Flesh House (19 page)

SMOAK WITH BLOOD

28

'Sodding cock-monkeys ...' DI Steel puffed out her cheeks and blew. 'What time is it?'

Logan peeled back the cuff of his SOC oversuit and checked.

'Nearly half seven.' Monday morning hadn't started well - three hours they'd been at it, and the sun was still nowhere to be seen.

The inspector groaned. 'It's going to be a long bloody day.' She stepped back to let an IB technician carrying a plastic evidence box squeeze past. 'What the hell is that?'

'Everything from the freezer.' The man said, holding it up for inspection.

Steel went for a quick rummage. 'Peas, sweetcorn, fish fingers ...' She pulled out a solid brown lump of something wrapped in clingfilm and waved it at Logan. 'That look like goulash, sausage casserole, or curry to you?'

'Could be mince?'

She chucked it back in the box and picked up a chunk of something pinky-red. 'Ahoy-hoy, this looks promising. Human remains?'

Logan shrugged - it all looked like meat to him.

'Go on then,' she told the guy holding the box,'don't just stand there, get it tested.'

The technician said,'Yes ma'am,' but Logan could hear him muttering 'silly old cow ...' under his breath as he carried it out to the IB van.

Steel fidgeted about in her pockets. 'Got a bad feeling about this, Laz - something in me water. Like bloody cystitis.' She wandered through to the lounge and watched the whitesuited figures picking their way through the contents with tiny hoovers and fingerprint powder. 'Only thing stopping the press buggering us with a cactus is that everyone knows Wiseman's guilty.' She shifted from foot to foot. 'He is guilty, isn't he?'

'Faulds says they thought Wiseman had an accomplice twenty years ago. Maybe this is him working on his own?'

Steel scowled at him. 'Thought you bloody caught the accomplice - what's-his-face, the brother-in-law?'

'Yeah, well ....' Cough. 'Maybe it wasn't him.'

'Gee, you
think?
' The inspector turned on her heel and stomped upstairs, her SOC suit making zwip-zwop noises as she climbed. Logan followed her up, across the landing and into the master bedroom, where she cracked open the window and lit a cigarette. Outside, in the back garden, two uniformed officers in the ubiquitous white paper oversuits were rooting through the bushes and shed, the grass twinkling with early frost in the half light.

'Hairy bastarding arseholes.' Steel flicked a few grey flakes of dove-grey ash out into the cold morning. 'How the hell am I supposed to solve this one?'

'There's a press conference at half eleven. Do you--'

'I mean it's no' as if them other bastards managed, and they tried for
years
!' She ran a hand across her face, pulling it all out of shape. 'You know I had to phone the Chief Constable at half three this morning and tell him we'd screwed up on this one? "Wiseman's no' the Flesher after all, terribly sorry old bean." Went down like Mother Teresa in a brothel ...'

Logan let her moan while he picked through one of the bedside cabinets. One drawer for socks, one drawer for underpants, one drawer for the assorted junk every man collected: handkerchiefs, playing cards, bookmarks, a little windup plastic nun that was probably supposed to walk, but just made obscene grinding motions instead. There was a photo next to the bedside light - Tom and Hazel Stephen, the Flesher's latest victims. They were at some sort of formal event, him in a suit and tie, her spilling out of a low-cut black cocktail dress. They looked happy.

'--creek without a paddle. Why the hell did those bastards no' finish the damn case properly twenty years ago? How come it's my fault all of a sudden?' Steel sank down on the edge of the double bed and sagged. 'And that wee bugger Alec's been following me about for days. Everywhere I go - there's his bastarding camera. Can't even take a crap without the BBC filming it.'

She pinged an inch of ash onto the oatmeal-coloured carpet and ground it in with her blue plastic bootie. 'Couple more days of this and I'm going to end up like Insch.'

Steel collapsed back on the bed, hands clamped over her face, cigarette poking out of her mouth, spiralling smoke towards the ceiling. 'Come on then - one more time.'

Logan stuck the photo back where he'd got it. 'Do we have to?'

'Yes.'

'Fine ... Next-door neighbour calls 999 at one fifteen and complains about the Stephens' dog barking. Calls back at two when the dog stops - says she was about to go round and give them a piece of her tiny mind when she looks out her window and sees someone dressed in a butcher's apron and Margaret Thatcher fright mask, loading plastic bags into the boot of the Stephens' car.

Steel was silent - and Logan was beginning to think she'd fallen asleep, when she said,'And?'

'And nothing.'

'How did he get here? He left in the Stephens' car, but how did he get here in the first place? If the bastard hopped on the number fifteen bus, dressed in his blood-soaked apron, I think someone would've noticed, don't you?'

'I'll get someone to run the number plates on every parked car within, what, three streets?'

'Four.' She pulled the fag from her mouth and coughed. 'Not that it'll do us any sodding good. He'll have picked it up by now. Get a lookout request on the Stephens' car.'

'Already done.' He wandered over to the other side of the bed. Hazel Stephen's bedside cabinet held the clock radio and a stack of romance paperbacks and
How
To diet books.

'Right ...' Steel hauled herself off the bed and stretched. 'Hold the fort for five minutes, I'm off for a wee.'

Logan pulled the bottom drawer out: pop socks and tights. Middle drawer: pants, thongs and huge knickers. Top drawer: bras, a pair of reading glasses, and a newsletter from Weight Watchers.

He picked it up and flicked through, looking at all the miserable-before and happy-ever-after pictures. How did Rennie put it:'
So Wiseman's a chubby chaser then.
' Logan dug out his mobile phone and called Control, wanting to know if Heather Inglis had been going to Weight Watchers too. She had. 'What about Valerie Leith?'

There was a pause and some clacking keyboard noises.'
No idea. I can put you through to the FLO though?
'

Another pause, bleeping, and then,'
Aye? I mean, PC Munro?
'

Logan asked the same question.

'
Don't think so, but
--'

'Well, can you ask the husband?'

'
I wish. Bugger's gone into Witness Protection. You know what they're like: law unto them-bloody-selves. Aye, unless they want something then it's all "we're on the same team, aren't we?" Tell you
--'

'What about the timeline? Any sign of her going to meetings?'

'
Eh? Oh, no. None of her friends mentioned it. Nothing in her diary either.
'

'Can you speak to the Witness Protection lot and get them to ask?'

'
Aye, but don't hold your breath.
'

Alec sloped into the bedroom, HDV camera dangling from his hand, and slumped against the windowsill. 'No offence, but this isn't making good television.' He looked around. 'Where's Her Royal Grumpiness?'

'Gone for a pee. They finished downstairs?'

'It's another crime scene soaked in blood, but there's nothing happening - no narrative drive. At this rate half the bloody programme's going to be shots of white oversuits searching stuff.'

'Sorry if our murder enquiry's boring you, Alec.'

The cameraman shrugged. 'Not your fault. But we need--'

'Oh for God's sake!' Steel appeared at the bedroom door, staring down at the oatmeal-coloured carpet and the new set of sticky red footprints. 'Alec!' The trail ended at the cameraman's blue booties.

'Oops ... It was kinda all over the kitchen ...'

'And now it's all over the bloody house!'

'Sorry.'

'Do you have any idea--'

Logan stopped her before she could get going. 'Found a possible lead: Heather Inglis and Hazel Stephen both went to Weight Watchers.'

'Valerie Leith?'

'Can't tell yet, waiting for Witness Protection to get back to us.'

'Aye, and we'll all be drawing our old-age-pensions by then. If she's in Weight Watchers there'll be evidence up at the crime scene. Low-fat Sellotape, membership forms, before-and-after trousers, that kind of thing.' Steel undid the zip on her SOC outfit. 'Well, come on then - romper suits off, we've got a house to ransack.'

'It's ... it's important not to panic ...' The new person's voice came through from the other side of the bars, where Duncan died. Where the Dark was the strongest. 'You hear me? We have to stay calm ...'

At least he'd stopped screaming.

Heather picked another escalope from the tinfoil parcel, biting through the herb crust. Very tasty.

'
He's a bit of a whinge, isn't he?
'

'Leave him alone, he's just scared.'

She could hear Mr New scrabbling forwards in the darkness, grabbing hold of the bars. 'Who are you talking to? Why won't you tell me who you're talking to? What's happening?

What's--'

Heather cut off the rising tide of panic before he drowned them both. 'I'm talking to my husband.'

'Is he ... hello? Why don't--'

'He won't talk to you. Because he's dead.'

'Oh Jesus ... I'm locked up with a lunatic.'

Heather nodded, even though the new man couldn't see her. 'I've gone mad.'

There was a long pause ... and then Mr New said,'What's your name?'

Heather chewed, swallowed, then told him.

'You're Heather Inglis?
The
Heather Inglis? I read about you ... oh Jesus ...' He started to cry. 'Oh fucking Jesus ... it ... it
was him
, wasn't it? The Flesher ... oh Jesus Fucking Christ ...'

'Who's the--'

'I didn't see him! I was ... from the back garden and ... oh God, Hazel ... What happened to Hazel? Where is she? WHERE'S MY WIFE? HAZEL?' He was screaming again. 'HAZEL?'

'
Well, this is going to get old really fast.
' Duncan plonked himself down on the mattress and sniffed at the tinfoil parcel in Heather's hands.'
That smells nice.
'

'You want some?'

'HAZEL!'

'
Can't: dead remember?
'

'HAZEL!' The screams gave way to sobbing. 'Hazel ...'

Heather took pity on him. 'Are you hungry, Mr New? Do you want something to eat?' She held one of the escalopes out between the bars. 'It's good.'

'Hazel ...'

'You need to keep your strength up.'

'
Heather, I don't think you should get too attached to this guy.
'

The sobbing went on for a while, but eventually Mr New accepted a drink of water and one of the escalopes. She could hear him sniffing it, then the crunch as he bit through the crust, mumbling,'What is it?' as he chewed.

'Veal, I think ... or pork. Difficult to tell in the dark. Maybe--'

Mr New was spitting, gagging, retching.

'Are you OK?'

'Aaaaaaaaagh, Jesus ...' A wet splattering noise as he vomited onto the cold metal floor - the stomach-churning reek filled the stale air.

'It's not
that
bad.'

He was crying again. 'It's people! Oh Jesus ... Don't you get it? It was on the news: the Flesher kills people and cuts them up for meat! We're eating people ...'

Duncan nodded.'
He's right, you know.
'

Heather felt her stomach lurch. 'But I've been eating it for ages ...'

'
You didn't have a choice, though, did you? It was that or starve.
'

Heather stared at Duncan, remembering what the Butcher - the Flesher - did to him. 'It was you, wasn't it? All this time ... it was you.'

He nodded.

'Oh Duncan.'

Her dead husband smiled.'
Hey, at least I was tasty.
' He pointed at the tinfoil parcel in her hands.'
Don't let it go to waste.
'

'But it's people ...'

'
It's just meat, Honey. In the end we're all just meat.
'

Heather picked up another slice from the parcel ... 'I can't.'

'
Yes you can.
'

Duncan was right.