He looked one last time at all three of us and then dismissed us with a flick of the hand. Then he added, 'Get out,' as he obviously thought the silence needed filling by a random sentence of futility.
We left.
Heard him having a quiet word with Taylor later on. So, you know, not that quiet a word. 'I'm a reasonable man, Chief Inspector, I realise this is bad luck. Bad timing. Could have happened to any one of us... I'm a reasonable man, I really am, but you have to acknowledge that the shit's hitting the fan on this.'
Wanker.
Shitty, long day. Spoke to Stephanie outside at the cigarette point some time around eleven. I was tired and miserable, feeling haunted. Feeling stupid. I needed my fuck buddy. I needed her to come back to my place. I needed to forget about the shitty, long day. And weirdly, I just presumed she'd feel the same.
'Not tonight,' she said.
'How come?' I said quickly, immediately breaking the terms and conditions. You wait for an explanation, and if none is forthcoming, you leave it at that and accept that your buddy is doing something she doesn't want you to know about it. Such as sleeping. Low maintenance rules the day, and whatever it is, it's none of your business. Move along.
I didn't think I was being high maintenance, but then, no one ever thinks they're being high maintenance. Even the most high maintenance person on the planet thinks that all their actions are justified. If you know your actions are high maintenance and do them anyway, then it means you're probably not high maintenance, you're just doing it out of badness. You're mean, vindictive, spiteful or malevolent maybe. Which is possibly worse, although I'm not sure.
'Just... not tonight,' she said. Sounded tired, which was natural, but in those few words I detected unease at being questioned on it, so I attempted to make a tactical withdrawal. It's hard, though, once the initial burst of high maintenanceness is out there.
'Sorry, fair enough,' I said.
I didn't immediately stub out my fag and head back into the office, as that would have looked like I was throwing my teddy into all kinds of corners, so we stood there, smoking in silence, an awkwardness around us that hadn't been there before. Eventually she finished her smoke, pressed the stub into the metal ash tray attached to the railing like a good little soldier, nodded vaguely in my direction and went back inside. Didn't see her again.
So now it's one-thirty in the morning and I'm tired and miserable but my head's still buzzing, and there's something there, something right in the middle yet way out of reach, something that I saw today that's saying Me! Me! Look at me! but I just can't pin down what it is and it's driving me nuts and filling me with an ugly, spirit-sapping uneasy feeling, and I'm thinking about forests and all the things I've done that I shouldn't have and I'd presumed I'd have company and I don't, so instead of wildly fucking DI Gostkowski, I'm trawling through the internet looking for some decent porn, and having been here many times before, it's not like I don't know where to look. I've got Bob playing loud, you know those mid-sixties numbers that sound raunchy and laid back and hedonistic, Temporary Like Achilles, that kind of thing, that sound like he was getting sucked off while he was singing. Tonight, however, in the words of the blessed Saint Mick, I can't get no satisfaction.
Blessed Saint Mick. I'm such a stupid fucker.
March
35
Sitting in a school in Rutherglen. The headmaster's office. Called out after a teacher attacked a pupil. A bare-handed job, smacking the kid about the head. The kid fought back. The teacher ended up really laying into him, kicking him repeatedly. All in front of an English class, half of them horrified, the other half training their phones on the action and probably uploading onto Facebook simultaneously.
Badly hung over. Me, not the teacher. Again. Third morning in a row. Late for work today, and I could tell DCI Dorritt was annoyed. Can see I'm getting lax. Haven't made any mistakes yet, just managing to keep ahead of the game, but he's poised with his arse-kicking for when it happens.
And I ought to learn. Going to bed at three in the morning completely hammered out of my face isn't stopping me from waking up a couple of hours later, the image of those women in the forest in my head, the sound of their screams in the air. The silence of the woods with no birds and no insects. The silence that is always shattered by their screams. Their screams that become my screams.
Why am I screaming? Why do I always wake up screaming? Nothing bad is happening to me.
I can believe that if I concentrate hard enough. Nothing bad is happening to me. They can scream. The women can scream. They're dead now. All of them. Are they dead? What the fuck do I know? I just hope they're dead, that's all, because sometimes I can tell myself that I don't have to feel so bad anymore if there's no one left who I hurt.
It doesn't really work like that.
He's not talking. The teacher's not talking. His career is over. The press will get hold of this one. The press love this kind of shit. Teacher assaulting a pupil.
Morrow and I have spoken to most of the pupils in the class, although one or two of them said they were too upset to talk. They sat there blubbing. I have utter contempt for them. The minute our backs were turned, you can bet they were filming each other blubbing. They were filming themselves being professionally upset, so they could put that online.
This is me being upset.
My part in the Downfall of Mr Gower.
I'm going to need counselling. The school haven't offered any counselling yet. It's, like, so annoying.
It's a disgrace. And shit.
Pretty clear from those pupils willing to offer up their version of events, that while they were mostly supportive of the pupil who got a kicking, the little bastard deserved it. Had it coming for months.
This is what happens when you instruct teachers that they have to enforce discipline by engaging their pupils in dialogue. Now, I know walloping kids isn't really the way forward and is definitely off the agenda in these enlightened times. But in its place you have to have respect, because if you don't, then it doesn't work. And, at the same time as getting rid of an effective method of disciplining children, we've also allowed a society to develop where no one has any respect. For anything.
I blame Bob Dylan.
It's been coming since the sixties, and it's just getting worse and worse. Adults have no respect, kids grow up thinking that they don't really need to respect authority because adults don't, and so they do what they want. In schools it's particularly hard for those teachers who spent some years back in the good old days when you could physically enforce discipline. You could make kids listen to you.
What can you do now?
Once again I'm complaining, but I don't have an answer. Society had to slowly ease discipline out of the way, while maintaining a sense of respect. Too late now. Much too late. And it certainly is for the likes of Mr Gower who just finally snapped and beat the shit out of a fifteen-year-old who had it coming.
The boy's mates all had him pegged as some kind of angel, who spent most of his spare time helping disabled children go to the seaside. Reading between the lines, however – those being the lines that say he'd been suspended six times from the school, and had been reported for abusive and unruly behaviour by every single one of his teachers – one gets the impression that if he was an angel of any sort, it was Lucifer.
I'm sitting in the head's office. The teacher is in another room, watched over by a couple of our guys. I see it as some kind of suicide watch. This bloke, this poor middle-aged, middle-class fucker, isn't going to see out the week. A career teacher, and now that career is down the toilet. He faces disgrace, unemployment and, more than likely, prison.
The kid's been taken to hospital, although he was beaten up by an old duffer who'd never swung a punch in his puff, so the chances that he was seriously hurt are pretty low. The kid's stepdad has gone with him. You might think the mum would go with him, but the mum stayed behind so that she could sit in this room with the headmaster, the union rep and the inves
tigating police officer.
Holy fuck.
'I knew something like this was going to happen,' she's saying. 'Fucking knew it, by the way, I says to Michael, I says to him, fucking knew it.'
She's directing her wrath at the headmaster, rather than the presiding police officer. She had been talking to me at the beginning, but I think the fact that I look like a complete sack of sunken shit has put her off. Realises she's not getting anything from me and so is completely ignoring my presence. The headmaster, on the other hand, rather looks like he'd appreciate some support.
'Where's that bastard now?' she says.
Now I would say that the bastard was currently in hospital having his injuries treated, but I don't think she was referring to that specific bastard.
'Mr Gower is in police custody and will be processed accordingly, Mrs Grantham. All we can...'
'I pure want to see him,' she says. 'I'm like that, I'm like that to Michael, they better let me see that cunt. Hitting a defenceless kid. I'll fucking see him off, see how he likes that.'
The headmaster looks at me. I take a deep breath and turn to the aggrieved mother. I would honestly rather someone was poking me in the eye with a chopstick.
'You are not going to see the accused, Mrs...'
'Accused! How many fucking witnesses do youse need?'
'He'll be taken back to the station, he'll be processed, and a decision will be taken on whether or not he's to be charged.'
'Whether or not he's charged?' She looks wonderfully red-faced and incandescent with anger. You know that way Penelope Cruz gets in movies when she gets all feisty and angry and starts shouting, full of Mediterranean passion and flair? Absolutely nothing like that. 'Fuck...' she says, because she seems to be having trouble articulating. She rises out of her chair. 'Are you... are you fucking with my... fuck?'
'Sit down, Mrs Grantham. Calm down.'
Are you fucking with my fuck? Nice. I think I might start using that one myself.
'Calm down? Has your son just had the fuck kicked out him? Well, has he?'
No, I think. But then, my son isn't a disruptive, horrible little piece of fucking shit either. I don't answer the question. She gives me the best Glasgow evils for a second or two, then turns to the headmaster to utter the words that any self-respecting, entitled bastard will utter in this day and age.
'See when my lawyer's finished with youse, I'm going to be loaded, and youse lot are all going to be out of jobs. You're shite the lot of you.'
Yes, madam, parents suing the education system is the way forward. It's weird that the government just doesn't plain encourage it.
36
The Plague of Crows is having fun. Enjoys the work. Likes a challenge. It had felt as though the police got a little too close in January, maybe there'd been a few too many chances taken, so this time the Crow will retreat a little. Go back to basics. Nothing too fancy. No live webcam. A simple, straightforward crime, much as had been perpetrated the previous August.
A social worker. A journalist. A police officer. Drawing up the shortlist had been time consuming, but entertaining, as usual. So many to choose from. Well, perhaps that had been the case with the social worker and the journalist. Not with the police officer, however. The police officer had been asking for it. The police officer had looked in the camera and had said, come and get me. The police officer had called out to the Plague of Crows, and the Plague of Crows was coming to get him.
BACK AT THE STATION, the teacher downstairs. The media have arrived. They love a good beating in school. They can say that it's barbaric and Victorian. They can revel in it. They can be happy. I hate them all. It's because of people like them that the likes of Clayton even exist, that he can play the sport of manipulation.
They all know that the pupil pretty much got what was coming to him – if perhaps a little heavy handedly – yet they have come to execute the teacher. He will be the symbol of authority, the pupil will be the working class hero. No good will come of it.
On finding out the level of media interest, Superintendent Connor immediately put DCI Dorritt on the case, to show how seriously we were taking it. And, of course, to make sure that I didn't get on TV, given that I look like three kinds of shit.
Sitting at my desk, getting the paperwork in order, typing up some notes on the case to hand over to Dorritt. He and I don't really get along so well. It's because I'm normal, and he's a total douchebag. Something like that. Anyway, typing up the notes will allow me to limit how much I have to speak to him.
'How was the school?'
Look up. Taylor's walking by. Slowly. In no rush to get anywhere, which is pretty much how he's been since we were removed from the Plague of Crows. It was like the whole thing with Clayton just sunk the careers of me, Taylor and Gostkowski overnight.
I presumed Taylor would continue to work on the case, even though he was ordered off it. I wonder if Connor thought the same. But no, Taylor stepped away. Completely. Realised what it was doing to him and turned his back. Killed him, though. It might have been a release for some, but not Taylor.
Inspector Gostkowski seemed to take it in her stride. She was taken off the case and given other jobs to work on and she went off to do that. Haven't spoken to her about it, but wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't thought about the Plague of Crows since then. That's who she is. She applies herself with the utmost diligence to the task at hand.
Another casualty of the Clayton fiasco was that great fuck buddy relationship we had going on. Didn't want to know me after that, as if being with me reminded her of that time when her career got completely shafted.
Maybe she blamed me. It was me who interviewed him in the first place. It was me who decided that out of all the people I'd talked to, he was the one. It was me who had her going off checking on Clayton's wife and then at Clayton's golf club, and had me and Taylor turning up at his house, to his obvious delight.
I believe I might have asked her for sex four more times after that first time she rejected me. She refused every time, and then finally said, 'Sergeant, it's over,' just to make sure I got the message.
I wasn't supposed to be upset, we'd just been fuck buddies after all, that's the point. So that night I nailed a hooker. She charged twenty-five pounds. I gave her thirty.
Gostkowski and I have had one case together, which we handled professionally enough. The case itself did not work out satisfactorily, but at least we didn't end up in some bitch fight.
Been thinking a lot about the waitress in Costa. The one Gostkowski made me picture naked. I've pretty much had that image in my head ever since. She seems like a good bet.
Asked her back to my place once, with little aforethought. She was pretty fucking cool, I have to say. Didn't say yes, didn't give me an outright no. Might, she said. Maybe.
That was it. I've been thinking about her naked a lot more since then, but trying not to go in there every night, because now when I see her it feels like there's some expectation. Is she looking for me to ask? And that kind of uncertainty makes me feel like a teenager, and who the fuck wants to feel like that?
Something's going to happen though. It has to.
'It was shit,' I say. 'A mess. If we just let teachers whack the shit out of the little bastards when they first caused trouble, this kind of thing wouldn't happen. Of course, the teacher's going to be the bad guy.'
'He thrashed the fuck out of a fifteen-year-old, Sergeant,' says Taylor.
'Yes, he did,' I reply. 'But in the same way that some twenty-one-year-old gets into trouble for knobbing a fifteen-year-old, when the girl has already got fake breasts and looks older than he does... things are not always as straightforward as the facts would make you think.'
'Aye, great analogy, Sergeant. I dare you to take that one on to Loose Women.'
He starts to turn away. Looks fed up, as he does all the time at the moment.
'What have you got on?' I ask.
Me and Taylor haven't worked directly together since January. Con
nor is keeping us apart, as if the combination of the two of us will bring down the entire station with our collective stupidity. He's just waiting for the court case, wherein Mr Clayton is attempting to suck £1.3m from the public purse, and then, if we lose, Taylor and I might well be finding ourselves out of a job.
Might celebrate then. Not sure.
'Attempted murder,' says Taylor, 'with an added bigotry ingredient. Can't get enough of them.'
'And the other thing?'
The other thing is code. Nice, eh? No one is going to have the faintest idea what we're talking about.
'The other thing, Sergeant,' he says, 'is finished. At least, I'm finished. I'm not going back there, and when the Plague of Crows strikes again, it isn't going to be my problem.'
Nod. Look miserably at the floor. The Plague of Crows took three more victims, fucking up me, Taylor and Gostkowski along his merry way. Maybe Gostkowski doesn't think of herself as a victim, but let's see how long she has to wait for her next shout at promotion.
He loiters. Taps his fingers on the end of my desk. Nothing much else to say. We used to hang out. We used to go to the pub. Don't anymore. It was an odd relationship, I suppose, not friends as such, what with him being the boss. But really, that's what we were. That's what we are. Friends. But now we're not working together anymore, we never go to the pub. Neither of us will take the time to say, 'Pub?' so that the other one can say, 'Aye, all right.'
We used to go there to talk about work, and would end up talking about everything else.
'You ever speak to Montgomery about it?' I ask.
'No, I haven't,' he says.
I nod. I can imagine it'd be pretty difficult.
'Whenever you see one of them walking about the station, do you get the feeling they're looking at us? You know, like we're shit.'
'Aye. That might be because we've got a chip on our shoulder, but whatever it is, aye, feel it every damn time.'
Montgomery and his crew still haven't moved on, although they must be close. There isn't a lot of point in them being here as opposed to back at their own ranch, but this case is his nemesis – and we all know about that – and it's as though he feels he needs to stay here until it's solved. I've no idea what kind of behind-the-scenes manoeuvres have taken place to try to facilitate it or whether there've been any discussions on whether he should be replaced. What I do know is that three weeks ago there was a sympathetic lifestyle piece on Montgomery in the Saturday edition of the Scotsman. It was entitled something along the lines of The Tortured Copper. Fuck me. And that was the paper that in January printed a front page photo of him under the headline Always The Last To Crow.
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