Now isn't that a fucking joke?
*
It happens that night. Me and Stephanie. Gostkowski, the Detective Inspector. We work late. All of us. No one leaves before eleven. A long day. Some stay until two or three in the morning, but in general we're told to leave, go home and get some rest, come in again early the following day. Clear heads.
We meet where I first really talked to her, last August, which already seems a long, long time ago. Like that time, she's already out there, smoking, coming to the end of her cigarette when I walk out.
We nod, not a lot to say. Think I know right there and then. She stubs her cigarette under her foot and says, 'Let me try one of them.'
I light it for her and hand it over. Lighting a cigarette for a woman and then handing it to her is one of those things that's just innately erotic. Don't know why, it just is. You're passing her death on a stick, but it doesn't matter. Still laced with tension.
'It's all right,' she says after a while.
I smile, sort of, but there's not much smiling tonight. This has been too long a day, too shit a day. A really, really shit day.
I'm tired, but I need something else before I go to sleep. I don't want to spend the day buried up to my eyes in this grotesque murder enquiry, be unconscious for six hours, and then get back to it. I need distraction, and it's going to have to be a pretty fucking mental one. No use watching a documentary on BBC4 or eating a fish supper.
This is why people in war zones, all the soldiers and the NGOs and the paper pushers that are sent to places like Baghdad and Kandahar, just fuck, bonk, bang and shag their way through their time out there. The working environment is too stressful, so that when they do get some down time, it needs to be high quality, needs to be an experience. So they shag their way around the compound, or wherever the hell they're living.
I'm about to bluntly suggest that she comes back with me to my house, and I know she'll say yes, and I also know that we likely won't be the only two doing it at the station this evening.
'You want to sleep with me tonight?' I say. I think when I started the sentence I'd intended asking if she wanted to stay over, or some shit like that, but out-and-out honesty just took over.
'Of course,' she says, as if we'd been fucking for years. Or like she was some blunt non-native English speaker. Dutch or German. For sure.
*
We don't speak. I walk into the bathroom and turn on the shower. She follows behind me, and stands unmoving as I undress her. Slip the blouse off her shoulders. Walk round behind her to undo the bra strap. Kiss the middle of her back. Let my hands rest lightly on her shoulders. Even at that she lets out a small gasp, the gentleness of touch, the caressing of the skin. Then I unbutton her skirt and let it fall to the floor.
The naked DI Gostkowski is as I'd imagined. Slim, not skinny. Deliciously proportioned breasts, great butt. I bend down, my hands holding tightly onto her hips, and bite her butt cheeks. Two, three times. Then I start working my way up, kissing and nibbling at her back. Standing behind her, I continue to kiss while I quickly undress, so that by the time I'm kissing her neck, I'm naked. I reach round and take her breasts into my hands and press against her, my erect cock thrusting hard against her buttocks. She gasps again, and now I turn her round so that we're facing each other.
As usual at this point I want to do everything at once. I want to kiss her all over, I want her lips on mine, I want her tongue all over me, I want her breasts in my mouth, I want to sink my cock deep inside her.
I kiss her gently, teasing her, biting at her lips, she seems to gasp with every enticement, and then I press against her, take her into my arms and kiss her fully and passionately and she gives in to it and I love the feel of her hands as they grab my back, and of her breasts pressed against my chest.
I step into the shower and take her with me, and then wonderfully, she takes over. Presses me against the wall, her hand immediately grabbing at my erection, squeezing my balls. Holy fuck, that glorious mixture of pain and pleasure.
She pulls away, grabs the nearest bottle of shower gel and squirts it over my chest, then starts rubbing it in, as the water – just a little bit too hot – cascades over us. She's not really concerned with washing my chest, as she massages the soap over my aching cock and testicles. She looks intoxicating, the water bouncing off her shoulders and her hair, the soap splashing onto her breasts.
Her hands are all over me, massaging my cock and my buttocks, and now she starts biting at my stomach, quickly getting lower. And then she pushes me slightly to the side so that the warm water is landing directly on my cock and she rinses off the soap, and then suddenly grabs the base of my erection, runs her tongue along the length, and then plunges onto it and starts fucking me gloriously with her mouth.
This is what I'm talking about. Who on earth is going to be thinking about work at this moment? I'm standing in the shower, hot water all over me, and a woman on her knees in front of me, gloriously sucking my cock. Holy shit. Start thrusting, and she takes it, takes every thrust of my hips, and now it's hard to know who's in charge, if she's fucking me with her mouth or I'm fucking her mouth with my desperate, inflamed cock.
Thirty minutes later we're dried off and lying in bed. Well, I'm lying in bed, she's on top of me. Stopped myself coming in the shower, because I didn't want it to end there. She didn't stop herself coming, as I pressed her against the wall, my tongue probing inside her, my lips and teeth massaging and nibbling her clitoris. And now she's sitting on top of me, her shoulders straight, almost leaning back, fucking me desperately, crying out with every thrust.
I've got my hands on her hips, watching the movement of her breasts. I love just watching them, but I want to reach up and touch them, hold them, grope them and squeeze them, those fucking glorious breasts, the nipples protruding and desperate for my touch. Finally I give in to it, and as she's moaning and thrusting and driving her cunt onto me, I take her breasts into my hands, and there's nothing tender or romantic, it's all wonderful, desperate sex, and then I lean up and take her right breast into my mouth, biting and sucking, my tongue desperate for her, and at the same time I'm driving my cock into her as hard as I can…
*
There were rights and there were wrongs, and there was very little truth. That was the Balkan war. That's every war. Generally there aren't good guys. There are just a bunch of people doing whatever it is they can to try and win. Maybe the guys who start it are always the bad guys, but then that would depend on why they started it in the first place.
That's why we're still talking about WWII in the UK, that's why it's nearly impossible to turn on the television without finding something on there about it, a documentary or a commemoration or a TV drama. We were the undisputed good guys. The other lot were stomping across Europe, murdering people for not being blond enough. We stood up to them. We were the good guys, so good that in general we can ignore the questionable stuff, like when we slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in bombing raids. The overall cause was so indisputably right that we're still happy to talk about it. Over and over and over, long after everyone else has moved on.
There were bad guys on every side in the Balkans. But there's no ignoring some things. There's no ignoring Srebrenica, for example. There was no other side did anything else on that scale. No other side lined up thousands of men and boys and slaughtered them all. They all did some fucking horrible shit, but no one else did that. Just the Serbs. The Bosnian Serbs.
The side that I took.
27
Get into work for 6:53am. Not bad, under the circumstances, but I'm pretty wired as soon as the alarm goes at six. Very commendably, DI Gostkowski did not stay over, barely even lay in bed, me with my arm draped around her, after we'd finished. She came, she fucked, she came, she left.
Thinking about her as I sit at my desk, but not in any proactively vomit-inducing romantic way. Would be nice if we quickly developed into fuck buddies. Been a while since I had an out-and-out fuck buddy
. Such a rare thing to find. There's usually one of you, if not both, ends up thinking romantic thoughts, and before you know it something's said, and there goes the fuck buddy relationship and then not long afterwards, there goes any kind of relationship.
Enjoy it while you can, as much as you can, in the sure and certain knowledge that it won't last.
Grabbed a look at the newspaper headlines on the way in. The Sun led with The Crow Must Go On, which was my favourite, although the Mirror's Let It Crow, Let It Crow, Let It Crow ran it a close second. Plenty of them happy to potentially offend their readers, or anyone who happens to notice the front page, with large graphic pictures of the dead and dying. At least three of them promise even more graphic pictures inside, promoted with the usual warning about not looking if you're squeamish which is just aimed at attracting as many readers as possible.
The victim who managed to last until the cavalry arrived – although it's doubtful she knew anything about it – didn't make it through the night. Heard the news on the radio as I was getting breakfast. Extraordinary that she lasted that long. She remained sedated once the paramedics had finally done the job, and had never had anywhere to go. There was never a chance of recovery. If she died because someone decided to pull the plug in the middle of night, then you couldn't blame them.
Taylor arrives just after seven. Stops at the desk, acknowledges my presence with a nod. I read into it that he's desperately impressed that I'm here, what with me having previous.
'Can you spend some time looking at the three dates?' he says.
'What am I looking for?'
'Whatever you can find. See if there's a connection. And I don't mean, you know, anything big, anything that would be obviously flagged up as happening on those dates, the This Day in History section. Check newspapers for the day after each of those three dates, note down every story that might be of worth, see if there's anything that recurs, any theme, any name. Anything.'
'You have a hunch or something specific?' I ask.
He stops. He'd been slowly edging towards his office as he spoke, as if he didn't even have time to get the words out.
'Neither,' he says, and suddenly, just for a moment, seems a lot less dynamic than a few seconds ago. Gives himself a shake, snaps out of it. 'Just a thought, nothing more. Clutching at straws. I assume…' He pauses at the use of the word. Never assume anything in this game, and he knows it. 'I'm thinking that he does it when he's ready, and the fact that there's less of a gap between the second and third than between the first and second, is an indicator that he's getting better, able to put his plans together more quickly. That's what I think. Nevertheless, it's no reason not to consider other angles. Let's give it a go.'
He looks around the office, maybe making a note of those already at work, but more than likely just collecting his thoughts, then turns back.
'The downside is that, even if you don't find anything, it doesn't rule it out. He could be committing the crimes on specific dates, but there's no public record of what those dates are. So…'
And he just lets the sentence drift off, waves a haphazard hand then walks to his office.
Turn back to my computer screen and start looking through the newspaper archives. Might as well begin with the Evening Times. My heart isn't exactly singing at the prospect, but at least it's something constructive.
Suddenly DI Gostkowski is standing beside my desk. Not sure what she's working on at the moment, how many of us are being placed under Edinburgh command and control. I'm very happily staying out of the office politics, leaving it all to Taylor. From the general lack of grown men shouting, throwing teddies in the corner and behaving like football supporters, I'm guessing that some sort of mutually beneficial agreement has been reached between the two forces – and let's not pretend that that would have been reached by anything other than total desperation – and we are all, like the High School Musical kids and George fucking Osborne, in it together.
She looks fresh. I'm guessing – although it's not a word I would usually use to describe a forty-five-year-old, marginally overweight bloke who smokes too much – that I probably look reasonably fresh as well. Rather than go home and lie awake in bed thinking too much about the day gone by, we banged each other's brains out and sleep came very easily.
'Fuck buddy,' she says, and a small smile comes to her face.
Interesting etiquette. Some would say that just the acknowledgement of the notion that you might be fuck buddies is overstepping the mark, that the person saying it is laying down some sort of rule and talking about the situation, which in itself is denying the very nature of one's fuck buddy role. You have sex, you don't talk, you don't acknowledge. So this is a bold move, early on in the fuck buddy relationship. I'd never make the move myself, but it probably is the case that if anyone's going to do it successfully, it has to be the woman.
And that smile. Intriguing. Beautiful. Almost not even there before it's completely gone. I attempt what I hope will be an equally small and intriguing smile in return and nod. She taps her closed fist on the desk, as if asking to come in, and then walks on her way. I watch her go, and I'm pleased to say that as I look at her, all I think is how great she looks naked and that I can't wait to sleep with her again tonight, and barely a romantic thought crosses my mind.
*
I never thought the dates idea was up to much. If that was what the Plague of Crows has done, then he was leaving something to chance. Using specific dates might have been a tricky one for us to work out perhaps, but if we did it, then we might have an in. So it was a long shot, like Taylor said. Something that he probably thought of while lying awake in the middle of the night, because he didn't have a fuck buddy.
Anyway. Four-and-a-half hours later – and I realise that this is something I could spend much longer on, but four and a half hours somehow seems enough – I'm standing at the door of his office.
'Nothing,' he says, without looking up. Not even a question. He knows.
'Nothing,' I say.
He sits back. Stares out the window. Another grey, cold day in January. There's a guy snooping around the car park, looking in windows. It could be someone hoping to nick a car – it's not like there aren't people around here with the sheer balls to nick a car from outside a police station – but we both know it's a journalist.
He lifts up the phone.
'Sergeant,' he says, to Ramsay at the front desk, 'there's an intruder in the car park. Send a couple of guys out to put the wind up him, eh?'
He hangs up. Looks tired again. Indicates for me to come in and sit down. The walls are still lined with the photographs of the woods of central Scotland. Now they seem pointless. Now they're taunting him. How was it ever going to be any different? They told him where to go, but it was no use. It hadn't allowed him to save anyone, and neither had they ever been going to. Not unless the Plague of Crows chose a patch of wood within a couple of miles of here.
He lifts the phone again, says, 'Can you come in here, Stephanie, please?' and hangs up.
Neither of us speaks. He's vaguely looking at a couple of pieces of paper on his desk, but in such a way that I can tell he's not actually looking. I watch him for a second, then look away. Outside, the bloke in the car park has been confronted by Constable Carr. They're arguing. No doubt the journalist is stating his case that his human rights are being infringed and that this is undoubtedly just another example of a thuggish police force cracking down on innocent civilians engaged in perfectly innocent activity.
The police. Never the good guys.
DI Gostkowski walks into the room, stands for a second, then closes the door unbidden and pulls up the other seat. And in an instant we have the feel of a war room. The cabinet come to establish the strategic overview and map out the way forward. I prefer war rooms conducted in pubs, and it is lunch time. I'd probably suggest it, but somehow the very presence of Gostkowski puts everything onto a higher plain of maturity.
'All right, we've finally come to an agreement
with Montgomery, although to be honest we've been working fine without it for some time. The three of us are going to be… I don't know…'
'Special Forces,' I chip in. 'Working to the same end, sharing information, but not actually part of the main force.'
He looks at me for a second. So much for the presence of DI Gostkowski. She says nothing.
'So the three of us are going to sit here until we decide what we do next. Look at dates, times, methods, places, woods, crows, brain-cutting equipment. We're going to do what we've been doing since last August, and at the end of it… I know we're not going to have solved anything, but we're going to have some direction we're heading in and we're going to be working together. And, despite the accommodation that's been reached with Montgomery, I don't give a flying fuck what they do or what they think. We're not relying on them for anything. If they work it out, then good for them, and we can all move on. But until that happens, we forget about them as much as we can. All this rests on our shoulders.'
He stops, looks between the two of us. Check my watch.
'Can we get sandwiches?'
'No,' he replies, then leans forward and turns the piece of paper that was on the desk in front of him. He's noted down six or seven points and listed off several strands from each of the central themes. I believe this is what is known these days as a mind map.
'Read through that, give me your comments,' he says.
Gostkowski automatically picks it up, and I find myself leaning towards her trying to see.
28
I'm standing in front of the press. Can see a couple of guys that I recognise, but most of these people aren't from Scotland. Sure, all the Scottish lot are here, but now they're outnumbered by the collective from England and Europe and the States. We've even got representatives from those weird news channels that no one watches like Russia Today and China Now and Al Jazeera in English and Breaking News Moldova. There are a tonne of them, and I ain't in my element.
A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller Page 14
