'Do you think that's wise?'
He makes a small gesture.
'I'll go,' she says.
'You can't.'
'Why? Are you saying that I can't take care of myself while you can?'
He doesn't answer.
'I could make a complaint about that,' she says. 'Discrimination. We don't have other available officers to go, it's inadvisable for you to go given that you've already been named in a lawsuit by Mr Clayton. I have my panic band, if I suspect anything I'll activate it.'
Taylor looks at Hutton's panic band. She follows her eyes.
'The sergeant was probably caught unawares.'
Or drunk. Or asleep. Or naked. She leaves them all unsaid.
'I'll be fine, Sir. I'll let you know as soon as I've spoken to him.'
Taylor nods slowly. Doesn't like it, yet knows it makes some sort of sense. The chances of him getting anything out of Clayton are nil. And if he seemed to get something from him, how would he be able to trust it? Although, that also applied to DI Gostkowski.
Maybe there was just no point in going to see him.
'Aw, bugger it, Stephanie... Be careful.'
'Yes, Sir.'
'I'll go back to Hutton's flat. I foolishly rushed back here because I thought they might be interested. See if I can find anything. After we've done those two things, we need to get back on Clayton's case. I know he's at the heart of it. Where he works, what he does, who he talks to, what happened to his wife, everyone he's slept with, everything...'
'Right,' she says. 'I'll take a quick look at the file, then I'll get over there.'
Taylor settles back in his seat. Takes a deep breath. Looks at the security band, lying on his desk in the middle of the room. The fear grows. The Plague of Crows is still out there. He never caught him, and eventually it was guaranteed to get personal.
'Thanks, Stephanie,' he says, and Gostkowski leaves quickly.
42
The door opens. A door. How can I say the door when I didn't even know there was a door. Obviously there's a door. I'm not outside, I'm not in a cave. There must be a door.
Open my eyes, there's still barely any light. Little illumination from outside the room, although there is some sort of light, the light of night, seeping into the corridor outside.
I can see her outline coming towards me. The last woman I'll ever fuck. The woman who came for revenge. Will she tell me? Will she say what's she doing? Will she let me know about her long search for me, and how she spent so many years waiting for this moment? Will I find out why her face was stored in some remote part of my brain?
I don't care. Won't make any difference to my wretchedness. Won't make any difference if she extends this sorrow. She's planning something. Perhaps she's taking me back. Perhaps I'll be put in a crate and sent to Bosnia.
Perhaps, in fact, this is what I want. To be taken back there. To that exact spot, which is so burned in my head. To face her again, one of those women. Any one of them. A sister, a mother, a granddaughter. Any one of them, if any of them survived. Maybe they're all dead now. Why wouldn't they be dead? What did they have to live for after that?
Fuck. What did I have to live for, and I'm not dead. Not yet.
She's pushing a trolley with a large, low level rack. Something that you would use in a warehouse. She stops next to me, manoeuvres the rack beneath my prone body. I get the feeling I'm attached to something, but I really can't tell. Cannot move an inch, my body expertly bound and strapped.
She removes the blanket. Can hear a slight sound of exertion as she tips the trolley back and lifts me off the ground. Ha! That extra couple of stones in weight is fucking you up darlin'...
Get to the door, she has trouble manoeuvring me through sideways. Bangs my forehead off the door frame. Grunt. Groan. More pain. The pain in my hand has started up again, somehow worse, after I'd been able to get used to it on some sort of level, lying alone in the darkness.
She bangs my head again as she works the trolley out of the back door. Outside now. Feel the cold air on my head. Seem to be wearing clothes, which I hadn't thought about before. I was naked when she attacked me at first, wasn't I? Of course, naked. I was naked, erect.
She stops beside a dark shadow. Large dark shadow. Get a glimpse of a tyre. She's putting me in a van. Taking me somewhere. Hospital? Ha! Still got a fucking stupid sense of humour.
She tips me off the trolley onto the ground. But it's metal. The metal ground. Then a slight humming sound and I'm being raised on a platform at the back of the van. Short trip. Then she's shoving me along the floor of the van until I hit something. Something not particularly solid, and there's a muffled grunt.
A muffled grunt. My head is swirling with confusion. General confusion. All over the place confusion. I'm not alone. Why am I not alone? Who else has she got in here?
I'm being punished for what I did in Bosnia. I know I wasn't alone, but surely those other guys haven't been living in Scotland. That doesn't make sense. They would have stayed on to fight for a Greater Serbia, or whatever the Hell it was they were after. If they had fled, why would they come to Scotland?
My mind is set. Feverish with the pain and the cold and the sweat. Hallucinating. Maybe I'm just hallucinating. Maybe there was no grunt.
Fuck! Just think, man. Think clearly, think straight.
But I don't want to. I want to get out. Get out of here. Not the van. I don't want to get out of the van. I mean life.
And I don't want to know, not really. Suddenly realise that I'm not that bothered who this other person is. Maybe there's more than one. Even so, I'm not interested. This isn't about them. Not now, not this time. This is about me. My part in my downfall. This is about me getting my comeuppance. I don't care about them, I don't care why they're here. I don't even care if I'm imagining it, and they're not even here in the first place.
Another moan. Low. Low groaning. I'm definitely not alone. How many more are there?
Footsteps around the outside of the van, the cab door opening and closing, the growl of the diesel engine, and then we start to move. A slight reverse, and then the van shudders forward and we're off.
I'm not thinking clearly, although I don't think it would make any difference if I was. In my mind we must be heading to the woods. I know that's where we're going, because that's where my last judgement will be.
My last judgement. Fuck's sake.
My head rests against the floor. I need out of here. Out of this life.
43
The darkness seems to be coming early. A grim day. Drab and cold. Gostkowski stands at Clayton's door, ringing the bell. Suddenly wondering what she was thinking. Did they really think that Clayton was guilty? If he wasn't, then there was no point in her being here; if he was, then she'd come on her own to interview a man who had already murdered nine people.
Not thinking straight. Is she suddenly nervous? Are those nerves?
Deep breath. She has to be more worried about tact and diplomacy than about Clayton lurking behind the door with a knife or some other surgical tool.
Clayton answers the door. He's wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Has an air about him that suggests he hasn't showered yet that day, that he's had a day of doing little around the house. Watching television and playing X-Box. Jeremy Kyle and Nazi zombies.
'Mr Clayton,' she says, and she holds out her badge. 'DI Gostkowski. Wonder if I could have a word.'
He stares at her for a moment and then snorts out a slight, rueful laugh. Shakes his head.
'Whatever,' he says. 'You fucking people...'
He stands back to let her in. And she has the impression straight away, an impression so strong that she knows it to be true. This guy has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with the disappearance of Sgt Hutton. Whatever the Plague of Crows does when he spirits people away from their lives, he does not then go and play Call of Duty for several hours. He has the real thing.
He shows her into the sitting room, the room at the front of the hous
e opposite the more business-looking lounge where he'd talked to Hutton and Taylor. The television is paused on a battle game. There is a pizza delivery box at the side of the large gaming chair which is positioned in front of the TV. There is a two-litre bottle of Diet Coke at the side of the chair, lying flat on the floor, top on, nearly empty. If you looked closely enough you'd see pieces of masticated pizza floating in the dark, flat liquid.
He sits in the large chair in the middle of the room, swivels it away from the TV and indicates the sofa for Gostkowski.
Everyone gets depression. Everyone has their day. This is Clayton's day. Not in the mood for playing games with the police, regardless of his guilt or otherwise on any previous crime.
'What?' he says.
In a way, she already has what she's come for. Really, she'd been thinking that if he is the Plague of Crows and if he's in the middle of putting together another crime, then he wouldn't even be home. She'd always known that she'd be making her mind up in the first few seconds.
'Your girlfriend not here?' she asks, perched on the end of the sofa.
He snorts quietly again, makes an ugly movement of his lips.
'She left.'
'Oh. That's too bad.'
A shrug. Another scowl. She wonders if he's been sitting here playing X-Box, eating pizza, since the girlfriend walked out. Has it so utterly ruined him?
'What was it you wanted?' he asks. 'You people can't stay away.'
She stares for a moment and then gets back to her feet.
'I think I've already got what I was coming for,' she says.
He looks at her. Quizzically for a moment and then he shakes his head. Whatever. Doesn't care.
'Sure,' he says.
She looks away. A glance around the room. Feels strange walking in and walking back out. What will she say to the Chief Inspector? That hunch of yours, about Clayton... it's shit. It's not him. Wherever we're going to find Sgt Hutton, it's not down at his place.
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.
DS Hutton Box Set Page 48