keys.’

      ‘So I’m going to sit in the passenger seat, and you’re going to drive me around? Like I outrank you?’

      ‘I’m not spending the rest of the day being dragged all over Oldcastle so you can run “little errands” like yesterday. Now: keys.’

      Fair enough. He dug them out of his pocket and tossed them across to her. Walked around to the other side and climbed in out of the rain as she slipped behind the wheel.

      Callum settled back in his seat. Stretched out a little. ‘I could get used to this.’

      Franklin took them through the rolling sea of ruptured tarmac and out into the industrial estate again. Past the boarded-up units, and onto the main road, heading back along the dual carriageway. The City Stadium loomed above the houses on the left, a lopsided bird’s nest of steel, concrete, and glass, lording it over the 1950s-style rows of semidetached two-up-two-downs.

      It was nice not having to do all the driving for a change. Just sit back and watch the scenery slip by. Even if it was all grey and rain-streaked.

      He dug his leprechaun-sized Mars Bar out of his pocket and took a tiny bite. Sweet, sticky, and chocolatey. ‘This your first serial killer?’

      ‘Of course it is.’

      ‘Number four for me.’

      Franklin looked at him across the car, one eyebrow raised. ‘Four serial killers? Yeah, right.’ She took them around the roundabout, the granite blade of Castle Hill just visible between the tall concrete buildings ahead. ‘I’m not an idiot, constable. There’s absolutely no way you’ve already worked three serial killer investigations.’

      A big flat-fronted building went by on the left, little windows in a big granite façade.

      ‘That’s Woodrow Hospital. Four years ago, we got complaints of missing dogs in the area. Didn’t really pay all that much attention.’ He scooted down in his seat, following the hospital in the wing mirror as it faded into the distance. ‘Then someone’s granny disappeared. Thought it was dementia to begin with, happens a lot with older people: they get confused and they wander off. Then another one went missing. And another. Took us six little old ladies to realise something was wrong.’

      The looming green mass of Camburn Woods poked out above the rooftops, getting bigger.

      Callum finished off his micro Mars Bar. ‘Who’s Mark?’

      Franklin’s jaw tightened. ‘Mark is none of your business.’

      ‘Turns out Pawel Sabachevich’s parents moved over here from a little village outside Krakow when he was six years old. They brought his maternal grandmother with them. She wasn’t very nice to Pawel. And twenty-three years later he abducted, raped, and strangled eight old ladies, dismembered their remains and fed them into the incinerator at Woodrow Hospital. He worked there as an assistant radiologist.’ Callum crumpled up his chocolate wrapper and stuck it in his pocket. ‘Nice guy. Well, if you overlook the whole murderous raping scumbag bit.’

      The diggers were still at it on the huge flanks of Camburn Roundabout – making mountains of mud, while a crane erected a lopsided metal trellis and high-viz figures sank into the mire. ‘Then there was Ian Zouroudi.’ Another shudder followed in the footsteps of the first. ‘Gah … The whole team needed therapy after that one.’

      ‘Just because I’m new and a woman, it doesn’t make me an idiot.’

      ‘Never said it did.’ Camburn Woods reared up and swallowed the car, the thick branches reaching out over the dual carriageway on either side, leaves dark and dripping. ‘From what I heard, it’s all the mercury in the ground around here. Too big a dose and it screws with brain development.’

      ‘Mercury.’

      ‘We made most of Britain’s mustard gas, right here in Oldcastle, for the First World War. Apparently it took a lot of mercury. And now we’re the serial-killer capital of Europe. Pretty high on the list for birth defects too.’ He sniffed. ‘That was a fun day at antenatal class.’

      Ruined buildings lurked in the woods to either side of the road, slowly dissolving into the bushes and ivy.

      She frowned across the car at him. ‘Three serial killers?’

      The world opened up in a blast of grey as the road emerged from the depths of Camburn Woods.

      ‘Straight through the next roundabout and it’s the third road on the right.’ Two parallel lines of shops and flats followed them along the road, at least a quarter of them boarded up. Bookies and charity shops rubbing shoulders with places to sell your gold or pawn your kids’ toys.

      Callum