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

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       45

      ‘All right, all right, settle down.’ Detective Chief Superintendent Bain stuck his mug on the desk at the front of the briefing room and waited for quiet. Logan sat with DI Steel, two rows back, marinating in the aftermath of a well-deserved hangover.

      Nearly everyone in the team had wanted to buy him a drink when Steel told them about the newspaper connection, and Logan had let them.

      ‘You’ll have heard,’ said Bain, ‘that we finally know how the Flesher is selecting his victims.’ He held up a copy of that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner, with Colin Miller’s exclusive splashed all over the front page. A ragged cheer went up and Logan blushed.

      DCS Bain held up a hand. ‘Before anyone breaks out the champagne, think about it: each of the Flesher’s victims was featured in a newspaper article before their death. Press and Journal, Evening Express, Dundee Courier, Glasgow Herald, Daily Mail, Scotsman, Sunday Post… Do you have any idea how many people read those papers?’

      And suddenly Logan’s glow didn’t feel so rosy.

      ‘Exactly. Millions. This tells us how the Flesher picks his victims, but it’s a long way from getting us his name and address.’

      Steel nudged Logan in the ribs. ‘Told you.’ Which was a lie.

      ‘But,’ said Bain cutting through the groans, ‘it might give us an insight into the mind of the bastard. Which brings me to item two on the agenda: Doctor Goulding.’ He pointed and a man in a sharp grey suit stood and joined him at the front.

      ‘Hi, call me Dave, OK?’ Liverpool accent, hooked nose, hair like animal pelt, and a lurid tie that looked as if someone had eaten a whole range of fluorescent paint and then thrown up on it.

      ‘Chief Constable Faulds asked me to come in and present a profile on the Flesher. I’ve worked with sexually motivated violent offenders for fifteen years, attended training courses with the FBI at their Quantico headquarters, worked as a profiler for the Metropolitan Police …’

      Steel leant over and whispered in Logan’s ear, ‘Lived in an octopus’s garden, dressed up in women’s clothing, had sex with a vacuum cleaner, am in love with the sound of my own sodding voice …’

      ‘I was asked to concentrate on three scenarios. A: Ken Wiseman is the Flesher and is working with an accomplice. B: Ken Wiseman was the Flesher, but the current spate of killings are down to a copycat. And C: it’s been somebody else all along.’ He looked at Bain. ‘Can we get the first slide up? … Thanks.’ He turned and checked the screen – a shot of Thomas Stephen’s surreal post mortem. ‘When dealing with sexual predators, or “serial killers”, it’s important to start with the effect and work back towards the cause …’

      Steel got comfortable in her chair. ‘Give us a nudge if I start to snore, OK?’

      There then followed a long explanation of how the Flesher was killing people in order to introduce human meat into the food chain. According to Goulding, this was part of some deranged Messiah complex. The longer the psychologist went on, the more coughing, shuffling and yawning he got from the audience. By the time he was going through the first profile, Steel was nodding off, her head dipping lower and lower each time, till her chin came to rest against her chest and she was gone.

      Logan didn’t blame her: he was having difficulty staying awake himself. Doctor Call-Me-Dave Goulding obviously thought he was ‘one of the lads’, but he just kept going on and on and on and on…

      ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘what concerns me about scenario “C” is the lack of escalation. Twenty years is far too long for a single individual to be operating. The sexual thrill should become more and more difficult to sustain as time goes on; the buzz he gets from killing and dismembering is over quicker, so he has to go out and kill again, till he’s either stopped, or goes on a spree.’

      Logan stuck up his hand. ‘What if it’s not sexual?’

      The psychologist pointed at the screen behind him: chunks of meat on a mortuary table. ‘It’s always sexual. Sometimes it doesn’t look like it, but it is. He kills, dismembers, eats: uses it to fuel the fantasy.’ He frowned. ‘Probably masturbatory. There was no sign Tom Stephen was penetrated pre or post mortem, and no semen recovered from the head.’

      Which was a lovely image.

      ‘But what if sex isn’t the important bit?’

      Goulding smiled. ‘Sex is always the important bit. The Flesher is a classic necrophiliac.’

      ‘But you said he doesn’t have sex with the bodies, how—’

      ‘Many necrophiliacs are sexually aroused by the image of death. The Flesher kills to produce a dead body he can have absolute power over. The act of murder is a means to an end, it’s incidental for him. He doesn’t sexually abuse the corpse, because that’s not what fuels his fantasy. The Flesher practises necrophagy – the mutilation and eating of dead bodies. It’s quite a fascinating subcategory of necrophilia.’

      ‘But—’