Flesh House (37 page)

59

The lead firearms officer pointed back towards the house. 'Place has been deserted for years, we've been all over it from attic to basement and there's no sign of anyone. IB can tear the place apart, but I'll bet you pound to a penny there's nothing there.'

DCS Bain nodded, then gave Logan what could only be described as a fucking horrible look. 'Well?'

Chief Constable Faulds stepped in. 'Just because Jimmy Souter isn't here, doesn't mean it wasn't a solid piece of police work. We now have a suspect with a connection to the abattoir and one of the victims. That's a lot more than we had this morning.'

'We're still no closer to finding PC Munro.' Faulds asked Bain if he could have a quiet word, leading him away out of earshot as the firearms team piled back into their vans and sodded off before the rain started.

'I can see why you're thinking about leaving.' It was Jackie, dressed in her full ninja police gear: black shoes, black trousers, black T-shirt, black stab-proof vest with a black fleece over the top. 'A Chief Constable who's not an arsehole.'

Logan nodded. 'And you're going back to Strathclyde.'

'If they'll have me after this ...'

They stood and watched as the IB marched into the old Souter house, armed with crowbars, pickaxes, and shovels to tear the place apart.

'Jackie ... I'm sorry.'

'For what?'

'Pretty much everything.'

By twenty to five most of the odds and sods had disappeared - back to the station in time to punch out and go to the pub. Now it was just Logan, Faulds, Wee Fat Alec, the IB team, and an unidentified PC standing guard outside the house in the pouring rain. Whoever it was, they must have
really
pissed someone off to end up with that job.

Rain drifted down in undulating sheets, caught in the glow of the abattoir's security spotlights between the leylandii hedge and the blood-blister sky. The row of bleak, dead houses, slowly rotted in the darkness. Only the old Souter place showed any sign of life: light oozing out through the occasional gap in the plywood sheets that covered the windows; the bang and crunch of demolition as the IB tore out fireplaces and ripped up floorboards. Poking and prodding every nook and crevice for evidence of PC Munro, Elizabeth Nichol, or her brother Jimmy.

'Well,' Faulds shifted round in the passenger seat of their pool car,'have you decided?'

'DI McRae, West Midlands Police.' Logan turned and offered Faulds his hand to shake. 'Pleased to meet you.'

Faulds smiled. 'Excellent. I'll get someone to start the paperwork soon as we get back to the station.'

The rear passenger door opened and someone jumped in out of the rain. 'Bloody Hell.' It was Jackie, looking like a drowned rat as she pulled off her peaked cap and shook it in the footwell. 'Like going for a swim out there.'

Logan stared at her in the rear-view mirror. 'Thought you'd gone back to the ranch?'

She grimaced. 'Put the heating on, I'm
freezing
.'

He started the engine and turned the blowers up full. Reheated greasy air filled the car. 'Don't tell me you're the poor sod...?' He pointed through the misty windscreen at the Souter place.

The grimace turned into a scowl. 'DCI McKay wasn't impressed by my revised report on Insch's handling of the investigation. Thinks I should've screwed him to the carpet.'

'I thought you had?'

'Yeah, well ...' She shrugged. 'You were right, OK? Don't rub it in.' She huddled forwards into the gap between the two front seats and cupped her hands over the air vents, complaining that they were still cold.

'You'll get chilblains.'

'Bite me.'

At least she was talking to him again. And then Logan's phone went: DI Steel calling from Elizabeth Nichol's ruined house in Newmacher with an update on the search.

'
No postcards, or letters, but the bugger's definitely been here. Found a scrapbook in the spare bedroom - thing's full of newspaper cuttings. Heather and Duncan Inglis, Tom and Hazel Stephen, Marcus Young, Maureen and Sandra Taylor ... they're all in there, all the little articles from before they went missing, and a lot of the stuff from after as well. "Flesher Strikes Again: Couple Missing" sort of thing. And they're no' the only ones - got stuff in here from Inverness to Eastbourne, and loads of stuff from Fuckknowswhereistan. Eastern European probably, but I can't read a bloody word of it
.'

Logan passed on the information.

Faulds asked for the phone:'Inspector? When does it start, this book? What's the first clipping?' Pause. 'Uh-huh ... Yes ... Is it? Good God ... How many do you think? ... OK, thanks.' He hung up and returned Logan's mobile. 'Looks as if the scrapbook only goes back as far as 2004. We're going to have to run all the newspaper clippings against every force's missing persons' database.' He rubbed a hand across the fogged-up windscreen, revealing the Souter household in all its ominous glory. It looked as if the IB were giving up, hauling their stuff back through the rain and into their filthy van. '2004 ... Christ knows how many Jimmy Souter killed before that ...'

Jackie nodded. 'There'll be more scrapbooks.' She must have seen the expression on Logan's face in the rear-view mirror, because she turned to stare at him. 'What? Souter's a hoarder, isn't he? He'll have every article he's ever clipped.'

She had a point.

'Can you imagine growing up here?' said Logan, watching the IB slowly disappear as the windscreen fogged up again. 'Downwind of the abattoir, everything you own covered in a greasy film. Go to school and it clings to your clothes and your hair. All the kids pick on you because you smell. Then you go home and your alki dad beats the shite out of you.'

Faulds wiped the windscreen again. 'You're not suggesting this isn't Jimmy Souter's fault?'

'I'm just saying it's ... well, not
understandable
, but you know ... it's amazing Elizabeth Nichol turned out as well as she did. Wonder if her sister ...' he trailed off into silence.

Faulds said something about search warrants and national appeals, but Logan wasn't listening, he was staring out at the row of derelict houses.

He pulled out his phone and called the station, getting them to put him through to DC Rennie. There was a long pause while someone went to get the constable out of the locker-room showers.

The IB van did a clumsy three point turn and juddered past, the driver waving them a cheery goodbye. The red tail lights glowed like halos of blood as it disappeared down the road, leaving them alone in the dark.

Alec jogged over to the car and clambered in the back with Jackie. His SOC suit had gone a nasty, patchy grey colour, and it dripped filthy water all over the seats as he shrugged out of it.

'Like a demolition derby in there.' He coughed, blew his nose, then checked his camera. 'Didn't find anything though. Probably stick the footage together as a ten second jump-cut montage. You know: tearing the skirting off, floorboards up, fireplace--'

And then Rennie was on the other end of the phone.'
Yo?
'

'What happened to the children's homes?'

'
I didn't have time to finish
--'

'This is important you know! I didn't ask you for fun.'

'
OK, OK, no need to get all snippy. Can I get dressed first, or do you want me to go running upstairs in the altogether?
'

That was a visual image Logan
really
didn't need. He hung up.

'Well,' said Faulds,'going to share with the rest of the class?'

'I am a carrot. Rennie is a stick. What if--'

'No wait ... hold on ...' Alec got his camera going. 'Aaaand ... Action!'

'Would you stop doing that?' Pause. 'The whole street's deserted - what if Jimmy just picked one of the other houses? He's been smart enough to get away with this for over twenty years.' Logan killed the engine and reached across the Chief Constable for the glove compartment, looking for the torch. It was buried right at the back in a graveyard of empty crisp packets, and by some strange miracle the batteries actually worked. Logan clicked it on and shone it through the clear patch of windscreen at the row of dilapidated houses.

'You're joking, right?' asked Jackie from the back seat. 'We're not seriously going to--'

Logan popped open the driver's door and stepped out into the drizzle. 'You can stay here if you like. I'm just going for a quick look around.'

'But we haven't got a search warrant. You can't--'

He closed the door before she could start swearing at him.

Five seconds later Alec was out in the rain too, his HDV camera tucked under his jacket to keep it dry. 'Just in case ...'

60

Logan swung his torch along the row of dilapidated houses. The beam sparkled against the rain-slicked grass and broken windows. He turned his collar up and picked his way between the potholes to the middle house - number three - now festooned with blue-and-white P
OLICE
ribbon, like a shabby, unwanted birthday present.

'What do you think, Alec - one, two, four, or five?'

'I'm bloody freezing.'

'You're such a girl.' Logan fought his way up the weed-clogged path to number two, rainwater trickling down the back of his neck. The front door was locked, but the wood was so rotten that a firm push was enough to tear the lock out of the frame. The door creaked open on rusty hinges.

His mobile rang as he stepped into the gloomy hallway - Jackie wanting to know what the hell he was doing.

'I'm poking about.'

'
We don't have a warrant for "poking about" - Faulds says you have to get your arse back in the car
.'

'I'm not going to be long. Just want to take a quick look through the other houses. There's a police officer's life at stake, remember?' She said something rude and he told her it would go much quicker if they got off their bums and helped.

There was some muffled conversation and then Jackie was back with,'
OK, fine. Be like that. We'll all go tromping through the rain so you can satisfy your bloody curiosity
.' So much for being civil.

Logan didn't rise to it. 'Thank you. We'll do numbers two and one, if you and Faulds do four and five--'

'
Care to tell me what we're looking for?
'

'No idea.'

Five minutes later he was back out in the rain again, doing his best to ignore Alec's revolting monologue on the perils of eating a whole family-sized bag of Fruit-tellas in one sitting. Torchlight spilled out through the broken windows of number five. Jackie and Faulds might not be happy about searching the place, but at least they were giving it a go.

Number one was the last building on the deserted street. It was slightly bigger than the others, with a garage tacked onto the side, but the roof sagged like a mouldy hammock and the front windows gaped black and empty.

God knew who owned these ghost properties, but they wouldn't be selling them anytime soon.

Logan pushed through the wrought-iron gate - the squeal of metal on metal following them up the path as it swung slowly shut.

A disintegrating sign was fixed to the wall by the front door,'T
HE
L
AURELS
' picked out in fading black paint on scabby grey wood. Logan's torch drifted across the wet sandstone and through the remains of a bay window: crumbling plaster and tattered wallpaper, a mantelpiece littered with bits of collapsed ceiling.

The door was locked, and this time giving it a shove wasn't enough. An old bench sat engulfed in a clump of dead brambles, but when Logan tried to drag it under the bay window it fell to pieces. 'Damn ...' He looked up at the hollow window frame, then back at the cameraman shivering on the top step. 'Want to give me a leg up?'

Inside, the lounge stank of damp and mould, the floor sagging alarmingly as Logan landed on the squelchy carpet. Alec's head peeked over the windowsill. 'It safe in there?'

'I'll let you in the front door.' He picked his way around the edge of the room, out into the hall, and up to the front door. A big rusty key stuck out of the lock, jammed nearly solid. Logan worked it backward and forward till the seized-up mechanism gave with a squeal, then dragged the door open.

Alec peered inside. 'Doesn't look promising, does it?'

'We'll start upstairs.'

Heather sat cross legged on the mattress, the plate of liver and onions going cold in her lap. Not that it wasn't good - everything He cooked for her was good - it was just that she didn't know what was real anymore.

He was on the other side of the bars, sitting with His back to the rusty red metal wall, His face an expressionless rubber mask.

She took her knife and fork and cut another slice of liver - caramelized on the outside, delicate pink on the inside - put it in her mouth and chewed. Moist and rich and tender. Heather had never eaten policewoman before.

'Are you ...' She tried to remember the name of Kelley's brother. 'Jimmy?'

The Flesher tilted His head to the side - that cat-like gesture He always did, questioning.

'Is she OK? Kelley? Is she ...' She bit her bottom lip, not wanting to say it:
is she dead?

He placed a hand over His heart. Then pointed at her plate of food.

'Yes, it's lovely.' She took another slice, heaping it with mashed potato and fried onions. 'Can I speak to her?'

Silence.

'She's my friend.'

A nod.

'Please don't hurt her.'

The Flesher reached up, took hold of the rubber mask, and pulled ... then froze, the mask half on and half off. There was a noise filtering down from somewhere, like electronic music being played far away. He slid the mask back down over His face and stood, then pulled a long butcher's knife from His apron. It looked exactly the same as the one Heather had been hiding.

Only this time she
knew
it was real.

'Hold on a minute ...' Logan stopped at the top of the basement stairs, pulled out his warbling phone and pressed the green button. 'Hello?'

Rennie, sounding excited:'
I did it! I rule! And rock! Rock and rule!
'

'Have you been drinking?'

'
Children's homes. I went through every bastard in Social Services till I got some doddery old bat who remembered something about a wee girl getting taken into care after her dad lost an arm in a slaughterhouse. You may now worship my
--'

'What about the other kids - Kelley and Jimmy?'

'
God knows. I was lucky to get that much out of her
.'

'What bloody good does that do us?' Logan started down the stairs, his torch's beam supplemented by the lights on Alec's camera. 'We already know--'

'
Ah, this is where my genius comes in. She didn't deal with the case herself, but she knows a man who did. We
...' Silence.' ...
time with ...' Hissing.' ... night?
'

'Hello?'

Tssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss' ... lo?
'

Logan froze on the stairs, then took two steps back up. 'Hello?'

'
Hello? You still there?
'

'What did he say?'

'
Didn't speak to him, thought you'd want to do that yourself. His number's oh, one, two, two, four
...'

Logan pinned the phone between his shoulder and his ear, dug out his notebook and copied it down. 'Thanks.'

'
And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, Simon Rennie has left the building!
'

'Oh no he bloody hasn't.'

'
What? Oh come on, I--
'

'Just hang around till I've spoken to him, OK? I might need you to follow up on something.' He hung up before Rennie could start whinging, and dialled the number.

'
Hello?
' An old man's voice.

Logan asked him about Elizabeth Souter. There was a long and thoughtful pause.'
Nope, doesn't ring a bell. Sorry
.'

'Well how about Kelley? No? Jimmy Souter?'

'
Jimmy Souter? Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time. You wouldn't believe the trouble one person can cause. If anything got broken, vandalized, set on fire, it was always Jimmy Souter's fault
.'

'Any idea what happened to him?'

'
Elizabeth and Kelley ... now I remember - we all breathed a sigh of relief when someone adopted her. Can't have been easy for the family, but I understand she turned out pretty well
.'

'What happened to Jimmy?'

'
Hmm? Oh, I suppose he just went away, like all imaginary friends
.'

Logan frowned at the phone. 'Imaginary--'

'
Kelley Elizabeth Souter was a very disturbed young lady when we took her into care, Sergeant. I understand she named "Jimmy" after her father. Any time she did anything wrong it was always Jimmy's fault
.'

Thirty seconds later, Logan was back on the phone to Rennie.

'Just shut up and listen, OK? There's a fax on my desk from Garioch United something-or-other, I need you to cross-reference all the dates and locations with those incidents you got from INTERPOL.'

'
But that'll takes ages, I'm
--'

'You've got it all in HOLMES, haven't you? Just run a search. It'll take twenty minutes!'

'
All right, all right. Jesus
.'

'And call me back soon as you've got anything!'

'
What do I tell Bain?
'

Logan started down the basement stairs again. 'Just let him know ...'

'
What ab ...' Scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' ... ed? Hello?' Hisssssssssssssss' ... in tr
...'

He hung up. At least that would buy him some time. The DCS wasn't going to be too pleased when he found out Logan had sparked a nation-wide manhunt for Elizabeth Nichol's childhood imaginary friend.

The basement was cluttered: tea chests full of mildewed clothing; cardboard boxes of paperback books, bloated and blackened by damp; disintegrating furniture; rusty bicycles.

'Fuck!' Alec spun round, the spotlight on his camera raking the debris. 'Was that a rat?'

Logan picked his way into the middle of the rotting maze. The building might have been sandstone, but the basement walls were granite. No wonder there was no signal. He peered into one of the boxes: Mills and Boon, Catherine Cookson, Barbara Cartland ...

Alec did another panicky pirouette. 'I bet it's rats. I bet there's hundreds of them down here ... feeding on the abattoir's leftovers ...'

'Will you calm down?'

The cameraman shivered. 'You never read James Herbert?' Logan ran his torch across the walls again. 'Is that a door under the stairs?'

'Probably just a fuse-box, or something. Can we get out of here before something eats us please? I fucking
hate
rats.'

'Tell them your Fruit-tella story, that'll put them off.' Logan fought his way round to the door and opened it. 'Bloody hell ...'

There was a long dirt corridor on the other side, stretching off into the darkness, at least twenty foot long. Logan stepped inside. The floor was almost shiny, worn with years of use. He swung the door back and forth on its hinges a couple of times. No sound. Not even a creak.

Alec stumbled through the piles of mouldering boxes and peered over Logan's shoulder. 'What?'

The corridor had a strange smell - not the rancid tang of rendered tallow, but something cloying and floral. Air freshener, or incense. Logan ran his torch along the corridor's rough walls. 'Get back up the stairs and call Faulds. Get him and Jackie over here now.'

'What is it?'

But Logan was already creeping forwards into the dark, telling himself that he was just going to the end of this bit and no further. Just in case.

Twenty yards in and the tunnel took a sharp right turn. He eased himself up to the edge and peered round the corner. Another short length of corridor had been dug out of the dirt, but this one had a blanket, or a curtain draped over the end, forming a makeshift door.

It was probably nothing ... these houses had been here for decades. Since the 1890s at least. This could be an old air-raid shelter, or somewhere to hide an illicit still.... Whatever it was, Logan was
not
going in there on his own.

When the voice sounded at his shoulder he nearly screamed.

'They're on their way over.' Alec whispered, camera at the ready. 'You think this is where he keeps them?'

'We'll find out when Faulds and Jackie get here.' Alec nodded, looked around, then said,'Sure you don't want to take a quick peek?'

'Certain.'

'But what if PC Munro's in there? Shouldn't we be, you know, saving her?'

'Go charging into an unknown area with no backup and no plan? You mad?'

The cameraman pursed his lips and made sooking noises. 'They'd do it if this was a film. Don't you want to be the hero? Ride in on your dirty big horse and save the damsel in distress in the nick of time?'

Logan stared at him. 'And get her, you, or me killed in the process? We're waiting till Faulds and Jackie get here and that's final.'