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

said Duncan.

      ‘Yeah,’ Mr New sat on the opposite side of the mattress, the pair of them trapping her beneath the duvet, ‘you’ve got the knife now.’

      Even with her eyes closed she could see it shining pale blue in the darkness, tucked down the side of her cosy new bed. She had the knife – the one that had clattered against the bars when Mr New kicked the Flesher’s tin bath over. The knife was long and sharp and glowed like death.

      ‘You could kill Him.’

      ‘He’s too big, Mr New. You can’t kill Him. He’s the Dark. He’s always been.’

      Duncan patted her on the shoulder.‘Don’t be such a flid, Heather: a person can’t be the Dark. The Dark’s a thing in its own right. The Flesher’s just a man but the Dark … the Dark is eternal.’

      Heather tried to get comfortable. ‘Can you move over a bit?’

      ‘Are you happy?’

      ‘Duncan, don’t be like—’

      ‘I’m not being anything.’ He pulled back the duvet so she could see his face.‘I’m asking a question: are you happy?’

      She thought of Him, standing there in His butcher’s outfit, breathing hard as he scrubbed away at the blood-smeared, rusty floor. The scent of Jeyes Fluid gradually replacing the stench of Mr New’s death and her food poisoning. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

      Duncan bent down and kissed her on the top of the head.‘I know, Honey, I know. But you could have been free.’

       35

      Ten am and Logan was buzzing from the three large espressos he’d downed in the canteen, trying to make sure he’d stay awake for Thomas Stephen’s post mortem. Doctor Isobel MacAlister presiding. In attendance: DI Steel, DCS Bain, the Assistant Chief Constable, the Procurator Fiscal, a queasy-looking PC, an IB photographer, and old Doc Fraser with his hairy ears corroborating. Full house.

      Isobel had ‘rebuilt’ Thomas Stephen on the larger of the two cutting tables, his meatless bones all arranged in the right order, the innards tucked in beneath the two halves of his ribcage. And right at the very top: the bruised and battered head. In all the years he’d been attending these things, it was probably the most surreal sight Logan had ever seen. A skeleton man with glistening innards and a human head.

      DI Steel wrinkled her nose. ‘What the hell is that smell?’

      Logan scowled at her. ‘I showered, OK? Twice last night and three times this morning. It’s that bloody protein processing plant, the grease sinks into your skin like fake tan.’ Every time he blew his nose, the smell of rendering fat came flooding back, that and the mortuary’s acrid formalin reek was making him queasy … or maybe it was all the coffee?

      Or maybe it was Isobel, picking over Thomas Stephen’s severed head – her fingers working their way across the swollen face, as if trying to memorize his features by touch alone. He was bald on top, with a fringe of grey hair round the edges, a small white goatee beard sitting beneath a newly broken nose – his skin covered with bruises and scrapes. Isobel placed the head on the cutting table and peered at the very top. ‘There’s a hole here … some sort of wadding’s been forced into the wound …’ She pulled out a clot of dark red fabric. ‘Circular puncture wound in the crown of the skull. Flesh isn’t torn around the hole; bone isn’t striated, so it probably wasn’t a drill. Something solid moving vertically at high speed. Looks like a close-range bullet hole, but there are no burn marks …’ She flipped the head upside-down, peering at the neck stump, while a thin, pink-brown slime dripped from the not-bullet-hole. ‘That’s odd … Brian,’ holding a hand out to her assistant, ‘I need the bone saw.’

      Logan tried not to think about the next bit.

      When it was all over, and her assistant was rinsing the sticky sludge off the dissecting table, Isobel gave them the edited highlights. ‘The hole in Thomas Stephen’s head was caused by a rod extending four and three-quarter inches into his brain. It punched through the skull – embedding bone fragments in the surrounding tissue – tore through the edge of the left cerebral hemisphere, caused extensive damage to the cerebellum, and pretty much obliterated the brain stem. The exit wound where the skull meets the spine is much smaller than the entrance.’

      ‘Something pointy?’ For once Steel didn’t look as if she was taking the piss. ‘Maybe an ice pick?’

      ‘No … The killer withdrew whatever he’d used to punch through the skull, then threaded something else into the entry wound.’ She picked up a marker pen and drew a small diagram on the mortuary whiteboard. ‘The vertebrae were split vertically more or less in the middle – probably with an axe – but the damage to the upper spinal cord is uniform. Whatever it was, it was forced down, inside the spine, to the fifth cervical vertebrae. Effectively destroying the brainstem and stripping the nerve branches.’

      Someone swore, and Logan didn’t blame them.

      ‘Death would have been nearly instantaneous. No motor functions: no breathing and no heartbeat.’

      Doc Fraser nodded. ‘Pithing cane.’

      Isobel stuck the cap back on her pen. ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘Pithing cane. What they used before BSE came along and made it illegal.’ Doc Fraser made a gun of his hand, placing the barrel-finger in the middle of Logan’s forehead. Then pulled the trigger. ‘Bolt gun shoots a metal rod through the skull of your cow, pig, sheep, or Detective Sergeant, only death’s not instantaneous. Sometimes they’re just stunned. And even if they are stone dead you can still get muscle spasms – no one wants kicked by half a tonne of dead bullock. So you take a flexible metal rod and shove it in the hole, through the brainstem and down into the spine. Jiggle it about a bit. Then you slit the animal’s throat.’ He shrugged. ‘I grew up on a farm.’

      Isobel bristled slightly. ‘I see. Well, that would be consistent with my—’

      The Assistant Chief Constable cut her off. ‘So we need to start looking at what, vets and farmers?’

      ‘Nah,’ the old pathologist ferreted about in his ear for something. ‘A vet wouldn’t be able to bone out the body like that. You’re looking at abattoirs. A lot have gone electrical, but some still use bolt guns.’

      Steel grinned. ‘And there’s us found the body in a slaughterhouse. Who’da thunk it, eh?’

      You couldn’t say that DI Steel didn’t learn from other people’s mistakes. As soon as Logan found out who Alaba Farm Fresh Meats were supplying, she was straight on the phone to the Environmental Health. She was not going to be beaten with the same shitty stick as Insch.

      Her office was a tip, so they convened in the history room, pointing at things on the whiteboard and generally getting in Logan’s way. They’d made a big list of every butcher’s shop, supermarket, delicatessen, baker’s, corner shop and cash and carry in the city and were working through them one at a time, confiscating anything that might have come from the abattoir.

      The man from the Environmental Health Department took off his glasses and rubbed at the black bags under his eyes. ‘We’re going to need more police backup. I’ve had four inspectors assaulted since seven o’clock this morning.’

      The DCS shook his bald head. ‘Can’t do it. We’re stretched as it is.’

      ‘Then you have to get officers in from Dundee, Glasgow, Inverness – I don’t care. My people are getting verbally and physically abused! And it’s not just the shopkeepers – one of my men got his nose broken by a pensioner’s handbag when he wouldn’t let her leave the shop with half a dozen pork chops. We need more police officers.’

      Logan tried to ignore