Chapter One – Little Dark One

Of all the possible ways his life could have gone, Adam could not have believed, in his wildest most fantastical dreams, the sequence of events he’d just watched unfold over the past eight weeks. The Judge, or Lord Justice, or Lord President, or whatever you wanted to call him, had just thrown the book at him in the most damning way possible; sealing his fate, erasing his future and topping off what had been, without a doubt, the worst two months of his life. Eighteen years at HMP Deepwood and now he had all the time in the world to mull it over.

Deepwood was situated in Brackletter, not far from Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland. The River Spean ran nearby and General Wade’s military road, between Fort William and Fort Augustus, was only a short walking distance away. Adam had walked that road with his father as a boy; the old military roads of Scotland had always fascinated Jack Hunt. Constructed during the middle of the eighteenth century in a vain attempt by the Government to bring order to a region in turmoil, after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, Adam had been bored to tears as his father recounted these endless titbits to him on their long country walks together.

The site where Deepwood now stood was famous for that one night in June 1941, during the second Great War, when it housed the now notorious Nazi war criminal, Rudolph Hess, before his transfer to the Tower of London the next day. In 1941, Deepwood had been a barracks for the Royal Observer Corps and was intended to be a holding place for Hess until the war came to an end. The barracks were converted to a prison in the mid-1960s and the building in which Hess had slept was knocked down in the 1980s during renovations to the East Wing. The sole remnant of his stay is a small plaque marking the spot that had once been his cell.

Adam reflected on these shadows from the past as they travelled. This part of Scotland saw nothing but snow for five months of the year, while the skiing season flourished, then the next seven months were nothing but rain. It battered the tiny windows of the G4S custodial truck, as it wound along the backroads on its way north through the Highlands, from Glasgow High Court of Justiciary; a granite essay in neo-classicism that glares over the banks of the River Clyde.

It was a three-hour drive through a beautiful stretch of country. Not that Adam could see any of it; the narrow windows of the custodial truck were barely eight inches wide and the plastic was frosted and pockmarked with graffiti. Prisoners weren’t meant to be able to enjoy the view on rides like this, and passers-by weren’t meant to see inside either. Incidentally, Adam’s fellow passengers were some of the lewdest and most violent looking men he’d ever had the displeasure to lay eyes on, and the screws at G4S Custodial preferred to spare the public’s eyes the same misfortune.

Inside the truck, each prisoner was squeezed inside their own tiny compartment. They offered little to no cushioning when the truck lurched cruelly, throwing Adam hard against the wall. In essence, it wasn’t a seat that Adam sat on as much as it was a bench, and seatbelts, of course, were a needless expenditure in such vehicles. The compartment had been designed to allow for as little room as possible; his knees were pressed painfully against the plastic wall in front of him, locking him into a fully upright position. Only the top half of his body remained free to roam the cabin. His wrists lay handcuffed between his thighs and other than the foot or so of space above his head, he had absolutely no room to manoeuvre himself.

Adam would come to learn that these trucks, amongst the community of convicts, were lovingly referred to as sweat boxes; but the way he remembered that first trip, ice boxes would have been a more fitting moniker. It was the most claustrophobic situation he’d ever found himself in, and he tried not to think about it as the truck ploughed ceaselessly through the rain. That three-hour drive up to Deepwood had felt like an eternity. He couldn’t wait for it to be over. Adam didn’t know it at the time, but a few days from now he would gladly have spent an eternity in that truck if it got him away from Deepwood.

While on remand, he’d managed to get a hold of a copy of the Scottish Daily Telegraph, featuring himself on the front page. They’d used a picture of him from his wedding day, alongside his bride – Perth Man Arrested on Suspicion of Murder, read the title. Although the picture was flattering, the article was not.

Police have arrested a twenty-five-year-old man in connection with the death of his wife. The woman, twenty-six, was found with knife wounds to her neck; medics at the scene were unable to revive her. She was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.

When asked for comment, Constable Alan McDonald, of Perth and Kinross Police, had the following to say:

‘We’ve taken a man into custody who we believe has information regarding the incident in question.’

When asked about a motive, Constable McDonald replied:

‘We have no clear motive at present, but questioning is underway, and we are confident of charging a suspect within the next 24 hours.’

If charged, the accused will likely spend the next twenty to thirty years behind bars. Until then, residents are left wondering why yet another murder has shaken the once peaceful City of Perth.

Little Dark One – Kieran Brookes

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Category: Fiction, Sale, Thriller/Crime