Flesh House. Stuart MacBride

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      ‘You do that.’

      The cash and carry’s chill room sat on the opposite side of the building, separated from the shelves of tins and dried goods by a curtain of thick plastic strips that kept the cold in and the muzak out. A huge refrigeration unit bolted to the wall rattled away like a perpetual smoker’s cough, making the air cold enough that Logan’s breath trailed behind him in a fine mist as he marched between the boxes of fruit and vegetables, over to the walk-in freezer section.

      Detective Constable Rennie stood beside the freezer’s heavy steel doors, hands jammed deep in his armpits, nose Rudolf-red, dressed like a ninja version of the Michelin Man in layers and layers of black clothing.

      ‘It’s freezing in here,’ said the constable, shivering, ‘think my nipples just fell off.’

      Logan stopped, one hand on the freezer’s door-handle. ‘You’d be a lot warmer if you actually did some work.’

      Rennie pulled a face. ‘The Ice Queen thinks we’re all too thick to help. I mean, it’s not my fault I don’t know what I’m looking for, is it?’

      ‘What?’ Logan closed his eyes and tried counting to ten. Got as far as three. ‘For God’s sake; you’re supposed to be looking for human remains!’

      ‘I know that. I’m in there, standing in a sodding freezer the size of my house, looking at rows and rows of frozen bits of bloody meat. How am I supposed to tell a joint of pork from a joint of person? It all looks the same to me. A hand, a foot, a head: that I could recognize. But it’s all just chunks of meat.’ He shifted, stomping his feet and blowing into his cupped hands. ‘I’m a policeman, not a bloody doctor.’

      And Logan had to admit he had a point. They only knew that the joint of meat found in the offshore container was human because it had a pierced nipple. Farmers were an odd lot, but not that odd.

      Logan hauled open the heavy metal door and stepped into the freezer … Dear God it was cold – like being punched in the chest by a bag of ice. His breath went from mist to impenetrable fog. ‘Hello?’

      He found Dr Isobel MacAlister on the other side of a stack of cardboard boxes, their brown surfaces sparkling with a crisp film of white ice. She’d traded in her white SOC oversuit for a couple of dirty-blue parkas and a set of padded trousers, the ensemble topped off with a red and white bobble hat bandaged onto her head with a tatty maroon scarf. Not exactly her usual catwalk self. She was picking her way through a mound of frozen mystery meat.

      ‘Anything?’

      She scowled up at him. ‘Other than hypothermia?’ When Logan didn’t answer, Isobel sighed and pointed at a big plastic crate stacked with chunks of vacuum-packed meat. ‘We’ve got about three dozen possible pieces. If it was on the bone it’d be a lot easier to spot; cows and pigs have a much higher meat to bone ratio, but look at this,’ she held up a pack labelled ‘DICED PORK’. ‘Could be anything. I’d expect human meat to be redder – based on the amount of myoglobin in the tissue – but if it’s been bled and frozen … We’ll need to defrost and DNA-test all of this before we’ll know for sure.’

      Isobel pulled over another cardboard box, sliced through the plastic strapping, and started picking her way through the contents. ‘You can tell Inspector Insch it’ll take at least two weeks.’

      Logan groaned. ‘He’s not going to like that.’

      ‘That’s not my problem, Sergeant.’

      Oh, when she wanted someone to babysit her kid, or suffer through her endless digital camera slideshows of the sticky-fingered, dribbly little monster, he was ‘Logan’, but when she was pissed off at work he was ‘Sergeant.’

      ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s not my fault Insch had a go at you, OK? You think he’s bad tonight? I get him all bloody day—’ Clunk. Logan froze, eyes sweeping the shelves of frozen goods, hoping it wasn’t Alec with his camera. Things were bad enough without being caught complaining about Insch on national television. ‘Hello?’

      ‘Sergeant McRae?’ Mr Thompson peered around a stack of boxes marked ‘FISH FINGERS’. ‘I’ve found the dockets …’ he trailed off and stared at the pile of meat as Isobel added another chunk to the crate, the frozen pieces clattering against one another like ceramic tiles. ‘Is … is that all …?’

      ‘We won’t know till we test it.’ Logan held out his hand, and the rumpled man looked puzzled for a moment, then tried to shake it. ‘No,’ Logan took a step back, leaving him hanging, ‘the dockets?’

      ‘Oh, right. Right. Of course.’ He handed over a crumpled sheet of yellow A4, covered with biro scribbles. ‘Sorry.’

      Thompson fidgeted nervously as Logan read.

      ‘What’s going to happen? I mean if that …’ He swallowed. ‘What am I going to tell my customers?’

      Logan pulled out his mobile phone and scrolled through the contacts list. ‘We’re going to need names and addresses for everyone who has access to this freezer. I want staff records, customers, suppliers, the lot.’ An electronic voice on the other end of the line told him the number he was dialling was busy, please try again later.

      The man in the crumpled suit shivered, wrapped his arms around himself and looked as if he was about to cry. ‘We’re a family firm, been here thirty years …’

      ‘Yes, well,’ Logan tried for a reassuring smile, ‘you never know: the tests might come up negative.’

      ‘I wouldn’t go getting Mr Thompson’s hopes up,’ said Isobel. She sat back on her haunches, breath a cloud of white around her head as she lifted something out of the box at her feet. From where Logan was standing it looked just like another chunk of pork, and he said so.

      ‘That’s true …’ she turned the joint of meat over, ‘but pigs don’t usually have tattoos of unicorns on their backsides.’

       2

      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 СКАЧАТЬ