A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller (23 page)

'Ah,' I say eventually. 'Clayton…'

'Thank Christ,' he mutters, and at last he can drag his contemptuous look away from me back to the dark water of the pond, then he flicks the line over his shoulder for all the world like he's Brad fucking Pitt in that fishing movie.

'You sure it was him?' I ask, risking opprobrium by even continuing the conversation.

'Aye,' he says. 'But he was good. Knew what he was doing. Covered up after himself. A real pro.'

I stare at the miserable old bastard. There we are, the kind of thing that we've been looking for. Knew what he was doing. Covered up after himself like a pro.

'You been following the Plague of Crows business?' I ask.

He snorts. I wait for him to say something. He doesn't.

'You been following the Plague of Crows business?' I say again.

He grunts, this time says, 'Aye. Fucking glad it's nothing to do with me 'n' all.'

'You think Clayton is the kind of man who could be pulling this off?'

He'd been about to cast the line again, then lets it fall and lie limply in the water. He stares straight ahead of him, although his eyes are vague, looking at nothing.

'That's what this is all about, is it?'

'Yes.'

He's still thinking, still looking at an indistinct point in the middle of nothing.

'What led you to him?' he asks.

It would be fun to answer him with a grunt and few words, but one of us has to be a grown up.

'Fishing around. Pretty clueless, to be honest. Ended up talking to people who might resent the police and the media, as the Plague of Crows appears to do. Spoke to several people yesterday, he was one of them.'

'Why'd he stand out?'

'He was an irritating, smug fuck,' I say. He snorts again. 'Lived in a nice house, seemed to have done well for himself…'

'Fucking too right, he did.'

'… just something about him. Didn't like the cut of his jib. When I think about all the people I've talked to in the course of the investigation, he stands out. You sure he killed that schoolgirl?'

'Yep.'

'Why?'

'He told me.'

'When?'

'When we'd let him go and he'd successfully sued the police, the Sun and the Daily Express.'

'Bravado? Rubbing it in? Just making shit up to try to piss you off?'

'Maybe.'

'So what made you believe him?'

He turns and looks at me again.

'He knew. He knew things he couldn't possibly have otherwise known. But he was good. Covered his tracks down to the last detail. Every time we thought we might have him, he had an out. Every track…. Bastard.'

We stare at each other for a few seconds and then he slowly turns away. Lifts the rod, flicks the line and the bait darts out over the water.

I look away. There are two other middle-aged blokes fishing on the other side of the pond. A chill day, low cloud, no hint of rain, not cold enough for snow. A flat, grey day. In the distance you can hear the traffic from the M74. A constant low sound, occasionally penetrated by a loud exhaust or an unnecessary charge up the outside lane.

'You there yet, Sergeant?' he asks.

'What?'

'You at the stage where you wonder what the fucking point is? You're there to catch criminals, to keep order, then you catch one and you're immediately hit with paperwork and human rights lawyers and all the rest of the crap. Fucking signs up on every wall of every station telling you how to conduct every single moment of your life in uniform. And you're always the bad guy. The scum… the bastards who rape and steal and assault and murder… they're the ones with the rights. The human fucking rights. Isn't that a joke? You there yet? You got to that point where you think, what in the name of fuck am I doing this shit for?'

No answer to that. I've been there a long, long time. I've just never had the guts to get out. What else am I going to do?

'He was the final straw. Clayton. Pushed me over the edge sure as I was standing on a cliff. Knew what he was doing as well. Picked his moment. Then he told me. Told me what he'd done to her, all that shit that hadn't been in the papers. Told me, as he was walking away with his three quarters of a million quid.'

'He told me it was a couple of hundred thousand.'

Another snort. 'From us, maybe, but he got more from the papers. He did all right out of it. Slaughtered a young girl, and earned seven hundred and fifty grand… Is that what it takes to be rich?'

'Did you wonder whether this might be him?' I ask. 'All this stuff with the crows, did you ever think it could be him?'

He's still flicking the line, although I can see that it's a more mechanical movement now than it was when I first arrived.

'Hadn't even crossed my mind,' he says. 'I'm not wrapped up in him, or my old work. Barely ever watch the news. I just do this… go and watch the Celtic at the weekend. Sometimes I can't even be bothered with that. I don't watch the news. I don't think about Clayton. He beat me, that's all. He beat me, and I've had to live with it. I don't think about him.'

'Now that you are,' I say, continuing to push him, although it's not like I'm unsympathetic to the oppressive weight of defeat that hangs over him, 'what do you think?'

He continues the movement of the line, but it's becoming less and less focussed. Suddenly realise that I'm completely fucking him up as I stand here. He'd been doing fine, and now I bring him this. And if this guy, this Clayton, turns out to be the Plague of Crows, then there are now a great list of victims who wouldn't have been killed if Lynch had been able to get his man in the first place. How shit is that going to make him feel?

I have a vision of Lynch at home, hanging from a light fitting, the cord around his neck, his face black and purple, tears dried on his cheek, a bottle of vodka on its side, the dregs having dribbled onto the carpet.

Or maybe that's me.

'Yes,' he says. 'Now that you make me think about it. Yes. He was intelligent, knew everything we'd try to uncover, and he had it all taken care of. He was on top from the start, and he stayed there. And…'

Finally he stops the continuous movement of the rod, the flick of the line.

'… and he was a sick fucker. The things he did to that girl. Is he sick enough to carry out this weird stuff that your Crows bloke is accused of doing….?'

'There's no accused about it,' I mutter.

'Yes,' says Lynch. 'It could be him. Let me know when he walks away and laughs in your face.'

He coughs, stares down at the water.

'Nothing's biting the day,' he says, then he lays the rod down on the grass and looks around. There's a bench a few yards away, and he lifts his small bag and walks over to it. Glance at my watch. Lunchtime, more or less, and he's taking a break. I realise that we're finished. He's not about to ask me to join him. He's said all he has to say.

Think of something else just as I'm about to leave.

'Has anyone else been asking about him?'

He turns and looks at me. Just a glance. Curiosity mixed with contempt, before moving quickly onto complete disdain. Doesn't even bother answering.

I'll take that as a no.

I watch him for a few moments and then turn away as he takes a small flask from his bag.

Back in the office with Taylor and Gostkowski. Ramsay tried to grab me on my way in, Gostkowski had already been grabbed, but I put him off and managed to get Gostkowski out of her interview with some little wanker who assaulted a couple of pensioners, so that the three of us can have a chat about Clayton.

More work to be done, more research into his family and what he's been doing for the past eleven years of his life, but for the first time since last August we actually have someone to investigate.

I've just finished laying it all out. My senior officers have listened without interrupting.

'Either of you know DCI Lynch?' asks Gostkowski when I'm done.

Shake my head.

'I remember the case,' said Taylor, 'but it was nowhere near us. Didn't know the guy. I might have had an opinion on it at the time but…' and he waves a dismissive hand in the air. 'And no sign of the wife?'

'None.'

'And no photos…'

'No photos. But, she was on
High Road
, apparently, so that might make her slightly easier to track down. Although, it's liable to have been in the early days of the internet, maybe there won't be too much online. We'll need to go and find someone at STV.'

'If there's a wife, if she's still around…'

'He said she was out getting her hair done.'

'Well that proves bugger all. If there's a wife then she's pretty crucial to it. We know how well executed this whole thing has been,'

He hesitates to glance at Gostkowski, who has reached over and taken the iPad that was lying on the edge of Taylor's desk. Fairly confident that she probably isn't checking the weather, the football transfer window or a recipe for that night's dinner, he ignores her and continues talking.

'She's going to be aware of him having been away for a while. Presumably she's thinking he's on some business trip or other.'

'He said she was a victim of the press as well. Maybe she's involved.'

He stares at the desk as he thinks about it.

'Maybe. Maybe. Don't like it. Everything we think about the Plague of Crows is based around him being in control. The second you bring someone else into it, no matter how much you trust them, you start to lose the control. There's also the matter of someone else being able to, in some way, moderate your insanity. This guy… this guy is a fucking basketcase. You've been married. Take the stupidest, weirdest, ugliest thing you ever did before or after your marriage, and then imagine if you'd have done it if your wife had known about it.'

We look at each other while we think about weird, ugly, stupid things we've done. Gostkowski glances up with a curious smile on her face, then looks back at the tech.

'Fair point,' I say. Didn't actually think of anything. Didn't want to.

'The whole thing is difficult enough to imagine, but the idea that two people – one of them the mother of two young children – would get carried away with this… I'm not convinced.'

'You're very old fashioned, Sir,' says Gostkowski without looking up.

'And I shall stay that way,' says Taylor.

'You have her name?' asks Gostkowski, turning to me. 'The wife?'

'Caroline…' I say, then realise I don't know her maiden name.

'There's a list on imdb of everyone, well, a shitload of people at least, who appeared in
High Road
.'

'Jesus. Who takes the time to write down that shit?' mutters Taylor.

A pause while we both look at her, then she nods.

'There's a Caroline Strachan, appeared in one episode at some point. Doesn't say when. There's no link to anything else.'

'I'll get the second name. Got the impression, from the way he said it, that she'd done a bit more than that. That she was some kind of regular. Maybe she used a different name for her acting career.'

Gostkowski's fingers are flying over the small keypad, then she starts nodding at it, understanding something that she's not letting us in on.

'There's the same plethora of information on the internet that there is about anything. We can look at it later.' She switches off the iPad, lays it back on the desk.

Taylor taps a quick beat out on the desk.

'Right, get going. I'll speak to Ramsay, make sure he leaves you out of the rest of it. You two get digging on Clayton and the missus. Discretion from both of you, no blundering phone calls. Obviously he knows we have some interest in him, after yesterday, but don't let him know for the moment that we're following it up.'

'You going to speak to Edinburgh?' she asks. 'Assuming Clayton wasn't winding the sergeant up, Edinburgh have already talked to him. It'd be wise to find out what they know.'

Taylor taps his fingers again. He's already been thinking about it. Ever since they were brought in they've been part of every one of his thoughts on the investigation.

'Yes,' he says. 'Wise. You're right. I'll run it by Montgomery, see what he thinks. Say enough so we don't look like we're over-reacting, but not enough to make him swoop in and take the thing off us and then do a shit job...'

He waits, and when we don't immediately stand up, he nods in the direction of the door and turns side on to us to look at his monitor. I glance at Gostkowski as I get to my feet, but she's already on her way out.

'We going to split this up?' I say, as we walk across the office.

She stops, stares at the floor while she's thinking about it.

'Yes, makes sense,' she says. 'I'll do the wife. I used to watch that stupid show when I was younger, maybe something'll ring a bell. I'll track down the story that her husband says ruined her career, and then find out what she's doing now. You stay on Clayton. Where he works, what he does in his spare time, that kind of thing. What about the kids? What age were they?'