A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller (5 page)

OK. Still getting back into the groove.

'Everything about this says planning. Planning to the absolute n
^th
detail. A perfectly executed crime. This is a scary fucking guy. None of your drunk aggressive, not even your psycho, can't-keep-his-knife-to-himself type. This is cold and devious. This is… you know, it's the equivalent of the German death camps against the Rwandan thing. Rwanda, a bunch of guys with machetes going about their business, making no attempt to cover up what they did. It was brutal, nasty, vicious. There was no artifice. The Germans. They burnt bodies, they dug deep graves, they used camps and then tore them down when the Russians closed in. They had a system. They systematically murdered. And that's what this guy is doing. He has a system. He's going to do the same thing again. We have no idea when that'll be, but
he
knows exactly when. Exactly.'

Taylor is looking at me while I talk. Face expressionless. I know it's why I'm here. To say what he already knows.

'And worse than that,' I continue, 'he'll already know who he's going to kill, and they won't have any idea. Maybe he's already taken them.'

'We should be looking for missing persons,' says Taylor. 'And not the usual kind, the seventeen–year-olds, the ones who'll have gone out on the piss and ended up on the bus to Aberdeen or in the wrong person's bed.'

'If he really didn't know the three victims and he selected them at random, then we're about to find out if he just selected any old person or whether he has a gripe against these professions. Did he choose social worker, policeman and journalist for a reason, or might it just as likely have been butcher, baker, candlestick maker?'

'We need to get ahead of the game,' says Taylor.

'We always do.'

'So we start by establishing if any police officers have gone missing in the last day or two, because the way he carried out that first murder, he must have grabbed the victims some time before they died. There had to be a gap.'

'Were any of them reported missing?'

Taylor stares at me for a second than shakes his head, drops his eyes.

'He had that covered as well. None of them were missed.'

'Why?'

'A combination of things, and it all points to the fact that this was immaculately planned. Either they lived alone, or the ones who didn't had time off work previously planned. They had arranged to go away. It was… it was like he was inside their lives, knew what they were doing, knew that he could secret them away and nobody would notice. How do we counteract that?'

'He was doing it online? Facebook, that kind of shit?'

He stares at me again. 'You weren't paying attention at the briefing, were you?'

Look a bit sheepish.

'Fuck, Sergeant, head in the game. The next time you're in the same room as a bunch of women, stop trying to work out which one you want to sleep with.'

Hide behind my drink. No one likes to get read like a damned book.

'We're checking it out, but we've found nothing so far.'

'So, realistically, we're not going to know if there are any officers missing?' I ask, to move the conversation on from Facebook.

'No.'

'What do we do about that, then?'

He takes a long drink. Drags his hand across his face.

'If it was just the one station, if we knew it was on our patch, we could introduce a system... I don't know, a checking-in system, a buddy system… But shit, we can't city-wide. And what do we know? Maybe it's country-wide. Maybe the next one'll be in the south of England. Or in France. This level of planning, how in the name of God are we supposed to know?'

V&t to my lips. Getting near the end, and it's losing a little of its crispness. Clearly I'm going to need another one.

'He knows,' I say.

Taylor drains his pint and places it on the table. He looks into it as the last of the froth hugs the side of the glass and slides down.

*

Second night back at home. Already changed the sheets, did a bit of a tidy. Glad I did it yesterday, as I've already reverted to where I was four months ago. The weeks of clean living and communing with the Gods of the Scottish highlands have gone. I woke up yesterday morning at the foot of a mountain. This evening it feels like a hundred years ago.

Brought a prostitute home with me. I know. Filthy. Picked her up in town. Had to drive on the back of four v&ts to go and find her. No hookers on the streets of Cambuslang and Rutherglen anymore.

She wanted to do it in the car. I wanted her to come back to my place. She refused, which is quite right of course. These people are mental if they go home with anyone. Being a bit pissed, I showed her my badge. She still refused, but at least began to enter into negotiations. I paid through the nose in the end. She wouldn't come until I'd gone to a cash point and got several hundred. It's just sweetie money to me at the moment, because I've got four months wages in there that I've hardly spent.

Back to my place. I made her shower first. Didn't ask how many she'd scored earlier in the evening, didn't want to know. I was gallant enough to shower too. After all that, it was worth it. Every penny. Great tongue on her, absolutely beautiful body, she had the decency to try to earn her money and got stuck into it. Great fun.

A fair compensation for feeling like a complete and total loser for having to go to her in the first place.

Called her a cab, then fell asleep as soon as she was gone. The door was locked and I knew she wouldn't be coming back.

*

Went to see Bob the next night. He didn't disappoint. Not that he ever does. He disappoints some people, of course. The nostalgia brigade, not the fans. The kind of people that go and watch Cliff Fucking Richard and McCartney, the Rolling Stones even. They go along to hear
Hey Jude
and
Livin' Doll
and
Jumpin' Jack Flash
, expecting it to sound exactly like it does on their
Best of The '60s
CD, and by fuck, sure enough those guys are still peddling the same shit and still managing to sound exactly like they did in 1965.

Bob doesn't sound like he did in 1965. His voice is completely shot. Anyway, it wouldn't matter, because he changes the arrangements all the time, and these sad fuckers go along thinking that he'll walk on stage with his acoustic guitar and start warbling his way through
Blowin' In The Wind
; well he'll do you
Blowin' In The Wind
often enough, but it'll be with a full band and a completely different tune, if it's even got a tune, and to the uninitiated he'll be halfway through before they pick up a line they recognise, then they think,
fuck me, this is shit, what a waste of £75
, and they'll storm out and if they can find someone to tell how shit they thought it was they'll do so.

That lot, those people, they can take a fuck to themselves. Bob owes you nothing.

November

The games involving the Old Firm got a bit nasty at the weekend. Clyde pitched up at Ibrox on Saturday, and a few of their fans thought it might be fun to have a go at the Scottish lower division superpower. It was brief but nasty. I mean, seriously. Fucking Clyde. The Sunday Mail said that parts of Govan looked like Aleppo, which was just incredibly stupid, not to mention completely inaccurate.

Then, in the interests of even-handedness, some Aberdeen fans got the bug on Sunday, and rocked up at Parkhead looking for a fight, and a little of that spilled out our way, although by then I don't think they were Aberdeen fans, just drunk guys who thought they'd get into a fight because everyone else was. A few injuries, but they all got what they deserved.

Sure, every now and again you'll get an innocent walking down the street who stumbles into a gang of orcs and gets the complete fuck kicked out of him. I might occasionally feel some sympathy for that guy. If he exists. As long as he's not wearing a scarf or a strip, in which case, what did he think was going to happen?

Most of them go looking for it, though. They're looking for the fight, expecting to win in the first place or, failing that, expecting the emergency services to clear up after them. Generally, I think we should just let them bleed. You want to fight for whatever dumb-ass cause you think it is you're protecting, then on you go, but don't expect the rest of society to clean up the mess for you.

Some might argue that the same should apply to people who smoke and drink too much, and end up draining the NHS of all its funds. The healthy living are supporting the rest of us hard-living chaps. Maybe those folks would be right. I'm just hoping to peg it from some other cause before I get cancer and die a horribly protracted death, dragged out over several years with just my estranged family to pop in and see me once every few months.

Walking back upstairs after a two-hour interview with a bloke who bricked another bloke in the head. The other bloke is in a coma. Our bloke is in custody. Not getting out any time soon, although personally I'd just let him go. Let him back to his feral homeland, where he might well be about to suffer much greater retribution than the courts will be able to visit upon him.

One of those lost generation types. Broken home. Abused as a child. Generally didn't go to school, left officially at sixteen with sod all to his name. Never worked. A child of the benefit system. He can afford his Ibrox season ticket though, albeit they're giving them away like sweeties these days.

That he lives out our way, and not on the other side, does not speak well for his chances. He's also got a self-defence defence as he was being chased. So, all in all, the usual thing. On the surface it looks a clear-cut case of a ned bricking another ned, and then you get into it and there's all sorts of subtext.

The summer seems a long time ago, but sometimes I look back fondly on my days sitting on the side of Ben Ime, watching old people trudge by and Tornadoes low-flying and clouds coming in from the west. Happy days.

There's talk of a redundancy round coming up. They'll be looking for volunteers. I'll need to do the maths. The other side of the coin, the side where one doesn't take redundancy, is that there ain't going to be any less crime committed, but there will be fewer officers around to do anything about it.

To be honest, the lump sum on offer is going to have to be pretty fucking low for me not to go for it. But then, there's a damned good chance that the lump sum on offer will be pretty fucking low.

Back to my desk. The paperwork seems to have grown in my absence. That was one of those things that got mentioned in my annual report. It was made part of my objectives.
Deal with paperwork in a more timely and organised manner.
I even said that I'd do it. I've now had to add that I'll try not to get into fights with anyone from the station, so I've been concentrating on that one. The paperwork thing has slipped.

Morrow is sitting across the desk, head buried as usual. I'm really pleased he's not one of these officious cunts – and I know that's a word that a lot of people hate, but it is the actual dictionary-defined term for people who are just too organised – although naturally his paperwork pile isn't quite as apocalyptic as mine.

'Any word from the hospital?' I ask, slumping into my seat. Not hungover today, but beginning to think that on days when I'm not hungover, I have a kind of anti-hangover feeling caused by withdrawal.

He shakes his head without looking up. I stare at the paperwork for another moment or two. It's breeding. It's breeding so much that I can actually see two pieces of paper humping each other trying to produce more paper. I'd probably get a bollocking from someone if I poured water over them.

Straight back up again and over to Taylor's office. He's in his usual position. Sitting at his desk, albeit this time he's staring at his computer screen rather than at the ceiling. As police officers go, Dan Taylor is slightly more cerebral than others. Not that I want to imply he reads – I don't know – fucking Kierkegaard or anything, but he thinks a lot. Likes to take his time, think things through. He doesn't rush, doesn't jump to conclusions. Spends a lot of time staring into space. Working things out.

I'm more of an Action Man type of police officer. Leap in, punch a few people, a bit of shouting, sort things out. Taylor stares at the ceiling. I believe his methods are more effective than mine. Mine is more fun.

Today, however, he's looking at the computer screen. There's an intensity in his gaze. He'll be looking at a single image, trying to see the thing that everyone else missed. Or looking at a photograph, attempting to read the lie behind the eyes.

He hasn't noticed me yet. Given that I've pretty much just come in for a chat, and the vague hope that seeing me will remind him that he has an interesting case to investigate, I contemplate turning and walking back out again.

Decide that that's just what I will do. Watch him for a moment. Hesitate before leaving. There's something in his face. He's not trying to work something out. There's dread in his eyes, rather than curiosity or inquisitiveness.

'Chief Inspector? Everything all right?'

He doesn't answer for a moment, then finally says, 'Close the door,' without looking up. Shut the door, glance out at the office as I do so. In the far corner I can see three of the guys standing around a computer screen. None of them look happy. One of them is staring over in our direction.