Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

‘Actually,’ Logan dug in his jacket pocket, pulled out the dog-eared copy of Smoak With Blood Steel had given him, and dumped it on the desk, ‘We do have another suspect.’

‘What,’ the DCS examined the cover, ‘Jamie McLaughlin?’

‘No, William Leith. I found a copy of that in the master bedroom.’

Steel made a sound like a drowning elephant. ‘You remembering he nearly got his head chopped off?’

‘They have an alarm system at the croft, but somehow the killer managed to break in without setting it off. Then he dismembers Valerie Leith and dumps her in their septic tank. How did he know where it was? I’ll bet if we search the garage again we’ll find a crowbar or something that matches the grooves in that septic tank lid.’

‘But Leith’s head—’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s injured themselves to shift the blame, would it?’

The DCS swore, grabbed his phone and started dialling. ‘Yeah, Pete, it’s me. I want William Leith brought in... No, no I don’t. I want him here now ... Well, I don’t care, do I? Just sort it!’ He hung up, steepled his fingers, brooded for a minute, then asked Logan, ‘You still friends with that journalist scumbag?’

‘All hail the conquering hero!’ DI Steel was sitting in Logan’s chair, feet up on his desk, a copy of that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner open on her lap. ‘Where the hell you been? I came in hours ago.’

‘Really?’ Logan stuck the brown plastic tray from the canteen down in front of her. ‘Because Big Gary says you didn’t get in till eleven. It’s only quarter past.’

Steel grinned, ‘Aye, aye: make with the bacon buttie, hero boy.’

He handed over a tinfoil package and sat back against the room’s only radiator. ‘I didn’t write the bloody thing, OK?’

Steel unwrapped her buttie and tore a huge bite out of it. ‘Chief Constable Baldy Brian wants to congratulate us personally for catching Leith. Of course, I put it all down to my inspirational leadership and—’

‘You’ve got tomato sauce on your blouse.’

The inspector peered down at her chest. ‘Aw no’ again !’

‘Anyway,’ Logan picked up his coffee and went to peel the Leith crime scene photos from the death board, ‘not as if makes any difference, is it? Doesn’t get us any closer to catching the Flesher.’

‘Are you mental?’

‘Well, it doesn’t, does it? He’s still out there—’

‘God, no’ again... Fine, be miserable. Your glass might be half empty, but mine runneth over. No’ had a pat on the back from Baldy Brian for ages.’ She took another massive bite, chewing happily. ‘Mmmmph, mmm, mph-mmmm?’

‘Yeah, I suppose. But not till Insch comes back.’ He slipped the crime scene photos back in the Leith file, then stuck the whole thing in his out-tray. ‘If there’s nothing urgent on, I thought I’d go home and—’

‘Oh no you don’t! You heard the DCS last night: if Wiseman’s slipping out the frame we need to find someone else to pin all this shite on. You and me are going through that 1987 case file with a nit comb.’

‘You’re kidding — we pulled a twenty-hour shift yesterday!’

‘Aye, well feel free to whinge to your Federation Rep about it. And have one for me while you’re there.’ She polished off the last of her bacon buttie, scrunched up the tinfoil and lobbed it at the bin. Not even close.

‘We’ve already been over the historical stuff, and—’

‘And now we’re doing it again. OK?’ She sooked something out from between her teeth and chewed. ‘Don’t be such a work-shy bastard. Our pat on the back’s not till after lunch: plenty of time to get cracking.’ She pulled out her cigarettes and stood. ‘Let me know how you get on. I’ll be in a... meeting. Yeah — anyone asks I’m in a meeting.’

Logan stifled a yawn, took another mouthful of coffee, and crawled back inside the McLaughlin case file. He hadn’t been entirely honest with DI Steel — he’d not really read the whole thing before. Not all of it. He’d just skimmed the day-to-day stuff on his way to the post mortem and crime scene reports. Going through it from start to finish was something of a revelation.

Once Detective Chief Inspector Brooks — this was 1987, before he’d got the promotion to DSI — had Ken Wiseman in his sights, he never looked at anyone else. As far as Brooks was concerned, Wiseman was guilty.

It was the car boot full of blood that had done it. Brooks kept coming back to it in the transcripts, time and time again.

DCI Brooks: Stop messing us about Ken, we know you did it.

Wiseman: I told you! It was a Roe Deer, OK? Found it at the side of the road.

DCI Brooks: Do you seriously expect me to believe—

Wiseman: It was still twitching. I took it home and butchered it.

DCI Brooks: They found human blood in there too, you idiot.

Wiseman: Mine. It was mine. Bloody deer kicked out when I hefted it into the boot, didn’t it? Got me right in the face. Bled all over the place.

Logan flicked through to the forensic reports. According to the lab, the samples were too degraded for a positive identification, the DNA test inconclusive.

They’d tried again in ninety-five, fighting Wiseman’s appeal. DNA testing had come on a bit since 1990, but the only human blood they could extract from the evidence shared so many markers with Wiseman’s own that even an idiot defence lawyer could have poked holes in the prosecution case. So good old Detective Chief Inspector Brooks had tried to suppress the evidence.

The defence managed to get hold of it anyway and that was it — case dismissed.

Wiseman’s original confession was given pride of place at the very back of the file, in its own clear plastic evidence pouch, obviously typed by someone with more fingers than brain cells:

I did it. I did it and I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt her, but I did. Their was a lot of blood. Afterwards I did not know what to do, so I proceeded to dispose of the body by dismemboring cutting it up and getting rid of the parts. I do not remember ware I burried them. I had been drinking.

There was another page and a half — a tortured mass of bad typing, poor spelling and twisted lies, and then, at the end, a shaky signature. As if the writer’s hand had just been slammed in a drawer. There was a second version of the confession, all neatly typed by someone who could spell. Wiseman’s signature wasn’t any better on that one.

Logan pushed the file away, wondering how the hell someone like Brooks had ever made it to the rank of Detective Superintendent; the bastard was little more than a criminal himself. And Insch had helped him. Mr Everything-Has-To-Be-Done-By-The-Book had beaten a suspect in custody and forced him to sign a confession. No wonder Wiseman went after him...

Lunch was a baked potato in the canteen, eaten one-handed as he re-read the SOC report on the derelict butcher’s shop where Ian and Sharon McLaughlin’s remains had been found. He stuck the report back in the folder and pulled out Faulds’ tatty copy of Smoak With Blood , flicking through till he got to the chapter on the same scene.

When God makes man, he does so from the simplest of materials. Our bodies, our minds, the blood that courses through our veins, are no different from those of the animals we slaughter for food. A pig, a cow, a human being: after the butcher’s tender ministrations it’s all just meat. We are all just meat.

It was an anonymous tip-off that led police to the disused butcher’s shop on Palmerston Road, within spitting distance of the railway station; the rumble of passing freight trains making the ground shudder beneath their feet as they picked through the debris-strewn interior. Rats scuttled through the piles of broken plaster and crumbling furniture. The floor and walls spattered where pigeons had passed judgement on a shop closed for eighteen years and turned into a storage shed.