The Absent Man Page 23

  ‘Based on what I have seen so far, I wouldn’t go on any decision made by a member of Glaswegian Police Service.’

  ‘Just shut up!’ Black snapped. ‘You assaulted a detective at a crime scene.’

  ‘To be fair, he swung at me first.’

  Vincent interjected. ‘Argyle has corroborated that fact, and Jones is a trained agent. Self-defence is necessary.’

  ‘So you could say I was just doing as trained, right?’ Bermuda cursed himself for antagonising.

  ‘Trained? What you have done, Jones, is discuss the Otherside with a detective who has pushed the idea higher. Not only has it been laughed out of the door and put her career in jeopardy, you have actively gone against one of the fundamental rules that we abide by here at the BTCO.’

  ‘Oh, fuck your rules.’

  A collective gasp echoed down the phone. Kelly McDonald rose from behind a partition, her mouth wide open, a look of pure horror across her face. Bermuda felt every muscle in his body tense. Silence.

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ Black finally uttered, astounded by the offence.

  ‘You know what? In case you haven’t realised, this thing is killing. Every day. Without fail. Innocent women are dying. Now we know what the fuck is going on, but that doesn’t mean we keep it to ourselves. Now if I get laughed out of every damn room, if I get swung at by every fucking inept detective, then so be it. I am not going to stop hunting this bastard until I bring him to his fucking knees.

  ‘So you can fire me, you can threaten me, whatever. I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere until I stop Kevin Parker.’ Bermuda stood, his hand on his hip. ‘You got a problem with that, Monty, then you know where I am.’

  Bermuda ended the call amidst Black’s threats of coming to Glasgow immediately and tossed the phone down onto the desk. He looked at Kelly, who slowly slunk into her seat, her fears of meeting her hero clearly solidified. With a deep sigh, he slid his hand to his back pocket and retrieved the small leather wallet, his BTCO Agency card securely fastened behind the clear plastic.

  He placed it on the table alongside his phone.

  The gentle clicking of a keyboard was the only sound in the room and Bermuda decided against an awkward goodbye. With purposeful steps, he strode through the giant steel doors and up the steep, dark stairwell for the final time. As he emerged through the reality-shattering door, the rain hit him hard.

  The next few words hit him harder.

  ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  Bermuda’s mouth pulled into a thin line and he turned, shielding his face from the hard downfall. Argyle stood to the side of the door, his arms folded across the armour plate. His eyes, piercing and pupilless, stared at Bermuda with hope.

  ‘I’m sorry, Big Guy.’ Bermuda shrugged. ‘But I can’t just turn my back on this and go home. It’s not an option.’

  ‘We have strict orders …’ Argyle began.

  ‘To hell with the orders,’ Bermuda interrupted, immediately regretting it. ‘Look, Argyle, I know you are a soldier and you were drilled from whatever age to be this well-oiled machine. But there are times when the orders shouldn’t be followed.’

  Argyle’s brow furrowed. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to, buddy.’ Bermuda let out a deep sigh, the pain of the goodbye coiling around his heart like an anaconda. ‘My whole life, I have been scared of this other world and what was waiting for me in the shadows. I have hated this curse, no matter how many times I have tried to accept it. It has brought me nothing but pain. Except you.’

  ‘I was assigned to you by Lord Ottoway,’ Argyle said with the clarity of a football commentator.

  ‘I know. You have been the best friend I could have asked for, and you have saved my arse more times than I care to remember. But I can’t walk away from this, Argyle. I just can’t. I have to stop him.’

  Argyle stood silently, casting his eyes back to the entrance of the BTCO Headquarters and the only life he had ever known on this side of the divide.

  ‘It has been an honour to serve by your side.’ Argyle stood proudly, resting his fist across his chest in a sign of respect. ‘And a pleasure to call you my friend.’

  Bermuda felt tears slowly welling behind his eyes, but puffed his chest out and offered the same salute to his partner. They nodded their final respect.

  ‘Take care of yourself.’

  Bermuda’s final words hung in the following silence, the rain clattering the short distance between the two of them. As the conversation ended, Bermuda turned and headed back towards the town, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Argyle watched his partner walk away, a pathway he could not follow.

  They had their orders.

  Argyle turned slowly and headed back to the secret office below the bustling city, trying his best to maintain his formidable composure. A sadness swept through his body, a feeling that was both overpowering and alien. The BTCO had been his saviour, pulling him from the Otherside and protecting him from all the horrors that would surely await him should he ever return. Bermuda had been assigned to him after what had happened.

  Argyle had saved him more than he knew.

  But the sadness Argyle felt was for the fading essence of Bermuda in his senses. He knew Bermuda was connected to his world, and like his own kind, he could sense his partner.

  That feeling was fading.

  The case, like their partnership, had come to an end, and he was to return alone.

  There was no essence of Otherside on the street anymore. Only the rain.

  Bermuda had gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The afternoon was brisk, with a dark cloud painting itself across the skyline. The darkness it cast loomed heavy over the Necropolis as Bermuda felt the mud squelch beneath his Converse. Whatever colour they were before, they were mud brown from now on. Inching his way between gravestones, he ascended to the top of the hill, the broken stone of the tomb the cherry on a depressing, muddy cake.

  It was empty.

  Frustrated at his lack of availability, Bermuda called for Tobias, his words dancing their way to oblivion on the howling wind. Leaves spun up off the ground, swirling through the dark graveyard and clattering the monuments to the dead. Bermuda entered the tomb, shuddering as he looked at the wall that Kevin Parker had sent him crashing into.

  The large platform in the centre of the room smelt damp, with flecks of dried blood scattered across the surface. The edges of the wall still showed the finger scrapings of a madman.

  Or a captive?

  Bermuda called out to Tobias again, immediately scorning himself for thinking he was hidden in one of the small coves within. Maybe he should have brought Argyle with him. The posh old groundsman was keen to meet his partner. Bermuda slid his notepad out and flipped it open, fanning the pages of crude notes until the day he met Tobias.

  Argyle?

  Bermuda scoffed; the senile old gatekeeper was certainly as bizarre as Monty had made out. It had probably been a long time since he had met a Neither, especially one with the reputation of Argyle. Bermuda said Argyle’s name a few times in the overly posh tones of Tobias, then stopped suddenly, checking the corners of the tomb in case he was there.

  The shadows offered nothing but cold silence. Rain dropped through a crack in the wall, splattering against the back of Bermuda’s neck. Wiping it away as he turned, Bermuda noticed the broken stones of one of the walls, the brick a shaky foundation on borrowed time.

  Everything here was dying.

  With a sudden chill tunnelling through his body like a starving termite, Bermuda wrapped his arms around his body and stepped back out into the world. Carefully treading through the slippery graveyard, Bermuda turned as he approached the gate, casting an eye back up to the tomb. The shadows of the Necropolis loomed from every angle, like thousands of ghastly fingers all reaching in from the edges of our world.

  He stepped through the gate and back onto the pavement, only then realising
that he had been holding his breath.

  The entire walk back to his hotel was spent running through the case in his mind, trying his best to figure out how Kevin was selecting his victims and who he was looking for. He had spoken of a voice in the darkness, promising her return. They needed to know who her was.

  After a while the rain failed to register with him, his body soaked through to the core. He dipped into a coffee shop, stepping out a few moments later with a hot cup in his hand and a fresh stream of caffeine trickling down his throat. Checking his phone, Bermuda immediately ignored the fifty-seven missed calls that he assumed were from Montgomery Black, the impending bollocking and likely sacking the furthest thing from his mind.

  Veering into the town centre, Bermuda was surprised at the volume of the footfall, the downpour doing little to discourage shoppers from buying into the Christmas spirit. Trying his best to remember what day it was, Bermuda walked towards the dismantled tramline, his heart racing as he revisited yet another near-death experience.

  Another life owed to Argyle.

  Bermuda frowned, the amicable breakup with his partner still a very raw wound that he knew the Otherside couldn’t heal. Without his partner, Bermuda felt every shadow slowly stalking him, knowing that the Otherside could sense his vulnerability.

  Occasionally, he had spun his head quickly and thought he had seen a hooded figure in a dark alley. Or a featureless, white face watching from a building above.

  He was alone.

  Finishing the last of his coffee and dumping the disposable paper cup in the nearest bin, Bermuda scanned his eyes across the dislodged tram track. He recalled the venom in Parker’s eyes as he had held him close, the sheer desperation to get away. A desperate creature was a dangerous one – even he knew that.

  But why?

  Bermuda sighed, time slipping through his fingers like raindrops. The streetlights that lined the high street burst into life, casting bright orange glows amongst the grey. Shop fronts lit up, showing a library of discount posters, all of them offering the best deals in a hope of attracting customers.

  A busker wrapped in a thick coat strumming a guitar with frozen fingers, grateful for any coin that was tossed into his bag, suddenly found himself under a spotlight. A few passers-by watched as he strummed another Ed Sheeran rent-a-song.

  The lights bore down on parked cars, families strolling through the town, and on the other side of the road the streetlight cast a shine across a pop-up florist. The portly gentleman grinned as he wrapped a bouquet up in a few sheets of paper before handing them over to an overly ambitious young man.

  Flowers either meant an anniversary or a fuckup.

  Bermuda never remembered either.

  The new brightness brought a beautiful burst of colour to the otherwise dreary street, with Bermuda’s brain forcing him to look. The tulips. The daisies.

  The roses.

  Slowly, Bermuda began walking towards them, his mind trying its best to decipher a message at the back of his mind. Slowly, dots began to land on a canvas, with lines connecting them, an image gradually becoming clearer and clearer. Like a page in a child’s dot-to-dot, Bermuda connected them, his eyes widening in realisation.

  ‘Can I help you, lad?’ The florist offered a big, boorish smile.

  Bermuda stared at him, the answer dropping on him like an anvil.

  Without answering, he slowly backed away before turning on his heels and running off into the gloomy Glasgow evening.

  ‘How’s it going, Greg?’

  McAllister leant against Butler’s desk, one arm folded across her stomach and the other lifting a warm cup of coffee to her mouth.

  She wished it was something stronger.

  ‘Aye, can’t complain.’ Butler didn’t look up from the mountain of paper before him, different sheets laid out in no obvious system. It drove McAllister mad how messily Butler worked, but then she shrank under the blanket of hypocrisy when she thought of her own life.

  ‘What’s our play?’ She took another sip as he dropped his pen and looked up.

  ‘We don’t have one.’

  ‘We need one.’

  ‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘We also need a fuck-tonne more funding and a pay rise for putting up with all of this shit, but it ain’t coming anytime soon. At least that prick has been sent back to London.’

  McAllister frowned at the thought of Bermuda leaving even though she agreed his theory was bizarre. As a dedicated detective, she had scolded herself many times over for entertaining his wild stories of other worlds and a scorned monster who was killing for the return of a woman.

  But what else did they have?

  Glancing beyond Butler’s desk, she saw Strachan stood in the incident room, pointing to the pictures of the deceased and their brutal murder scenes, the whiteboard covered in different-coloured inks that all pointed to a massive question mark.

  No one had a clue how to catch Kevin Parker.

  All the proof they had, besides the bodies, was a fingerprint from decades ago and a photo that proved he was alive almost a hundred years ago.

  All of it came from Bermuda.

  And none of it made any sense.

  Realising Butler had returned to his work, McAllister gently rubbed the bridge of her nose, annoyed at the unravelling of her career. She had lost Ethan after the devastation that had fallen upon them. The loss of their child had broken their marriage and her resolve, and she now relied upon bottle after bottle of wine. But her career was different. She had always been at the front of the line, fast-tracking to detective and proving herself to be one of the brightest minds in the service. Strachan had already earmarked her for the sergeant’s chair.

  Putting forward theories of the boogie man was not going to help her cause.

  Throughout it all, Butler had been her rock. He knew the shattered life she kept hidden away, the devastating self-hatred that led to such destructive behaviour. On more than one occasion, he had covered for her with Strachan or collected her, drunk and disorderly, from a bar where she had overstayed her welcome.

  He had been her friend.

  Yet now, after the altercations with Bermuda and her propensity to believe his wild theories, she could feel him pushing her away.

  She was alone.

  Suddenly, a wave of sadness rose inside her like an elevator and she pushed herself off of her partner’s desk and headed to the bathroom. Keeping her head down to hide the tears building in her eyes, she passed the other cubicles and the incident room – where her superiors were undoubtedly discussing her failings – until she hit the corridor. Throwing open the door, she entered the bathroom and quickly shut it, leaning against the door for a few moments as she struggled to catch her breath.

  McAllister leant down, checking under the doors, and was relieved to see no evidence of any occupants. Splashing some lukewarm water onto her face, she angrily scowled at her reflection: deep sunken eyes on a sleep-deprived face, with a mess of thick hair perched on top.

  She looked like hell.

  As the water droplets slithered down her pale skin, McAllister let out a deep breath. She felt calmer, the numbing feeling of isolation slowly rising from her like steam. She hated second-guessing herself. Having built a career as a strong detective, her conviction had always been heavily praised by DCI Fowler and above.

  She had laughed off Bermuda’s original theories. Her life as a detective was surrounded by hard evidence and pure fact, not wild speculation and proof of existence beyond our world. Yet the nagging doubt hung from her brain like a sloth, pulling her back to the idea.

  Kevin Parker was not of this world.

  The evidence and the facts that she lived by backed that theory. Bermuda had been removed from the case and admonished, sent back to London to face the superiors of his secret organisation which, if Bermuda’s descriptions of the other world were correct, would be a horrifying experience.

  What if he was right?

  McAllister rolled her eyes and reached for her p
hone, her loneliness taking control of her hands, her head and heart wrestling for control. Neither won as she began typing, repeating Bermuda’s words in her head like a mantra.

  ‘Don’t let the things you can’t control destroy the things you can.’

  Slowly, with tears falling between her eyelashes, her unpainted nails clattered the bright screen of her phone. McAllister took a deep breath as she dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand and read the message.

  Ethan. I miss you. Xx

  Guilt and pain combined in her chest, shaking her body like an earthquake. The world had moved them in different directions; the devastating loss of their child had brutally ruptured their life together. God knew what he had been doing.

  She had been self-destructing.

  And then some.

  McAllister scowled in the mirror. The once proud, tough female detective she had built herself to be was nowhere to be seen. She looked frail and beaten.

  She looked alone.

  Determined to be that woman again and get her life back, she pressed send. Instantly, she slammed the phone facedown on the sink, splashing tepid water over her face and running some through her matted hair. She pulled it into a ponytail before straightening her jacket.

  She was going to take her life back.

  And catch Kevin Parker.

  As her mind raced to think of a new angle to take on the case, a vibration echoed through the bathroom. McAllister stopped dead.

  Slowly, she turned the phone.

  It was Ethan.

  Miss you too. Xx

  McAllister let out a small sigh. Just the idea of hearing from him brought back a joyful feeling she had long since forgotten. Almost instantly, the gaping hole she had been trying to fill with drink and random men began to shrink.