Flesh House

Her mother kissed Heather on the forehead. One soft hand cradling her cheek. 'Please! Please don't--' Crack. And then there was no more screaming. The silence was beautiful and rich and dark. Like chocolate. Heather didn't even mind when the hacking started.

The bar was full of off-duty police officers and students, both sets here for the cheap beer. Logan sat at DI Steel's normal table - in the corner beneath the television - polishing off his first pint of the night and enjoying every mouthful. 'I mean, think about it,' said Rennie, dressed for some unfathomable reason in a dog collar and priestly black,'how come whenever the Flesher strikes, our so-called Chief Constable Faulds is nowhere to be seen?' Logan consigned his empty pint glass to the drinker's graveyard that covered the table. 'You're not still on about this, are you?' 'Where is he tonight, then?' 'How should I know?' 'Exactly!' Rennie finished off his Stella and plonked it down with the others. Logan shook his head. 'I don't know where Steel is either, but that doesn't make her Jack the bloody Ripper.' He pointed at the collection of empties. 'Your round.' The constable stood, pulled on an ecclesiastical expression, and marched off to the bar. Blessing random strangers on the way, leaving his girlfriend behind. Rennie wasn't kidding about Laura's kinky schoolgirl outfit - she was dressed in an exact replica of the Albyn School uniform, only she had her shirt-tails tied beneath her breasts, hoiking them up to create a vertiginous cleavage and exposing her stomach at the same time. The skirt was so short there was a flash of white knickers every time she moved her stockinged legs. She'd even put her long, blonde hair in pigtails and painted freckles on her cheeks. Logan had never really got the whole schoolgirl fantasy thing himself - it always seemed a bit paedophilic - but the other men at the table were falling over themselves to laugh at her jokes and ogle her breasts. Logan barely heard his phone when it went off. 'Hello?' With all the laughing, jiggling and rampant testosterone, he couldn't make out a word. 'Hold on, I'll have to go outside ...' The front door to Archibald Simpson was sheltered by a granite portico, held up by huge ionic columns, a perfect little haven for all the banished smokers to light up in. He waded through the cigarette smog to the outer edge, looking into the cold, rainy night as Colin Miller said,'You in the pub again? Christ knows how your liver copes ... Listen, I did a search on all the victims, right? No' just the Aberdeen ones: every bugger. They all had a wee thing in the papers three or four weeks before they died. It's like clockwork, but.' 'You sure?' 'Every last one of them. Gonna be all over the front page tomorrow: 'Headlines Spell Death for Flesher Victims!' Continued page seven, eight and nine.' 'Can you email me all the references you found?' 'What am I, your secretary?' 'Oh come on, you wouldn't have a story at all if--'