I reach the heart of the forest. It might be further still to the other side, to the border with farmland, but I get to the point where I can't see my way out. The forest isn't too dense, but there's enough of it that the perimeter and what lies beyond is lost. And two things happen.
Firstly, I get an all-encompassing feeling of utter hopelessness and dejection. What is the point? So, I'm in a wood that the killer might use. There will be others. And even in this wood, I need to trawl through it for the next… what?… fifteen minutes?… half an hour?… working out the most likely spot for the guy to use.
Then it gets worse. The past comes back, and the past is so much worse than the hopeless present. I don't want to know the past. There should be enough in my life for me to be able to forget it. Enough police work, enough women, enough evenings lost in alcohol. But all those things are like taking ibuprofen for toothache. You can keep it at bay, maybe you can cover it up, but when the painkiller wears off, it's still there. Nagging. Waiting to eat into you, stab at you, to not let you forget that it exists until you've done something about it.
Except there's no dentist for the past. You can't go and sit in a small room, get an injection in your brain and undo the things that you've done.
Maybe all you have to do is face up to it. Look yourself in the mirror. Accept what you did. Maybe you have to look someone else in the face and tell them what you did.
It was me. That fucking awful thing. I didn't just see it. I was supposed to be an impartial observer, I was supposed to be working. But it was more than that. I wasn't just an observer. I became part of the story.
This wood, this old wood with trees that just happened to grow here for whatever reason, and not because some forestry manager decided they would, this wood takes me back. It shouldn't. It's really not that similar to the forest where it happened. Perhaps it's just because it's natural. Feels natural in a way that so many woods in Scotland don't. So many woods. So many trees. Planted by big companies, or natural woods close to populated areas that end up filled with crap, the detritus of all our lives. Crisp packets and needles and condoms and beer cans and fucking shit.
This feels natural, like all those woods that are all over Bosnia. Nobody planted them. Of course, worse has happened in those forests in recent years than has ever happened in a small wood up the Clyde valley.
I end up sitting at the base of a tree, resting my head back against it, staring straight up at the bare branches out at a damp, grey sky. Immediately feel the dampness soak through my trousers, soak my underwear. Just as quickly forget it, ignore it. It doesn't matter.
Close my eyes. Can feel spots of rain on my face, or drips from the branches above. But I'm lost. Eighteen years ago. Nineteen? A long time, not long enough. I can hear it, see every detail. Every detail. If I could apply that kind of memory and analysis to every other crime scene, I'd be a far better copper than I currently am.
Hands over my head, bring my head down between my knees. But it's not going away. It's here now, just like it comes every now and again.
Guilt. Fear. Self-hatred. Shame. What could I have done differently? That's always the question. What could I possibly have done that night that I wouldn't be sitting here now in this position?
Why can't he take me? The guy, this guy, the Plague of Crows guy, why can't he take me? If he's got something against the police, take me. I'd be no one's loss. And it's what I deserve. Strapped to a chair, my head sliced open, picked at by birds. Angry birds.
Hah! Angry fucking birds.
End up curled on the forest floor wishing I was dead. Wishing I was dead. Then it could all go away, unless there is a Hell. Unless my mother was right. There's a Hell. And I won't be going there because I used to keep magazines under my pillow when I was fourteen.
Don't want to do this anymore.
Not anymore.
17
Taylor had headed up over Eaglesham moor. He gets back to the office about ten minutes before me, so that when I get back, having answered the call, he's in position. YouTube on the computer, watching the murder scene. The latest murder scene, the one we've been expecting. Everyone out in the station is going mental, they're on the phone, they're shouting, they're clustered around computer screens. For the time being this will transcend the dicks from Edinburgh. They'll get to it on their own when all the shit has settled down. Or, more to the point, when we find out where these latest poor bastards are.
'Any chance they're still alive?' I say to Taylor's shoulder.
He answers with a slight wave of the hand, then points at one of them.
'This guy's dead already. The other two aren't, but they can't last too much longer.'
'You spoken to Baird?'
'No, not long in. Give him a call, will you? He's bound to have watched it.'
It comes to an end and he immediately clicks back to the start.
'Any clue to where it is?'
He snorts.
'There are trees, a few low hills in the background and the weather's miserable as shite…'
I watch it through, start to finish, for the first time. As before, there's absolutely no evidence of the person taking the film. They're doing it on a hand-held, walking around the scene, catching it quickly from all angles. Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds in length. One person dead, two people alive, awake and terrified. Wide eyes. The guy got a great shot of a crow pecking into the middle of an open eye, and then withdrawing quickly as if spooked by what it had just done. The last shot before the end of the film is blood running from the eye. An eye with the eyelid pinned back, an eye that can't be closed.
The noise is just the clamour of the birds. Wings flapping, the occasional squawk as they get in each other's way. There's no sound from the cameraman, not even a muffled footstep or a low breath. No cars to be heard in the distance.
It's real, but of course you watch it as if you're watching Saw II or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just a film. Given that there's not that much blood, maybe it wouldn't even be an 18. Kids today. Played Call of Duty with Andy one day last year. Fucking hell. Having seen the real thing, I didn't last very long.
'He posted this from a new account?' I ask.
'Plague of Crows 2,' says Taylor, and he glances over his shoulder.
'Maybe he's a Hollywood executive.'
'You look fucking awful, what happened?'
In the middle of the woods, with one bar worth of reception, and me lying on the forest floor curled up in the mother of all foetal positions, the phone had rung and dragged me back. Answered in a daze. Got in the car and started driving back without really knowing what I was doing. Finally came out of it somewhere along the last part of the M74. It was only when I'd returned to the station that I noticed the passenger side mirror had been swiped off. There was a note inserted in the socket, squeezed in, so that it hadn't blown off when I'd been hitting eighty-five on the motorway. I had a fleeting moment of thinking that I wouldn't bother contacting the person who had left their name, address and an apology and that I'd just get it fixed myself — or, more than likely, never get it fixed, ever — and then I read the note.
You was parked in the middle of the fukkin road, you wanker. Ive got you're number.
And he's calling me the wanker. People wonder why the police beat the shit out of them sometimes, but really. Hopefully he'll come and find me. Well, I'm saying he, but who knows. All we're looking for is someone who doesn't know the arse end of an apostrophe, but that doesn't really narrow it down, does it?