A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller (24 page)

'Photos looked pretty young. Both under five, I'd have said.'

'And there was no sign of them?'

'None. So maybe they were at school or nursery school, the mum took them to the hairdresser's…'

She's nodding, already mentally getting on with the job.

'Fine,' she says. 'See you later.'

She turns, then stops and looks back, a little unsure, as if that last line had been a slight overstep of the fuck buddy rules. We stare at each other, she shakes her head to lose the moment and turns away.

See you later. Those three words. That's all it takes, and I'm already there, thinking about the night ahead. Take a moment, a delicious moment to sink into it, to think about the two previous nights of fuck buddy heaven, and to think about what it might be like this evening.

Sigh, switch back on to the general tumult of an open-plan police office, get the image of Michael Clayton in my head, the image of a naked DCI Gostkowski out of it.

*

People don't entirely realise the extent of it these days. The amount of information that the police – and no end of other bodies and organisations – have at their fingertips on virtually everybody.

Doesn't take long, and I can tell you where Clayton goes shopping and what his favourite type of breakfast cereal is, how often he plays golf, how much money he has in the bank, the last time he went to the theatre, what kind of movies he likes. If I wanted to do the Sherlock Holmes shit I could probably have extrapolated that he and his wife don't have sex any more and that his kids don't love him. But then I'd already found out that he and his wife split up three years earlier and he hasn't seen her, or those ugly kids of theirs, since then.

Those picture-perfect images of two young children adorning every wall and every mantelshelf in the house are at least three years old because he's had no contact with them.

Living in a big house, earning a decent amount of money working self-employed as some kind of sales consultant in the stationary business. He's a big thing in paper clips. I mean, even if I didn't have my suspicions about this bloke being some kind of deranged crow-controlling super-villain, I'd still hate him. A theatre-going, golf-playing consultant. In my world, punching people like that in the face would be an Olympic sport.

Of course, the more your read, the sadder it looks. Come across a lot of lawyers letters from three years ago, and quite a number since then. Split from the wife, she didn't want anything to do with him, didn't want the kids anywhere near him. She left in the middle of the night, he hasn't seen them since.

I suspect that Gostkowski will have trouble even finding where she is now. He wasn't married when he was previously arrested, but he managed to take the money he made out of that scandal and put it into a nice house, a wife and a decent job. Been earning quite a lot since, in the usual money-follows-money kind of way.

But whether or not he turns out to be the Plague of Crows, this is just a portrait of a sad little life. Of course, if Lynch is correct, then a sad little life is far more than he deserves. But this is the trouble with police work. So much of it revolves around people whose lives have been fucked up, or who have chosen to fuck up their own life, that you end up wallowing and trawling through these endless sad stories. Your days become one long episode of Eastenders. And every now and again, such as when you're looking at a divorced bloke who never sees his kids and whose life is filled with all sorts of pointless shit in some desperate attempt to compensate, it's like looking in a mirror.

*

At the Costa across the road, me and Gostkowski, two cups of Americano. Just because we're having sex, doesn't mean we can't also hang out and talk and stuff. That's part of the contract. The things you don't do are have expectations, fight, and get neurotic.

Boiling bunnies is also right out.

'So, no sign of the wife?'

'She did a Lucan,' says Gostkowski. 'And a pretty spectacular Lucan at that. Middle of the night, fleeing the country with the kids. Nice job.'

'You think he looked for her? I mean, I know he got his lawyer to write a lot of letters to the courts and police, but…'

She shrugs. 'Presumably. But did he ever get on a plane? I doubt it.'

'Well, he doesn't have a passport.'

'Ah. Well, there's your answer, because I'm pretty sure that she left the country.'

Sip the coffee. As usual there's too much coffee in the cup, not enough space for milk. Even though I asked. There must be people who complain if their cup isn't filled to the last millimetre.

There are always people who complain. And then there are the people who complain about the people who complain. Like me.

'And
High Road
? Turn up in one episode, did she?'

'No episodes,' she says.

'What?'

She shrugs.

'Really, it was hard to find out about his wife, because there wasn't a lot to be found. Regular family life. There was a sister and a brother. Studied mathematics at Glasgow, couldn't get a job, eventually worked for a while in an office job for Woolworths, etc., etc. She'd been a bit political at uni, kind of anti-government. You know, she was a student, they're supposed to be anti-government. Maybe she still had some of that when she met Clayton. Sympathised with him for having been manipulated by the system.'

'Maybe she never knew.'

'Maybe. Although, he never changed his name and it was in the papers, a lot, at the time, so she'd have to have been walking around with her eyes shut. Which doesn't tie in with her having been reactionary. At least to some level.'

A waitress hoves into view, clearing one of the other tables, so we stop talking for a second. Drink coffee. Look out of the window. Late afternoon, low cloud, street lights already on. Chill in the air. Snow would be nice, I suppose. At least it would brighten up the drabness, but you can tell this will be a winter without snow.

'Everything all right for youse?'

We look round at the waitress. Late thirties. Slim. Attractive. I know, I know, but that's just how it is. Look at a woman, and my brain makes an instant judgement. Just as well I don't project.

I nod. Gostkowski says, 'Yes, thanks.' The waitress shimmers off to another table, laden with the detritus of mochaccinos and muffins.

'You're a piece of work,' says Gostkowski. Smiling.

'What?'

'You just undressed her.'

'No, I didn't.'

'Yes. You. Did.'

Funny. She actually just did that. Said three words as individual sentences. I'm not playing that game.

'I just said everything was fine.'

'Actually, you said nothing, and while you were saying nothing, you were deciding whether or not you'd sleep with her.'

'Maybe. But that's not the same as undressing her.'

She stares at me. I am, of course, drawn to look round at the waitress, but I make sure I don't.

'So, was she slim?'

I give her the look. 'Yes,' I say eventually.

'Hair colour?'

'Mousey blonde, kind of tousled, shoulder length.'

'Nice breasts?'

I'm not answering that one.

'All you're proving is that I have decent powers of observation,' I say. 'And what with my job title 'n' all…'

'Sergeant, I'm just teasing, not going all high maintenance on you. But honestly, have you, or have you not, just imagined what that woman looked like naked?'

I stare across the table. So, that thing I was saying about not projecting…

'Yes… all right, I did. And she looks damned good without clothes on. You know…'

'All right, Sergeant, I've got the picture. You're not down the pub with your mates.'

'You started it.'

'You were the one undressing her, while thinking you were being discreet.'

She's got me there. I hide behind the cup of coffee, then say, 'Anyway, I never talk to men about naked women. That's… I don't know…'

'Vulgar?'

'Yes.'

'Well, I'm honoured. We should probably get back to talking about the investigation now.'

'Yes.'

'So Mrs Clayton leaves her husband, taking the kids with her. I spoke to a couple of people who weren't very forthcoming. Also spoke to the brother, couldn't get hold of the sister. I'll keep trying. But I think we can take it that he wasn't necessarily abusive, just not a nice bloke to live with, and pretty demanding. She felt threatened ultimately, but was never actually harmed. Bottom line is, she's not part of this, and he told you quite a lot of lies. Which is odd.'

'Maybe if your whole life is a lie, if you're always lying, lying to your family, lying to the police, lying to yourself, you forget what the truth is. You forget what can be checked.'

'Yep,' she says, 'that makes sense… But does that tie in with the Plague of Crows? The meticulous killer, the man who makes sure he covers every track?'

'Maybe he's very focussed on his work. That's… his work, his murder, is one thing. Cold and clinical. He can control everything. But his home life, his private life, he hasn't been able to control. It's fucked up so he's constructed stories around it to make it work, to make it appear as orderly as his work life.'

She's nodding. 'Not bad, Sergeant, that makes sense. So classic a personality type that it's almost a cliché; seemingly ordered on the surface, but full of turmoil and shattered confidence underneath. Yet, here, applied to this, it really fits, and it doesn't seem clichéd at all. This guy is potentially so screwed up, it seems… it seems likely.'

'Nevertheless, we have to be careful. We're talking ourselves into this guy being him. Every piece of information we unearth seems to back it up… have to be careful, that's all.'

She nods again. 'Yep. So, let's keep digging. The alibi or not is unlikely to prove anything, given that the bulk of the work was done late at night, early morning. Living alone… it'll be easy enough for him to say he spent the night in bed, and there would be no one to back him up even if he is telling the truth.'

Drain the coffee, still quite a lot in the cup and some of it dribbles down my chin. Grab a napkin and wipe it away before lowering the cup from my face. Like a seasoned professional.

*

Late night, Taylor's office. He's standing at the window looking out at the car park, although there are more lights on in here than out there, so he's mostly staring at his own reflection. Gostkowski and I have just laid it all out for him. A day spent rooting around after Michael Clayton. He's listened to it all, asked a few questions. Even as we explained it, I wasn't sure that there was enough to be making sure we went back to see him.

'All right,' he says, 'you've identified a certifiable liar, fantasist maybe, an unpleasant husband and father. Possibly, if we listen to Lynch, a murderer. The fact that he managed to get away with all that shit before, if it was him, doesn't make him any more unpleasant, but it does make him smart. Smarter than most of the fuckwits we end up dealing with in this job.' Ain't that the truth. 'So he seems right – fits the bill – but we have nothing to connect him to the Plague of Crows. No doctor's training, no particular social media expertise…'

'No,' says Gostkowski. 'Social media is one thing, he could be spending five hours a night working on that and no one would ever know. But the ability to remove part of the skull without killing the victim…'

'I know,' says Taylor. 'Spoken to a few surgeons. They're all impressed with the quality of work when I show them pictures and describe it to them. Ballingol's certainly impressed with it. It implies training.'

'Maybe he trained himself,' says Gostkowski.

'I've given that a lot of thought,' says Taylor. 'Spoke to a few people about it. Not impossible, and it would explain why I got absolutely nowhere chasing after medical students and doctors last year.'

He turns to face us, leans back against the window ledge. God he looks shit.

'So, it doesn't rule out our guy, it just doesn't help us. We have nothing definite that helps us. It's all supposition. We're the ones joining the dots, they're not being connected for us.'

A joining the dots analogy. It comes to this.

'I don't know how much more there is to find without speaking to him, Sir,' says Gostkowski. 'Or, at least, speaking to people who might well let him know that we're nosing around.'

'Time to make a decision,' says Taylor, and it's not a question. It is time to make a decision.

'You spoke to Montgomery?' I ask.

He nods without looking at me.

'Not at all helpful. Said he'd look into it and get back to us in a day or two.'

Useless fucker. This is like being in government in America. Too many people running things, no one wanting to help anyone else.

'I think we'll go and see Clayton tomorrow,' says Taylor, 'but I'll sleep on it.' Checks his watch. 'You two go home, get some sleep. Don't be late tomorrow morning, start getting our shit together.'

'You should get some sleep too,' I say, getting to my feet.