Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

‘Please don’t hurt her.’

The Flesher reached up, took hold of the rubber mask, and pulled... then froze, the mask half on and half off. There was a noise filtering down from somewhere, like electronic music being played far away. He slid the mask back down over His face and stood, then pulled a long butcher’s knife from His apron. It looked exactly the same as the one Heather had been hiding.

Only this time she knew it was real.

‘Hold on a minute...’ Logan stopped at the top of the basement stairs, pulled out his warbling phone and pressed the green button. ‘Hello?’

Rennie, sounding excited: ‘ I did it! I rule! And rock! Rock and rule! ’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘ Children’s homes. I went through every bastard in Social Services till I got some doddery old bat who remembered something about a wee girl getting taken into care after her dad lost an arm in a slaughterhouse. You may now worship my —’

‘What about the other kids — Kelley and Jimmy?’

‘ God knows. I was lucky to get that much out of her .’

‘What bloody good does that do us?’ Logan started down the stairs, his torch’s beam supplemented by the lights on Alec’s camera. ‘We already know—’

‘ Ah, this is where my genius comes in. She didn’t deal with the case herself, but she knows a man who did. We ...’ Silence.’... time with...’ Hissing.’... night? ’

‘Hello?’

Tssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss’... lo? ’

Logan froze on the stairs, then took two steps back up. ‘Hello?’

‘ Hello? You still there? ’

‘What did he say?’

‘ Didn’t speak to him, thought you’d want to do that yourself. His number’s oh, one, two, two, four ...’

Logan pinned the phone between his shoulder and his ear, dug out his notebook and copied it down. ‘Thanks.’

‘ And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, Simon Rennie has left the building! ’

‘Oh no he bloody hasn’t.’

‘ What? Oh come on, I— ’

‘Just hang around till I’ve spoken to him, OK? I might need you to follow up on something.’ He hung up before Rennie could start whinging, and dialled the number.

‘ Hello? ’ An old man’s voice.

Logan asked him about Elizabeth Souter. There was a long and thoughtful pause. ‘ Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry .’

‘Well how about Kelley? No? Jimmy Souter?’

‘ Jimmy Souter? Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time. You wouldn’t believe the trouble one person can cause. If anything got broken, vandalized, set on fire, it was always Jimmy Souter’s fault .’

‘Any idea what happened to him?’

‘ Elizabeth and Kelley... now I remember — we all breathed a sigh of relief when someone adopted her. Can’t have been easy for the family, but I understand she turned out pretty well .’

‘What happened to Jimmy?’

‘ Hmm? Oh, I suppose he just went away, like all imaginary friends .’

Logan frowned at the phone. ‘Imaginary—’

‘ Kelley Elizabeth Souter was a very disturbed young lady when we took her into care, Sergeant. I understand she named “Jimmy” after her father. Any time she did anything wrong it was always Jimmy’s fault .’

Thirty seconds later, Logan was back on the phone to Rennie.

‘Just shut up and listen, OK? There’s a fax on my desk from Garioch United something-or-other, I need you to cross-reference all the dates and locations with those incidents you got from INTERPOL.’

‘ But that’ll takes ages, I’m —’

‘You’ve got it all in HOLMES, haven’t you? Just run a search. It’ll take twenty minutes!’

‘ All right, all right. Jesus .’

‘And call me back soon as you’ve got anything!’

‘ What do I tell Bain? ’

Logan started down the basement stairs again. ‘Just let him know...’

‘ What ab...’ Scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’... ed? Hello?’ Hisssssssssssssss’... in tr ...’

He hung up. At least that would buy him some time. The DCS wasn’t going to be too pleased when he found out Logan had sparked a nation-wide manhunt for Elizabeth Nichol’s childhood imaginary friend.

The basement was cluttered: tea chests full of mildewed clothing; cardboard boxes of paperback books, bloated and blackened by damp; disintegrating furniture; rusty bicycles.

‘Fuck!’ Alec spun round, the spotlight on his camera raking the debris. ‘Was that a rat?’

Logan picked his way into the middle of the rotting maze. The building might have been sandstone, but the basement walls were granite. No wonder there was no signal. He peered into one of the boxes: Mills and Boon, Catherine Cookson, Barbara Cartland...

Alec did another panicky pirouette. ‘I bet it’s rats. I bet there’s hundreds of them down here... feeding on the abattoir’s leftovers...’

‘Will you calm down?’

The cameraman shivered. ‘You never read James Herbert?’ Logan ran his torch across the walls again. ‘Is that a door under the stairs?’

‘Probably just a fuse-box, or something. Can we get out of here before something eats us please? I fucking hate rats.’

‘Tell them your Fruit-tella story, that’ll put them off.’ Logan fought his way round to the door and opened it. ‘Bloody hell...’

There was a long dirt corridor on the other side, stretching off into the darkness, at least twenty foot long. Logan stepped inside. The floor was almost shiny, worn with years of use. He swung the door back and forth on its hinges a couple of times. No sound. Not even a creak.

Alec stumbled through the piles of mouldering boxes and peered over Logan’s shoulder. ‘What?’

The corridor had a strange smell — not the rancid tang of rendered tallow, but something cloying and floral. Air freshener, or incense. Logan ran his torch along the corridor’s rough walls. ‘Get back up the stairs and call Faulds. Get him and Jackie over here now.’

‘What is it?’

But Logan was already creeping forwards into the dark, telling himself that he was just going to the end of this bit and no further. Just in case.

Twenty yards in and the tunnel took a sharp right turn. He eased himself up to the edge and peered round the corner. Another short length of corridor had been dug out of the dirt, but this one had a blanket, or a curtain draped over the end, forming a makeshift door.

It was probably nothing... these houses had been here for decades. Since the 1890s at least. This could be an old air-raid shelter, or somewhere to hide an illicit still.... Whatever it was, Logan was not going in there on his own.

When the voice sounded at his shoulder he nearly screamed.

‘They’re on their way over.’ Alec whispered, camera at the ready. ‘You think this is where he keeps them?’

‘We’ll find out when Faulds and Jackie get here.’ Alec nodded, looked around, then said, ‘Sure you don’t want to take a quick peek?’

‘Certain.’

‘But what if PC Munro’s in there? Shouldn’t we be, you know, saving her?’

‘Go charging into an unknown area with no backup and no plan? You mad?’

The cameraman pursed his lips and made sooking noises. ‘They’d do it if this was a film. Don’t you want to be the hero? Ride in on your dirty big horse and save the damsel in distress in the nick of time?’

Logan stared at him. ‘And get her, you, or me killed in the process? We’re waiting till Faulds and Jackie get here and that’s final.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘Shhhhh... did you hear that?’

A woman’s voice. Muffled somewhere on the other side of the curtain.