Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

‘ Ah ...’ Duncan smiled. ‘ Only just figured that out, have you? ’

Heather held her thumb up, watching the cut surface ooze. ‘Blood to blood.’

‘ I know what you’re thinking, but— ’

‘Now I’m part of the Dark. I passed the test.’

‘ Heather— ’

She laid the point of the blade against her stomach, just above her bellybutton.

‘ Come on, Honey ,’ Duncan knelt in front of her, ‘ Don’t do this .’

‘Blood to blood.’ She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and plunged the knife in. Once. Twice. Three times. Ripping it back and forth, slashing herself wide open, staining the mattress dark, shining red.

‘ The knife’s not real .’

Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing...

A dry hand wrapped around her own, holding it still. ‘ Heather, it’s not real. You’re imagining it .’

She opened her eyes, looked down at her stomach. Nothing broken, nothing torn. Not even a drop of blood on her hands. ‘But... but the knife... the Dark said...’ Feeling the tears start to come. ‘The knife...’

‘ Shhh... it’s OK .’ Duncan wrapped her in his arms, holding her close.

‘But it was real! It was—’

‘ Shhhhhhh... you’ve gone mental, remember? There never was a knife .’ He kissed the top of her head as she cried. ‘ It’s just what’s left of your mind playing tricks on you. Like talking to dead people .’ He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up until she was looking into his beautiful eyes. ‘ Even I’m not real .’

‘I don’t want to be crazy...’

He kissed her, then told her it was too late to worry about that now.

The lead firearms officer pointed back towards the house. ‘Place has been deserted for years, we’ve been all over it from attic to basement and there’s no sign of anyone. IB can tear the place apart, but I’ll bet you pound to a penny there’s nothing there.’

DCS Bain nodded, then gave Logan what could only be described as a fucking horrible look. ‘Well?’

Chief Constable Faulds stepped in. ‘Just because Jimmy Souter isn’t here, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a solid piece of police work. We now have a suspect with a connection to the abattoir and one of the victims. That’s a lot more than we had this morning.’

‘We’re still no closer to finding PC Munro.’ Faulds asked Bain if he could have a quiet word, leading him away out of earshot as the firearms team piled back into their vans and sodded off before the rain started.

‘I can see why you’re thinking about leaving.’ It was Jackie, dressed in her full ninja police gear: black shoes, black trousers, black T-shirt, black stab-proof vest with a black fleece over the top. ‘A Chief Constable who’s not an arsehole.’

Logan nodded. ‘And you’re going back to Strathclyde.’

‘If they’ll have me after this...’

They stood and watched as the IB marched into the old Souter house, armed with crowbars, pickaxes, and shovels to tear the place apart.

‘Jackie... I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘Pretty much everything.’

By twenty to five most of the odds and sods had disappeared — back to the station in time to punch out and go to the pub. Now it was just Logan, Faulds, Wee Fat Alec, the IB team, and an unidentified PC standing guard outside the house in the pouring rain. Whoever it was, they must have really pissed someone off to end up with that job.

Rain drifted down in undulating sheets, caught in the glow of the abattoir’s security spotlights between the leylandii hedge and the blood-blister sky. The row of bleak, dead houses, slowly rotted in the darkness. Only the old Souter place showed any sign of life: light oozing out through the occasional gap in the plywood sheets that covered the windows; the bang and crunch of demolition as the IB tore out fireplaces and ripped up floorboards. Poking and prodding every nook and crevice for evidence of PC Munro, Elizabeth Nichol, or her brother Jimmy.

‘Well,’ Faulds shifted round in the passenger seat of their pool car, ‘have you decided?’

‘DI McRae, West Midlands Police.’ Logan turned and offered Faulds his hand to shake. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

Faulds smiled. ‘Excellent. I’ll get someone to start the paperwork soon as we get back to the station.’

The rear passenger door opened and someone jumped in out of the rain. ‘Bloody Hell.’ It was Jackie, looking like a drowned rat as she pulled off her peaked cap and shook it in the footwell. ‘Like going for a swim out there.’

Logan stared at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Thought you’d gone back to the ranch?’

She grimaced. ‘Put the heating on, I’m freezing .’

He started the engine and turned the blowers up full. Reheated greasy air filled the car. ‘Don’t tell me you’re the poor sod...?’ He pointed through the misty windscreen at the Souter place.

The grimace turned into a scowl. ‘DCI McKay wasn’t impressed by my revised report on Insch’s handling of the investigation. Thinks I should’ve screwed him to the carpet.’

‘I thought you had?’

‘Yeah, well...’ She shrugged. ‘You were right, OK? Don’t rub it in.’ She huddled forwards into the gap between the two front seats and cupped her hands over the air vents, complaining that they were still cold.

‘You’ll get chilblains.’

‘Bite me.’

At least she was talking to him again. And then Logan’s phone went: DI Steel calling from Elizabeth Nichol’s ruined house in Newmacher with an update on the search.

‘ No postcards, or letters, but the bugger’s definitely been here. Found a scrapbook in the spare bedroom — thing’s full of newspaper cuttings. Heather and Duncan Inglis, Tom and Hazel Stephen, Marcus Young, Maureen and Sandra Taylor... they’re all in there, all the little articles from before they went missing, and a lot of the stuff from after as well. “Flesher Strikes Again: Couple Missing” sort of thing. And they’re no’ the only ones — got stuff in here from Inverness to Eastbourne, and loads of stuff from Fuckknowswhereistan. Eastern European probably, but I can’t read a bloody word of it .’

Logan passed on the information.

Faulds asked for the phone: ‘Inspector? When does it start, this book? What’s the first clipping?’ Pause. ‘Uh-huh... Yes... Is it? Good God... How many do you think?... OK, thanks.’ He hung up and returned Logan’s mobile. ‘Looks as if the scrapbook only goes back as far as 2004. We’re going to have to run all the newspaper clippings against every force’s missing persons’ database.’ He rubbed a hand across the fogged-up windscreen, revealing the Souter household in all its ominous glory. It looked as if the IB were giving up, hauling their stuff back through the rain and into their filthy van. ‘2004... Christ knows how many Jimmy Souter killed before that...’

Jackie nodded. ‘There’ll be more scrapbooks.’ She must have seen the expression on Logan’s face in the rear-view mirror, because she turned to stare at him. ‘What? Souter’s a hoarder, isn’t he? He’ll have every article he’s ever clipped.’

She had a point.

‘Can you imagine growing up here?’ said Logan, watching the IB slowly disappear as the windscreen fogged up again. ‘Downwind of the abattoir, everything you own covered in a greasy film. Go to school and it clings to your clothes and your hair. All the kids pick on you because you smell. Then you go home and your alki dad beats the shite out of you.’

Faulds wiped the windscreen again. ‘You’re not suggesting this isn’t Jimmy Souter’s fault?’