Cold Cuts Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  About the Book

  The cold meat option in the sandwich shop wasn’t supposed to feature human flesh. The victim identified, detectives Pereira and Bain find their way to the meat processing factory where the human meat entered the food chain. A media frenzy quickly takes hold, with Pereira’s boss demanding immediate results. But no one is talking, some of the players have gone missing, and it seems unlikely that the butcher’s work is done.

  COLD CUTS introduces DI Pereira and DS Bain, Glasgow detectives on the trail of a killer, through a sordid underworld of deceit, vengeance, and murder.

  About the Author

  DOUGLAS LINDSAY was born in Scotland in 1964 at 2:38a.m. It rained.

  Some decades later he left Scotland to live in Belgium. Meeting his future wife, Kathryn, he took the opportunity to drop out of reality and join her on a Foreign & Commonwealth Office posting to Senegal. It was here that he developed the character of Barney Thomson, while sitting in an air-conditioned apartment drinking gin & tonic at eight o’clock in the morning. Since the late 1990s, he has penned seven books in the Barney series, and several other crime novels written in the non-traditional style.

  His first book, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, has been translated into several languages and in July 2015 was released in the UK as the major motion picture event, The Legend of Barney Thomson, starring Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson and Ray Winstone.

  His other crime series include the Highland police procedurals of DI Westphall, the crime thrillers of DCI Jericho, and the Glasgow police procedurals of DS Hutton.

  He lives, with his family, in the south of England.

  DOUGLAS LINDSAY

  COLD CUTS

  A gripping crime thriller with a shocking twist

  Pereira & Bain Book 1

  »be« by BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

  Digital original edition

  »be« by Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

  Copyright © 2017 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Cologne, Germany

  Written by Douglas Lindsay

  Edited by Allan Guthrie

  Project editor: Kathrin Kummer

  Cover design: © www.buersosued.de

  eBook production: Urban SatzKonzept, Düsseldorf

  ISBN 978-3-7325-4184-3

  www.be-ebooks.com

  CHAPTER 1

  “It’s a distraction.”

  “You think?” said Pereira, without looking up from the case file.

  “Did you know that in the mid-sixties,” said Bain, “when Kennedy had pitched his whole let’s-get-to-the-moon thing, NASA had four point four per cent of the Federal budget? All that money, just to get to the moon, which in space terms, is like, in your back garden. Now here we are, fifty years later, and NASA has point five of a per cent of the Federal budget.”

  Pereira nodded. She was into her third day investigating a convoluted case of second hand car fraud. On the face of it, small-time and of little interest, yet the more she looked, the more complex it became, the greater the extent of the fraud. It was time to start expanding the scope of the team and the investigation, and to begin the long process of putting a comprehensive case together.

  “They are seriously not getting to Mars with that budget. I mean, they talk about it, they try to get everyone excited. That’s the plan, right? They want people to want to go to Mars. But then you look at the issues involved, and it’s like, holy shit, there is no way. I mean, they have all these programs to gauge the psychological effects, and to look at the dust, and they have people living in pods in the desert in California or wherever, but seriously, they are not even close to getting people there in one piece. These people are going to arrive on Mars, and if they’re not already dead, their muscles will have atrophied and their brains scrambled. They’ll walk out onto the Martian landscape needing to build a colony, except they won’t be able to walk and they won’t be able to think about shit.”

  Pereira glanced past Bain’s shoulder into the DCI’s office. Parker was talking to Griffin from forensics, and as she watched the body language and tried to work out which of the cases floating around the department it might be related to, Parker caught her eye, then turned back to Griffin.

  Looked like she would be getting the call into the office in a minute, and she could hope that whatever it was, it was going to be more interesting than a car mileage racket.

  “Aren’t there private companies putting money into it, like Branson and these kinds of people?” she said, absent-mindedly.

  “Branson is in passenger space flight,” said Bain, “not Mars. You’re thinking of Elon Musk, and sure, he’s putting in billions over time. But you know what? Whatever he says, it ain’t happening in his life time, it just ain’t. And we haven’t even got to the part yet where people are dying on test runs, a tenth of the way there. Or, you know, just disappearing off into space, never to be heard from again.”

  “It’s a distraction from what?” she asked, checking off a number with a red pen, then looking back through the paperwork beneath for the data she needed to crosscheck the details. In the movies, didn’t they have computers to do this kind of work?

  “Everything else. Failing economies, unemployment, drug use, wars in the Middle East and everywhere else, terrorism, you name it. It’s a simple thing to say, ‘Hey look at us, we can go to another planet!’ But think about this. All the nuclear powers on Earth could drop all their nuclear bombs, every single damn one of them, killing everyone and decimating the planet, and Earth would still be genuinely more habitable after that than Mars is now. But that doesn’t matter. It’s the promise that once we’ve gone to Mars, then holy shit, there will be other planets out there. And then all we have to do is ignore the fact that the difference between getting to Mars and getting to a planet in another solar system, is like the difference between getting to the bathroom and getting to Mars, and we can all be excited.”

  He glanced up at her, and despite the fact that she was looking past him into Parker’s office, he continued talking anyway. “Wait, what’s that, you said? There are babies being killed in Syria in case they become terrorists in twenty years’ time? Sad! But look! Space!”

  Finally he followed Pereira’s glance over his shoulder, and at that moment Parker made the gesture for her to come into his office, and she stood quickly.

  “Sergeant,” she said, walking past, “hold the thought.”

  “You weren’t paying attention anyway,” he said, and she smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

  Into the office, Parker with his head down looking through a report, and Griffin from forensics standing with his arms folded, beside the desk. They acknowledged each other, then Pereira waited for Parker to look up, which he did after a few seconds.

  “Got much on, Aliya?” he asked.

  “Still working through the Maybanks fraud case.”

  “Minefield,” he said, shaking his head.

  “It’s complicated, but it’s not going anywhere if you need me to look at something else.”

  “I do, yes,” said Parker, and he nodded at Griffin. “Dan.”

  “We got a case sent over from Food Standards in East Kilbride,” said Griffin, nodding at the report
. “There’s a sandwich shop down in Millport. Eat ‘N’ Go, it’s called.”

  “Eat ‘N’ Go?”

  “Yes, I know,” said Griffin, with a shake of the head. “I mean, as a name for a restaurant it would be pretty dumb, but for a sandwich place with no seating, where your only option is to leave and then eat …”

  “Dan,” said Parker.

  “Been open about a month,” said Griffin.

  “They opened a sandwich shop in Millport in October?”

  “Go figure. A few days ago they get a delivery. Various types of cooked meat. There’s one meat they don’t recognise, and for some reason they decide to serve it as pork. A customer complains, they take a closer look at the meat …”

  “I’m hoping this is going to be a horsemeat story,” said Pereira, and Griffin smiled and shook his head.

  “They went to the local butcher. He didn’t recognise it. They got in touch with Food Standards, I think reluctantly. But glad they did, and now it’s over with us. And there you have it.”

  He nodded at the report again and Pereira asked the question with her eyebrows.

  “From the thigh of a male, thirty-one years old.”

  “A male …?”

  “Human,” said Griffin. “Yes, human.”

  “Thirty-one seems very precise. You’ve already identified him?”

  “Kevin Moyes,” said Griffin. “He’s been missing for a couple of weeks. We had his DNA on file.”

  “Crap,” said Pereira, shaking her head. “There’s a story.”

  “You were looking bored over there, Inspector,” said Parker, smiling.

  He closed the folder he’d been reading and held it out to her.

  “This is Dan’s report, but he hasn’t gone into details of the missing person. He’s a Millport local, so you should head down there now, speak to the island constable, and get round to the shop.”

  “Anyone been in contact with them yet?”

  “You’re going to be the bearer of grim news, Inspector,” said Parker. “I expect they were thinking it was going to turn out to be horsemeat too.”

  Pereira nodded, looked at Griffin, asked, “It’s all in here?” and turned to the door at his nod.

  “Aliya?” said Parker, and she turned back, stopping at the tone in his voice. Something personal, she thought.

  “You know how things are around here,” he said, a slight movement of his shoulders accompanying the vague remark. “Money, money, money. In short, I’m being bumped upstairs. To Justice Department Liaison, of all places.”

  “Crap,” said Pereira. “Did we know that was coming?”

  “It was kind of in the offing,” he said. “I‘d heard a rumour …” and he broke off, as Griffin excused himself from the discussion, and moved to the door with a wave.

  “Thanks, Dan,” said Parker, and Griffin was gone.

  “What kind of time scale?” asked Pereira. “I mean, I’ve just got you properly trained, sir, I’m not sure I want to lose you.”

  Parker laughed, then the laughter died away and he made a gesture of helplessness.

  “Today,” he said, then he looked at the clock beside the door. “Got a meeting in my new post at three.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Pereira, glancing round at the clock.

  “Nope, ‘fraid not, Inspector. That’s the way it goes. Dog eat dog …”

  “So, how long d’you think the post will be vacant?”

  “It’s not going to be,” he said. “The new man’s coming in about half an hour. Don’t worry about waiting around, you can meet him when you get back. Name’s Tom Cooper, just been promoted out of Renfrew.”

  “How does that …?” she began, then she shook her head. She was the detective, after all. “His newly promoted DCI salary is way cheaper than your twenty-year DCI salary.”

  “Yep. And I’m going to be filling a superintendent spot, but without the temporary promotion.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them to piss off?” she said.

  Parker did not answer, and slowly Pereira nodded, accepting that it was probably not a choice he’d been given, and that perhaps it was time he was moving on anyway. It may have been almost a year, but the uniforms upstairs were not going to forget the shambles of the Polmadie Three.

  Pereira let out a long, slow breath, then shook her head, a positive act of shaking the pieces into place.

  “So, you’ll be gone by the time I get back?”

  “I will.”

  “We’ll never see each other again?”

  “As the crow flies, we’ll be less than fifty yards apart, and while I grant you we shan’t be bumping into each other in the bathroom …”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Let’s have a coffee, Friday lunchtime,” said Parker. “We can compare notes. Working for a younger DCI might be just what you need.”

  “I rather liked your old head,” she said.

  Finally Parker was able to bring a little light to the conversation. He waved her away with a smile and said, “Bugger off, get on with the job. You don’t want DCI Cooper to think you’re a slacker.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Pereira and Bain were sitting in the small living room, in a house at the back of Kames Bay. No view of the sea from here. Just the houses across the street, and the slope of a corner of field, heading off in the direction of the cathedral, although the cathedral itself was not in view.

  The day was cold, the sky grey, there had been a swell to the sea, and even though the ferry ride only lasted about ten minutes, Pereira had begun to feel sick and had been glad to get off. On the way back, she would get out of the car and stand up on deck.

  The woman was sitting on the sofa, staring at her phone — even though they could see it was turned off — breastfeeding her child. She had said no when the boy had asked, but then he’d started to insist. The insistence had been about to become a full-blown tantrum, and she had acquiesced. The boy was no baby however. Easily a four-year-old. He was kneeling on the sofa beside his mother, staring out the corner of his eye at the detectives as they spoke, giving the room a peculiar and uncomfortable air.

  Bain was standing by the window, his eyes mostly directed at the restricted view outside. Pereira thought the woman odd, but didn’t mind looking at her. They’d all been there, although like most women, Pereira had not let her daughter get anywhere near this age before weaning. Everyone’s got a reason.

  “Kevin wasn’t your son’s father?” asked Pereira, and Jacqueline Hannity shook her head.

  “He’d only been here a year or two. Two,” she added, nodding.

  “And where’s the father?”

  Hannity pressed the side of the boy’s head to her chest, covering the other ear with her hand, and quietly said, “Pokey. Kingdom thinks he’s on an expedition to the Himalayas.”

  “Your son’s called Kingdom?”

  “Aye.”

  “You call him King for short?” asked Bain, glancing over.

  It wasn’t innately funny, there was just something about a boy like that, living in a place like this, with that name. And there she was, treating him like her precious little royal, giving in to any hint of a tantrum.

  “Dom,” said the mum, and Bain nodded and turned away, disappointed that there was nowhere for his gentle amusement to go.

  “When was the last time you saw Kevin?” asked Pereira.

  “I told all that stuff to the other one. The polis who looks like he should still be in nappies. I’m like that: are you even old enough to be in uniform?”

  Pereira and Bain had stopped off at Millport station to speak to Constable Williams in the first instance, and were not expecting to learn too much more from interviewing Hannity again. This had more been about passing on the news.

  She winced at the bite of the four-year-old’s teeth, scolded him with a sharp look, and then turned back to Pereira.

  “How d’you know he’s dead, anyway?”

  “We never said he was dead, J
acqueline,” said Pereira. “We said we’d identified part of his body. His leg. I know it looks bad, but it’s not entirely impossible that someone removed his leg, or part of his leg, but that Kevin is still alive.”

  “You found his leg just lying around?” said Hannity, through a bitter laugh. “Seriously? What the fuck?”

  As she said the expletive, she glanced down at the child to see if he’d been paying attention. His eyes were on Pereira, his lips still around his mother’s nipple, although he didn’t appear to be drinking.

  “That’s not exactly what happened,” said Pereira. “Part of his leg was found in the town, and we’re just getting st–”

  “What d’you mean, the town? Millport? Largs? Glasgow?”

  “Millport,” said Pereira. “Can I ask if you’ve had any contact with Kevin since you spoke to Constable Williams last week?”

  “And what d’you mean, part of his leg turned up in the town?” asked Hannity, and again she covered up the ear on the child, even though she hadn’t thought to do so during the previous discussion of the leg.

  “Someone had cut off a part of the muscle in Kevin’s thigh, and left it in the town,” said Pereira. “I can’t tell you where.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re in the early stages of the investigation. I wanted to give you the update, and to ask if you’d had any further contact with Kevin.”

  “Well, I’m not going to have if he’s dead, am I?” Hannity glanced down at the child, letting go of his ear at the same time. “Just get out,” she said, her eyes turning to her phone. “Come and talk to us when you’ve actually got something to say.”

  *

  They stood outside the shop for a few moments, backs turned to it, looking out on Millport bay, the wind cold in their faces. No sign of life out on the water, very few people along the sea front, the crazy golf long since closed for the winter, a bleakness over the town. Across the water sat the nuclear power station, grey and grim and foreboding, accompanied for the past couple of years by two giant wind turbines.