The Bug: Complete Season One (3 page)

Hoon dropped into his chair, spun away from his cluttered desk and gazed out over the city.

What the Hell was happening out there tonight?

The sky over Govan glowed an angry shade of orange. He could see the flashing blues of the fire engines heading out that way, although they could just as easily be the lights of his own guys, rushing off to deal with whatever new blister of madness had just burst open somewhere.

Twelve murders so far, and the night was still young. Five women, four men, three kids. Babies, practically. Some of them…

Hoon squeezed the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes. He hadn't seen anything like them since that spate of 'devil dog' attacks back on his beat days. Poor bastards.

And then there was Lacey Crane. He wasn't even counting her in with the rest of the murders yet. He wasn't sure
what
that was.

There was a soft knock and his door creaked open.

“Press again, sir,” said a worried voice. “They want to—?”

“Tell them to away and get fucked!”

There was a moment of hesitation, then the door clicked closed again. Hoon took out his mobile and redialed the last number. It rang and rang until the voicemail eventually kicked in. Hoon drummed his fingers on the desktop impatiently, listening to the message drone on.

“Marshall!” he barked, the moment he heard the
beep
. “Where the fuck are you? I told you to go home, not vanish off the face of the Earth. Phone me back.”

He hung up and slammed the phone down on the desk with more force than he meant to, scattering a tower of paperwork that had been in danger of toppling over ever since he'd set foot in the room.

He gathered the files up, shuffling them roughly into a lop-sided stack. Assault, arson, rioting, rape – the top few files alone read like a psychopath's Bucket List. Only they'd caught some of the people in the act, and they weren't psychos. They had no priors, no history of trouble. They were just normal folk.

At least, they had been. Something had happened to them. Something that had turned normal folk off the street into the mindless animals that were banged up in the cells downstairs.

He looked at the pile of paperwork, then back out the window. The orange glow was brighter now. Tiny flames licked the night sky on the horizon. The fire was spreading.

But that was someone else's problem. Thank Christ. He had his own stuff to sort out. He called Marshall for the umpteenth time, waited as long as the voicemail, then hung up without leaving a message.

The door opened again. “I said to tell them to fuck off,” Hoon boomed.

“Told them sir. They didn't. But it's not that.”

Hoon squinted at the woman in uniform. Alessi or something. She was new. Not to the force, but new to him. She looked about twelve, which made him feel about ten times that. It was right enough what they said, they were getting younger.

“What now?”

“They've found another one, sir.”

“Another body?”

“Another Lacey Crane. Two of them, actually.”

Hoon stood up. “How d'you mean? Cut in half?”

Alessi nodded. “Top to bottom.”

Hoon sat down. “Fuck,” he said, then he stood up again. “Fuck! A serial killer.”

“Actually, no. Don't think so, sir,” said the constable. She handed him a sheet of paper. “Not unless he can fly.”

Hoon stared down at the page. It was a printout from the BBC News website with a photo of some uniformed types all gathered around a couple of white sheets. He tried to read the article, but one word kept rearing up at him.

“Egypt?”

“And there's this one,” Alessi continued. She passed him another printout. He read it in silence.

“I can't even pronounce that,” he said at last. “Where is it? Wales?”

“Thailand, sir.”

Hoon lowered himself onto his desk. The stack of paperwork slid off it and onto the floor.

“Same as Lacey Crane, sir. Sliced top to toe, organs missing, the works,” Alessi said. She opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, then changed her mind again all in the space of a second. “What do you think it is?”

Hoon carefully folded the sheets and slipped them into his inside pocket. “Bad fucking news, constable,” he said. “Get on the phone, will you? Get Marshall in here.”

“I'll try, sir. Phone's playing up,” Alessi said. She headed for the door.

“And don't tell anyone about this.”

Alessi paused in the doorway. “Apart from the readers of the BBC website, you mean, sir?”

Hoon twitched. “Fuck. Aye. Apart from them.”

The door closed. Hoon was halfway through gathering up the tower of paperwork when it opened again. He straightened up, knocking the back of his head on the underside of the desk.

“Ow! Christ. What now?”

“The super's on the phone, sir,” said another kid in uniform. A man this time, although his voice had barely broken and he still had a face full of plooks. “And the press really want to talk to you.”

“Tell the press to get fucked. And tell the super…” Hoon thought for a moment. “Tell her to get fucked an' all.”

The kid nodded. “Right, sir.” He moved to go.

“Don't actually tell her that,” Hoon said. “Tell her I'll phone her back.”

“Right,” said the kid. He looked agitated and unsure. No wonder with the world crumbling around them. “And the press?”

“Actually tell them to get fucked,” Hoon said. “Literally say those words.”

“Right, sir. Will do, sir.”

The kid had barely shuffled off when another face appeared. This time it was one he knew.

“Sergeant. Thank fuck. Someone out of nappies.”

“We’ve got him, boss,” said the sergeant, cutting the DCI short.

Hoon nudged the toppled tower of papers with his boot. “Which one?”

“Lacey Crane. The bastard that did it. We've got him downstairs.”

“You sure it's him?”

The sergeant nodded. “Oh it's him. He's confessed. In writing.”

“In writing?”

“Aye, boss.” The sergeant shifted uncomfortably in his polished shoes. “More or less.”

Marshall lay there. For a long time he just lay there on the carpet, the wind whistling through the broken window, his blood staining the neck of his pajamas.

There was a numbness in his chest, like the aftermath of an electric shock. His heart was no longer in there, it was up around his ears, surging the blood through his veins with a
whump-whump-whump
.

A breeze billowed the curtains towards him and he scrambled back, jolting from his daze. He leapt to his feet and frantically looked around. The phone. Where was the—

Aha! He pounced on the handset like a tiger, snatching it up and stabbing three nines. He listened to the faint hiss of static as lines clicked together in an exchange somewhere.

“Come on,” he muttered, his eyes fixed on the window frame. “Come on.”

There was a click from down the line, followed by a series of short rising beeps.

“Sorry,” chimed a polite female voice in his ear. “The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please replace the handset and try again. You have not been charged for this call.”

Marshall pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the display. Three LED number nines stood shoulder to shoulder on the screen.

He hit the button to hang up and dialed again. This time there was no delay before the beeps.

“Sorry. The number you have dialed has not been recognized…”

“Fucking thing!” Marshall yelped. He hung up and dialed the station. He shifted anxiously from foot to foot while he waited for the ringing.

It never came. There were no beeps or recorded messages this time, just a hiss and a click and a continuous flat tone.

“Fuck!”

Marshall tossed the phone onto the couch and glared at it with contempt. He hurried through to the bedroom where he'd abandoned his clothes in a pile and fumbled through his trouser pockets until he found his mobile.

He pressed the top button and tapped his pin number on the screen. The phone unlocked and a message flashed up telling him he had missed calls.

Twenty-seven of them.

Marshall's stomach knotted as he swiped through the list. Hoon, Hoon, the station, Hoon. There were a few others, too. His mother (twice). His sister in Edinburgh (four times). Two random numbers he didn't recognize and a
Caller Withheld.
Mostly, though the screen was flooded with DCI Hoon.

With a few taps he called the number back. He held his breath and waited. The cold breeze from the living room swirled into the bedroom and Marshall shivered in his thin pajamas.

There was no sound from the phone. He checked the screen, which still claimed to be
Dialing Number
. It was taking it's time about it.

Keeping the phone to his ear, Marshall slipped off his pajama bottoms and pulled on the discarded trousers. He'd tossed his boxers in the washing basket and the others were piled up with the other clothes on the couch. He'd have to go commando for now. It was, he reckoned, the least of his problems.

He fumbled with the button and held the phone in the crook of his neck as he carefully zipped up the fly. Wriggling his bare feet into his shoes he checked the screen again. Still dialing.

There was a streak of red across the phone's plastic screen guard. Marshall felt the back of his neck, saw the blood on his fingers and spat out a curse. There was a half-empty box of tissues within easy reach of the bed. He tugged one out and pressed it to his nape.

He checked the screen again. It insisted it was dialing, but he was beginning to have grave fucking doubts. He returned the handset to his ear again, just in time for a garbled screech to come blasting out of the earpiece.

He hissed sharply, yanking the phone away. The noise kept coming, screaming and squealing like a dial-up modem, growing louder and more frenetic with each second that passed. Marshall jabbed the icon to hang up, but the din didn't stop. It was the same sound his old ZX Spectrum used to make as it tried – and inevitably failed – to load a cassette, only this one wasn't stopping.

The call had been ended. The screen was back showing the list of missed calls. But the noise kept coming.

“Shut up,” he muttered, tapping the screen and jabbing at the buttons to try to mute the racket. “Shut up!”

In the olden days, of course, you could have just yanked out the battery, but that was before some fucking bright spark had decided the battery should be sealed up.

No matter what Marshall tried, the screeching didn't stop. He resorted to shaking the phone vigorously and slapping his hand against the screen, but neither one made any difference.

With a cry of frustration he rammed the handset under his mattress, muting the din if not silencing it.

He left the bedroom and pulled the door closed, dulling the noise further. His eyes fell on the broken window and he stared, as if seeing it for the first time. The body was gone, but he could still picture it there. A man. No, a teenager, he thought. Eyes open, mouth slack, brain oozing out of the hole in his mangled skull.

Marshall shook his head, trying to push the image away. He checked the tissue. There was blood, but not too much, thankfully.

The initial shock was beginning to fade, and the first few rational thoughts came creeping in. He'd seen definitely one, possibly two bodies come plunging past his window. Or into his window in one case. It was only now that what should probably have been his first question reared its head.

Where had they come from?

Slowly – ever so slowly – Martin Marshall's eyes went to the ceiling.