Flesh House (15 page)

The hanky came out for another performance.

'OK, finish it up and I'll get Rennie to stick the kettle on.'

She sniffed. 'Looks like a professional job.'

'Get your team in out of the wet. We can--'

'Sir?' A panicked shout from the front of the house. 'Sergeant McRae?'

Logan knew it had been too good to last. The only surprise was that it'd taken the Insch this long ... He turned and marched through the spotless conservatory; the bombsite lounge with its overturned furniture, smashed ornaments, and bloodstains; then out into the hall, where DC Rennie was trying to stop DI Insch from storming into the house.

'It's OK,' Logan tapped the constable on the shoulder. 'Why don't you go see to the teas?' He let Rennie squeeze past, then stepped forwards to block the entrance. 'Inspector?'

'I was out walking Lucy, and I spotted the IB van.' Insch gestured at the grubby transit parked in Brooks' drive with 'A
LSO
A
VAILABLE
I
N
W
HITE
' finger-painted in the filth. Behind him, his ancient Springer Spaniel sat on the wet grass, legs akimbo, slowly absorbing the drizzle.

'What can we do for you?'

The huge man glowered at him from the threshold. 'You can let me in for a bloody start.'

'Sorry, sir, this is an active crime scene.'

Insch rested a fat finger in the middle of Logan's chest. 'Remember I'm going to be back in charge again tomorrow, Sergeant. You might not want to go pissing me off right now. Step aside.'

'I can't do that. You know I can't do that.'

Insch's finger withdrew two inches, then rammed forward into Logan's chest. 'Suspended or not, I am your superior officer. And I swear to God, if you don't get out of my bloody way--'

'What, you'll punch me in the face? Again?' Logan looked down at the cast-iron digit, then up at the inspector. 'Sir, I know he was your friend. And I know you want to catch whoever did it. But do you think you could try fucking trusting me for five minutes and let me do my job?'

Insch actually backed off a step.

'Look, we'll be finished here soon. An hour tops. We'll have to leave someone outside till we can get the back door boarded up. But if you're a friend of the family you'll have a key. You can let yourself in.'

The inspector turned away, watching as his decrepit spaniel embarked on a vigorous ear-scratching campaign. There was a pause, then,'I don't have a key.'

'Wait here.' Logan ducked back into the hall and picked a likely candidate from the pegboard above the telephone, then tried it in the Yale lock. Perfect fit. He held it out to Insch. 'Brooks must have given it to you a while ago, just in case he had to go away. So you could water the plants.'

The inspector stuck out a vast paw, and Logan dropped the key in it. Insch turned without a word and marched away down the garden path, taking his stinky, soggy old dog with him.

21

It was half past four before the joiner turned up to board up Brooks' back door. Logan watched him nailing the huge sheet of plywood into place, doing his best to ignore the man's rambling moan about all these Eastern Europeans coming over here and undercutting honest tradesmen like him. Then asked if Logan needed any jobs doing on the QT for cash...?

Logan did one last circuit of the house, making sure the IB hadn't left anything behind, then stepped out into the rainy night and locked the front door.

A lone rocket screeched into the dark orange sky, exploding in a tiny puff of golden sparks. Not exactly spectacular.

He climbed behind the wheel of his pool car and sat there, listening to the rain tapping on the roof, looking out at Brooks' house. Maybe he should go round and tell Insch the place was all his? Not that it'd do the inspector any good - there was nothing there to link Wiseman with Brooks' death. The Butcher was too clever for that.

Logan turned the key in the ignition and set the windscreen wipers going. They'd emptied Brooks' freezer, just in case it contained any human remains, but he doubted they'd find any. The man who'd led the Flesher investigation back in 1987 hadn't been turned into meat, he'd been turned into pavement pate.

Logan took the scenic route to Insch's house, driving through the old town centre. A clot of schoolchildren lurked in the bus shelter: some smoking cigarettes, some'Oh-myGod'ing into mobile phones, one or two making abstract patterns in the air with hot white sparklers.

A scream.

Logan snapped upright in his seat - a young girl, no more than six years old, was being chased by a little boy in a Margaret Thatcher fright mask.

'Jesus ...' In his day they'd played cowboys and Indians, not serial killer and victims. He pulled out into the town square, past the weird sandstone statue of a sailor, and onto South Road.

Insch's home,'D
UNPROMPTIN
', was a large granite box set back off the road, shielded by a high wall and mature trees, the leaves amber and russet, like frozen fireworks. Logan creaked the gate open and headed up the path. Another rocket exploded in the distance, this one slightly more impressive than the last anaemic attempt.

He leaned on the bell, watching the green sparkles fade away.

He counted to sixty, then tried again. A deep ding-donggggggg sounded somewhere inside the house. Still no answer.

Maybe they'd gone out?

So much for Insch being desperate to see round his dead friend's house. Bloody man was like mercury these days: I want this, I want that, I want something completely different. A vast, bad-tempered child.

Logan tried one last time, then headed back to the car.

'Shhhhhh ...' Wiseman held a finger to his lips as the last peal of the doorbell faded into silence. Then waited five minutes, just to be sure whoever it was had fucked off. Then took his hand off the bitch's mouth.

She was a good girl, didn't scream this time. Learned her lesson. She wasn't much to look at - let herself go a bit after the kids - but then, given the fat git she'd married ... No accounting for taste.

He pulled out a couple of cable-ties and fastened the bitch's wrists behind her back, then wrapped another set around her ankles. Just like her darling husband and the three little girls upstairs. One big happy family.

Wiseman smiled at her. 'Now then, where were we?'

The fat bastard lay flat on his face in the middle of the carpet - spread out like a beached whale, bright red oozing from the back of his bald head.

'He ever tell you about me?'

She whimpered and shook her head.

'No? That's not polite, is it, Insch?' Wiseman heaved the fat man over onto his back and slapped a strip of duct-tape over his mouth. 'How could you not tell your lovely wife that you fucked my life over?' Wiseman sat on Insch's barrel chest, spat in his face. Then slammed a fist into it. The whale's blubber shuddered, and two dark, piggy eyes cracked open.

'The kraken awakes! Hey, Fat Boy: miss me?'

Insch struggled, breath hissing through his nose as he tried to break his bonds.

'No point, Lard Arse. Most people can't snap
one
cable tie, never mind six. You're going nowhere.' He patted Insch's chubby cheek. 'I can't believe you never told her how you beat a fucking confession out of me! Eh? How you told the court I fell ...' Wiseman slammed his fist into Insch's face,'down ...' punch,'the ...' punch,'fucking ...' punch,'stairs!'

He sat back and flexed his hand. 'See, your law-abiding, police officer husband liked beating up suspects, didn't you, Fatty?' He stood, took two steps back and slammed a foot into Insch's ribs.

The bitch whimpered. 'We ... we've got money! You can have it! Just let us go!'

Wiseman pretended to think about it for a minute. 'No.''

But ... but they'll come looking for us! You can't--'

'Oh, shut up.' He tore off another strip of duct-tape and sealed her cakehole. 'What've I got to lose, eh? These bastards catch me they're going to screw me over. Just like last time. I've seen the papers: what is it, five, six murders? You think two more are going to make any difference?'

She mumbled something behind her gag, eyes wide, terrified.

'Shhhh ...' He dropped down in front of her, stroked her hair, cupped her podgy face in his hand; smiling as Fatty thrashed about on the floor, making angry, impotent noises. 'I've been waiting for this for ages. Believe me, there are worse things than dying. There's being banged up with fucking sickos and kiddy-fiddlers for fifteen years. There's getting raped in the showers. Now why don't you settle back and enjoy the show? It's going to be a lonnnnng night ...'

Heather sat, knees drawn up to her chest, ears straining at the darkness.

'I don't understand, what--'

'Shhh!'

Duncan pulled on his hard-done-by face. 'I was only asking.'

'Can you hear it? I can hear it ...'

'Maybe you should eat something?'

'I can hear it breathing.'

'Heather--'

'Something's out there.' She pointed out into the darkness, where the bars were, and Duncan shuddered.

'Don't think about it.'

'You know what it is, don't you?'

'There's still plenty of pork left. Or is it veal? I can't tell.'

'Duncan - tell me!'

'Where do you think he's gone? I mean, he left enough food--'

'DUNCAN!'

When he replied it was little more than a whisper.
'It's the Dark.'

Heather pushed herself back into the corner, praying that the line of bars would be enough to keep the Dark from breaking through. 'What ... what does it want?'

'What do you think?'

Breathing in the darkness. Watching her. Waiting.

'It wants me ...'

The morning briefing was a pretty dismal affair - DI Steel standing in for Insch who hadn't turned up that morning. Probably hungover after a night in the Redgarth, drinking to DSI Brooks' memory. So Steel was just going through the motions till he turned up: no new leads, no new victims, no sign of Wiseman. Same as yesterday and the day before.

She wrapped up the meeting with a half-hearted chorus of 'We are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up!' then let them all get back to whatever jobs Insch had given them before he'd been suspended. Which left Logan and Rennie back in the Flesher history room, clambering up the north face of Ancient Paperwork Mountain.

By half past ten Rennie was off making tea again - anything to escape all those INTERPOL reports - when Faulds reappeared. The Chief Constable dumped his suitcase by the radiator, stretched, yawned, and slouched into his seat. 'Sorry I'm so late, but I couldn't face the redeye.' He fumbled the top off a waxed cardboard cup of coffee. 'Why does everyone have to go feral on Guy Fawkes night?'

Logan looked up from the latest in a long line of crime scene reports. 'Fireworks?'

'It'll make my life a lot easier when they ban the bloody things. Seven children with first-degree burns. One little girl lost most of her left hand ... mind you, she was trying to stuff a rocket up some poor dog's bum at the time: wanted to see if it would explode. What's wrong with people today?'

There was no answer to that, so Logan went back to work. But he could feel Faulds watching him.

It took the Chief Constable nearly five minutes to pop the question:'So ... what happened to your face?'

'I'd rather not talk about it, sir.'

Faulds stared at him for a while, shrugged, then asked for an update on the case, nodding and groaning as Logan went through everything that had happened since the CC left for Birmingham on Friday.

'So basically,' said Faulds, when Logan had finished,'I go away for three days and it all goes to rat-shit.'

'Something like that.'

The Chief Constable sniffed. 'I can't believe Wiseman threw Brooks off a roof. I mean, he was a Neanderthal and his methods were ... questionable, but he didn't deserve that.'

It was hard to imagine who did. 'We've got CCTV footage of someone helping Brooks into the tower block. He looks plastered - post mortem turned up traces of heroin in his system, Isobel only found one injection site.'

'Poor sod. At least we've got CCTV--'

'We can't make an ID. It's a council system so the resolution's terrible, and the guy's wearing a hoodie, never looks at the camera.' Logan pointed at a fresh collection of photos on the wall of death. 'We found the flat he kept Brooks in; according to council records the last tenant was a Mrs Irene Grey. She went into hospital for a cataract operation, caught MRSA. Died two months ago.'

'And?'

'Turns out her son is one Martin Grey - doing twelve years in Peterhead Prison for abduction, rape and forced imprisonment. Grabbed a sixteen-year-old boy and kept him chained and drugged for nearly a week.'

'Jesus ...

''Martin and Wiseman were in the same cell block.'

Faulds took a sip of his coffee. 'Circumstantial at best. We need prints, fibre, witnesses ...'

'None of which we have. Wiseman's had years to plan all this, he's taking precautions, wearing gloves, cleaning up after himself.'

'I don't like the thought of someone bumping off retired senior police officers with impunity.' He drummed his fingers on the desk for a bit. 'So what's the plan?'

'Up in the air at the moment. Insch hasn't been in yet.'

The Chief Constable checked his watch. 'Not still suspended is he?'

'No, but Brooks' death hit him kind of hard. The DCS says we should give him a couple of days to--'

Faulds was already dialling. 'I'd better give him a call, let him know we're here if he needs to talk.' He held in silence for a moment, then left a message asking Insch to call him back. 'Not answering his mobile.'

Logan tried the inspector's home number. It rang and rang and rang and,
'You've reached the Insch residence. I'm afraid we're not able to come to the phone right now ...'

'Aren't you popular.' Wiseman listened as some policeman's voice echoed out of the answering machine.' ...
can call the station as soon as you get this. Thanks.' Bleeeeeeep.
He hit the delete button.

'How you doing, Fat Boy? Hungry? You have to be hungry, look at the size of you!'

Insch could only scowl. Poor bastard. Ha, ha, ha.

He wasn't looking too pretty this morning: his piggy face all swollen and covered with bruises. It had taken a shit heap of duct-tape to strap the fat git to an armchair, but it was worth it just to see him wriggle. Wiseman grinned, and placed the hot frying pan down on the dining room table. The smell of scorching varnish filled the air, covering the stink of two people tied to their chairs for over eighteen hours with no access to a toilet.

'Mmm ...' Wiseman prodded the meat in the sizzling pan. 'Want some?'

Insch's eyes were like burning coals. If looks could kill, the fat bastard would be a walking doomsday device.

'Where are my manners, eh? Ladies first.' Wiseman grabbed the stinky bitch by the hair, pulled her head back, and gripped one end of her tape gag. 'If you shout, try to raise the alarm, warn someone, any of that shite, I'll kill you.' The tape came away with a patina of smeared lipstick. She burst into tears.

'Please. Please let us go! We won't tell anyone! You can just leave and no one will know!'

Wiseman stared for a moment, then slapped her. 'LOOK AT MY FUCKING FACE!' He hit her again. 'What am I going to do? Shave off my beard and buy a ginger wig? Think that'll work? Think people won't notice the big,' he hit her again,'fucking scar?' Once more for luck: snapping her head round, blood and spittle dribbling down her chin.