A Dark So Deadly. Stuart MacBride

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.