Douglas Lindsay - A Plague Of Crows

Mind on the job. Taylor stands before us.

'We're welcoming back DS Hutton today,' he says, pointing a desultory finger my way. They've all noticed me already of course. No one nods or says anything. One or two of them might have been glad to have me back, but I'm not the friendliest bastard in these parts. I'm just another copper in a room full of them. Well, I have slept with three of the women, but fortunately none of the WAGS.

Of the three women, I used to be married to Sergeant McGovern, so you know, you can take sex for granted. It lasted less then a month — I mean the marriage, not the sex. I know I'm a bit fucking full of myself sometimes, but not even me… Then there's Constable Grant. Bit awkward. Had sex once as a result of there being a bit too much alcohol consumed on both sides. But then, I'm rarely embarrassed about it, while Grant could barely show her face around here for the next week. Assumed I'd tell everyone, and seemed downright shocked that I didn't. And then there's Constable Carr. That one was a bit more long term. And when I say long term, I mean four weeks. Maybe five, if you count the part where we weren't talking to each other but hadn't actually acknowledged that she thought I was complete bastard.

So, on the SexPossibility-ometer McGovern is out, what with her being married to the other McGovern at the station. Grant, well she respects me a bit more now because I didn't publish a full account of our all-nighter in the Sun, but she's still pretty embarrassed about the fact that she got nailed by someone who's fifteen years older than her. And Constable Carr still thinks I'm a complete bastard.

Which leaves the four other women in the room to be considered.

I'm supposed to be listening to Taylor.

'… planned out, to the last detail. Sgt Harrison, how's it going on trying to establish a link between the victims?'

Sgt Harrison glances at her notepad. Best sergeant around these parts and several steps ahead of the likes of me in the promotion race. And it is a race.

'Nothing,' she says. 'I think we can probably go so far as to draw a strict inference that these people definitely did not know each other and were not connected in any way whatsoever.'

'You've spoken to…'

'Done the rounds, been across the board. You can never be completely sure, of course, because how can you know? Not everyone documents every minute of their lives, albeit even that seems to be changing… Nevertheless, although Sparing worked in social services, we can't really call him a social worker. Apparently he only did that for a couple of months, couldn't handle it, and ended up as support staff. Paperwork. Had no connection with the police. Had never, his family says, had reason to speak to the police. Not, of course, that Goodwin worked in his area anyway.' She flicks the notebook, waves a rather mournful hand across it. 'I'll give you more details later, if you like. But these people didn't know each other.'

'OK, thanks. Morrow, how's it going at pathology?'

Detective Constable Morrow also has a notebook. A quick glance round the room. Everyone has a notebook. Seriously, everyone in the room is sitting there with a fucking notebook in their hands. Pen at the ready. Jesus.

I, of course, don't have a notebook. I suddenly feel like I'm standing naked in the middle of the street. The weird thing is that they've all got the same notebook. I mean, all right, there's the standard police issue, but there's more than one notebook in the police service, and there's usually someone brings something a little idiosyncratic to the table. It's like some weird satanic worship thing where I'm the only one not involved.

'They're sure now that Tucker died first,' says Morrow. 'Quite possibly as much as an hour before the others.'

'So the journalist didn't suffer too much…' says Taylor ruefully. Dark, but well said.

'Relatively speaking, no. The other two both showed signs of surviving much longer, and with much greater brain degradation, before they died.'

Man, that's one of those situations where you're going to just hope that you go quickly, isn't it? Sometimes you're going to want to hang on as long as possible — say for example, if you're dying while Scotland are playing Brazil in the World Cup Final — and sometimes you're going to just want to fucking peg it.

Maybe they clung on, their nerves twitching and bodily functions failing, in the hope that they'd be found. That they'd get to live on, live another day, live out their days in a quiet suburb, watching daytime television and visiting their therapist.

'Anything else?' asks Taylor.

'They're keen to point out the quality of the workmanship. They got a brain guy in from the Western to take a look, and he said the work was done with surgical precision.'

'So do we think we're looking for a brain surgeon?'

'Not necessarily. It wasn't as if the bloke performed surgery on the brains. He was just a dab hand at removing an area of the skull without inducing fatal bleeding. He could have practiced on animals. And maybe on humans. I did wonder if there were missing persons that he might be responsible for, where he practiced his craft before going public.'

Taylor stares at him for a second, then looks at the floor. Thinking it over. That's a decent thought from Morrow, but it's a tough one to move on. Does he put one of his officers on something that might be a complete waste of time? Where would you start?

Well, with a list of missing persons obviously.

'Give it a go,' said Taylor. 'Yep, you know, don't spend a week on it or anything, but just stick your toe in the water.'

'Yes, Sir.'

'Constable Grant, you help him out. It'll be one of those you'll-know-it-when-you-find-it things.'

'I'm used to that,' says Morrow, immediately shaking his head at the comment.

Taylor ignores it, glances around the room. Eyes settle on DI Gostkowski. When she says her name, she still pronounces the w as a v , so it can't be too long since her family left eastern Europe, although there's no trace of an accent. She's the number two here, and he hasn't referenced her yet. Wonder what he's had her working on.

She was brought in to replace Leander because, when he was finally able to return to work, he didn't want to come back here. Thought everyone would be talking about him. Which they were. He was packed off to the other side of the city. Just as well, or it would have been me being packed off to the other side of the city.

'Stephanie, how's it looking on possible revenge motives?'

She manages to talk without looking at her notebook. That's the talent that comes with being higher up the pay scale.

'Blank,' she says. 'Sergeant Goodwin… well, you don't know what kind of petty grudge people are going to bear, but there's really nothing there. A regular policeman's life…' She shakes her head. This time she does glance at her notebook, although she's not actually looking at it. 'A regular police officer's life, no stand-out cases. Recently he's been spending a lot of time going round schools, speaking to youth groups.'

'If this is revenge, it's old, been a long time in the planning,' says Taylor.

'I know. It's hard to imagine that any of the people he's arrested over the years would want to do anything other than put a brick through his car window.'

'All right. Tucker. He's a journalist. He must have fucked someone off. I'm fucked off at him and I'd never even heard of him…'

She answers without any trace of the black humour that Taylor has just introduced into the conversation. I start to drift away, crossing her off the list as I go.

Did I say list?

She's too … I don't know… serious is probably the word. She's a grown-up. You know the sort. Has that air of humourless responsibility about her. You can imagine she's been this way since she was eight. Then later, when all her friends were doing standard teenage things, like getting drunk and listening to indie bands and smoking weird shit and getting annoyed at things that happened a hundred years ago and being outraged at that year's genocide, she was looking disdainfully upon it all and writing in her diary the precise plan of how she was going to become Chief Constable of the Met by the time she was forty-seven. And a half. Marry George. Take two months off to have a child. Harry or Imogen. She probably had the kid signed up to the nursery school of her choice even before she met George.