Douglas Lindsay - A Plague Of Crows

I've been holding his gaze throughout. When he stops talking I glance at Gostkowski, then look away. Lower my eyes. Do I not want them to see me like this? Banged up and pathetic, silent and withdrawn, ready for the end? Bald?

I don't think it matters. Just got nothing to say.

'The other two are dead,' says Taylor. 'You were lucky.'

If that's what you call it.

Gostkowski's not saying much. Taylor continues talking, filling the uncomfortable silence with facts that I can't bring myself to tell him don't interest me.

'She had a shit life. Abused as a kid. We're still trying to find her sister, but it looks like the dad abused her as the eldest and not the younger sister. She became an actress, got a part on High Road , fucked it up. Took some newspapers and the police to court. Long time ago. We hadn't got that far back. Montgomery had, it turns out. They made some half-arsed attempt to speak to her, but no better than when they talked to Clayton. Never made the connection. She met Clayton through their lawyer, dated him a couple of times, made the mistake of introducing him to her sister. The sister seems likely to be pretty fucked up 'n' all. Just the fact that she went for Clayton in the first place.'

He hesitates, as if he might be leaving a gap for me to fill. That's probably it. A gap in the conversation that I can step into, thereby letting them know that I'm all right.

There's a fucking laugh.

'Maybe if she'd stayed with Clayton it might have kept her straight. But then, given what he'd done, it seems unlikely. He dumped her, she went off the deep end. Yet she managed to do it in a very cold, patient and time-consuming way. We've got the boys going over her computers, but it looks like she was planning this for years. It's all there.'

He pauses again. Maybe it's for me to speak, maybe he's finished. I don't have any questions. I ought to have questions. We spent months on this investigation. It had us pulling our hair out. But now that it's over, I don't want to know anything about it. The Plague of Crows is dead. Time to move on to the next thing. The next crime. Wonder what the next crime will be?

No, actually, I really fucking don't.

'Your hand was crushed to all kinds of fuck. That must've hurt. She broke fourteen bones.'

That would explain the screaming pain. I broke one bone in my hand once before and that was painful enough.

Taylor shuffles. No closer to his comfort zone. Doesn't know what to say to someone who looks fine, but isn't saying anything back. Of course he's not getting angry like that wanker Montgomery, but he's equally uncomfortable.

He walks to the window and looks outside. I don't know what he'll be looking at, or even what floor we're on. He turns back. Another glance at me, not really sure what to say, and then he nods at Gostkowski and walks slowly from the room.

My heart bleeds. He's my best friend. Maybe he's the one I should be talking to. Feel like I'm letting him down in my silence, but I can't say anything. How can I tell him what the terror in the woods reawakened in me?

The weight of depression rests slightly more heavily on me. Gostkowski does not immediately follow the DCI, yet she's not staying. I catch her eye. We stare at each other. I know she's not going to say anything. If she's trying to communicate through a look, then that ain't happening either. She bends over me and kisses me softly on the cheek.

Another look after she's straightened up, and then she walks slowly from the room, closing the door behind her. For a while I stare at the door, then I close my eyes.

I close my eyes.

*

'Hey.'

I'm back in the woods. For some reason I don't seem so upset, not as worked up as usual. I'm watching them, watching those other guys do their thing. But the women are different. I don't know who they are. I've forgotten. Perhaps that's why I'm not upset. It isn't my women that are getting raped, the women I've been so worried about and so remorseful over all these years. These are some other women who I don't have any feelings for. This is like watching the news. If they showed rape on the news.

'Hey.'

Open my eyes, dragged very slowly from sleep. The dream is gone in an instant, so that I have no memory of it.

'Hey.' Again. The voice is soft.

I manage to focus on the man beside the bed. It's Clayton. Michael Clayton. I hadn't been expecting him. I wonder what time it is. Dark outside. I wonder how he got past the policeman outside the door. How do I even know if there is a policeman guarding the door?

Why would there be a policeman outside the door? They got the Plague of Crows, didn't they?

'You intrigue me, Detective,' he says. Not that I've got anything to say to that. Not that he's waiting for me to say anything to that either. 'I was watching you. The way you manipulated poor old Jane. And, of course, I say manipulated, because I thought that's what you were doing. But you weren't, were you? You weren't playing a game.'

He's sitting down. He leans forward and places his forefinger in the middle of my forehead. Leaves it there for a second then leans back.

'You didn't need your brains eaten out, did you? There's already something missing. What is that? What did you mean when you said you thought Jane was someone else? What did you mean?'

He has the eyes of a crow. Clayton, with the eyes of a crow. Dead. Wanting. Expecting. Entitled.

'I wondered if I might kill you tonight, but there doesn't seem any point, does there? It's hardly sport. Like I always thought I'd kill the old man. Detective Chief Inspector Lynch. That's what I thought, but then… it seems so much more fun leaving him to live on, humiliated and broken.'

He pauses. Leans his chin on the palm of his hand, even though there doesn't appear to be anywhere for him to rest his elbow.

'You… You're already broken. What broke you? Not me. Not this. Not the infamous Plague of Crows. Not spending all those weeks searching for her. Hmm…'

He seems to get bored talking and looks around the room. There's nothing doing. Nothing to see. A bland hospital room. Could be anywhere. I wonder which hospital it is.

'You took your time turning up,' he says distractedly. 'I'd been expecting you right from the start. You took your time. I wondered if Lynch would put you on to me. Hmm… I expect he's got his head buried so far up his backside in self-pity he hadn't even noticed the news. Too bad… Do you care? I don't believe you care.'

I hold his gaze. No, I don't . He tosses an unconcerned hand in the air.

'I didn't come to kill you. I did come, after a fashion… to chat. Some might call it confess, I suppose.' He laughs. 'Ha! Confess… you know what I mean. Thought I might tell you the story, in expectation of it going in one ear, etc., etc. You'd never pass it on, and if you did, who'd believe you? You're a basketcase.'

He shakes his head, waves that hand again.

'What does it matter? You're not going to be impressed anyway. Lynch was impressed. Impressed enough that it got under his skin and it ruined him. But you… you're not interested in the minutiae, are you? You're not interested in anything.'

He casually looks away, makes another small gesture. Suddenly he seems terribly affected, in a way that I'd never noticed before. He's sitting here talking to me. It's a real conversation about things that actually happened, yet he's acting, and acting in quite an old-fashioned way. He's channelling Laurence Olivier or a touch of the exaggerated camp of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock.

He's been acting all along. We knew that. Couldn't believe anything he said.

'You used her?' I say. Found my voice. But really, I haven't found my voice.

Another casual throw of the hand, accompanied by a smirk.

'Things needed done, but I'd rather not get blood on my hands. She was very talented with… you know, she had talent. A steady hand. Yes. She had a steady hand.'