A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller

by Douglas Lindsay

  'This guy doesn't leave things to chance,' says Taylor. 'Every angle covered. Spare bit of ground in the country, someone's out walking their dog.'

  Slight movement of the head. She doesn't completely agree. But we need to make some calls to narrow down the list. We need something.

  'All right…'

  'Do you have… is there some kind of reference work, easily referenced map, something like that, where we can look at it and say, right, it can be here or here or here? That's what we're getting at. If we did that, how many areas are we going to need to check out and how many are we likely to miss because we're looking at a map?'

  She glances at him, then turns and takes a quick look at me. Making sure I'm still there. Or that I'm not stealing anything.

  'Might as well start with Google Earth,' she says.

  'What?' Taylor looks annoyed. 'I already looked at Google Earth. I was looking for…. I don't know, something that…'

  'You were looking for something that showed all the wooded areas in Scotland, with an overview of the position of those woods in relation to urbanised areas?'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, let's look at Google Earth. To make you feel better, I'll do it with you, tell you what kinds of trees you're looking at and give you my opinion on whether or not any particular wood is a plausible place for your chap. Happy?'

  Taylor makes a throwaway gesture. It is, despite himself, exactly what he was looking for.

  'Will you scream if I say you're looking for a needle in a haystack?' she says.

  He doesn't scream, but doesn't reply. Takes a step away from the window, goes and looks at an ordnance survey map on the wall.

  'That's south Devon,' she says. 'Won't help you.'

  He shakes his head, glances round at me.

  'How many men have you got?' she asks. 'Are you going to be able to put officers out in every town and every area? How long are you going to be able to do that? If this guy is smart, he's probably planned for you to be looking out for him.'

  'There are two of us,' said Taylor.

  She stares at him, and then back at me. Back to Taylor. There's a beautiful silence in the air. With the hills in the background it's taking me back to the summer. A long quiet summer without any of this shit.

  'There are two of you on the whole investigation?' she says. 'You're kidding.'

  'There are two of us on this part,' says Taylor. Not giving her any more, despite the look she gives him. 'Look, this is shit. It's shit that the guy's done what he's done, it's shit… whatever, it's all shit. We just need your help to try and get ahead of the game. I want to walk out of here with a list. That's all. An ordered list. If the list has a hundred thousand individual small areas of woodland on it I don't care, as long as there's a top and a bottom, a note of what kinds of trees they are, a most likely and a not really much of a chance, a list that we can check out. If there are crows' nests and the wood is in any way secluded, it stays on the list. This guy has given us nothing. We need to get lucky, and all we're trying to do is make our own. Can you help?'

  It's obvious she likes the speech. She nods.

  'Well, Chief Inspector, it's not like I've nothing else to be doing today, but what the hell. Might as well give it a go. Let's get to work. You can use separate computers, split up the country, and I'll move between the two of you letting you know what I think.'

  She moves around her desk and logs onto a monitor that is yet to be activated today.

  'We've only got an hour,' says Taylor. 'Don't want to lose too much daylight.'

  'Dream on, sunshine,' she says, smiling and shaking her head.

  *

  Four-and-a-half hours later we're sitting in the car. We have a long list, hastily arranged into order of likelihood. Sadly the top of the list starts with pretty unlikely and then gets progressively more far-fetched.

  'We starting around here since we're in the area?' I ask.

  He shakes his head. We've been concentrating on the absurd task we've set ourselves, but I know he'll have been thinking ahead. Mentally, I realise that I've been playing the part of the subordinate, waiting to be instructed on what to do next. I'll catch up eventually.

  'No,' he says. 'We're going back home, split up, start looking at potential areas as close to the previous. Really, if it turns out the next killings are in Dundee or Inverness or Perth then we are, as Corporal Hicks says in Aliens, fucking fucked, man. We look at the places around our patch and hope for the best.'

  Start the car, head off, quickly onto the A95 back towards Glasgow. Look up the hill to my nemesis of a golf course.

  'We're just wasting our time,' I say after a while, as the pale green countryside passes by. Sudden melancholy, feeling a little bit lost. Put on a hopeless mission, driving around being told what to do. A cold couple of hours ahead, checking on small clumps of trees. And for what? A man cementing chairs into the floor?

  'If he never kills again, we're wasting our time,' says Taylor. 'If he kills again, but this time he's gone to Sweden or Normandy or somewhere, then we're wasting our time. But if he picks somewhere that happens to be on that list… even if we don't catch him, it doesn't matter. It means we're on the right track, and we'll have more to work with… next time. So, no…'

  Feeling tired after a sleepless night. Would love to fall asleep, but then, I'm driving, so that would be bad. Nevertheless, there isn't any more talking to be done. There really hasn't been any talking to do since early August. It's all been about waiting, and now this rather desperate attempt to force the pace of the investigation.

  Get back to the station at 2:43pm. Time to grab a sandwich, then take about 0.005% of the list and get going.

  13

  6.33pm. Trudge back into the office, stop in the middle of it all. No sign of the hired hands from out of town. Everything seems to be normal, the usual kind of shit and general level of activity for this time of day, midweek. Morrow looks up from his desk and nods. I nod back. Presumably, after one day on the job at all-out speed, he's been removed and put back onto the mundane day-to-day stuff of the Cambuslang/Rutherglen area.

  Taylor's in his office so I wander through. Smoked enough fags during the afternoon not to be feeling deprived. Could use a coffee. Maybe some alcohol. Alcohol later, coffee first. Would have stopped off at the Costa on the way in, but thought I should report back. Had hoped that Taylor wouldn't be here yet.

  Stand in the doorway. 'How'd you do?' I ask.

  He's got one of the maps spread out in front of him, which he's been marking off.

  'Looked at around twenty spots. Some of them are definitely out, some 50/50… found two, maybe three that would be good places for our man, nests in place, definite signs of crow activity. How about you?'

  'You didn't catch him in the act then?'

  'Sadly it's not an episode of Scooby Doo, Sergeant.'

  I grunt and walk round behind him to look over his shoulder at the map.

  'You make notes?' he asks.

  'Yes.'

  Annoyed at the suggestion that I might not have done, although generally my paperwork is so shit that I oughtn't to be.

  'Right, grab a seat and mark them off.'

  'Yes, boss.'

  Pull up a seat across the desk from him, turn the map around and start to mark it up. He watches me for a few seconds and then turns back to the computer. Quick glance to see what he's looking at. Twitter. Ah yes, the modern way. That's how we'll find out.

  For the moment Plague of Crows isn't trending, having been usurped by four tags related to Justin Beiber, two about John Terry and #replacemovietitleswithcock. Society knows what's important, and here's us worrying about this shit. But he's right to look. While we're running headlong down our tunnel-vision wild goose chase, and the boys from Edinburgh are throwing money and resources at every aspect of the investigation, you can guarantee that the next piece of information will first come to the attention of the police via social networking.

  He's searching Plague of Crows,
tracking the most recent stuff. A quick glance doesn't reveal anything new.

  'I'm going to leave you to speak to DI Gostkowski,' he says.

  'Sure.'

  'We don't want any of that new mob asking questions. If they see you talking to her, it's just going to look like you're trying to get a shag. They might start questioning it if they think I'm sniffing around.'

  'You think there are people on the Edinburgh police force who assume that I spend my entire life trying to get laid?'

  'Sergeant, there are police officers in Bandar Seri Begawan who think you spend your entire life trying to get laid.'

  Funny. Nice thought, though.

  'So, do we have some sort of code?' I ask. 'Is she going to leave a flowerpot on the balcony?'

  He turns away from the computer and looks at me like I'm some sort of ridiculous police freak with no clue. I get that look from him a lot, although it is at least contradicted by the fact that he wanted me here in the first place.

  'You're meeting her in the Costa down the road at 7.'

  'Oh. Right.'

  'You'll be talking about work,' he says, giving me the look.

  'She's way too serious for me,' I say.

  'Bollocks,' he mutters, shaking his head and looking back at the monitor. 'Too serious… You'd have sex with a four-thousand-page essay on 17th century Scottish agriculture if it'd let you.'

  *

  I've got an Americano. I asked for space for extra milk and still had to give it back to them so they could tip some of it out to allow space for extra milk. It's like their mission statement is We Will Burn Your Lips The Fuck Off. DI Gostkowski is drinking mint tea with delicate little sips.

  'What d'you do all day?' she asks.

  'You're on our side, right?'

  She smiles.

  'Despite what all you strapping men think, it's not a competition. Nevertheless, I've been instructed by the Superintendent only to pass back the information that he authorises me to. So, your secrets are safe with me.'

  'We went looking for possible woods that the killer might use the next time.'

  She pauses, the cup at her lips, then sets it back down without taking anything from it.

  'You looked for trees? In Scotland?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did you find any?'

  'Funny.'

  'Seriously? There have to be a million places that this guy could use…'

  'We narrowed it down to around nine hundred or so… Well, you know, in the vicinity. And then, you know, some of them are going to have nests and very obvious crow communities, and those are the ones that we can concentrate on. Shouldn't be so many in the end.'

  It seemed pretty lame as we went about our business this afternoon. Now, explaining it to another polis, it sounds flat out stupid, despite my best attempts at justification.

  She takes her next sip, bit of a longer drink this time as it's cooled down enough. Finally makes some kind of 'well, I suppose you have to do something' expression with her face.

  'What are the Bat-team up to?' I ask to get us off the subject. Don't want to loiter over the possibility that two senior detectives spent their day chasing their own bollocks.

  'I don't suppose what they did amounted to much more. Spent the day familiarising themselves with the investigation. I can't say that they had anything new to add at this stage. Seem like a sharp enough bunch.'

  'Full of themselves or aware that they're stepping on toes?'

  'Oh…' she begins, and then thinks about it. At least, she's thinking about how to put it, rather than thinking about whether or not these people might actually be in danger of disappearing up the arsehole of their own self-importance.

  'They're confident,' she says eventually.

  'Good. Confidence is important.'

  She smiles a little at that. We glance at each other, then let our eyes drift around the café. These places are just permanently busy nowadays. Everybody's drinking coffee. Even the people who are going to go and get pissed later, still have a coffee first.

  Maybe I'm just making that shit up. What do I know?

  'So, have you got anything for us?' I ask.

  Quick shake of the head, and she looks slightly abashed. This will, presumably, become a nightly thing, and it's going to get a little awkward if she has nothing to say every day.

  'Like I said, they were getting their feet under the desk. They spent the day asking questions. Tomorrow, I suppose, we'll find out if they've got anything new to bring to the table.'

  We hold each other's eyes for a moment, then she looks at her watch.

  'Gotta go,' she says and takes a last quick sip of tea. Her phone has been sitting unlooked at on the table, and she lifts it and puts it in her pocket as she stands. 'Same time tomorrow, Sergeant?'

  'Sure,' I say, which doesn't sound like much, but is better than all the innuendo that immediately came to mind.

  'Right. I'll be in touch if there's anything I think you should know before then,' she says, and then she's off, back out the door and onto the street, leaving me alone with a half-drunk Americano with a little too much milk.

  I watch her across the street. Can't quite see the entrance to the station from where I'm sitting, but keep following her until she's out of sight. Then I turn back to my coffee and take a long drink.

  Check my phone. No messages. 7:17. Ought to be getting back to work. Wonder how it went with Taylor explaining to Connor that we set out on a two-man mission to search every wood in Scotland.

  Hopefully he lied. That's what I would have done.

  14

  Already dark.

  The policeman, the journalist the social worker; the tailor, the baker, the candlestick maker.

  The lucky three.

  Police Constable Morgan. Lives on the outskirts of Dundee, works in Perth. Single, no kids. Has been friends with his killer online for nearly a year, although all this time has known the Plague of Crows as a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Dulcie.

  Linette Grey. Lives in Bankfoot, works on the front line of social services in Perth. Single, no kids. Spends her days visiting families who hurt each other. Three-year-olds still in nappies who are never fed or changed, six-year-old children given alcohol and cigarettes and not much else, drug addicts, wife-beaters, husband abusers, child abusers. She deals with the police often; a couple of times it has been Constable Morgan. But just a couple, which isn't many, given the number of years she's been doing the job. The police, however, when it comes to looking for a connection between the victims, are at least going to be able to find one, and it will lead them off in entirely the wrong direction.

  Malcolm Morrison. Lives in the centre of Perth in a modern, chic apartment. Small, but perfect for impressing women. Single, no kids. Works for the Dundee Courier & Advertiser. Fancies himself for a job on one of the big London tabloids, but there is plenty of time. For the moment he's compiling an interesting body of work. Some people might consider that they'd suffered by his hands along the way, but they could live with it. Or not. Has been friends with his killer online for nearly a year, although all this time has known the Plague of Crows as a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Dulcie.

  Dulcie has a lot of friends. Dulcie knows how to cover her tracks.

  Linette Grey awakens to find herself in a small clearing in the middle of a wood. She feels cold. It takes her some time to sort out all the sensations in her head. The cold. The fact that she can't move any part of her body. The low hills above the tree line. The two men strapped to chairs less than a couple of yards away. The fact that she recognises one of them but can't remember who it is. The fact that the one who isn't strapped down, the other person in the clearing doing something to the head of one of the men, she doesn't recognise at all. The fact that when she realises what's happening, and she tries to scream, no sound comes out.

  From somewhere overhead comes the loud squawk of a crow. She can't compute that either. She tries to scream again.

  They are in a small w
ood, about a mile from the A85 between Perth and Crieff. Even if she had been able to scream, no one would have heard, but the Plague of Crows doesn't like to take chances.

  15

  Worked until just after eleven, reviewing everything we have on the case, looking over all the potential murder sites trying to make some sort of informed guess about where we should check next, then home to a late supper and crawling into bed – on my own – about one. Started thinking about Gostkowski late in the evening and wondered if we might bump into each other at the cigarette hole, but it didn't happen.

  Home alone, late, two nights in a row. Not about to end either, is it? We're no nearer catching this bloke or having even the faintest idea who it is. Long, late nights stretching immeasurably into the future. Jesus.

  Slept all right, got to the station just before eight. Still have that feeling that I'm last to arrive. Feel everyone looking at me, like where the fuck have you been, don't you know there's a war on?

  I stop, look around. I'm imagining it. Most of our lot aren't involved in the war, and they don't give a shit that I wasn't at my desk by 6 a.m. They're like soldiers, trained and armed to the teeth, dispatched into the war zone, and then told, nah, don't bother, these other guys are going to do the fighting, you lot go and jerk off in the corner.

  Since the Leander business I've got it in my head that they're all wary of me, all looking at me. I'm thinking it's about me. The disease of conceit, as Bob says. Despite having been here for more years than I want to remember, I'm just not one of them. They don't give a shit about me, I don't give a shit about them.

  Straight to Taylor's office. No point in even going to my desk. Ramsay at the front desk has been instructed not to send anything new my way. The endless piles of crap that are sitting there and have been waiting for weeks or months, can continue to sit and wait.

  Shit day outside, low cloud, miserable. It's not been light for long, and it's one of those days when it'll never be anything other than gloomy as all fuck. The grey light of dawn will merge horribly into the grey light of morning and afternoon.