Since the Leander business I've got it in my head that they're all wary of me, all looking at me. I'm thinking it's about me. The disease of conceit, as Bob says. Despite having been here for more years than I want to remember, I'm just not one of them. They don't give a shit about me, I don't give a shit about them.
Straight to Taylor's office. No point in even going to my desk. Ramsay at the front desk has been instructed not to send anything new my way. The endless piles of crap that are sitting there and have been waiting for weeks or months, can continue to sit and wait.
Shit day outside, low cloud, miserable. It's not been light for long, and it's one of those days when it'll never be anything other than gloomy as all fuck. The grey light of dawn will merge horribly into the grey light of morning and afternoon.
'Morning.'
Taylor glances up from a map and grunts.
'Made it in, then,' he says.
I'll ignore that.
'What's the plan?'
He waves a hand which I take to mean that he wants the door closed, then I pull up a seat across the desk.
'You go your way and I go mine?' I say.
He looks up. 'You're not going to start singing are you?'
He doesn't seem particularly chipper.
'Not get much sleep?' I ask.
He looks up again, the angry frown still on his face, then a moment of self-realisation kicks in and he shakes his head.
'No,' he says. 'Not much.'
He gets wrapped up in this shit. When he's given a job — I mean, a good job, an interesting job, one where peoples' lives are at stake — he throws himself into it. I'm still doing it because it's what I do, in the way that I breathe and eat and go to the bathroom. There's no option. Taylor has a social conscience, which frankly I find absurd. Most of the fucking public don't deserve to be watched over.
'Thought of anything else we could be doing?' he asks.
'What?'
'That'll be a no then.'
'You've been on this for three months,' I say.
'It changed two days ago,' he replies. 'And all we've thought of in those two days is this wild goose chase. Jesus.'
He shakes his head, sits back. Looks across the desk. I get the feeling that it's the first time he's looked away from one of these maps in about fourteen hours. At least he's not wearing the same shirt he was wearing when I saw him last night, so he must have been home for a little while.
'You've been on this for three months,' I say again. 'The only thing that's changed is that we're pretty sure he's going to repeat. Apart from getting ahead of the game, what else can we do? We could try contacting every police officer, journalist and social services bod in Scotland to make sure they're not currently getting their brains eaten out by a bunch of ravenous birds, but holy fuck, you know we can't. Even if we weren't working under these preposterous circumstances.'
Hands across his face. The usual gesture. However much sleep he got, it wasn't enough.
'We need to spend at least one more day doing what we did yesterday,' I say. 'Get a feel for the places, the kind of area he might be inclined to use. You must be getting that already. Sure there are hundreds of wooded areas, but then you go to them, and you realise, he's never going to do the kind of thing he does right here. You realise that it must be somewhere else. Then, every now and again you think, wait a minute, this would be perfect.'
He's staring at me. You can see him almost fighting internally on whether or not he's going to allow himself to be dragged out of his moment of temporary despair.
'Coffee shop,' I say. 'Thirty minutes, chew the fat of the case, then head off. If nothing else, we get to sit in our respective cars and listen to Bob.'
Big sigh.
'Fuck,' he says.
I stand up.
'Come on, shift your arse,' I say.
Not terribly respectful, but you have to judge your moment.
'Fine,' he says, and he stands and grabs his coat from the back of his chair.
We walk out together. Since I'm in one of my rare moments of not believing that the entire world revolves around me, I don't presume that everyone is looking at us, thinking, where the fuck are they going now?
'What you listening to at the moment?' I ask, as we head outside and start walking down the street. Light drizzle in the air. You know, the soaking, horrible kind.
He doesn't immediately reply.
'I'm still on a Together Through Life kick,' I say. 'Been listening to it all week.' Of course, he knows that, as he had to listen to it on the way out to Aberfoyle. And back.
He grunts. Give him a glance.
'Been listening to Adele,' he says, his voice low.
What the actual fuck?
I give him the appropriate look.
'What the actual fuck?' I say.
'You just hear it so much. Quite catchy. Thought I'd give it a go.'
Feel a weird, genuine sense of revulsion. Like cockroaches crawling over my skin. Like finding out your wife's a man. Like Scotland getting beaten 1–0 by Andorra.
'What? I mean, seriously? You can't listen to that. Jesus.'
'It's just… you know, bugger off, Sergeant, I can listen to something other than Bob for once. He won't mind.'
'Fine, listen to something other than Bob, but for God's sake, make it Leonard Cohen or, if you must be populist, Springsteen maybe. But fucking Adele? Seriously. What are you? You're like, fifty-something aren't you? And a man. You're a man in his 50s.'
'Fuck off, Sergeant.'
'She's a chav, 'n' all. We'd probably arrest her given the chance.'
'Sergeant, shut the fuck up,' he says as we reach the café. 'I've been listening to it for a few weeks, but out of respect to you, not when you've been in the car. But you're on warning. Some respect for your senior officer, or I'll play it every time you're in the fucking motor.'
Holy Jesus. He sits down and I head to the counter to place the order. Don't think it's too much to say that my faith in my fellow man — which was already on a very shaky peg — has just been shafted that little bit more.
16
Headed up the Clyde valley, past the garden centres and the old people out for their morning cup of tea. Plenty of available spots out here for your demented killer to murder someone in the woods. This whole section is the kind of area that just makes our task look impossible.
There are, actually, huge chunks of the country that can be ignored. All those swathes of open farmland and moor with neatly planted forests stuck in the middle. Populated and built up areas. Lots of them. But areas like the Clyde valley, roads snaking up the length of the river, towns and villages and individual homes strung out, patches of wood all over the place. This is the kind of place I'd go for if it was me.
It happens to me the third patch of wood that I stop beside. Up past Larkhall, to the west of the river. Up a slight hill from the road. Park the car on the verge, still sticking out a little, so turn the hazards on.
Over the brow of the hill, the wood stretches away far enough that I can't see where it ends, although I've already got a decent idea from the map. Don't know enough about trees to know what we have here. Most of them have shed; there are a few conifers around. It's an old wood, a naturally occurring wood. Almost seems odd that it hasn't been turned into a turnip field or an extraordinary development of four-bedroomed homes for the young professional.
Head towards what I think will be the middle of it. Away from the noise of the road, a sound that dimmed naturally as soon as I got over the brow of the hill. Looking all around me. A few birds in the trees, a few nests up above, but not yet that cluster of large crows' nests that we're looking for.