A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller (12 page)

'It's all hands at the moment.'

He grunts, then doesn't say anything. He's not one to fill a silence.

'Any idea how long those two might have lived after that footage was shot?'

'I knew you people were going to ask that,' he mutters.

'So you'll have an answer then.'

'And you know that I can't possibly say.'

'Ball park?'

He grunts again.

'Taking into consideration the level of deterioration you can see in the film, the activity of the birds, what do you think?' I ask.

'Sergeant, tell your boss… with the blood vessels in the brain, they could have bled to death in five minutes, and if one wasn't hit right away, maybe twenty minutes, half an hour.'

'Let's call it somewhere between five and twenty minutes, something like that,' I say.

He grunts. 'I don't think that was exactly what I said.'

'Thanks.'

I hang up, no doubt marginally before he does. He doesn't do goodbyes either. I think his dad must've walked out on him when he was a child.

Go back through to Taylor. He's still watching, leaning forward now, peering closely at the screen.

'What'd he say?' he asks without moving his eyes.

'Somewhere between five and twenty minutes.'

'He said that?'

I smile. God knows what my face looks like. Smiling. Not in the mood, not in the right place mentally to be smiling at anyone.

'That's what it boiled down to.'

'Well, at least we can presume the poor bastards are dead.'

'You're assuming this was recorded this morning?'

He shrugs.

'God knows. We might as well. Whoever these three are, chances are they've not been reported missing yet. This must be recent. Let's not get carried away with the weather similarity, but it was a reasonably bright day yesterday, today it's been pishing down everywhere.'

'Fair enough.'

'Right, need you to get an enhancement of the footage. That is one clear-as-fuck, stone-cold beaut of a shot of the terror on that woman's face. Let's see if there's any reflection in her eye.'

'If there is, that would be a mistake,' I say.

'And he doesn't make mistakes. Check it anyway.'

Off back out the door, away to speak to a woman I know.

Ninety minutes later we're sitting in Taylor's car, heading up the M80 on our way to the murder site. A polis in Perth thought he recognised the hills and went for a look. Found the bodies where the killer had left them, still surrounded by birds. Birds which seemed reluctant to leave despite the presence of the police. In the end, apparently, they killed a couple of them. Better not let that get out to the press.
Bird-Killing Cops Disrespect Crime Scene
or some shit like that.

We're listening to Bob, thank God, although Taylor stuck on
Saved
, which he knows I don't like. Petty. Very petty.

The boys from Edinburgh have already headed on out to take charge. We oughtn't to be going at all, but Connor called Taylor in and told him to get his arse out there. He's expecting us to blag our way onto the crime scene. Hopefully it'll be the locals who are in charge of securing the perimeter and they won't know to tell us to bugger off. Next time it happens, if there is a next time, the guys from Edinburgh will be ready for us. They'll know that we're still working the case.

What we're doing now is starting a turf war over investigation rights, but we're not thinking about that at the moment. Just doing what we're told.

The one positive, and it's a pretty small positive but we're grasping, is that the area was one that we'd marked off as a potential spot when we saw the Whittaker woman in Aberfoyle. We'd been thinking along the right lines, just without the resources to do anything about it.

If we'd told the Edinburgh boys what we were thinking, would they have done anything? Would they have said
good idea chaps, let's crack on
? Probably not. Or maybe they've been thinking the same thing.

Taylor's not talking. Thinking the case through, likely wondering the same thing I am. Will he have left no trace and be gone on his way? Will it be three months before he strikes again? Longer, shorter, exactly to the day?

Phone goes, take the call. Sophie in the tech room.

'Yep?'

'Sergeant,' she says, 'we got a good look at your guy from the video. He was wearing a mask.'

That makes sense. Even though he was obviously confident his victims were not going to survive, he doesn't take chances.

'What kind?' I ask. Pointless question, but I feel like I need to say something to justify a conversation that has already pretty much given up all that it will.

'Well… a crow. It looks like the head of a crow… I'll send the images over.'

I stare straight ahead, don't immediately say anything.

'Can you see his eyes?' I eventually think to ask.

'No.'

'He knew we'd check…'

'Fuck, yeah. And given the precision of the scalping that everyone's talking about, it's hard to imagine he wore the mask while he was cutting. He hardly needed to care that his victims would see what he looked like. So, he just put the mask on for filming. He knew we'd see. That's why he waves.'

'What?'

'Oh yes. And you know he's not waving at that terrified woman. He's waving at you.'

'Us.'

'If that's how you want to see it, Sergeant.'

There's a short silence which Sophie in the tech room breaks by hanging up.

She watches movies. People don't say goodbye when they end phone calls in movies, they just hang up. That's because at some stage the writer will have been told to cut the script down, so he'll have scrapped pointless shit like people being pleasant to each other. Now it's seeped insidiously into society.

'Mask?' says Taylor.

'A crow's head.'

'Oh for crying out loud… What was the other thing?'

'He waves when he's filming her eyes 'cause he knows we're going to check that shit.'

'Jesus. He's taking the piss?'

'I think we knew that already.'

The conversation is over, and we're coming towards the end of the motorway, still twenty minutes or so to go and Bob is well into
In The Garden
.

*

The place is crawling with our lot, sealed off from the public at a good distance. Fortunately, as we'd been hoping, it's the local plods who are guarding the site and keeping the ghouls at bay. Bit of an out of the way place, as it was always likely to be, but there are still plenty of people who have driven out here to try to take a look. Really. What the actual fuck are these people thinking?

On the other hand, maybe we should sell them tickets, make a bit of money, put it back into the Force. No doubt some liberal somewhere would object to selling tickets to see murder victims.

Not just liberals, you reckon?

We walk through the woods like we're meant to be there, badges at the ready. We've had to flash them four times so far. Closer to the scene there are no uniforms. A few plain clothes detectives, a host of the white jump suits. Already we can see the bodies, still cemented in place, still strapped in. Taylor saw the same last time, but obviously they were gone by the time I got there.

Grotesque murder. Does that bring it all back, all that crap from the past that I don't want to think about? You'd think, but it doesn't. Not at all. I'm ready for it. Prepped. With the exception of all that shit with the Keller case last year, it's not like we're used to a massive pile of brutalised dead – although it's getting bigger pretty quickly – but I'm ready for it when I see anything nasty in the course of my duties. It's the moments like this morning, when it creeps up out of the blue, grabs me by the testicles when I'm not expecting it, that's when it really hurts. That's when I go hurtling back and I can't stop it.

Taylor nods at a couple of feds as we enter the small clearing. There's not a lot of noise, other than that of some low conversation and the occasional footstep taken through fallen leaves.

It's a similar forest to the one I was in this morning. At least it makes it feel like we're on the right track. Maybe next time, with a little more chance to prepare, we'll be ready for him.

Ha! If detective work doesn't get you there, sheer bloody-minded burying your head in the sand will see you through.

Just as we get to the cadavers a crow squawks high in the trees. We both stop and look up. The others all do the same. Just for a moment. The real killers are all up there, watching over their victims, wondering if they're going to get another chance to pick at the bones.

Wonder if the public will start going bat-shit crazy for killing crows. That collective mentality is so fucked up sometimes. Someone will point out that yes, it was the crows that were committing the murders, the other bloke just facilitated it. The crows are the real killers. Let's get the bastards! And off they'll go, all Henry the fucking Fifth, and crows will be laid waste all over. Not like I give a shit, but there's nothing worse than crowd violence just for the hell of it. Even if it is against crows.

We get right up to them before anyone intervenes. Two feet away, as close as we want to get. Stand in silence over the three cadavers, each of them exposed to the elements.

One of them, the guy who looked like he was already dead in the video, has had the inside of his head almost completely cleaned out. Fuck, I've never seen anything like this. It's so grotesque, so absolutely horrible, that it's almost like standing over a waxwork, or playing one of those god-awful video games that Andy spends all his time on.

With the other two there's a little more brain matter left in the cavity. A munge of grey/red soup. Vichyssoise or some shit like that. Damned disgusting. The heads are supported so that they can't tip forward, the remains of the brain matter can't spill out. Hard to read the expressions on the faces, as they've all had their eyes picked. Carbon copy of last time.

The possibility that that's what it might be – a copy – flits through my head, but it's not that. This is the same guy.

'Detective Chief Inspector,' says a voice approaching quickly from four o'clock. Here we go. We both turn, although obviously I don't really answer to Detective Chief Inspector. Give it another few decades.

We are met by Detective Chief Inspector Montgomery. He's the same rank as Taylor but obviously, in ranking terms, being from Edinburgh is like an away goal in Europe.

'Why are you here?'

Straight to the point. It was always going to get down to some sort of bitch fight pretty quickly. Would have been nice to get a bit more of a look before we got tossed. I do the sensible thing, turn away from the awkward handbags situation, and start making a mental note of everything that I can see before we get ejected.

'I thought it would be instructive for two of the investigating officers who were at the first crime scene to visit the second one, so that there could be some sort of direct comparison.'

Which is, of course, a perfectly valid point. But let's not let common sense get in the way of some dick jousting.

Taylor stares it out for a moment, but then Montgomery probably realises that the longer we stand here like we're in a Steven Segal film on Channel 5 at 11pm on a Friday night, the longer we get to take in the crime scene. A situation like this would have been so much more fun back in Bogart's day. There would have been punches thrown, we'd have cracked open a bottle of whisky and all three of us would have nailed the blonde broad.

What with it not being Bogart's day, Montgomery pulls his phone from his pocket. He stares at us as he makes his call, it's just that I'm not looking. Start walking round the small triangle of the dead, examining their bonds.

Duct tape, largely, but tight. Unbreakable from inside the bond. Bare feet cemented in concrete as before. High-backed chairs, the neck bound to the wooden slats as is the forehead, or what's left of the forehead after he's superscalped them. Eyelids stapled open. Lovely touch.

'Glasgow are here,' he says. Crisp voice. Sharp. I've nothing against the guy, and Taylor won't have either. Just doing what he's been told. Might even be worthwhile trying to be nice to him for a minute or two. Might be. He hangs up without saying anything. He must have been watching the movies too.

Taylor breaks eye contact, turns and starts looking over the bodies. Face impassive. Jesus, what other kind of face can you have when confronted with this? Having seen it before, he quickly makes the assessment that it looks exactly as it did previously, then he looks round the clearing, up at the tree tops. A few crows visible. Watching. Not as many as we saw in the footage. Maybe the others have all gone off to another killing.

Taylor's phone rings. He glances at Montgomery as he takes it from his pocket. Can see him briefly curse himself for not having thought to turn it off.

Taylor answers and doesn't say anything at all. Nice. The movie people would love him. Listens for a moment, then clicks the phone off and puts it back in his pocket. He takes a last glance around the area then looks at me. That last call might as well have been on loudspeaker. We all know what was said.