Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

‘Something pointy?’ For once Steel didn’t look as if she was taking the piss. ‘Maybe an ice pick?’

‘No... The killer withdrew whatever he’d used to punch through the skull, then threaded something else into the entry wound.’ She picked up a marker pen and drew a small diagram on the mortuary whiteboard. ‘The vertebrae were split vertically more or less in the middle — probably with an axe — but the damage to the upper spinal chord is uniform. Whatever it was, it was forced down, inside the spine , to the fifth cervical vertebrae. Effectively destroying the brainstem and stripping the nerve branches.’

Someone swore, and Logan didn’t blame them.

‘Death would have been nearly instantaneous. No motor functions: no breathing and no heartbeat.’

Doc Fraser nodded. ‘Pithing cane.’

Isobel stuck the cap back on her pen. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Pithing cane. What they used before BSE came along and made it illegal.’ Doc Fraser made a gun of his hand, placing the barrel-finger in the middle of Logan’s forehead. Then pulled the trigger. ‘Bolt gun shoots a metal rod through the skull of your cow, pig, sheep, or Detective Sergeant, only death’s not instantaneous. Sometimes they’re just stunned. And even if they are stone dead you can still get muscle spasms — no one wants kicked by half a tonne of dead bullock. So you take a flexible metal rod and shove it in the hole, through the brainstem and down into the spine. Jiggle it about a bit. Then you slit the animal’s throat.’ He shrugged. ‘I grew up on a farm.’

Isobel bristled slightly. ‘I see. Well, that would be consistent with my—’

The Assistant Chief Constable cut her off. ‘So we need to start looking at what, vets and farmers?’

‘Nah,’ the old pathologist ferreted about in his ear for something. ‘A vet wouldn’t be able to bone out the body like that. You’re looking at abattoirs. A lot have gone electrical, but some still use bolt guns.’

Steel grinned. ‘And there’s us found the body in a slaughterhouse. Who’da thunk it, eh?’

You couldn’t say that DI Steel didn’t learn from other people’s mistakes. As soon as Logan found out who Alaba Farm Fresh Meats were supplying, she was straight on the phone to the Environmental Health. She was not going to be beaten with the same shitty stick as Insch.

Her office was a tip, so they convened in the history room, pointing at things on the whiteboard and generally getting in Logan’s way. They’d made a big list of every butcher’s shop, supermarket, delicatessen, baker’s, corner shop and cash and carry in the city and were working through them one at a time, confiscating anything that might have come from the abattoir.

The man from the Environmental Health Department took off his glasses and rubbed at the black bags under his eyes. ‘We’re going to need more police backup. I’ve had four inspectors assaulted since seven o’clock this morning.’

The DCS shook his bald head. ‘Can’t do it. We’re stretched as it is.’

‘Then you have to get officers in from Dundee, Glasgow, Inverness — I don’t care. My people are getting verbally and physically abused! And it’s not just the shopkeepers — one of my men got his nose broken by a pensioner’s handbag when he wouldn’t let her leave the shop with half a dozen pork chops. We need more police officers.’

Logan tried to ignore them, concentrate on the transcripts of yesterday’s abattoir interviews, but it was impossible.

Finally the argument ended and they went back to the list, marking the outlets at serious risk of selling contaminated meat and meat products.

Steel swore. ‘I bought a big steak and kidney pie from there last week.’ She poked the whiteboard with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘Must’ve been OK though: I’m no’ feeling all Hannibal Lectery.’

The Environmental Health Officer scowled at her. ‘It’s not funny. Until you identify all the victims we’ve no idea what sort of diseases they were carrying.’

That wiped the smile off her face. ‘Diseases?’

‘If he’s used a pithing cane there’s a risk of variant CJD. Then there’s HIV. And Hepatitis C doesn’t die unless you cook it at one hundred and sixty degrees, for about three-quarters of an hour. How long did you give your pie?’

‘I...’ Cough. ‘I don’t know, do I? Stuck it in the oven and opened a bottle of wine...’

He looked at her. ‘There’s going to be a lot of people wanting blood tests. We’ll have to draft in extra health staff to cope with demand.’

Steel didn’t say much for the rest of the meeting, just fidgeted nervously till everyone was gone. Muttering to herself, ‘I can’t have diseases: I’m getting married!’

Saturday evening was a tin of beer, a soak in the tub, and then a prolonged period of standing in front of the open fridge, wondering if any of the contents were safe to eat. Just in case, Logan made broccoli cheese and chips. He ate it slumped in front of the telly, flicking idly through the channels: crap, crap, reality TV, crap, Simpsons repeat, crap, crap, more reality TV, crap...

‘— scenes outside the Sheriff Court yesterday as Andrew McFarlane was released on bail .’ The picture jumped to a shot of Wiseman’s brother-in-law clambering into the back of a big black Mercedes with tinted windows, caught in the strobe-light of two dozen press cameras.

Logan yawned and sagged even further down the sofa. ‘— the following statement .’

A podgy-faced lawyer appeared. ‘ My client, Mr McFarlane, has always protested his innocence, and the discovery of human remains at Alaba Farm Fresh Meats yesterday was proof of that. Mr McFarlane’s butcher shop was supplied by that abattoir, and they are the ones responsible for human meat entering the food chain, not my client. Thankfully the Sheriff recognised that fact this morning .’

Logan got himself another beer, returning just in time to watch the tail-end of the press conference, and the Chief Constable trying to assure everyone that Grampian Police could actually find its arse with both hands, no matter what some of the tabloid papers were saying.

Then it was the weather, and after that some God-awful, ‘ I’m a celebrity ’ — style garbage. Logan switched the TV off, went to bed, and slept like a corpse.

‘Well?’ DI Steel stood with her back to the death board and its disturbing new photo of Tom Stephen’s semi-skeletal remains. ‘Any joy?’

Logan picked up the next interview transcript in line. ‘How come this is now my job?’

‘Because you’re Auntie Roberta’s special little soldier. Besides, you got any idea how much this enquiry is costing? Need to economise, so you’re multitasking.’ The inspector made an exploratory foray into the world of the underwire, peering down at her own cleavage. ‘Why can no bugger make a decent bra that fits?’

‘I’m supposed to be going through the 1987 case files. How can I do that and everything else at the same time?’

She hauled at her underwear. ‘I mean they’re either all lace and bugger-all support, or they look like my granny’s surgical truss.’

‘Can we not discuss your bra for a change?’

‘Still not getting any, eh? Thought that Procurator Fiscal Depute was after your truncheon d’amour?’

‘Why am I the only person with any work to do?’ He tried to ignore her, focus on the transcripts, but she wouldn’t go away.

‘So come on then: teeth?’