Hunting for Crows

by Iain Cameron

  ‘I do, but I want to make the point perfectly plain as I don’t want this story coming back and biting me on the rear with headlines about wasting police resources. Do what you need to do, but keep it low key. That’s an order.’

  SIXTEEN

  Derek Crow returned to his office, his face sullen and his mood sour. He called a special meeting of his IT people to discuss his concerns about computer hacking. Instead of filling him with confidence at his company’s ability to withstand malicious data intruders, they left him with a feeling of helplessness at their lack of assurance at being able to stop anything but an out-and-out amateur.

  A few days back, he had attended a conference where the main speaker, a professor in cyber crime and hacking at Bristol University, made it clear the number of attacks zipping into government agency computers had reached an unprecedented rate, something the previous administration failed to mention. The principal targets were the Ministry of Defence and GCHQ, the Government’s secret listening post in Cheltenham, with less intensive but nevertheless damaging attacks aimed at many large commercial organisations.

  It wasn’t an area where he could profess any special knowledge, as his inability to keep up with conversations in the last meeting demonstrated, but he also knew responding with a knee-jerk reaction and throwing a shed load of money at the problem was not the answer either. He needed time to think and listen to the opinions of experts, but he had to do something, as he didn’t want to be the one standing up in front of the press when his IT systems went up the spout.

  The phone rang. It was his secretary.

  ‘Mr Crow, I have a Mrs Emily Grant on the line.’

  All thoughts of insidious hacker emails and the security of the tanker and parcel business IT systems evaporated like a petrol spill on a hot summer’s day at the mention of Emily’s name.

  ‘Derek?’

  ‘Hello, Emily. It’s been a while since I last heard your voice. Much too long in fact.’

  ‘You’re right, it is. So how are you keeping? How’s your wife and family?’

  ‘We’re all well. Edward, the nine-year-old from Hayley’s first marriage, took a long time to accept me but the little one, Nathan, is a diamond and always full of smiles. How are Danielle and Graham?’

  Derek Crow had known Emily Grant for almost thirty years, since Peter Grant introduced her to him and the guys in the Crazy Crows all those years ago. They talked families for a few minutes, but he knew most of it, as he talked to Pete at least once a week. When Pete and Emily first split up, he worried in case his name was brought up during divorce proceedings, as things like this could be embarrassing to him and the PM, now that he was considered a public figure and a free target for the tabloid press. It hadn’t been, and he knew then as he did now, Emily could be discreet even when at her most vulnerable.

  ‘The reason I called you, Derek, is to pass on some sad news.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pete’s dead.’

  ‘What!’ He held the handset at arm’s length, staring at it, as if it was the telephone’s fault. If it wasn’t Emily on the line, he would probably have smashed it against the desk until it shattered into a thousand plastic fragments.

  ‘Derek, are you there? Are you all right?’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. The trade unions often said he was a tough bastard for the way he called their bluff when they threatened to go out on strike last month, but now on hearing of the death of his friend, tears tumbled down his cheeks.

  ‘How did he die?’ he said after a few moments.

  He listened as she recounted the heavy barbell, the gym, the drugs in his system, the booze.

  ‘So, what they’re saying is he died because his judgement was impaired by booze and drugs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. I’ve seen Pete go into the gym in every state you can imagine, from stone-cold sober to blind drunk and I’ve never seen him make a mistake like this.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Ten minutes later, he put the phone down; it took another five for the news to fully sink in. In fact, he had such trouble believing the words Emily had said, he researched the story on the web and when it was displayed there in front of him on the screen, he could no longer ignore it. He had loved the man like a brother; the phone conversations, the dinners in London and the hearty reunions they held in some posh hotel in Shropshire or Dorset when they got so pissed they had to help one another up the stairs.

  Pete was dead, killed by the bloody thing that was supposed to keep him fit and healthy well into old age. He buried his head in his hands and wept tears of sorrow for a good friend. Almost without bidding, his brain began running through a slideshow of concerts, radio interviews, rehearsals and wild, drunken parties, all the things they’d experienced together.

  He wiped his face, picked up the phone, instructed his secretary to cancel all meetings for the rest of the day and closed the office door. He needed time to get over the terrible news, but he could also see, clear as day, what the implications might be. First Barry, now Pete. It had to be him next.

  In the space of a month, he had lost a brother and a good friend, but try as he may, he could see nothing to connect their deaths other than they were both members of the Crazy Crows and friends with him.

  He reached for the phone and dialled a number from memory.

  ‘Hello,’ a gruff voice said. ‘Bill Paterson.’

  ‘Bill, it’s Derek Crow.’

  ‘Hello there Derek, how are you? Don’t answer, I saw your mug in The Mirror the other day, in the company of your young lady and if you don’t mind me saying, you looked like the cat that had supped all the cream.’

  ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere.’

  ‘True, but what would I do with it at my age? So Derek, what can I do for you?’

  Chief Inspector Bill Paterson used to work for the Metropolitan Police, where he specialised in vice and sleaze, and spent the years before his retirement lining up clients for his new business venture as a private investigator for harassed senior executives. Derek explained about the deaths of Barry and Pete and his concern that his former band members were dropping as fast as a groupie’s knickers.

  ‘You have my deepest sympathies Derek, and if I can offer a crumb of comfort, I’ll say that any copper who believes in coincidence has never solved a bloody crime in his life.’

  ‘So you think the deaths might be connected?’

  ‘I obviously couldn’t comment further without seeing some evidence, but off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of other ways of looking at this.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Granted I don't know much about your band, but I know many bands at the time led what might be called boisterous lifestyles with drugs, women, booze and all the rest. I’m thinking the guys might have died from the drugs they once took, you know, it might have weakened their hearts or given them diseased livers or something. Then, there’s the sexually transmitted diseases picked up from some tart, or a tropical disease copped on a foreign tour and you know, some of them can lie dormant for years. In Peter Grant’s case, his accident might have resulted from weakened shoulder muscles, his years of drumming catching up with him.’

  ‘Bloody hell, I didn’t think of any of this. It makes perfect sense.’

  ‘I’m only chewing the fat, Derek, trying to give you something else to think about. I’m not saying any of this stuff is the answer to what you’re looking for, and I won’t know any different unless I take a closer look.’

  ‘I know Bill, I know, but you hear of businessmen dying when they get bitten by spiders when travelling to the Far East or South America and people getting infected with diseases that lay undetected for years until one day they suddenly drop dead. I didn’t think along those lines.’

  ‘That’s the reason you became a successful businessman and I became a copper.’

  ‘If we take this a stage further, my turn to chew the fat if you like, what if someo
ne has cast a spell and is hitting us with some bad karma?’

  Paterson laughed. ‘I’ve known a lot of tarts from Jamaica who practiced this voodoo stuff, or went to see a witch doctor when they felt ill, you know?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But I never saw anything to convince me it worked. In my mind, these so-called witch doctors were just a bunch of charlatans who only did it for the money and to have sex with the girls, and my view on this score hasn’t changed.’

  Derek smiled. Bill Paterson might have left the streets of London, but the streets of London had never left him.

  ‘The reason I mention it,’ he said, ‘is I went through a phase in the late eighties when I only wore black clothes and hung a big metal cross around my neck. In combination with one or two of our songs with devil and occult references, it attracted a few crazies to our concerts. One time, we went back to our rooms and found four Hare Krishna characters camped outside in the corridor praying for our blackened souls.’

  ‘Ha, I can believe it with them.’

  ‘Bill, can you do me a favour?’

  ‘Name it Derek, but it'll cost you. As you know, I’m no longer funded by the great British taxpayer.’

  ‘I know this might sound a bit daft, but could you take a look at the deaths of Pete and my brother Barry and tell me, in your considered opinion, if it looks like both guys genuinely died in accidents?’

  ‘I could Derek, but I’ll tell you now, I think you’d be wasting your money.’

  ‘What, you’re telling me your former colleagues don’t make mistakes?’

  ‘Sure they do, but as much as I criticise modern policing, I do think cases like these are meat and drink to the average Bobby, and any investigation of this nature would be done by the book. They don’t often get stuff like this wrong.’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying, but it would make me feel a lot better. At least I’d know whatever the problem might be, it doesn’t lie there.’

  ‘Let me see what I can do.’ He paused for a couple of seconds and Derek could hear heavy breathing down the phone, perhaps a legacy of Paterson’s time in Vice or his high cigarette intake.

  ‘I might still know a few friendly faces down in Sussex, and maybe I can get a swatch at the Accident Reports. I’ll visit the loci and talk to some of the witnesses. How does that sound?’

  SEVENTEEN

  Eric Hannah attempted to make his way to the back of the shop without being seen. Despite his best efforts, clothes hangers started rocking in his wake and he grabbed a large cardboard cut-out of a topless bloke wearing tight jeans before it could fall and damage his well-developed pecs or scratch his bronze-toned skin.

  Even with some major impediments blocking their view, such as tall clothes stands, in-your-face ‘sale’ cards and a couple of concrete pillars, his two staff members spotted him, as the shop was quiet and they were both standing around chatting.

  ‘Good morning, Eric. How are you this morning?’

  ‘Morning Fran, I’m fine. How are you? Morning Cassie.’

  He made it to the sanctity of his untidy office without being buttonholed by either of his two assistants with their never ending list of issues and problems; he didn’t want to talk to them as he was unshaven and stank of booze and garlic. It didn’t pass muster as a good look for the owner of a gents’ clothes shop and he didn’t need to give his well-togged underlings anything else to gossip about. He slammed the office door shut, took off his jacket and slumped into the seat.

  He sat back with his eyes closed, and moments later, an arm snaked out and felt for the large latte, bought from a coffee shop two doors along. Fingers tapped their way up to the lid and removed it. The hand then moved down the desk, opened a drawer and fumbled inside for paracetamol. Two were gulped down in rapid succession followed by a large glug of coffee made from the finest Columbian beans, harvested at the optimal moment by local farmers and brewed to perfection by a highly trained Italian barista. He bought one every day to give his non-morning body a boost, but in the dank, swampland of his mouth, the fine coffee tasted bitter and metallic and couldn’t penetrate the deep cave where his hangover lurked.

  Last night was bad. In fact most nights these last few months were bad. These were not the guilty feelings of the remorseful hangover victim, as he was well used to its corrosive effects and the negative impact it had on his moods, but his life was in a rut and he didn’t know how to get out of it.

  Most evenings he would head down to his local in Farnham, The Horse & Groom, and team up with a few regulars. From there, they would go to a curry house or a Chinese restaurant and afterwards, end up back at someone’s house and raid the booze cabinet. Night after night it seemed a good idea at the time, but it left him with a physical pain which nagged in his side and an emotional pain at the emptiness which refused to go away.

  Last night might have improved if the barmaid at The Horse & Groom had joined them for a curry, but she was a smart kid and refused because she knew what he was like. Instead, he’d shared onion bhajis, chicken dalfrezi and enough rice to feed two families with a bunch of hard core losers: a redundant banker, an alcoholic window cleaner and a crooked car dealer.

  On such occasions, his return to the marital bed in the wee small hours might often be rounded off with a third-degree grilling and a nasty slanging match, but these last few weeks she’d been giving him the silent, cold-back treatment. A clear indication his good lady didn’t give a toss anymore.

  Suzy, Mrs Hannah number three, was fast becoming a royal pain in the arse. They were married after a whirlwind romance and it was followed by a fantastic honeymoon on the Caribbean island of Antigua, fuelled by copious amounts of sex, the best ganja he could find, and a valiant attempt to drink every rum-based cocktail ever made. It created a spark to re-ignite the Soufriere volcano on nearby Montserrat, but they’d left it behind in the sand of Hermitage Bay and nothing said or done since had even come close.

  Her list of complaints loomed almost as large as the shopping list she tacked on the kitchen wall. She didn’t like him drinking, didn’t like sex, didn’t like the way he dealt with his children, didn’t like being left short of money, blah, blah, blah. She was twenty years his junior and could easily start again if they divorced, but what about him? A few weeks back he’d turned fifty-three. The suggestive charm and boyish good looks, once responsible for removing the pants from seven different women in one riotous weekend, faded with each shower, shave and broken night’s sleep, the result of a nagging bladder filled with too much beer and a stomach irritated by high doses of turmeric and monosodium glutamate.

  By eleven, more caffeine and additional painkillers were beginning to make inroads into his debilitated condition, so much so, he made a momentous decision. Today would be the day he would start to make positive changes to his life. The source of his malaise was this damn clothes business; he felt manacled to the office and weighed down by the paperwork, the moaning staff and a business that no longer inspired him.

  If having once played in a rock band had taught him anything, it was that he was better suited to owning a small bar in Jamaica than forever tied to a Farnham shop selling jeans and t-shirts. When Suzy was out of the way, he decided he would sell the house and business and use the money and the stash he had hidden away, safe from the grasping hands of his free-spending wife, and move to the Caribbean.

  Without much enthusiasm, he reached for a pile of invoices, all requiring his approval, but as he tried to focus red-veined eyes on the first, the phone rang.

  ‘Hello Eric.’

  ‘I would recognise your animalistic growl anywhere. Derek Crow my man. How’s life treating you?’

  ‘I’m fine mate, how about you?’

  ‘Nothing a new liver and a new woman couldn’t fix but fuck, what do I have to complain about? Listen man, I haven’t heard from you for ages but you’re in the paper just about every bloody day, you and Mr Soundbite.’

  ‘Who, Rob McNaughton?’

&nbs
p; ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who calls him that?’

  ‘Me, I just made it up.’

  ‘Christ, it seems like some of your brain cells are still working. Take it easy mate, you could hurt yourself.’

  ‘Ha, chance would be a fine thing.’

  ‘I mean, nobody took a blind bit of notice of me before Rob became Prime Minister and back then I spent just as much time with him as I do now. Such is life. So, how’s business?’

  ‘Ach, its all hunky dory, you know.’

  ‘You can’t catch me out, that’s another one of your bloody album titles, is it not? Don’t tell me…. Yeah, David Bowie.’

  ‘Very sharp Derek, my man, I can’t sneak one past you. There’s no need to ask you how your business is doing, as all I need to do is look in the paper and there you are, jabbering on about what another fine year you’re having, blah, blah blah.’

  ‘There’s no secrets nowadays. Listen mate, the reason I called was to find out how you are–’

  ‘Stop worrying, I’m fine. What’s the sudden concern for my health? D’you know something I don’t?’

  ‘Eric, read the fucking papers. We lost Barry and now we’ve lost Pete. Schoolboy logic says it’s either you or me next.’

  ‘Whaaat? Don’t be daft man. Pete’s death was an accident with all those bloody weights he liked playing with, and you know Barry, he would help any animal in distress. Where’s the connection? At a push, someone might call it, I don’t know, a suicide pact or something, but knowing the guys as we both do, no fucking chance.’

  ‘I agree on that score, but don’t you see?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Somebody’s fingering the band, Eric. Somebody out there has put a curse on us.’

  Fucking hell. The great Derek Crow’s gone gaga, he never thought he’d see the day.

  ‘What do you mean, like witches, spells and mixing potions around a fire in the woods? What a load of phoney baloney. If you ask me, Derek, you’ve been spending too much time reading Harry Potter to those kids of yours.’