A Plague Of Crows th-2

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Sir,' he says, reigning back the tone, 'can you explain to me how he got the bracelet off?'

  Connor stares across the desk. He doesn't look at Montgomery, as he has fallen so far back into the pits of insecurity that he can't stand to be undermined any further.

  'I don't know,' he says. 'Butter?'

  Taylor stares disdainfully across the desk. Look at the bracelet, he thinks. Look at your stupid, fucking bracelet you pathetic, ignorant fuck. It's tight around your wrist. Butter, for crying out loud.

  'Chief Inspector,' says Montgomery, 'let's be realistic here. It's not just the unreliable habits of your sergeant that are the question. I know if the Plague of Crows returns, chances are he will take out one police officer as part of his ritual, and it's always possible that that one police officer could be from this station. However, it seems highly coincidental, highly coincidental, that it should be one of the previous investigating officers. If he wanted to make a point then surely he would have taken one of my men, one of the men who are actually involved in the case at this time. This… doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for the Plague of Crows to take Sgt Hutton. That the sergeant has gone somewhere he knows he shouldn't, that quite possibly he's with someone that he knows he shouldn't be, is far more likely.'

  He stares at Taylor. Taylor has looked at Connor throughout. Connor sits uncomfortably looking at Montgomery.

  'There's no place for talk of coincidence in police work,' says Montgomery.

  'Coincidence?' barks Taylor. 'Two months ago we had the Sergeant in front of the cameras, taunting the guy, trying to draw him out. This could be it. This could be the drawing out. And what are we doing to handle that?'

  He looks between the two of them.

  'Maybe two months ago,' said Connor. 'But he's tipped too far over the edge now for anyone to trust him.'

  'Jesus,' mutters Taylor. He stands quickly. Hesitates. Sits back down. Addresses Connor, although realistically he knows that he's speaking to Montgomery.

  'On the obviously farcical off-chance that Sgt Hutton has been taken by the Plague of Crows, would it be possible for you to ask G4S to run a check to make sure that all the social services staff currently covered by the security check are accounted for?'

  Connor knows that this is not within his remit. He has power over a small section of south-west Glasgow, and not much power at that. He looks to Montgomery.

  'Chief Inspector, do you know how many false alarms there have been in the past two months?' says Montgomery.

  He pauses. Taylor again contemplates walking out, but knows that it will look churlish.

  'Oh, G4S are happy to do it when we ask, but you know how much it costs? How much it costs the police every time we ask them to make a 100 % check?'

  'Isn't that part of the contract?' says Taylor. 'Didn't someone think to make that part of the contract? That they would check when we asked? What, in the name of God, is the point of this thing if we have to pay them every time we ask a question?'

  'We can ask questions, Chief Inspector, but we are required to provide extra funding for 100 % checks. That's the contract as it stands.'

  'Jesus Christ…'

  'I doubt either of us has experience of writing a government contract, so let's not get into that.'

  'So the system is set up in such a away that it discourages us from using it?'

  'If you want to be jaundiced about it…'

  'A police officer is missing under peculiar circumstances…' says Taylor harshly.

  'Not just any policeman,' says Montgomery. 'A wayward officer. An officer out of control. A maverick.'

  Oh, for fuck's sake, thinks Taylor. He didn't just use the word maverick, did he? Jesus.

  'Prove to me that Sgt Hutton is not just out sleeping with someone's wife or some prostitute or some wanton… trash of a PC, then I'll take your request higher up the chain and see…'

  Connor lets the sentence drift off as Taylor gets up quickly and walks from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  *

  Door shut, he's alone with Gostkowski. Hutton's security band is on his desk between them. It dominates the room.

  'They think I'm over-reacting. I don't need to know the full details, Inspector, I'm just looking for an opinion. This doesn't make sense. Hutton's band lying here without him attached to it, doesn't make sense. Montgomery thinks he's taken it off so that he can go out… shagging. Or that he's on the piss somewhere. I don't think so. For all that he's a fucked-up sonofabitch, this isn't him. He would know what taking this off would mean, he would know that removing it, and it being found, would get people panicking. Although, Jesus, that only appears to be me…'

  'I agree.'

  He exhales, aware that he's getting slightly breathless in his annoyance and excitement, his feeling of dread.

  'The sergeant and I had a brief fling, just a few nights,' she says. 'I'm one of them, one of the long list that he's had around here. I won't explain it. Can't. Just happened. He is reckless, there is something there, something buried in his head that he doesn't talk about. But this isn't part of it.'

  'How d'you think he got the band off without activating the alarm?' says Taylor.

  Has only been able to think of one way. Gostkowski studies her own band, studies for the hundredth time how little give there is around her wrist. Presses the bones of her hand together.

  Taylor watches her. Knows what she's thinking.

  'That's going to have hurt,' he says.

  'Yes.'

  'Shit. Where do we have to go with this?' he says. 'For all the work we put in, what did we have? Where were we two months ago?'

  She shrugs.

  'The only lead we had was Clayton, and it might not have been a lead at all,' she says.

  Taylor nods, as it's what he'd already been thinking. Taps his forefinger rapidly on the desk.

  'I need to go and speak to him again,' he says. 'When I think about it, I really don't know what to do, where else to go, yet my thoughts always seem to come back to him. He beat us, but he knew what he was doing. I don't trust him, and not just because he was so intelligently manipulative.'

  '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 house 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.