A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller (2 page)

'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.

'Whatever,' is all I can manage.

*

We don't talk for a while sitting on the train on the way back up to Glasgow. My tent is still up and waiting for me at the bottom of Ben Vorlich, in the lee of some trees. Some part of me still thinks I'll be going back there, but the further the train gets from Helensburgh, the closer we get to Glasgow and on our way to Cambuslang, the more I know that I won't be going back.

Not sure what happens to tents that are just left lying. Maybe someone will report me missing and there'll be hundreds of people searching for me for months. It'll be on the news, and I'll be watching it, thinking,
miserable fucker, you deserve to be lost
.

I should probably call someone about the tent.

The warm afternoon passes by. At all the stations there are women in summer clothes.

'So you've been hill walking?' says Taylor after a while.

'Aye.'

I answer without looking round. Watching the world go by, like a kid on his way home with his dad.
Black Crow Blues
has started playing in my head.

'Where were you staying?'

'In a tent.'

'You've been living in a tent for four months?'

'Aye.'

'Jesus. Thought you'd smell worse.'

'Had a shower today at the gym.'

'What've you been eating?'

'Rabbits and shit.'

'You've been catching rabbits?'

Look round at last. Shrug.

'You've been catching rabbits?' he says again.

'Aye.'

'Eating them raw, cooking them?'

'Cooking them.'

'Jesus, Hutton.'

He shakes his head and looks out the window.

'What does rabbit taste like?' he asks eventually.

'Don't know. Rabbit.'

'Thought it was supposed to taste like chicken.'

'Doesn't taste like chicken.'

He glances at me again, and then we both look out of the window as the warm summer's day passes by. All we can see are the banks of the railway line.

'Are you sure they were rabbits?' he says.

I have three MP3s on the go. One for studio Bob, one for live Bob, one for bootleg and miscellaneous Bob. (Bootleg and miscellaneous Bob is naturally largely live too, although it does include some of Bob's songs performed by other artists. I know, I wasn't sure about that either. It felt like I was debasing the MP3, or that I should have a completely separate fourth MP3 to accommodate them. But really, it's just versions where the artist has done a solid stand up job, like Tim O'Brien's
Farewell Angelina
or George's
I Don't Want To Do It
. Don't go thinking I've got that woman singing
Feel My Love
or any shit like that.) I had no way to charge them when I was out on the hills other than when I came up to town every week for my psych, gym and dinner afternoons. I'd get them charged while I was there, then listen to them at will over the next few days, then start to ration myself as it got closer to the town trip and the charge started to run low. I bought one of those Ray Mears books, but there was nothing about how to charge your MP3 whilst living wild.

I tried building a shelter one day, thought that would be a natural extension of what I was doing. Do away with the tent. Had even begun to imagine that I might be there, trying to see myself through the winter out in the wilds, even though the winter was some way off. Anyway, my shelter was shit. I slept under it a couple of nights, but that was only because it wasn't raining and the wind wasn't blowing. As soon as some weather happened I was back in the tent.

Suppose I could have stuck at it, but I was too busy catching rabbits.

It's 7.30 in the morning, Taylor and I are heading up to the woods to check out the site where the bodies were found. It's been closed off to the pubic for three days, will remain so for quite some time. Eventually they'll have to let it go – for no other reason than we won't have the manpower available to keep people away from it – and then the tourists will arrive, the great ghoul collective who like to visit murder sites. Weird bastards the lot of them. I mean, I get stopping to stare at something as you drive by or if you just happen to be walking down the same street on which someone got gunned down. But going out of your way, and in some cases a long way out your way, to check out where someone got stiffed…

It's a short drive. He needs me to speak to Sutcliffe again before I get authority to come back to work, but she's not free until ten. He can't wait. I'm just an observer for the moment. If we come across any other crime while we're out there, I'm not allowed to produce my I.D. and nick some bastard.

Bob's playing on the CD. Another Side Of.
I once had a girl…
Never liked that song, although it might be just because I read somewhere that Bob wished he hadn't written it. If that's what Bob thinks then, subconsciously or otherwise, that's what I think. I also wish he hadn't written it. Whatever. It'll be over in eight minutes.

I know Taylor doesn't like it either, but he doesn't believe in skipping tracks.

Had a quick look through the folder, got an outline of the case. Three victims. One police officer, Constable Goodwin from Royston. 33 years old, divorced, no family. The journalist, a staffer on the business pages of the Herald, Morris Tucker, 29, degree in business from Stirling University, no kids, one girlfriend. Due to get engaged next year, she said. I've been married three times without being engaged once. If you're going to do it you might as well just get on with it. These two, they were engaged to be engaged. That's just spinning it out for the sake of attention and presents. Well, if the lassie got any pre-engagement presents, she might as well give 'em back. The third was a social worker from the centre of the city. Lived in a small flat not far from Bridgeton. Nothing noticeably to connect him to the other two, just as they weren't connected to each other. Angus Sparing, 42. Wife and kids. Three of the little bastards. Given how shittily social workers get paid, it might not make that much difference to the family household him not bringing any money in.