Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

‘Something like that. We had to break down the front door.’

‘And you didn’t see anyone leaving the house?’

‘Of course we bloody didn’t. Don’t you think we would have said something?’

Logan nodded, went back into the butchery and picked up his torch. Dead. He shook it a couple of times and a thin light flickered on. Good enough.

If the Flesher didn’t go out through the house there was only one way she could have gone. Logan lurched past the containers and on into the darkness.

It seemed to go on forever — dark and oppressive, smelling of earth and decay, with an undercurrent of meat. The tunnel took a sudden right — an old wooden door blocking the way. Logan stopped with one hand against it, trying to tell if there was someone waiting for him on the other side.

He had no intention of finding out the hard way.

‘This is a complete and utter cocking disaster.’ It was Faulds, muttering his way down the corridor, following Jackie and her torch.

She stopped when she got to the door and ran the beam over Logan’s face. The light was blinding, making him feel sick all over again.

‘Argh, Jesus...’ He held a hand up over his eyes.

‘You’re bleeding. And you look like shite.’

‘Ow!’ Logan flinched away as she prodded the side of his head. ‘Thanks, I love you too.’

She stared at him. ‘No you don’t. That was the problem, remember?’

Faulds pushed his way to the front. ‘We shouldn’t leave all that evidence unguarded.’

‘Tell you what then,’ said Jackie, ‘why don’t you stay behind, in the dark, on your own, in the Flesher’s lair, while we go looking for the bastard? I’m sure you’ll still be alive when we get back.’

‘Are you...’ Faulds looked as if he were about to pull rank, but Jackie was right: there were only three of them, splitting up wasn’t an option.

Logan grabbed the old Bakelite handle and pulled the door open... exposing a blank, white wall.

‘Oh, that’s just brilliant,’ said Faulds. ‘Dead end. And while we’re arseing about here, the Flesher’s getting away.’ He turned. ‘Watson, I want you—’

‘Hold on...’ Logan gave his torch another shake and ran the jaundiced beam around the blank, featureless surface. A couple of small hinges ran down the left-hand side. ‘It’s a door.’

It took a bit of fiddling, but eventually Logan got the thing to open. There was a store room on the other side, full of shelves and cleaning products. Jackie pulled out her extendable baton and clacked it to full length. Then inched into the room. ‘Clear.’

They followed her past racks of bleach, disinfectant, and tubs of antibacterial hand-wash. The door at the far end was more traditional. Jackie turned the handle and stepped out into a corridor: white walls; suspended ceiling with fluorescent lighting; stainless-steel flooring — the kind with raised diamond patterns to stop people from slipping; the distant rumble and squeak of machinery; a radio playing something innocuous; the almost overpowering smell of lamb.

Logan looked up and down the corridor. ‘Left or right?’

‘Left. If there’s a radio there’s people.’ Faulds set off towards the noise with Jackie hot on his heels, leaving Logan to trail along behind. Every step making his head swim. The smell, the noise and the bright white walls weren’t helping. Probably a concussion and—

His phone blared into life, adding to the waves of nausea. He fumbled it out, still marching after Faulds and Jackie. ‘What?’

It was Rennie, talking so fast it was nearly gibberish: ‘ I did it! It was a right pain in the arse, but I did it! Every time Elizabeth Nichol was driving her truck on the continent there’s at least one hit from the INTERPOL files. She’s the Flesher! ’

‘Get a firearms team out to the abattoir now. And an ambulance.’ Logan stopped for a second, eyes squeezed shut, leaning against the wall to stay upright. Mouth suddenly full of saliva. Not going to be sick, not going to be sick.

‘ That’s why we’ve not had any bodies for eighteen years: she’s been killing her way round Eastern Europe. Bain says —’

‘Shut up. Fuck’s sake... Roadblocks — every route out of Turriff...’ Maybe it would be better to throw up now and get it over with?

‘You OK?’

‘No.’ Logan hung up, pushed off the wall, took a deep breath, and hurried after Faulds and Jackie, the mingled sounds of Northsound Radio 2 and heavy machinery getting louder with every step.

He limped around the corner into a steamy room that reeked of lamb. A pair of mechanized belts ran along the ceiling. Sheep carcasses creaked and swayed their way down one side — fully wooled at one end, skinned and gutted at the other. The opposite belt carried stainless-steel poles, each with a little basket on the end; severed sheep heads staring out of them, looking mildly surprised by death, their innards draped over a spike underneath. All going round to the tune of Blur’s ‘Parklife’, like some macabre merry-go-round.

Faulds and Jackie were in here, the Chief Constable trying to get a man in a bloodstained overall to understand English by shouting at him. Finally the man seemed to get it and pointed at a doorway next to a plastic bin full of lungs.

Logan pushed his way through the crowd of abattoir workers just as Faulds stepped into the corridor. ‘Armed backup is on its way.’

Faulds stopped and turned. ‘I want this place evacuated. We’re not putting any more civilians—’

He didn’t get to finish the sentence.

The Flesher appeared in the doorway behind the Chief Constable, knife in hand. There wasn’t even time to shout. The Flesher wrapped her arms around Faulds in a lover’s embrace — a knife blade flashed in the overhead lighting. It disappeared into Faulds’ side, just below the bottom rib.

He looked down at the arm wrapped around his stomach and the bloody hand holding the knife. ‘P... please...’ His face went white.

The Flesher yanked it straight across Faulds’ belly and out the other side. Less than a second start to finish.

Bright-scarlet oxygenated blood pulsed out into the room. Someone screamed, but all Faulds could do was open and shut his mouth. He fell to his knees — innards bulging out, still held together with connective tissue — the stink of punctured bowels and severed intestines barely noticeable, just another slaughterhouse smell.

The workforce ran: shouting, swearing, getting as far away from the blood and guts as they could. The Flesher disappeared into the crowd.

‘NO!’ Logan scrambled over to Faulds. The man was in shock. His face pale and glassy, hands shivering over the hole in his belly, not touching anything...

‘Come on, you’re going to be OK, You’re going to be OK!’

No he wasn’t — there was blood everywhere, she’d nearly cut him in half.

Jackie shouted over the sounds of panicking abattoir workers: ‘YOU! STOP RIGHT THERE!’

Logan scanned the room; she was over by the line of skinned and gutted sheep, facing off against the Flesher. The knife flashed out, but Jackie slashed her baton across it, sending the blade clattering to the metal floor.

The Flesher lunged, shoving a hollowed-out carcass into Jackie. She staggered back against the wall, slipped on the bloody floor and went down hard.

A small pause and the Flesher pulled out what looked like a lightsaber, twisting it apart and slipping in a small green cartridge as Jackie struggled to get up.

Logan yelled, ‘It’s A BOLT GUN!’

Snap and the thing was back together again.

He tried to get up, but Faulds had a death grip on his jacket, mouth moving soundlessly, eyes wide, gasping for breath.