Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

There was no sign of Insch in the corridor outside, but Logan could hear the stairwell doors battering back and forth on their hinges. He broke into a jog as raised voices echoed down from the floor above.

Insch: ‘You’re being ridiculous, we—’

Steel: ‘God’s sake, I’m just saying, OK? He could still be in there!’

Logan took the stairs two at a time.

Insch: ‘If we tear the place apart, he’ll know. This discussion is over — we’re not going in... Will you get that bloody camera out of my face!’

Alec: ‘I’m just doing my job... hey... where are—’ Logan pushed through the stairwell doors just in time to see Steel march into the gents’ toilet, shouting, ‘Don’t you walk away from me! We’re not finished.’

Logan hurried in after her. The toilets were a depressing shade of green: three walls painted a nasty institutional spearmint; the fourth — where the long, trough urinal was — done in the same speckled green terrazzo as the floor. But unlike the floor, years of police officer’s piddle had bleached white streaks into the surface, looking disturbingly like dried milk. Or sperm.

Steel stood by the line of cubicles, arms outstretched, preventing DI Insch from disappearing inside. ‘No — we are going to talk about this like adults!’

‘Get out of my bloody way.’

Alec shifted to get a better angle and Insch turned on him: ‘WHAT DID I BLOODY TELL YOU?’

‘I’m just—’

Insch stuck a hand against Alec’s chest and shoved — sending the cameraman clattering back into the urinal trough.

‘Aaaah! Fucking hell—’

Steel stared. ‘Have you gone mental? ’

Snarl. ‘GET OUT!’

‘You can’t just—

‘Jesus... I’m covered in piss!’

Insch turned, grabbed Steel by the lapel and shoved her back against a cubicle door. ‘Listen up and listen good, you foulsmelling—’

Logan stepped forwards. ‘Excuse me, sir!’

‘I’m busy, Sergeant.’

‘The Assistant Chief Constable wants to see you in his office.’

‘Tell him I’ll be there in a—’

‘Get your fat hands off me!’

‘He did say it was urgent, sir.’

Silence.

‘Fine.’ The inspector stepped back and let go of Steel. ‘I’m finished here anyway.’

She straightened her jacket. ‘You ever grab me like that again and you will be — I’ll tear your fucking balls off!’

Alec was back on his feet, face a picture of disgust as he shook one foot and then the other, sending little droplets flying onto the grubby, green floor. ‘Fucking piss everywhere! I was only trying to do my job!’

He picked up his camera and wiped it on his sleeve. ‘You any idea how much these bloody things cost? I’m making an official complaint, you can’t treat me like I’m some sort of—’

‘Oh God...’ Logan saw the punch coming long before anyone else: Insch curled one huge hand into a fist and swung.

Alec didn’t stand a chance. So Logan lunged forwards, shoving him out of the way. The cameraman went sprawling, right back into the urinal again — and that was when Logan realized he’d not thought this through properly.

Insch’s fist whistled through the gap where Alec used to be and clattered into Logan’s face.

Everything smelt of burning copper. Logan sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair with his head thrown back and a clump of soggy paper towels clamped to his nose.

‘Still bleeding?’ Chief Inspector Napier — head of Professional Standards — was probably doing his best to sound concerned, but it wasn’t working. Hook-nosed ginger bastard.

His office was crowded and noisy. Big Gary — huge, uniformed and covered in biscuit crumbs — sat in the corner, next to Napier’s colleague, taking notes while Steel and Insch lied about what had happened in the toilets. Everyone doing their best not to get too close to Alec, who was starting to smell.

Logan pulled the compress away and dabbed at his nostrils with a finger. It came away covered in blood. He tipped his head back again and applied a fresh wodge of paper towels.

‘As I see it,’ said Napier, treating them all to his fish-like gaze, ‘no one is denying DI Insch hit DS McRae in the toilets. Correct?’

No one said anything.

‘I see...’ Napier picked up a silver pen from his neat-freak desk and pointed it at Alec, as if it were a magic wand and by some miracle of prestidigitation he could make the cameraman not stink of piss. ‘And did you manage to film this “assault”?’

Alec looked at Insch and Steel, then blushed and stared at the carpet instead. ‘My... my camera wasn’t working because it fell in the urinal... when I... tripped.’

‘Really?’ The chief inspector pulled a notebook from his drawer and read aloud. ‘He attacked me — he shoved me into the urinal. He tried to—’

Alec went even redder. ‘I was wrong. I slipped and fell.’

‘You slipped and fell.’

‘I slipped and fell.’

‘I see...’ Napier put the notebook back in the drawer. ‘And this sudden change of opinion wouldn’t have anything to do with being threatened by DI Insch?’

The inspector lumbered to his feet. ‘Are you suggesting I tampered with a witness? Because if you are—’

Napier didn’t even look at him. ‘Spare me the indignant act, you’re in enough trouble as it is. Half the station heard you and DI Steel screaming at one another.’

‘Friendly disagreement,’ said Steel.

‘Quite.’ Napier turned a reptilian smile on Logan. ‘I’d like to hear what DS McRae has to say for himself.’

Logan blanched. ‘Whad? I did’n do adythig! It wasn’t—’

‘You must have done something for the Inspector to punch you.’

‘He...’ Logan snuck a glance at the pair of them — Insch and Steel, sitting there as if butter wouldn’t melt. ‘I slibbed and fell against the cubigle door.’

Napier took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘Do I look stupid, Sergeant?’

Logan didn’t want to answer that one.

‘Very well,’ said Napier at last, ‘McRae, Steel, you may go. And take... that,’ he pointed at the smelly cameraman, ‘with you. DI Insch and I have some things to discuss.’

Without Faulds and Rennie making the place look untidy, the Flesher history room was nice and quiet, giving Logan peace to groan and dab at his blood-encrusted nostrils. The whole front of his head felt like a bouncy castle full of rats.

Technically he should have gone home after being dismissed from Chief Inspector Napier’s Lair of Doom, but he wanted to know what Professional Standards had in store for Insch. Unable to decide if he wanted the fat git suspended or not. Loyalty to your superior officer was all well and good, until they punched you on the nose.

A knock at the door and one of the station’s Family Liaison officers stuck her head into the room. ‘Rennie says...’ she trailed off, staring at Logan’s puffy face. ‘Damn, I had a tenner on Wednesday.’ She held up a small sheaf of paperwork. ‘Are you in charge till Insch... you know?’

Logan sighed and stuck out a hand. It was the initial victimology report on the Leith attack, trying to build up a picture of Valerie Leith’s life before Wiseman put an end to it. It wasn’t easy to concentrate with both nostrils stuffed full of tissue paper, but he did his best.

The FLO couldn’t stop staring at Logan’s nose. ‘Haven’t got any ibuprofen have you? Six hours in a hospital visitor’s chair and my back’s sodding killing me.’

Logan pointed at a desk in the far corner. ‘Tob left drawer, helb yourself.’ He’d already had four.

According to the FLo’s report, Valerie Leith was a creature of habit: shopped at Sainsbury’s every Saturday, Debenhams every Tuesday; worked in a solicitor’s office doing house sales; had no close friends, but did have a number of people she spoke to on a regular basis. It would take a while, but the Family Liaison officers would interview each and every one of them.