Flesh House (3 page)

'We do our best.'

'You buggers must be born with webbed feet.'

'Only the ones from Ellon, sir.'

Holburn Street had been brought to a virtual standstill - two uniformed officers pretending to be traffic lights as they funnelled the backed-up traffic down one side of the road. The butcher's shop had been hidden behind a cordon of eight-foot-high white plastic screens that reached out into the middle of the street.

A BBC outside broadcast van was parked on the double yellow lines just down from the scene, a woman with a pony tail, an umbrella, and a strange orange tan trying to convince a traffic warden not to give the van a ticket. There was a strobe-light flicker of flash photography and shouted questions as Logan and Faulds ducked under the blue-and-white P
OLICE
tape, then they were through and behind the wall of plastic sheeting.

The IB's filthy Transit van was parked inside the cordon, its back doors open while someone rummaged about inside for SOC suits for Logan and the Chief Constable.

Inside, the shop walls were peppered with recipe cards hung at jaunty angles: goulash, rib roast, minty lamb kebabs ... A deli section and a mini greengrocer's sat opposite an empty glass-fronted counter festooned with colourful stickers. The place was full of people in white paper oversuits and the smell of meat.

They found DI Insch in the cold store through the back, with a pair of IB technicians and Isobel, examining yet more chunks of meat.

Faulds took one look at the inspector in his bulging SOC outfit and said,'Good God, David, you're huge!' He stuck out his hand to shake, but Insch just looked at it. 'Yes, well ...' Faulds reached up and adjusted his suit's hood, as if that was what he'd meant to do in the first place. 'Have you picked up Wiseman yet?'

Insch scowled. 'Kicked his door down at seven forty-five this morning. He wasn't there.'

'You let him
escape?
'

'No I bloody didn't: I had an unmarked car sitting outside his house from the moment we found the remains down the docks. He never went home, OK?'

'Oh God ...' Faulds closed his eyes and swore quietly. 'OK, right, fair enough, too late to worry about that now.' Sigh. 'So what are we looking at here?'

'That.' Insch pointed at the far corner of the cold store, where Isobel was examining a cut of meat hanging from a hook. It was about two foot long, seven inches wide: the flesh a dark rose colour, the fat a golden yellow, the surface punctuated by pale bones. No skin.

'Loin of pork?' asked Faulds, inching forwards.

'Close: long pig.' Isobel stood, rubbing her latex-gloved hands down the front of her coveralls. 'The meat's darker than pork, more like veal - definitely human. The ribs have been severed halfway down their length, but the shape's unmistakable.'

The Chief Constable thought about it for a moment, then asked,'Care to hazard a time of death?'

Isobel stared at him. 'And you are?'

Faulds turned the full power of his smile on her. 'Mark Faulds, West Midlands Police. DI Insch asked me to come up and take a look at the case.'

Which sounded incredibly unlikely to Logan: Insch wouldn't ask for help if his crotch was on fire. From the look on her face, Isobel didn't believe it either.

'I don't know what kind of pathologists you're used to dealing with down there,
Mr
Faulds, but in Aberdeen we don't rush to conclusions before we've carried out the post mortem.' She went back to her slab of meat, muttering,'God save us from bloody policemen, think we're all clairvoyant ...'

'I see.' Faulds winked at Logan, whispering,'I love a challenge.' He cleared his throat. 'Actually it's "Chief Constable", not "mister".' If he expected that to impress Isobel, he was in for a disappointment. She didn't even pause, just unhooked the chunk of meat and slipped it into a large evidence bag.

'Right,' she handed it to one of the IB technicians,'I want every piece of meat in here taken down to the mortuary. Mince, sausages, everything.' She snapped off her gloves then nodded at Insch. 'Inspector, a word please.'

Faulds watched them march out of the cold room. 'Is she usually that welcoming?'

Logan smiled. 'No, sir. She must like you: normally she's a lot worse.'

The shop's owner - the eponymous Mr McFarlane - lived in a large flat directly above the butcher's, so it hadn't exactly taken Operation Cleaver long to track him down. He was a chunky blob with a worried expression, thinning hair, a red-veined nose, and bags under his eyes. He'd clarted himself in aftershave, but it still wasn't enough to cover the smell of stale sweat and last night's alcohol.

McFarlane sat behind the desk in a little office at the back of the shop, watching as an IB technician dismantled a yellow-grey computer and stuck it in an evidence crate.

'I ... I don't understand,' McFarlane said, looking around with watery pink eyes,'we're supposed to be open at nine ...'

Insch leaned over the desk, looming over the butcher. 'Do you have any idea what they do to people like you in prison?'

McFarlane flinched as if he'd been slapped. 'I ... But I've not done anything!'

'Then why have you got a slab of human flesh HANGING IN YOUR FRIDGE?'

'I didn't know! I didn't! It wasn't me! I never did anything, I've not even had a parking ticket, I'm law-abiding citizen, I do barbeques for charity, I don't even overcharge people! I've not--'

'You sold human remains to Thompson's Cash And Carry.
They
sold it on to catering companies.'

'Oh God ...' McFarlane had gone a deathly shade of white. 'But--'

'PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EATING IT!'

'David,' Faulds laid a hand on Insch's arm. 'It might help if you let the poor man complete a sentence.'

The Chief Constable perched himself on the edge of the desk, SOC oversuit rustling as he moved. 'You see, Mr McFarlane, you own a butcher's shop that sells chunks of dead bodies. Can you see why we might have a bit of a problem with that?'

'I didn't know!'

'Uh-huh ... Mr McFarlane, you're a professional butcher, yes?'

The man nodded, setting his jowls wobbling, and Faulds gave him an encouraging smile. 'And you expect us to believe you can't tell the difference between pork and people?'

'I ... I ... I don't do a lot of the actual butchery anymore ...' He held up his trembling hands. 'Can't hold a knife still.'

'I see.'

Insch placed a massive paw on the desk. 'You don't remember me, do you, Mr McFarlane?'

'What?' He frowned. 'No. What are you--'

'Twenty years ago. Three people hacked up and fed--''Oh, no!' McFarlane clamped one of his quivering hands over his mouth. 'Not ... I'm not! I never did anything! I ...' His frantic eyes locked onto Faulds. 'I never! It's not me! Tell him it's not me!'

'Where's Ken Wiseman?'

'Oh God, this isn't happening, not again ...'

'WHERE - IS - HE?'

And suddenly all the colour rushed back into McFarlane's face. 'I don't know! And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you.' The butcher clambered to his feet. 'I remember you now, you and that bastard ... what was it...? Brooks! Ken never did anything, you fitted him up!'

'Where is he?'

Logan listened to Faulds and Insch playing Bad Cop, Worse Cop for a while, then let his attention wander round the little office. A couple of empty display stands were piled in the corner, next to a stack of dusty wicker picnic hampers; two filing cabinets beneath a barred window - Logan poked through one of them, keeping an ear on the conversation behind him.

Insch:'Tell me where the bastard is.'

McFarlane:'I've no idea, I haven't seen Ken in years.'

Insch:'Bollocks.'

The filing cabinet was full of accounts, bills, payslips - nothing really jumped out. Logan pulled a ledger marked 'O
VERTIME
' from the drawer.

Faulds:'You have to see it from our point of view--'

Insch again:'--going to send you down for a long, long--'

Faulds:'Better if you just tell us everything you know--'

McFarlane:'But I don't know anything!'

The ledger was nearly indecipherable, page after page of dates, hours, payments, and names in the butcher's trembling scrawl. Logan skipped to the most recent entries.

Insch:'--people like you in Peterhead Prison, with the--'

'Sir!' Logan cut across the inspector, and there was an ominous silence as Insch turned to glare at him. Logan held out the ledger. 'Last page. Third name from the bottom.'

Insch snatched it off him and read, his brow furrowed, lips slowly twitching into a smile. 'Well, well, well.'

Faulds:'What?'

The inspector slammed the book down on the desktop, then tapped the page with a fat finger. 'Thought you said you'd not seen Ken Wiseman for years.'

McFarlane wouldn't look at the book. 'I ... I haven't.'

'Then why does this say he did two hours overtime, day before yesterday?'

3

There was a pause, and then a voice from the doorway said,'Sorry guys, I ran out of tape. Any chance we could do that last bit again?' It was Alec, standing in the doorway with his HDV camera.

Insch rolled his eyes, sighed, then asked,'From where?'

'Finding the book.'

Faulds looked confused, until Logan introduced the cameraman. 'He's from the BBC, they're doing one of those observational documentaries:
Granite City
999. Going out next summer.'

'Ah ...' Faulds ran a hand through his hair, then snapped on the same smile he'd tried with the pathologist. 'Chief Constable Mark Faulds, West Midlands Police. Believe it or not I used to be on telly when I was younger. It was a children's show, sort of William Tell meets
The Muppets
only more--'

'Can we get on with this please?' said Insch.

'I was only--''

McRae,' Insch handed the book back to Logan and told him to put it in the filing cabinet and find it again.

Logan groaned. 'But we're in the middle of--'

'Sergeant, this is a key discovery in the case: you're going to be a hero on national television. Now put the bloody book back and remember to act all surprised when you find it!'

'You know,' Faulds said,'if you feel uncomfortable faking it, Logan, I'm sure DI Insch, or myself would be happy to do it for you. We--'

'No. DS McRae found the thing: he should be the one getting the credit for it.'

'Oh, well, of course ... I never meant that we'd take the credit for his hard work, I just thought ... if he wasn't comfortable--'

'He's comfortable. Aren't you, Sergeant.' It wasn't a question.

'Yes, sir.' Logan stuck the overtime ledger back in the filing cabinet, waited for Alec to shout 'ACTION!', then did the whole thing again.

'Terrific!' The cameraman gave them the thumbs up when they were done. 'Now all I need is for someone to explain who this Wiseman bloke is and we've got a great scene. Just try not to make it too expositiony, OK? I want it to look nice and natural.'

'Of course you know what this means?' said Insch, as McFarlane was stuffed into the back of a patrol car with a blanket over his head.

Faulds nodded. 'We've got a chance to do it properly this time.'

Two constables pulled back the barrier and the patrol car drove out into a barrage of flash photography and shouted questions.

'We did it properly
last time
.'

'Then why did it get thrown out on appeal?'

The inspector sighed. 'Because the jury were idiots. McRae!'

Logan held up a hand, mobile phone clamped to his ear, listening to Alpha Seven Two reporting back on their search of Wiseman's street. 'OK, yeah, thanks.' He hung up. 'Couple of neighbours think they saw Wiseman going out last night around ten. Not seen him since. They say he stays out pretty regularly.'

Insch swore. 'I want every uniform out there looking for him. Roadblocks on all major routes out of Aberdeen. Get onto the port, the bus station, railway and the airport. Search his house - I want a recent photo, circulate it. Posters up in all the usual places. Send out a notice to every police force in the UK.'

Logan groaned. 'But it's nearly eleven; I've been on duty since two yesterday afternoon!'

'Eleven?' Insch peered at his watch, frowned, rubbed a fat hand over his face, and swore again. 'Post mortem starts in three minutes.' He turned and marched off towards the barricade, peeling off his SOC suit and thrusting it into the arms of a spotty-faced PC.

Faulds watched him go, then placed a hand on Logan's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. 'You did well there, Sergeant. Good work.'

'Er ... thanks.' Logan shifted out of range, just in case the Chief Constable went in for a teambuilding hug. 'How come McFarlane's so upset about this Wiseman bloke?'

'"This Wiseman bloke"?' Faulds shook his head. 'Didn't they teach you anything in school? Andrew McFarlane was married to Ken Wiseman's sister when all this happened first time round. Which is why he's not too keen on your DI Insch.'

Logan tried to stifle a yawn, but it ripped free anyway. 'God ... Right, search teams ...'

Faulds did the shoulder squeezing thing again. 'Delegate. Pass that lot onto someone else and go get some sleep. You're no use to Insch, or anyone else if you can't function.' He smiled. 'Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll nip along to that PM and take another crack at your lady pathologist friend.'

Logan didn't have the heart to tell him he was wasting his time.