Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

An embarrassed silence settled into the car.

‘What? I was just saying, OK?’ Alec slumped back into his seat. ‘Honestly, some people would find that kinky. I used to know this guy—’

Faulds turned and stared at him. ‘Better leave it there, Alec. Don’t want to spoil the magic.’ In the end Wiseman had to stuff a dishtowel in the fat bastard’s mouth to get him to shut up. Insch didn’t look well, sat there, strapped to his armchair, face all covered with bruises and tears and snot. Trembling and furious.

Wiseman glanced at the clock — the telly people were expecting him at two — he had to get a shift on. ‘Well, Fatso, I’ve got to go. It’s been fun, but tempus fugit, and all that.’ He grabbed Insch’s nose and pinched the nostrils shut, watching him struggle for oxygen. He could kill him with two fingers. Just like that... But it would be a waste.

He let go and Insch dragged a shuddering breath in through his podgy nose. ‘But before I leave,’ Wiseman wiped his fingers on the fat bastard’s shirt, ‘have to decide what to do with you.’ He picked up the boning knife and rested the point on that disgusting, huge stomach. ‘I could open you up like the fat fucking piggy you are, gut you right here. Would you like that, Fat Boy?’

Insch glared at him, furious hissing noises coming from his flared nostrils.

‘Thought so. But know what I’m going to do instead? I’m going to hurt you.’ He slammed his fist into the bastard’s face, rocking that angry scarlet head back on its huge pink neck. ‘Made an appointment with the BBC — stupid bastards actually think I’m going to turn up, when I know the whole place will be swarming with cops.’ He smiled. ‘You know where I’ll be while they’re looking the other way, Fat Boy?’

Wiseman went upstairs and came back carrying a wriggling piglet with blonde pigtails, tied hand and foot.

The little girl took one look at her parents, and froze. He dumped her on the floor at Daddy’s feet. ‘Three daughters. That’s one for you, one for me, and one for the pot.’ Wiseman picked up the frying pan again, and poured the last of the fat and gravy over Insch’s head. ‘She was tasty, wasn’t she?’

The bitch moaned and wailed behind her gag, but the fat man looked ready for murder.

‘What will I do with my one? Hmm?’ Bending down to stroke the piglet’s hair. ‘What will I do with my little girl?’ He looked up into Insch’s terrified face, then backhanded him again. ‘Not that, you fucking pervert. I’m going to sell her. Get a lot of money for specialist livestock this sweet.’ Wiseman winked. ‘According to the paedos in Peterhead, they’re easier to train if no one knows you’ve got them. No Social Services, no “concerned parents”. You can do whatever you like.’

Insch shouted something behind the gag, thrashing back and forth, straining against the duct-tape, making the armchair creak. Wiseman picked up the girl and slung her over his shoulder. ‘She’s going to make some dirty old bastard very, very happy. And all because you fucked with me, Fatty. All because of you.’ He turned and smiled at Insch’s wife. ‘You think about that next time he wants to put his dick in you.’

He could still hear them struggling as he closed and locked the front door. Throwing Brooks off the roof had been a bit of a letdown. He’d expected it to be a lot more satisfying, but it was over too quickly.

This was going to hurt that fat bastard till the day he died.

Logan slowed down as they reached the outskirts of Oldmeldrum. ‘How we doing for time?’

Faulds scowled. ‘Badly.’

‘Not my fault there was a tractor.’ He threaded the car through the village centre, making for Insch’s house. ‘Anyway, if we stick the siren on all the way back we can—’ There was a familiar-looking Range Rover up ahead. It only stayed in vision for a second, and then it was hidden by the curve in the road.

‘What?’

‘I think that was Insch...’ Logan pulled up outside the inspector’s house. Where the muck-encrusted four-by-four should have been, there was just a patch of oily gravel. ‘Someone must’ve got through on the phone. Told him it was going down at two.’

‘Are you telling me we came all this way for nothing?’

‘We can still catch him.’ Logan ignored the thirty limit all the way up to the T-junction. The Range Rover was just visible, driving along the A947 back towards Aberdeen. Logan followed it.

‘What if it’s not even his car?’

Logan accelerated, closing the gap. There were two vehicles between them and the four-by-four: a blue Audi and a tatty Daihatsu 4Trak, Logan peered past them at the car in front. ‘No... it’s definitely Insch’s.’

‘Well, flash your lights, or something.’

Alec shuffled himself forwards. ‘Jesus, that thing gets filthier every time I see it; you could grow tatties on that.’

Flashing the lights didn’t seem to help so Logan leant on the horn. The driver turned, glancing back over his shoulder — only it wasn’t Insch.

‘Fuck!’ Logan gripped the steering wheel. ‘It’s him!’

‘What? Of course it’s—’

‘Wiseman! Wiseman’s driving the car!’

‘WHAT?’

He grabbed the car’s radio handset as the Range Rover accelerated away uphill. ‘He’s seen us!’ The road was too twisty to get past the Audi and the 4Trak. Logan fumbled on the dashboard for the siren switch, and the handset went flying: clattering down into the footwell. ‘Bloody hell!’ But at least the siren’s wail made the slowcoaches get out of the way. Logan hammered it.

The black slab of Alec’s HDV camera poked between the seats.

‘Put your bloody seatbelt on!’

Over the brow of the hill. A hard right curve and the Range Rover was putting as much distance between them as possible. Round a wide bend, the four by four overtaking a JCB digger.

Logan put his foot down and followed suit, jerking them out into the opposite lane.

Faulds screamed: ‘TRACTOR! TRACTOR! TRACTOR!’ A huge blue and white monstrosity was coming straight at them.

Logan slammed on the brakes and screeched the car back to their own side of the road in a cloud of swearing and burning rubber. The thing trundled past and he accelerated out and round the digger.

Up ahead, Wiseman threw the Range Rover hard right, leaving the main road for a little side one. Logan followed, the pool car’s back end kicking out as they slid round the corner.

A loud CLUNK! and a fencepost went flying.

Faulds had one hand dug into the dashboard, the other wrapped around the handle above the passenger-side door. Teeth gritted, eyes wide. ‘Who the hell taught you to drive?’

‘I haven’t done the pursuit training course, OK? I’m doing my best!’

A hump in the road and the car left the tarmac for a second. ‘Oh God!’

‘Call the station! Tell them we’re after Wiseman!’

Alec’s voice came from the back of the car. ‘This is bloody brilliant!’

Faulds released his death-grip on the dashboard and scrabbled in the footwell for the radio handset as Logan wrenched the manky Vauxhall through a succession of snaking bends. Insch’s Range Rover was getting closer and closer... they were right behind it, siren blaring, lights flashing, completely unable to get past and cut Wiseman off.

‘Single-track bastards...’

‘ Alpha Charlie Seven from Control, when do you —’

‘This is Chief Constable Faulds, we are in pursuit of—’

A sharp bend and the pool car brushed a drystane dyke on the passenger side — a squeal of metal and a shower of sparks as Logan struggled to get them back on the road.

‘—Ken Wiseman. Will you watch where you’re bloody going!’