Douglas Lindsay - A Plague Of Crows

That's why whenever I heard anything about the war crimes tribunal at the Hague, I was instantly there. I was waiting for my name. And there were many times when I'd be called into the office of the superintendent, and I'd be standing there thinking, fuck, this is it. This is where they tell me that an accusation's been made against me and I'm suspended pending an investigation. And a trial.

Even after I'd sorted out that stupid arse Leander, when I was called into Connor's office the next day, some part of me still thought, shit, this is it. It's not about Leander, it's about Bosnia. They know. Everyone knows.

So it was inevitable. When someone attacked me. When someone bit me on the penis. When someone punished me during sex. When someone came after me, when they had stalked me in a café and asked me out, when they had chosen their moment, it seemed obvious. They were getting revenge for what I'd done. They were having their perfectly understandable, their absolutely entitled, vengeance.

And I was wrong. Because that's not what's happening. If it was, then why wouldn't she just have finished me off there and then, in her bedroom? Maybe she doesn't want any evidence of murder, so she takes me elsewhere. What she wouldn't do, if this was about me, is put me in the back of a van with a group of other people.

Whatever this is, it's not about me. And it's perfectly obvious what it is about.

The Plague of Fucking Crows. I looked at the camera, and I said to it, Come and get me. Come and get me, you fuck, if you're man enough.

Well, she was more than man enough, and I was happy enough and stupid enough to walk into it. Eyes open. Penis erect.

And now I'm getting what I asked for. I thought it, as I looked at that camera, I thought come on then, bring it the fuck on. Come on! And here I am. Never stood a chance. Never saw it coming. Blinded by lust, blinded by being obsessed with sex.

The endless, ceaseless search for sex, to prove to myself, to prove to that great watching audience that has followed every grotesquely dull turn of the screw in my life, that I can still do it. That I can get an erection. That I can have sex. It'll never happen again. It'll never let me down again, I will never let anyone down again, as I try to expunge the memories of the time when I let someone down and they died as a result. As if all that sex was doing anyone any fucking good.

And I knew I'd seen her face. The waitress. But it wasn't in dreams. It was in a photograph on a shelf in Clayton's house. The day he did a runner and Taylor and I got to look through his stuff. Another day investigating the guy and his family, and we would have found out more about him, but we were kicked off the case there and then.

Still, when I saw her in the café my brain didn't make the connect. Well, it has now. Just a few hours and one desperate fuck too late.

The Plague of Crows. Fuck, I don't care. I don't care. Fucking crows eating my brains. I don't care. Serves me right, because what I've done is put my wish fulfilment onto my own kidnapping. I wanted it to be about Bosnia, because this was how I would get my absolution. This is what I get for it. I get pain and torture and brutal, bloody death. And no absolution.

*

Sat in a small triangle in a wood. It's dark. Late evening, early morning, middle of the night. I can't tell. There's a lamp to the side, casting just enough light for everyone to see what's going on.

She's cemented our feet and the legs of the chair, just as we saw in the three previous cases. Witnessing it first hand, she's as neat and ordered and organised as we'd assumed the Plague of Crows would be. If I get to come back in a Randall amp; Hopkirk Deceased kind of situation, I'll be a perfect foil for Taylor.

Stupid fucking thoughts. I'll be glad when the crows have rid me of them. We should all be glad.

We? Who the fuck is we?

Oh God, enough…

Look at the other two. Terrified, one of them in tears. The woman. The bloke isn't crying yet, but he will be. He looks in pain. Don't know them, but I'd guess the bloke is the social worker. Got the look about him. Annoyingly empathic. If he is the social worker, then he'll have had his hand crushed, same as me. The woman has the look of the journalist about her too, but she ain't looking switched on and sharp and hungry for a story now. She just looks shit-scared. Shit fucking scared. Ha! Fucking journalists. At least the Plague of Crows is doing something useful for society.

I don't look scared. I know I don't. Because I'm not. I am… alone. Full of sorrow. Flat and empty.

Flat and empty? Can you be flat and empty? If you're flat, then you have no volume, so how can that also be empty?

Funny the stupid thoughts that run through your head while they still can. Just before the end.

'I'm going to take your gags off for a few minutes,' she says unexpectedly. She's standing slightly to the side. Realise that I'd drifted off somewhere and hadn't been paying attention to what she was doing. She has the taser in her hand.

'You can scream if you like, I don't care. No one will hear you anyway, and as soon as any sound passes your lips that is a clear attempt to attract attention, you will get this. You all know what it feels like, so let's avoid it.'

She's giving me a slightly resentful look. Don't know why. Don't care. Our mouths are gagged with thick silver tape and she grabs the end of it at the back of my head and unwinds it quickly, before ripping it off, the last pull tugging painfully at my hair.

I let out a low grunt and my head falls forward. Jesus. Nothing to say. It's just one pain after another. I realise that I'd known the position of our heads wasn't quite right as we'd been sitting there, not yet bound the same as those from past murders. Obviously some way to go in the process.

She quickly does the same to the other two. The bloke yelps, the woman sobs. The Plague of Crows, wearing thin rubber gloves, sticks the tape together while somehow not getting it stuck to the gloves, and places it in a black plastic bin liner.

She looks at the three of us in turn. This is the payoff for her. This is the moment when she gets to play God. She has complete dominion throughout, from the moment she zapped us with the taser, right to the crow-feasting end; but this is the moment when God will speak to her desperate, pitiful subjects.

'You all know what's coming,' she says.

'Please…' gasps the journalist.

I close my eyes and bow my head still further, as if closing my eyes is a way to block out the sound.

I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear the whining and the pleading and the desperation. It never works. It won't work in the woods with the Plague of Crows, just as it didn't work for so many people in the woods of Bosnia.

'Why?' says the guy, desperately. 'What have we done?'

'You assholes fucked me up from day one,' she says. Matter of fact. Cold. Not getting into it.

'What?' he says. 'We can talk about it. Make amends.'

In the silence that's only punctuated by the sobs from the journalist, I can imagine the Plague of Crows staring at him with utter contempt. My eyes are shut, my head is bowed. I'm not looking. I don't care.

She's not getting any tears from me. Nothing. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm empty.

'Let the woman go,' says the bloke.

How can you appeal to the chivalry in a female killer, you idiot?

'You?'

I don't look up, although I know.

'You!' Voice sharper this time. Don't raise my head. Sinking. I just want to sink. Keep going down until it's all darkness. Dark and cold. And there's nothing left. I don't want there to be anything left.

I hear the crack and fizz of the taser as she lets it go just to my side. Grabbing my attention as it zings into a tree behind me. Lift my head slowly. It's coming. Death is coming. And pain. Maybe I don't even care if she hits me with that thing again. Yet I've lifted my head.