Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

‘I said,’ Steel shouted, ‘I wouldn’t kick that lot out of bed for farting.’ The inspector pointed at the group of girlies up on the dance floor: long blonde hair, short skirts, skimpy tops, the pulsing disco lights glittering off the jewellery in their pierced bellybuttons.

As Logan watched, Detective Constable Simon Rennie boogied his way past them, doing a pretty good impersonation of a octopus being electrocuted. One of the girlies laughed and joined in, bumping and grinding.

‘Jammy bastard.’ Steel took another swig of her vastly overpriced beer. ‘I’m no’ surprised he wanted to come here.’

Rennie wasn’t the only off-duty police officer up there, strutting his funky stuff — even Faulds had gone up when they’d put on an old Phil Collins number — but Logan wasn’t in the mood. ‘I hate nightclubs.’

‘So you keep saying.’

Three songs later and a sweaty Rennie was back, handing out another round of drinks. ‘Is this not brilliant?’

Logan scowled at him, but it didn’t seem to dent the constable’s enthusiasm.

‘Oh, ‘fore I forget,’ Rennie pulled out his wallet and produced a folded-up postcard of a naked bodybuilder with a strategically placed police helmet. ‘This came yesterday.’

It was from Jackie, telling the muster room what a great time she was having on secondment to Strathclyde Police’s Organized Crime and Gang Violence Unit.

Rennie nodded in time to the music as one song ground to a halt and another deafened its way out of the speakers. ‘Sounds like a right laugh down there— Ooh, I love this one!’ And he was back on the dance floor.

Twenty minutes later he was still up there, slow dancing with one of the blonde girlies from earlier, mouths locked, eyes closed, groping away.

‘Makes you sick.’ Steel sniffed, watching the detective constable and his friend trying to crawl inside one another. ‘I’m much sexier than he is.’

Faulds leant on the rail that separated the drinkers from the dancers and fondlers. ‘So,’ he shouted, ‘what’s with all this “Laz” business then?’

Logan sighed. ‘Just a stupid nickname. It’s nothing—’

‘Laz — short for Lazarus.’ Steel grinned and clinked her latest bottle of beer off of the Chief Constable’s pint, ‘DS McRae here came back from the dead, didn’t you?’

‘It wasn’t—’

‘Oh aye, our wee boy’s a bona fide police hero!’ She wrapped her arm round Logan and gave him an affectionate shoogle. ‘Shame he’s so bloody ugly.’

EXTERIOR: A graveyard in Aberdeen — Union Street. Church in background. Noises of traffic and seagulls.

CAPTION: Detective Sergeant Logan McRae

MCRAE: I’d rather not, to be honest.

VOICEOVER: But you were instrumental in catching The Mastrick Monster?

MCRAE: Do we have to do this, Alec?

VOICEOVER: Come on, it’ll make for good telly. And if you don’t tell us we’ll just get it from someone else.

MCRAE: [shifts uncomfortably] Look, there’s nothing to tell. It was a joint operation, I just happened to be there at the end. Now can we just drop it?

[end tape]

INTERIOR: An untidy office in Grampian Police Headquarters.

CAPTION: Detective Inspector Roberta Steel.

STEEL: [finishes a cigarette and flicks it out of open office window] Right, where were we?

VOICEOVER: We’ve done Insch, Rennie and McInnis. That leaves DS Beattie, Doctor McAllister, Inspector Nairn and DS McRae.

STEEL:Right, we’ll do McRae next. My hair look OK to you?

VOICEOVER:Well... it’ll be fine.

STEEL:Good, got my public to think of... you’ll edit out that bit with me smoking, aye? I’ll no’ hear the end of it otherwise. OK, June 2004, and we’ve got fifteen women in the morgue. The press are calling him the Mastrick Monster — he stabs his victims, then rapes them while they die. Sick bastard. Anyway, the investigation’s going nowhere when up pops Detective Constable Logan McRae. He goes digging and unearths Angus Robertson — turns out Robertson works in a sandwich shop that delivers all over Aberdeen, that’s how he was picking his victims—

[loud rattling cough — goes on for nearly a minute]

Ah... fucking hell...

[presses hand to chest]

Bastard...

Anyway, something happens and Robertson finds out he’s a suspect: he goes bonkers, snatches McRae’s girlfriend, and there’s a big showdown on the roof of this tower block. All very dramatic. McRae takes Robertson down, but gets himself stabbed about twenty times in the stomach doing it. Robertson gets thirty to life; McRae gets a year in hospital and promoted to DS.

[clears throat and spits into wastepaper basket]

OK, who’s next? Beattie? Useless, fat, beardy arsehole. Next!

The Press Liaison Officer slammed the incident room door. ‘Bastards!’

Logan looked up from a pile of search reports and watched her march up to DI Insch and wave a newspaper in his face.

‘Have you seen the front page? Have you? They’re eating us alive out there!’ Which was a pretty unfortunate choice of words. This morning’s Aberdeen Examiner had, ‘CANNIBAL HORROR FOR HUNDREDS OF NORTH EAST RESIDENTS!’ plastered all over the front page. Colin Miller strikes again.

Insch snatched the paper and skimmed the article, face rapidly darkening to a furious scarlet. ‘MCRAE! My office: NOW!’ He stormed out, nearly flattening a constable carrying a big stack of actions from the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System.

Logan slumped back in his seat, stared at the ceiling, and swore. Then followed in the inspector’s wake.

Insch’s office wasn’t its usual tidy self: the floor was littered with screwed-up bits of paper and sweetie wrappers. The inspector’s bin lay on its side against the wall, with a dirty big dent in it. He didn’t even wait for Logan to close the door. ‘WHY THE HELL DIDn’t YOU TELL ME ABOUT THIS?’

‘I thought you knew! It’s not—’

‘How did your bloody Weegie friend know people have been eating...’ he narrowed his angry, piggy, eyes. ‘Did you—’

‘I never said a word! He—’

‘That two-faced cow!’ The inspector’s face got even uglier. He stabbed a button on his phone and demanded to be put through to the mortuary.

It wasn’t long before Isobel’s voice crackled out of the speakerphone: ‘ This had better be important! Do you have any idea—’

‘WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?’

‘What? I—’

‘Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?’

Isobel’s voice dropped about twenty degrees. ‘ If you’ve got something to say to me Inspector, you’d better say it, because I will not have you shouting down the phone at me like some sort of petulant child, do you understand?’

‘Your boyfriend. The front page of the Examiner. I expected you to act like a professional—’

A loud brrrrrrrrrrrrrr came from the speaker: she’d hung up on him.

Insch stabbed the off button hard enough to make the whole phone creak. ‘You...’ He screwed up his face, grimaced, held two fingers to the side of his throat and tried to breathe slowly. In and out. In and out.

Logan watched him do his Zen breathing thing, wondering how much mess it was going to make when the inspector’s head finally exploded. ‘Er... do you want me to get you a glass of water, sir?’