Steel pointed at the growing pile of human remains. 'It's Tom Stephen, they found his head ... you want to see?' 'Excuse me?' A man in white Wellington boots, baggy plastic trousers, overcoat, hairnet and hardhat had appeared on the walkway behind them. 'Do you think this is going to be finished tonight? Only we've got a backlog--' 'How'd you get up here?' He pointed over his shoulder. 'Access door from the Den of Dung - where we rinse out the intestines and stomachs ...' He dropped his voice to a whisper,'Look, can't you just empty this lot out and take it with you?' 'Excuse me a moment, sir,' Steel leant on the guardrail and shouted down at someone on the ground. 'I told you to seal the bloody entrances! That means all the entrances, no' just the ones you can be arsed with!' She turned back to the gentleman. 'Sorry about that. Now if you don't mind: this'll go a lot faster if you let us get on with out jobs.' 'But--' 'This is the way it works. We have to go through each and every chunk of crap in that hopper. Then we're going to examine every bit of meat in the place. And until we've done that, you're no' hacking up anything else. Comprende?' 'But I've got orders to fulfil! We have to--' 'Oh, is this no' a good time for you? You should have said! Tell you what, why don't we just forget all about the human remains we found in your rendering plant--' 'Protein processing. We don't call it 'rendering' anymore, on account of--' 'I don't care! You're shut down till I tell you different!' And with that she stomped off. It would have been an impressive exit, if she hadn't stopped halfway down the stairs to haul her SOC oversuit out from the crack of her backside. The man in the white outfit watched her go. 'But we've got a backlog ...' Logan patted him on the shoulder. 'I'm afraid she's right: we can't risk any more human meat getting into the food chain.' He looked up at the company name, written along the side of the abattoir building in three-foot-high lettering. 'It's an unusual way to spell Alba.' 'The MD's idea: he got fed up having to explain how to pronounce it all the time.' 'Look on the bright side, it ...' Logan stopped and frowned. 'Do you supply wholesalers? Butchers, cash and carrys, things like that?' 'Couple of supermarket chains too. We're very proud of our traditional--' He was starting to get a very bad feeling about this. 'I'm going to need a list of your customers.'
DI Steel was slumped in one of the boardroom chairs, hands over her face, listening as Logan told her the bad news. Again. He waited for her to go off on one, rant and swear, try to pin the blame on someone else. But instead she let her head fall back, stared at the ceiling, and said,'Oh ... sodding hell.' The boardroom was lined with posters of steaks, roasts, things on skewers, mince, chops, and those charts telling you which cut comes from which part of which animal. Like a preschool puzzle in meat. She scrubbed her hands across her face, sighed, then asked Logan if he was sure.
