Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

Logan got an update from the officer in charge, commiserated with him about the stink, then got out of there as quickly as possible. But the skin shed was Santa’s Grotto compared to the protein processing plant.

It was a dark, low-ceilinged room, just off the bone mill, oppressively hot and humid. Logan gagged: the smell of greasy, rendering fat was nearly overpowering. For some bizarre reason a small, wooden garden shed sat against one wall, the windows fogged over with condensation and a film of tallow.

Filthy pipes snaked through the air, leading in and out of three large black ovens that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a horror movie. Team three were working their way through a trio of centrifuges, picking tiny chunks out of a hessian-wrapped disk the size of a tractor wheel.

He’d been there less than thirty seconds, but Logan was already starting to sweat. ‘How you getting on?’

The female officer pulled off her facemask, pushed a limp strand of hair from her shiny face, and said, ‘Bloody dreadful, sir. Ovens’ve been off since about seven and it’s still baking in here. And this,’ she held up a handful of little lumps, ‘could be anything! Look at it! Bones, hooves, heads, blood, fat, it all gets passed through two sodding big sets of metal teeth till it’s no bigger than the tip of your thumb. Then it gets stuffed in those boilers and cooked to death. It’s just rubble!’

She tossed her handful of animal-gravel into a big metal sieve. ‘ And we’re dying of thirst.’

Logan looked at the centrifuges and their unidentifiable grey loads. ‘How much more you got to do?’

‘Heaps.’

‘OK, go get a cup of tea and—’

‘Holy shit!’ It was one of the male officers, he had something clamped between his thumb and forefinger, twisting whatever it was, so it glittered in the gloom. Everyone hurried round, peering at the tiny lump in his hand. He dropped it into Logan’s open, latex-gloved palm. It was a gold tooth.

Ten minutes later someone found another one — the crown for a rear molar. And that seemed to get their eye in. In twenty minutes they turned up half a dozen little lumps of grey-black metal: fillings, some still attached to their teeth.

Whoever the Flesher really was, he’d discovered a nearly perfect way to dispose of a body. After the bone mill, the ovens and the centrifuges, whatever solids were left went into another hopper to be ground into powder and sold to pet food manufacturers. God knew how many victims’ remains had gone through people’s dogs and cats, but Logan got the nasty feeling Thomas Stephen was just the tip of the iceberg.

Warm. Heather rolled over onto her side, smiling in the darkness. She bunched the duvet round her body, enjoying the feeling of fresh pyjamas on her clean skin. The soft swell of the pillow beneath her head.

‘ It’s not that surprising, when you think about it ,’ said Mr New. He’d calmed down a lot — death seemed to agree with him.

Duncan sighed. ‘ She’s trying to sleep .’

‘ Stockholm syndrome they call it. She’s been here for so long, dependent on the Flesher for everything: food, water, survival. She identifies with him. Not to mention the physical and mental strain she’s been under .’

‘ She’s not mental! ’

Mr New laughed. ‘ Duncan: we’re dead, remember? We’re figments of her imagination and we’re arguing about whether or not she’s off her rocker. I think it’s pretty much a moot point, don’t you? ’

‘ I... Yeah, you’re probably right .’

Heather felt the weight of a body settle next to her in bed.

‘ And don’t forget the knife ,’ said Duncan.

‘ Yeah ,’ Mr New sat on the opposite side of the mattress, the pair of them trapping her beneath the duvet, ‘ you’ve got the knife now .’

Even with her eyes closed she could see it shining pale blue in the darkness, tucked down the side of her cosy new bed. She had the knife — the one that had clattered against the bars when Mr New kicked the Flesher’s tin bath over. The knife was long and sharp and glowed like death.

‘ You could kill Him .’

‘He’s too big, Mr New. You can’t kill Him. He’s the Dark. He’s always been.’

Duncan patted her on the shoulder. ‘ Don’t be such a flid, Heather: a person can’t be the Dark. The Dark’s a thing in its own right. The Flesher’s just a man but the Dark... the Dark is eternal .’

Heather tried to get comfortable. ‘Can you move over a bit?’

‘ Are you happy? ’

‘Duncan, don’t be like—’

‘ I’m not being anything .’ He pulled back the duvet so she could see his face. ‘ I’m asking a question: are you happy? ’

She thought of Him, standing there in His butcher’s outfit, breathing hard as he scrubbed away at the blood-smeared, rusty floor. The scent of Jeyes Fluid gradually replacing the stench of Mr New’s death and her food poisoning. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

Duncan bent down and kissed her on the top of the head. ‘ I know, Honey, I know. But you could have been free .’

Ten am and Logan was buzzing from the three large espressos he’d downed in the canteen, trying to make sure he’d stay awake for Thomas Stephen’s post mortem. Doctor Isobel McAllister presiding. In attendance: DI Steel, DCS Bain, the Assistant Chief Constable, the Procurator Fiscal, a queasy-looking PC, an IB photographer, and old Doc Fraser with his hairy ears corroborating. Full house.

Isobel had ‘rebuilt’ Thomas Stephen on the larger of the two cutting tables, his meatless bones all arranged in the right order, the innards tucked in beneath the two halves of his ribcage. And right at the very top: the bruised and battered head. In all the years he’d been attending these things, it was probably the most surreal sight Logan had ever seen. A skeleton man with glistening innards and a human head.

DI Steel wrinkled her nose. ‘What the hell is that smell?’

Logan scowled at her. ‘I showered, OK? Twice last night and three times this morning. It’s that bloody protein processing plant, the grease sinks into your skin like fake tan.’ Every time he blew his nose, the smell of rendering fat came flooding back, that and the mortuary’s acrid formalin reek was making him queasy... or maybe it was all the coffee?

Or maybe it was Isobel, picking over Thomas Stephen’s severed head — her fingers working their way across the swollen face, as if trying to memorize his features by touch alone. He was bald on top, with a fringe of grey hair round the edges, a small white goatee beard sitting beneath a newly broken nose — his skin covered with bruises and scrapes. Isobel placed the head on the cutting table and peered at the very top. ‘There’s a hole here... some sort of wadding’s been forced into the wound...’ She pulled out a clot of dark red fabric. ‘Circular puncture wound in the crown of the skull. Flesh isn’t torn around the hole; bone isn’t striated, so it probably wasn’t a drill. Something solid moving vertically at high speed. Looks like a close-range bullet hole, but there are no burn marks...’ She flipped the head upside-down, peering at the neck stump, while a thin, pink-brown slime dripped from the not-bullethole. ‘That’s odd... Brian,’ holding a hand out to her assistant, ‘I need the bone saw.’

Logan tried not to think about the next bit.

When it was all over, and her assistant was rinsing the sticky sludge off the dissecting table, Isobel gave them the edited highlights. ‘The hole in Thomas Stephen’s head was caused by a rod extending four and three-quarter inches into his brain. It punched through the skull — embedding bone fragments in the surrounding tissue — tore through the edge of the left cerebral hemisphere, caused extensive damage to the cerebellum, and pretty much obliterated the brain stem. The exit wound where the skull meets the spine is much smaller than the entrance.’