Douglas Lindsay - A Plague Of Crows

Taylor stares at her, a piece of paper in his hand. Closes his eyes, tries to think it through.

'They could be working together,' she says, 'Clayton and this woman, the café woman, to get the police to make an even bigger idiot of themselves. For us to make idiots of ourselves. They want us to call it in, they want us to turn up here with thousands of SOCOs. This could just be…' and she lets the sentence drift off and waves a hand at the pictures on the walls.

Taylor opens his eyes, turns and looks over the evidence before them. Goes to the map of Scotland on the wall. There are seventeen pins in place, three red, fourteen yellow. Recognises the three red as being the spots where the Plague of Crows previously committed murder. The others are spread around the central belt.

What would they find when they got there, to these fourteen woods. Trees? Crows' nests? A jack-in-the-box, all part of Clayton's deception and joke? Hutton and two others, bound and gagged and scalped?

He runs a mental cross reference with woods that he's looked at over the previous few months. Some of these might only be useful for the summer. He quickly reduces the list of fourteen to six or seven. He turns back to Gostkowski.

She's been gone for a while. Not sure how long. Maybe half an hour. I've got under her skin, yet she didn't kill me. She's angry. Too angry to be coldly removing part of someone's skull, preparing the food for crows. She'll make mistakes. Something that she won't see coming, something she will miss because she's not in control.

She's been in command throughout every one of the murders so far. This time she's lost concentration. I know that's what she's doing when she shuffles around, out of sight. Occasionally there's the sound of footfalls on dead leaves, the noise of someone walking through the forest.

She is pulling herself together. Getting a grip. It's not about me, and she had made this murder about me.

The guy is still blubbing. Soft moaning, whimpering noises. Tears. He can't stop looking at the dead journalist. He is wrapped up in her, that bloody corpse. Occasionally I lift my head to look at the two of them.

I won't ask myself if I'm heartless. I know I'm heartless. Beyond caring, about me or anyone else.

The Plague of Crows flits in and out of my thoughts. It comes together, with wonderful clarity. I have none of the facts, and yet I know everything. Instinctively know that what is pieced together in my head is what brings me here, what brings the Plague of Crows out into the woods to avenge herself.

I see it in her face, just a flash, but it sparks the thought process. It's her eyes. The same as the look on photographs of Clayton's wife that we looked at.

If only we'd kept looking. If only we hadn't turned our backs on the case when Connor kicked us off it. Strangely I blame Taylor and myself, rather than Connor. He was just doing what he had to do. We shouldn't have taken his word. We should have kept at it. We would have come to the sister-in-law soon enough.

Clayton was just the way we found our path in. It was chance, but one of those chances that happen in life. Meant to be. I wasn't attracted to Clayton because he was the killer, but because the killer was connected to him. Quite probably he didn't know anything about it, yet it drew me in. There's no reason for it, other than some sixth sense saying that the path to the Plague of Crows lay through Clayton.

And so it did.

She comes back to the fray. Calm. Renewed. Concentration intact. She doesn't even look at me. The guy is whining slightly more loudly now. He must recognise the new coldness in her. She's back, she's determined, she's going to get on with the job.

She has the duct tape in her hand. Doesn't bother gagging me. Knows I'm not going to say anything. The social worker is already gagged, now she grabs his head and straps it firmly to the back of the seat. His eyes are wide with fear, tears flowing freely.

'You're next,' she says, without looking. Wants to be in control, but can't help herself.

Perhaps she's thinking some level of humanity will kick in and that I'll start pleading for the social worker's life. There would be no point, even if I felt like it. I'm not saying anything.

He looks at me. Beseeching, demanding. You're the police officer! Do something! Do something, you fucker! For all my genuine and heartfelt disinterest, I would be doing something if I could. But I can't. I'm as tied up as he is. Shouting won't get us anywhere.

Head strapped tightly, she moves away for a second and then returns with an electric razor. One of those big round fuckers with which you can shave your own head in seconds, if you're of a mind to not care what you look like afterwards. She's in her groove now, working quickly and efficiently. He has reasonably short hair as it is, receding slightly. I expect there's a bit of a bald patch, although I can't see from here.

Takes her less than a minute, then she rubs her hand over his shaved head to clear off the remnants of the cut. Turns away for a moment, replacing the shaver with the bone saw, and she's back a second later. She switches it on, the familiar low hum, holding it a couple of inches in front of his face. The eyes widen even more.

Terror. That's what terror looks like.

I've seen it before.

I look away. Head drops. Maybe she glances over to see if I'm paying attention, but I won't notice if she does.

The sound of the low hum is strangely all-consuming.

*

I wake up to her roughly grabbing my head and forcing it back against the chair, strapping it tightly. Quickly look over at the social worker guy. Scalped, skulled, still alive. His eyes are clipped open. His whole body seems to be trembling within the confines of his bondage.

I must have fallen asleep. Would have been perfect to just never have woken up. Gripped, immediately on waking, by a dreadful, oppressive feeling of desolation. Had been almost phlegmatic before. Sitting in hopeless impotence, the pain in my hand occasionally throbbing.

Now, the weight of it all is much heavier. The place I'd got myself into, the place where I didn't care and where pain could be ignored, has gone. Self-loathing has returned, much stronger than before.

A woman was just brutally murdered in front of me and I did nothing. I did not care. Now I hate that I was in no position to do anything. I blame myself. I'm a police officer, for fuck's sake. How could I have taken so long to find the Plague of Crows? How could I have gone to bed with the woman? How could I not know? Where was the gut instinct that I've been sitting here priding myself on?

Notice the first signs of grey light in the sky. Dawn's coming, then the crows will be unleashed. How will the crows be unleashed?

She's good. Sees it in my eyes straight away. The change. She stares for a moment, but she has nothing to say. Maybe thinks that I'll be the one to talk this time.

She moves away for a moment then returns with the razor. Bizarrely, it's quite a nice feeling as she runs it over my head. She's careful not to cut the scalp, as she doesn't want too much bleeding. It has to be as smooth an operation as possible. The crows will do the killing, not her.

When she's done, she runs her hand over the top of my head. Almost lingering. She was making love to me not so long ago. Jesus, not that I know how long ago that was. Lost all track of time.

So convinced was I that it had all been part of some sort of Bosnian revenge tragedy, that it's still hard to get it out of my head. I still associate that moment with revenge. The moment when she broke off the lovemaking to taser me. It was revenge. Except it wasn't.

'You spoke to the idiot,' she says.

Standing slightly back, the razor switched off and at her side.