Flesh House (20 page)

29

Alec fired up his camera, pointing it through the windscreen at the darkened house. 'We looking for anything in particular?'

Logan waited for Steel to say something, but she was already clambering out of the car, a freshly lit cigarette between her teeth. Blue-and-white POLICE tape flapped in the wind, a wriggling snake of it caught in the bramble bushes that grew along the drystane dyke opposite the Leiths' converted steading. Other than that, there was no sign that this place had witnessed a sudden, violent death.

He dug the key out of his pocket - courtesy of a brief stop past FHQ - unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. A highpitched
bleep, bleep, bleep
came from a small plastic box on the wall, lights flashing, showing an intruder in 'Zone One'. The keypad was in the cupboard under the stairs and Logan punched in the code he'd got from the FLO. 'One, nine, nine, five ...' the year the Leiths got married. Alarm disarmed.

The Environmental Health team had pretty much wrecked the place getting rid of anything contaminated with body fluids. They'd cut large chunks out of the carpet, removing it and the underlay beneath, exposing pale patches of bleached chipboard. The smell of chlorine in the kitchen was almost overpowering, but the blood was gone. God knew how many canisters of trychloroethylene they'd had to use to get rid of it all, but the walls were blotchy where the super-strength bleach had eaten away the colour. Logan threw the kitchen window open, then did the same with the back door, trying to get rid of the swimming pool stink.

And then he went through the kitchen units, looking for anything from Weight Watchers that might suggest Valerie Leith had been a member. There were a couple of cartons of Slim Fast in the cupboards, a packet of Ryvita, but no official products.

Steel was in the back garden, fag in one hand, mobile phone clamped to her ear with the other. She shouted in through the open window,'Found anything?' And when Logan told her no, went back to her phone call. 'I'm not saying that, Susan, I was just ... but ...'

So Logan searched the lounge, then the dining room, bedrooms, bathroom, with Alec trailing along behind him. 'You going to tell me what we're looking for then?'

'The Flesher's victims aren't just picked at random: he has a selection criteria. If we can figure out how he finds them, we've got a much better chance of catching the bastard. And I thought ...' They'd ended up back in the kitchen and Logan still hadn't found anything. 'I thought I had a connection, but Valerie Leith never went to Weight Watchers. Close, but no low-fat Chicken Kiev.'

Alec shrugged. 'Shame - that would have looked good on telly: lone-wolf cop makes connection that breaks the case.'

'Always thought of myself as team player.'

'Yeah, well, the public likes lone wolves better. More romantic.'

Logan pulled the window closed, then did the same with the back door. Stopping with his fingers resting on the handle, looking back at the bleach-stained kitchen. All the way up the walls. Not just all over the floor.

A slow grin spread across Logan's face: he finally knew what had been bugging him about the Leith crime scene.

30

DI Steel leaned back against the working surface and ground her cigarette out in the sink. 'It doesn't prove anything.'

'Look.' Logan pointed at the bleach marks above the tiled splashback. 'There was blood all the way up the walls. Four streaks.' He wrapped his hand around an imaginary knife, raised it high, then stabbed the inspector four times. 'Each time the knife comes out it sprays blood in an arc up the walls.'

'Aye, it was in the SOC report.' She shook her head. 'Jesus ... I do read these things you know!'

'None of the other crime scenes have that kind of stabbingblood-pattern.'

'So she fought back, it's--'

'Alec, you got the footage you shot this morning at the Stephens'? I need to see the kitchen.'

Alec went through his pockets, pulling out HDV tapes and reading the labels. He found what he was looking for, swapped out the one in the camera and fiddled with the buttons.

'I don't see what this has to do with--'

'Got it.' Alec flipped the camera's little screen around and pressed play.

'See?' Logan pointed at the picture,'There's blood all over the floor, none on the walls or ceiling. I've been through every crime scene photo since 1985 and when he kills them onsite it's always the same - floor soaked, blood splashed to about knee high, fine spray on the units. No marks up the walls.'

'Oh come off it. Leith saw the bloody Flesher!'

'Yeah, and lived to tell the tale. This guy has enough time to turn the kitchen into a butcher's shop as he hacks up Valerie Leith, but doesn't get round to killing the husband? Does that sound like the Flesher to you?'

Steel sucked a breath in between her teeth, face creased into an unhappy grimace. 'But the husband
saw
him!'

Logan held up the copy of
Smoak With Blood
he'd found in the Leiths' bedroom. 'It's all in here. The MO, the costume, the fact he leaves bits of meat behind. Best selling book in Aberdeen since we raided that butcher's shop. You got any idea how many Margaret Thatcher fright masks were bought last week? Hundreds.'

'Stop. Back the What-the-Fuck bus up right now. You are
no
' making this bastarding case any more complicated than it already is. Understand?'

'Plus I called the lab - they did a rush job on that slab of meat we found at the Stephen house this morning. It was a bit of Duncan Inglis. If the Flesher's still got slices of him knocking around, how come Valerie Leith ends up in her own freezer?'

The inspector took another look around the kitchen: the bleached-out walls and ceiling. 'Oh bloody hell ... Fine. OK. You win, get another search team up here - half a dozen uniforms, couple of dogs, and the IB - we'll go through the place from scratch, but if this is all a sodding waste of time
you
can tell the ACC why we pissed away a dozen man-days.'

'Heather? Heather, are you awake?'

Darkness. Stench. Cold.

She groaned and slapped both hands over her eyes. 'Heather?'

'Go back to sleep, Mr New.'

'Don't call me that - my name's Tom, I told you three times already.' Pause. 'It
stinks
in here ...'

'Well, whose fault is that?'

'I'm thirsty.'

She let her hands fall away and stared up into the void.

Mr New was always bloody thirsty.

'Is there anything to drink on that side?'

Heather felt the water bottle, lying next to her on the smelly mattress. 'He'll be back soon.'

A shuffling sound, then Mr New was whispering to her through the bars. 'We have to get out of here.'

'The Dark won't let us.'

'We have to try! What have you got on that side? Anything we can use as a weapon?'

'You can't--'

'I'M NOT DYING IN HERE!' He hammered on the bars, making them boom and rattle. 'I'm not ...'

Later.

She could hear him feeling his way around on the other side of their cold, dark prison. 'It's a container ...' he said at last. 'Like the ones they send offshore. It has to be. I can feel the locking bar on the door ...'

He fumbled with something, grunted, swore, then tried again. 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!' More fumbling, then what sounded like a man's belt being unfastened and removed. 'Go on you bastard ...' Clicking noises, and then a rusty creak. 'Come on, come on ...' Another creak. 'Yes, yes, come on ...'

CLANG. More swearing.

And then a loud metallic groan. 'You fucking beauty!'

A thin shaft of light streaked into the darkness. Heather could just make out Mr New's face - he was grinning.

Duncan placed a hand on Heather's shoulder. 'This isn't a
good idea.
'

She grabbed the bars. 'Get me out! Don't you dare leave me in here!'

Mr New looked back at her. 'It's padlocked, OK? The bars are padlocked. I'll get help. I'll bring them back.'

'
Seriously: this is a really, really bad idea
!'

'Don't leave me!'

'I'll be back ...' He put one hand against the door and pushed. Outside, there was nothing but a dirt-walled corridor lit by a flickering fluorescent tube. And for the first time, Heather got a look at her cellmate: he wasn't a tall man, but he looked ...
friendly
, with his bald head and little white beard. He stepped over the threshold. 'I promise. I'll be back.'

And Mr New was gone.

Duncan wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close.

'
Shhhh. It's OK. He'll be back soon. You'll see. He'll be back soon, then everything will be all night again.
'

The sunlight was already beginning to go as the search team worked its way across the large back garden. 'You know what, Sherlock,' said Steel, cigarette firmly clamped between her lips, smoke curling away into the pale blue sky,'this wasn't one of your better ideas.'

Logan leant on the decking rail and watched one of the dog handlers trying to persuade his Alsatian not to crap in the flower beds. 'There's got to be
something
here.'

'I'm giving this ten more minutes then we're sodding off back to the station.' Steel flicked her cigarette butt away to join the little pile she'd made in the last couple of hours. 'But first - you can go put the kettle on.'

Logan opened the patio doors and they stepped back into the kitchen, just as one of the IB techs was shovelling a dessert spoon of ice-cream into his gob. He froze as he caught sight of them. 'Whad?' mouth full,'Id was onry goig to wasde ...'

Steel snatched the spoon from his hands. 'This is supposed to be a crime scene!'

The tech swallowed, blushed and stuck the carton back on the work surface. 'I was only--'

'Don't give me that bollocks.' She pointed back towards the rest of the house. 'Now get out there and find me some forensics: you're supposed to be a bloody professional, for God's sake!' She waited until the kitchen door closed behind the tech's embarrassed backside before asking Logan,'Well - what is it?'

'Mackie's, vanilla.'

'Ooh, cool. Get us a clean spoon, eh?'

Logan rummaged one out of the kitchen drawer and passed it over.

'Ta ... You heard from Insch?'

'Wife gets out of hospital today. She wasn't well enough for the memorial service.'

Steel was silent for a long time. 'Poor sods.' She dug her spoon into the tub and extracted a heap of vanilla. 'We're up to about two hundred pound in the kitty, going to get one of those benches in Duthie Park. Somewhere nice, you know: with a view of the ducks or something? In memory of Sophie Insch, 2003 to 2007. Sorely missed. That kind of thing.'

'He'd like that.'

'Aye, well ...' The ice-cream disappeared. 'Best present we can give Insch is to put that cock-weasel Wiseman away for the rest of his sodding life.' She stood there with a thoughtful look on her face, as if she was on the verge of some portentous announcement. 'See if you can find some chocolate syrup.'

Duncan was right, Mr New did come back: unconscious and thrown over the Flesher's shoulder like a side of meat. He was dumped on the metal floor in a puddle of his own vomit.

The Flesher stared down at Mr New for a minute, then turned and left the room, slamming the door behind him. Leaving Heather in darkness again.

She shuffled forwards. 'Mr New?'

'
See: told you it was a bad idea.
'

'Mr New, are you dead?'

She strained her ears, just able to make out a wet breathing sound. But she couldn't tell if it was Mr New, or the Dark. Heather waved Duncan over. 'Is he dead?'

'
Not yet. Soon.
'

She unfastened the top of her water bottle and reached through the bars, groping her way along the rusty floor with her fingers: metal, metal, cold sick -'Urgh' - metal, hair. She dragged his face round, and poured water over it.

Coughing. Spluttering. Groaning. And then tears. 'Oh Jesus ...'

She heard him struggle to his knees, breathing in painful hisses. Then there was a clang as he fell back against the bars. He stank of puke and fear and blood.

'He's ...' Mr New spat. 'Ow ... It's like a rabbit warren out there ... underground ... dirt ... I found her. I found Hazel ...' He was sobbing now, the words getting harder and harder to make out. 'He's got a butchery with ... with bits of ... She was my wife ...'

BANG - something thumped into the bars. 'SHE WAS MY WIFE!' Then Mr New's sour breath washed across Heather's face. 'He's going to kill us. I've seen it - bits of body hanging from hooks in the ceiling. I won't be a victim. I won't!' He was whispering now, as if that would make any difference to the Dark. 'When he comes back, I'll pretend to be dead and ... and then you start screaming, and he goes over to see what's wrong and I ... I'll ram his head into the bars. Keep doing it till the bastard's dead. You grab his hands! You grab his hands and pull, so he can't get away!'

'I don't--'

'You have to! You have to or we'll both die in this shit-hole! Is that what you want?'

Duncan stood behind him, staring at the closed door.'
Maybe he's got a point? If you don't do it, you'll end up dead like me.
'

'But I can't--'

'Yes you can!'

Heather shook her head. 'I can't.'

'We have to work together, Heather. We have to, or we'll die in here.' Mr New took a deep breath. 'He comes in, you scream, I charge. It'll all be over in a couple of minutes and we'll be free. OK? We'll be free ...'

'Well,' said Steel, watching as the IB packed their kit back into the filthy Transit van,'that was a waste of time and money.' It was cold and dark outside, just a sliver of moon poking out between the clouds as everyone locked up and got ready to go home.

The lead tech peeled off his SOC suit. 'Nothing left to find - the whole place's been bleached to buggery and back, half the carpet's missing, any evidence is so compromised it's not funny.'

Steel turned and poked Logan in the shoulder. 'Well, Poirot, you figured out how you're going to explain this one to the ACC?'

'But it's a copycat, it
has
to be.'

'Blah, blah, blah.'

A loud bleeping noise came from inside the house, closely followed by the wailing alarm and a uniformed PC's head. 'It's not working properly!'

Logan rolled his eyes. 'Did you enter the alarm code?'

'Course I entered the alarm code:1993.'

'Five. One, nine, nine,
five
.'

The PC disappeared back into the house muttering,'Bloody handwriting's appalling ...'

Logan turned back to the IB team-leader. 'Is there anything we didn't search?'

'House, garden, garage, cars - we did the lot.'

'Come on, Laz,' said Steel,'give it up, eh?'

He pulled out the last search report again, flipping through to the photocopied map at the back - reading by the glow of the Transit van's headlights. They'd gone over every inch of the property, twice, and still not turned up anything. Logan took one last look around him: house, front garden, flash cars, road, field, other field, garage, and back to the house again. The nearest neighbours were a faint yellow flicker through trees. Miles from anywhere.

'You think they're on mains water?'

Steel shrugged. 'Probably.'

'What about sewage?' Clutching at straws.

'How the hell would ...' She drifted to a halt and stared at him. 'Oh, you're
kidding
... Tell me you're kidding!'