Gostkowski stayed on the case for a fortnight, and then Connor was forced to move her on. I lasted into December, but as the Christmas season approached, and there was the usual rise in drink, depression and desperation related crime, they had to shift me back on to regular duties.
Taylor has stayed on the Plague of Crows throughout. It's not been good to him. Too long with nothing to do and no progress to be made. Day after day searching through the same old stuff, an increasingly desperate search, knowing that the killer is coming again, at a time of his own choosing.
When someone plans a crime, before it's been committed, when only they know it's going to happen, they hold all the cards. The course of an investigation is the act of taking those cards away from them, transferring the cards until it's the police who are in charge.
It's just over five months since the first set of victims was discovered, and so far the Plague of Crows is still in full possession of all fifty-two. Taylor is gradually suffering, gradually being dragged downhill.
Not all police officers will have a nemesis in their career, indeed most won't. But sometimes it happens, and pity those that do.
*
Fortunately for me, my nemesis continues to be sleeping with women that I really ought to stay away from. Got to the Christmas night out and imagined that it might be the time to finally consummate all that electric sexual tension that had been going on with Gostkowski. Then I got slaughtered on vodka and ended up taking home one of the waitresses. Not my proudest moment.
Caught DI Gostkowski's eye as I was walking out, absurdly young woman draped around me. Not sure how to describe how she looked. Not judgemental. Sensible.
Anyway, the waitress – and for the life of me I can't remember her name – was old enough to know what she was doing, and I think it was pretty good fun. It's supposed to be, after all. No point in casual sex if you're not going to have fun with it. She was gone in the morning.
Maybe she nicked something, although I haven't noticed.
Slim pickings otherwise. Some other night in the pub I ended up alone at a table with Alison – ex-wife number three – and she wasn't sounding so happy about her recent marriage to Sergeant McGovern. McGovern, at the time, was off at Ibrox watching the Rangers embarrass themselves further in the Stygian depths of Scottish lower division football. Really it was just early days marriage blues, something that she and I crashed and burned at, our faithful union before God not surviving into the second month, and some mature ex-husbands at this point would have comforted her with reassuring words about the future and how everything would settle down.
Me, I hit on her, asking her if she wanted to come back to my place for a shag. I'd been drinking. And I did actually use the word shag. Classless wanker.
She left shortly afterwards, and when I say shortly afterwards, I mean she was putting her coat on before I got to the 'g' in shag.
Oh, there was another one, another crappy night in the pub. Went to her place. Rubbish sex. One of those where you crawl out the door afterwards, struck low by the colossal weight of your own depression and self-loathing. Horrible night. Didn't drink for nearly two days after that, and then, because I'd sworn I wouldn't drink again, like ever, I was full of self-loathing again when I went back to the bar. Having never seen her before, seems like every time I'm in the bar now she's there, and we look at each other with ill-disguised contempt.
Saw the kids a couple of times over Christmas, but things have been pretty ropey since I nearly got back with their mother, screwed it up and then bailed without giving her any say in the matter. We're drifting into disinterest and the kids are getting more and more distrustful of me at the way I've treated her as they get older. I'm losing them.
No, I've already lost them. All I can do is try not to completely fuck it up during their teenage years and then hope for some sort of rapprochement once they reach adulthood.
Taylor's moved office, now in a smaller room at the far end of the station. This one has a window on the outside world, however, unlike the last office, which just had windows staring at the rest of the station open-plan. There's a new DCI been put in his place in that office. Dorritt. Newly promoted, brought in from South Lanarkshire. A junior DCI, he's no threat to Taylor. Even if he was, in some way, a nominal threat, I doubt Taylor would see him as such. He doesn't care, too wrapped up in the Plague of Crows. If anything, thankful that there's someone else filling the void, leaving him to concentrate on the task that consumes him.
His office walls are covered in photographs of woodland areas around the country. Potential murder sites. His hunch is that next time the Plague of Crows will be even bolder. There will be a natural progression. From much delayed video, to video filmed only hours earlier, to something altogether more sinister. Next time, he thinks, it will be a live webcam. Sure of it.
And he's right. After all this time, trying to get inside the head of this killer, a killer who has been calculatingly brilliant in everything he's done, it's the natural progression. Live webcam, taunting us, laughing at us, mocking the entire force, every station and unit in the country. That's what's coming.
Taylor spends his days getting to know these places. There's not enough space on his walls for the photos, so he rotates them. Studies the photographs as he takes them down and puts them up. Has them on his computer, so he can watch them flash by when he's sitting thinking. When the next piece of footage starts to circulate around the web, and has gone viral within minutes, he wants to know where it is. Right there, that first instant.
In this regard, he needs the killer to strike again before late spring, because once the leaves come back, the number of potential woodland sites increases exponentially and we're fucked.
It seemed preposterous to start with. Of course it does. Just look out your window or pay attention when you drive to work or sit on the bus. There are hundreds of potential sites. Thousands. How could one man learn them all? But he's taken the time, visited them all. Stood in the middle of them and worked out what the killer will have worked out. Natural clearing. No one, or at least no more than the occasional house, within close range. Crows' nests. Good cover, even in winter. Decent access to allow him to get a Transit in.
Taylor worked at it, he narrowed it down, which meant his list was just incredibly long, rather than ridiculously unworkable.
Some are going to think he's obsessing, but all he's doing is giving himself the best chance of success. Although, of course, what will it do for us? The killer would be incredibly bold, and taking the kind of chance he appears not to take, if he were to hang around while the murders were broadcasting. He would have to make the assumption that some police officer somewhere might know where it was and therefore be long gone by the time the webcam went live.
And Taylor has started drinking again. The Plague of Crows would love what this is doing to him. He's not an alcoholic, it's not getting in the way of his work, but for a while, for a long while, he became the job, he became the authority figure in the station, he became his work; stronger, fitter, healthier. So now that he's started going back to the pub, and is having a drink when he gets home after work, regardless of time, it shows on him. He's not coming into work drunk or reeking of it, he's not drinking any more than your average middle-aged, middle-class bloke, but you can tell on his face. And I can tell from the fact that he's started coming to the pub with me.
Walk into his office, catch him standing at the window looking out at the car park. The same view, from one storey up, that you get from the back door area where all us smokers congregate these days.
'How's it going?' I ask.
He shrugs without turning.
'Nothing to report, Sergeant,' he says.
I stand at the window beside him, looking down on a sea of Hondas and dull Fords and cars that were in their prime fifteen years ago.
'It's coming,' I say.
'Seventeen days,' he says.
We've been working to a calendar. The number of days it will be
before the next killing, if the Plague of Crows waits the same number of days as the last time, as if there might have been a specific reason for choosing that precise time gap.
Neither of us believe it though. It'll be sooner than that. Or later. To do it on the exact day might not be to invite capture, but it would certainly put the police in a better position. Give them a few cards perhaps. So it won't happen.
'Feels like one of those war movies,' I say, 'when they're waiting at the airfield to see who's going to make it back from the bombing raid. Or they've sent Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton out on a mission and there's nothing they can do other than wait for the phone or radio to start going.'
'Broadsword to Danny Boy…' says Taylor humourlessly. 'Yes, I suppose it feels something like that. What've you got on this morning?' he asks, turning, his tone picking up, shaking off the maudlin feeling of hopelessness.
'Usual,' I say. 'Thirteen year-old kicked fuck out her mum… a child abuse case… couple of stabbings, gang-related probably… and there were a few leftovers out our way last night after the Celtic – United game.'
'What are you doing standing here then?' he asks.
'Everything seems to be in hand,' I say. 'Everyone who had to be brought in, has been. Questioning has been done or is in order. Mostly just the paperwork and the odd talking-to to be delivered. Thought we could have lunch.'
He glances over his shoulder.
'It's 9.47.'
'Yes,' I say, 'it is. I meant, I was coming in to ask if you wanted to have lunch today. Talk about the case.'
He looks at me. Wonderfully expressive, lugubrious eyes, like an orang-utan whose forest has just been burned down, killing all his relatives and destroying his collection of David Attenborough DVDs.
'Sure,' he says. 'Twelve will suit me.'
'Right.'
I stand beside him looking out on the car park for a while. Nothing happens. No cars come or go, barely a pedestrian in the street beyond. The day is grey and flat and perfectly befitting of the mood. Eventually I turn away without speaking, and head back to my desk.
24
Back in the pub after work. Getting to be a regular occurrence again. You can't change your spots etc., etc. For a while there, after I'd gone up the mountain, and Taylor was determinedly getting his feet under the desk of responsibility, we went months without coming here. Then we came once, and then without really thinking about it here we are, several nights a week. Two divorced, miserable, single men out on the lash. Boo-yah!
Inevitably we always end up talking about Taylor's obsession. Sometimes I manage to get the conversation around to the new Bob album, or whether Thistle are going to get relegated or which one of the women at the station I'd like to sleep with next – although weirdly I never mention Gostkowski – but those conversations always end up rather one-sided and so I give in to the inevitable and let him elucidate what he's thinking. Because he certainly ain't thinking about Bob, the Thistle or women.
Of course, at the moment we're not talking about anything. Two fat old wankers sitting in a pub in complete silence. Silence, that is, apart from the rest of the general chatter and the fact that they're playing an entire album by that noxious little shit Olly Murs. Fucking hate Olly Murs. He'll be doing the Eurovision Song Contest soon, just you wait and see. That's his level.
Although, you know, I can imagine Bob doing Eurovision one year. It's the kind of crazy, fucked-up, completely out of left field kind of shit he'd do. Pop up out of nowhere representing Armenia or Latvia, some shit like that. Wouldn't be that much weirder than singing O! Little Town of Bethlehem.
'How are you and Adele getting on?' I ask Taylor, to break the near ten-minute silence.
He takes a moment, while he gets dragged back from whatever woods it is he's inhabiting, says, 'Who the fuck's Adele?'
'You know, the fat, chav, singing girl thing. Her.'
He grunts, looks disinterested. Well, of course he does. No grown man is going to want to be reminded of the fact that they like listening to Adele.
'Got bored,' he says. 'Threw it out, I think… Maybe it's still in the car.'
'Back onto Bob?' I say.
'Been listening to Bach's Christmas Oratorio.'
I believe there follows what many would call a stunned silence. He doesn't even look abashed. In fact, judging from the glazed look in his eyes he feels so comfortable with this information that he's already forgotten he said it and is back in amongst the trees, searching for his killer.
'But Bob did a Christmas album…' is all I can find to say.
'What?'
'Bob did Christmas. Why are you listening to someone else's Christmas? And Bach… I mean… what the fuck?'
He shrugs.
'It's different. Heard it on Radio 3, quite liked it. Lasts just over eight minutes, which on most days takes up the entire drive to work.'
He shrugs again. Jesus. How can you casually say things like 'I heard it on Radio 3' and just shrug as if nothing's wrong.
'You were listening to Radio 3?'
'Aye. I do sometimes. At home. When I'm making dinner. Or breakfast. Have it on in the kitchen.'
'That's… that's…'
He's looking at me like I'm the weird person.
'Grow up, Sergeant. There are worse fucking betrayals than that in life.'
Suppose. Like listening to Guns 'N' Roses' version of Knocking On Heaven's Door.
'But you could listen to 'Cross The Green Mountain. That's just over eight minutes.'
'You know how many times I've listened to that song in the last ten years?'
Continue to stare at him. 'It's like you've suddenly become bipolar.'
'Fuck off, Sergeant.'
'You're implying that there's a finite number of times somebody can listen to any one of Bob's songs before they need to listen to…. Bach.'
He shakes his head then drains his pint. Settles the glass down on the table and stares at it for a moment.
'I'm leaving,' he says.
Glance at my own drink, my third vodka tonic, nearly empty.
'We haven't done the Plague of Crows,' I say. Pointless really. He's too bloody maudlin even for that.
'No, we haven't.'
He looks at me. Nothing to say. The time for talking ended about two months ago, since when there's been nothing new to talk about. We need something else to happen, and when it does, then the shit can hit the fan, the politicians can take charge, the media can fly in ferment, and we can talk again.
'See you in the morning, Sergeant. You probably shouldn't stay too late. The drink's starting to show on your face.'
He leaves. I don't watch him go. That's ironic.
Is it ironic? I think it's showing on his face and don't see it on my own, and he's seeing the same thing with me. Or is that only ironic in an Alanis Morissette type of way?
And do I care?
Drain the glass, head to the bar. A quiet night. The girl behind the bar seems happy with something to do.
'What can I get you?' she asks.
I try not to stare at her breasts while contemplating an all out shock & awe offensive.
Boo-yah!
*
There are crows high in the trees. None of them are sleeping, all awoken by the noise from below. A grey early morning. They look down and watch what is happening in the forest. Three people tied to chairs, another walking between the three. Extracting information.
There is a light attached to the head of the person who's moving around. The light bobs, here and there, up and down. Something glints in the light.
Crows like things that glint. One of them wonders if it might be food.
25
Interview Room 3. A man with a baseball bat. Well, he no longer has the baseball bat. When you're interviewing a suspect it's best to relieve them of all weapons. Learned that from CSI.
Have no sense of impending action. The room springing to life. No sense that everything is about to change. Sometimes that happens. Not
today. Not so far.
The guy in front of me, who would be defined in any statistical analysis as a nineteen-year-old fuckwit, is not being given quite as hard a time as he ought to be by the interviewing officer – me – because he quoted Bob Dylan right at the start.
'Let me die in my footsteps.'
He said that. Let me die in my footsteps. People generally don't say let me die in my footsteps because it doesn't really make much sense. Although it makes sense in Bob's terms, when he was writing it in the early 60s about not wanting to spend his life hiding in an atomic bomb shelter. So, in that sense, the clown was being a bit over-dramatic, but all the same, he'd nailed his target audience.
For his part, I could immediately see that he had a bit more respect for the arresting officer when he discovered that he was a Dylan freak. Now we're almost mates, and the only thing standing between us is that this idiot banjoed some bloke in the pub over the head with a bat because he made some comment about the length of his girlfriend's skirt. That, and the fact that the Bob thing was only ever going to get him so far.
'That's how it is, man,' he says, when we finally move on from Bob and get around to addressing the issue of assault.
'What do you think Bob would have done?' I say. Even I'm aware of how stupid that question is as it leaves my mouth. Wonder what PC Corrigan is thinking as she stares vacantly across the room.
'What the fuck?' he says. 'I don't fucking know, do I?'
Hah. You may have seventeen Bob albums on your iPod, you little shit, but you're no fan. He just likes Bob Dylan because he thinks it makes him look cool and it sets him apart from his contemporaries who are all listening to God knows what. And really, I don't know. What are nineteen-year-olds listening to?
A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller Page 12
