DS Hutton Box Set

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘We’ve just been discussing...,’ he continues, speaking slowly, sorting out his thoughts. ‘This could be directed at the station, or those e-mails could have been directed at you personally. If it’s the latter, and I’m really not keen to make that kind of assumption at this stage, but if it is the latter, is there anyone –’

  ‘Clayton,’ I butt in, not letting him complete the sentence.

  His lips purse, his face hardens. Taylor glances round, gives me a bit of an eyebrow, then turns back to Connor. The storm clouds continue to gather above Connor’s head.

  ‘No. Fucking. Way,’ he says.

  Curious. The Superintendent never swears at home.

  ‘Clayton,’ I repeat.

  ‘We are not going there again, gentlemen,’ he says. ‘We were burned once, we got our man, or woman, I should say, and we found nothing on Mr Clayton. You found nothing on him. The officers we had through from Edinburgh found nothing, and believe me, they looked. We’re bloody lucky he didn’t pursue it through the courts or we would have been absolutely screwed. Fucked beyond the wildest imaginings of any of us. All of us, all three of us in this room, barely got out of that mess with our –’

  ‘The crows are back.’

  He stops. He wasn’t expecting that. There’s a lovely silence in the room. You could cling to it, cling to it for as long as possible. Get lost in it.

  Under other circumstances, perhaps.

  ‘What?’

  He decently leaves the ‘the fuck’ off the end of the question. I can feel Taylor’s eyebrow on me again, but I don’t turn.

  ‘I’ve been dreaming about crows. For a couple of weeks now. I wondered what was going on, why they were back...’

  ‘Ah.’

  The tension in his face goes, and he looks almost relieved.

  ‘Sergeant, I’ve seen this kind of thing before. You, clearly, are suffering some version of PTSD from your experiences in the wood. And the fact that somehow you managed to keep the crows in your head, the dreams of crows, at bay for this long... well, is remarkable in itself. But this, this now... Well, I don’t know why they’re back now, at this particular point, but it was inevitable.’

  I don’t say anything. Said too much already, of course. There will be words exchanged with the boss when we leave, I expect.

  ‘I think perhaps we need to get you back in touch with a doctor. That is of a higher priority to going back for Mr Clayton. I don’t want to say the man has a clear run at doing anything he pleases, but seriously,’ and now he turns to Taylor, ‘before we go after him again for so much as a parking ticket, I want to see absolute, irrefutable evidence. I don’t think a dream about crows quite covers it.’

  He looks back at me, and fuck me, but he actually looks sympathetic. He’s playing a blinder today.

  ‘I’m concerned for you Sergeant, and I want you to see a police psychologist within the next week. I need to know you’re still cleared for duty.’

  He looks back at Taylor.

  ‘Get everything you can together on our crime, and anything from our end to suggest there might be a connection with the others.’ Check of the watch. ‘Thirty-five minutes.’

  Taylor stands, walks to the door, and then I’m out after him and the door is closed on what, it’s safe to say, was a meeting with Connor Taylor didn’t see coming. He walks to his office, me a pace behind, knowing he’ll want me to follow him. Inside, close the door. He goes and stands at the window, hands in pockets. I go and stand beside him.

  Outside it’s grey and warm. The car park is quiet. I can see Gostkowski down there having a smoke. White blouse, unbuttoned at the neck, pencil skirt below the knee. Haven’t seen her around much the last couple of weeks. Not sure what she’s working on.

  ‘Can we talk about what just happened?’ he says.

  I smile, although he’s not looking at me. A sad smile. It goes quickly.

  ‘You dreamt about crows.’

  ‘Every night,’ I say.

  ‘And it started a couple of weeks ago?’

  ‘Think so. Not sure exactly. I think it had been going on a few nights before it really clicked. I wasn’t remembering at first.’

  ‘What happens in the dreams?’

  Don’t really want to think about it, but then I was the fool who just went and put it out there.

  ‘I’m in the forest. On the ground. Can’t move. I can hear the crows, and then one of them is on the ground beside me, tapping at the side of my head. Stabbing its beak into my skull.’

  ‘You think that’s a metaphor for something?’ he says, a rueful smile in his voice.

  I smile with him, the same, old sad smile. The Smile of the Fucked.

  ‘Then it speaks to me.’

  We’re both looking straight ahead.

  ‘Is there any point in asking what it says?’

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘It doesn’t, for example, mention Clayton? Because, you know if it did, if you had a crow in your dreams specifically implicating Clayton in the girl’s death at the train station, I think it’s the kind of proof Connor’s looking for.’

  Can’t help laughing.

  ‘I don’t know what it says,’ I say eventually.

  ‘And you think this is a sign of Clayton being back, because you still think he’s responsible for the crows business? Somehow your subconscious is tuned in to all this. Tuned in to Clayton in some way.’

  ‘Bang on.’

  I say the words bang on, but not in the way they’re supposed to be said. Not with any enthusiasm.

  ‘Connor knows Clayton came to see me in hospital, right? He knows he more or less confessed?’

  I know what Taylor’s going to say. The same thing I would say if someone was saying that stuff to me.

  ‘He knows what you said. But we all came to speak to you. We all know what you were like, the level of drugs you were on, the state your head was in. And you know no one else saw Clayton at the hospital. If Clayton did come to see you...’

  And he pauses, waiting for me to insist he did. I stay quiet.

  ‘... he did so in the certain knowledge he could say anything he damn well pleased. And even if you’d been recording everything he said, he could just say he was messing with you, to get back at you for messing with him. The worst we could have got him on was wasting police time, and there’s no way Connor’s going after the guy for that. And I’d agree with him.’

  ‘You know where he is now?’

  ‘Clayton? Right this minute?’

  ‘Is he still in the same house?’

  ‘I don’t know. But whatever you do next, Sergeant, don’t go round there. Don’t go anywhere near him. Connor can be an absolute arse, we all know, but this time... this time he’s right. We can’t go near Clayton on the back of a dream crow.’

  ‘I know.’

  He finally looks at me. I keep my eyes out the window. Gostkowski has gone. The car park is deserted. Across the way there’s an old couple, the man walking ten yards ahead of the woman. We see them coming along that road all the time, the man always a few yards ahead of his wife, both of them with walking sticks.

  ‘I’ll get you an appointment with a psych.’

  We stand and stare out of the window. The day passes before us. The silence in the room is of a similar quality to the silence in Connor’s room.

  ‘A male one,’ he adds, a short while later. ‘Just in case.’

  20

  Things change so quickly. Investigations fly by, pieces of information here and there, slotting in perfectly, or hanging around on the periphery, waiting to be picked up, waiting to find their place. As so often seems to be the case, I feel like a passenger. I’m just there, while things happen around me. Bad things. Pointless things. Things that sometimes lead to results. What do I ever contribute?

  I said to Taylor I’d go and speak to Kramer to confirm his assessment. Then the next e-mail came in, and off we went on another tangent. I thought, there’s little point in seeing Kramer n
ow. So that sparked the next thought, the one that said, maybe that’s what he’s expecting you to do. This might be the moment when you miss the thing. The breakthrough. You were going to do it. Regardless of what’s happened, you need to follow it through.

  So here I am, sitting in the bar of the Holiday Inn in the centre of town. Kramer’s getting the drinks. I thought I oughtn’t to drink alcohol while interviewing on a case, and then he said he was getting himself a gin and tonic and I crumbled and asked for vodka tonic. Just like that, the weak, pathetic wretch surrendered to one of his many vices.

  ‘You got a daughter, Sergeant?’ he says, after we’ve been sitting in silence for a second or two.

  ‘Don’t see her much.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Don’t deserve to,’ I say. At least it forces me to get going, because we’re certainly not here to talk about me. ‘Tell me about Tandy.’

  ‘I think you people have heard it all by now,’ he says.

  ‘Tell me something I haven’t heard. There’s always something.’

  I hold his gaze. I thought, coming here, it was going to be like looking in the mirror, looking into the same miserable depths I find myself in. Perhaps, even, it would be worse.

  Regardless of all my crap, self-inflicted and otherwise, there can be nothing like losing a child. I don’t know whether the newness of the event might make it worse or whether the real torment will take longer to kick in. Maybe there hasn’t been the time yet, for him to live every day, getting up, having the first thought of the day, day after wretched, shitty day, his daughter is dead and he’ll never see her again.

  But it’s not there. The look isn’t in his eyes. It’s not that I see a lack of concern. I don’t see guilt or fear, I don’t see disinterest. But I also don’t see heart-wrenching hurt and regret. The pain that ought to be there.

  ‘What’s there to say, Sergeant?’ he says. ‘She’s dead. Someone killed her. Maybe they knew who they were pushing in front of the train, I don’t know...’

  ‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’

  ‘Your boss asked me already, Sergeant,’ he says. ‘Are you reading off the same cheat sheet? Is that all you’ve got?’

  And he’s right. It is pretty much all I’ve got.

  ‘You’re not here to ask any more questions,’ he says, ‘or any different questions. You’re just here to see what he’s like, scope out the Californian guy. That it? Look me over, see what you think? Is it possible I was nailing my daughter? Huh?’

  ‘You lied to DCI Taylor,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t believe I did,’ he says, ‘but go on, Sherlock.’

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  ‘You told him you spoke to Tandy at the weekend. You told him you spoke to her every weekend, sometimes during the week, too.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  Take a drink. God, it’s good. Perfect amount of vodka, great mix, temperature colder than the kiss of a vampire lesbian.

  Yeah, whatever.

  ‘Well,’ I say, having left him hanging, ‘it’s correct that’s what you told him. It’s not correct that’s what you did.’

  He’s staring, trying to figure me out, trying to understand what I know, and where I’m coming from. Have I checked phone records? Have I spoken to anyone else in California? Have I, perhaps, spoken to Tandy’s mother.

  I’ve got nothing on him other than the look in his eyes. Tandy may have lived with him, but there was no great relationship there. Probably explains why she was studying in Scotland and not in California, or anywhere else in the US.

  ‘You have a daughter,’ he says, and his eyes are dropping.

  Is this all he’s been waiting for, I wonder. Another father to talk to?

  He goes quiet for a while. Stares at the floor. Holds his drink, but doesn’t lift it. Now there’s real feeling in those eyes, real thoughts rather than evasive thoughts running through his head, but there’s no need to push him further. It’s coming. Just need to wait until he decides the time is right.

  Wonder why he never talked to Taylor? Natural defence against the first line of attack, perhaps. Eventually the weight of lies start to kick in, take their toll.

  Finally he lifts his drink again, lifts his eyes at the same time, takes about a third of the glass in one go then places it back on the table.

  ‘We all want to be thought reasonable men, Sergeant. I’m a reasonable man. Decent. Tandy was... she was wild. After her mother left, I couldn’t do anything with her. She needed a mother. She was...’ The gaze drifts away over the hotel bar, coming to rest on the lower leg of a woman sitting at a nearby table. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt and say he’s staring into space, not really focused on anything. ‘Always bringing boys home, always much older than her. I mean, when she was twelve, thirteen. She didn’t care what I thought. Wild... like I said.’

  Not the Tandy Kramer we’ve come to know from her lecturers and fellow students, but how often do you see that? The daughter, a completely different person from the friend.

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  He doesn’t look at me. A doleful smile on his lips, another drink.

  ‘No, Sergeant, I did not. I did not sleep with her. I did not understand her, and if I’m honest, I gave up on her, and she gave up on me, a long time ago. I don’t know what her plans were, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t coming back to California. Not to cross my front door, any road. California’s a big place. More than big enough for the two of us.’

  He drains the drink, turns back to face me.

  ‘About a year ago,’ he says, ‘to answer your question. The last time I spoke to her was about a year ago.’

  And that, I think, might just be that for Mr Kramer and this particular line of inquiry.

  END UP TALKING TO THE guy for an hour, albeit mostly on his part in dress-up battle re-enactments. You hear about people doing that kind of thing. In the UK, it’s usually going to be Civil War, or Bannockburn, some kind of shit like that. In the US, you’d think Civil War and Little Big Horn. This guy does Game of Thrones. He dresses up as characters from Game of Thrones and plays out battle scenes. Because that’s not weird.

  Fuck it, who knows? Could be the master tactic of the murdering father, engaging in chitchat with the investigating detective, and making him think you’re a sad, simpleton loser because you like to dress up as Stannis Baratheon.

  I suppose there are some of those Game Of Thrones prostitute sex scenes I might have inadvertently re-enacted.

  Get home some time just before ten. Nothing, I think, to report in the end, other than that Kramer should be allowed to return home with his daughter’s body, whenever we’re ready to release it. Could go back into the office, but decide against.

  Tomorrow might be Saturday, but it’s just going to be a regular working day. Get in early, find out how it went for Taylor and Connor. Perhaps the boss will expect me there now, but I’ve had enough for today. Enough of all this shit and death and of thinking that somehow someone is targeting me.

  To the fridge, bottle of wine, get a tumbler, stand in the middle of the kitchen turning the screw. If only I could remember what the crows said. I don’t believe, whatever powers he has, I don’t believe Clayton has the ability to put crows in my head. The crows are making that decision. They must be there to warn me. Or help me.

  First taste of the wine. Dry. Probably something about gooseberries and citrus fruits.

  The doorbell goes. I stand for a moment, not really sure about the sound. The doorbell? Not the buzzer from down on the street. The doorbell. Someone in the building ringing my bell. One of my neighbours come to speak to me, which is weird. My neighbours never speak to me.

  Set the glass down on the table, go to the door, don’t bother with the peep hole. And there’s the explanation right there. A guy with a beard, in green Lycra, holding a clipboard with his green cycling gloves, wearing a political rosette with matching cycling helmet for the FSN.

  Who
the fuck are the FSN?

  ‘Good evening, how are you?’ he says.

  Politics. Jesus.

  In fact, I think I’d prefer it if the guy was selling Jesus. And right there I think of sitting in the church at the top end of Cambuslang, the peace and quiet it afforded, and wonder if it might be worthwhile going back there some time.

  ‘I wonder if you’ve decided how to vote in next month’s council by-election, my friend?’

  Oh, for crying out loud. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do in the next five fucking minutes.

  Oh, wait. Start getting drunk. I have made that decision.

  ‘There’s a council by-election?’

  ‘Yes, there is. The councilor won last month’s Holyrood by-election. Did you vote then?’

  ‘I don’t vote,’ I say.

  He looks taken aback. Like, whoever heard of such a thing?

  ‘Why not? People died so you could vote,’ he says, although he doesn’t quite have the conviction of his words, like it’s a learned response. Like it’s what you’re supposed to say.

  ‘Who the fuck are the FSN?’ I ask.

  Possibly could have chosen words that were slightly less aggressive, but he started it. He rang the bell.

  ‘The Federal Scottish Nationalists,’ he says. ‘We’re an alternative to the SNP, for those who want independence but... well, who want an alternative to the SNP.’

  I stare at him from four feet away. There’s a silence, but it’s not an engaging silence. I think he’s waiting for me to be impressed. Or perhaps he’s guarded, in case I turn out to be one of those bulldog Nats, the walls of my bedroom covered in pictures of the Dear Leader with her Bay City Rollers hair, and I’m about to chib him for daring to suggest there should be another option.

  ‘What does that even mean?’ I say eventually.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Federal Scottish Nationalist?’

  ‘We want independence,’ he says.

  He suddenly doesn’t sound sure.

  ‘So what’s federal about it exactly? You want Scotland itself to be a collection of states in a federation? Millport and Orkney and Glasgow and Edinburgh, with little centralised power?’