Faulds took one look at the inspector in his bulging SOC outfit and said,'Good God, David, you're huge!' He stuck out his hand to shake, but Insch just looked at it. 'Yes, well ...' Faulds reached up and adjusted his suit's hood, as if that was what he'd meant to do in the first place. 'Have you picked up Wiseman yet?' Insch scowled. 'Kicked his door down at seven forty-five this morning. He wasn't there.' 'You let him escape?' 'No I bloody didn't: I had an unmarked car sitting outside his house from the moment we found the remains down the docks. He never went home, OK?' 'Oh God ...' Faulds closed his eyes and swore quietly. 'OK, right, fair enough, too late to worry about that now.' Sigh. 'So what are we looking at here?' 'That.' Insch pointed at the far corner of the cold store, where Isobel was examining a cut of meat hanging from a hook. It was about two foot long, seven inches wide: the flesh a dark rose colour, the fat a golden yellow, the surface punctuated by pale bones. No skin. 'Loin of pork?' asked Faulds, inching forwards. 'Close: long pig.' Isobel stood, rubbing her latex-gloved hands down the front of her coveralls. 'The meat's darker than pork, more like veal - definitely human. The ribs have been severed halfway down their length, but the shape's unmistakable.' The Chief Constable thought about it for a moment, then asked,'Care to hazard a time of death?' Isobel stared at him. 'And you are?' Faulds turned the full power of his smile on her. 'Mark Faulds, West Midlands Police. DI Insch asked me to come up and take a look at the case.' Which sounded incredibly unlikely to Logan: Insch wouldn't ask for help if his crotch was on fire. From the look on her face, Isobel didn't believe it either. 'I don't know what kind of pathologists you're used to dealing with down there, Mr Faulds, but in Aberdeen we don't rush to conclusions before we've carried out the post mortem.' She went back to her slab of meat, muttering,'God save us from bloody policemen, think we're all clairvoyant ...' 'I see.' Faulds winked at Logan, whispering,'I love a challenge.' He cleared his throat. 'Actually it's 'Chief Constable', not 'mister'.' If he expected that to impress Isobel, he was in for a disappointment. She didn't even pause, just unhooked the chunk of meat and slipped it into a large evidence bag. 'Right,' she handed it to one of the IB technicians,'I want every piece of meat in here taken down to the mortuary. Mince, sausages, everything.' She snapped off her gloves then nodded at Insch. 'Inspector, a word please.' Faulds watched them march out of the cold room. 'Is she usually that welcoming?' Logan smiled. 'No, sir. She must like you: normally she's a lot worse.'
The shop's owner - the eponymous Mr McFarlane - lived in a large flat directly above the butcher's, so it hadn't exactly taken Operation Cleaver long to track him down. He was a chunky blob with a worried expression, thinning hair, a red-veined nose, and bags under his eyes. He'd clarted himself in aftershave, but it still wasn't enough to cover the smell of stale sweat and last night's alcohol. McFarlane sat behind the desk in a little office at the back of the shop, watching as an IB technician dismantled a yellow-grey computer and stuck it in an evidence crate. 'I ... I don't understand,' McFarlane said, looking around with watery pink eyes,'we're supposed to be open at nine ...'
