Flesh House, page 36
They went through Newmachar at full speed, then roared up the windy road to Oldmeldrum, tractors and four-by-fours getting out of their way.
Constant radio chatter.
Logan turned it down and asked Faulds to put a call through to Control. ‘Get them to send someone out to Elizabeth Nichol’s place – she might’ve been in contact with her brother. Tell them they’re looking for photo albums, letters, postcards. Anything that might tell us where he lives.’
Faulds released his death grip on the dashboard for long enough to pull out his mobile phone. ‘Why are we always trying to break the bloody sound barrier?’ He punched a couple of numbers into the phone and gave a small squeal as Logan threw the car round the last bend and they hammered into Oldmeldrum, the convoy roaring straight through and out the other side.
Past Fyvie, Birkenhills, and Darra without even slowing down, and on to Turriff. The sky was almost black, golden shafts of sunlight spearing through gaps in the heavy cloud, making the little market town glow.
They killed the sirens as they passed the swimming pool, just the flashing lights to warn Saturday afternoon shoppers out of the way – not wanting to give Jimmy Souter too much advance warning.
‘Kelley?’ Heather whispered into the darkness. ‘Kelley, can you—’
The door creaked open, spilling light into the cell, catching Heather kneeling on the mattress, holding onto the bars. She tried to duck, but it was too late: He was standing in the doorway staring at her, the front of His butcher’s apron stained dark red.
She turned to ask Kelley … but Kelley wasn’t there – Heather was alone in the little metal cocoon.
There was a wheelbarrow sitting in the dirt corridor behind Him, and Heather could make out a tuft of blonde hair poking over the edge, white and red bones sticking up into the dank air.
‘Oh God …’ How long had she been asleep?
The Flesher pointed at her, then at His stomach, head tilted to one side in question.
Heather’s eyes went back to the wheelbarrow. ‘Is that … is that Kelley?’
The Flesher shook His head and pointed a blood smeared finger down the corridor. Where PC Screams-A-Lot had been. He did the stomach thing again.
‘Yes, I’m hungry.’
He nodded, stepped back outside, picked up the barrow’s handles and walked it out of view. The wheels squeaked away into the silence.
‘Do you think He’s killed her?’ Duncan stepped through the bars, pausing on the threshold to look up and down the corridor.
‘I …’
‘Be a shame, that. She was nice.’
‘Maybe,’ said Mr New,‘He’s put her in the policewoman’s cell?’
‘Why would He do that? Unless He’s going to kill and eat her?’
‘Good point.’
‘He can’t: she’s my friend!’
‘Now, now, Darling,’ her Mother said,‘No point crying over spilt milk, is there? Or blood.’
Heather clamped her hands over her ears. ‘She can’t be dead!’
‘Why not? We are.’
Tears. ‘She can’t …’
‘You know,’ said a new voice, one Heather hadn’t heard before,‘you’ve still got the knife …’ And suddenly Duncan, Mother, and Mr New were gone.
She turned, but there was no one there. ‘Hello?’
Just the empty metal cell.
Heather slid her hand underneath the mattress for the forgotten knife. The blade shone pale blue in the dim light that filtered in from the corridor outside.
‘There you are,’ said the voice,‘all you need to do is slip that into His guts when He comes back.’
‘I’ve never killed anyone …’
‘If He’s hurt Kelley, doesn’t He deserve to die?’
‘But I’ll be trapped in here.’
‘Oh, I’m sure He has the keys on him … In fact, is it even locked? You’ve not checked for ages, have you?’
Heather’s eyes drifted across the bars to the heavy Yale padlock. ‘Who are you?’
‘Who do you think I am?’
And suddenly Heather knew. ‘You’re the Dark.’
‘The knife, Heather. That’s how it works. If you want to be my favourite, you have to use the knife.’
‘But …’ She stepped across to the small gate set into the bars and reached up for the padlock. The Dark was right: it wasn’t even locked.
Heather sat down on the mattress, the knife cold and vibrant in her hands. The Dark wanted her to do it. Kill the Flesher and be the favourite. Save Kelley. Take His place at the top of the food chain. Live forever in the Dark …
A clunk and He was back, carrying a plate of food that smelt delicious. Liver, onions and creamy mashed potatoes.
He stepped up to the bars and Heather tightened her grip on the knife.
The abattoir car park was nearly full. The sounds of cattle and sheep echoed out from round the back of the huge building, where the unloading docks and pens were. Alaba Farm Fresh Meats was back in business. The convoy slipped past and up the small road on the other side – the one flanked with five dilapidated and deserted houses: their windows boarded-up or broken; gardens overrun with weeds and yellow grass; their red sandstone walls stained and blackened, glistening in the headlights.
The vans bounced to a halt on the potholed road. Then the doors were flung open and armed officers piled out, charging up to number three in the growing gloom.
Logan sat in the car with his fingers crossed, watching as the firearms team took their positions. Alec and his minder from the BBC bringing up the rear.
Warped plywood sheets covered the downstairs windows. The door looked as if it hadn’t been touched in twenty years – the paint blistered away by weather and time, until there was nothing but grey wood left. The portable battering ram sent it flying inwards.
The black-clad figures swarmed inside.
Heather wasn’t sure where the noise came from, but the Flesher looked up, His dark eyes invisible in the depths of the mask. Staring at the ceiling.
She slipped the knife out from behind her back and slid it into His belly, all the way up to the hilt. Hot blood poured over her hand, making the handle slippery and sticky at the same time as she pulled the blade out and plunged it back in again. And again. And again.
The Flesher didn’t even make a sound.
The place was a mess: rotting carpet sending up clouds of dust as the firearms team swept through the building. Detective Constable Simon Rennie lurched into what had to be the lounge, the torch attached to his machine pistol picking details out of the darkness: a mouldering sofa; a couple of disintegrating armchairs; a fireplace full of broken crockery; windows boarded over.
He did the little nimble-toed dance they’d taught him during the firearms course – a swift three-sixty turn that covered all four corners of the room – then off round the furniture while someone else watched the door. ‘Clear.’
Voices sounded in his earpiece:‘Upstairs is clear.’‘Kitchen: clear.’‘Bathroom: clear.’
That only left the cellar.
Rennie joined the rest of the team at the door leading down from the kitchen. It was much brighter in here, thanks to the spotlights on Alec’s TV camera, showing up the mouldy wallpaper, rotting table, brown-stained sink, curling linoleum floor.
‘OK,’ said the sergeant in charge,‘we go on three. Rennie, Caldwell: you’re on point. No mistakes and no getting shot, understand?’
‘Yes ma’am.’
‘On three: One … two …’
The Flesher looked down at Heather’s hand – wrapped around the handle of the knife – then up into her eyes. Deep within those lifeless rubber sockets, Heather could see something glint as He cocked His head to the side and stared at her.
He stepped back from the bars, placed the plate with the liver and onions within easy reach, turned and left. He didn’t bother closing the door.
Heather’s legs gave way and she collapsed onto the mattress, still clutching the knife in her blood-soaked hand.
‘Honey, are you OK?’
The Dark had been testing her.
It told her to stab Him and she had. It promised she’d be the favourite … it promised.
‘Only you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Maybe there was something wrong with the knife? She ran her thumb along the edge, pressing just hard enough to break the skin, and felt no pain. Pressed harder, till the blade sliced through the pad and scraped along the bone. Her blood mingling with His.
‘Seriously, you should lie down.’
‘He can’t die … He’s part of the Dark, he’s eternal.’
‘Ah …’ Duncan smiled.‘Only just figured that out, have you?’
Heather held her thumb up, watching the cut surface ooze. ‘Blood to blood.’
‘I know what you’re thinking, but—’
‘Now I’m part of the Dark. I passed the test.’
‘Heather—’
She laid the point of the blade against her stomach, just above her bellybutton.
‘Come on, Honey,’ Duncan knelt in front of her,‘Don’t do this.’
‘Blood to blood.’ She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and plunged the knife in. Once. Twice. Three times. Ripping it back and forth, slashing herself wide open, staining the mattress dark, shining red.
‘The knife’s not real.’
Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing …
A dry hand wrapped around her own, holding it still.‘Heather, it’s not real. You’re imagining it.’
She opened her eyes, looked down at her stomach. Nothing broken, nothing torn. Not even a drop of blood on her hands. ‘But … but the knife … the Dark said …’ Feeling the tears start to come. ‘The knife …’
‘Shhh … it’s OK.’ Duncan wrapped her in his arms, holding her close.
‘But it was real! It was—’
‘Shhhhhhh … you’ve gone mental, remember? There never was a knife.’ He kissed the top of her head as she cried.‘It’s just what’s left of your mind playing tricks on you. Like talking to dead people.’ He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up until she was looking into his beautiful eyes.‘Even I’m not real.’
‘I don’t want to be crazy …’
He kissed her, then told her it was too late to worry about that now.
59
The lead firearms officer pointed back towards the house. ‘Place has been deserted for years, we’ve been all over it from attic to basement and there’s no sign of anyone. IB can tear the place apart, but I’ll bet you pound to a penny there’s nothing there.’
DCS Bain nodded, then gave Logan what could only be described as a fucking horrible look. ‘Well?’
Chief Constable Faulds stepped in. ‘Just because Jimmy Souter isn’t here, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a solid piece of police work. We now have a suspect with a connection to the abattoir and one of the victims. That’s a lot more than we had this morning.’
‘We’re still no closer to finding PC Munro.’ Faulds asked Bain if he could have a quiet word, leading him away out of earshot as the firearms team piled back into their vans and sodded off before the rain started.
‘I can see why you’re thinking about leaving.’ It was Jackie, dressed in her full ninja police gear: black shoes, black trousers, black T-shirt, black stab-proof vest with a black fleece over the top. ‘A Chief Constable who’s not an arsehole.’
Logan nodded. ‘And you’re going back to Strathclyde.’
‘If they’ll have me after this …’
They stood and watched as the IB marched into the old Souter house, armed with crowbars, pickaxes, and shovels to tear the place apart.
‘Jackie … I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘Pretty much everything.’
By twenty to five most of the odds and sods had disappeared – back to the station in time to punch out and go to the pub. Now it was just Logan, Faulds, Wee Fat Alec, the IB team, and an unidentified PC standing guard outside the house in the pouring rain. Whoever it was, they must have really pissed someone off to end up with that job.
Rain drifted down in undulating sheets, caught in the glow of the abattoir’s security spotlights between the leylandii hedge and the blood-blister sky. The row of bleak, dead houses, slowly rotted in the darkness. Only the old Souter place showed any sign of life: light oozing out through the occasional gap in the plywood sheets that covered the windows; the bang and crunch of demolition as the IB tore out fireplaces and ripped up floorboards. Poking and prodding every nook and crevice for evidence of PC Munro, Elizabeth Nichol, or her brother Jimmy.
‘Well,’ Faulds shifted round in the passenger seat of their pool car,‘have you decided?’
‘DI McRae, West Midlands Police.’ Logan turned and offered Faulds his hand to shake. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Faulds smiled. ‘Excellent. I’ll get someone to start the paperwork soon as we get back to the station.’
The rear passenger door opened and someone jumped in out of the rain. ‘Bloody Hell.’ It was Jackie, looking like a drowned rat as she pulled off her peaked cap and shook it in the footwell. ‘Like going for a swim out there.’
Logan stared at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Thought you’d gone back to the ranch?’
She grimaced. ‘Put the heating on, I’m freezing.’
He started the engine and turned the blowers up full. Reheated greasy air filled the car. ‘Don’t tell me you’re the poor sod…?’ He pointed through the misty windscreen at the Souter place.
The grimace turned into a scowl. ‘DCI McKay wasn’t impressed by my revised report on Insch’s handling of the investigation. Thinks I should’ve screwed him to the carpet.’
‘I thought you had?’
‘Yeah, well …’ She shrugged. ‘You were right, OK? Don’t rub it in.’ She huddled forwards into the gap between the two front seats and cupped her hands over the air vents, complaining that they were still cold.
‘You’ll get chilblains.’
‘Bite me.’
At least she was talking to him again. And then Logan’s phone went: DI Steel calling from Elizabeth Nichol’s ruined house in Newmacher with an update on the search.
‘No postcards, or letters, but the bugger’s definitely been here. Found a scrapbook in the spare bedroom – thing’s full of newspaper cuttings. Heather and Duncan Inglis, Tom and Hazel Stephen, Marcus Young, Maureen and Sandra Taylor … they’re all in there, all the little articles from before they went missing, and a lot of the stuff from after as well. “Flesher Strikes Again: Couple Missing” sort of thing. And they’re no’ the only ones – got stuff in here from Inverness to Eastbourne, and loads of stuff from Fuckknowswhereistan. Eastern European probably, but I can’t read a bloody word of it.’
Logan passed on the information.
Faulds asked for the phone:‘Inspector? When does it start, this book? What’s the first clipping?’ Pause. ‘Uh-huh … Yes … Is it? Good God … How many do you think? … OK, thanks.’ He hung up and returned Logan’s mobile. ‘Looks as if the scrapbook only goes back as far as 2004. We’re going to have to run all the newspaper clippings against every force’s missing persons’ database.’ He rubbed a hand across the fogged-up windscreen, revealing the Souter household in all its ominous glory. It looked as if the IB were giving up, hauling their stuff back through the rain and into their filthy van. ‘2004 … Christ knows how many Jimmy Souter killed before that …’
Jackie nodded. ‘There’ll be more scrapbooks.’ She must have seen the expression on Logan’s face in the rear-view mirror, because she turned to stare at him. ‘What? Souter’s a hoarder, isn’t he? He’ll have every article he’s ever clipped.’
She had a point.
‘Can you imagine growing up here?’ said Logan, watching the IB slowly disappear as the windscreen fogged up again. ‘Downwind of the abattoir, everything you own covered in a greasy film. Go to school and it clings to your clothes and your hair. All the kids pick on you because you smell. Then you go home and your alki dad beats the shite out of you.’
Faulds wiped the windscreen again. ‘You’re not suggesting this isn’t Jimmy Souter’s fault?’
‘I’m just saying it’s … well, not understandable, but you know … it’s amazing Elizabeth Nichol turned out as well as she did. Wonder if her sister …’ he trailed off into silence.
Faulds said something about search warrants and national appeals, but Logan wasn’t listening, he was staring out at the row of derelict houses.
He pulled out his phone and called the station, getting them to put him through to DC Rennie. There was a long pause while someone went to get the constable out of the locker-room showers.
The IB van did a clumsy three point turn and juddered past, the driver waving them a cheery goodbye. The red tail lights glowed like halos of blood as it disappeared down the road, leaving them alone in the dark.
Alec jogged over to the car and clambered in the back with Jackie. His SOC suit had gone a nasty, patchy grey colour, and it dripped filthy water all over the seats as he shrugged out of it.
‘Like a demolition derby in there.’ He coughed, blew his nose, then checked his camera. ‘Didn’t find anything though. Probably stick the footage together as a ten second jump-cut montage. You know: tearing the skirting off, floorboards up, fireplace—’
And then Rennie was on the other end of the phone.‘Yo?’
‘What happened to the children’s homes?’
‘I didn’t have time to finish—’
‘This is important you know! I didn’t ask you for fun.’
‘OK, OK, no need to get all snippy. Can I get dressed first, or do you want me to go running upstairs in the altogether?’
That was a visual image Logan really didn’t need. He hung up.
‘Well,’ said Faulds,‘going to share with the rest of the class?’
‘I am a carrot. Rennie is a stick. What if—’
‘No wait … hold on …’ Alec got his camera going. ‘Aaaand … Action!’
‘Would you stop doing that?’ Pause. ‘The whole street’s deserted – what if Jimmy just picked one of the other houses? He’s been smart enough to get away with this for over twenty years.’ Logan killed the engine and reached across the Chief Constable for the glove compartment, looking for the torch. It was buried right at the back in a graveyard of empty crisp packets, and by some strange miracle the batteries actually worked. Logan clicked it on and shone it through the clear patch of windscreen at the row of dilapidated houses.
