Flesh House. Stuart MacBride

      Logan flicked through the names and dates. All those deaths …

      According to the notes, everyone knew Wiseman was responsible, but couldn’t prove it, so in the end they’d had to settle for the only ones they could prove: Mr and Mrs McLaughlin, Aberdeen, 1987. And even then—

      ‘Sergeant McRae!’

      Logan looked up from his pile of paperwork to find the whole court staring at him. He clambered to his feet, blushing. ‘Ah … yes, sorry, Milord …’ and it sort of went downhill from there.

      The light was blinding, streaming in from an open door on the other side of the bars. Heather screwed her face shut, one hand over her eyes for added protection. After all this time in total darkness it was just too painful.

      Her head throbbed, her throat ached, she felt dizzy and weak. Her wrists burned where she’d scraped them up and down against the rough edge of the bars, till the cable-ties snapped.

      Gradually her eyes got used to the light and the room faded into focus. They were in a small metal space, no bigger than their tiny bedroom back home – the floor red with rust and dried blood … Oh God … Duncan was dead. She reached through the bars with a trembling hand and stroked his forehead. It was hot, not cold: he was still alive!

      She croaked through the bars at him: ‘Duncan! Duncan wake up!’

      Nothing.

      ‘Duncan! Someone’s found us, Duncan! It’s going to be all right!’

      A shadow blocked the light, then a loud metallic clang rattled the walls.

      Heather tried to shout, but her throat was too dry to do much more than whisper, ‘My husband needs medical …’ There was a figure standing in the doorway: butcher’s apron, white Wellington boots, grubby rubber mask, the eyeholes two black voids with nothing human behind them.

      ‘Please,’ Heather tried again, ‘please, we won’t tell anyone! Please, Duncan needs help!’

      The man in the butcher’s apron stood with his head on one side, watching her cry, the way a cat watches an injured bird.

      ‘Please! I’ll do anything you want! PLEASE!’ She scrambled to her knees and fumbled at the buttons on her blood-soaked blouse, tears rolling down her cheeks as she exposed her pale body. ‘Please don’t hurt us …’

      The Butcher turned and pulled an old tin bath into the room.

      Heather knelt there in her grey, mumsy bra. ‘Whatever we did, we’re sorry!’

      He stooped and pulled two lengths of chain out of the bath, and threaded them through a pair of pulleys bolted to the ceiling. Then he dragged Duncan into the middle of the room.

      She lunged forwards, hands scrabbling between the bars, clutching at her husband’s ankles. Holding on for dear life.

      ‘NO! You can’t have him! You can’t!’

      The Butcher let go and Duncan clattered to the ground. Heather hauled him back towards the bars, screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘HELP! HELP! WE’RE IN HERE! SOMEBODY HELP!’

      The Butcher grabbed her wrists, yanking her forward and bashing her head into the metal bars. Pain closed her eyes, burning iron filled her nose. Heather opened her mouth to cry out and tasted blood. She tried to break free, but he held her firm … and then he let go. She lurched backwards, but something jerked her to a painful halt – there was a fresh set of cable-ties around her wrists, binding them on either side of a rusted metal bar. ‘NO!’

      She lunged back and forth, ignoring the pain. ‘LET HIM GO!’

      The Butcher fastened the chains around Duncan’s ankles, then pulled – the links rattling through the pulleys as her husband’s limp body was hoisted upside-down, dangling over the tin bath. Something flickered in his pale face, and his eyes opened. Confused. ‘Heather?’

      ‘Duncan!’ She dropped her shoulder and slammed into the bars, too close to get up any real momentum, but enough to make the metal groan.

      ‘Heather …’

      This time the whole room shook as she slammed into the bars. ‘LET HIM GO!’

      The Butcher took a long, green rubber apron from the bucket and pulled it on. Then a pair of elbow-length green rubber gloves.

      ‘Give me back my fucking husband!’ BOOM – she threw herself at the bars again, tearing the skin on her naked shoulder.

      An axe came out of the bath, followed by what looked like a torch, or a lightsaber. The last thing was a set of knives. The Butcher selected one and sliced Duncan’s clothes off, running the blade up the seams, peeling him like an orange.

      And when Duncan had been stripped naked – his pale skin fluorescing in the harsh electric light – the Butcher twisted the lightsaber in half, slipped a tiny green cartridge into it, and screwed it back together.

      ‘LET HIM GO!’ She slammed into the bars again.

      ‘Heather …’

      Click, and the lightsaber was given another small twist. The man grabbed a handful of hair and dragged Duncan’s head up.

      ‘Heather … Heather, I love y—’

      He brought the blunt end of the lightsaber down hard, right on the top of Duncan’s head. A loud CRACK reverberated round the metal room and Duncan convulsed; a thin plume of blood pulsed from the new hole in his scalp. Heather screamed. The Butcher calmly picked up a thin wire rod and slid it into the little geyser of blood: jerking it in and out, then jamming it so far in that only the wooden handle protruded. Duncan stopped moving.

      The Butcher slit Duncan’s throat vertically from clavicle to chin, opening his neck. Then the blade disappeared up inside the cut, twisted, and a huge rush of bright scarlet deluged into the tin bath.

      Duncan hung naked and still as the grave. Dripping and swaying gently.

      Heather sank to her knees and sobbed. She didn’t watch the man skin and gut her husband.

       9

      DI Steel was waiting for Logan when he got back from court. ‘Well?’

      ‘Two months.’

      ‘Is that all?’

      ‘Sheriff said he’d shown real remorse and didn’t present an immediate danger to the public. We were lucky he got banged up at all.’

      ‘Why do we even bother arresting the bastards?’ Steel hitched up her trousers. ‘Right, I want you to—’

      ‘Scuse me,’ DC Rennie staggered to a halt, clutching a dusty cardboard box full of case files. ‘Bloody thing weighs a ton …’

      The inspector stood to one side and Rennie lurched past.

      The constable paused. ‘You two coming tonight?’

      Steel shrugged. ‘Ah, why not? Laz can bring his new boyfriend from Birmingham.’

      ‘He’s not my boyfriend!’

      ‘That reminds me,’ Rennie shifted his grip on the box. ‘Chief Constable Faulds’s been looking for you.’

      ‘Oh aye?’ said Steel, ‘Well he can kiss my—’

      ‘No, not you: DS McRae. Something about retracing the original investigation.’

      Logan closed his eyes. ‘Oh God …’

      Steel slapped him on the back. ‘Never mind, Laz, you’ll get your reward in heaven. But before you get there I want that vandalism report, or you’re going the other way, understand?’

      The setting sun made the