Flesh House (32 page)

49

'Where the hell have you been?' Big Gary grabbed Logan as soon as he got back to FHQ. Quarter past seven and the place had that calm-before-the-storm feeling to it. As if something nasty was lurking just around the corner with a baseball bat.

'The Chief Constable's going ballistic.' Big Gary thrust a copy of that morning's News of the World into Logan's hands:'DI B
EATS
H
ANDCUFFED
S
USPECT
'. 'As your Federation Rep I need to see your statement about what happened before you hand it in to Professional Standards.'

'Too late, I did it yesterday.'

'You...?' The huge sergeant grimaced. 'What the hell did you do that for? Thought you were supposed to be his friend!'

'That's why I'm trying to save the daft bastard from himself.' Logan skimmed through the article. 'Where's Steel?'

'Where do you think?'

He started for the door. 'Get someone to pick Wiseman up and stick him in an interview room.'

'No. Hoy - paper!' Big Gary stuck out his hand.

'What do you mean, "no"?'

'One: I'm not your bloody secretary, and two: he's in court first thing - they're thinking about letting the murdering bastard go, remember?'

'Bloody hell ... When?'

'Eight.'

Logan dragged out his phone and started dialling.

Aberdeen Sheriff Court was an imposing granite building at the bottom end of Union Street, sandwiched between the Council chambers and the Tollbooth Museum. They'd convened Wiseman's hearing in one of the small courts - a converted jury room tucked away down a side corridor - and it was a closed session, so Logan was forced to wait outside, nodding at the lawyers he knew, the police officers he worked with, and the shoplifters he'd arrested.

It was nearly twenty to ten when the doors finally opened and someone from the Procurator Fiscal's office stormed out, muttering darkly. Which wasn't exactly a good sign. Next it was a couple of clerks, the Sheriff, and finally Ken Wiseman, flanked by two prison officers.

His lawyer had shovelled him into a grey suit, the formal attire not really going with the collection of bruises and swellings. The butcher's face looked like a mouldy pumpkin, bisected by that white line of old scar tissue.

Logan stepped up. 'Kenneth Wiseman--'

A balding woman stepped in front of him. 'It's OK, Ken, you don't have to talk to him.'

Wiseman pulled his swollen face into something that might have been a smile. 'They fired that fat fuck yet?'

The butcher's lawyer placed her hand against her client's chest. 'Please, let me deal with this.' She looked back at Logan. 'Mr Wiseman has nothing to say to you.'

'No? Well I've got something to say to him--'

'Threatening my client will--'

'They had fuck all on me in 1990, and they've got fuck all on me now.' Wiseman stepped forwards, but the prison officers took hold of his arms. 'That bastard Brooks fitted me up and I--'

'Kenneth, I must insist--'

'For what it's worth,' said Logan,'I believe you. Brooks screwed up the original investigation. You're not the Flesher, you never were.'

The butcher opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again, a puzzled look oozing out between the bruises. 'I ... yeah, the appeal--'

'But you're still a killer. Kenneth Wiseman, I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Kirsty McFarlane, also known as Kirsty Wiseman, in February 1990. You do not have to say anything--'

'But ... but you can't ... I was ...' He grabbed his lawyer's sleeve as Logan read him his rights. 'They can't prosecute me for the same thing twice. Double jeopardy. Tell him!'

And it was Logan's turn to smile. 'You were tried for the murders of Ian and Sharon McLaughlin, not Kirsty McFarlane. So--'

The lawyer stepped in again. 'I insist you let me speak to my client in private, we--'

'You can have him back when I've finished with him.' Logan turned to the two prison officers. 'How do you fancy escorting Mr Wiseman round to the station?'

The butcher was too shocked to struggle.

Interview Room Number Three was like a sauna - as usual - a thin film of condensation furring the double glazed window, while Ken Wiseman sat and sweated. 'I ... I didn't do anything ...'

It was as if someone had pulled the plug, letting all the cocky bastard drain away, leaving a scarred, scared, middle-aged, balding bloke.

Steel stretched out in her plastic seat. 'That, Ken, is what we in the business call a "fucking lie".'

The butcher ran a hand across his battered face, wrists still handcuffed together. 'It wasn't me ...'

Logan slapped a small stack of paper down on the table - Andrew McFarlane's statement. 'Your brother-in-law says you were drunk. Got into an argument with your sister.'

'That's not--'

Logan read it out loud: '"Kirsty slapped him and he went mental. He wouldn't stop hitting her. I--"'

'That's not how it happened!'

'--tried to stop him, but he was too strong.'

'No!'

'I wanted to call the police, but he wouldn't let me.'

'He's lying!' Wiseman battered his fist off the tabletop, hard enough to crack the fibreglass cast. 'He's lying ...'

'He dragged her body into the butchery and--'

'That's not what happened!' He stared at the dent he'd made in the Formica, chewing on his split bottom lip. 'We'd ... we'd been out on the piss. All three of us, up the Malt Mill on a Friday night. Kirsty was hammered - they were supposed to be celebrating their anniversary. She started saying stuff ... When we got back to the flat, she tore into Andrew: he was a useless tosser; crap lay; had a tiny dick; she was having an affair ...'

'Then what?'

'I don't know ... I was hammered. Got a bottle of vodka out the freezer and next thing I know it's three am in the morning. I'm lying on the couch and Andrew's shaking me. He's crying and going on about how it wasn't his fault - she was going to leave him ...'

Wiseman looked up, then straight back down again. 'She was lying at the bottom of the stairs, all twisted and ... and her head was ... She was already cold. There wasn't anything I could do.'

He shrugged, big muscular shoulders rising and falling. 'We panicked. She was dead. And ... Andrew said we had to get rid of her. That if we called the police the business would be ruined. That no one would care if it was an accident or not. And ... the butcher's shop was right there.'

'She was your sister!'

Wiseman started picking at the crack in his cast. 'She was always ... Andrew wasn't just my brother-in-law, he was my best friend ... We vacuum-packed the bits and buried them out in the middle of nowhere. Only ...' Shudder. 'The bag with her insides got caught on the boot catch. Went everywhere. I ... we had to scoop the bits out with our bare hands ...'

'What do you think?' asked Logan, when Ken Wiseman was back in his cell.

'He's a silly bastard.' Steel pulled out her cigarettes and stuck one in her mouth, flicking it from one side to the other with her tongue. 'If he'd come clean when they arrested him, he'd've got what? Four, five years for illegally disposing of a body and not reporting a death? Would've been out in three.' She sighed. 'Silly, silly bastard.'

'I meant - do you believe he only helped cut up the body? that she was already dead when he got there?'

Steel shrugged. 'Don't think it really matters anymore if he did it or not. The PF'll do him for murder and he'll get another sixteen years. It'll be his word against McFarlane's, and who's a jury going to believe: an alki butcher, or good old Ken - Murdering Bastard - Wiseman? Anyway,' she fidgeted with her lighter, not looking Logan in the eye,'I suppose now someone's got to tell Insch.'

And Logan got a nasty feeling who that someone was going to be.

50

According to the custody assistant, Insch's five-minute appearance in the Sheriff Court that morning had provoked a media circus and ended up with the inspector released on bail and into the ever-loving arms of Professional Standards. Which was a bit like being kicked in the testicles, smeared in marmite, then thrown to the sharks. He was still up there now.

Logan got himself a newspaper and a cup of tea, then settled into one of the uncomfortable chairs outside the Professional Standards office. Bracing himself for a long wait with a punch on the nose at the end of it.

'You're an utter bastard!'

Logan looked up from his
Aberdeen Examiner
-'G
RIEVING DI
A
TTACKS
M
URDER
S
USPECT
' - to see Wee Fat Alec glowering down at him, HDV camera in hand. 'Morning Alec.'

'Why didn't you tell me you were going to arrest Wiseman? You
know
I'm supposed to--'

'There wasn't time, OK? I only found out at half four this morning.'

'I thought we were a team!'

Sigh. 'Look, Alec--'

The door through to Professional Standards burst open and DI Insch stormed out: face dark purple, little flecks of spittle around his mouth, eyes like angry pickled eggs. He barged past, making for the stairs.

Logan hurried after him. 'Inspector?'

'Not any more!' Insch slammed through the stairwell doors, making them boom off the walls. 'BASTARDS!'

'About Ken Wiseman ...'

'How many years have I given this place?' He took the stairs two at a time.

'Sir, we ... I arrested him this morning.'

Insch froze. Voice low and dangerous. 'You did what?'

Alec finally caught up with them, his camera focused on the inspector's furious face. Logan held a hand in front of the lens. 'Switch that damn thing off--'

'What the fuck did you do?'

'Wiseman was involved in his sister's death. That's where the blood came from in 1990. There was an argument, maybe an accident and--'

Insch grabbed Logan by the lapels and thumped him back against the wall. 'I
told you!
I wanted him out, not behind bloody bars!'

'I couldn't let you--' BANG: back against the wall again. This time Insch let go, and marched off, Alec scurrying after him. BOOM: through the doors. Leaving Logan to slump, swear, then follow on behind.

The inspector bulldozed his way into reception, shoved past a pair of constables and out into the rain. The sky was battleship-grey above the rain-battered granite buildings, making it difficult to tell where the city stopped and the downpour began. Logan splashed after Insch and the cameraman, catching up to them just outside the District Court.

'Wait, you need to--'

Insch spun, wrapped a huge fist into Logan's jacket and threw him to the floor. 'I TRUSTED YOU!' The fat man loomed, bald head dripping, suit slowly turning funeral black as the rain soaked into it.

'It was all Brooks' fault. Wiseman isn't the Flesher, never was.'

'You knew I needed him outside--'

Logan sat up, feeling the cold puddle soaking through his trousers. 'He's not the Flesher. He went after Brooks because he set him up - he came after you, because you helped. If Brooks had done his bloody job none of this would have happened. Sticking Wiseman in Peterhead Prison made him what he is today.' He groaned his way to his feet. 'It was a self-fulfilling prophesy.'

Insch looked as if he was about to burst: face dark scarlet, lips pulled back like a snarling dog, thin breaths hissing in and out between his gritted teeth.

Alec peered round the side of his camera. 'Inspector? Are you OK?'

'You ...' Grimace. 'You ...' One hand went to the middle of his chest, fingers splayed. Then curled into a fist. 'You ...' Mouth open, no sound coming out as Insch's legs gave way.

On his knees. One hand against the cold, wet concrete paving slab, the other massaging his chest.

And then he was face down, the rain bouncing off his suddenly pale head.

'Oh fuck ...' Logan scrambled through the puddles and stuck two fingers to the side of Insch's throat. 'Fuck!'

'Is he OK?'

'Get the duty doctor - hurry!' Logan pulled out his mobile phone and called for an ambulance.

51

Quarter past four and the traffic was starting to get heavy - the school-run clogging up the side streets with four-by-fours and badly parked Audi estates. Union Street was one long shuffling procession of scarlet brake lights - nose-to-tail all the way, with an unmarked CID pool car stuck in the middle. 'Sorry, sir,' said Rennie as they chugged to a halt, yet again. 'Thought this would be quicker than Schoolhill, it's a sodding nightmare when Robert Gordon's lets out. Should've gone left to Mounthooly ...'

Logan shrugged - it wasn't as if they were in a hurry.

The rain hadn't let up any - water hitting the pavement hard enough to bounce back to knee height, hiding the ground in a sheen of mist between the crawling traffic and the hurrying pedestrians.

Not every school kid had a parental taxi booked, some marched down the pavement with their schoolbags over their heads, others shared brightly coloured golf umbrellas. A million miles away from murders and heart attacks.

Logan watched a pack of Robert Gordon students stream into McDonalds, a sign in the window proclaiming,'N
OW
W
ITH
100% I
MPORTED
B
EEF
!'

Rennie drummed an annoying tattoo on the steering wheel. 'Going to buy a house and ask Laura to marry me.' He turned and grinned. 'How cool is that? Course, we won't get married right away, I mean she's got to finish her degree first. And kids can wait till we're older. You know, like in our thirties, or something ...'

Logan let him rattle on. Why burst his little bubble?

'Going to honeymoon in Vegas. Maybe get married there too? What do you think? Elvis Presley now pronounces you man and wife ... or is that too cheesy?'

'Pretty cheesy.'

'Sometimes cheesy is good.'

The traffic ground to a halt again at the junction with Union Terrace. On the other side of the road a gaggle of schoolgirls - all wearing the green jumpers and tartan skirts of Albyn School - waited for the cars and buses cutting across Union Street to give way to the little green man.

They laughed and joked, smoked, listened to iPods, sent text messages to their friends, peered in shop windows ...

Logan frowned. Then slapped Rennie on the arm. 'Look!'

'What?' The constable glanced across the road. 'Jesus, never figured you for a dirty old man.'

'No, you idiot:
her
. The one with the red and green brolly. Blonde. Does Laura have a little sister?'

'Eh? No, she's ...' Rennie was staring at the girls again, face going pale. Without the makeup, tiny skirt and hoiked-up boobs, Laura didn't look quite the same as she had in the pub the other night, but it was definitely her. 'Ffff ... oh ... Fuck!'

'What do you think? Sixteen? Higher? Lower?'

'Fuck!'

'Not so much your pretend kinky schoolgirl, as an
actual
schoolgirl.'

'FUCK!'

'You were saying something about dirty old men?'

The intensive care ward was quiet, just the hum and ping of machinery to break the gloomy silence. Insch was wired up to a bank of equipment, little round sticky pads on the pale pink expanse of his chest; an oxygen mask strapped over his mouth, misty with condensation; another pulse monitor on the end of his finger.

The inspector's wife, Miriam, was sitting by his bedside, sniffing into a handkerchief, looking twenty years older than she should have.

Logan stopped at the end of the bed. 'How is he?'

She looked up, saw who it was, then went back to staring at her husband. 'They're waiting to see if ... he needs to be stronger, or they can't operate.'

'We ...' Logan gave an embarrassed cough, and held up the massive get-well-soon card in the shape of a teddy bear. 'Everyone signed it. We ...' Another cough. 'You know he's too damn stubborn to give up.'

'It all went so wrong ...'

Brilliant evening. Spectacular. Like a hole in the head.

Vicky clambered out of the car and plipped the locks. Sodding Marcus and his sodding parents and this sodding, GODFORSAKEN DINNER PARTY tomorrow night. All over town looking for organic sodding lamb in the rain ... If Marcus wanted roast lamb with sodding baby vegetables to impress his sodding parents, he could sodding well get out here and help her unload the car.

She tried the front door, but it was locked. 'Oh for God's sake.' As if anyone was going to break in while he was there - and she knew he was in: his car was in the drive and all the lights were on. She tried her key, but it wouldn't turn. The idiot had left
his
key in the lock.

Vicky leant on the doorbell. 'Come on Marcus! Answer the sodding door!'

She took two steps back and scowled up at their three bedroom semi-detached rabbit hutch. He was probably in the toilet making smells and reading Dilbert, or one of his 'postmodern-ironic' lads' mags. Yeah, young ladies getting their boobs out. Very post-sodding-modern.

'MARCUS!'

Nothing.

'Sodding hell.' She turned and stomped back down the drive. Fine, if Captain Useless wasn't going to help her, she'd just have to-- She heard the door unlocking behind her.

Vicky turned, hands up in mock rapture. 'Halleluiah!'

Only there was nobody there. The lazy sod had unlocked the door and disappeared back into the house. You know what?
Fine
. She'd unload the car on her own, and if Marcus thought he was getting any sex for the next month he was going to be very disappointed. He could go have a post-modern-ironic wank for all she cared.

She threw her handbag over her shoulder, grabbed as many carrier bags as she could manage and staggered back up the drive, her high heels clicking on the wet lockblock. In through the front door. The television was on: some pretentious latenight discussion programme droning on about a book no one would ever read. Why couldn't he watch the sodding Simpsons like a normal person? That's what she got for marrying someone called
Marcus
.

She stomped down the hall, calling,'They're your sodding parents, you know. You could help!'

No response.

Typical. She pushed through into the kitchen/dining room. He was such a useless ... She stopped. Eyes wide.

Red.

Everything was red.

There was red everywhere.

The smell of hot copper and sea salt.

Raw meat.

Something that used to be a man was laid out on the kitchen table. In bits. She could ... she could ...

Clunk.

The front door closing.

Snick
.

The front door locking.

RUN!

Vicky didn't look back, just dropped her shopping and charged straight though the kitchen, heels skidding on the blood-slicked linoleum. She grabbed the patio door handle, but it wouldn't budge. Locked. Sodding Marcus!

Key in the lock. KEY IN THE LOCK!

She turned it and yanked the door open, throwing herself out into the night ... which wasn't dark for long as the back garden security light glared into life.

She slipped and fell, sprawling across the wet grass, and for a moment she was looking back into the kitchen. And came within an inch of wetting herself. It was him, the man from the papers: butcher's outfit, Margaret Thatcher mask, knife.

Marcus's head was staring back at her from under the table.

Vicky scrambled to her feet, grabbed her handbag, and ran.

Down the garden, heels sinking into the sodden turf. She wrenched the damn shoes off, leaving them behind.

Past the shed.

She could hear
Him
: the Flesher was coming after her.

She clambered over the back fence, ripping her jacket as she tumbled down the other side and into a gorse bush, not caring if the thorns tore her skin, just as long as she lived to see tomorrow.

She ran, tearing down the little gully that separated her street from the next one in the development, screaming 'HELP ME!' at the top of her lungs. Until she realized that gave the man chasing her something to aim for.

She concentrated on putting as much distance between them as possible instead.

Mobile phone. She had a mobile phone in her handbag. She had to call the police.

The Flesher crashed through the undergrowth behind her.

Vicky took a sudden dive to the left, into the grass, scurrying behind a huge whin bush. Holding her breath. Praying.

She could see him: a faint silhouette against the orange-grey clouds.

Phone. Where was her phone? Where was her sodding, bloody, fucking phone?

Vicky tipped her handbag out into the wet grass and felt her way through the contents: compact, tampons, purse, brush, credit card wallet, bits of paper, more bits of paper, more BITS OF BLOODY PAPER. Comb. Lipstick. PHONE!

She flipped it open and the screen sent out a little bloom of light. She slapped her hand over the thing, trying to hide the glow. Praying he wasn't looking this way. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus ...

Nine. Nine. Nine.

Come on, come on ...

'
Emergency services, which service do you require?
'

'Police.'

'
I'm sorry, you'll have to speak up, you're very faint
.'

Vicky cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered 'Police!' as loud as she dared.

Now all she had to do was tell the man on the other end who was after her, where they were, and--

The silhouette stopped, turned left, then right, then marched straight towards her.

Vicky ran.