Broken Skin (38 page)

And Logan had to admit he had a point. They only knew the joint of defrosting meat found in the container was human because it had a pierced nipple. Farmers were an odd lot, but not that odd.

Logan hauled open the heavy metal door and stepped into the freezer ... Holy shit it was cold. It was like being punched in the chest by a bag of ice. His breath went from mist to impenetrable fog. 'Hello?'

He found Doctor Isobel McAllister on the other side of a stack of cardboard boxes, their brown surfaces sparkling with a crisp film of white ice. She'd traded in her white SOC oversuit for what looked like a couple of dirty-blue parkas and a set of padded trousers, a red and white bobble hat bandaged onto her head with a tatty maroon scarf. Not exactly her usual catwalk self as she picked her way through a mound of frozen mystery meat.

'Anything?'

She scowled up at him. 'Other than hypothermia?' When Logan didn't answer, Isobel sighed and pointed at a big plastic crate stacked with chunks of vacuum-packed meat. 'We've got about three dozen possible pieces. If it was on the bone it'd be a lot easier to spot; cows and pigs have a much higher meat to bone ratio, but look at this,' she held up a pack labelled 'DICED PORK'. 'Could be anything. I'd expect human meat to be redder - based on the amount of myoglobin in the tissue - but if it's been bled and frozen ... We'll need to defrost and DNA test all of this before we'll know for sure.'

Isobel pulled over another cardboard box, sliced through the plastic strapping, and started picking her way through the contents. 'You can tell Inspector Insch it'll take at least two weeks.'

Logan groaned. 'He's not going to like that.'

'That's not my problem, Sergeant.'

Oh, when she wanted someone to babysit her kid, or suffer through her endless digital camera slideshows of the sticky-fingered dribbly little monster, he was 'Logan', but when she was pissed off at work he was 'Sergeant.'

'And it's not
my
fault he had a go at you, OK?' You think he's bad tonight? I get him all bloody day--' Clunk. Logan froze, eyes sweeping the shelves of frozen goods, hoping to God it wasn't Andy with his bloody camera. Things were bad enough without being caught complaining about Insch on national television. 'Hello?'

'Sergeant McRae?' Mr Stephenson peered around a stack of boxes marked 'FISH FINGERS'. 'I've found the dockets ...' he trailed off and stared at the pile of meat as Isobel added another chunk to the crate, the frozen pieces clattering against one another like ceramic tiles. 'Is ... is that all ...?'

'We won't know till we test it.' Logan held out his hand, and the rumpled man looked puzzled for a moment, then tried to shake it. 'No,' Logan took a step back, leaving him hanging, 'the dockets?'

'Oh, right. Right. Of course.' He handed over a crumpled sheet of yellow A4, covered with biro scribbles. 'Sorry.'

Stephenson fidgeted nervously as Logan read. 'What's going to happen? I mean if that ...' He swallowed. 'What am I going to tell my customers?'

Logan pulled out his mobile phone and scrolled through the contacts list. 'We're going to need names and addresses for everyone who has access to this freezer. I want staff records, customers, suppliers, the lot.' An electronic voice on the other end of the line told him the number he was dialling was busy, please try again later.

The man in the crumpled suit shivered, wrapped his arms around himself and looked as if he was about to cry. 'We're a family firm, been here thirty years ...'

'Yes, well,' Logan tried for a reassuring smile, 'you never know: the tests might come up negative.'

'I wouldn't go getting Mr Stephenson's hopes up.' Isobel sat back on her haunches, breath a cloud of white around her head as she lifted something out of the box at her feet. From where Logan was standing it looked just like another chunk of pork, and he said so.

'Yes, well,' she turned the joint of meat over in her hand, 'pigs don't usually have tattoos of unicorns on their backsides.'

BROKEN SKIN

Stuart MacBride has gone from asking people if they 'want fries with that' to project-managing vast IT projects for the oil industry. Somewhere in the middle he managed to make money out of dressing up as a woman, doing voiceovers, graphic design, working offshore, and very boring things involving websites. He failed the interview to become a funeral director.

His first book,
Cold Granite
, was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers' best debut novel and won the Barry Award for best first novel. The follow-up,
Dying Light
, became an instant top-ten bestseller. Stuart MacBride won the 2007 Dagger in the Library, awarded for a body of work.

Stuart lives in north-east Scotland with his wife Fiona, cat Grendel, and a vegetable plot full of weeds.

Visit Stuart MacBride's website at:
www.stuartmacbride.com.

By Stuart MacBride

Cold Granite
Dying Light
Broken Skin

Praise for Stuart MacBride:

'Fierce, unflinching and shot through with the blackest of humour; this is crime fiction of the highest order by a writer whose dark star is most definitely on the rise.'

Mark Billingham

'If you're looking for taut narrative, gut-churning incident, strong characterisation, all shot through with savagely dark humour, then look no further'

Reginald Hill

'The novel rattles along like a bolting horse and the dialogue crackles like a firework display ... DI Steel should be declared a national treasure'

Andrew Taylor,
Spectator

'This intelligent, exciting police procedural should make the leading writers of the genre start looking over their shoulders.'

Sunday Telegraph

'Another brilliant, riveting police procedural. I'm green with envy!' R D Wingfield, author of
A Touch of Frost
'Stuart MacBride goes straight for the jugular with a tight, thrilling novel'

Glasgow Herald

'This is Ian Rankin on Speed ... the humour is black, the violence is apalling, the language is, well, realistic, the entertainment is unflagging. I hunger for the earlier novels'

Adelaide Review

'An impressive debut ... an edge-of-your-seat page-turner'

Publishers Weekly

'A cracking new writer on the crime scene who hooks you from the first page and never lets you go. The action is ferocious and the pace unrelenting'

Northern Echo

'A gritty, roller-coaster, in-your-face thriller'

Aberdeen Press and Journal

'MacBride is a confident writer ... does a good line in black humour and has a nose for the macabre.'

Scotsman

'The story is violent and bloody; some of the crimes are vicious and MacBride doesn't hold back on the details. But there is plenty of dark humour, and a warmth to the portrayal of the police officers which lightens an otherwise grim tale by this very talented writer'

Susanna Yager,
Sunday Telegraph

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to reallife counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exceptions to this are the characters of Alexander Clark, Debbie Kerr and John Rickards, who have given their express permission to be fictionalized in this volume. All events and character traits assigned to these individuals have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and bear no resemblance to the real people.

Harper
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This paperback edition 2008 596 1

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Publishers
2007

Copyright (c) Stuart MacBride 2007

Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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ePub edition June 2008 ISBN- 9780007279418

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