Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

Twitching.

‘You have to get me out of here!’

Faulds passed him one of the polystyrene cups. ‘It’s all right, Mr McFarlane. No one’s going to hurt you here.’

‘No one’s going to... WHAT ABOUT THIS?’ He pointed a trembling finger at his battered face. ‘They put my photo in the papers! Everyone thinks I killed those people...’

‘I’m sure it’s not—’

‘He wouldn’t stop hitting me! Said I’d killed his mother! I never touched her! It wasn’t me!’ McFarlane started to cry. ‘All I wanted was to run a little butcher’s shop, somewhere nice and local, where people would come and buy their meat...’

‘Then why were you selling bits of dead body?’

McFarlane wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘I told you: I don’t know how that stuff got into my shop.’

‘So you’re saying it was all Wiseman—’

‘No. He didn’t kill anyone, he—’

‘When he was in Peterhead Prison, he beat a man to death in the showers.’

‘Because you bastards put him there! It wasn’t his fault.’

‘I can’t believe you gave him a job when he got out. Wiseman in a butcher’s shop? Like giving Gary Glitter the keys to a children’s home.’

‘He’s my brother-in-law, what was I suppose to do: abandon him? He didn’t kill those people!’

‘Come off it, Andrew.’ Faulds sat back in his chair and tried his friendly Chief Constable smile again — the one that hadn’t worked on Richard Davidson. ‘When he was arrested they found a lot of blood in the boot of his car, it—’

‘It — was — his! He cut himself. We went through all this at the appeal. You fitted him up.’

‘He confessed.’

‘You beat that out of him!’

‘Oh please.’ Faulds picked up his tea, then put it down again. ‘You know, I always suspected he had an accomplice. Someone to help him. Someone with their own butcher’s shop. Someone—’

‘No you bloody don’t! I didn’t do anything.’

The Chief Constable leant across the table and poked McFarlane in the chest. ‘You were helping him dispose of the bodies twenty years ago, and you’re helping him now.’

‘I never—’

‘Where were you on the fourteenth of October 1982?’

‘What? I don’t remember, it was twenty-five years—’

‘Were you in Birmingham, Mr McFarlane?’

‘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.’

‘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.’