A Plague Of Crows th-2

by Douglas Lindsay

  Hands across his face. The usual gesture. However much sleep he got, it wasn't enough.

  'We need to spend at least one more day doing what we did yesterday,' I say. 'Get a feel for the places, the kind of area he might be inclined to use. You must be getting that already. Sure there are hundreds of wooded areas, but then you go to them, and you realise, he's never going to do the kind of thing he does right here. You realise that it must be somewhere else. Then, every now and again you think, wait a minute, this would be perfect.'

  He's staring at me. You can see him almost fighting internally on whether or not he's going to allow himself to be dragged out of his moment of temporary despair.

  'Coffee shop,' I say. 'Thirty minutes, chew the fat of the case, then head off. If nothing else, we get to sit in our respective cars and listen to Bob.'

  Big sigh.

  'Fuck,' he says.

  I stand up.

  'Come on, shift your arse,' I say.

  Not terribly respectful, but you have to judge your moment.

  'Fine,' he says, and he stands and grabs his coat from the back of his chair.

  We walk out together. Since I'm in one of my rare moments of not believing that the entire world revolves around me, I don't presume that everyone is looking at us, thinking, where the fuck are they going now?

  'What you listening to at the moment?' I ask, as we head outside and start walking down the street. Light drizzle in the air. You know, the soaking, horrible kind.

  He doesn't immediately reply.

  'I'm still on a Together Through Life kick,' I say. 'Been listening to it all week.' Of course, he knows that, as he had to listen to it on the way out to Aberfoyle. And back.

  He grunts. Give him a glance.

  'Been listening to Adele,' he says, his voice low.

  What the actual fuck?

  I give him the appropriate look.

  'What the actual fuck?' I say.

  'You just hear it so much. Quite catchy. Thought I'd give it a go.'

  Feel a weird, genuine sense of revulsion. Like cockroaches crawling over my skin. Like finding out your wife's a man. Like Scotland getting beaten 1–0 by Andorra.

  'What? I mean, seriously? You can't listen to that. Jesus.'

  'It's just… you know, bugger off, Sergeant, I can listen to something other than Bob for once. He won't mind.'

  'Fine, listen to something other than Bob, but for God's sake, make it Leonard Cohen or, if you must be populist, Springsteen maybe. But fucking Adele? Seriously. What are you? You're like, fifty-something aren't you? And a man. You're a man in his 50s.'

  'Fuck off, Sergeant.'

  'She's a chav, 'n' all. We'd probably arrest her given the chance.'

  'Sergeant, shut the fuck up,' he says as we reach the café. 'I've been listening to it for a few weeks, but out of respect to you, not when you've been in the car. But you're on warning. Some respect for your senior officer, or I'll play it every time you're in the fucking motor.'

  Holy Jesus. He sits down and I head to the counter to place the order. Don't think it's too much to say that my faith in my fellow man — which was already on a very shaky peg — has just been shafted that little bit more.

  16

  Headed up the Clyde valley, past the garden centres and the old people out for their morning cup of tea. Plenty of available spots out here for your demented killer to murder someone in the woods. This whole section is the kind of area that just makes our task look impossible.

  There are, actually, huge chunks of the country that can be ignored. All those swathes of open farmland and moor with neatly planted forests stuck in the middle. Populated and built up areas. Lots of them. But areas like the Clyde valley, roads snaking up the length of the river, towns and villages and individual homes strung out, patches of wood all over the place. This is the kind of place I'd go for if it was me.

  It happens to me the third patch of wood that I stop beside. Up past Larkhall, to the west of the river. Up a slight hill from the road. Park the car on the verge, still sticking out a little, so turn the hazards on.

  Over the brow of the hill, the wood stretches away far enough that I can't see where it ends, although I've already got a decent idea from the map. Don't know enough about trees to know what we have here. Most of them have shed; there are a few conifers around. It's an old wood, a naturally occurring wood. Almost seems odd that it hasn't been turned into a turnip field or an extraordinary development of four-bedroomed homes for the young professional.

  Head towards what I think will be the middle of it. Away from the noise of the road, a sound that dimmed naturally as soon as I got over the brow of the hill. Looking all around me. A few birds in the trees, a few nests up above, but not yet that cluster of large crows' nests that we're looking for.

  I reach the heart of the forest. It might be further still to the other side, to the border with farmland, but I get to the point where I can't see my way out. The forest isn't too dense, but there's enough of it that the perimeter and what lies beyond is lost. And two things happen.

  Firstly, I get an all-encompassing feeling of utter hopelessness and dejection. What is the point? So, I'm in a wood that the killer might use. There will be others. And even in this wood, I need to trawl through it for the next… what?… fifteen minutes?… half an hour?… working out the most likely spot for the guy to use.

  Then it gets worse. The past comes back, and the past is so much worse than the hopeless present. I don't want to know the past. There should be enough in my life for me to be able to forget it. Enough police work, enough women, enough evenings lost in alcohol. But all those things are like taking ibuprofen for toothache. You can keep it at bay, maybe you can cover it up, but when the painkiller wears off, it's still there. Nagging. Waiting to eat into you, stab at you, to not let you forget that it exists until you've done something about it.

  Except there's no dentist for the past. You can't go and sit in a small room, get an injection in your brain and undo the things that you've done.

  Maybe all you have to do is face up to it. Look yourself in the mirror. Accept what you did. Maybe you have to look someone else in the face and tell them what you did.

  It was me. That fucking awful thing. I didn't just see it. I was supposed to be an impartial observer, I was supposed to be working. But it was more than that. I wasn't just an observer. I became part of the story.

  This wood, this old wood with trees that just happened to grow here for whatever reason, and not because some forestry manager decided they would, this wood takes me back. It shouldn't. It's really not that similar to the forest where it happened. Perhaps it's just because it's natural. Feels natural in a way that so many woods in Scotland don't. So many woods. So many trees. Planted by big companies, or natural woods close to populated areas that end up filled with crap, the detritus of all our lives. Crisp packets and needles and condoms and beer cans and fucking shit.

  This feels natural, like all those woods that are all over Bosnia. Nobody planted them. Of course, worse has happened in those forests in recent years than has ever happened in a small wood up the Clyde valley.

  I end up sitting at the base of a tree, resting my head back against it, staring straight up at the bare branches out at a damp, grey sky. Immediately feel the dampness soak through my trousers, soak my underwear. Just as quickly forget it, ignore it. It doesn't matter.

  Close my eyes. Can feel spots of rain on my face, or drips from the branches above. But I'm lost. Eighteen years ago. Nineteen? A long time, not long enough. I can hear it, see every detail. Every detail. If I could apply that kind of memory and analysis to every other crime scene, I'd be a far better copper than I currently am.

  Hands over my head, bring my head down between my knees. But it's not going away. It's here now, just like it comes every now and again.

  Guilt. Fear. Self-hatred. Shame. What could I have done differently? That's always the question. What could I possibly have done that night that I wouldn'
t be sitting here now in this position?

  Why can't he take me? The guy, this guy, the Plague of Crows guy, why can't he take me? If he's got something against the police, take me. I'd be no one's loss. And it's what I deserve. Strapped to a chair, my head sliced open, picked at by birds. Angry birds.

  Hah! Angry fucking birds.

  End up curled on the forest floor wishing I was dead. Wishing I was dead. Then it could all go away, unless there is a Hell. Unless my mother was right. There's a Hell. And I won't be going there because I used to keep magazines under my pillow when I was fourteen.

  Don't want to do this anymore.

  Not anymore.

  17

  Taylor had headed up over Eaglesham moor. He gets back to the office about ten minutes before me, so that when I get back, having answered the call, he's in position. YouTube on the computer, watching the murder scene. The latest murder scene, the one we've been expecting. Everyone out in the station is going mental, they're on the phone, they're shouting, they're clustered around computer screens. For the time being this will transcend the dicks from Edinburgh. They'll get to it on their own when all the shit has settled down. Or, more to the point, when we find out where these latest poor bastards are.

  'Any chance they're still alive?' I say to Taylor's shoulder.

  He answers with a slight wave of the hand, then points at one of them.

  'This guy's dead already. The other two aren't, but they can't last too much longer.'

  'You spoken to Baird?'

  'No, not long in. Give him a call, will you? He's bound to have watched it.'

  It comes to an end and he immediately clicks back to the start.

  'Any clue to where it is?'

  He snorts.

  'There are trees, a few low hills in the background and the weather's miserable as shite…'

  I watch it through, start to finish, for the first time. As before, there's absolutely no evidence of the person taking the film. They're doing it on a hand-held, walking around the scene, catching it quickly from all angles. Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds in length. One person dead, two people alive, awake and terrified. Wide eyes. The guy got a great shot of a crow pecking into the middle of an open eye, and then withdrawing quickly as if spooked by what it had just done. The last shot before the end of the film is blood running from the eye. An eye with the eyelid pinned back, an eye that can't be closed.

  The noise is just the clamour of the birds. Wings flapping, the occasional squawk as they get in each other's way. There's no sound from the cameraman, not even a muffled footstep or a low breath. No cars to be heard in the distance.

  It's real, but of course you watch it as if you're watching Saw II or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just a film. Given that there's not that much blood, maybe it wouldn't even be an 18. Kids today. Played Call of Duty with Andy one day last year. Fucking hell. Having seen the real thing, I didn't last very long.

  'He posted this from a new account?' I ask.

  'Plague of Crows 2,' says Taylor, and he glances over his shoulder.

  'Maybe he's a Hollywood executive.'

  'You look fucking awful, what happened?'

  In the middle of the woods, with one bar worth of reception, and me lying on the forest floor curled up in the mother of all foetal positions, the phone had rung and dragged me back. Answered in a daze. Got in the car and started driving back without really knowing what I was doing. Finally came out of it somewhere along the last part of the M74. It was only when I'd returned to the station that I noticed the passenger side mirror had been swiped off. There was a note inserted in the socket, squeezed in, so that it hadn't blown off when I'd been hitting eighty-five on the motorway. I had a fleeting moment of thinking that I wouldn't bother contacting the person who had left their name, address and an apology and that I'd just get it fixed myself — or, more than likely, never get it fixed, ever — and then I read the note.

  You was parked in the middle of the fukkin road, you wanker. Ive got you're number.

  And he's calling me the wanker. People wonder why the police beat the shit out of them sometimes, but really. Hopefully he'll come and find me. Well, I'm saying he, but who knows. All we're looking for is someone who doesn't know the arse end of an apostrophe, but that doesn't really narrow it down, does it?

  'Fell over in the woods running back to the car.'

  He looks at me and I look down the front of my jacket and trousers. Not that bad. I don't look like I was curled up in a ball like a fucked-up trauma victim. That wasn't what he meant.

  He doesn't introduce any more awkwardness into proceedings by pushing me on it.

  'Call Baird. Ask if he's got any opinion to offer. Don't bother trying to pin the bastard down. Anything'll do.'

  Back out to my desk. Morrow's walking by.

  'You seen it?' he says.

  'Oh, yes.'

  'Fuck.'

  'Aye.'

  All delivered without breaking stride, and he's off out the door. No idea what he's working on at the moment, but I presume it's not this. Maybe we're all on it until we at least find out where the victims sit, the soft parts of their bodies eaten away by birds.

  As usual Baird answers the phone without actually saying anything. Hello is too many words.

  'You've seen it,' I say.

  'Yes,' he replies abruptly.

  He and Balingol are the two pathologists for our part of town. Joint winners of last year's Miserable Cunt Of The Year award. That's a genuine award, I'm not making it up. And as you can imagine, there was some pretty stiff competition around these parts.

  'Anything to tell us?'

  'I thought you lot had been taken off the case, Sergeant,' he says.

  'It's all hands at the moment.'

  He grunts, then doesn't say anything. He's not one to fill a silence.

  'Any idea how long those two might have lived after that footage was shot?'

  'I knew you people were going to ask that,' he mutters.

  'So you'll have an answer then.'

  'And you know that I can't possibly say.'

  'Ball park?'

  He grunts again.

  'Taking into consideration the level of deterioration you can see in the film, the activity of the birds, what do you think?' I ask.

  'Sergeant, tell your boss… with the blood vessels in the brain, they could have bled to death in five minutes, and if one wasn't hit right away, maybe twenty minutes, half an hour.'

  'Let's call it somewhere between five and twenty minutes, something like that,' I say.

  He grunts. 'I don't think that was exactly what I said.'

  'Thanks.'

  I hang up, no doubt marginally before he does. He doesn't do goodbyes either. I think his dad must've walked out on him when he was a child.

  Go back through to Taylor. He's still watching, leaning forward now, peering closely at the screen.

  'What'd he say?' he asks without moving his eyes.

  'Somewhere between five and twenty minutes.'

  'He said that?'

  I smile. God knows what my face looks like. Smiling. Not in the mood, not in the right place mentally to be smiling at anyone.

  'That's what it boiled down to.'

  'Well, at least we can presume the poor bastards are dead.'

  'You're assuming this was recorded this morning?'

  He shrugs.

  'God knows. We might as well. Whoever these three are, chances are they've not been reported missing yet. This must be recent. Let's not get carried away with the weather similarity, but it was a reasonably bright day yesterday, today it's been pishing down everywhere.'

  'Fair enough.'

  'Right, need you to get an enhancement of the footage. That is one clear-as-fuck, stone-cold beaut of a shot of the terror on that woman's face. Let's see if there's any reflection in her eye.'

  'If there is, that would be a mistake,' I say.

  'And he doesn't make mistakes. Check it anyway.'

  Off b
ack out the door, away to speak to a woman I know.

  18

  Ninety minutes later we're sitting in Taylor's car, heading up the M80 on our way to the murder site. A polis in Perth thought he recognised the hills and went for a look. Found the bodies where the killer had left them, still surrounded by birds. Birds which seemed reluctant to leave despite the presence of the police. In the end, apparently, they killed a couple of them. Better not let that get out to the press. Bird-Killing Cops Disrespect Crime Scene or some shit like that.

  We're listening to Bob, thank God, although Taylor stuck on Saved, which he knows I don't like. Petty. Very petty.

  The boys from Edinburgh have already headed on out to take charge. We oughtn't to be going at all, but Connor called Taylor in and told him to get his arse out there. He's expecting us to blag our way onto the crime scene. Hopefully it'll be the locals who are in charge of securing the perimeter and they won't know to tell us to bugger off. Next time it happens, if there is a next time, the guys from Edinburgh will be ready for us. They'll know that we're still working the case.

  What we're doing now is starting a turf war over investigation rights, but we're not thinking about that at the moment. Just doing what we're told.

  The one positive, and it's a pretty small positive but we're grasping, is that the area was one that we'd marked off as a potential spot when we saw the Whittaker woman in Aberfoyle. We'd been thinking along the right lines, just without the resources to do anything about it.

  If we'd told the Edinburgh boys what we were thinking, would they have done anything? Would they have said good idea chaps, let's crack on? Probably not. Or maybe they've been thinking the same thing.

  Taylor's not talking. Thinking the case through, likely wondering the same thing I am. Will he have left no trace and be gone on his way? Will it be three months before he strikes again? Longer, shorter, exactly to the day?