Flesh House

'And these,' said Ewan,'are our recently deceased members. There's Charles, I was telling you about him. Simon, Craig, Thomas ... This is John: he was in the second wave on D-Day. And that's my old mentor Edward. Lovely man; orphan, grew up in a children's home, came from nothing and ended up with three butcher's shops and a house in Rubislaw Den. Couldn't have kids of his own so they adopted a little girl from a broken home.' He pointed at a man with a ludicrous comb-over. 'Robert there took in a wee boy with polio. Jane and I had two girls of our own, but I never forgot Edward's example. So we adopted our youngest, Ben. Abandoned on the steps of St Nicholas church the day after he was born. How could someone just throw away a life like that? Madness ...' Ewan stared at the photos in silence for a moment. Then went through them one by one:'Cancer, cancer, heart attack, pneumonia, cancer, Thomas had a stroke two weeks after his wife died; Edward and Sheila went in a car crash. Robert took an aneurism on Union Street.' He tapped the glass. 'One day I'll be in there. And people will come in and laugh at my photo. I'll be dead, but I'll always be part of something. That's important, isn't it? Not to disappear into nothing ...'

'Pierdolona kurwa fuck.' Andrzej Jaskolski jabbed at the start button again. 'Work jebany piece of shit!' he kicked the metal wall, but the mill still wouldn't start. Typical: the boilers go down for two days and now the pierdolone bone mill was broken too. 'Go to UK,' said his wife,'earn lots of money, come back and set up own clinic in Warsaw. Be rich man.' Kurwa mac. Degree in Orthopaedic Therapy and he ends up working in stinking rendering plan in stinking abattoir in stinking arse end of nowhere Scottish backwater. Another kick. 'Start, dirty bitch fuck!' One more kick and the machine rumbled into life, the huge steel teeth at the bottom of the trough grinding through bones and off-cuts and fat. Only no chopped up bones fell into the next hopper. Ja pierdole! He grabbed the long wooden pole that leant against the wall - still not laughing at the kurwo foreman's joke - and jabbed at the mass of bones. Poke, jab, poke. A sudden clunk, and the pile slumped. Grinding noise. Bone and gristle fragments chugged into the next hopper, ready to be torn up into even smaller pieces. Andrzej Jaskolski turned to put the pole back where he'd got it. Tonight he'd go into town with other Polish workers from abattoir. Drink. Maybe dance. Maybe find nice woman with own flat and not go back to jebanego bed and breakfast with no hot water and stains on ceiling and bed made of concrete. He froze, one hand on the pole, then turned back to the sinking mass of cattle bones. Sweat breaking out on his forehead. Hoping his eyes were playing tricks on him ... They weren't. 'O kurwa jebana mac ...'

34

Logan had never seen an abattoir before. He'd been expecting a wooden building with blood-smeared concrete and wailing cattle, but from the outside, Alaba Farm Fresh Meats looked more like a warehouse. A big, breezeblock building with a green metal roof and a two-storey block of offices, all hidden behind a thick, twelve-foot-high leylandii hedge. From the street you'd have no idea what was going on inside - if it wasn't for the smell. The company sign tried to make everything look jolly and approachable:'FARM TO PLATE, SCOTCH MEAT IS GREAT!' and a happy cartoon pig, wearing a butcher's outfit and holding a cleaver. Logan marched past the thing, across the car park, and up to the security bunker. An articulated lorry was stopped at the barricade, its headlights glowing in the thin, cold drizzle, sheep staring out from the four-storey trailer as the driver argued with one of the guards. 'What the hell am I supposed to do with all these bloody sheep?' 'It's no' ma fault, is it? Police say naebiddy gets in or oot till they've finished.'