A Plague Of Crows th-2

by Douglas Lindsay

  A Plague Of Crows

  ( Thomas Hutton - 2 )

  Douglas Lindsay

  Douglas Lindsay

  A Plague Of Crows

  Prologue

  They'd probably have viewed things differently if Detective Inspector Leander had kicked the fuck out of me, rather than the other way round. All right, regardless of the outcome of the manly posturing and handbags that it ultimately came down to, I have to hold my hand up, take responsibility for my own actions, and admit that I was banging his wife.

  But surely they would have taken into consideration that he's a workaholic deadbeat loser who had forgotten his wife existed, and that I was only giving her what she deserved… had I not put him in hospital with a fractured jaw, a couple of broken ribs and a punctured lung. And, you know, people make a lot of the punctured lung, but Jesus, lungs get punctured all the time. Guys puncture lungs when they're playing football, and they play on. Break a rib, damned good chance that you'll puncture a lung along with it. God, you've still got another one. How many do you need?

  He decided not to sue me, which is something for which I am apparently to be grateful. Well, I wouldn't have had to puncture his lung if he hadn't cracked a bottle of wine over my head. Good thing he hits like a girl.

  He had seven weeks off sick. That must have been fun around the house, just the two of them. Maggie running after his every need. They must have had some interesting conversations over the breakfast table.

  Under other circumstances I might have felt bad when he confronted me about it. I'm not a completely heartless wanker. I felt some level of guilt about the fact that I was fucking the wife of another guy at the station. But Maggie… if you saw her, you'd know. How could I not? Leander oversnagged. And I mean, seriously oversnagged. I saw a wedding photo of them around the house, and fair enough, on their wedding day they looked kind of natural. Almost like a couple. But over the years he's worked too many hours, suffered too much stress, drunk too much, smoked a few too many God-knows-what, and he's just running to sad middle age; Maggie, on the other hand, is a few years younger, never had kids, works out, doesn't drink, and just keeps getting hotter.

  I doubt I'm the only one. Don't care now, didn't care back then. Whatever, I was the one Leander found out about. We were both in the Whale one night, which was stupid, don't know what I was doing in there drinking with all our lot, and getting worse and worse for it. He asks me if I've shagged his wife. I say no, in the drunk kind of way that pretty much says 'Oh yes!' — but I'm thinking, you know anyway, you sad sack, so it doesn't matter — and then he minces off to a corner to sulk for a while, before coming back and beaning me over the napper with the bottle. Chaos and mayhem ensue.

  Chaos, the whining Nancy boy, ended up in hospital with a punctured lung, while Mayhem got nicked. They weren't really ever going to charge me with anything, but they suspended me until I got help with my issues.

  Fucking issues.

  1

  August

  She hasn't said anything for upwards of ten minutes. I'm the one who's supposed to be talking, although I haven't opened my mouth since I sat down. I've barely looked at her as that just increases the awkwardness. This isn't comfortable for me. I've no idea how she finds it. She's probably used to people clamming up and going all silent movie on her.

  Silent movie? What the fuck? Actors in silent movies didn't sit all sullen and miserable. They overacted like all kinds of shit to compensate for the silence. So I'm not sitting here like I'm in a silent movie, I'm just like everyone else who's been told to go somewhere and who doesn't want to play.

  I'm looking at a picture on the wall. A painting. The top half is red, the bottom half orange. I keep waiting for her to ask me what I think it represents.

  Does she care that I'm not interested in her psycho-drivel, or does she just see it as easy money? She can sit here doing bugger all for an hour and at the end send a bill for four hundred quid to the police.

  I start to wonder if I could be a psychiatrist, and how long the training lasts, and if there are any modules from which they'll make you exempt if you're already a certifiable nutjob.

  Sadly I haven't even been certified as a nutjob. I think someone just wrote pain in the arse on my file and thought that if they suspended me and made me talk to someone I might become less of a pain in the arse. How was that ever going to happen?

  'What do you think it represents?' she says.

  Ha!

  Every week I mean to bring a Psychiatrist Bingo card with me, rather than just the one in my head. My mother. My father. Childhood trauma. Why do you think that is? What do you think it represents?

  Of course, if I was playing actual Psychiatrist Bingo, she'd have to ask me what I was doing, and if I told her then she'd have to ask me what I felt about the fact that I was choosing to do this, and how did I think it impacted on our time together.

  Time to go. I stand up. I contemplate walking out without even looking at her, but I can't stop myself glancing her way. It's a warm day and she's just wearing a light blouse on top. Open at the neck. I look at her breasts. Small, enticing.

  Oh, God… Stop it. Stop doing that thing. It's not about her breasts.

  Enticing, for crying out loud. Get a grip.

  We look at each other for a moment. It feels like she can read my every thought. She knows I've been playing Psychiatrist Bingo, she knows I just glanced at her breasts, and she knows I liked them and immediately chastised myself for looking and for thinking about it.

  Nevertheless, she's wrong about the most fundamental thing. She thinks my time in Bosnia left me with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I like to tell myself that that's the case. I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I don't speak to anyone about it, but if I did, that's what I'd tell them.

  Me and my PTSD. That could be the title of my autobiography. My PTSD And Its Part In My Downfall.

  But I'm lying to myself. The whole time I'm lying, because I don't have PTSD.

  I have guilt. And I have shame.

  I leave, closing the door behind me.

  *

  When I'm in town for the weekly psych sessions, I always go to the gym. I punch a bag for an hour, and take a shower. I'm washing the rest of the week, but this is warm water, rather than a testicle-freezing stream at the bottom of a mountain.

  I punch a bag, I have a shower, I have a hot meal, and then I get the train back down to Tarbet and walk off into the mountains.

  The guys at the station probably think I'm sitting at home, watching sport all day, getting pished and finding myself as many women as possible. But in fact I'm living in a tent, have barely touched alcohol in four months, and spend most of my time wandering the hills and catching dinner. Yep, catching dinner. I can trap, skin and cook a rabbit. That's some ancient fucking skill-set going on right there. When society breaks down, and the infrastructure of the western world collapses, I'm going to be stoked. Everyone else is going to be queuing up for the last box of frozen chicken pieces in Tesco, and stabbing folk in the back to get it, and I'm going to be dining on fresh meat.

  In this modern world, there's probably a name for what I'm doing. Everything's got a name. In my head, however, it doesn't have a name. It's just what I'm doing this week. This month. I doubt it'll last into the winter, although I'm not giving Dr Sutcliffe anything on which she could recommend that I be allowed to return to work.

  I just don't think they should have suspended me in the first place.

  So, I don't know that I'd give what I'm doing a name, as such, but I've lost nearly twenty-five pounds, and I'm marginally less likely to die of a heart attack than I was a few months ago. Off the fags as well. What a fucking loser.

  My mobile rings for the
first time in over two months as the train pulls into Helensburgh station.

  2

  Sitting in the station café waiting for DCI Taylor to get the coffees in. Feeling, as I do most of the time these days, remarkably fresh and healthy. Bright. Sharp as a fucking tack. Haven't had coffee in three weeks, but the boss has come down here for a chat and if I drink water or some sort of fruit smoothie like the twenty-year-old wankers drink, he'll think I've lost it.

  He comes back with two Americanos and parks himself across the table. First time I've seen him in three-and-a-half months. Hasn't changed.

  Of course he hasn't.

  'What's with you?' he says. 'Been to the Med or something?'

  Ah, yes. Got a bit of a tan.

  'Out on the hills every day. Windswept.'

  'You've got a Scottish tan?'

  'Aye.'

  'Fuck me…'

  He shakes his head and looks away. Glances around the café. Checking out the rest of the clientele. I know the look. Making sure there are no journalists. We take a sip of coffee at the same time.

  'You're coming back to work,' he says, before he looks at me.

  Strangely I hadn't expected that. I hadn't given any thought to why he would get on a train to the other side of Glasgow just to come and see me, so this possibility never entered my head. Not sure what else it was likely to have been, though.

  'What if I don't want to?' I say.

  I'm not sure what it is I've been doing the last few months, but I'm not finished.

  'You're still getting paid, aren't you?' he says sharply.

  Very true. I don't need to be living in a tent.

  'You start tomorrow morning at eight. I expect you'll spend the night in bed with God knows who, but wherever you lay your hat, you'll need to get out of there in time to get back to work.'

  Don't immediately say anything. Another drink of coffee, look at the road outside. Traffic and people. I've grown used to the solitude of the hills.

  'Surprised Doctor Sutcliffe thought I was ready,' I say.

  Must have fooled her into thinking I was normal by doing what most blokes would have done. You know, by not saying anything. And staring at her breasts.

  'Sutcliffe thinks you're so fucked up you're practically retarded. You've buried your past deeper than most war criminals bury the bodies, is what she says.'

  Jesus. That didn't take much. Suddenly it's all back there in my head, the thing that I manage not to think about while I'm sitting on a quiet Scottish mountainside, looking out over the hills and lochs, the sea in the distance.

  'So why are you bringing me back?' I ask. Just to keep the conversation going. Don't want to wallow. Wallowing can lead to many things, none of them good.

  'I need you.'

  I stare across the table. Don't know what to say to that. Don't even feel like sarcasm or bursting into some bloody awful romantic song.

  He's got a bag beside him. I'd noticed the bag, what with me being a detective 'n' all. He reaches into it and pulls out an iPad.

  'You been following the news?' he asks, as he keys in the code.

  'In my world, America's still fighting in Vietnam.'

  Seriously, I haven't the faintest idea what's happening in the news. And I like it that way. I've been sitting on the side of hills, staring into space, listening to Bob. Bob's timeless. News doesn't come into it. Occasionally on my trips up to Glasgow I've seen the odd Evening Times billboard, but invariably it'll be some pointless story about the city council or about some Hollywood movie filming in the centre because it so beautifully approximates an apocalyptic war zone without any extra work being done to it, or there'll be a story about some Old Firm player I've never heard of before.

  That's my news.

  He's found what he's looking for, looks up at me.

  'There were three bodies found in a small wood up above Cathkin four days ago.'

  Why is he bringing me this? I don't want to know about bodies in a wood. I've seen enough dead bodies in woods. It might have been a long time ago, but those bodies are still burned in my brain. It wasn't like it happened yesterday. It's like it's still happening, like there's something I could be doing about it.

  'One police officer, one social worker, and a journalist.'

  'One of ours?' I ask. 'The polis?'

  'No. A constable from out Royston way.'

  'The papers get it all?'

  He hesitates. He's looking at a photograph. I'm looking at his face, not trying to see the photograph upside down. I don't want to see the photograph.

  'They got a bit about there being three deaths in mysterious circumstances. One of them was a journalist after all, we could hardly keep it a secret. But the exact details of the murders… no. We've had to do some serious business to keep the lid on. Just making sure they don't go for some human interest angle. The public only ever care when the press want them to.'

  He turns the iPad round. I'm still looking at his face. Finally I lower my eyes.

  The photograph is of a clearing in a wood on a bright morning.

  There are three cadavers in the picture, all sitting upright in a small triangle, facing each other. They have been strapped to wooden chairs, presumably while they were still alive, so that they would remain sitting upright throughout the process of their murder.

  Despite the clarity of the picture, it still takes some deciphering at first glance, especially when I don't know what it is I'm looking at. From the angle that the picture has been taken, two of the faces are visible, the other showing the back of his head to the camera. Blood has run down and dried on the two faces. It's hard to make out what's going on with the other head.

  The most obvious thing about the three victims, yet the thing that takes the longest to decipher, is that each of them has had the top of their skull removed. Cut clean away to reveal the top of the brain. What is visible, however, is not clear. On all three of them, what can be seen is a bloody mess.

  'There are more,' said Taylor.

  I hand the iPad back.

  'Nice job,' I say. 'Bleed to death?'

  'No,' says Taylor. 'The killer did a good job. Very precise. Managed to expose the brain without causing too much bleeding. Any that he did cause, he immediately cauterised with superglue. Knew what he was doing.'

  'Quality,' is all I find myself saying, like I'm a football pundit talking about… fuck I don't know, just not anything that ever happens in Scottish football, that's for sure.

  I look back at the picture, which is now upside down. Having my attention, Taylor turns the iPad round and flicks it onto another frame. It's a close-up of one of the victims. The photograph has been taken from a slightly elevated angle, looking into his face from the front and just a little above.

  The face is dirty with congealed blood. The eyes are missing. The top of the brain is a bloody mess, but there appears to be a lot of it missing too. Weirdly, and this really is fucking weird, the photograph isn't grotesque. Not to me, at this moment. It looks like a damned good special effects job.

  I take a slurp of coffee, start wondering if they have anything decent to eat here. He goes to flick over to the next picture, and this time I push the technology away from me.

  'Don't show me anymore.'

  It's the woods. I don't want to see the woods.

  What's the matter, Numbnuts? Traumatised by Winnie the Pooh when you were a kid?

  He looks at me, then turns back to the iPad. Another glance at a picture or two, then he turns it off and slips it back into his bag.

  I have to ask.

  'What happened to the brains?' The words sound empty. I take some more coffee.

  'Birds ate them. Crows.'

  He glances out the window as he says it, as though he can't look me in the eye while saying something that bizarre. Grotesque. Or maybe he's looking to see if there are any crows outside. I don't follow his gaze. There are usually crows. There are always crows.

  'The guy controlled the crows?' I say. This has got
a bit of life back into me. This is too weird to be real. 'That's like some sort of Steed and, what's her name, Emma Peel, kind of shit.'

  'No, don't think so,' says Taylor. 'It's not the Avengers. He tied the victims up, stuck them out there in the wood, removed the scalp in situ, and then left them to it. Exposed brain. Almost an experiment to see how they'd go. The most obvious way would have been that they'd've bled to death. But as I said, he'd done a good job, made sure that wouldn't happen.'

  'Why didn't they do something? Topple the chairs over, crawl through the wood. Something…'

  'He cemented them into place.'

  'Fuck.'

  'Cemented them into place and left them there. I suppose he took the chance that they could be found and rescued, but as it was, they were found by birds. Glistening live brains proved to be too much of an attraction.'

  'But they wouldn't feel the brain getting eaten, right?'

  'Probably not. They were facing each other. They would have been able to watch as it happened to the other two, and they'd know it was happening to them. Who knows what part of the body went first.'

  'Well, they could watch if their eyes didn't go first. I presume that was the crows too.'

  Taylor nods. I hold his gaze for a moment and then look down at my coffee. Suddenly don't feel so much like drinking. I'd already given up on going back to the fresh air and the solitude of the side of a Scottish mountain, but now that reality strikes firmly home. Back on the job, and at a hundred miles an hour.

  'So I'm cleared by Sutcliffe,' I say.

  He shakes his head.

  'No. You need to go back and see her first thing tomorrow morning.'

  'What?'

  'And you need to talk to her. I don't care what you say, just be… normal.'

  I continue to stare across the table. This is bullying, right? This is new millennium Britain, and he's bullying me into coming back to work when I'm not ready. I could sue him. Right now. I could make a phone call and have a lawyer wedged a foot-and-a-half up Taylor's arsehole before he leaves the café.