Flesh House (8 page)

Logan sighed. 'Just a stupid nickname. It's nothing--'

'Laz - short for Lazarus.' Steel grinned and clinked her latest bottle of beer off of the Chief Constable's pint,'DS McRae here came back from the dead, didn't you?'

'It wasn't--'

'Oh aye, our wee boy's a bona fide police hero!' She wrapped her arm round Logan and gave him an affectionate shoogle. 'Shame he's so bloody ugly.'

E
XTERIOR
:
A graveyard in Aberdeen - Union Street. Church in background. Noises of traffic and seagulls.

C
APTION
:
Detective Sergeant Logan McRae

M
CRAE
:
I'd rather not, to be honest.

V
OICEOVER
:
But you were instrumental in catching The Mastrick Monster?

M
CRAE
:
Do we have to do this, Alec?

V
OICEOVER
:
Come on, it'll make for good telly. And if you don't tell us we'll just get it from someone else.

M
CRAE
:
[shifts uncomfortably] Look, there's nothing to tell. It was a joint operation, I just happened to be there at the end. Now can we just drop it?

[end tape]

I
NTERIOR
:
An untidy office in Grampian Police Headquarters.

C
APTION
:
Detective Inspector Roberta Steel.

S
TEEL
:
[finishes a cigarette and flicks it out of open office window]
Right, where were we?

V
OICEOVER
:
We've done Insch, Rennie and McInnis. That leaves DS Beattie, Doctor McAllister, Inspector Nairn and DS McRae.

S
TEEL
:
Right, we'll do McRae next. My hair look OK to you?

V
OICEOVER
:
Well ... it'll be fine.

S
TEEL
:
Good, got my public to think of ... you'll edit out that bit with me smoking, aye? I'll no' hear the end of it otherwise. OK, June 2004, and we've got fifteen women in the morgue. The press are calling him the Mastrick Monster - he stabs his victims, then rapes them while they die. Sick bastard. Anyway, the investigation's going nowhere when up pops Detective Constable Logan McRae. He goes digging and unearths Angus Robertson - turns out Robertson works in a sandwich shop that delivers all over Aberdeen, that's how he was picking his victims--

[loud rattling cough - goes on for nearly a minute]

Ah ... fucking hell ...

[presses hand to chest]

Bastard ...

Anyway, something happens and Robertson finds out he's a suspect: he goes bonkers, snatches McRae's girlfriend, and there's a big showdown on the roof of this tower block. All very dramatic. McRae takes Robertson down, but gets himself stabbed about twenty times in the stomach doing it. Robertson gets thirty to life; McRae gets a year in hospital and promoted to DS.

[clears throat and spits into wastepaper basket]

OK, who's next? Beattie? Useless, fat, beardy arsehole. Next!

11

The Press Liaison Officer slammed the incident room door. 'Bastards!'

Logan looked up from a pile of search reports and watched her march up to DI Insch and wave a newspaper in his face.

'Have you seen the front page? Have you? They're eating us alive out there!' Which was a pretty unfortunate choice of words. This morning's
Aberdeen Examiner
had,'C
ANNIBAL
H
ORROR
F
OR
H
UNDREDS
O
F
N
ORTH
E
AST
R
ESIDENTS
!' plastered all over the front page. Colin Miller strikes again.

Insch snatched the paper and skimmed the article, face rapidly darkening to a furious scarlet. 'MCRAE! My office: NOW!' He stormed out, nearly flattening a constable carrying a big stack of actions from the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System.

Logan slumped back in his seat, stared at the ceiling, and swore. Then followed in the inspector's wake.

Insch's office wasn't its usual tidy self: the floor was littered with screwed-up bits of paper and sweetie wrappers. The inspector's bin lay on its side against the wall, with a dirty big dent in it. He didn't even wait for Logan to close the door. 'WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT THIS?'

'I thought you knew! It's not--'

'How did your bloody Weegie friend know people have been eating ...' he narrowed his angry, piggy, eyes. 'Did you--'

'I never said a word! He--'

'That two-faced cow!' The inspector's face got even uglier. He stabbed a button on his phone and demanded to be put through to the mortuary.

It wasn't long before Isobel's voice crackled out of the speakerphone:
'This had better be important! Do you have any idea--'

'WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?'

'What? I--'

'Did you really think I wouldn't find out?'

Isobel's voice dropped about twenty degrees.
'If you've got something to say to me Inspector, you'd better say it, because I will not have you shouting down the phone at me like some sort of petulant child, do you understand?'

'Your boyfriend. The front page of the Examiner. I expected you to act like a professional--'

A loud brrrrrrrrrrrrrr came from the speaker: she'd hung up on him.

Insch stabbed the off button hard enough to make the whole phone creak. 'You ...' He screwed up his face, grimaced, held two fingers to the side of his throat and tried to breathe slowly. In and out. In and out.

Logan watched him do his Zen breathing thing, wondering how much mess it was going to make when the inspector's head finally exploded. 'Er ... do you want me to get you a glass of water, sir?'

Insch didn't open his eyes, didn't stop his slow, shuddering breaths.

The office door slammed open. 'How dare you!' Isobel stormed into the room, still dressed in her white paper SOC suit, green plastic apron, hairnet, and white morgue clogs. She snapped off her surgical gloves and hurled them onto the inspector's desk. 'If you
ever
speak to me like that again--'

Insch slammed a fat fist down on the newspaper. 'How did he know? Your "boyfriend"? How did he get sensitive information about an ongoing investigation? One
you'
re involved in? One--'

Isobel slapped him, hard, leaving a perfect white handprint on his florid face. She snatched the phone off the desk and dialled. Probably making a complaint to Professional Standards. 'Hello? ... Yes.' She pressed the button and asked,'Can you hear me?'

Colin Miller's broad Glaswegian accent blared out into the room,
'Aye, is this goin' ... Am I on a speakerphone? Izzy, you know I'm no' --'

'Colin, did I tell you anything about the Wiseman case?'

'Eh? What's going--'

'Did I tell you?'

A small pause, then. 'What? No, you know you didn't.'

Isobel stared at Insch, triumph written all over her face, but the inspector wasn't finished yet:'Do you really expect me to believe he just
happened
to come up with this all by himself?'

'Who's that? Is that DI Fatbastard?'

Insch looked as if he was about to burst. 'Just answer the bloody question: who told you?'

'I don't believe this ... You lot are down the docks crawlin' all over a container that's meant to be goin' offshore; next thing you're screamin' off tae a cash and carry; couple hours later you raid a butcher's shop. It's a fuckin' supply chain isn't it? What you think people were doin' with all that meat they bought? Givin' it a decent burial? Course they've been eatin' the fuckin' stuff!'

'Are you--'

'It's no' exactly rocket science, is it?'

Isobel folded her arms. 'Well, inspector? I think you've got something to say, don't you?'

Insch did, but not to her:'Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused? Printing that? The bloody switchboard's jammed with people complaining their sausages taste funny! How are we supposed to conduct a murder enquiry when--'

'Aye, right. It's my fault you can't catch Wiseman. I told people they were eatin' deid bodies, because - it's - the - truth.' Stead of blamin' me, you should be out there doin' somethin' about it. And if you ever talk to Izzy like that again, I'm gonnae come down there and punch your fat fuckin' lights out!'
And he was gone.

Richard Davidson wasn't the sort of person you'd leave your children with. Not unless you really, really didn't like them. Five foot eleven of tattooed resentment, he wore the standard institution-grey 'HMP A
BERDEEN
' T-shirt, stripy shirt and blue jeans with all the panache of a grumpy rottweiler. He scowled at Logan and Faulds from the other side of the tiny table in the prison interview room.

The Chief Constable tried his disarming smile. 'Do you remember me, Richard? I was--'

'I know who you was. OK? Answer's still fuck off.''Richard, I'm sorry it's all worked out like this for you, but--''Aye, well that's just great. Makes everythin' all better that does. You're sorry. Jamie's mum and dad get kilt and he goes to live with his Nan. Goes to university. Writes a fuckin' book. What do I get? A father who drinks himself to death; foster parents who're bastards; and a criminal record.' He stabbed himself in the chest with a thumb. 'Where's my fuckin' publishin' deal?'

'Richard, I--'

'And
his books are shite.'

Logan watched the pair of them staring at each other. 'Look,' he said,'we just want to ask you a couple of questions about what happened twenty years ago. OK? Nothing else.'

Richard Davidson scowled. 'I didn't do nothin' else. Whatever they told you, it's a fuckin' lie.'

'Fine. Don't care. We just want to know what happened in 1987.'

'Nothin' else?'

'Nothing else.'

Davidson shifted in his seat, then stared at the camera bolted high in the corner of the room. 'We're walkin' Jamie home, in the dark, me and Mum. And we get to the jungle - just this wee bit of park, couple of trees and some shitey bushes, but Jamie and me played Japs and British there the whole time.' He looked down at his hands, flexing them open and closed, open and closed, like a heartbeat, the knuckles bruised between the DIY prison tattoos. 'Jamie and me run off into the jungle ... Mum tries to call us back, only we don't listen. Jamie's got some crappy fancy-dress party to go to for his dad's work and Jamie don't want to go,' cos his dad's a dick.'

He sighed. 'After a while we get bored bein' soldiers, but we can't find Mum anywhere. We shout, look all over the place ...' Davidson bit his bottom lip. 'Can't find her. Nowhere ... She's gone.' He rubbed a hand across his eyes. Deep breath. 'And then he turns up: Wiseman, in his fuckin' butcher's costume. And he takes our hands and ... and we walk back to Jamie's house ... Never saw my mum again.'

Logan let the silence go on for nearly a minute. 'What happened at the house?'

'Stupid, isn't it? All this time and I still miss her ...' Davidson shook his head and wiped his eyes again. 'Jamie's dickhead father was on the phone, shouting at my dad, then he shouted at us and we ran upstairs and ... and Jamie put on this stupid Viking costume and we sat there. We could hear more shouting and we didn't want to go downstairs in case we got into even more trouble - Jamie's dad was one of those wankers didn't worry about clobbering other people's kids. So we just sit there for ages, waiting for him to come get us. Only he doesn't ...'

Davidson shuddered. 'Eventually we give in and go downstairs. The kitchen was clarted in blood ... and Wiseman ... Wiseman made us sit in the lounge while he cooked tea ...' He looked up at them, his eyes rimmed with red. 'Jamie's book says Crispy Pancakes, but it was liver. His dad couldn't stand the stuff, wouldn't have liver in the house. So where do you think Wiseman got it from?' There was another long pause. Then Richard Davidson stood and wrapped his arms around himself. 'I'd like to go back to my cell now.'

'So,' said Logan, when a prison officer had taken Davidson away,'what do you want to do now?'

Faulds checked his watch. 'Nearly ten. While we're here, how about we take a crack at the butcher - McFarlane?'

'Ah ...'

'What?'

'Maybe not the best of ideas, sir. DI Insch can be a bit--'

The Chief Constable waved him down. 'Nonsense. We're just going to have a little chat with the man, where's the harm in that?'

'But--'

'Good, then it's settled. You get someone to bring him up from the cells and I'll sort us out a nice cup of tea.'

Five minutes later Logan had held up his end of the bargain, which was more than Faulds had done. Whatever was in the three Styrofoam cups he'd turned up with could only be described as 'nice' if you were a lying bastard. It was barely tea - just a watery brown substance with suspicious-looking froth round the edges.

But it wasn't the least attractive thing in the room: that honour went to Andrew McFarlane. The butcher was like one of the damned. Sweat beaded on his balding forehead, his baggy face swollen in places, bruises beginning to spread across his pale skin. His big, bloodshot nose had developed a list to the left, a sticking plaster crossing the bridge from one blackened eye to the other. And he stank. BO and desperation mingling with the sour tang of TCP.

Twitching.

'You have to get me out of here!'

Faulds passed him one of the polystyrene cups. 'It's all right, Mr McFarlane.

No one's going to hurt you here.'

'No one's going to ... WHAT ABOUT THIS?' He pointed a trembling finger at his battered face. 'They put my photo in the papers! Everyone thinks I killed those people ...'

'I'm sure it's not--'

'He wouldn't stop hitting me! Said I'd killed his mother! I never touched her! It wasn't me!' McFarlane started to cry. 'All I wanted was to run a little butcher's shop, somewhere nice and local, where people would come and buy their meat ...'

'Then why were you selling bits of dead body?'

McFarlane wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'I told you: I don't know how that stuff got into my shop.'

'So you're saying it was all Wiseman--'

'No. He didn't kill anyone, he--'

'When he was in Peterhead Prison, he beat a man to death in the showers.'

'Because you bastards put him there! It wasn't his fault.'

'I can't believe you gave him a job when he got out. Wiseman in a butcher's shop? Like giving Gary Glitter the keys to a children's home.'

'He's my brother-in-law, what was I suppose to do: abandon him? He didn't kill those people!'

'Come off it, Andrew.' Faulds sat back in his chair and tried his friendly Chief Constable smile again - the one that hadn't worked on Richard Davidson. 'When he was arrested they found a lot of blood in the boot of his car, it--'

'It - was - his! He cut himself. We went through all this at the appeal. You fitted him up.'

'He confessed.'

'You beat that out of him!'

'Oh please.' Faulds picked up his tea, then put it down again. 'You know, I always suspected he had an accomplice. Someone to help him. Someone with their own butcher's shop. Someone--'

'No you bloody don't! I didn't do anything.'

The Chief Constable leant across the table and poked McFarlane in the chest. 'You were helping him dispose of the bodies twenty years ago, and you're helping him now.'

'I never--'

'Where were you on the fourteenth of October 1982?'

'What? I don't remember, it was twenty-five years--'

'Were you in Birmingham, Mr McFarlane?'