Broken Skin
Page 40
‘Er …’ said the cameraman, catching up to them by Logan’s grubby, unmarked CID pool car, ‘I wondered if I could tag along with you for a while. Insch is a bit …’ He shrugged. ‘You know.’
Logan did. ‘Get in. I’ll be back in a minute.’ It didn’t take long to pass the word along: he just grabbed the nearest sergeant and asked her to give it forty-five minutes, then tell everyone to finish up and get their backsides over to Altens.
Andy was in full whinge when Logan got back to the car, ‘I mean,’ the cameraman said, leaning forward from the back seat – knee-deep in discarded chip papers and fast-food cartons – ‘If he didn’t want to be in the bloody series, why’d he volunteer? Always seemed really keen till now. He shouted at me – I had my headphones on, nearly blew my eardrums out.’
Logan shrugged, threading the car through the barricade of press cameras, microphones and spotlights. ‘You’re lucky. He shouts at me every bloody day.’
Isobel just sat there in frosty silence, seething.
Stephenson’s Cash and Carry was a long breezeblock warehouse in Altens: a soulless business park on the southernmost tip of Aberdeen. Inside it was huge, rows and rows of high, deep shelves stretching off into the distance, made miserable by the flicker of fluorescent lighting and the drone of piped muzak. The manager’s office was halfway up the end wall, a flight of concrete steps leading to a shiny blue door with ‘YOUR SMILE IS OUR GREATEST ASSET’ written on it. If that was the case, they were all screwed, because everyone looked bloody miserable.
For someone who’d been dragged out of his bed at four in the morning, the man in charge of Stephenson’s Cash and Carry looked bloody awful. Bags under the eyes, blue stubble on his jowly face, wearing a suit that probably cost a fortune, but looked like someone had died in it. Mr Stephenson peered out of the picture window that made up one wall of his office, watching as uniformed officers picked their way through the shelves of jelly babies, washing powder and baked beans. ‘Oh God …’
‘And you’re quite sure,’ said Logan, sitting in a creaky leather sofa with a cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit, ‘there haven’t been any breakins?’
‘No. I mean, yes. I’m sure.’ Stephenson crossed his arms, paced back and forth, uncrossed his arms. Sat down. Stood up again. ‘It can’t have come from here: we’ve got someone on-site twenty-four-seven, a state-of-the-art security system.’
Logan had met their state-of-the-art security system – it was a sixty-eight-yearold man named Colin. Logan had sneezed more alert things than him.
Stephenson went back to the window. ‘Have you tried speaking to the ship’s crew? Maybe they—’
‘Who supplies your meat, Mr Stephenson?’
‘It … depends what it is. Some of the prepackaged stuff comes from local butchers – it’s cheaper than hiring someone in-house to hack it up – the rest comes from Abattoirs. We use three—’ He flinched as a loud, rattling crash came from the cash and carry floor below, followed by a derisory cheer and some slow handclapping. ‘You promised me they’d be careful! We’re open in an hour and a half; I can’t have customers seeing the place in a mess.’
Logan shook his head. ‘I think you’ve got more important things to worry about, sir.’
Stephenson stared at him. ‘I don’t … no. You can’t think we had anything to do with this! We’re a family firm. We’ve been here for nearly thirty years.’
‘That container came from your cash and carry with bits of human meat in it.’
‘But—’
‘How many other shipments do you think went out to the rigs like that? What if you’ve been selling chunks of dead bodies to catering companies for months? Do you think the guy’s who’ve been eating chopped-up corpses offshore are going to be happy about it?’
Mr Stephenson blanched and said, ‘Oh God …’ again.
Logan drained the last of his coffee and stood. ‘Where did the meat in that container come from?’
‘I … I’ll have to look in the dockets.’
‘You do that.’
The cash and carry’s chill room sat on the opposite side of the building, separated from the shelves of dry and tinned 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.
‘Jesus,’ said the constable, shivering, ‘it’s fucking perishing in here.’
Logan stopped, one hand on the freezer’s doorhandle. ‘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 the joint of defrosting meat found in the 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 … Holy shit it was cold. It was like being punched in the chest by a bag of ice. His breath went from mist to impenetrable fog. ‘Hello?’
He found Doctor Isobel McAllister 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 what looked like a couple of dirty-blue parkas and a set of padded trousers, a red and white bobble hat bandaged onto her head with a tatty maroon scarf. Not exactly her usual catwalk self as she picked 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.’
‘And it’s not my fault he 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 to God it wasn’t Andy with his bloody camera. Things were bad enough without being caught complaining about Insch on national television. ‘Hello?’
‘Sergeant McRae?’ Mr Stephenson peered around a stack of boxes marked ‘FISH FINGERS’. ‘I’ve found the do
ckets …’ 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.’
Stephenson 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 Stephenson’s hopes up.’ Isobel 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.
‘Yes, well,’ she turned the joint of meat over in her hand, ‘pigs don’t usually have tattoos of unicorns on their backsides.’
Cold Granite
Stuart MacBride
Winter in Aberdeen: murder, mayhem and terrible weather.
It’s DS Logan McRae’s first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn’t get much worse. Four-year-old David Reid’s body is discovered in a ditch, strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he’s only the first. There’s a killer stalking the Granite City and the local media are baying for blood.
Soon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die. If Logan isn’t careful, he could end up joining them.
‘Ferocious and funny’ VAL MCDERMID
‘A gripping debut’ Daily Mirror
‘Stuart MacBride goes straight for the jugular … tight and thrilling’
Glasgow Herald
ISBN 978 0 00 719314 1
Dying Light
Stuart MacBride
It’s summertime in the Granite city: the sun is shining, the sky is blue and people are dying …
It starts with Rosie Williams, a prostitute, stripped naked and beaten to death down by the docks – the heart of Aberdeen’s red light district. For DS Logan McRae it’s a bad start to another bad day.
Rosie Williams won’t be the only one making an unscheduled trip to the morgue. Across the city six people are burning to death in a petrol-soaked squat, the doors and windows screwed shut from the outside. And despite Logan’s best efforts, it’s not long before another prostitute turns up on the slab …
Stuart MacBride’s characteristic grittiness, gallows humour and lively characterization are to the fore in this unput-downable serial killer tale.
‘Another brilliant, riveting police procedural. I’m green with envy!’ R D Wingfield, author of A Touch of Frost
‘Stuart MacBride goes straight for the jugular’
Glasgow Herald
ISBN 978 0 00 719316 5 5
BROKEN SKIN
Stuart MacBride has gone from asking people if they ‘want fries with that’ to project-managing vast IT projects for the oil industry. Somewhere in the middle he managed to make money out of dressing up as a woman, doing voiceovers, graphic design, working offshore, and very boring things involving websites. He failed the interview to become a funeral director.
His first book, Cold Granite, was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers’ best debut novel and won the Barry Award for best first novel. The follow-up, Dying Light, became an instant top-ten bestseller. Stuart MacBride won the 2007 Dagger in the Library, awarded for a body of work.
Stuart lives in northeast Scotland with his wife Fiona, cat Grendel, and a vegetable plot full of weeds.
Visit Stuart MacBride’s website at:
www.stuartmacbride.com.
By Stuart MacBride
Cold Granite
Dying Light
Broken Skin
Praise for Stuart MacBride:
‘Fierce, unflinching and shot through with the blackest of humour; this is crime fiction of the highest order by a writer whose dark star is most definitely on the rise.’
Mark Billingham
‘Gripping’ Daily Mirror
‘Ferocious and funny.’ Val McDermid
‘Riveting and gruesome’ Telegraph
‘If you’re looking for taut narrative, gut-churning incident, strong characterisation, all shot through with savagely dark humour, then look no further’
Reginald Hill
‘Grim, gritty and great fun’ Daily Sport
‘The novel rattles along like a bolting horse and the dialogue crackles like a firework display … DI Steel should be declared a national treasure’
Andrew Taylor, Spectator
‘This intelligent, exciting police procedural should make the leading writers of the genre start looking over their shoulders.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Another brilliant, riveting police procedural. I’m green with envy!’ R D Wingfield, author of A Touch of Frost ‘Stuart MacBride goes straight for the jugular with a tight, thrilling novel’
Glasgow Herald
‘This is Ian Rankin on Speed … the humour is black, the violence is apalling, the language is, well, realistic, the entertainment is unflagging. I hunger for the earlier novels’
Adelaide Review
‘An impressive debut … an edge-of-your-seat page-turner’
Publishers Weekly
‘A cracking new writer on the crime scene who hooks you from the first page and never lets you go. The action is ferocious and the pace unrelenting’
Northern Echo
‘Compelling reading’ Telegraph
‘A gritty, roller-coaster, in-your-face thriller’
Aberdeen Press and Journal
‘MacBride is a confident writer … does a good line in black humour and has a nose for the macabre.’
Scotsman
‘The story is violent and bloody; some of the crimes are vicious and MacBride doesn’t hold back on the details. But there is plenty of dark humour, and a warmth to the portrayal of the police officers which lightens an otherwise grim tale by this very talented writer’
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to reallife counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exceptions to this are the characters of Alexander Clark, Debbie Kerr and John Rickards, who have given their express permission to be fictionalized in this volume. All events and character traits assigned to these individuals have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and bear no resemblance to the real people.
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This paperback edition 2008 596 1
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007
Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2007
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ePub edition June 2008 ISBN-9780007279418
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