The neighbourhood was quiet as the NonDe rolled into the driveway. That’s how Detective Chief Inspector Walsh liked it; nice and quiet. Since he became head of his CID, crime had dropped by more than half… and he had tonight’s dinner host to thank for it.

He flashed a smile at the buxom woman waiting for him in the car port. Stopping the car, he got out and handed her the keys. She carefully drove the car off to a parking area as he ascended the marble steps and knocked on the heavy oak door.

Walsh liked  Malcolm’s dinner parties. The man was well off – a mix of old money and new – and was popular with the ladies. In fact his staff was almost exclusively made up of attractive females; some young, some aging gracefully such as the one playing valet for the night. Another beauty who could have been her younger sister opened the door and greeted him with a smile that made young men wish they were older, and made older men feel young again.

“Come in, Sir. The Master is waiting for you in the study. This way.”

Walsh allowed himself to be led to the study, though he knew the way well. He’d been a guest at the house more often than he could count. Letting her do her job, however, allowed Walsh a good view of Malcolm’s Estate Manager’s firm buttocks, swaying seductively as she led the way.

Malcolm lounged in a plush leather chair that matched the opulence of the room. He looked up as Walsh entered, and rose to greet him.

“Ah, Ainbertach.  A pleasure, as always.”

“And as always, Malcolm, please call me Bert.”

Walsh found it grating that Malcolm used the full version of his first name. Practically no one had called him anything but Bert since the ink had dried on his birth certificate.  But for all his quirks the man did have a sense of style; his staff were as loyal to him as groupies. Walsh sometimes wondered if the man even paid them, or if they simply volunteered. The way they referred to him as ‘Master’, too… anachronistic formality? BDSM dominance? Cult-like obedience? All three? The Estate manager’s choker did look suspiciously collar-like…

“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, Master.”

“Thank you, Sarah."

“You’ll have time for an aparatif. Shall I mix you both a cocktail?”

Malcolm waved her away dismissively. “We’ll drink with dinner, thank you.”

Walsh watched as Malcolm’s personal assistant gave a slight curtsey – a curtsey! - before leaving the room. He was surprised his host didn’t pretentiously make them wear French maid outfits or something equally servile.

Malcolm sat down again. Walsh took the cue and did likewise, facing him.

“So… Bert… how are things?”

“Can’t complain, Malcolm, can’t complain.” Walsh settled into his chair. They are very comfortable, he thought. “ The new regs are padding our budgets nicely, and the cons seem to be getting the message. Crime is down, cash is up… there’s even talk of us getting a rise.”

“Good to hear.”

Walsh could see the question in the other man’s gaze.

“Our… arrangement… continues in full force, of course. You save the taxpayers quite a lot in court costs, incarceration, and, er, rehabilitation.” Walsh almost chuckled as he uttered that last bit.

Malcolm smiled. “I’m glad to hear that, Bert. It keeps my staff and I well fed.”

Not that you have trouble buying groceries for the lot, you Toff, Walsh grumbled in the privacy of his own mind. But keep smiling. His work does make our job easier.

Malcolm leaned forward conspiratorially. “In fact, Detective Chief Inspector, we’ve begun an expansion that should interest you."

Walsh braced himself. Malcolm rarely called him by his title. What now?

The smell of deliciously roasted meat wafted into the room. Malcolm paused to inhale it, his eyes closed. Walsh felt his mouth beginning to water.

“Where was I? Right. Expansion.” Malcolm’s smile broadened. “We-"

Just then Sarah entered the room. She stood by the doorway, demurely looking down.

Malcolm gazed at her expectantly. “Well?”

“Sorry to interrupt, Master. Dinner is served.”

“Ah, good.” Malcolm slapped the arms of his chair with glee and sprang to his feet. “Shall we, Bert?”

Walsh didn’t need to be told twice. Malcolm’s chefs creations were as much a feast for the eyes as for the tongue.

“A couple of gin and tonics while we dine, Sarah.”

“ ‘s Sir.” Sarah beetled off to wherever it was the servants beetled off to as the men strode into the adjoining room.

Awaiting them was one of the most splendid roasts Walsh had ever seen. “Your kitchen staff have outdone themselves this time, Malcolm.”

“Quite.” Malcolm sat, as calmly as though it were a rack of lamb on the table.

Only it wasn’t.

Walsh greedily drunk in the sight of their meal as he took his seat opposite his host. The meat had probably been about 5’4” in life, with the hips and breasts of a taller woman. The proportions in contrast to her small feet and fey features would have made her very attractive. Her golden brown skin, was covered in beads of moisture. The way the chef had artfully preserved her skin, keeping it smooth even as it crisped, made her appear as though she were merely a young woman tanning on a hot day. Only the beads weren’t sweat, but her own juices coming through the skin. And women don’t tend to tan with their wrists lashed to their ankles in a turkey-like pose. Nor are they usually headless.

Sarah entered carrying the requested gin & tonics, setting them before the men, then leaned over and began carving into the girlmeat. Walsh did a double-take as he noticed she was now topless, her breasts swaying nicely as she sawed at the tender flesh of one of her own kind.

Two small steaks were trimmed from the girl’s plump buttocks and set onto the hungry men’s plates. Sarah then leaned in and artfully carved out the cooked girl’s pubic mound, setting it on top of Walsh’s steak.

Walsh looked at it as Sarah circled the table. A beautifully cooked cunt. And he was going to eat it. Yes, he loved Malcolm’s dinner parties.

Sarah, armed with a bone saw, leaned past her master and, gripping one of the girl’s feet in one hand, sawed through the ankle with the other. She set the foot on Malcolm’s plate before returning the saw to the tray of carving tools.

Malcolm waved her out of the room dismissively.

The men ate in silence for a few minutes. Walsh was lost in a rapture. Not only was the meat cooked to perfection, but the decadence of knowing a beautiful young girl had died so he could experience something so temporarily enjoyable… it was all he could do to slow himself down and savour every bite, rather than devour it like a wild, half starved beast might.

He watched Malcolm holding the small roasted foot in both hands, eating it as though it were a drumstick.

It must be nice to eat like this every night, thought Walsh. Cut off the bits of the girl you want for yourself, give the rest to the staff, then pick out a new one before bed and slit her throat so she can drain overnight. Walsh greedily turned the thought over and over in his mind… killing a girl a day, for something as common as meat. If only he could get away with that!

Walsh had on more than a few occasions pictured Malcolm’s meat storage. In the older man’s mind’s eye it was a stone walled dungeon where young ladies hung upside down like sows, sobbing or screaming as they awaited their fate.

Walsh preferred to picture it like that. The cruelty of it heightened the eroticism for him.

He found himself wishing yet again that Malcolm would order a few of the girls from the dozen or so on his staff to kneel under the table and fellate the men as they dined. He could almost hear the exasperated sigh, the “they’re my servants, Mr. Walsh, they’re not whores. Just because I use them as sluts doesn’t mean they put out for anyone.” That had made for an awkward dinner. Walsh had skipped brandy that night and left early, though not before pocketing the hands of the teenage girl they’d eaten that night. Snack for later, and all that.

Malcolm’s teeth stripped the flesh from yet another dainty toe. The arch was gone, exposing the bone beneath.  He set the foot down, took a sip of his drink, then picked up his knife and fork to tuck into his rump steak when he noticed Walsh watching him.

“Is there something wrong with your food, Ainbertach?”

“No no. It’s wonderful as always. Very generous of you to allow me the succulent bit when I visit.”

Malcolm popped a slice of meat into his mouth. “When you eat girl meat every day, you like variety. Different bits. I sometimes allow one of the servants the cunt if they’ve been especially good.”

Subtly equating me with your servants. Tactfully done, sir.

“And if they’re exceptionally bad? Send them to bed with a spanking and no supper?” Walsh grinned at his own joke – and at the pleasure of visualizing those acts.

“Then it’s their cunt in the oven, to be eaten by me.” Malcolm stated matter-of-factly. He circled a knife, gesturing to include all his servants. “This lot do not view spankings as punishment. I have to be creative when it comes to discipline.”

Walsh took a large drink, emptying his glass. The warmth of the alcohol made him more bold. “I envy the life you live.”

“Due in no small part to you, Bertie” Malcolm teased.

“it was cold logic that led me down this path. These lovely monthly dinners of ours are an unexpected benefit. If a chav street races, we can seize his car. If a dealer stores the white stuff in his garage, we can seize his house. Police seizure of property is well entrenched. And a hooker’s body is her property.”

Malcolm nodded, picking up the half-eaten foot and taking another bite.

Walsh was about to cut into the roasted cunt again when Sarah appeared, setting another drink beside him. He swung his arm to slap her on the ass as she retreated, but she artfully evaded him.

Walsh realized that may have been bad form. To offend Malcolm was to risk the end of these dinners. He cleared his throat. “Disposal. That’s the problem. We tried auctioning them off, but you were the only one who could afford them.”

Malcolm snapped his fingers. Sarah picked up the saw, hacked the remaining foot from the trussed female human roast, placed it on a fresh plate, and set it before her master. She carried away the dirty plate, and with it the pile of small bones that had been a living girl's foot as recently as that morning.

“You could have lowered your prices” Malcolm noted before biting off a pinky toe.

“And have the bleeding hearts all over us? Most people understood what it was we’re accomplishing. A dead hooker doesn’t hang around blighting the streets, or hitting on taxpayers’ sons and husbands. Nor do pimps make money when their girls keep going missing. But to auction them off as inexpensive slaves, that was a political hot potato. But since you were only buying them for their legs and feet anyhow, the problem just… went away.”

“You mean giving me the girls for nothing, except my silence as to their fate.”

“No need for a rebuke, sir. You and your staff eat well, as you were saying earlier-"

“No rebuke given, Bertie. I’m appreciative of our arrangement, and of your department’s discretion at simple mathematics.”

Walsh looked puzzled.

“You’ve never done the figuring, Bertie? Every young, attractive girl you pick up for hooking vanishes off the streets. It’s been twenty two months since you began seizing women like any other property, Bertie. There are now only one hundred and fifty to two hundred new girls per year stupid enough to try hooking that match my tastes. Unless you’ve been holding a few back.”

Malcolm didn’t need to glare at him. Didn’t need to put a threatening edge into his voice. That’s what scared Walsh the most about Malcolm. Cross him, and he’d be eating your wife or your girlfriend, or both before you could get home to warn her. His bitches would be on their way to kidnap your women the moment he’d decided he was cross with you.

“Of course not. You get every attractive girl we nick. But… really? Less than two hundred? But you eat a different girl every day, don’t you?”

“A bit of an exaggeration, Bert. But not by much. We process around three hundred girls per year. Guillotine five or six  girls every Sunday, butcher them, then eat an assortment of parts throughout the week.” Malcolm paused at the sight of Walsh’s puzzled expression. “This”, he waved his hand over the roasted almost-whole woman’s carcass still steaming between them “is a treat for when I have guests over.

Walsh picked up his knife and fork and gobbled up a large chunk of cunt to mask his discomfort. Damn – that was the bit with the clit, he thought as he swallowed without chewing.

“I’d like to sit in on one of those guillotining sessions some day”

“I doubt it, Bert. It’s all very clinical. Wrap them in canvas, bind the sack with rope, carry them to the guillotine, set them on the table, pop the head through the lunette, and thunk! The girls really have it down to a science."

Walsh imagined a girl’s bare feet sticking out of a headless canvass cocoon, quivering in the bodies death rattles. He’d bet a year’s pay that Malcolm was staring at those soon-to-be-eaten feet, his cock buried in one of his servants’ mouths, every time.

The foot on malcolm’s plate, only partly eaten, was growing cold. Sarah discretely removed it, replacing it with a thick slice of steaming rump. Walsh admired her ruthless efficiency. He began eating the last of the cooked cunt lest she take it away, too. His mind began to drift as he imagined Sarah sitting before a large bowl filled with pieces of girlmeat, and eating the two breasts on top.  Her own.

Malcolm’s voice snapped him out of it. “ I do talk to the girls down in their cages beforehand”, Malcolm was saying. “Get to know their names, a bit about them… it makes the meat that much sweeter when I eat them. I enjoy eating the occasional girl from my house staff for the same reason.”
“That’s how you make up the difference, is it? The girls we give you, plus your staff, makes the three hundred?”

“oh God no” Malcolm retorted. “In a slow year that would mean going through up to one hundred and fifty serving girls. No, I only eat one of my girls every two months or so. It’s a very special occasion and the rest of the girls seem to treat the meat with a special awe. Not like the street girl meat we eat every day.”

“So” said Walsh, feeling as thick as a whale omelette, “ at best two hundred from the tanty, and six more from your staff… where-?”

“-do the rest come from. That was the expansion I mentioned before dinner. I’m really very excited about it.”

Walsh waited, hanging on Malcolm's words.

“Well obviously we could have lowered our standards and taken some of the… less desirable prostitutes. The drug addicted, the older, the less attractive…”

Walsh chuckled. “After raising such a fuss when one of our new clarks sent you a few of that sort?”

“Don’t be dramatic. It was hardly a fuss. And you took home a whole pelvis that night; rump, cunt, and all.”

“Yes, well if I’m going to allow you to eat a policewoman, clark or not, I’m going to get a bloody healthy serving of meat out of it. D’yer know what I went through to make it appear she’d been transferred? Good thing she wasn’t as popular as her looks would make one believe.”

“If I may get on with it…?”

“Right. Sorry.”

“I can tell you this now, because I know you’ll do nothing about it. For about a year after we started receiving the undesirables you sent us, we supplemented the supply with female tourists, truant high school seniors, and sisters of the staff.”

“They bring you their own sisters to eat?”

“Yes. They’re very loyal. Please do stop interrupting.”

Walsh sheepishly nodded an apology.

“Where was I? Ah yes. The tourists were a bit risky, as one never knows who will come looking for them. The schoolgirls were especially tender, but carried a similar problem. And, man to man, I suspect my staff were a bit jealous of them. The girls seemed to delight in torturing the poor teens before giving them the chop. For naturally submissive women, they’re quite imaginative about inflicting pain on fellow females.”

Sarah and another girl carried in dessert. The parfaits were small enough to be carried by one, but the sight of the topless nubile thing bringing Walsh his treat was a treat in itself. Where does he find these girls? Walsh asked himself. Or do they find him? Maybe there’s a ‘Cannibal Masters Quarterly’ that such girls subscribe to…

Malcolm gulped a large spoonful of parfait, then set the spoon aside. Walsh’s police mind couldn’t help but scan this: self discipline in the face of excess? No. He’ll kill a girl and only eat her feet, giving the rest to his staff as one might feed scraps to his dogs... just as he’ll only have one bite of dessert.  Yet the next day he’ll kill another girl for her meat, or have his kitchen staff make a new parfait, rather than settle for leftovers.

Walsh wanted to be Malcolm.

The younger servant gathered it up and set the half-eaten dessert by the carving tools. She picked up the carving knife and fork and began slicing off generous slabs of rump, hip, thigh, and belly.

Where had Sarah gone? He shuffled in his seat, his foot striking something beneath the table. A woman’s calf. Sarah was down there right now, fellating her master.

That lucky bastard. Must he have everything?

“About ten months ago Sarah came up with a brilliant idea, but it took us a while to work out the details” said Malcolm in a surprisingly steady voice. If that bitch were blowing me, Walsh glowered, I’d have trouble saying the word ‘oh’ without mucking it up.

“We first went after runaways, since anyone who is looking for them has no idea where they are, but most easily identifiable runaways are… youngish. Makes the girls squeamish and quite frankly I’ve never been big on veal.  So we carved out a few new niches. My younger girls like Michelle here spread the word at the Uni campus; those young men who have recently had their hearts broken, or are just tired of their girlfriends, bring them to us.”

The young servant, Michelle, gathered up the meat she’d trimmed, wrapped it in paper, and set it beside Walsh. She began clearing the table.

“Leftovers for the road. Cheers.” Walsh patted the package, covetously eying the curvaceous and only partly mangled girl’s corpse before him. Her cunt meat had been exquisite.

“Before long”, Malcolm announced proudly, “Campus administration was turning over to us girls who had cheated on exams, got caught smoking pot, or accused their instructors of sexual harassment. Soon we’ll be up to a full three hundred and sixty five girls a year, perhaps even more.”

Walsh beamed. “And more young, tender meat like this one here. “

“The same”, said Malcolm. “Until yesterday afternoon our supper was a music student. She cheated on her boyfriend or some other spot of drama, then told him to stop calling her and that she’d sic her father on him. He got his revenge, and we got a fine meal.”

“A music student, eh? I wonder if she knew my daughter”

“Your daughter studies music at Uni?”

“My youngest, Clarissa.”

Michelle dropped the plates she’d gathered up.

It was Malcolm’s turn to look uncomfortable.

“...ah. How awkward.”