Set in the days leading up to a future referendum on Scottish independence, The Darker the Night sees friends David Bryant and Fulton Mackenzie conscripted as unlikely detectives when a Senior Civil Servant is found dead in an alleyway in central Glasgow. Wrestling with their own demons, the men set about trying to discover the truth, and in doing so show that some things are more important in life than politics. In this extract, peer into the mind of Fulton Mackenzie, a reporter on fictional Glasgow newspaper The Siren:

The Darker the Night
By Martin Patience
Published by Polygon

You never know when it’s going to hit you. It’s not like you see it off in the distance slowly approaching and you can prepare yourself. It’s more like a car bomb going off on the street you’ve walked down every day of your life. Everything you held true is going and you’re plunged into a world from which you suddenly fear you cannot escape. 

Fulton was returning home after buying eggs from the local shop. A tall, lanky teenager was approaching him on the pavement. His black hoodie was pulled up, his earphones were in, and his head was down, bobbing along to the music. He was staring at the ground so intently it was as if he was tracing ants. If it had stayed that way, nothing would have happened. But a few steps away from Fulton the teenager looked up from the pavement and stared directly at him. It was barely a second but in that moment Fulton’s world was shattered by the furious, rushing return of the past. In that face he saw his beautiful young son, Daniel – the boy who would never grow old. He’d be a teenager now; he would have the same blithe limbs, the same light stubble, and the same smattering of spots on his face. The boy passed by, completely oblivious, as Fulton felt the box of eggs slip from his hand, its lid springing open and the eggs smashing on the pavement, their yellow yolks streaking the tarmac. 

It had been seven years since that night. They were on the road to Kilmarnock that rises out of Glasgow onto the bleak, soggy, unforgiving moors. A place where a misstep means you can be up to your neck in a peaty bog. That was Fulton’s recurring nightmare. That was what we he woke up from more nights than he cared to count – the collar of sweat on his neck like a cordon of water that he was about to slip under. The waking up Fulton took as a sign that, deep down, he never wanted to put an end to it all. He’d even recce’d a bridge where he could quickly finish it. One small step and it would be over. But Fulton would be jolted by thoughts of his daughter. He would see the dimples that appeared on either side of Alana’s mouth whenever she smiled. The way she said ‘Dad’ like no other word. It came from the heart rather than the lips. And Fulton knew then he would never do it. Instead he was left living, wrestling with the truth of what had happened that night. Throughout the years only a few shards of memory had revealed themselves. 

He remembered his son kicking the back of his seat. It was in three-kick bursts and Dan would laugh and shout, ‘Too slow, you can’t catch me.’ Fulton remembered taking his hand off the wheel and awkwardly reaching back and tickling under his son’s knee. Dan started squealing and twisting in his car seat. And then he would promise he wouldn’t kick any more, only to repeat it a couple of minutes later. But that wasn’t what caused the crash. 

Fulton remembered Clare’s stony expression. They had had a massive argument. But what was the cause of the fight? Money? Family? Or something else? No matter how many times Fulton cast his mind back he could never find the truth. It was like a bleeding sore that he constantly picked at and that never healed. 

The Darker the Night by Martin Patience is published by Polygon, priced £9.99.