Nothing but Meat: A dark, heart-stopping British crime thriller (12 page)

For the past few weeks Simone had felt that her life had been
steeped in death. Day after day she seemed to be dealing with blood and gore
and grieving families.

Her face had healed well and now only yellow and purple
bruises remained. Her reflection looked sad but she was on the mend and
determined to make the changes that would finally bring some sunshine into her
life.

Simone got to the station before West and busied herself with
paperwork while waiting for him to arrive. The post came and with it a parcel
for West – a cardboard box with a basic label. She took it from the
mailman; it was deceptively heavy; a dense solid weight, as if it contained a
couple of bottles of water. Something about it felt wrong. For a start the
printed label bore only West’s surname and the station address. Not Detective
West or Mr West or DCI West it simply read: West. She put it on his desk and
stared at it for a while. There was no return address either, just the Royal
Mail postage stamp. Something was wrong about it, the room was silent and she
put her arms on the desk and leant towards it, listening. She pressed her ear
to the cardboard; it looked new but smelt old and dank and mouldy. There was
also a feint floral fragrance as if the box had been standing in a puddle of
toilet cleaner.

Bombs don’t tick they hum she thought to herself as she held
her breath and listened. Could she hear something coming from within? She
wasn’t sure and blamed it on her imagination. Simone considered ringing the
bomb squad but in her mind pictured the evacuation and everyone standing
outside complaining about Simone’s decision to get them out of the building
only to find that West had ordered a new teapot. She pushed the thoughts away
and listened ever so carefully.

Bang!

She jumped out of her skin as West flung the door wide open
and came rushing into the room.

‘Fucking Christ Nathan!’

‘Morning to you too.’

She had her hand on her chest and she knew she looked a state.
‘What’s up?’ he said.

‘Have you ordered anything to be delivered to the station?’

He looked at the parcel instantly serious. ‘No.’

‘It arrived a few minutes ago.’

‘Step away.’

Without question she did as he said, was he thinking the same
as her?

‘It shouldn’t have got this far without being opened,’ he
said. He walked to the desk and looked at the label. ‘Who delivered it?’

‘The usual kid.’

‘First things first – call downstairs, we need to
guarantee this was delivered by Royal Mail and logged in before getting in
here.’

Simone did as he asked. ‘It was delivered today. Everything
is in order. They fucked up downstairs and let it go through without being
opened. They were confused because you don’t work at this station and somehow
it slipped through the net. The kid only knew where to deliver it because he
knows me and knows we are working together.’

‘Okay. Let’s see Jackson.’

West and Jackson made the call to clear the station. Simone
was one of the evacuees. She stood in the sweltering heat of the car park
waiting with the others at the fire assembly points. When the bomb disposal
team arrived West and Jackson joined her at the assembly point. They moved away
from the majority and sat together on a low stone wall at the edge of the car
park.

She asked West, ‘What’s the procedure?’

‘They’ll use a hand drill to make three or four holes in the
lid and look inside with a camera. They’ll check to see if anything is attached
to the lid, things like wires or connecting plates. They’ll look at the
contents too as best they can.’ He looked around for eavesdroppers and although
no one was near them he continued in a lower voice. ‘They’ll be looking for
powders; poisons or diseases like anthrax. If they don’t find anything they’ll
probably open it up. They’ll look for pressure pads and –.’ He mouthed
the word silently, ‘-explosives.’

Thinking it was a fire drill people sat around smoking and
chatting casually amongst themselves while they waited for the all clear. But
for Simone the time passed slowly. She was anxious and couldn’t shake the
feeling that an explosion would rip a hole in the top floor of the building at
any moment. The heat was a distraction; she could feel the sweat glaze her
back, chest and stomach and she used her hand to shade her eyes and wished she
hadn’t left her sunglasses inside.

West and Jackson were in conversation and she turned her face
into the sun, its heat kissed her throbbing nose and bruises and it felt good.
She sniffed unconsciously and her mouth suddenly filled with a huge glob of
bloody matter from the back of her nose. It took her by surprise and her first
instinct was to spit it into a tissue but she didn’t have one and she couldn’t
spit it onto the floor in front of people so she swallowed quickly. It slid
down her throat like a bloody oyster and her mouth tasted metallic afterwards
but she found she could breathe deeply through her nose, a pressure had eased
from between her eyes and it was the most clear and deep breath she had taken
since the incident at the Pulaski’s; it felt glorious and confirmed the feeling
that her nose was well on the way to being healed.

Jackson’s mobile rang. He had a brief conversation and hung
up. He said to Simone, ‘It’s all clear, tell the marshal to let everyone back
inside and come straight up.’ He and West stood and walked towards the building
together.

Both West and Jackson were on their phones when she walked
into the office and the moulding yet floral stench had filled the room like an
invisible fog that had become so overpowering it was almost unbearable. The box
was in the same place on the desk but now the cardboard flaps were open and a sheet
of paper and hunk of polystyrene lay beside it. What looked like small dusty
gravel lay in scattered heaps across the table. She moved to step closer but
West caught her attention and motioned for her to wait with a gloved hand.

West finished his conversation and hung up before Jackson who
turned away from them while he spoke into the phone.

They were concerned; she could see it in their eyes.

‘What’s happened?’ she said.

He motioned to the box. ‘Look inside.’

She approached the table slowly, more apprehensive now. The
smell was stronger and obviously coming from the box. She looked at the piece
of paper, the polystyrene and the dusty gravel, that she now recognised as cat
litter beside it and considered the dense, heavy weight she felt when she first
picked it up. Thoughts of what else it could contain flashed across her mind.

She peered in.

At first what she saw wasn’t shocking. She had imagined
looking in and seeing a human head staring back at her with vacant eyes and
peeling flesh but what she saw didn’t seem unusual to her, the box contained
packets of raw bacon, rashers of smoked meat that were vacuum packed and shiny
and looked as though they had just been lifted from the cold food aisle at a
supermarket or the cabinet at her local butchers. The most disturbing thing was
that the meat had turned in the warmth and smelt awful even though it had been
tightly packed in clear plastic packages. They were dusted with cat litter and
she saw that a handful of yellow car air fresheners had been ripped open and lay
on top of the meat packets, all obviously there as a weak attempt to disguise
the inevitable sourness that would come from sending unrefrigerated meat
through the postal system in the middle of summertime. The combined smell of
artificial flora and rancid meat was like the tip of a feather in the back of
her throat and she felt her abdomen tighten as her stomach toyed playfully with
idea of relieving itself of its contents. She turned away and swallowed slowly,
her mind racing with the image and smell of rotten meat and as she wished her
nose was still blocked her thoughts went back to the taste and sensation of
swallowing the congealed matter from the back of her nose that now sat heavily
in her stomach like a huge blob of bloody snot.

She put her fist to her mouth and made watery eye contact
with West.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

‘It’s the smell.’

‘Stinks doesn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘I’m surprised how well polystyrene, a bit of cat
litter and a few air fresheners did at covering the stench before it was opened,’
she said.

‘Did you read the note?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said and reluctantly moved a few steps towards the
desk and the evil stench that hung strongly around it.

‘Hold this.’ He passed her a plastic evidence bag and
carefully lifted a corner of the note with his pen and picked it from the desk
by his gloved fingernails. She held the bag open for him as he slid the note
inside. She zipped it shut and read the note out loud through the plastic
cover.
‘I have all I need. Pig.’
She
peered back into the box. ‘The meat in the box, is it human?’

West lifted a packet from the box and showed it to her,
turning it in the light so she could get a clear look without touching. ‘It looks
like bacon; it smells fucking terrible but it still smells like bacon,’ he
said. ‘Pounds of it - all sealed in packages.’ She looked at the long drooping
packet, the raw meat; red, wet and fleshy on one side, and on the other fluid
swam glossily over the white fat that coated one edge.

He lifted them out. ‘Twelve packets of meat,’ he said, ‘and
this too.’ He reached back into the box and removed a small cassette case. He
showed her the spine; it was marked
Damning
Evidence,
with a label from an old Dymo labelling machine.

‘What about the cassette; is there one inside.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s empty,’ he said. ‘I can tell from
the weight.’ He opened it anyway and showed her the empty case.

‘At least it can be swabbed for prints and the meat can go
straight to the lab.’ He put it back in the box. ‘We need to confirm whether
it’s human or not, I’m convinced it’s just bacon but we need to know if it’s
something more sinister.’

Jackson came over looking more stressed than ever. ‘Do you
think it’s our man?’

‘Who the hell knows?’ said West. ‘He cut the word sow into
Redman’s back, but that could be coincidence.’

‘Referring to police as pigs isn’t exactly unique,’ said
Simone.

‘It was addressed to you West. Any enemies?’

He shrugged. ‘Too many to count probably.’

‘The cassette case; any ideas?’

‘It’s the cassette from a Dictaphone, sending a recording on
the cassette itself I could understand, but an empty case?’ he sighed. ‘The
label looks old, and that label style is definitely old, modern ones no longer
have the raised print.’

‘Dictaphones with cassettes are outdated too,’ said Simone.
‘Modern ones are digital.’

‘Damning evidence?’ said Jackson referring to the label.

‘It seems he’s trying to send us a message; but it’s beyond
me.’ said West. ‘We could do some digging and try to date the label style but I
very much doubt it’ll be worth the time and effort.’

‘I agree, we need to discuss our resources,’ Jackson said. ‘I
hate to say it but I’m running out of personnel, we need to prioritise the
leads.’

‘Understood,’ said West. ‘We can spend an hour or two running
over what we know and working out where to go next.’

‘We have to close this fucker down – he keeps cranking
the pressure up and I don’t like it.’

12

West stood by a white board; marker pen
in hand, he spoke as he wrote. ‘Who attacked Gary Stevens? Where did the tooth
come from? Who sent us a box of meat?’ He stamped a full stop at the end of the
final question. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ he said loudly and turned back to
the room.

There was little response from the
onlookers; no one knew what to say. It was time for West to let the station commander
step in and take over, he made eye contact with Jackson who was standing nearby
and Jackson took his cue. He suddenly slammed his fist on the desk and yelled
at the crowd, ‘How can we be so damn clueless? Come on people we need to follow
leads and we need to move fast, we have limited manpower but we have enough to
get this guy. I know we do.’

The station was tired and the
officers had been working around the clock chasing dead ends, morale was down
and Jackson’s outburst had startled them - but in a good way. West watched the
room of uniforms shuffle in their seats and sit more upright. They were
suddenly more alert. It was like a slap in the face or a mouthful of good
espresso.

Prior to the meeting Jackson and West
had spent time breaking the case into prioritised leads and dividing up the
workforce. Jackson now assigned his people according to their previous
discussion. He barked names and shouted orders, creating new units to follow
predetermined leads. West watched as notes were taken and questions asked,
ideas and suggestions were thrown around, he was pleased, Jackson had fired
them up, he had them working for each other; all pursuing a common goal and the
room had begun to buzz with a new found determination and lust for capture.
Things were moving again.

Simone had been assigned to a unit
that had been tasked with following up the Stevens attack. West explained that
he needed to spend some time with his father and she would be of better use to
the case if she teamed up with one of the units. She made sure she kept a
professional attitude towards his suggestion and agreed willingly but she felt
quite saddened to find out she would no longer be spending her days with him.
She thought she had managed to disguise it well enough and didn’t think he had
noticed her disappointment but she wanted to spend as much time with him as she
could. Days spent with him just weren’t long enough.