Squeaky Clean (Pushkin Vertigo) - Softcover

Mcsorley, Callum

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782278389 ISBN 13: 9781782278382

Verlag: Pushkin Vertigo, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

"A formidable debut... With its wit, terror, guts and gumption, Mr. McSorley's first novel is a smash!" – The Wall Street Journal

A raw, fast-paced, and darkly comic thriller and “an amazingly accomplished debut,” perfect for fans of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid – The Times Crime Book of the Month

“An absolute knockout! Pitch-dark and yet dripping with warmth. Packed with brilliantly drawn characters, laugh-out-loud humour, and lots of blood – what’s not to love?” – Caz Frear, author of Sweet Little Lies

WINNER OF THE McILVANNEY PRIZE for SCOTTISH CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR

From a hard-hitting and brutally funny new voice in crime writing comes the first in a new series starring DI Alison McCoist - the least popular detective in the Glasgow police.

Half the Glasgow copshop think DI Alison McCoist is bent. The other half just think she's a fuck-up.

No one thinks very much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride.

One kidnapping later, he and the carwash are officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like 'Keep Yer Kneecaps' with any poor bastard who crosses him.

Can Davey escape from the gang's clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the carwash could help. That's if she doesn't get herself killed first.

Don’t miss this propulsively readable story of two likeable but flawed characters sucked into a grim criminal underworld –think wayward Scottish police meets Breaking Bad.

Features an exclusive excerpt from Paperboy, the next Alison McCoist thriller.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Callum McSorley is a writer based in Glasgow whose short stories have appeared in Gutter Magazine, Monstrous Regiment and New Writing Scotland. Squeaky Clean is his debut novel, inspired by his years working at a car wash in Glasgow's East End.

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Prologue
The ash was shot through with burnt scraps of newspaper, lumpy where the hammer had failed to smash the charred bone to dust, and slushy like dirty, roadside snow melt where the shoe box had started to let the damp in. Faint, pish-smell of a doused fire – spent charcoal and blackened meat.
The logo on the side belonged to a brand of shite trainers – the kind worn by bully victims and the lonely, sexless men they grew into. Of all the fucking indignities, McCoist thought, supressing both a manic smile and the coffee burning its way back up her gullet. She peered at the contents, eyes snapping shut with every flash of the camera, opening again dazzled and scorched but fixed on the grey powder mulching in the corners of the cardboard, the gloved hand of a SOCO sifting it as if looking for gold.
“Is it…?”
“Cannae say till the tests huv bin done.”
“But is it…?”
She couldn’t see the SOCO’s face for his surgical mask and the hood of his paper suit, afterimage spots dancing where his eyes must be. Other bodies moved around outside the tent erected over the shallow hole they’d dug in the ground, shadows going about bad business.
“Cannae say,” he said.
#
They had a recorder and a microphone, they had glasses of water and a jug between them, they had thick folders stuffed with papers lying perfectly parallel to expensive-looking pens. They had laptops and tablets and severe silences at their disposal. On the other side of the table, McCoist had a chipped mug full to the brim with cold coffee. The words on the side – faded by a thousand quick scrubs of the ancient, hairy Brillo that lived by the sink in the office mess – declared her the World’s Best Maw. The lanyard she wore said Detective Inspector.
It was three on one. A fifth – a greying man with crowns on his epaulettes and glasses hanging from his neck by a chain – perched on the window ledge. Referee? Lifeguard? Executioner? McCoist didn’t know. He hadn’t opened his mouth yet since the inquisition started, not even to speak his name for the DIR. Officially, he wasn’t there. Unofficially, he lurked and listened and scratched his balls now and again.
The old goat in the middle seat straight across from McCoist was also a superintendent. He licked a finger and leafed through some loose pages. He was a man who could make rustling paper sound very loud indeed. “And these remains, DI McCoist, whose were they?”
McCoist touched the handle of her mug, turned it slightly, but didn’t pick it up. “The remains were of an unborn child belonging to the murder victim, Dannie Gibb, sir.”
“The lab results don’t confirm that.”
“No, sir, but Mr Knightley stated so as part of his confession.” Which is in the paperwork right in fucking front of you.
“And you trusted completely in what he said?”
“Every word, sir.”
“Why?”
#
McCoist followed the man out into the garden, keeping her distance. He lumbered along in an old t-shirt and joggies, smelling unwashed and sour. If his head wasn’t naturally inclined to slump towards his chest, his shoulders hunched, he’d have had to duck to get through the door. The sweat on his back was a dark continent which tapered into an arrow diving into the cleft of his arse crack, the valley exposed where everything was spilling out between the gap of his too-tight clothes.
There was filthy plastic furniture on a paved terrace buckled by weeds. Beyond was a jungle, the dilapidated shed a half-hidden outpost in the bush. He walked to an island of fresh soil in the middle of the over-grown grass. He turned to face her and, with a shy smile, he dug at the patch of earth with his heel, like a child trying to break through an iced-over puddle. “Right here,” he said.
“Mr Knightley, I need you to wait inside while I make a phone call.” She didn’t worry at all that he would try to run away. While she waited for the cavalry to arrive and the return call from the sheriff about the warrant, Knightley offered to make her a cup of tea in his pokey kitchen that smelled of microwave macaroni and the overstuffed bin. A greasy window looked out onto the garden and what was buried there. “No thank you, Mr Knightley,” she said, her voice hoarse and dry in the too-close kitchen, palms slick and fingers wriggling out the excess energy firing through her.
“Dye mind if a huv wan? There’s biscuits in the tin an aw.” He tapped a clumsy rhythm on a shortbread tin with long, ragged nails. He had large, fleshy hands. The skin looked soft but hid the power of an industrial vice. The rest of him was the same – a gentle, blubbery overcoat on something more powerful than he could control. “Maw goat this when she wis in Edinburgh wan time an kept it full ae bickies ever since. A try tae…” – he wheezed then coughed into his hand with a phlegmy rattle from the bottom of his lungs – “…try tae keep it up, ye know? The…” – his chest made a noise a stone being sucked up the hoover – “…scuse me. The tradition.”
#
“I had no reason to believe he was lying.”
“Is that so? For someone of your rank and experience that strikes me as somewhat naïve, DI McCoist.” The super’s eyes were large in thick glasses, showing off red cracks and gunky corners. They didn’t blink enough. “Didn’t it strike you as odd he didn’t try to hide what he’d done?”
“Well, he’d certainly hidden Dannie Gibb’s body. If it wasn’t for the tip off it could have been weeks till she was found.”
“This tip off – who did it come from?”
“Anonymous, sir.”
The super sighed in a way that made it clear this was somehow McCoist’s fault. “You didn’t try to track the caller down?”
“Of course, sir –”
“The caller could have been Knightley himself. Isn’t that right?” The man on the super’s left – a DS with the wet-look haircut of a teenage boy and the sulky eyes and flushed cheeks to match – cut across her. Wee prick. McCoist made sure there was none of the deference she gave to the super in her eyes or manner when she turned to address him.
“No, that is not right, Sergeant. The officer who received the tip off was played multiple examples of Knightley speaking and confirmed he was not the caller.”
“Confirmed?” The DS smirked. “This officer, a PC…” – he made a show of looking through his notes, a clumsy imitation of his boss – “…Kirsty Ravani – she’s got a good ear does she? A big music fan is PC Ravani, eh? Not exactly a scientific test.”
“Mr Knightley has a distinct voice,” McCoist said (pitched too high and nasal for his size and with a breathless rasp – just the memory of it gave McCoist a shiver, fingertips squeaking across the skin of a balloon) but the DS ignored her and continued.
“Look, as soon as you show up at his door, he admits – without pressing – the whole charade with Miss Gibb and points out where he’s buried the baby. Let’s just admit there’s a good chance he tipped you off to the body’s location in the first place.”
“Charade? He battered and throttled that woman to death then cut out her –”
“We know what he did, Inspector,” the super said, sounding almost bored.
“Then why are you asking me to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pushkin Vertigo
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1782278389
• ISBN 13: 9781782278382
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 407
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar