Logan hurried inside. Security monitors dominated one wall, showing white oversuited figures picking their way through the abattoir and its outbuildings. Three uniformed PCs sat going through the old tapes, wreathed in the comforting steam of hot coffee. Logan helped himself to a mug, then stood with his backside against the radiator, watching them work. 'Anything?' One of the PCs shrugged. 'Not yet.' When his bum had defrosted, Logan topped up his coffee, poured one for Steel, and headed out into the abattoir grounds. Everything was going on round the back, the harsh white glare of the IB's spotlights cutting through the cold November night. He struggled into yet another SOC oversuit and followed a line of blue-and-white POLICE tape into a three- storey, enclosed metal structure. The smell was much worse here: raw meat and roasting animal fat, like a lamb chop left under the grill for too long. The air felt ... greasy with a sour edge to it that made his stomach churn. Steel was at the top of the stairs, hands jammed deep into her pockets, her face creased in disgust. 'What took you so long?' 'You're welcome.' He handed over the extra mug of coffee. 'This got sugar in it?' 'What do you think?' Logan stepped round the inspector, peering over the guard rail at a mass of bones, hooves and offal. There were two IB technicians in there, passing chunks out to a third who carried them over to a collapsible table, where Isobel scrutinized them. 'Bloody stinks in here ...' Steel wrapped her hands around her mug. 'Come on then, door-to-doors?' Logan pointed towards the back wall of the bone mill. 'All the houses on that side are derelict - apparently no one wants buy a three-bedroom semi downwind of an abattoir.' 'There's a surprise.' 'Uniform are going through the rest. Nothing so far.' 'Yeah, well, the pretty and talented DCS Bain is interviewing the workforce as we speak. So that'll be a bloody disaster.' The inspector sipped her coffee, and grimaced. 'This taste funny to you?' 'It was fine in the security bunker ...' but Steel was right, out here it had developed an unpleasant flavour of rancid lard. 'Right,' she leant on the guard rail, watching as Isobel chucked a long bone into a wheelbarrow and waved for the next sample,'half six - the abattoir's running double shifts to catch up,'cos they've had an equipment failure - and some poor sod's clearing out the bone cruncher. Turns out he's an orthopaedic thingy back in Poland, so when he sees a human thighbone poking out of the pile he hits the emergency stop and refuses to budge till they call the police.' She shook her head. 'Weird, eh? Guy goes to medical school and ends up over here,' cos he can make more money working in an abattoir shovelling bones than he can doctoring back home.' 'You question him?' Steel turned. 'No, I took his word for it when he said he'd no' hacked anyone up. Looked like an honest bloke ...' she slapped Logan on the arm. 'Course I bloody questioned him.' Isobel straightened up from her table and passed a triangle of bone to her assistant. 'Scapula.' It went into a blue plastic evidence box.
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