Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

He widened the search, looking to see if he could pick up Elizabeth’s birth records, but the database didn’t go back that far. So he tried her parents’ details instead. Munro had left their names — Edward and Sheila — when she’d called in her final update on Thursday afternoon. Probably one of the last things she’d done before the Flesher grabbed her.

According to the PNC, Edward and Sheila both died in a car crash in 1970. So that was no bloody...

Edward and Sheila — car crash... Logan sat back in his seat and tried to figure out why that sounded familiar. Something to do with Steel and Alec and dead men with humorous facial hair... couldn’t have kids of his own so they adopted a little girl from a broken home ...

Logan grabbed his phone and went hunting through his notebook, wanting contact details for the little old man who’d shown them around Trinity Hall.

The Fleshers’ Boxmaster picked up on the fourth ring: ‘EWAN MORTON SPEAKING.’ The familiar up and down lilt of a Fife accent.

‘Mr Morton? It’s DS McRae, we met last week? You were telling me about your mentor—’

‘ Oh, yes, Sergeant McRae. I’ve been following the case in the papers. Dreadful isn’t it? ’

‘Your mentor: Edward, what was his last name?’

‘ Nichol. Edward Nichol .’ Pause. ‘ Why? ’

‘And the girl he adopted?’

‘ Elizabeth? Lovely girl, she was at our silver wedding anniversary and— ’

‘Did Elizabeth ever talk about her brother and sister?’

‘ She didn’t have— Oh, you mean from before they adopted her. She used to have nightmares about her brother. I remember Edward saying she’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night. From what I gathered he took after their... what is it they call them these days?... Biological father? She had a pretty rough time growing up, so —’

‘Do you know what her original name was?’

The old man was starting to sound a little flustered. ‘ I... no. I can’t... look, what’s all this about? ’

‘It’s important.’

A sigh. ‘ I think it was someone associated with the trade, but not in the trade, if that makes sense? I know it wasn’t another member .’

‘Can you find out for me?’

‘ What? Well... I’m supposed to be seeing my chiropodist —’

‘Thought you always wanted to help with a murder investigation.’

Ewan Morton’s singsong voice grew an edge of steel. ‘ Don’t worry, you can count on me .’ And to hell with his bunions.

The Fleshers’ Boxmaster was as good as his word. Twenty minutes later he was back on the phone, sounding out of breath. ‘ Had to go to... had to go to Trinity Hall... Went... went through all the minutes from... from 1966 .’ He went quiet for a while.

‘Mr Morton? Are you OK?’

‘ Just a little angina... The minutes show that Edward adopted the daughter of a man called James Souter. He wasn’t a member of the Fleshers, but he worked in a slaughterhouse as a butchery assistant .’ Another pause, and this time Logan could hear the puff of an inhaler in the background. ‘ It says here he had an industrial accident — sleeve caught in a bit of machinery, lost most of his arm. The Council took Elizabeth into care and Edward adopted her .’

Logan was scribbling in his notebook. ‘What about her sister and brother: any mention of what happened to them?’

‘ Erm... no, just Elizabeth .’

‘OK, thanks, you’ve been a great help.’ Logan was about to hang up when he realised there was something he hadn’t asked: ‘The slaughterhouse where Souter worked, what was it called?’

‘ It was on the site of that big new place. What’s it called... mind’s going... the one in Turriff? Been in all the papers? ’

‘Alaba Farm Fresh Meats.’ Bingo.

‘ Aye, that’s the one. Never did understand why they couldn’t spell “Alba” properly. You’d think someone would have said .’

Logan barged into the main incident room. DCS Bain was deep in conversation with Faulds, while Wee Fat Alec played with his lens cap — on, off, on, off.

Logan marched over and Faulds looked up, smiled, and held out a mug of tea. It was cold. ‘Ah, just in time. I want to get your opinion on—’

‘We’ve got a suspect.’

‘Oooh! Wait, not yet...’ Alec pressed buttons and fiddled his focus. ‘Aaaaand... Action!’

Bain scowled at him. ‘What have I told you about that?’

‘Sorry. Force of habit.’

‘Jimmy Souter: he’s Elizabeth Nichol’s brother. Their father worked at the Turriff abattoir. Maybe Goulding was right: he’s been building up to taking revenge on his sister.’

‘What?’

‘Mother abandons them; father loses an arm in an industrial accident; Elizabeth gets taken into care and adopted. She got a loving family, he got stuck at home with a violent, alcoholic father.’ It hadn’t taken long to dig up Daddy Dearest’s criminal record: drunk and disorderly, assault, criminal damage, child endangerment, a couple of what they used to call ‘domestic incidents’ — one involving a frying pan full of bacon fat. It wasn’t surprising the mother left. Just a shame she hadn’t taken her kids with her.

‘And does this Jimmy Souter have prior?’

‘We don’t know.’ This was the bit that Logan wasn’t so happy about. ‘I can’t find him anywhere — chances are he was adopted too, so he’ll have a different surname now. I’ve got Rennie going through all the children’s homes in Grampian for any record of him, Elizabeth, or their sister Kelley.’

Bain turned and asked Faulds what he thought, but Logan wasn’t finished yet: ‘I did a search on the father: James Souter.

He’s wasting away in a hospice up the coast, but he still owns a house. It’s one of the dilapidated ones that backs onto Alaba Farm Fresh Meats. Number three.’

Bain grabbed a phone off the desk and put the call through to Control: they were going now, and they were going mobhanded.

Logan put his foot down, doing eighty on the twisting A947 north out of Dyce, lights and sirens blaring. Three vans — all loaded down with firearms-trained officers — two patrol cars and a couple of CId’s scabby Vauxhalls, with Logan struggling to keep up at the tail-end of the convoy. Faulds was in the passenger seat, holding on for dear life, while Alec sat in the back, bouncing from side to side like an unattractive ping pong ball. He’d brought a friend with him: someone called ‘Mike’ from the BBC, there to watch his back when he went in with the firearms team. As if a dozen heavily armed officers wasn’t going to be enough protection.

They went through Newmachar at full speed, then roared up the windy road to Oldmeldrum, tractors and four-by-fours getting out of their way.

Constant radio chatter.

Logan turned it down and asked Faulds to put a call through to Control. ‘Get them to send someone out to Elizabeth Nichol’s place — she might’ve been in contact with her brother. Tell them they’re looking for photo albums, letters, postcards. Anything that might tell us where he lives.’

Faulds released his death grip on the dashboard for long enough to pull out his mobile phone. ‘Why are we always trying to break the bloody sound barrier?’ He punched a couple of numbers into the phone and gave a small squeal as Logan threw the car round the last bend and they hammered into Oldmeldrum, the convoy roaring straight through and out the other side.

Past Fyvie, Birkenhills, and Darra without even slowing down, and on to Turriff. The sky was almost black, golden shafts of sunlight spearing through gaps in the heavy cloud, making the little market town glow.