Flesh House (14 page)

20

Logan waited in the pre-dawn gloom trying not to stand in anything red. Which was easier said than done: who knew one old man could go so far? The impact zone lay in the strip of concrete between the two tower blocks. Ex-DCI Brooks covered at least a dozen feet in every direction - tarmac, pavement, wall ... The cars were the worst: metallic paint pebble-dashed with shrivelled, crimson bubbles, glittering in the IB spotlights like dried-up ladybirds. Not the best accompaniment to a Monday-morning hangover.

Someone from the Environmental Health team marched over, sipping tea from a polystyrene cup, her white paper oversuit unzipped to the waist. 'You going to be much longer?'

'Don't think so.' Logan watched DI Steel mooching about on the far side of the blue-and-white POLICE tape, mobile phone clamped to her ear. 'Think you'll be able to shift all this?'

The woman shrugged. 'You should see some of the crap we have to deal with. She pulled a huge aerosol out of her pocket. 'Trychloroethylene: it'll bleach through pretty much anything. Don't fancy owning any of those cars, Christ knows what it's going to do to the paintwork.'

'Hoy, Lazarus!' Steel - shouting across Garry Brooks' personal Ground Zero. 'Get them going.'

'You heard the lady.' Logan skirted the taped-off scene as the Environmental Health team pulled up their hoods, strapped on their facemasks, and got to work with the trychloroethylene.

Steel lit a cigarette, watching them spraying away, the thick stench of bleach oozing out in a fine mist, caught by the morning breeze, glowing in the building's security lights. 'No' exactly my idea of fun ...'

'How'd Insch take it?'

'How do you think?' She took a long drag. 'The guy you've looked up to for twenty-five years does a belly-flop off an eighteen-storey building. No' exactly ice-cream and balloons, is it?' A small crowd of onlookers had gathered on the outskirts of the car park. More peered out of the windows of the tower block, watching as the Environmental Health team covered everything in industrial bleach. 'He's coming in.'

Logan hadn't expected anything else. Suspended or not, Insch wouldn't trust them not to screw this up. 'Wiseman?'

'Probably.' Steel looked from the blood-splashed car park all the way up to the roof. 'That or Brooks decided to go in for a bit of freestyle plummeting.' She sucked in a lungful of smoke. 'Maybe he was wracked with guilt for screwing up the Flesher inquiry? If he'd done a proper job in the first place, they'd never have let the bastard go.'

She dragged the last gasp from her cigarette, then flicked it out into the puddle of drying blood. 'How's your vertigo?'

From the roof, eighteen floors up, the car park looked a long, long way down. The Environmental Health had finished with the spraying and were now trying to wash the remaining bleachy sludge down the nearest drain with a hose.

Steel sidled up next to Logan and peered over the wall. 'Jesus, how far you think that is?'

'Sixty, seventy feet?'

'Hmm ...' She howched, and spat, watching as the glob disappeared. 'Enough time for a good long scream. You'd think someone would've noticed.'

'Fireworks. The Council had their big display--''

Looks like Brooks wasn't the only one who had a bad one last night.' She turned and stared at Logan's bruised face. 'Twice in two days?'

Logan put a hand up to his cheek: it was still swollen, even after an evening of cold compresses and malt whisky. 'It's nothing.'

'Word is Watson lamped you one.'

'When's the post mortem?'

'Eh? Half eight, they're rushing it through' cos he's an ex-cop. And stop changing the subject.'

Logan leant on the wall, staring out over the city as the sun rose from the watery depths of the North Sea, washing the granite buildings with gold. 'Insch and I were supposed to meet Brooks on Saturday night. He was trying to pump us for details on the Wiseman case.'

'Sounds like Basher Brooks. Silly sod could never let it-- Arse ...' Her phone was ringing. 'Hello? ... Aye ... Did he? ... Oh.' Her face fell. 'Aye, well, no surprise there ... No, no, it's OK. See you then.' She hung up. 'They were doing a quick check at the mortuary, making sure they'd no' left any bits of Brooks behind. Ligature marks round wrists and ankles.'

'Definitely Wiseman then.' Not suicide: murder.

The mortuary smelt like a butcher's shop, the numerous chunks of Ex-DCI Brooks arranged to make a whole, slightly flattened person, as Isobel dictated her way through the remains.

Most of the jumpers Logan had seen were from six or seven storeys high - broken bones, internal bleeding - but Brooks looked as if he'd been torn apart, then battered with a sledgehammer.

'You fancy pizza for lunch?' whispered Steel, while Isobel wrestled with the deflated football that used to be Brooks' head.

Logan grimaced.

'OK, OK, not pizza. Curry? Sushi? How about ...' she trailed off when she realised Isobel and the Procurator Fiscal were staring at her. Steel shrugged. 'Didn't have any breakfast.'

Isobel put Brooks' head back on the dissecting table. 'Can we all please remain silent while I'm dictating!'

No one said anything.

'Thank you.' She picked up the head again. 'Evidence of severe impact trauma consistent with a fall of eighty to a hundred feet--'

'There's a surprise.'

'Inspector! I'm not going to--'

The door flew open and crashed against a trolley full of sterilized implements sending them pinging and clanging to the mortuary floor: DI Insch. His white oversuit stretched nearly to bursting point. His face dark, dark red.

The PF looked up and frowned. 'Inspector, you shouldn't be--'

The fat man elbowed his way to the dissecting table. 'He was my friend!'

'That's
why
you shouldn't be here.' The Procurator Fiscal looked round for support, but everyone had developed a sudden interest in the mortuary walls.

Everyone except Isobel:'For goodness sake! I'm trying to carry out a post mortem and if I don't get silence I'll eject the lot of you! This will be a closed session. Do I make myself clear?'

Insch rounded on her. 'Don't you
dare
--'

Steel laid a hand on his arm. 'Come on, David.'

'Get your bloody hands off me! I'm--'

'Let's no' burn any more bridges. Eh? Brooks wouldn't want that. Would he?'

The fat man's eyes sparked with tears. 'He was my friend.'

'I know.' She pulled him towards the door. 'Come on, you and me'll go have a cuppa. Laz'll look after him. Won't you Laz?'

Logan nodded, and the inspector let himself be led out of the sterile cutting room. For a moment everyone relaxed ... and then Isobel peeled off DCI Brooks' face.

Her head hurt. Pounding. Bang, bang, bang ... Throat dry, lips like sandpaper. 'Thirsty ...'

Duncan squatted down next to her and smiled.
'I know, but it'll only hurt for a little bit. Then you'll be OK. You'll be with us.'

'So thirsty ...'

Heather curled up on the filthy mattress and tried not to cry. She was going to die in here, in this dark metal box. Forgotten and alone ...

'Hey,'
Duncan brushed the hair from her face.
'You're not alone. You've got me, remember?'

She kept her eyes screwed shut. 'You're not real.''I'm as real as you need me to be. Come on, have I ever lied to you?' She rolled over onto her other side, turning her back on him. 'Inverness, three years ago.'

He groaned.
'I told you: it was a mistake. I was drunk. She didn't mean anything to me.' Duncan's hand slipped down her body. 'It's always been you, you know that.' The hand caressed her thigh. 'You were my world.'

'I hated you so much.'

His fingers wandered north, making her breath catch.
'Let me make it up to you ...'
He kissed her neck, her throat, her breasts, her stomach, her--

There was a clang from outside and Heather froze. Light flooded the tiny prison.

He was back.

She scrabbled her clothes back into place and hurried over to the bars as the door creaked open. 'Please, I'm so thirsty.'

The Butcher placed six two-litre bottles of water on the prison floor, then stepped outside again, leaving the door open. Heather grabbed them, cracked one open and drank deep. Coughing and spluttering in her haste. Twelve litres of water!

And then the smell hit her - meaty and fragrant over the disinfectant reek coming from the chemical toilet. The Butcher was back, carrying a big plastic box. He dropped it at his feet, took a key from his apron pocket, unlocked a heavy brass padlock, and pushed open a gate in the bars.

Heather could feel her bowls clench. This was it, he was going to kill her ...

But he didn't. He opened the box and pulled out a tray covered with slices of roast meat, boiled potatoes, green beans, Brussels sprouts, Yorkshire puddings ... enough food to feed an army.

Heather almost wept.

All this food. All this water!

She crept forward and grabbed a slice of meat, cramming it into her mouth and chewing, washing it down with deep swigs of water.

He stood watching her.

'It's ... very good,' she said, picking up another chunk and a handful of vegetables to go with it. Gravy dribbled down her chin as she ripped another bite out of the tender, juicy flesh. 'Mmmphnngh ...' More water. 'Delicious, really nice.' Desperate not to sound ungrateful.

The Butcher nodded, then stepped back to the other side of the bars, closed the gate and snapped the padlock back into place. Leaving her with her feast.

Days' worth of food and drink ...

'Are you ... are you going away?'

He stared silently at her, then pointed at the meat.

'Please don't leave me ...'

But he did.

At least DI Insch had calmed down a bit by the time Logan emerged from the post mortem. Whole bodies were bad enough, but Brooks ... Logan shuddered. It was like some sort of horrible jigsaw puzzle.

All the chairs in the inspector's office were occupied - DI Steel in one, the Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of CID in the other. Everyone waiting for Logan's edited highlights.

'Preliminary report won't be out till the end of the day, but there's a lot of bruising to the head, stomach, thighs and chest - he'd been repeatedly beaten. Looks like Brooks was held somewhere for about forty-eight hours before he ...' Logan tried to think of a tactful way to put it,'before he was thrown off the roof.'

Silence.

'Sorry, sir.'

The inspector's voice was a low rumble: distant thunder getting close fast. 'Wiseman.'

'We're doing door-to-doors in the tower blocks, going through the Castlegate CCTV--'

'That's why he didn't turn up. At the pub. Wiseman had him ...' Insch's face had gone beyond its normal angry red, into a previously undiscovered shade of trembling purple. Breath hissing out between clenched teeth. 'Get the IB round to his house. I don't care if they have to tear it apart, I want--'

The DCS placed a hand on the inspector's arm. 'David, I need you to go home. Let us handle this.'

Insch got as far as. 'Don't you--'

'Before you say it: I know. I worked with Brooks too. We'll get the bastard responsible, but you need to go home. If Professional Standards find out you've ignored your suspension they'll go ballistic.'

Insch was on his feet. 'You can't send me--'

'I can, and I am. Go home, David. Have a pint for Brooks. Come in tomorrow and we'll discuss your caseload.'

'But--'

'That's an order, Inspector.'

Drizzle. It drifted down from a battleship-grey sky, slowly seeping its way into everything, making the IB team miserable as they searched Ex-DCI Brooks' back garden. Logan stood at the conservatory door, watching them get wet.

On the other side of the high back wall, a development of nasty yellow-clad houses sat cheek-by-jowl with one another. Brand new and ugly in comparison to the stately granite buildings they'd been thrown up behind. McLennan Homes strikes again.

If he stood on his tiptoes, Logan could just make out pairs of uniformed officers going door-to-door in the vague hope that someone might have seen something.

A grumpy figure in a mud-smeared SOC suit trudged up to the conservatory, snapped off her latex gloves, dragged out a scabby handkerchief, and made horrible snottery noises. 'Bugger all,' she said when she'd finished. 'No hair, no fibres, no prints. We know he came over the back wall - got two goodsized indentations in the flowerbed, but nothing we can get a decent cast from. Best guess is he had plastic bags on over his shoes - that'd explain why there's no muddy footprints in the house.'