Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

The silhouette stopped, turned left, then right, then marched straight towards her.

Vicky ran.

One woman screaming would have been bad enough, but two of them going at it like blue-rinse foghorns was doing PC McInnis’s head in. Kingswells was meant to be a sleepy little commuter town, not a septuagenarian war zone: the battle line drawn through a dying leylandii hedge. Both sides were squaring off outside a pair of identical yellow-brick boxes, ignoring the misty drizzle that drifted down from the cold November sky as they screamed at each other.

McInnis had another go: ‘Look, can we all please calm down. We—’

‘This was a nice place to live before you moved in!’

‘Oh why don’t you go shove a cactus up your—’

‘Ladies, if we can just—’

‘Should be ashamed of yourself!’

‘Just because you’ve got cobwebs growing down there doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have sex!’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’

PC Guthrie had retreated back to the patrol car, out of the rain — lazy bastard — leaving McInnis to play United Nations.

‘Ladies, why don’t we go inside and—’

‘There’s a wee thing called Viagra. You should get some for your William, maybe perk the poor old sod up a bit. God knows he could use it.’

‘How dare you!’

‘If we could all just—’

Guthrie stuck his head out of the car window and shouted: ‘McInnis!’

‘I’m busy .’ He turned back to his battling pensioners. ‘I need you both to—’

‘Someone’s spotted the Flesher in Kingswells: three streets from here!’

‘Holy shit!’

He sprinted back to the car and jumped in behind the wheel, ignoring the outraged cry of, ‘What about my bloody hedge?’

McInnis put his foot down, leaving two smoking trails of rubber behind.

The whole car shuddered as he slammed on the brakes. Lights and siren blaring. First on the scene.

They leapt out of the car and swept the undergrowth on either side of the road with torchlight. Raindrops glittered in the beams like shards of falling glass as the drizzle gave way to proper pelting-it-down rain.

It was a stretch of wasteland between two housing developments, tarted up with a tarmac path and a couple of streetlights. PC Guthrie took a couple of steps into the darkness and bellowed, ‘MRS YOUNG?’

‘How’s she supposed to hear you? Turn off the siren!’

And the night was suddenly quiet — just the drumming of rain on the car roof, the soft hiss of it falling on trees and bushes, and the gurgle of the stream at the bottom of the ravine.

McInnis had a go. ‘MRS YOUNG? VICKY? It’s THE POLICE!’

‘There’s got to be miles of scrub and bushes out here.’

‘MRS YOUNG?’

A new sound joined the shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh of rain — distant sirens as patrol cars hammered along the Hazlehead Road, more coming over the back from Bucksburn. The cavalry was on its way.

‘Did Control say where she was—’

A woman screamed.

‘Over there!’ McInnis ignored the path and half-ran, half-scrambled down the slippery embankment with Guthrie hot on his heels, torchlight bobbing across wet grass, stones and bushes.

‘MRS YOUNG?’

They slithered to a halt at the foot of the slope, rain drumming off their peaked caps and black jackets. ‘OK,’ said Guthrie, ‘you go left, I’ll go right.’

McInnis snorted. ‘Bugger that! If the Flesher’s out here we should stick together, so—’

‘Don’t be such a big jessie. There’s a woman out there getting murdered, remember?’ He stumbled off into the downpour, following the beam of his LED torch. It wasn’t long before he was swallowed by the night.

McInnis swore, then waded out into the knee-high grass. This was ridiculous — probably just a hoax, or some kinky sex game gone wrong, like those idiots in Northfield with all the tomato sauce. Nothing was going to happen. False alarm.

He swung his torch across a mountain range of gorse bushes.

‘MRS YOUNG?’

He didn’t see the patch of mud that sent him sprawling. One minute he was upright, and the next he was lying flat on his back, watching his torch spin through the air... It came down somewhere deep inside the prickly bushes — clattering through the branches till it finally hit the ground. ‘FUCK!’

A pause, then the Airwave handset on his shoulder started ringing: Guthrie. ‘ Are you OK? What happened? You need help? ’

There was no way McInnis was going to say he’d slipped and fallen on his arse. ‘I’m fine. Dropped my torch.’

‘ Moron .’

‘Up yours.’ McInnis ended the call and struggled to his feet. Everything was soaked through: trousers, jacket, socks, T-shirt, pants. ‘Bloody marvellous...’ He could see the faint gleam of his torch leaching out beneath the line of gorse bushes. For a second he considered just leaving the damn thing, but it wasn’t as if he could get any wetter.

He edged his way forward in the dark.

The torch was no more than a couple of feet from the outer cordon of spines. McInnis hunkered down and tried to reach it.

Thorns scratched the back of his hand as he fumbled in the shadows. Stupid bloody torch. Come on... Branch, rock, something horrible and sticky — please not dog shit, please not dog shit— torch! McInnis grabbed it, thankful no one had seen him make an absolute tit of himself.

And as the torch came out of the bush, its beam glittered back from something dark and oily. Blood. His hand was covered in blood. There was something white further back. It was a foot.

McInnis froze, then slid the beam up: ankle, leg, thigh, buttock... a woman, lying on her front, naked except for a pair of control-top knickers and a substantial bra. Her neck had been slashed so deeply the head was barely attached. Very, very dead.

‘Oh, Jesus.’ He sat back on his haunches. Mouth open wide as the rain hammered down all around him. He reached for his Airwave handset and punched in Guthrie’s badge number.

It was picked up on the second ring. ‘ Aye? ’

‘It... I’ve found her.’

‘ She OK? ’

Pause. ‘No. She’s...’ he drifted to a halt, all the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. The sound of the rain had changed — the soft hammering of water on vegetation had been overlaid with a new, harder noise. As if there was something else... someone else there.

‘ What? ’

McInnis stood. Trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything. Oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit.

‘ Where are you? ’

He whipped round, snatching his baton from his belt, ready to crack the bastard’s head open... But there was nobody there. Just the rain and the bushes and the weeds and the grass and the darkness.

‘ McInnis: what the hell’s going on? ’

Idiot. Scaring himself like that. He turned back towards the bush. ‘Nothing. We need to get the IB out here and...’ The Flesher was standing right in front of him.

‘Oh,’ McInnis could barely get the words out, ‘shit.’

And then the Flesher hit him.

Darkness.

‘Ah Jesus!’ McInnis sat up, coughing, water streaming down his face, a bright light shining in his eyes.

‘You OK?’

Everything smelt of blood. ‘Where...?’

Guthrie peered at him. ‘Bloody hell! What happened to your nose?’

McInnis shuddered, spat, and held out a hand, getting Guthrie to haul him to his feet. ‘How long?’

‘Is she in there?’ Pointing at the bush.

‘How long was I out for?’ Another shudder. His nose felt as if it was on fire.

‘Not long. A minute? Two? I saw your torch: nearly killed myself getting here. Tore the arse right out my trousers.’