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

…’

      Duncan nodded.‘He’s right, you know.’

      Heather felt her stomach lurch. ‘But I’ve been eating it for ages …’

      ‘You didn’t have a choice, though, did you? It was that or starve.’

      Heather stared at Duncan, remembering what the Butcher – the Flesher – did to him. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? All this time … it was you.’

      He nodded.

      ‘Oh Duncan.’

      Her dead husband smiled.‘Hey, at least I was tasty.’ He pointed at the tinfoil parcel in her hands.‘Don’t let it go to waste.’

      ‘But it’s people …’

      ‘It’s just meat, Honey. In the end we’re all just meat.’

      Heather picked up another slice from the parcel … ‘I can’t.’

      ‘Yes you can.’

      Duncan was right.

       29

      Alec fired up his camera, pointing it through the windscreen at the darkened house. ‘We looking for anything in particular?’

      Logan waited for Steel to say something, but she was already clambering out of the car, a freshly lit cigarette between her teeth. Blue-and-white POLICE tape flapped in the wind, a wriggling snake of it caught in the bramble bushes that grew along the drystone dyke opposite the Leiths’ converted steading. Other than that, there was no sign that this place had witnessed a sudden, violent death.

      He dug the key out of his pocket – courtesy of a brief stop past FHQ – unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. A high-pitched bleep, bleep, bleep came from a small plastic box on the wall, lights flashing, showing an intruder in ‘ZONE ONE’. The keypad was in the cupboard under the stairs and Logan punched in the code he’d got from the FLO. ‘One, nine, nine, five…’ the year the Leiths got married. Alarm disarmed.

      The Environmental Health team had pretty much wrecked the place getting rid of anything contaminated with body fluids. They’d cut large chunks out of the carpet, removing it and the underlay beneath, exposing pale patches of bleached chipboard. The smell of chlorine in the kitchen was almost overpowering, but the blood was gone. God knew how many canisters of trichloroethylene they’d had to use to get rid of it all, but the walls were blotchy where the super-strength bleach had eaten away the colour. Logan threw the kitchen window open, then did the same with the back door, trying to get rid of the swimming pool stink.

      And then he went through the kitchen units, looking for anything from Weight Watchers that might suggest Valerie Leith had been a member. There were a couple of cartons of Slim Fast in the cupboards, a packet of Ryvita, but no official products.

      Steel was in the back garden, fag in one hand, mobile phone clamped to her ear with the other. She shouted in through the open window, ‘Found anything?’ And when Logan told her no, went back to her phone call. ‘I’m not saying that, Susan, I was just … but …’

      So Logan searched the lounge, then the dining room, bedrooms, bathroom, with Alec trailing along behind him. ‘You going to tell me what we’re looking for then?’

      ‘The Flesher’s victims aren’t just picked at random: he has a selection criteria. If we can figure out how he finds them, we’ve got a much better chance of catching the bastard. And I thought …’ They’d ended up back in the kitchen and Logan still hadn’t found anything. ‘I thought I had a connection, but Valerie Leith never went to Weight Watchers. Close, but no low-fat Chicken Kiev.’

      Alec shrugged. ‘Shame – that would have looked good on telly: lone-wolf cop makes connection that breaks the case.’

      ‘Always thought of myself as team player.’

      ‘Yeah, well, the public likes lone wolves better. More romantic.’

      Logan pulled the window closed, then did the same with the back door. Stopping with his fingers resting on the handle, looking back at the bleach-stained kitchen. All the way up the walls. Not just all over the floor.

      A slow grin spread across Logan’s face: he finally knew what had been bugging him about the Leith crime scene.

       30

      DI Steel leaned back against the working surface and ground her cigarette out in the sink. ‘It doesn’t prove anything.’

      ‘Look.’ Logan pointed at the bleach marks above the tiled splashback. ‘There was blood all the way up the walls. Four streaks.’ He wrapped his hand around an imaginary knife, raised it high, then stabbed the inspector four times. ‘Each time the knife comes out it sprays blood in an arc up the walls.’

      ‘Aye, it was in the SOC report.’ She shook her head. ‘Jesus … I do read these things, you know!’

      ‘None of the other crime scenes have that kind of stabbing-blood-pattern.’

      ‘So she fought back, it’s—’

      ‘Alec, you got the footage you shot this morning at the Stephens’? I need to see the kitchen.’

      Alec went through his pockets, pulling out HDTV tapes and reading the labels. He found what he was looking for, swapped out the one in the camera and fiddled with the buttons.

      ‘I don’t see what this has to do with—’

      ‘Got it.’ Alec flipped the camera’s little screen around and pressed play.

      ‘See?’ Logan pointed at the picture, ‘There’s blood all over the floor, none on the walls or ceiling. I’ve been through every crime scene photo since 1985 and when he kills them onsite it’s always the same – floor soaked, blood splashed to about knee high, fine spray on the units. No marks up the walls.’

      ‘Oh come off it. Leith saw the bloody Flesher!’

      ‘Yeah, and lived to tell the tale. This guy has enough time to turn the kitchen into a butcher’s shop as he hacks up Valerie Leith, but doesn’t get round to killing the husband? Does that sound like the Flesher to you?’

      Steel sucked a breath in between her teeth, face creased into an unhappy grimace. ‘But the husband saw him!’

      Logan held up the copy of Smoak With Blood he’d found in the Leiths’ bedroom. ‘It’s all in here. The MO, the costume, the fact he leaves bits of meat behind. Best selling book in Aberdeen since we raided that butcher’s shop. You got any idea how many Margaret Thatcher fright masks were bought last week? Hundreds.’

      ‘Stop. Back the What-the-Fuck bus up right now. You are no’ making this bastarding case any more complicated than it already is. Understand?’

      ‘Plus I called the lab – they did a rush job on that slab of meat we found at the Stephen house this morning. It was a bit of Duncan Inglis. If the Flesher’s still got slices of him knocking around, how come Valerie Leith ends up in her own freezer?’

      The inspector took another look around the kitchen: the bleached-out walls and ceiling. ‘Oh bloody hell … Fine. OK. You win, get another search team up here – half a dozen uniforms, couple of dogs, and the IB – we’ll go through the place from scratch, but if this is all a sodding waste of time you can tell the ACC why we pissed away a dozen man-days.’

      ‘Heather? Heather, are you awake?’

      Darkness. Stench. Cold.

      She groaned and slapped both hands over her eyes.

      ‘Heather?’