'That's south Devon,' she says. 'Won't help you.'
He shakes his head, glances round at me.
'How many men have you got?' she asks. 'Are you going to be able to put officers out in every town and every area? How long are you going to be able to do that? If this guy is smart, he's probably planned for you to be looking out for him.'
'There are two of us,' said Taylor.
She stares at him, and then back at me. Back to Taylor. There's a beautiful silence in the air. With the hills in the background it's taking me back to the summer. A long quiet summer without any of this shit.
'There are two of you on the whole investigation?' she says. 'You're kidding.'
'There are two of us on this part,' says Taylor. Not giving her any more, despite the look she gives him. 'Look, this is shit. It's shit that the guy's done what he's done, it's shit… whatever, it's all shit. We just need your help to try and get ahead of the game. I want to walk out of here with a list. That's all. An ordered list. If the list has a hundred thousand individual small areas of woodland on it I don't care, as long as there's a top and a bottom, a note of what kinds of trees they are, a most likely and a not really much of a chance, a list that we can check out. If there are crows' nests and the wood is in any way secluded, it stays on the list. This guy has given us nothing. We need to get lucky, and all we're trying to do is make our own. Can you help?'
It's obvious she likes the speech. She nods.
'Well, Chief Inspector, it's not like I've nothing else to be doing today, but what the hell. Might as well give it a go. Let's get to work. You can use separate computers, split up the country, and I'll move between the two of you letting you know what I think.'
She moves around her desk and logs onto a monitor that is yet to be activated today.
'We've only got an hour,' says Taylor. 'Don't want to lose too much daylight.'
'Dream on, sunshine,' she says, smiling and shaking her head.
*
Four-and-a-half hours later we're sitting in the car. We have a long list, hastily arranged into order of likelihood. Sadly the top of the list starts with pretty unlikely and then gets progressively more far-fetched.
'We starting around here since we're in the area?' I ask.
He shakes his head. We've been concentrating on the absurd task we've set ourselves, but I know he'll have been thinking ahead. Mentally, I realise that I've been playing the part of the subordinate, waiting to be instructed on what to do next. I'll catch up eventually.
'No,' he says. 'We're going back home, split up, start looking at potential areas as close to the previous. Really, if it turns out the next killings are in Dundee or Inverness or Perth then we are, as Corporal Hicks says in Aliens, fucking fucked, man. We look at the places around our patch and hope for the best.'
Start the car, head off, quickly onto the A95 back towards Glasgow. Look up the hill to my nemesis of a golf course.
'We're just wasting our time,' I say after a while, as the pale green countryside passes by. Sudden melancholy, feeling a little bit lost. Put on a hopeless mission, driving around being told what to do. A cold couple of hours ahead, checking on small clumps of trees. And for what? A man cementing chairs into the floor?
'If he never kills again, we're wasting our time,' says Taylor. 'If he kills again, but this time he's gone to Sweden or Normandy or somewhere, then we're wasting our time. But if he picks somewhere that happens to be on that list… even if we don't catch him, it doesn't matter. It means we're on the right track, and we'll have more to work with… next time. So, no…'
Feeling tired after a sleepless night. Would love to fall asleep, but then, I'm driving, so that would be bad. Nevertheless, there isn't any more talking to be done. There really hasn't been any talking to do since early August. It's all been about waiting, and now this rather desperate attempt to force the pace of the investigation.
Get back to the station at 2:43pm. Time to grab a sandwich, then take about 0.005 % of the list and get going.
13
6.33pm. Trudge back into the office, stop in the middle of it all. No sign of the hired hands from out of town. Everything seems to be normal, the usual kind of shit and general level of activity for this time of day, midweek. Morrow looks up from his desk and nods. I nod back. Presumably, after one day on the job at all-out speed, he's been removed and put back onto the mundane day-to-day stuff of the Cambuslang/Rutherglen area.
Taylor's in his office so I wander through. Smoked enough fags during the afternoon not to be feeling deprived. Could use a coffee. Maybe some alcohol. Alcohol later, coffee first. Would have stopped off at the Costa on the way in, but thought I should report back. Had hoped that Taylor wouldn't be here yet.
Stand in the doorway. 'How'd you do?' I ask.
He's got one of the maps spread out in front of him, which he's been marking off.
'Looked at around twenty spots. Some of them are definitely out, some 50/50… found two, maybe three that would be good places for our man, nests in place, definite signs of crow activity. How about you?'
'You didn't catch him in the act then?'
'Sadly it's not an episode of Scooby Doo, Sergeant.'
I grunt and walk round behind him to look over his shoulder at the map.
'You make notes?' he asks.
'Yes.'
Annoyed at the suggestion that I might not have done, although generally my paperwork is so shit that I oughtn't to be.
'Right, grab a seat and mark them off.'
'Yes, boss.'
Pull up a seat across the desk from him, turn the map around and start to mark it up. He watches me for a few seconds and then turns back to the computer. Quick glance to see what he's looking at. Twitter. Ah yes, the modern way. That's how we'll find out.
For the moment Plague of Crows isn't trending, having been usurped by four tags related to Justin Beiber, two about John Terry and #replacemovietitleswithcock. Society knows what's important, and here's us worrying about this shit. But he's right to look. While we're running headlong down our tunnel-vision wild goose chase, and the boys from Edinburgh are throwing money and resources at every aspect of the investigation, you can guarantee that the next piece of information will first come to the attention of the police via social networking.
He's searching Plague of Crows, tracking the most recent stuff. A quick glance doesn't reveal anything new.
'I'm going to leave you to speak to DI Gostkowski,' he says.
'Sure.'
'We don't want any of that new mob asking questions. If they see you talking to her, it's just going to look like you're trying to get a shag. They might start questioning it if they think I'm sniffing around.'
'You think there are people on the Edinburgh police force who assume that I spend my entire life trying to get laid?'
'Sergeant, there are police officers in Bandar Seri Begawan who think you spend your entire life trying to get laid.'
Funny. Nice thought, though.
'So, do we have some sort of code?' I ask. 'Is she going to leave a flowerpot on the balcony?'
He turns away from the computer and looks at me like I'm some sort of ridiculous police freak with no clue. I get that look from him a lot, although it is at least contradicted by the fact that he wanted me here in the first place.
'You're meeting her in the Costa down the road at 7.'
'Oh. Right.'
'You'll be talking about work,' he says, giving me the look.
'She's way too serious for me,' I say.
'Bollocks,' he mutters, shaking his head and looking back at the monitor. 'Too serious… You'd have sex with a four-thousand-page essay on 17th century Scottish agriculture if it'd let you.'