The first two chapters of
Flowers for the Slaughterman
are presented here as a taster.
Flowers for the Slaughterman is book two in the Flint & Masson series of crime novels, the follow-up to Miles Away (2022)
Chapter 1
February 1982
Flint’s head was banging and his lips were glued to his gums. A wiry hair was stuck between his front teeth. Rolling his head to see his watch set a kaleidoscope spinning inside his skull.
Ten to eight, and it was still dark. Isla stirred beside him. Her back was towards him, one arm stretching out behind her and lying across his belly. It was pressing on his full bladder, and felt podgy when he tried to lift it away. She’s putting on weight, he thought. It suits her, but when did she start biting her nails?
Isla, Isla, Isla. They must have caught the last bus back to Hillhead, or maybe walked? He became aware of how quiet it was, the only sound something scraping at his window. Normally there would be the morning sounds of students rousing. Muffled radios through walls, footsteps in the corridor, and conversations from outside as straggles formed on the way to the refectory or the bus stance.
Turning his head left he was blinded by a dull streetlight. Open curtains hung in limp ripples at either side. They should be mustard yellow, but were offensive pink and too far away. The room was huge, not like the narrow box of space he’d been allocated in the university halls of residence. This wasn’t Esslemont House, he decided.
The blushing curtains were nothing compared to the electric pink of the rumpled candlewick. He’d always preferred the blue one his mother kept for summer. She thought pinks were warmer for winter. The air smelled of his mother, the perfume she’d worn since his infancy. I’m at home. Oh God.
Reality began to surface.
But how did Isla get here, his childhood home in Auchmoor, where he’d been since leaving Aberdeen? He hadn’t seen her since she’d thrown him out. He could remember being in the Arms last night, as usual. Tich had been there, and flashes of disco lights meant he had gone on somewhere. The Royal Hotel for the Friday night late licence? The rest remained elusive.
Flint shuffled onto his right side, and the old mattress creaked. A moan emanated from the shape beside him as it shifted. He looked at the back and shoulders presented to him, pale in the rosy hue. Wider, longer. It wasn’t Isla. Or the familiar disappointment of waking after dreaming about her. Someone else was in his bed. A wicked smile of guilty pleasure cracked his lips away from his teeth, and he managed to extract the curling hair. He’d pulled, he thought, as Nudge would’ve said. Nudge, his best pal at university, had loads of tales of similar conquests. Some of them were probably true. He wished he could meet Nudge again, in the Dungeon Bar. As memories washed over him, he felt himself drifting back into sleep.
When another movement in the bed beside him brought him back from Aberdeen to Fife, Flint surfaced from a dozy slumber to a restive awareness. Something wasn’t right. Who was it lying beside him? And why did Mum let me sleep in her bed with a strange girl?
Bang!
A crashing tidal wave of horror washed away the doubt he had been floundering in. Paralysed, he didn’t dare breathe. He didn’t care if he drowned. He could smell his mother and he was between her sheets. Bile filled his mouth and he gagged, his heart punching against his ribcage. How could he be so depraved? How could she? Had he added to the list of men who’d abused her?
Flint let out a deep moan, and the body beside him stirred. Holding himself rigid as his mind writhed with self-loathing, a new burst of adrenaline blew the fog from his head. Ecstatic relief flowed in. He had waved his mother off in Janet’s car yesterday.
Aunt Janet, his mum’s snobby sister, had invited Eleanor away for a couple of days, to ‘take her out of herself.’ It was now more than four years since Alun had died, Janet had said. Time Eleanor moved on. Flint smiled as he remembered the cheeky smirks he and his mother had exchanged as she climbed into Janet’s latest car. They both knew his aunt didn’t need to worry about his mother ‘moving on.’
Exhaling, Flint sank into the mattress. He didn’t know who the slumbering girl beside him was, and stifled a guilty laugh. What might she think if she knew he’d mistaken her for his mother? Watching her wide back move rhythmically with her breathing, he felt a transient swell of feeble passion, but his hangover made him sleep before he could summon the energy to reach his arm around her.
###
The girl was gone when Flint woke and he still didn’t know who she was. The scraping noise went on. Now in daylight he saw spidery branches of a silver birch brushing glass. The sapling he’d watched his neighbour plant all those years ago, now reaching the upstairs window.
Stepping round the creaking floorboard on the landing, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen to gulp icy cold water from the tap. He sat at the red Formica table with empty nausea. There were biscuits in the cupboard above the sink but it was some minutes before he could make himself move again. A few rich teas helped. Idly flicking crumbs into the crack where the drop leaf folded down against the woodchip wall, he remembered eating biscuits at the same table just hours before his father had died. He shivered the thought away before it brought the guilt back.
A welcome noise distracted him, a car door banging shut outside. It can’t be anyone coming here, he thought. Seconds later there was loud rapping at the front door. Flint pulled himself up from his stool and leaned out of the kitchen to see along the hall. A shape shuffled outside the wavy glazed door. Flint stayed out of sight, but instead of going away the figure knocked again and again.
“Flint. Are you in? Flint?” A male voice, muffled but familiar.
Who the hell would visit me? Spake’s in Edinburgh. While Flint wondered, the shape outside crouched down and the low letterbox flapped inward.
“Flint! It’s me, Craig. How’s it going?”
Craig Masson. He hadn’t seen the young policeman since not long after The Mount. The events and emotions of that day now played like a cinema film trailer, key scenes flashing over his mind. The exciting, terrifying chase around the Fife landscape of his boyhood as he and Masson tracked the killer down. The murderer’s body writhing in its death throes, suspended like a butchered carcass 100 feet up in the winter sky, with a metal spike protruding through its eye socket. Flint’s fears and relief for his mother, after that day’s revelations about her tragic past.
As Flint swung the door inward, Craig Masson stood up, grinning broadly. “Christ! Flint, what is it about you and being naked? You’ve no excuse this time!”
Now shivering as the February air rushed into the Auchmoor semi, Flint remembered he was only wearing his Y-Fronts. When they’d escaped the Mount, Flint had only had Craig’s jacket to cover his bottom half.
“Wait there, I’ll find my jeans.” He ran along towards his own ground-floor bedroom, before remembering where he’d spent the previous night. About-turning, he pushed past bemused Craig to run up the carpeted stairway.
“I take it your mum’s not in?” said Craig when Flint returned, pulling his Aberdeen University sweatshirt on.
“Err — no. She’s away for a couple of days.”
“I see you’re making sure you look after the place,” said Craig, grinning as they sat down at each end of the kitchen table. Flint realised he must have brought beers back to the house as well as the unnamed girl.
“Fuck! She was smoking,” he said aloud. Three damp fag ends balanced on one of several open Tartan Special cans. The ring pulls were on the floor.
“Entertaining last night?” Craig’s grin was even wider, his eyes glinting cheekily. Weak sunshine through the kitchen window highlighted his prominent ears.
“Aye, just — erm — had a friend round. Heavy night.” He didn’t know why he felt he had to try to hide what had happened.
“You’d better clear that up if you want to invite your girlfriend back again when your mum’s away.” Craig wasn’t pointing at the mess of cans and ash, but out into the hall. And it wasn’t the open condom wrapper on his mum’s velour telephone seat the police constable was presenting as evidence. It was the pair of twisted lace knickers against the skirting board.
“Oh, Jeezuss!”
###
“I can’t get over how short your hair is,” said Craig with a grin.
Flint ran his hand over his head. “Aye, and this is it growing back. It was a lot shorter when I was working for the Council.” Flint had made them coffee. He now put his mug on a coaster and looked out of the living room window at the red Escort parked outside. “Still enjoying your car, then?”
“Yeah, but I’m saving for a Cortina. A sergeant at work bought the latest model as soon as it was launched. You should see it. I'll not be able to afford a new one, though.”
Flint had almost given up the idea of ever being able to buy a car. He couldn’t even drive. Looking across at the PC, he wished he’d made more effort. It was good to see Craig. They’d kept in touch by letter and phone for a few months while the furore around the Limb Collector continued, but as soon as it died down Flint wanted to forget it all. But why had Craig turned up now, all of a sudden?
As if he had read Flint’s thoughts, Craig said, “I have today and tomorrow off, and I thought I’d take a wee drive.”
“Back to Fife, though?” Flint grinned. “Still breaking the rules? I’m surprised they let you out of Edinburgh after what happened.”
“I got a transfer to Aberdeen nearly a year ago. I think the Lothian chiefs were glad to see the back of me.”
“Aberdeen! You’ve been up there?”
“Yeah. And it’s not too bad. They’re not all sheep shaggers.”
“But how come I never saw you?”
A lash of rain blew hard against the window. Craig was silent for a moment. “Aye, sorry. I was busy, and by the time I got round to looking you up you’d gone. Isla told me.”
Flint winced on hearing Isla’s name spoken out loud. His mum had learned not to mention her soon after Flint returned to Auchmoor.
Looking at the rain outside, Craig said, “She didn’t tell me what happened. Why you left...”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m over it.”
Neither spoke for a moment, then Craig stood up. “Can I use your toilet? Long drive.”
“Aye.” Flint pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Upstairs.” Alone in the living room, Flint’s thoughts jumped back a few months to his life with Isla in Aberdeen.
###
“For the love of God, Flint! I can’t stand this!”
“What? What’d I do? Sorry. You not sleeping?” Flint went straight back to tortured nothingness. His next awareness was of Isla moving in the kitchenette. He’d never heard of a kitchenette when they found the flat, but agreed that a sink, cooker and fridge in an alcove off the living room didn’t merit more. It was still dark outside their second-floor window. He slipped out of bed and pulled on the heavy Norwegian jumper his mum had embarrassed him with when he got his job in Aberdeen. It was October and the flat was cold already.
“Come back to bed,” he said, entering the living room where Isla was now hunched over the two-bar electric fire.
“I’m going in to work early,” Isla replied without looking round at him. “I’ve been awake half the fucking night again, anyway. I might as well get out of here.” If she ever swore, he knew it was serious. He must have done it again.
“Was I–?”
She twisted to face him. Without standing up she shrank him with a glare. “Thrashing. Moaning. Kicking your legs up and down. All night. I can’t take much more of it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know I’m doing it. I—”
“Shut up. Just do something about it.”
But he hadn’t known what to do. He’d continued in his ways, coming home from work, opening cans of beer or persuading Isla to come out to the Silver Slipper. Without drink, he knew the early part of his night would be awful. The dream would be more vivid and he would remember some of it the next morning. What he dreamt no longer frightened him. What did was the increasing certainty it left that he had killed his father. He’d given up telling Isla: she would only remind him that the Police had cleared him.
In late 1977, when at last Flint had learned the truth, confronting his father led to a fight. Flint had been knocked unconscious, and came round to discover his dad was dead. Isla was right, the Police had proved Alun Flint’s death was a tragic accident, but Flint’s twisted nightmares hinted otherwise. Even hypnosis was now useless in dismissing the dreams, and only blotting himself out with alcohol meant any peace from them. For him, at least. So the routine continued. Disturbing dreams were followed by unconscious writhing and calling out for help, before eventually he reached an empty blankness that lasted until morning. Then Isla’s ire. And still a nagging doubt about his part in dad’s death.
By November she had had enough. “I love you, Flint, but I can’t do this anymore. You're 23 now and it’s all starting again, as if we’ve gone back years.”
###
Craig’s clumping down the stairs brought Flint back to Auchmoor.
“So, what are you doing with yourself now? When you’re not picking up women, I mean.”
Flint shook his head, exhaling. “Christ, I’ve never done anything like that before. D’you think she’s alright? I mean, I don’t know what happened.”
Craig laughed. “It looks like she knew what she was doing. You obviously shared a few drinks when you got back here then retired upstairs for what comes naturally.”
“She must’ve brought the rubber johnnie,” said Flint. “It wasn’t mine.”
“There you are, then. She got what she wanted.”
“Jesus, I really can’t remember.”
Craig picked up the mugs. “Can I make us another coffee?” Flint followed Craig back into the kitchen and started clearing away the cans and fag ends. After he’d filled the kettle, Craig said, “Anyway, what are you up to? Working?”
“Aye. Hamlyn’s Mill in Cupar. Filling up sacks of animal feed. I know all about calf pellets. It’s fascinating.”
He heard Craig laugh. “Sounds it.”
“It’s fucking freezing as well. The wind cuts through you. The auld bugger I have to work with doesn’t like the dust; keeps every bloody windae open to keep the stoor down.”
“And you’re fair getting back your Fife accent. No other jobs going? What was it you said you were doing in Aberdeen?”
“I got a job with the Council. ‘Parks Department Assistant Manager,’” he said with a sarcastic sneer.
“Sounds OK. Got to start somewhere.”
“They said my botany degree would make me just right for the job. Shite! All I did was check up on guys cutting grass and pruning shrubberies. Fucking shrubberies!”
Craig appeared to smile sympathetically but soon let a laugh escape. “Sorry. You haven’t lost your sense of humour at least. Anyway, I wanted to ask you something. Are you still doing the hypnosis?”
“You must be joking. Look at the trouble it caused me. Why?”
“It was just an idea I had.” Flint thought Craig looked unsure of himself, as if he wanted to ask something but didn’t know how.
“Idea?”
“It’s just — I wondered if — well — you know the dreams you had, and how you thought they meant you were a murderer. Do you think—”
“What the fuck? I don’t want to drag all that up again. And here’s me thinking you’d come to visit your pal. Long way for a ‘wee drive’! I thought you’d just come from Edinburgh. And all along you want to fuck with my head!” Flint was shocked at how quickly his hackles had risen.
“No, I don’t, but — well — you know how you used hypnosis, and you found out why you were dreaming that stuff — and…”
Flint heard the young policeman’s words dry up and could tell Craig was uncomfortable. Shrugging and shaking his head, he said, “If you think I’m going to hypnotise you or anyone else, you can forget it. Hypnotising myself nearly made me go mad. And why the hell d’you want to do that, anyway?”
###
“And you say this nutter dreams about cutting guys’ nuts off? Fuxake!”
“Well, it might just be the cock — like, err, penis — y’know, rather than the balls. But yeah, ‘genitalia’ it said in the psychiatrist’s report.”
“Aw, just the cock, that’s OK then! Not a nutter after all!” Flint laughed and saw Craig’s face relax. The toast popped up from the toaster and he stood up with their plates and a buttery knife. “But how d’you know he didn’t do it? Kill the guy and stuff his balls in his mouth?”
As Flint buttered more toast and poured a third coffee for each of them, Craig repeated the doubts he had about Ian Soutar’s guilt. “He claims it was the penis he cut off when it was actually just the balls. And he’s too small, not strong enough, y’know.”
“But you said he knew all about the place it happened, I mean the golf course where the body was, and the car and all that. And he confessed. Why the fuck would he confess if he didn’t do it? I’m no detective, Craig, but even I can work it out.”
“The psychiatrist wrote that he’s been having these dreams about cutting off men’s ‘genitalia’ for years. Or at least she thinks they are dreams but he says they might be real.”
Flint was shaking his head and smiling sarcastically. “You’re not making much sense here, y’know.”
“Oh, God, I know it sounds mad. But I can hardly think about anything else. Christ! I’ve got a date with a cracking lassie tomorrow night and I’m bound to be going on about it even to her! It’s driving me nuts.”
Flint was glad of the chance to change the subject. “Tell me more. What’s she like?”
“She’s the sister of my mate at work, the guy I’m teamed up with.”
“Lucky bugger! I never meet anyone stuck here. I’m not much of a catch anyway, stinking of cattle feed.”
It was Craig’s turn to grin ironically. He stood up, opened the litter bin and pointed in. “Err — you did OK last night!” Reflected in the chrome of the underside of the bin lid Flint could see the black lacy knickers the unknown girl had left behind. Stuck to them was the condom wrapper.
“Aye well — that was a one-off. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve not thought about anyone since — you know — ” He looked at the floor. “Isla.” They were quiet for a minute. Then Flint stood up and looked out of the kitchen window. “But I know how real and scary dreams can be. Even if he did cut the guy’s cock off, I feel a bit sorry for your man in the jail.”
“Balls, not cock. But anyway, that doesn’t matter. If his dreams make him believe he did it, maybe that’s why he confessed.” Flint didn’t say anything, and Craig continued. “The psychiatrist said he needs therapy to get to the bottom of the dreams.”
Flint turned round from the window. “I’m not fucking hypnotising him! Anyway, they wouldn’t let some amateur do it!”
“Aye, I know, but I just wanted your opinion.” Craig’s head was down.
“Forget it. I can’t believe you drove all the way from Aberdeen to ask that!”
Staring at his clasped hands, Craig spoke quietly. “There’s another one. The exact same thing — balls cut off and head smashed — that guy from Cupar. They found his body a year ago. At Tentsmuir. Just the same.”
Flint stood shaking his head, his eyes fixed on Craig. “Naw! Fuck, you’re taking that too far. Don’t tell me you think there’s another serial killer?”
###
When Craig Masson had left to drive back to Aberdeen, Flint had a bath, went for some chips, and spent an hour tidying up the house. His mum would be back the next day, and though she might have been glad to hear he’d had a visit from Craig, he didn’t think she’d want to know about the unknown girl. He emptied the kitchen bin and left the windows open as long as he could bear the cold, trying to get rid of the smell of cigarettes. He smiled to himself, thinking how Eleanor Flint’s life had improved in the four years since his dad had died. Far from being a lonely widow as her sister Janet thought, Flint knew she had transformed herself. No longer the timid, cowed victim in Flint’s childhood.
How the ongoing deception of Janet had started Flint couldn’t quite remember, but it had become a shared joke between him and his mum. It would have surprised Janet that Eleanor and Granville Sutton had kept in touch after Alun Flint’s death. If she knew that within a few months they had rekindled a secret love they’d shared years before, Janet would have shit a brick, Flint thought.
And if Janet ever did find out, he knew his mum would handle his aunt’s disapproval with a new confidence. He wondered what Janet’s ‘taking Eleanor out of herself’ would have entailed. He strongly suspected it would have meant an opportunity for Janet to visit her favourite Edinburgh shops.
Chapter 2
Four months earlier
1st October 1981
Detective Constable Barry Cummings tried not to look as a hulk of a man in a green gown carried a shining steel tray past him. The man started to wash out the contents of an opened colon in a deep, white sink.
From the dissecting table to his left, Barry heard the pathologist’s voice. “George, I have to say you’ve excelled yourself this morning. The reek in here is about turning my stomach.”
“Sorry, Bill,” said the hulk from the sink, “D’you want me to open a windae?”
Thank God, Barry thought, his hopes rising. I don’t know how they can stand the heat and the stench in here.
“Don’t let the cold in. Just breathe the other way, for God’s sake,” said the pathologist. In pin stripes and neat white coat, Dr Bill McHardy leaned closer over the corpse in front of him. When George, the mortuary assistant, walked back past him Barry discovered what McHardy was objecting to. It wasn’t strong chemicals and putrid gut contents. A fug of stale beer fumes dominated the atmosphere. Barry remembered where he had seen the mortuary assistant before. The Black Sabbath t-shirt, the fat backside hanging over the sides a Prince of Wales bar stool. Come to think of it, George’s occupation might explain the acrid smell that sometimes affected the far end of the long bar.
“Detective, you might want to see this.”
Bill McHardy’s words drew Barry’s attention back to the gruesome task the forensic pathologist was poring over. With his nose almost touching the forehead of the corpse, he appeared to be probing into its mouth. Keeping his eyes aimed over the body at the pale green wall above, Barry edged forward a little, but McHardy waved impatiently.
“Come on, man! Get in close, you’ll love this. If these are what I think they are you’ll remember them forever.”
Trying to hold his breath, Barry took two small steps forward.
“Here we go. As I thought. It’s like delivering twins.”
What on earth is he on about?
“That explains where they went!”
Barry had to look. With a pair of forceps, McHardy was carefully withdrawing something purple from the corpse’s mouth. With a pop and a slurp, a walnut-size lump appeared. McHardy suspended it in mid-air, smiling as he looked over his glasses at DC Cummings.
“What the f..? Oh, sorry, sir. I mean…”
“Give me a sec. I’ll have the second twin out in no time, then you can give them names.” The pathologist put the orb carefully onto a green sheet — it looked like a ripe plum — and seconds later his gloved hand placed another beside it. Briefly distracted from his disgust, Barry couldn’t help being reminded of the smudged attempts at still-life paintings on the wall of the art classroom at St Machar Academy. As it dawned on him what he might be looking at, Barry Cummings felt sick. Holding on to the cold edge of the steel table, he felt a shrinking between his legs. Reflexly, one hand moved to cover his crotch.
George moved round from the sink to lean in for a closer look. “Christ! I’ve never seen that before.”
“Well, Detective, you’ll be able to report back that while they weren’t quite in the usual order, all his body parts were present and correct. If you’d like to look down here, you’ll see how neatly the work was done.” With the glinting forceps, McHardy led Barry’s reluctant gaze down over the torso and abdomen. Deftly, the pathologist pulled bloodless flaps of floppy skin aside to display the inside of an empty scrotum.
The dam burst. Barry’s breakfast bacon softie travelled back up his gullet, mixed with stomach acid. When he turned back round from the huge porcelain sink, wiping from his chin a swinging slaver of mucoid sick, George was guffawing.
A sympathetic look on McHardy’s face was spoiled by upturned corners of his mouth. “It’s alright, laddie, it often happens. But I’m afraid there’s more. You’ll need to see this. It’ll be important in your report.”
Still facing the wall above the sink, Barry fixed his eyes on cracks in the green paint, trying to focus and prepare himself for whatever else Dr McHardy could want him to look at.
“George, could you lift his head for me for a moment, please?” McHardy said to his assistant. Barry relaxed a little. He wasn’t going to have to look down there again. When he turned, George had a thick arm under the corpse’s shoulders and, with his other hand, was supporting the neck to elevate the head. Barry was relieved to see that sheets covered the empty chest cavity and abdomen, and what lay below.
“Round here, Constable.” McHardy beckoned Barry round the head of the dissecting table. The face on the cadaver looked different now that its mouth was empty. Relaxed, unblemished, eyes closed, he could have been asleep. But as the right side of his head came into view Barry tried not to recoil, hoping he wouldn’t embarrass himself again. The first thing he saw was a stain on the green sheet. Above it, towards the back of the head, there was a crater the size of a golf ball, its jagged margins smoothed by congealed, bloody hair. It was shocking after the serenity of the face.
When he made himself speak, he thought his voice sounded like he was talking through a cardboard tube, muffled but loud. He hoped to be professional. “Can I report back that the man was killed by the damage to his head, and then the killer cut off his — er — you know — and put them in his mouth, sir?”
“Very good assumption, Constable, but that’s just it, you see. Wrong way round. Look.” McHardy waved him along the table to where he was standing. He drew back the sheets to reveal the man’s groin and legs. “See? Blood. Lots of it.” The insides of the thighs were blackened by dried blood, and scattered spots fanned out in disordered lines that reached as far as the dead man’s knees. “When this man’s scrotum was sliced open, when his ‘you knows’ as you call them were removed, his blood was circulating well. He was alive.”
Dr McHardy had a satisfied grin on his face.
Thank you for reading Chapters 1 & 2 of Flowers for the Slaughterman.
I hope you enjoyed it. To continue, buy a copy at the links below,
or order from any bookshop.
N J Edmunds December 2025
