World's End (Cullen & Bain Book 2) Read online

  WORLD'S END

  CULLEN & BAIN 2

  ED JAMES

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Other Books By Ed James

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Next book

  Craig Hunter

  Copyright © 2020 Ed James

  The right of Ed James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design copyright © Ed James

  OTHER BOOKS BY ED JAMES

  SCOTT CULLEN MYSTERIES SERIES

  GHOST IN THE MACHINE

  DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

  FIRE IN THE BLOOD

  STAB IN THE DARK

  COPS & ROBBERS

  LIARS & THIEVES

  COWBOYS & INDIANS

  HEROES & VILLAINS

  CULLEN & BAIN SERIES

  CITY OF THE DEAD

  WORLD’S END (June 2020)

  HELL’S KITCHEN (August 2020)

  CRAIG HUNTER SERIES

  MISSING

  HUNTED

  THE BLACK ISLE

  DS VICKY DODDS

  TOOTH & CLAW

  FLESH & BLOOD (July 2020)

  DI SIMON FENCHURCH SERIES

  THE HOPE THAT KILLS

  WORTH KILLING FOR

  WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU

  IN FOR THE KILL

  KILL WITH KINDNESS

  KILL THE MESSENGER

  MAX CARTER SERIES

  TELL ME LIES

  GONE IN SECONDS

  CORCORAN & PALMER

  SENSELESS

  SUPERNATURE SERIES

  BAD BLOOD

  COLD BLOOD

  PROLOGUE

  Adam stood in the freezing darkness, shivering as he stuck his key in the lock and twisted. But it didn’t open. ‘Bloody head office. Too cheap to pay for a proper system.’ Every day, Adam saw how cheap they were, but hey, a job’s a job. He tried the key again and the door opened this time, with no rhyme or reason. He took a deep breath and stepped inside the supermarket.

  The lights flickered on, lifting the gloom on the breezeblock walls. But not by much. The store’s backroom was a giant cube filled with empty metal cages. The deep freeze was just to the side, humming away, so he walked over to the door through to the front.

  And it was absolutely boiling, like the heater had been working ten to the dozen all night. He just knew he was going to lose a couple of hours trying to get the standard-rate boiler repair guy down to Edinburgh from all the way up in Crieff. Yet more cheapness from head office.

  And a stale smell hung on the air, like someone had left a packet of steak mince out all night. Or a whole cage of it. If there was one thing Adam knew, it was people leaving meat out all night. Bane of his effing life. He could picture fifty packets of mince browning and going all slimy.

  ‘Hold the door!’ Keith Ross was rushing down the street, his boots clumping off the frosty pavement, but he was a good three stone too heavy to keep that pace up for long. Not with his knees. He stopped, hard breath puffing in the freezing air, his distended belly hanging out of his “NO CHEMTRAILS” hoodie. In this weather, he still didn’t wear a coat. Adam got a waft of dope, a tell-tale sign of yet another night on the hash bowls. At least he was wearing his official Ashworth’s jacket, though the orange wasn’t as bright as it should be. ‘Cheers, boss. Couldn’t find my key this morning.’

  Adam locked the door behind him with a sigh. ‘Keith, you live in Clermiston, we’re in Gilmerton. That’s two buses, especially at this hour. Meaning that if I insisted you went back home to collect that key, which is effing company property then I’ll lose my cleaner for an hour. The hour which is the only time during the day you can do any real cleaning.’

  ‘You seriously want me to go home?’

  ‘No, I of course I don’t. Just stop forgetting it.’

  ‘No big deal, though, man.’ Keith smiled at him. ‘You’re always here, bud. Or there’s Have A Phil doing the bread.’

  ‘You shouldn’t call him that.’ Adam waited for a nod. ‘And what if Phil forgets his key and I’ve got the dentist?’

  ‘The dentist at half six in the morning?’ Keith’s face twisted up. Cynical bastard was always trying to pick holes in stuff. But then his face brightened with some new mystery. ‘You know if I quit, you’ll never find anyone as cheap as me.’

  Adam didn’t doubt it, but then you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. ‘And you’ll struggle to find another job.’ He gestured through the roasting backroom towards the cleaning store. ‘Just get on with it, okay?’

  No sign of Keith doing that. The big lump just stood there, the overhead lights lost in his thick beard. ‘You check those links I sent you?’

  Adam vaguely remembered some messages on his phone that morning, but he was too bleary-eyed to focus on them. The pot of coffee had cleared the worst of his hangover, but it was already shaping up to be a day where he needed to schedule a nice snooze on the toilet. ‘I was busy last night, sorry.’

  ‘Busy nudging turps, aye?’ Keith stepped forward, his glassy eyes glowing in the dark store. ‘Found this cracking video about coronavirus. Apparently the CIA developed it, unleashed it on some bats in China. From space.’

  ‘How did bats get into space?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Keith rolled his eyes. ‘They targeted the bats from an orbital platform.’

  ‘With lasers?’

  ‘No.’ But he didn’t have an answer.

  Time for Adam to twist the knife. ‘If the CIA did it, how does that explain it infecting people in America?’

  ‘Collateral damage.’ Keith’s shrug showed that’s all the consideration that gaping hole needed. ‘Plus, the kind of people most at risk of catching it are the ones who can’t afford to get a test and can’t afford to take two weeks off work in quarantine. Thinning out the herd.’

  Always an answer for everything. What Adam wouldn’t give to go back in time to before YouTube and all those nut-job conspiracy theories, and before pretty much everything else. ‘All so the New World Order can institute a global government, aye?’

  ‘Sure you didn’t watch it?’

  ‘Positive.’ Adam patted his arm. ‘I’ll just check on the young lad, see how he’s getting on.’ He pointed to the cleaner’s store cupboard again. ‘Get on with it.’

  �
�Aye, aye. It’s boiling in here. I’m sweating like a bastard already.’

  ‘So turn the heating down.’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ Keith shuffled off, stuffing in his earbuds to listen to yet another conspiracy freak podcast, or an audiobook about chemtrails turning frogs gay, or whatever new nonsense he was filling his head with.

  Adam walked off in the opposite direction, passing through the rubber flaps into the store itself. He hit the first aisles and triggered the banks of lights to flash on.

  It was set in pitch darkness—not a good sign—so he set off, the lights flashing on as he passed. He tried not to inspect each and every aisle for how badly they needed refilling. Tuesday night wasn’t nightfill, so his team of underpaid idiots would stack up during the day. The way things used to be, but it meant they’d be chasing their tails all day until the store shut and the nightfill took over.

  No toilet rolls, even with their rationing at the tills. Pretty soon people would start paying for things by the sheet. Or they’d move on to pasta or tins of tomatoes.

  At the far end, the bread aisle was a complete disaster. The shelves were virtually empty, just the huddled remnant of yesterday’s stock that hadn’t been sold off to the yellow-item vultures in the final hour of trading last night. And no sign anyone had been in this morning. Young Phil should’ve been here at the crack of sparrow fart to take the bread delivery and start stocking up. Should’ve just about been finished by now too.

  He checked his phone for messages from Phil, maybe saying he was self-quarantining, but there was just the YouTube link from Keith.

  Either way, looked like he was going to have to do the whole lot himself.

  And it was so effing hot. Still, the sooner he started, the sooner he’d get that bacon roll and that blissful sleep on the toilet. He stomped off, the shop now all bright and glaring, then through the doors to the back storeroom.

  The storeroom was piled high with boxes ready for the compactor. No sign of Young Phil.

  A loud squeak came from somewhere behind him. Made him jerk around.

  But it was just Keith twisting that tap he was constantly moaning about, the one Adam would have to call another Crieff-based plumber to fix.

  Adam cut through the narrow corridor between the boxes, just about wide enough to wheel a cage through and opened the main door. And there they were, the bread cages, unattended and freezing in the icy blast.

  Six of white, two of wholemeal, another three of rolls and wraps and all that malarkey. Two of cakes.

  And still no sign of Young Phil.

  Effing useless.

  Adam took the first cake cage and wheeled it inside. He stopped dead.

  In an alcove between some empty cages, someone had scrawled a message over the scuffed floor tiles. “Love and kisses, the Evil Scotsman”.

  What the effing hell?

  Next to it, a body lay in an Ashworth’s uniform, covered from head to toe in yellow price-reduction stickers.

  Young Phil.

  Was he just messing about?

  Adam charged over and went to shake him. But he stopped. There was something about not waking someone who was sleepwalking, wasn’t there? And… Christ. Phil wasn’t breathing.

  He touched Phil’s cheek. Ice cold. Dead.

  And Adam would have to do the effing bread on his own.

  1

  BAIN

  Sundance sits there in the meeting room, reams of paperwork in front of him. Place stinks of those pens and stale milk. DI Scott fuckin’ Cullen. Pretty bastard, with that dimple in his cheek. Fancy new haircut, probably ordered by his new bird. Fresh clean look now he was a DI. Acting DI.

  Can’t believe this prick’s my boss now. How times have changed.

  He slides a copy of my annual appraisal over the table. Way bigger than usual, like War and fuckin’ Peace compared to the usual pamphlet. And he’s grinning away like a fuckin’ clown. I’ve seen him do this before when he’s shitting it about something. Sneaky wee toerag. He clears his throat into his fist, then stares into his hand like there’s something there. Probably just bad news for yours truly.

  ‘Since that case in Glasgow last month, I’ve been impressed by your application. You’ve turned a corner and are really gelling with the team. Thanks, Brian.’

  Don’t know what the arsehole expects of us, but I give him a shrug. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘There is one thing, though.’ And there it is again, that fuckin’ grin. Makes my blood boil, I tell you. ‘I’ve received some concerning reports about some questionable remarks you’ve made to witnesses and members of the public.’

  Aye, that’ll be fuckin’ chocolate. Doesn’t take a genius like me to figure out who’s been grassing. This prick has saddled me with two DCs. I know it’s not Elvis, obviously, meaning it’s Sundance’s bum chum. Not exactly the kind of deductive reasoning I’m renowned for but, hey ho. ‘DC Hunter should keep his thoughts to himself.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was him.’

  ‘No?’ Catch myself rubbing my nose. That big plook isn’t going anywhere and it’s hurting like a bastard. ‘Might as well have hired a plane to write it across the fuckin’ sky.’

  ‘It wasn’t him.’

  That throws us. So who the fuck was it? Murray? That Polish bird? Fuckin’ Budgie? Wait, I know who it fuckin’ is. ‘Was it Chantal?’

  ‘Brian, can you stop focusing on who passed on their concerns to me, and start thinking about how you might want to change your behaviour? Okay?’

  Pretty fuckin’ far from okay, but in this place, you’ve got to play the game. Even if you don’t like the fuckin’ rules. And they stink like fresh dog shit, especially since they fucked it royally and changed it all to Police Scotland. ‘Fine.’

  Prick looks like he’s expecting more. Eyes wide, like he’s in one of them Japanese cartoons.

  Walls are closing in on us, I swear. ‘Do you know what I’m alleged to have said?’

  ‘It’s largely to do with your swearing. Now I let a lot of things slide, but you need to tone down your use of the F-word.’

  Fuck it, for fuckin’ fuck’s sake. My fists are clenched and I’m ready to take this fucker on. ‘This is fuckin’ bullshit, Sundance. Crystal fuckin’ Methven is always with the sodding this, sodding that and—’

  ‘That’s another thing.’ Sundance rifles through his papers. Bringing a ream of five hundred sheets into a suspect interview is the oldest trick in the book. Try to make them think you’ve got a shit ton of stuff on them. Well, I started it and I don’t appreciate this wee nyaff trying it on with me. He pulls out a page halfway through and… Shite, it actually looks like the pages might have something printed on them, after all. Shite, shite, shite. ‘You’ve got to stop giving everyone nicknames.’

  Cheeky bastard. ‘You’re just as bad.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You started Crystal Methven.’

  ‘That wasn’t me.’

  ‘You were going through a Breaking Bad boxed set at the time, if I recall.’

  Prick’s blushing now. He’s rubbing up against the fuckin’ ropes and the champion here’s winding up a sucker punch. Nobody’s taking my fuckin’ belts off me!

  And then I realise—it was his ex who came up with the nickname, wasn’t it? Sitting there in their grubby wee flat just off the Royal Mile, watching Walter White and Jesse Pinkman cooking up crystal meth. Crystal Methven. Bet their sides were fair splitting. Ho ho ho. And he fuckin’ hates her, doesn’t he? Another wee screw to twist and turn.

  ‘Brian, I need you to focus on the message here. You can’t use nicknames to people’s faces.’

  ‘I take it all back. I’m sorry.’ That gets a smile from the smug wanker. ‘But behind their backs is okay? Come on, that’s snide as fuck.’

  ‘As a way of letting off steam, it’s fine. I don’t mind people calling me names behind my back.’

  ‘You seem to hate Sundance.’

  ‘To my face.’ The arsehole jabs a finger at us, almost touching
my beak. ‘And you know why.’

  I don’t give him any satisfaction or any more ammo. But he’s not getting away with this. Not after last time. I’ll take the prick down, but first… ‘You should be very careful. I’ve got friends in high places.’

  The prick sits back in his chair with a little squeak. Maybe he farted. Out of fear, I hope. The ref’s counting down from ten, and Sundance is clean out of it. He reaches over the table for my paperwork and writes a 3 in the box.

  ‘A three? That’s it?’

  ‘You think you deserve a four?’

  ‘Sundance, I know I deserve a five. I’ve been in that seat, worn those shoes. I know what’s a three and a four and a fuckin’ five.’

  Prick looks like he wants to give us a 2 and stick us on an action contract. Move us out of the door. But my warning has spooked him and he’s reeling. Knows who I’m talking about, too. That “Acting” bit of his title suddenly seems mighty tenuous.

  ‘Look, if you keep up the discipline you’ve shown since Glasgow, if you cut down the swearing, the nicknames and the bullying, then maybe we’ll consider you for a four at your full-year appraisal.’

  ‘This is a shit sandwich, Scott. Two bits of vague good news wrapped around a really smelly turd.’

  Getting no reaction from him now. Maybe the ref didn’t count him out.

  ‘I used to do these appraisals on you back in the day. Used to have to warn you about your drinking and shagging around.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Aye? I know what you were up to at Tulliallan with that wee minx from Livingston.’

  Oh, I’ve fuckin’ done it now. Face twisted up and sneering and his mouth’s hanging open. He’s raging.

  But his moby goes. He reaches into his jacket pocket for it and checks it, then says ‘Cunt’ under his breath. Way stronger language than what I’ve been warned about. Two-faced arsecandle. ‘Sorry, thought this was on mute.’ He kills it and puts it away. ‘Now, where were we? Oh, aye.’ He sighs at us. Big habit with the boy, always at it. Whether he’s bored or stressed or what, who knows, but you can tell if he’s in the trap next to you in the gents just by the timbre of the sigh. ‘Brian. This is precisely what I’m talking about. You keep lashing out at the people trying to help you. Like me. You need to stop reacting and to start listening, okay?’