Logan McRae Crime Series Books 4-6: Flesh House, Blind Eye, Dark Blood. Stuart MacBride

back to the car.

      ‘Shhhhhh …’ Wiseman held a finger to his lips as the last peal of the doorbell faded into silence. Then waited five minutes, just to be sure whoever it was had fucked off. Then took his hand off the bitch’s mouth.

      She was a good girl, didn’t scream this time. Learned her lesson. She wasn’t much to look at – let herself go a bit after the kids – but then, given the fat git she’d married … No accounting for taste.

      He pulled out a couple of cable-ties and fastened the bitch’s wrists behind her back, then wrapped another set around her ankles. Just like her darling husband and the three little girls upstairs. One big happy family.

      Wiseman smiled at her. ‘Now then, where were we?’

      The fat bastard lay flat on his face in the middle of the carpet – spread out like a beached whale, bright red oozing from the back of his bald head.

      ‘He ever tell you about me?’

      She whimpered and shook her head.

      ‘No? That’s not polite, is it, Insch?’ Wiseman heaved the fat man over onto his back and slapped a strip of duct-tape over his mouth. ‘How could you not tell your lovely wife that you fucked my life over?’ Wiseman sat on Insch’s barrel chest, spat in his face. Then slammed a fist into it. The whale’s blubber shuddered, and two dark, piggy eyes cracked open.

      ‘The kraken awakes! Hey, Fat Boy: miss me?’

      Insch struggled, breath hissing through his nose as he tried to break his bonds.

      ‘No point, Lard Arse. Most people can’t snap one cable tie, never mind six. You’re going nowhere.’ He patted Insch’s chubby cheek. ‘I can’t believe you never told her how you beat a fucking confession out of me! Eh? How you told the court I fell …’ Wiseman slammed his fist into Insch’s face, ‘down …’ punch, ‘the …’ punch, ‘fucking …’ punch, ‘stairs!’

      He sat back and flexed his hand. ‘See, your law-abiding, police officer husband liked beating up suspects, didn’t you, Fatty?’ He stood, took two steps back and slammed a foot into Insch’s ribs.

      The bitch whimpered. ‘We … we’ve got money! You can have it! Just let us go!’

      Wiseman pretended to think about it for a minute. ‘No.’

      ‘But … but they’ll come looking for us! You can’t—’

      ‘Oh, shut up.’ He tore off another strip of duct-tape and sealed her cakehole. ‘What’ve I got to lose, eh? These bastards catch me they’re going to screw me over. Just like last time. I’ve seen the papers: what is it, five, six murders? You think two more are going to make any difference?’

      She mumbled something behind her gag, eyes wide, terrified.

      ‘Shhhh …’ He dropped down in front of her, stroked her hair, cupped her podgy face in his hand; smiling as Fatty thrashed about on the floor, making angry, impotent noises. ‘I’ve been waiting for this for ages. Believe me, there are worse things than dying. There’s being banged up with fucking sickos and kiddy-fiddlers for fifteen years. There’s getting raped in the showers. Now why don’t you settle back and enjoy the show? It’s going to be a lonnnnng night …’

      Heather sat, knees drawn up to her chest, ears straining at the darkness.

      ‘I don’t understand, what—’

      ‘Shhh!’

      Duncan pulled on his hard-done-by face. ‘I was only asking.’

      ‘Can you hear it? I can hear it …’

      ‘Maybe you should eat something?’

      ‘I can hear it breathing.’

      ‘Heather—’

      ‘Something’s out there.’ She pointed out into the darkness, where the bars were, and Duncan shuddered.

      ‘Don’t think about it.’

      ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’

      ‘There’s still plenty of pork left. Or is it veal? I can’t tell.’

      ‘Duncan – tell me!’

      ‘Where do you think he’s gone? I mean, he left enough food—’

      ‘DUNCAN!’

      When he replied it was little more than a whisper. ‘It’s the Dark.’

      Heather pushed herself back into the corner, praying that the line of bars would be enough to keep the Dark from breaking through. ‘What … what does it want?’

      ‘What do you think?’

      Breathing in the darkness. Watching her. Waiting.

      ‘It wants me …’

      The morning briefing was a pretty dismal affair – DI Steel standing in for Insch who hadn’t turned up that morning. Probably hungover after a night in the Redgarth, drinking to DSI Brooks’ memory. So Steel was just going through the motions till he turned up: no new leads, no new victims, no sign of Wiseman. Same as yesterday and the day before.

      She wrapped up the meeting with a half-hearted chorus of ‘We are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up!’ then let them all get back to whatever jobs Insch had given them before he’d been suspended. Which left Logan and Rennie back in the Flesher history room, clambering up the north face of Ancient Paperwork Mountain.

      By half past ten Rennie was off making tea again – anything to escape all those INTERPOL reports – when Faulds reappeared. The Chief Constable dumped his suitcase by the radiator, stretched, yawned, and slouched into his seat. ‘Sorry I’m so late, but I couldn’t face the redeye.’ He fumbled the top off a waxed cardboard cup of coffee. ‘Why does everyone have to go feral on Guy Fawkes Night?’

      Logan looked up from the latest in a long line of crime scene reports. ‘Fireworks?’

      ‘It’ll make my life a lot easier when they ban the bloody things. Seven children with third-degree burns. One little girl lost most of her left hand … mind you, she was trying to stuff a rocket up some poor dog’s bum at the time: wanted to see if it would explode. What’s wrong with people today?’

      There was no answer to that, so Logan went back to work. But he could feel Faulds watching him.

      It took the chief constable nearly five minutes to pop the question: ‘So … what happened to your face?’

      ‘I’d rather not talk about it, sir.’

      Faulds stared at him for a while, shrugged, then asked for an update on the case, nodding and groaning as Logan went through everything that had happened since the CC left for Birmingham on Friday.

      ‘So basically,’ said Faulds, when Logan had finished, ‘I go away for three days and it all goes to rat-shit.’

      ‘Something like that.’

      The Chief Constable sniffed. ‘I can’t believe Wiseman threw Brooks off a roof. I mean, he was a Neanderthal and his methods were … questionable, but he didn’t deserve that.’

      It was hard to imagine who did. ‘We’ve got CCTV footage of someone helping Brooks into the tower block. He looks plastered – post mortem turned up traces of heroin in his system, Isobel only found one injection site.’

      ‘Poor sod. At least we’ve got CCTV—’

      ‘We can’t make an ID. It’s a council system so the resolution’s terrible, and the guy’s wearing a hoodie, never looks at the camera.’ Logan pointed at a fresh collection of photos on the wall of death. ‘We found the flat he kept Brooks in; according to council records the last tenant was a Mrs Irene Grey. She went into hospital for a cataract operation, caught MRSA. Died two months ago.’