Douglas Lindsay - A Plague Of Crows

Maybe there was just no point in going to see him.

'Aw, bugger it, Stephanie… Be careful.'

'Yes, Sir.'

'I'll go back to Hutton's flat. I foolishly rushed back here because I thought they might be interested. See if I can find anything. After we've done those two things, we need to get back on Clayton's case. I know he's at the heart of it. Where he works, what he does, who he talks to, what happened to his wife, everyone he's slept with, everything…'

'Right,' she says. 'I'll take a quick look at the file, then I'll get over there.'

Taylor settles back in his seat. Takes a deep breath. Looks at the security band, lying on his desk in the middle of the room. The fear grows. The Plague of Crows is still out there. He never caught him, and eventually it was guaranteed to get personal.

'Thanks, Stephanie,' he says, and Gostkowski leaves quickly.

The door opens. A door. How can I say the door when I didn't even know there was a door. Obviously there's a door. I'm not outside, I'm not in a cave. There must be a door.

Open my eyes, there's still barely any light. Little illumination from outside the room, although there is some sort of light, the light of night, seeping into the corridor outside.

I can see her outline coming towards me. The last woman I'll ever fuck. The woman who came for revenge. Will she tell me? Will she say what's she doing? Will she let me know about her long search for me, and how she spent so many years waiting for this moment? Will I find out why her face was stored in some remote part of my brain?

I don't care. Won't make any difference to my wretchedness. Won't make any difference if she extends this sorrow. She's planning something. Perhaps she's taking me back. Perhaps I'll be put in a crate and sent to Bosnia.

Perhaps, in fact, this is what I want. To be taken back there. To that exact spot, which is so burned in my head. To face her again, one of those women. Any one of them. A sister, a mother, a granddaughter. Any one of them, if any of them survived. Maybe they're all dead now. Why wouldn't they be dead? What did they have to live for after that?

Fuck. What did I have to live for, and I'm not dead. Not yet.

She's pushing a trolley with a large, low level rack. Something that you would use in a warehouse. She stops next to me, manoeuvres the rack beneath my prone body. I get the feeling I'm attached to something, but I really can't tell. Cannot move an inch, my body expertly bound and strapped.

She removes the blanket. Can hear a slight sound of exertion as she tips the trolley back and lifts me off the ground. Ha! That extra couple of stones in weight is fucking you up darlin'…

Get to the door, she has trouble manoeuvring me through sideways. Bangs my forehead off the door frame. Grunt. Groan. More pain. The pain in my hand has started up again, somehow worse, after I'd been able to get used to it on some sort of level, lying alone in the darkness.

She bangs my head again as she works the trolley out of the back door. Outside now. Feel the cold air on my head. Seem to be wearing clothes, which I hadn't thought about before. I was naked when she attacked me at first, wasn't I? Of course, naked. I was naked, erect.

She stops beside a dark shadow. Large dark shadow. Get a glimpse of a tyre. She's putting me in a van. Taking me somewhere. Hospital? Ha! Still got a fucking stupid sense of humour.

She tips me off the trolley onto the ground. But it's metal. The metal ground. Then a slight humming sound and I'm being raised on a platform at the back of the van. Short trip. Then she's shoving me along the floor of the van until I hit something. Something not particularly solid, and there's a muffled grunt.

A muffled grunt. My head is swirling with confusion. General confusion. All over the place confusion. I'm not alone. Why am I not alone? Who else has she got in here?

I'm being punished for what I did in Bosnia. I know I wasn't alone, but surely those other guys haven't been living in Scotland. That doesn't make sense. They would have stayed on to fight for a Greater Serbia, or whatever the Hell it was they were after. If they had fled, why would they come to Scotland?

My mind is set. Feverish with the pain and the cold and the sweat. Hallucinating. Maybe I'm just hallucinating. Maybe there was no grunt.

Fuck! Just think, man. Think clearly, think straight.

But I don't want to. I want to get out. Get out of here. Not the van. I don't want to get out of the van. I mean life.

And I don't want to know, not really. Suddenly realise that I'm not that bothered who this other person is. Maybe there's more than one. Even so, I'm not interested. This isn't about them. Not now, not this time. This is about me. My part in my downfall. This is about me getting my comeuppance. I don't care about them, I don't care why they're here. I don't even care if I'm imagining it, and they're not even here in the first place.

Another moan. Low. Low groaning. I'm definitely not alone. How many more are there?

Footsteps around the outside of the van, the cab door opening and closing, the growl of the diesel engine, and then we start to move. A slight reverse, and then the van shudders forward and we're off.

I'm not thinking clearly, although I don't think it would make any difference if I was. In my mind we must be heading to the woods. I know that's where we're going, because that's where my last judgement will be.

My last judgement. Fuck's sake.

My head rests against the floor. I need out of here. Out of this life.

The darkness seems to be coming early. A grim day. Drab and cold. Gostkowski stands at Clayton's door, ringing the bell. Suddenly wondering what she was thinking. Did they really think that Clayton was guilty? If he wasn't, then there was no point in her being here; if he was, then she'd come on her own to interview a man who had already murdered nine people.

Not thinking straight. Is she suddenly nervous? Are those nerves?

Deep breath. She has to be more worried about tact and diplomacy than about Clayton lurking behind the door with a knife or some other surgical tool.

Clayton answers the door. He's wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Has an air about him that suggests he hasn't showered yet that day, that he's had a day of doing little around the house. Watching television and playing X-Box. Jeremy Kyle and Nazi zombies.

'Mr Clayton,' she says, and she holds out her badge. 'DI Gostkowski. Wonder if I could have a word.'

He stares at her for a moment and then snorts out a slight, rueful laugh. Shakes his head.

'Whatever,' he says. 'You fucking people…'

He stands back to let her in. And she has the impression straight away, an impression so strong that she knows it to be true. This guy has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with the disappearance of Sgt Hutton. Whatever the Plague of Crows does when he spirits people away from their lives, he does not then go and play Call of Duty for several hours. He has the real thing.

He shows her into the sitting room, the room at the front of the house opposite the more business-looking lounge where he'd talked to Hutton and Taylor. The television is paused on a battle game. There is a pizza delivery box at the side of the large gaming chair which is positioned in front of the TV. There is a two-litre bottle of Diet Coke at the side of the chair, lying flat on the floor, top on, nearly empty. If you looked closely enough you'd see pieces of masticated pizza floating in the dark, flat liquid.

He sits in the large chair in the middle of the room, swivels it away from the TV and indicates the sofa for Gostkowski.

Everyone gets depression. Everyone has their day. This is Clayton's day. Not in the mood for playing games with the police, regardless of his guilt or otherwise on any previous crime.