A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller

by Douglas Lindsay

  '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. Connor 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.

  Taylor taps his fingers again. Stares randomly at the desk. I glance around the office. The usual hubbub of noise, of police officers and administrative staff going about their business. Notice Mrs Lownes across the office, on her way to deliver something to the Superintendent.

  'I miss hearing about your sexual exploits,' says Taylor, as if reading my thoughts. 'It's the closest I got to having sex in the last two years.'

  He turns at that and walks away. Shoulders hunched.

  The phone rings. The display indicates that it's DCI Dorritt. I stare at it for a moment, but given that Dorritt is sitting in Taylor's old office, which is no more than fifteen yards away and has glass walls, and therefore he will be watching me as I watch the phone ring, I can't really pretend I'm out of the room.

  37

  After the third Plague of Crows event, the police and local authorities across Scotland implemented a scheme whereby everyone considered to be under threat was issued with a panic bracelet. Yes, a panic bracelet. To be worn at all times.

  They intended doing this after the second batch of killings, but of course, couldn't just go out and order some panic alarms or tags or whatever. They had to go through due process. A consultation to decide the best way to track each member of staff, and then an open competition to find the provider of the service. Can't do anything that's publicly funded without going out to tender.

  All that meant the system wasn't in place by the time the third batch of murders occurred. However, it's now in order. They decided they couldn't track several thousand people on an individual basis, that the only sure fire way to do it was to put an implant in their head or something. Not really practical.

  They considered a panic alarm that you'd have on your key ring or round your neck or something, but they sensibly realised that eventually you're going to forget where it is or what you've done with it or you'll get out of the habit of wearing it or taking it everywhere.

  So they hit on the bracelet idea. You put it on, you never take it off. It contains a tracking device and an inbuilt panic button. So that it won't be constantly set off accidentally, there are two buttons, which have to be pressed in a short sequence of three to set off the alarm. The only way to remove the bracelet is to pull it apart, and if the circle of the bracelet is broken then the alarm is triggered.

  Is anyone happy about this? Fuck, of course they're not. No one likes it. Virtually every officer you meet says he'd prefer to take his chances. It feels like some kind of weird futuristic shit. Fucking Blade Runner kind of shit. No one wants that.

  They reckon it's foolproof, however, which of course means it won't be. Wherever we are, it should be with us, and if we get into trouble, then we call for help. Should we get the opportunity.

  They were so up themselves with the foolproofness of the whole idea, they happily announced what they'd done on TV. Wanted to show Scotland how seriously they were taking it, and how much they were determined to protect their staff. Or, if you wanted to take a different point of view, they wanted to show the Plague of Crows what they were doing, so that the next time he could come prepared.

  If they'd just shut the fuck up about the fucking bracelets, it might be that the Plague of Crows never even noticed. They're pretty cool looking. They're not some clunky 1970's piece of plastic, looking like they came off the set of Blake's 7. They look like they were bought out of a surfing shop, something like that, which no doubt was one of the things that contributed to them costing the government over £550 each.

  But ultimately, that's what this is all about. That's what the government are thinking. They want to be seen to be doing something. Politicians are incapable of taking measures and not telling everyone what they've done. What would be the point in that? What's the point in doing good then the public not knowing anything about it? Being seen to get involved is even more important than getting involved in the first place.

  A lot of muttering that the damn bracelets will stay even once the Plague of Crows is caught; if he's ever caught. They will argue that it's for the well-being of their officers. I doubt it, but at the same time, wouldn't put it past the bastards.

  There was some discussion with the National Union of Journalists about whether all their members in Scotland would be equally tagged, and they came back with a collective fuck off. They probably all want to be the next journalist selected, because they will all have that basic human belief in infallibility and will believe that they'll be the one to escape, and then they'll be the one to break the story.

  Ultimately, they had the choice, so said no. We weren't given the choice.

  For the first few days the bracelet was a pain in the arse. Felt like I had a camera trained on me. Now, of course, I don't care. It's just there. I presume there isn't someone sitting in a massive room somewhere – in India, if anywhere – following my every move, thinking, ah, he's sitting in again tonight, the sad lonely fucker or, ah, I see he's made once again for Glasgow's infamous red light district.

  Same as everybody else, I've stopped caring.

  The one positive of not working full time on the Plague of Crows is that work finishes at a normal time. We're doing twelve-hour days, instead of seventeen or eighteen. The bad part of that is that it shows even more how miserable and empty my life is, because I've got fuck-all to do with the extra time I have in the evening. I want to do something other than sit at home eating a fish supper, drinking vodka and watching crap TV, but I don't know what it is. Anything I think of just makes me feel like some desperate middle-aged loser having some sort of mid-life crisis, and trying to think of something new and worthy to do now that the autumn years of my puff are fast approaching.

  So, instead, I do nothing, and in dark moments tell myself I'm happy doing nothing, and that the reason I don't try to give myself anything more interesting to do is because I'm happy being a fat, slobby useless bastard who hates his job and does fuck-all with himself.

  Last summer, long weeks of climbing hills and sleeping under the clouds and stars, and of hunting food and living in the wild, seems like more than a lifetime ago. I rarely think about it, and I never, ever, wake up dreaming about it.

  The other wild living, the feral living, that I did in a forest nineteen years ago… that still comes to me at night. All the time. And during the day.

  I know I need to face up to it, to look at it, think about it, talk about it, accept responsibility for it, but deep down I just hope to fuck that I die before I have to do any of those things.

  *

  Sitting in Costa. Bad day today. Bad evening ahead. I'm here to hit on the waitress, no other reason. It's time. Time must be running out. Whatever the fuck time is.

  Sometimes I come here because I'm positively trying to drink coffee instead of vodka. Today I feel reckless and depressed and I don't care. I don't care what happens. Tonight is an evening for getting completely hammered, for falling asleep with a kebab in my lap, and waking up at four in the morning in a cold sweat, feeling like complete shit.

  Feeling recklessly horny. So before I go home and get wasted and stupidly drunk, fuck it, I'm going to get laid and if I have to pay for it, then to hell with it,
I'll pay for it, and I'm not going to think about the ways in which I might have to do the paying.

  I asked Constable Grant. That was fate avoidance right there, that's what I'm talking about. Just out and out asked her. Nothing subtle. Do you want to come by my place tonight? She said no. Didn't even feel that she needed to give me an excuse.

  Couldn't blame her. What was I thinking? And I look like death. Nothing attractive about me. Whether there normally is, who knows? Maybe. A certain look of having been places and done stuff. Now I just look tired and old and fat. Three stone heavier than I was last summer, an increase that's showing no sign of abating. That's what being middle-aged does to you, especially when you eat fish suppers, drink vodka and do sod-all exercise.

  'Everything all right for you today?' she says.

  I look up at the waitress, having been staring morosely at the floor. She's smiling. A nice smile. I like that she smiles and that she asks if everything's all right. It's not in her job description. She's not singling me out or anything, I hear her asking all around the shop. Happy in her work. A genuineness and generosity about her that the rest of society could do with picking up on.

  No, really, it could. It's easy enough to see your own faults in others.

  'Pretty miserable,' I say, breaking the conventions of polite conversation.

  'Aw, too bad,' she says. 'What's up?'

  Look up at her. She's holding an empty mug and a plate with muffin crumbs on it, the wax casing twisted neatly at the side. She has a small towel over her arm, as if she's the waiter in an expensive London hotel bar.

  This is the moment to ask. This is the moment to come out with the latest clumsy approach. The latest desperate attempt to get laid; or the desperate attempt to grab the future. And it all just disappears. Whatever it is that it takes, it all vanishes with a snap of the fingers. Seeps out of me, runs out of me, courses out of me, races from me. The confidence, the chutzpah, the desperation, the energy, the desire, the lust. It all goes, leaving behind a wave of suffocating darkness, the kind of sorrow that bleeds you dry, makes you want to collapse to your knees. Vomit. Makes you want to vomit. And give up.