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

all be over soon.’

       27

      Logan wasn’t really in the mood for getting pished, but he made a brave stab at it anyway. Four hours sat in the cramped viewing room with DI Steel – watching Faulds and his criminal psychologist trying to get something useful out of Ken Wiseman – meant that Logan was more than ready to go bowling with Rennie and a couple of people from work. There were only so many times you could watch a murdering scumbag tell a Chief Constable to go fuck himself with a cheese grater.

      By the time Rennie’s girlfriend, Laura, turned up at the bowling alley, they were all on their fourth pints. Logan wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved that she hadn’t brought the promised friend with her.

      More beer, then tequila, then chips. Then Logan called it a night, walking home to the flat alone, feeling drunk and more than a little sorry for himself.

      The flat wasn’t the same without Jackie’s crap lying all over the place: the strange little porcelain things, the dozens of unidentifiable potions in the bathroom, the little tangles of hair on the carpet by the mirror in the bedroom. Cold feet beneath the duvet …

      Jammy bastard Rennie with his nice perky new girlfriend.

      Logan collapsed into bed, sprawled out like a half-cut starfish, and stared up into the darkness. They’d caught the Flesher – everything should have been hunky dory. But it wasn’t.

      Eventually he drifted off to sleep, his dreams full of little dead girls and their grieving fathers.

      Bright light. Hazy, painful … but that was nothing new. Everything hurt. Heather rolled over onto her side and squinted at the open door.

      He was back!

      She scrambled to her knees, fell over, crawled to the bars. ‘P …’ Just enough water left in her body for a few burning tears.

      HE WAS BACK!

      The Butcher dragged someone new into the prison, dumped them on the other side of the bars, then turned and stared at Heather.

      ‘P …’ She choked. Tried again. ‘Please …’

      He pulled a bottle of water from his apron and handed it through the bars. Heather grabbed his leg, pulling him off balance, hauling him forwards till he was hard against the metal. Then she wrapped her arm around his leg, croaking, ‘Don’t … ever … leave me again …’

      She fumbled the lid off the bottled water and drank, spluttered, brought most of it back up. Sobbing. ‘Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’

      The Butcher froze, then reached down and stroked her matted, greasy hair.

      Everything would be OK now.

      He was back.

SMOAK WITH BLOOD

       28

      ‘Sodding cock-monkeys …’ DI Steel puffed out her cheeks and blew. ‘What time is it?’

      Logan peeled back the cuff of his SOC oversuit and checked. ‘Nearly half seven.’ Monday morning hadn’t started well – three hours they’d been at it, and the sun was still nowhere to be seen.

      The inspector groaned. ‘It’s going to be a long bloody day.’ She stepped back to let an IB technician carrying a plastic evidence box squeeze past. ‘What the hell is that?’

      ‘Everything from the freezer.’ The man said, holding it up for inspection.

      Steel went for a quick rummage. ‘Peas, sweetcorn, fish fingers …’ She pulled out a solid brown lump of something wrapped in clingfilm and waved it at Logan. ‘That look like goulash, sausage casserole, or curry to you?’

      ‘Could be mince?’

      She chucked it back in the box and picked up a chunk of something pinky-red. ‘Ahoy-hoy, this looks promising. Human remains?’

      Logan shrugged – it all looked like meat to him.

      ‘Go on then,’ she told the guy holding the box, ‘don’t just stand there, get it tested.’

      The technician said, ‘Yes ma’am,’ but Logan could hear him muttering ‘silly old cow …’ under his breath as he carried it out to the IB van.

      Steel fidgeted about in her pockets. ‘Got a bad feeling about this, Laz – something in me water. Like bloody cystitis.’ She wandered through to the lounge and watched the white-suited figures picking their way through the contents with tiny hoovers and fingerprint powder. ‘Only thing stopping the press buggering us with a cactus is that everyone knows Wiseman’s guilty.’ She shifted from foot to foot. ‘He is guilty, isn’t he?’

      ‘Faulds says they thought Wiseman had an accomplice twenty years ago. Maybe this is him working on his own?’

      Steel scowled at him. ‘Thought you bloody caught the accomplice – what’s-his-face, the brother-in-law?’

      ‘Yeah, well…’ Cough. ‘Maybe it wasn’t him.’

      ‘Gee, you think?’ The inspector turned on her heel and stomped upstairs, her SOC suit making zwip-zwop noises as she climbed. Logan followed her up, across the landing and into the master bedroom, where she cracked open the window and lit a cigarette. Outside, in the back garden, two uniformed officers in the ubiquitous white paper oversuits were rooting through the bushes and shed, the grass twinkling with early frost in the half light.

      ‘Hairy bastarding arseholes.’ Steel flicked a few grey flakes of dove-grey ash out into the cold morning. ‘How the hell am I supposed to solve this one?’

      ‘There’s a press conference at half eleven. Do you—’

      ‘I mean it’s no’ as if them other bastards managed, and they tried for years!’ She ran a hand across her face, pulling it all out of shape. ‘You know I had to phone the Chief Constable at half three this morning and tell him we’d screwed up on this one? “Wiseman’s no’ the Flesher after all, terribly sorry old bean.” Went down like Mother Teresa in a brothel …’

      Logan let her moan while he picked through one of the bedside cabinets. One drawer for socks, one drawer for underpants, one drawer for the assorted junk every man collected: handkerchiefs, playing cards, bookmarks, a little windup plastic nun that was probably supposed to walk, but just made obscene grinding motions instead. There was a photo next to the bedside light – Tom and Hazel Stephen, the Flesher’s latest victims. They were at some sort of formal event, him in a suit and tie, her spilling out of a low-cut black cocktail dress. They looked happy.

      ‘—creek without a paddle. Why the hell did those bastards no’ finish the damn case properly twenty years ago? How come it’s my fault all of a sudden?’ Steel sank down on the edge of the double bed and sagged. ‘And that wee bugger Alec’s been following me about for days. Everywhere I go – there’s his bastarding camera. Can’t even take a crap without the BBC filming it.’

      She pinged an inch of ash onto the oatmeal-coloured carpet and ground it in with her blue plastic bootee. ‘Couple more days of this and I’m going to end up like Insch.’

      Steel collapsed back on the bed, hands clamped over her face, cigarette poking out of her mouth, spiralling smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Come on then