'Oh crap ...' She grabbed the Airwave handset from her shoulder and got onto Control as Logan stepped quietly over the threshold and into the long, dark hallway. The walls were covered in spray paint: profanity, threats, and 'UP THE DONS!' He stopped at the foot of the stairs. A faint glow of light broke the gloom from somewhere under the stairs. Logan crept round. It was coming from the internal entrance to the butcher's shop. The door was almost shut, but he could make out a torch shining on a paint-spattered wall. Mumbled singing, the words soft and slurred, the tune unrecognizable. Logan eased the door open. McFarlane was dressed up in his butcher's outfit - white coat, blue stripy apron, little white porkpie hat, sloshing petrol from a green plastic can all over the shattered deli counter. He gave a sudden lurch to the left, legs stiff beneath him as he tried to stay upright, getting petrol all down his trousers, and then he was stable again. 'Let me guess,' said Logan, stepping into the devastation,'you're having a going-out-of-business barbecue?' McFarlane spun round, petrol and legs going everywhere as he slipped and crashed down on his backside. 'We ...' For a second he looked as if he was about to be sick. 'We're shut.' And then he was - all over himself.
The butcher's flat was oppressively warm, which only made the smell worse. McFarlane sat on the immaculate couch, in his immaculate lounge, wearing an apron stained with petrol and vomit. He cradled a silver photo frame against his chest, ignoring the cup of strong black coffee on the table in front of him as Logan introduced PC Munro. Throwing up seemed to have done McFarlane the world of good. If it wasn't for the stink and the bloodshot eyes he could almost have passed for sober. 'I'm ... I'm sorry ...' He blinked back a tear. 'I didn't know what else to do ... twenty years I spent, building up the business ... I thought if no one got hurt ... I mean it's not as if the insurance company haven't had their pound of flesh from me over the years, is it? ... Place was ruined anyway ...' 'I'm afraid we've got some bad news, Andrew.' The butcher didn't look up. 'I didn't have any choice ...' 'It's about your wife, Kirsty. We retested the carpet from Ken Wiseman's car boot - the human blood wasn't his, it was Kirsty's.' McFarlane screwed his face into a knot, clutching the photo tighter. 'She was everything to me. Everything ...' 'PC Munro is a Family Liaison officer, she'll--' 'He killed her.' 'We think so. He told the guy in the next cell--' 'I watched him ... I watched him cut her up ...' He buried his head in his hands and sobbed. Logan looked from the vomit-soaked butcher to PC Munro and back again. Trying not to grin. They had a witness - after all these years, they
49
'Where the hell have you been?' Big Gary grabbed Logan as soon as he got back to FHQ. Quarter past seven and the place had that calm-before-the-storm feeling to it. As if something nasty was lurking just around the corner with a baseball bat. 'The Chief Constable's going ballistic.' Big Gary thrust a copy of that morning's News of the World into Logan's hands:'DI BEATS HANDCUFFED SUSPECT'. 'As your Federation Rep I need to see your statement about what happened before you hand it in to Professional Standards.'
