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?’
‘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