A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller

by Douglas Lindsay

  Clayton is all they have, and she is about to make the bold move of striking him off the list of one based on a feeling, and the fact that he's playing X-Box. It's going to be tough going back with nothing, but is there any point in asking?

  What were you doing last night? What about earlier today? We really need to get hold of your wife so that we can ask her how much of a nutjob you are.

  She stops. She stops thinking. The thought processes stop and are replaced by a slight confusion. Where has she seen that face? It comes back to her immediately, no searching around in the canyons of her brain for the information. One of the things that makes her a good officer. Instant access to everything she needs to know.

  She crosses the room and lifts the photograph. Clayton standing with a woman on each arm. One of them is his wife. She recognises the other. The hair is completely different. The photograph is a few years old, but it's the smile. She knows the smile.

  'This woman,' she says, turning to Clayton. He's watching her, annoyance beginning to stir him from his apathy.

  'What?'

  'This woman,' she repeats. 'Who is it?'

  He snorts again.

  'That's my wife,' he says. 'Or, at least, it was. Bitch. Don't ask me where she is now. Haven't seen her in fucking years.'

  'Not your wife, the other one.'

  He appears not to hear the question. He noisily rattles off several rounds of machine gun fire, his face expressionless. She waits for a few seconds, but soon realises that she'll be waiting forever.

  'Not your wife,' she repeats.

  He turns. He looks in the direction of the photograph, although she gets the feeling that he could be staring into darkness for all that he's seeing. He snorts again, another small and bitter laugh.

  'You people are so shit,' he says.

  Looks back at the screen, shaking his head. Enjoying knowing something that she doesn't.

  'Tell me how shit we are,' she says.

  She has to wait again. The sneer doesn't leave his face. He rattles off more gunfire. She glances at the television. He says 'fuck', as red is smeared across the screen.

  'Tell me how shit we are,' she repeats.

  He half glances in her direction, but his game is ended and now he's concentrating on what he's done and setting up another game.

  'That's my sister-in-law. Jane. That's her name. Jane. Sounds so unassuming, doesn't it?' He laughs. 'Dick and Jane play in the woods, or Dick and Jane build a house. Then there was Dick and Jane fuck round the back of the studio while whacked out of their heads on crack.'

  He laughs again.

  'What?' she says. Becoming irritated. 'What?'

  He doesn't reply. Clicking rapidly through pages. Concentrating on the TV.

  'Would you look at me while I'm interviewing you?'

  She has his attention.

  He stops, stares at her. The sneer has died away and there's nothing on his face. Eyes are dead.

  'Jesus…' he mutters. Shakes his head, turns back to the TV. Now, however, he stares at the set-up screen, but doesn't do anything.

  'Tell me about Jane,' she says.

  Slight movement of his fingers and he starts witlessly clicking and trawling, before the game sparks to life again.

  'Met her through the lawyer. That's how I first met Caroline. Jane and I were going out. Jane was on High Road. There were stories about her on set, you know, fucking, drug taking, that kind of thing. The usual crap. Fucking press. They love that shit.'

  'You went out with her?'

  'For a while. I mean, like twice or something. It was nothing. She was a fucking space cadet. Introduced me to Caroline. Wasn't happy when we started seeing each other, by the way. Can't blame her…'

  'She sued the press over her stories?'

  'Lost.'

  'Then what?'

  He plays for a few seconds, then glances over. He shrugs.

  'Not sure. She was fucked. No money. Didn't want to ask us 'cause she was fucked off at Lin. And me. She was a fucking fucked-up junkie crack whore. Don't know what happened to her.'

  'What's her name?'

  Another quick glance, this time annoyance mixed with disdain.

  'Fucking Jane,' he says. 'What else are you looking for? Her designation? One of Two, some shit like that, some kind of Star Trek shit?'

  'What was her second name? What name did she use on High Road?'

  He snorts. Knew what she meant.

  'Fucking police,' he mutters.

  He's finished.

  Gostkowski stands in the middle of the room, clutching the photograph of Clayton, and Clayton's wife and Clayton's sister-in-law, the waitress at the Costa across from the police station. The waitress who had spoken to her and Hutton. The waitress about whom she had teased him.

  Then suddenly she's running out the room, reaching for her mobile.

  *

  Clayton stands at the window, watching her leave, DI Gostkowski driving hurriedly back down the long driveway.

  Another fine job under his belt. Another solid performance being someone he isn't. Along the way he has perhaps forgotten who he actually is. Perhaps he doesn't want to know. It'd be pretty lonely being the only one in here. Most people are lonely, or desperate enough to do something about it. That's what he thinks. So he submerges himself in various people and does not think of the contradiction.

  He wasn't pretending to have been dumped by a girlfriend that never existed. He was that person, sitting in pathetic, game-playing loneliness. He was someone who had been dumped by his girlfriend.

  A few years ago it would have made him smile. To carry off something like that with such panache. Now it means little. He watches her go. He doesn't smile.

  Maybe that's why he played the spurned, depressed lover so well. He was tapping into the part of him that had had enough.

  He has things to do, but he's not in any rush. The police won't be back for a while, and it's not like he has to change anything around here before they come.

  He slumps down into the chair in front of the TV and lifts the Xbox handset. Before he restarts the game, he lifts the bottle of Coke, unscrews the lid with one hand and tips the remainder of the warm, flat liquid, small pieces of chewed pizza and all, into his mouth.

  44

  It kicks in some time during the journey. The awakening. The realisation that I'm being an idiot. A fucking idiot, no less.

  When you're guilty, when you've done something you're scared is going to be found out, then you look for it everywhere. Everything reminds you of it. You constantly think you've been caught. Each turn of events seems to be taking you back to that place.

  That's why whenever I heard anything about the war crimes tribunal at the Hague, I was instantly there. I was waiting for my name. And there were many times when I'd be called into the office of the superintendent, and I'd be standing there thinking, fuck, this is it. This is where they tell me that an accusation's been made against me and I'm suspended pending an investigation. And a trial.

  Even after I'd sorted out that stupid arse Leander, when I was called into Connor's office the next day, some part of me still thought, shit, this is it. It's not about Leander, it's about Bosnia. They know. Everyone knows.

  So it was inevitable. When someone attacked me. When someone bit me on the penis. When someone punished me during sex. When someone came after me, when they had stalked me in a café and asked me out, when they had chosen their moment, it seemed obvious. They were getting revenge for what I'd done. They were having their perfectly understandable, their absolutely entitled, vengeance.

  And I was wrong. Because that's not what's happening. If it was, then why wouldn't she just have finished me off there and then, in her bedroom? Maybe she doesn't want any evidence of murder, so she takes me elsewhere. What she wouldn't do, if this was about me, is put me in the back of a van with a group of other people.

  Whatever this is, it's not about me. And it's perfectly obvious what it is about.

  The Plag
ue of Fucking Crows. I looked at the camera, and I said to it, Come and get me. Come and get me, you fuck, if you're man enough.

  Well, she was more than man enough, and I was happy enough and stupid enough to walk into it. Eyes open. Penis erect.

  And now I'm getting what I asked for. I thought it, as I looked at that camera, I thought come on then, bring it the fuck on. Come on! And here I am. Never stood a chance. Never saw it coming. Blinded by lust, blinded by being obsessed with sex.

  The endless, ceaseless search for sex, to prove to myself, to prove to that great watching audience that has followed every grotesquely dull turn of the screw in my life, that I can still do it. That I can get an erection. That I can have sex. It'll never happen again. It'll never let me down again, I will never let anyone down again, as I try to expunge the memories of the time when I let someone down and they died as a result. As if all that sex was doing anyone any fucking good.

  And I knew I'd seen her face. The waitress. But it wasn't in dreams. It was in a photograph on a shelf in Clayton's house. The day he did a runner and Taylor and I got to look through his stuff. Another day investigating the guy and his family, and we would have found out more about him, but we were kicked off the case there and then.

  Still, when I saw her in the café my brain didn't make the connect. Well, it has now. Just a few hours and one desperate fuck too late.

  The Plague of Crows. Fuck, I don't care. I don't care. Fucking crows eating my brains. I don't care. Serves me right, because what I've done is put my wish fulfilment onto my own kidnapping. I wanted it to be about Bosnia, because this was how I would get my absolution. This is what I get for it. I get pain and torture and brutal, bloody death. And no absolution.

  *

  Sat in a small triangle in a wood. It's dark. Late evening, early morning, middle of the night. I can't tell. There's a lamp to the side, casting just enough light for everyone to see what's going on.

  She's cemented our feet and the legs of the chair, just as we saw in the three previous cases. Witnessing it first hand, she's as neat and ordered and organised as we'd assumed the Plague of Crows would be. If I get to come back in a Randall & Hopkirk Deceased kind of situation, I'll be a perfect foil for Taylor.

  Stupid fucking thoughts. I'll be glad when the crows have rid me of them. We should all be glad.

  We? Who the fuck is we?

  Oh God, enough…

  Look at the other two. Terrified, one of them in tears. The woman. The bloke isn't crying yet, but he will be. He looks in pain. Don't know them, but I'd guess the bloke is the social worker. Got the look about him. Annoyingly empathic. If he is the social worker, then he'll have had his hand crushed, same as me. The woman has the look of the journalist about her too, but she ain't looking switched on and sharp and hungry for a story now. She just looks shit-scared. Shit fucking scared. Ha! Fucking journalists. At least the Plague of Crows is doing something useful for society.

  I don't look scared. I know I don't. Because I'm not. I am… alone. Full of sorrow. Flat and empty.

  Flat and empty? Can you be flat and empty? If you're flat, then you have no volume, so how can that also be empty?

  Funny the stupid thoughts that run through your head while they still can. Just before the end.

  'I'm going to take your gags off for a few minutes,' she says unexpectedly. She's standing slightly to the side. Realise that I'd drifted off somewhere and hadn't been paying attention to what she was doing. She has the taser in her hand.

  'You can scream if you like, I don't care. No one will hear you anyway, and as soon as any sound passes your lips that is a clear attempt to attract attention, you will get this. You all know what it feels like, so let's avoid it.'

  She's giving me a slightly resentful look. Don't know why. Don't care. Our mouths are gagged with thick silver tape and she grabs the end of it at the back of my head and unwinds it quickly, before ripping it off, the last pull tugging painfully at my hair.

  I let out a low grunt and my head falls forward. Jesus. Nothing to say. It's just one pain after another. I realise that I'd known the position of our heads wasn't quite right as we'd been sitting there, not yet bound the same as those from past murders. Obviously some way to go in the process.

  She quickly does the same to the other two. The bloke yelps, the woman sobs. The Plague of Crows, wearing thin rubber gloves, sticks the tape together while somehow not getting it stuck to the gloves, and places it in a black plastic bin liner.

  She looks at the three of us in turn. This is the payoff for her. This is the moment when she gets to play God. She has complete dominion throughout, from the moment she zapped us with the taser, right to the crow-feasting end; but this is the moment when God will speak to her desperate, pitiful subjects.

  'You all know what's coming,' she says.

  'Please…' gasps the journalist.

  I close my eyes and bow my head still further, as if closing my eyes is a way to block out the sound.

  I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear the whining and the pleading and the desperation. It never works. It won't work in the woods with the Plague of Crows, just as it didn't work for so many people in the woods of Bosnia.

  'Why?' says the guy, desperately. 'What have we done?'

  'You assholes fucked me up from day one,' she says. Matter of fact. Cold. Not getting into it.

  'What?' he says. 'We can talk about it. Make amends.'

  In the silence that's only punctuated by the sobs from the journalist, I can imagine the Plague of Crows staring at him with utter contempt. My eyes are shut, my head is bowed. I'm not looking. I don't care.

  She's not getting any tears from me. Nothing. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm empty.

  'Let the woman go,' says the bloke.

  How can you appeal to the chivalry in a female killer, you idiot?

  'You?'

  I don't look up, although I know.

  'You!' Voice sharper this time. Don't raise my head. Sinking. I just want to sink. Keep going down until it's all darkness. Dark and cold. And there's nothing left. I don't want there to be anything left.

  I hear the crack and fizz of the taser as she lets it go just to my side. Grabbing my attention as it zings into a tree behind me. Lift my head slowly. It's coming. Death is coming. And pain. Maybe I don't even care if she hits me with that thing again. Yet I've lifted my head.

  'You,' she says again. 'Look at me. Look at me!'

  I'm already looking at her. But I know what she means. My eyes are dead. What's the point of terrorising someone if they're not interested? How can you instil fear into someone when they feel nothing?

  'You invited me in,' she says. 'You looked in the camera. You asked for this. Now look at you. Not so fucking… tough now.'

  I continue to look at her with dead eyes. So bereft of spirit that I'm not even interested in telling her that I couldn't care less about this. Go on. Kill me. Kill the three of us. Go on killing until you've got everyone in Scotland.

  All those things that mattered. Partick Thistle getting into the SPL. Going to see Bob. Cigarettes and alcohol. Perfect, redemptive sex. Italy beating Scotland 2-1 at Hampden in 2007. Archie Gemmill's goal against the Netherlands. Ullapool. Peggy. The kids. Alison and Jean. Stupid politicians. Stupid newspapers. Stupid questions. Arrests, charges, convictions. Getting wasted. Forgetting. Bosnia. Rape. Death. Guilt. Anger. Fear.

  None of it. None of it matters.

  Anyway, I always thought it. Right from the start. It's worse for people watching than the people to whom it's happening. It looks horrific. Sure, you know what's happening to you, but you can't really feel it. You can't feel your brain getting eaten. That's why she does it this way. That's why the victims are arranged like this. So they can watch the others, and know what's happening to them.

  I suppose some people are going to be freaked by that. I just thought, fuck it. Fuck it.

  I thought it, I really did. But not as much as I think it now. And she knows. That'
s why she's angry. I bet she's not usually angry. I bet when she does this she's committed and cold and calculating. Doesn't make mistakes. But this time she's angry. She's angry at me, and she's off her game.

  Maybe she'll make mistakes. Probably will. Won't save me. Won't save these two sad fuckers sitting with me, but it'll allow Taylor to get that bit closer. Close enough to make a difference.

  Do I want to make her angrier? Do I care enough about this to try to throw her off her game? Do I care if she gets caught? Fuck, I'll be dead. Like I give a shit about the rest of society.

  'Sex was good until you ruined it,' I say.

  Suddenly find myself glancing at the social worker. Did she get him into bed too? Bastard. Doesn't look like it.

  I get the back of her hand across my face. Compared to the rest of the pain she's been doling out, this is pretty insubstantial. An angry gut reaction, rather than all the rest of the calculated brutality.

  'Fucking police,' she says.

  I've been holding her gaze for a few moments, but can't any longer. My head drops.

  'Don't you pretend you don't fucking care,' she growls at me.

  'Thought you were someone else,' I say.

  My voice is dead. Has to be disconcerting. I hear a whimper, but it's from the bloke, not the journalist. The journalist has silent tears streaming down her face.

  'What? What? What the fuck does that even mean?'

  I don't look at her. No, I've thought about it. I'm not interested in getting her even more annoyed than she already is. It makes no difference. Yet, my indifference is what will get her more annoyed, whether it's what I'm after or not.

  'Fuck!'

  She screams. That's got to be upsetting to the crows. She turns her back. The other two are watching her as I look up. Two shit-scared people, as well they might be. She has lost control. Because of me. Because of someone who is hitting the exact opposite end of the scale. Someone who has switched off. Someone who is not as impressed as he's supposed to be.