Flesh House (9 page)

'No!'

'Shirley Gidwani was pregnant, did you know that, when you and Wiseman carved her up?'

'We didn't--'

'Stuffed chunks of her in the freezer like she was nothing more than joints of bloody meat.'

'I never--'

'I had to tell her parents!'

McFarlane slapped both hands over his ears. 'Stop it!'

'You didn't even leave them enough for a decent burial.'

'I DIDN'T KILL ANYONE! It wasn't me! Ask him! Ask Ken! He'll tell you--'

'Oh we intend to, Mr McFarlane, soon as we catch him. And we'd also like a word with your wife ...' Faulds checked his notes,'Kirsty.'

McFarlane's face went fish-belly pale between the bruises. 'She left me.'

'We know that: where is she now?'

'I ... I don't know.' He stared at the tabletop. 'She ran off with an electrician called Neil, OK? You happy?'

'Not even vaguely.' Faulds pushed his chair back and stood, towering over the shivering butcher. 'I hope you've got a good lawyer Mr McFarlane, because you're going to need one.'

12

'You really think he's involved?' asked Logan as they drove back to FHQ.

Faulds didn't look round, watching the grey granite buildings drifting past instead. 'Don't tell me you bought all that, "It wasn't me" crap.'

The radio was on in the background: Jamie McLaughlin being interviewed on Northsound 2 about his book and the hunt for Ken Wiseman.
'Did you ever dream when you wrote Smoak With Blood that it would all happen again?'

'McFarlane just doesn't seem ...' Logan frowned. 'I don't think he'd be any use. And from what I hear, Wiseman's not the kind to carry passengers.'

'Not in my worst nightmares. You know, Damien, when the appeal court overturned his conviction in
1995--'

'And if McFarlane is involved, why didn't we find any forensics in his flat, or his car? The amount of blood at the scene - we should have found something.'

'--it was like everything I'd ever believed in was a lie. And now here we go again, right back where we started.'

Faulds sighed. 'I know.'

'Right, I suppose we'd better have a record, then well be back with Jamie McLaughlin, author of
Smoak With Blood ...'

Logan joined the tail end of a queue of traffic, shuffling its way down Market Street. 'What does it mean, "Smoak"?'

'Soak, I think. Or something like that. Comes from a painting in Trinity Hall, where the Aberdeen trades meet. We interviewed pretty much everyone involved there during the original investigation - bizarre place, full of all this historical stuff and ancient paintings. We should probably pay them another visit, see if any of the 1990 suspects are still around ...' And then he started humming along to the song on the radio, just off-key enough to set Logan's teeth on edge. The torture didn't stop till the record did.

'You're listening to Northsound Radio Two, and I'm in the studio with Jamie McLaughlin--'

'You know,' said Faulds,'you should read Jamie's book. It's a good insight into what happened in eighty-seven. Remind me when we get back to the station, I'll lend you my copy.'

'And I understand sales of the book have rocketed?'

'Then we'll get that trip to Trinity Hall organized.'

'--guilty about it, but the publishers have been swamped. There's talk of a television series on Channel Four, and a new book to accompany it.'

Faulds drummed his fingers on the dashboard. 'And we should try a search for McFarlane's missing wife as well. PNC, census records, Friends Reunited: the usual.' He started up the painful humming again.

'It's weird, I don't want to profit from other people's misfortune, but ... but it feels like my whole life's been shaped by Ken Wiseman and the murders he commits.'

'Dig out her statement when you get a minute. Should be on file somewhere. Probably a load of old bollocks about how her brother wouldn't hurt a fly, but you never know. And then we're going to book a restaurant; haven't had a decent curry since I got here.'

'I just have to pray that they catch him before he kills again--'
Amen to that.

'God, look at them,' said Rennie, whispering like some sort of naughty schoolboy, talking behind the teacher's back,'I'll bet they're figuring out how to blame this on someone else.'

DI Insch, DI Steel and CC Faulds, stood at the front of the incident room arguing quietly amongst themselves.

Rennie sniffed. 'Not like it's our fault is it? Insch should have called in the Environmental Health people from the start.'

He was right, but Logan didn't want to be overheard agreeing with him. 'What happened to you last night then?'

The constable grinned. 'Wouldn't you like to know?'

Logan thought about it, said,'Not really,' and went back to his paperwork.

'OK, OK, I'll tell you.' Rennie scooted his chair closer. 'Her name's Laura and we were at it all night. It ever becomes an Olympic sport, that girl could bonk for Scotland. She could suck a bowling ball through a garden hose.' He sighed, happily. 'Think I'm in love.'

'It's like Romeo and Juliet.'

'Only with lots and lots of condoms.'

The discussion at the incident board was getting heated, DI Insch heading his usual shade of beetroot.

'What's the book at?' asked Logan, as Insch placed a huge finger in the middle of Faulds' chest and poked.

'Six hundred for lamping someone, three hundred for a heart attack.'

'You're taking bets on when Insch'll have a heart attack now? What the hell is wrong with you people?' Logan shook his head. Then put ten quid on the inspector punching someone before the week was out. From the look of things, it was probably going to be Chief Constable Mark Faulds.

Insch turned and stormed out of the room, followed a beat later by DI Steel and an angry-looking Faulds. Maybe the end of the week was a little conservative: Logan doubted Insch would last till the end of the day.

'Three cups of tea, two rowies and an Eccles cake.' DC Rennie stuck the tray on top of a mound of dusty archive boxes, then helped himself to one of the cowpat-shaped disks of flour, lard, butter and salt, chewing as he handed out the mugs.

Faulds accepted his with an exasperated smile - still on the phone with his Deputy Chief Constable. 'I know it is, Arthur, but it's the same every year ...' He grabbed the other rowie, lumbering Logan with the Eccles cake.

The room looked even smaller than it had when Faulds had claimed it for his own yesterday, marking his territory with a laminated sheet of A4 taped to the door:'F
LESHER
H
ISTORY
R
OOM
'. Someone kept sticking Post-it notes on it with,'A
BANDON
H
OPE
A
LL
Y
E
W
HO
E
NTER
H
ERE
' scrawled on them - it looked like DI Steel's handwriting. The walls were lined with stacks of file boxes going back twenty-five years, each one representing another Flesher victim. Newcastle, Glasgow, London, Dublin, Manchester, Birmingham: they'd all sent up everything they had, and now Logan, Faulds and Rennie were sifting through the lot, looking for anything that might help catch Ken Wiseman.

Rennie parked his backside on one of the three desks squeezed in between the case histories, and munched his way through his rowie, staring at the death board as Logan pinned up another victim in chronological order.

'So,' said the constable, pausing to sook his fingers clean of grease,'Wiseman's a chubby chaser then?'

Logan pulled out the crime scene photo that went with the face - another kitchen splattered with blood - and stuck it on the board. 'What?'

Rennie pointed at the photos. 'All the women: chunky. Most of the blokes too. Not wanting to speak ill of the dead and that, but the whole lot look like they could have done with a few less pies.'

Logan opened a box file from Northumbria Police and dug about for the next victim. 'If he's killing them for meat, he'll want a reasonable covering of flesh, won't he?'

Rennie shook his head. 'Fat people got the same amount of muscle as thin ones, it's just buried under lots of lard. I saw a programme on it. Mind you, my mum always says that when you're cooking stuff, fat's where all the flavour is.'

'Thank you for that startling insight.'

Logan looked at the Chief Constable, but he was still on the phone, laying on the calm and reasonable with a trowel:'Arthur, you're perfectly capable of making the decision on your own ... No ... Arthur, if I didn't think you were the best man for the job I wouldn't have picked you ...'

'Do you think he roasts or fries them?''You're supposed to be going through the door-to-doors.''Yeah, but it's all twenty years out of date.''Don't whinge.''But I'm bored.' Rennie struck a pose. 'Shouldn't be in here, pawing through ancient history, I should be out there: fighting crime! I'm a lean, mean, detecting machine!'

'You're an idiot.' Logan went back to the box and pulled out the coroner's report. A small stack of glossy eight-by-tens slithered out, scattering across the grubby carpet tiles. Logan swore and started picking them up - each one showed a joint of meat, photographed from various angles as it defrosted.

The victim's picture was paper-clipped onto the scene of crime report. Logan put it up on the board with the others. Rennie was right - twice in one day, something of a record - every one of Wiseman's victims was overweight. Not obese, but not skinny either.

He worked his way through all the case files until the wall of death was complete. A collage of blood and pain that stretched all the way from a Glasgow shopkeeper in 1983 to Valerie Leith yesterday. All overweight. Other than that, Wiseman's victims had nothing in common. They weren't all blonde or brunette, nearly fifty per cent were men, some were Asian, one couple in Newcastle were from Trinidad, and yet something had brought them all into contact with Ken Wiseman. Something that meant the difference between a long and happy life, and a chunk of flesh in a morgue photograph.

The crime scenes were a lot more regular - soaked bright red, or just signs of a struggle. A joint of meat left in the freezer as a parting gift.

Logan stopped at the photo of the Leiths' kitchen, remembering the hot copper smell. How could one person contain so much blood?

'Bloody hell ...' Faulds flipped his mobile phone shut and stuck it back in his pocket. 'Never become a Chief Constable, Logan. Yes, it sounds like a bundle of laughs: fancy uniform, people saluting, dancing girls, but it's a royal pain in the backside.' He covered his face with his hands and slumped back in his chair. 'I have to go back to Birmingham. Tonight.'

'But Wiseman's--'

'I know, I know: he's going to call the BBC back and set up that interview, and we'll come down on him like a ton of bricks. And I won't be there, because no one wants to be responsible for policing bonfire night.' He pulled his hands away, swore, and put them back again. 'I am a lily, floating on a cool pond ...' Faulds sat up. 'It's no good; I'm going to have to go. The buck stops here, after all. Can you get someone to run me over to the airport?'

Rennie nearly exploded out of his seat. 'I'll take you!' Anything to get out of going through mounds of dusty paperwork.

Logan went back to his post mortem report.

The incident room door nearly banged off its hinges as DI Insch barged into the room. Glaring. 'Where the hell's that useless bastard Rennie?'

Logan closed his eyes and counted to three, but Insch was still there when he opened them again. So much for wishful thinking. 'He's taking Faulds to the airport.'

'He's supposed to be reviewing case files!'

'The Chief Constable pulled rank.' Not strictly true, but it might save Rennie an ear-bashing when he got back. 'You want me to pass on a message?'

'Tell him I'm running this investigation, not Faulds. Remind him that I'll rip his balls off and stuff them down his throat if he ever disappears without my say so again! Understand?'

Logan held up his hands. 'Nothing to do with--'

'In the meantime I want a rundown of all sex offenders over forty with a history of serious assault.'

Logan checked the clock on the wall. Twenty past four, forty minutes to go till he was off duty. 'Actually, sir, I'm in the middle of something for--'

'Did that sound like a request to you, Sergeant?'

Getting together a list of sex offenders over forty years old was only the start of it: Insch wanted them all cross-referenced to see who'd done time in prison since 1990 - when the first batch of murders stopped - and he didn't just want them for Aberdeen either, Logan had to do it for the whole of the UK.

He sent another query running on the computer, then pasted the results into a spreadsheet. Now he had data from every police force in the nation with electronic records going back far enough to be of any use; the others would take days, if not weeks to respond to the inspector's request. But right now it was twenty past five.

Logan sent the list of names to the CID office printer. He'd dump them on Insch's desk and slope off before anyone noticed.

Chance would be a fine thing.

DI Steel stopped him on the stairs. He was going down: clutching his folder full of sex offenders, she was going up: clutching her left breast through her charcoal-grey blouse. 'Where's your boyfriend, Faulds then?'

'He ... er ...' Trying not to watch what she was doing.

'Got this new bra from Markies, it's all weird bits of plastic. Feels like a ballistic missile.'

'Er ... he's off back to Birmingham. Rennie's taking him to the airport.'

'Oh aye?' She stopped fiddling with herself. 'So how come you've no' sloped off early then?'

Logan held up his folder. 'Going through the sex offenders list for Insch, trying to find an alternative suspect.'