Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

Rennie sniffed. ‘You ever thought about getting married?’

Logan pulled out the bottom drawer and carefully picked through the pile of paired-off socks. ‘You’re not my type.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You know, with Laura?’

‘Mattress!’

‘Eh? Oh, aye...’ The sound of rummaging. ‘Course it wouldn’t be for a while yet. Have to save up for a house.’

The sock drawer contained nothing but socks. Logan gave the whole thing one last tug — pulling it out of the unit and onto the swirly brown carpet — then peered into the hole. Two magazines, both explicit, but nothing illegal.

He stuck the magazines back where they’d come from and replaced the drawer, then stood at the little window, looking out at the dismal day in all its grey glory. Twenty to eleven on a cold November morning and it was probably warmer outside than in here. He could see DI Steel standing halfway down the garden path, smoking cigarettes and fiddling with her underwear. Logan let the curtain fall back. ‘You come all the way from Poland looking for a better life and what do you get? A manky box-room in a crappy little B&B and a job shovelling sheep heads into a skip.’

‘Give us a hand...’ Rennie was fighting with the saggy mattress, its stripy fabric stained and fraying round the edges. Logan helped him raise it all the way up, where gravity promptly folded it in half. Swearing, Rennie struggled it to the floor beside the single bed.

It was a divan and the base unit looked just as bad as the fusty mattress.

Logan’s phone made strangled metal chicken noises — Control calling to say they couldn’t get through to DI Steel, but Logan was to tell her the Polish police had just faxed over details on Kowalczyk and the three abattoir workers who’d alibied him. Only Piotr Nowack had prior, and it wasn’t for cannibalism — he was part of a gang who broke into industrial estates and stole anything not nailed down.

Logan hung up as Rennie wrestled the saggy mattress back where came from, grumbling about bedbugs and pee stains.

‘Not so fast.’

A pained look slid onto the constable’s face. ‘What?’

‘You didn’t check the base unit.’

‘Oh bloody hell...’ Rennie heaved the mattress back onto the floor again.

It took both of them to heave the wooden-framed base up onto its side, and when they did they discovered an Aladdin’s cave. Assuming Aladdin had fallen on hard times, and instead of gold, jewels and coins he’d taken to hoarding pens, Post-its, staplers, telephones and four-hole punches. The divan was stuffed with office supplies, some still bearing little ‘PROPERTY OF ALABA MEATS LTD.’ stickers. There were even a couple of fax machines and a laptop.

And right at the back: a holdall that looked eerily familiar.

Rennie picked up a packet of Blu Tack. ‘Not exactly the great train robbery, is it?’

Logan slipped on a second pair of latex gloves and pulled the holdall from the pile of pilfered stationary. It was identical to the one Marek Kowalczyk was carrying on the abattoir’s CCTV tape, only it wasn’t full of blood and meat, it was full of whiteboard markers and DL envelopes.

‘Oh... bugger.’

Logan stood on the B&B’s top step, listening to DI Steel swearing a blue streak. ‘You sure?’ she said, when the well of profanity had finally run dry, ‘Post-it notes?’

‘Loads of them. Envelopes, paperclips, ring-binders, you name it.’

More swearing. ‘The DCs’s going to kill me...’ She took an angry drag on her cigarette. ‘He thinks we caught the Flesher, not some silly bugger raiding the stationery cupboard.’

‘Nowak didn’t say anything when you spoke to him?’

‘Course he bloody didn’t. Just kept bleating for a lawyer.’ Puff, puff, puff. ‘Look, you’re absolutely positive? No wee chunks of meat in there at all?’

‘Not a sausage. Looks like Nowak was trying the same scam he ran back home, probably got Kowalczyk, Wisniewski, and Laszenyk to do the actual stealing. I’ve told Rennie to go round the local pubs, see if anyone remembers being offered a dodgy fax machine and a load of yellow highlighers.’

‘Sodding hell.’ Steel was quiet for a moment. ‘Can you no’ concentrate on solving the main crime for once? We almost had the bastard!’ She hurled her cigarette butt to the path and ground it out with her boot.

‘It wasn’t him though, was it?’

‘If you don’t stop rubbing it in, I’m going to introduce the point of my boot to the hole in your arse.’

‘You’re welcome.’

DI Steel was right: DSC Bain wasn’t happy to hear the news. ‘GRAMPIAN POLICE CATCH ABATTOIR KILLER’ had turned into ‘MAN FLATTENED BY VOLKSWAGEN GOLF FOR NICKED POST-IT NOTES’. Or it would do as soon as the papers found out Marek Kowalczyk wasn’t the Flesher after all.

Logan sloped off before anyone found a way to make this all his fault, and went to the canteen for lunch. After all, it was Monday and that could only mean one thing: lasagne and chips, lasagne and chips, lasagne and... fuck.

He turned from the serving counter, tray in hand, to see DI Insch sitting at a table by the window with Jackie. If that wasn’t bad enough, the inspector was staring straight at him. And now Jackie was staring at him too.

The fat man pushed the chair on the other side of the table out with his foot.

Damn... Logan took his lunch over and sat, trying to act casual as he helped himself to the vinegar. ‘Sir, Jackie.’

She didn’t even pretend to be on first-name terms anymore: ‘Sergeant.’

There was an awkward silence.

Logan started in on his lasagne. All he had to do was eat fast and get out of here. Why the hell did Insch have to—

‘Soon as you’ve finished,’ said the inspector, scooping the last remnants of custard out of a bowl, ‘you can get us a pool car. You and I are going to see Andrew McFarlane.’

And there went Logan’s appetite. ‘Sorry sir, the DCS gave strict—’

‘I’m not supposed to interfere in the Flesher case? You’ll be happy to know, Sergeant, that we’re going to talk to Mr McFarlane about a spate of recent vandalism. Which does fall under my remit.’

Logan looked at Jackie, hoping for some support, but all he got back was a stony silence.

He tried again. ‘Sir, don’t you think—’

‘No I don’t. Now eat your bloody lasagne.’

‘So,’ said Logan, looking up at the butcher’s shop, ‘you were having lunch with Jackie...?’ The shop windows were boarded up: huge sheets of plywood, peppered with nightclub flyers and a patina of graffiti: ‘CANNIBAL BASTARD!’

‘MURDERER’

‘SCUM’ and for some reason: ‘ENGLISH OUT’

Insch unwrapped a chocolate eclair, stuffing the sweetie in his mouth, and the wrapper in his pocket. He pointed at the blue door next to the butcher’s shop. ‘You know the drill.’

There was an intercom with McFarlane’s name printed on a plastic slip. Logan pressed the button. No reply. So he did it again, and twice more for luck. A scared voice crackled out of the speaker. ‘ Go away! I’m calling the police! ’

‘This is the police, Mr McFarlane. It’s DS McRae: we met at the prison? We’re here to talk to you about the vandalism.’

‘ Oh ...’

A low grinding buzz sounded and Logan pushed the door open. They went through a short hallway and up a brightly painted flight of stairs.

McFarlane was waiting for them at the top. He didn’t look much better than the last time Logan had seen him. Yes the bruises were fading, but the butcher had a caved-in look, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of him, leaving behind an empty shell with a broken nose and missing teeth.