Flesh House

He tried again, hauling himself up using the eviscerated carcass of a sheep ... it was still warm. The woman threw her arm around the Flesher, and together they hobbled away. Logan took two steps after them, then stopped, turned back and looked at Jackie. She had her hands cupped in her lap, head thrown back, teeth gritted. Her whole face was painted scarlet, tears washing little pink trails through the blood. He sank down beside her, using the wall for support. His whole left arm was burning now, throbbing in time with his head. 'You OK?' She glared at him. 'Do I fucking look OK? I've got holes in my hands!' Grimace. 'Ah Jesus it hurts!' 'I'll get an ambulance.' 'No you don't - you go and you catch that bastard!' 'But Faulds--' 'He's already dead.' Logan glanced over at the Chief Constable's body. The man's eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, his chest still, his blood-soaked hands limp at his sides, his stomach a gaping hole ... Jackie tried to grab hold of Logan's filthy suit jacket, but her fingers weren't working. 'You let that bastard escape, I'll bloody kill you.'

63

Logan lurched along the corridor, clutching his left arm to his chest, following the Flesher and her accomplice as fast as his wobbly legs would go. The burning sensation was slowly giving way to a worrying numbness. Dislocated or broken, either was better than a bolt gun through the hands, or getting cut in half. A pair of double doors at the far end led through into the cattle area: a tall, warehouse-style room with another mechanical conveyer built into the ceiling. Only this time it wasn't sheep dangling five inches off the floor, it was cattle: hanging head down, their rear hooves chained to the belt ten foot above Logan's head. He'd seen plenty of cows in the fields around Aberdeen, but he'd never realized they were so huge. An elevated walkway ran along the twisting path the carcasses followed; men and women in blue and white overalls, Wellington boots, and hardhats; strange bits of equipment; the stench of rendering fat and hot copper and raw meat; gouts of greasy steam drifting out of circular holes in the floor. There was music playing in here too, but no one was working - they were all staring at Logan in his blood- soaked suit. A hydraulic noise, then a faint buzzing, and then a huge bullock fell out of a slot in the wall onto a knee-high plinth. It wasn't even twitching as someone in a long green apron shackled its back legs and winched it upside down to join the line. 'Which way did they go?' No one could hear him over the clank of machinery and the roar of Tom Jones. Three quick slashes to the throat and the bullock's blood gushed onto the killing floor, bright red. Logan tried again. 'WHERE DID THEY GO?' The man in the green apron pointed down the line - past where the emptied, skinned cattle were being sawn in half with an industrial band-saw - at a small area tacked onto the end of the cavernous room.