Читать книгу Flesh House - Stuart MacBride - Страница 11

Insch was in the sweetie section, surrounded by catering-sized packs of Crunchies, Rolos, Sports Mixture, and fizzy flying saucers – eyeing them up as he spoke on the phone, ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ The inspector listened for a moment, chewing on the side of his thumb, ‘No … no … if the bastard sets foot outside his house I want him picked up … What? … I don’t care what you arrest him for, just bloody arrest him!… No, I don’t have a warrant …’

Insch’s face was starting its all too familiar slide from florid pink to angry scarlet. ‘Because I bloody well told you to, that’s why!’ He snapped his phone shut and glowered at it.

Logan cleared his throat, and the glower turned his way. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but Iso … Dr MacAlister’s found at least one piece of human remains in the freezer. And about another forty possibles.’

The inspector’s face lit up. ‘About time.’

‘Only trouble is, some of those are catering packs of diced meat. She says they’ll have to defrost and DNA-test every chunk, otherwise there’s no way of telling if a pack’s got bits of one, two or a dozen people in it.’ Deep breath. ‘It’s going to take at least a fortnight.’

And Insch went straight from angry scarlet to furious purple. ‘WHAT?’

‘She … it’s what she said, OK?’ Logan backed off, hands up.

Insch gritted his teeth and seethed for a moment. Then, ‘You tell her I want those remains analysed and I want them analysed now. I don’t care how many favours she has to call in, this takes top priority.’

‘Ah … maybe that’d sound better coming from you, sir? I—’ The look on Insch’s face was enough to stop Logan right there. ‘Fine, I’ll tell her.’ Isobel was going to kill him. If the inspector didn’t do it first. The big man looked like an unexploded bomb.

Logan had a bash at defusing him. ‘According to the cash and carry’s records the meat in the container came from a butcher’s shop in Holburn Street: McFarlane’s.’

‘McFarlane’s?’ A nasty smile twisted Insch’s face.

Logan pulled out the docket. ‘Two sirloins, half a dozen sides of bacon, a pack of veal …’

But the inspector was already marching towards the exit, uniformed constables and IB technicians scurrying to get out of his way. ‘I want a search warrant for that butcher’s shop. Get everyone over there soon as it’s organized.’

‘What? But we haven’t finished here yet.’

‘The remains came from McFarlane’s.’

‘But we don’t know that. This place isn’t exactly difficult to get into. Anyone could have—’

‘And I want an arrest warrant for Kenneth Wiseman.’

‘Who the hell is—’

‘And tell the press office to get their backsides in gear: briefing at ten am sharp.’

An hour and a half later Logan and Insch were sitting in a pool car outside McFarlane’s butcher’s shop, ‘GOOD EATS GOOD MEATS’ according to the sign above the big dark window.

Holburn Street was virtually deserted, lonely traffic lights changing from red to green and back again with no one to watch them but a couple of unmarked CID Vauxhalls, a police van full of search-trained officers, a once-white Transit van belonging to the Identification Bureau, and two patrol cars. All waiting for the Procurator Fiscal to turn up with the search and arrest warrants.

Insch scowled at his watch. ‘What the hell is taking so long?’

Logan watched him fight his way into a small jar of pills – thick, sausage-like fingers struggling with the child-proof lid – then throw a couple of the small white tablets down. ‘Are you OK, sir?’

Insch grimaced and swallowed. ‘How long’s it going to take you to get to the airport from here?’

‘Depends if the Drive’s busy: hour, hour and a half?’

‘There’s a Chief Constable Faulds coming in on the BMI red-eye. I want you to pick him up and bring him back here.’

‘Can we not just send one of the uniforms? I’m—’

‘No, I want you to do it.’

‘I should be helping organize the search, not playing taxi driver!’

‘I said NO!’ Insch turned on him, voice loud enough to make the car windows rattle. ‘Faulds is a slimy tosser – a two-faced, backstabbing bastard – but he’s a Chief Constable, so everyone scurries round after him like he’s the bloody Messiah. I do not want some idiot PC in the car with him telling tales out of school.’

‘But—’

‘No. No buts. You go pick him up and you don’t tell him any more than he needs to know. And with any luck we’ll have this whole thing wrapped up before he even gets here.’

Anderson Drive stretched across the city: from a horrible roundabout at Garthdee to an even more horrible one at the other end. Half past seven and Logan was stuck in the middle of a snaking ribbon of scarlet tail-lights shuffling their way towards the Haudagain roundabout. Dawn was little more than a pale yellow smear, its faint light making no difference to the thick pall of grey cloud that loomed over the city.

Some halfwit had broken the car’s stereo, so all he had to listen to was the clack and yammer of the police radio – mostly people hustling to and fro, trying to keep out of DI Insch’s way as ‘Operation Cleaver’ was thrown together. The fat git had been a pain in the backside ever since he’d started on that stupid diet. Eighteen months of tiptoeing about, trying not to set the man off on one of his legendary rants.

‘This is Alpha Nine One, we are in position, over.’

It sounded as if they were ready to go.

‘Alpha Three Two, in position.’

‘Aye,’ is is Alpha Mike Seven, we’re a’ set tae go too. Just gie the word.’

Logan should have been with them, kicking down doors and taking names, not babysitting some tosser from Birmingham.

By the time he was leaving the city limits a light drizzle had started to fall, speckling the windscreen with a thin, wet fog, making the tail-lights of the taxi in front glow like volcanic embers as DI Insch gave his motivational speech.

‘Listen up: I want this done by the numbers, understand? Anyone steps out of line, I’ll tear their balls off and shove them up their arse – do I make myself clear?’

No one was daft enough to answer that one.

‘Right. All units, in five, four, three, two … GO! GO! GO!’

And then there was shouting. The sound of a door being battered off its hinges. Bangs. Thumps …

Logan turned the radio off, sat in the long line of traffic waiting to turn towards Aberdeen Airport, and sulked.

The airport was busy this morning: the queue for security backed up the length of the building – nearly out the front door – business commuters and holidaymakers nervously checking their watches; clutching their boarding passes; worrying about missing their planes while the tannoy droned on about not leaving baggage unattended.

The BD672 was supposed to have landed eight minutes ago, but there was still no sign of anyone getting off the thing. Logan stood on the concourse, next to the twee tartan gift shop, holding up a sheet of paper with ‘CC FAULDS’ scribbled on it in big biro capitals.

Finally, the doors at the far end opened and the passengers on the 07:05 flight from London Heathrow staggered out.

Logan didn’t think Faulds would be too hard to spot, he was a Chief Constable after all. He’d be in full dress uniform – hoping it would let him cut through security and get extra packets of peanuts on the plane – with some obsequious Chief Superintendent in tow to carry his bags and tell him how clever and witty he was.

So it came as something of a surprise when a gangly man in jeans, finger-tip-length black leather jacket, Hawaiian shirt, shark’s tooth necklace, and a little salt-and-pepper goatee beard stopped, tapped the sign in Logan’s hands and said, ‘I’m Faulds. You must be …?’

‘Er … DS McRae, sir.’

Was that an earring? It was: Chief Constable Faulds had a diamond earring twinkling away in his left ear.

Faulds stuck out his hand. ‘I take it DI Insch sent you?’ The accent wasn’t marked, just a hint of Brummie under the received pronunciation.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So let me guess: you’re not to tell me anything, and basically keep me out of the way. Yeah?’

‘No, sir. I’m just to give you a lift into town.’

‘Uh-huh. And that needed a detective sergeant?’ Faulds watched Logan wriggle for a moment then laughed. ‘Don’t worry: I used to do the same thing when top brass descended on me from other divisions. Last thing you want is some desk-jockey coming in and telling you how to run your investigation.’

‘Ah … OK … The car’s—’

‘Do you have a first name, Sergeant, or would that spoil your air of mystery?’

‘Logan, sir.’ He moved to pick up the Chief Constable’s bag, but Faulds waved him away.

‘I’m not a senior citizen yet, Logan.’

They crawled back into Aberdeen through the rush-hour, with Faulds on the phone, drawing Logan into a strange three-way conversation about the body parts they’d found the previous night.

‘What? Of course it’s raining: it’s Aberdeen … No, no I don’t think so, hold on …’ The Chief Constable stuck his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Do you have an ID for any of the victims?’

‘Not yet, we—’

‘Not gone through the missing persons database, or the DNA records?’

‘We only just found the remains, sir. They’re still frozen solid. The pathologist—’

And Faulds was back on the phone again. ‘No, they’ve not done the DNA yet … I know … You heard?… Yes. That’s what I thought.’ Back to Logan again. ‘You don’t need to defrost the whole thing – the sample you need for a DNA test should be small enough to come up to temperature in seconds. I’d better have a word with this pathologist of yours when we get in.’

‘Actually, sir, that might not be—’

But Faulds was back on the phone again. ‘Uh-huh … I think you’re right … Did he?’ Laughter. ‘Silly sod …’

He’d hung up by the time Logan was fighting through the long queue that trailed back from the Haudagain roundabout. Two lanes packed solid with cars and a bus lane full of orange cones. Faulds looked around at the collection of shiny new vehicles full of bored-looking people investigating the insides of their noses, while the drizzle drifted down. ‘Is this going to take long, Logan?’

‘Probably, sir. Apparently this is the worst roundabout in the country. Been questions raised about it in the Scottish Parliament.’

Faulds smiled. ‘About a roundabout? You whacky Jocks: and they said devolution wouldn’t work.’

‘They estimate it costs the local economy about thirty million a year. Sir.’

‘Thirty million, eh? That’s a lot of deep-fried haggis pies.’

Logan bit his tongue. Calling the chief constable a condescending wanker probably wasn’t the best career move.

They sat in uncomfortable silence, just the squeak of the windscreen wipers interrupting the stop-go of the motor as Logan inched the car forward. At least the bloody roundabout was in sight now.

And then Faulds burst out laughing. ‘You are so easy to wind up!’ He settled back in his seat. ‘Come on then, I know you’re dying to ask.’

‘Sir?’

Faulds just smiled at him.

‘Well … I was …’ Logan snuck a glance at his passenger: the clothes, the earring. ‘You’re not exactly what I expected, sir.’

‘You heard the words “Chief Constable” and you thought: doddery old fart with no sense of humour, who dresses up like a tailor’s dummy because he’s got an embarrassingly small penis and truncheon envy.’

‘Actually, I was wondering why someone as senior as you would come all the way up here to sit in on a local murder enquiry.’

‘Were you now?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Logan accelerated into the maelstrom of traffic, swung round the roundabout – trying not to get squashed by the articulated lorry heading straight for them – and finally they were on North Anderson Drive. Halleluiah! He put his foot down, overtaking a doddering old biddie in a clapped-out Mercedes. ‘I mean, why not send a DI, or a superintendent?’

There was a pause. ‘Well, Logan, there are some things you just can’t delegate.’ He checked his watch. ‘This raid DI Insch is on?’

‘That’s where we’re going now.’

‘Excellent.’ Faulds pulled out his phone again and started dialling. ‘Don’t mind me, just got a couple of calls to make, we – Fiona? … Fiona, it’s Mark: Mark Faulds … course I do, darling …’

They abandoned the pool car down a little side road and hurried out into the drizzle.

‘You know,’ said Faulds as they crossed at the traffic lights outside Country Ways, collars up and heads down, ‘I’ve been to Aberdeen about a dozen times, and it’s always sodding raining.’

‘We do our best.’

‘You buggers must be born with webbed feet.’

‘Only the ones from Ellon, sir.’

Holburn Street had been brought to a virtual standstill – two uniformed officers pretending to be traffic lights as they funnelled the backed-up traffic down one side of the road. The butcher’s shop had been hidden behind a cordon of eight-foot-high white plastic screens that reached out into the middle of the street.

A BBC outside broadcast van was parked on the double yellow lines just down from the scene, a woman with a ponytail, an umbrella, and a strange orange tan trying to convince a traffic warden not to give the van a ticket. There was a strobe-light flicker of flash photography and shouted questions as Logan and Faulds ducked under the blue-and-white Police tape, then they were through and behind the wall of plastic sheeting.

The IB’s filthy Transit van was parked inside the cordon, its back doors open while someone rummaged about inside for SOC suits for Logan and the Chief Constable.

Inside, the shop walls were peppered with recipe cards hung at jaunty angles: goulash, rib roast, minty lamb kebabs … A deli section and a mini greengrocer’s sat opposite an empty glass-fronted counter festooned with colourful stickers. The place was full of people in white paper oversuits and the smell of meat.

They found DI Insch in the cold store through the back, with a pair of IB technicians and Isobel, examining yet more chunks of meat.

Faulds took one look at the inspector in his bulging SOC outfit and said, ‘Good God, David, you’re huge!’ He stuck out his hand to shake, but Insch just looked at it. ‘Yes, well …’ Faulds reached up and adjusted his suit’s hood, as if that was what he’d meant to do in the first place. ‘Have you picked up Wiseman yet?’

Insch scowled. ‘Kicked his door down at seven forty-five this morning. He wasn’t there.’

‘You let him escape?’

‘No I bloody didn’t: I had an unmarked car sitting outside his house from the moment we found the remains down the docks. He never went home, OK?’

‘Oh God …’ Faulds closed his eyes and swore quietly. ‘OK, right, fair enough, too late to worry about that now.’ Sigh. ‘So what are we looking at here?’

‘That.’ Insch pointed at the far corner of the cold store, where Isobel was examining a cut of meat hanging from a hook. It was about two foot long, seven inches wide: the flesh a dark rose colour, the fat a golden yellow, the surface punctuated by pale bones. No skin.

‘Loin of pork?’ asked Faulds, inching forwards.

‘Close: long pig.’ Isobel stood, rubbing her latex-gloved hands down the front of her coveralls. ‘The meat’s darker than pork, more like veal – definitely human. The ribs have been severed halfway down their length, but the shape’s unmistakable.’

The Chief Constable thought about it for a moment, then asked, ‘Care to hazard a time of death?’

Isobel stared at him. ‘And you are?’

Faulds turned the full power of his smile on her. ‘Mark Faulds, West Midlands Police. DI Insch asked me to come up and take a look at the case.’

Which sounded incredibly unlikely to Logan: Insch wouldn’t ask for help if his crotch was on fire. From the look on her face, Isobel didn’t believe it either.

‘I don’t know what kind of pathologists you’re used to dealing with down there, Mr Faulds, but in Aberdeen we don’t rush to conclusions before we’ve carried out the post mortem.’ She went back to her slab of meat, muttering, ‘God save us from bloody policemen, think we’re all clairvoyant …’

‘I see.’ Faulds winked at Logan, whispering, ‘I love a challenge.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Actually it’s “Chief Constable”, not “mister”.’ If he expected that to impress Isobel, he was in for a disappointment. She didn’t even pause, just unhooked the chunk of meat and slipped it into a large evidence bag.

‘Right – ’ she handed it to one of the IB technicians – ‘I want every piece of meat in here taken down to the mortuary. Mince, sausages, everything.’ She snapped off her gloves then nodded at Insch. ‘Inspector, a word please.’

Faulds watched them march out of the cold room. ‘Is she usually that welcoming?’

Logan smiled. ‘No, sir. She must like you: normally she’s a lot worse.’

The shop’s owner – the eponymous Mr McFarlane – lived in a large flat directly above the butcher’s, so it hadn’t exactly taken Operation Cleaver long to track him down. He was a chunky blob with a worried expression, thinning hair, a red-veined nose, and bags under his eyes. He’d clarted himself in aftershave, but it still wasn’t enough to cover the smell of stale sweat and last night’s alcohol.

McFarlane sat behind the desk in a little office at the back of the shop, watching as an IB technician dismantled a yellow-grey computer and stuck it in an evidence crate.

‘I … I don’t understand,’ McFarlane said, looking around with watery pink eyes, ‘we’re supposed to be open at nine …’

Insch leaned over the desk, looming over the butcher. ‘Do you have any idea what they do to people like you in prison?’

McFarlane flinched as if he’d been slapped. ‘I … But I’ve not done anything!’

‘Then why have you got a slab of human flesh HANGING IN YOUR FRIDGE?’

‘I didn’t know! I didn’t! It wasn’t me! I never did anything, I’ve not even had a parking ticket, I’m law-abiding citizen, I do barbeques for charity, I don’t even overcharge people! I’ve not—’

‘You sold human remains to Thompson’s Cash And Carry. They sold it on to catering companies.’

‘Oh God …’ McFarlane had gone a deathly shade of white. ‘But—’

‘PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EATING IT!’

‘David,’ Faulds laid a hand on Insch’s arm. ‘It might help if you let the poor man complete a sentence.’

The Chief Constable perched himself on the edge of the desk, SOC oversuit rustling as he moved. ‘You see, Mr McFarlane, you own a butcher’s shop that sells chunks of dead bodies. Can you see why we might have a bit of a problem with that?’

‘I didn’t know!’

‘Uh-huh … Mr McFarlane, you’re a professional butcher, yes?’

The man nodded, setting his jowls wobbling, and Faulds gave him an encouraging smile. ‘And you expect us to believe you can’t tell the difference between pork and people?’

‘I … I … I don’t do a lot of the actual butchery anymore …’ He held up his trembling hands. ‘Can’t hold a knife still.’

‘I see.’

Insch placed a massive paw on the desk. ‘You don’t remember me, do you, Mr McFarlane?’

‘What?’ He frowned. ‘No. What are you—’

‘Twenty years ago. Three people hacked up and fed—’

‘Oh, no!’ McFarlane clamped one of his quivering hands over his mouth. ‘Not … I’m not! I never did anything! I …’ His frantic eyes locked onto Faulds. ‘I never! It’s not me! Tell him it’s not me!’

‘Where’s Ken Wiseman?’

‘Oh God, this isn’t happening, not again …’

‘WHERE – IS – HE?’

And suddenly all the colour rushed back into McFarlane’s face. ‘I don’t know! And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’ The butcher clambered to his feet. ‘I remember you now, you and that bastard … what was it …? Brooks! Ken never did anything, you fitted him up!’

‘Where is he?’

Logan listened to Faulds and Insch playing Bad Cop, Worse Cop for a while, then let his attention wander round the little office. A couple of empty display stands were piled in the corner, next to a stack of dusty wicker picnic hampers; two filing cabinets beneath a barred window – Logan poked through one of them, keeping an ear on the conversation behind him.

Insch: ‘Tell me where the bastard is.’

McFarlane: ‘I’ve no idea, I haven’t seen Ken in years.’

Insch: ‘Bollocks.’

The filing cabinet was full of accounts, bills, payslips – nothing really jumped out. Logan pulled a ledger marked ‘Overtime’ from the drawer.

Faulds: ‘You have to see it from our point of view—’

Insch again: ‘—going to send you down for a long, long—’

Faulds: ‘Better if you just tell us everything you know—’

McFarlane: ‘But I don’t know anything!’

The ledger was nearly indecipherable, page after page of dates, hours, payments, and names in the butcher’s trembling scrawl. Logan skipped to the most recent entries.

Insch: ‘—people like you in Peterhead Prison, with the—’

‘Sir!’ Logan cut across the inspector, and there was an ominous silence as Insch turned to glare at him. Logan held out the ledger. ‘Last page. Third name from the bottom.’

Insch snatched it from him and read, his brow furrowed, lips slowly twitching into a smile. ‘Well, well, well.’

Faulds: ‘What?’

The inspector slammed the book down on the desktop, then tapped the page with a fat finger. ‘Thought you said you’d not seen Ken Wiseman for years.’

McFarlane wouldn’t look at the book. ‘I … I haven’t.’

‘Then why does this say he did two hours overtime, day before yesterday?’