‘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.
