'Aim to do your seven o'clock thing with the sergeant tomorrow unless something comes up. Presumably, with the level of planning this guy puts in, even if he doesn't wait three months before the next time, he won't be trying anything again tomorrow.'
'Good night, Sir,' she says, then turns to leave.
I watch her go for a moment — in fact, until she's out of sight — and then turn to Taylor. Had a weird feeling there of not being in existence. Taylor glances back at me.
'She didn't seem to be aware that you were in the room, Sergeant. I presume you've slept with her at some point.'
'Stop saying that,' I reply, a bit testily. 'I haven't shagged everyone.'
He grunts, looks back at his photographs. I wait for some other throwaway insult, and when it doesn't come I get to my feet. Everyone's tired.
'Do I get to go home now too?' I ask.
And suddenly I do feel tired. Tired and melancholic. If it was a regular day I'd be heading to a bar, to be followed by a really bad headache with potential vomiting. But even I'm not going to try to find something to drink at this time of night. A long day, with far too much of it spent staring intently at screens trying to see something that more than likely isn't there. The morning, when I ended up curled in a ball, seems a very long time ago. Yet I haven't slept since then and the life had been taken out of me all those hours ago.
He looks at his watch and indicates with a dismissive movement of his hand. I turn to head off, then look back at him, getting over my general annoyance.
'You shouldn't work much longer either, Sir. Go home.'
He looks up, irritation on his face, but it immediately leaves him. He nods and waves me out.
20
Only kept in touch with one guy after Bosnia. A Canadian journalist. Eddie. By kept in touch, I mean that we saw each other one time maybe, and he'd leave me a message on the phone or something like that when he had a piece from some distant war-torn shit hole in one of the British papers. We'd just about hung on to each other by the time e-mail really got started, so that kept us going for a while. Always said that he'd end up living in London — as if that was something to look forward to — but he never made it.
He used to say that he was comforted by the thought of suicide, that the possibility of it cheered him up. The idea that he could just walk away, turn his back on the memories and the visions and the demons, turn his back on the horrors that played out in his head when he closed his eyes. Then, having been dragged from the depths by the thought of suicide, he no longer needed to do it. And he'd say that it was a vicious circle he needed to break. One way or the other.
He finally broke it. One night in a hotel in Dubai. He'd gone there for a break from Afghanistan some time in late 2002. Dubai killed him off, sitting alone in the bath with a razor blade, listening to Turin Brakes' The Optimist.
I found out some time during the summer of 2004.
*
Wake up at 4.37am. Sweating, like I've left the heating on full, but the room is cold as I sit up out of the sheets. Rest my head back against the wall, stare into the orange light of a room with the curtains open, illuminated by the streetlights. A car drives past, and then there's silence.
Listen to see if a noise in the house woke me up. A policeman's expectation that around every corner a guy in a mask is waiting to bean you over the napper with a crowbar. Nothing. The dead of night, but I'm wide awake now.
4:38. The chances of getting back to sleep before I need to get up for work are slim. Can feel it already. Brain in overdrive.
The forest. The crows with human remains in their stomach. That's what woke me up. Then I remember my brain freeze in the woods the previous morning, something that seems a long time ago, and suddenly a warm evening in a Bosnian forest is back in my head and there's nothing I can do about it.
Fuck it. Fuck all that shit. I'm not lying here thinking about it, and if I stay in bed that's all I'll be able to think about.
Instant decision, even more awake than I was two minutes ago. Swing my legs out the bed and stand up into the cold night. Map out the next two hours: shower, coffee, toast, get into the station, start going over the whole thing again and this time find something I've not been looking for.
*
Taylor sits at Morrow's desk, what with Morrow not being in yet, and looks at me suspiciously. Checks his watch.
'What time'd you get in?' he asks.
'5.30.'
'Couldn't sleep?' he says. It's not like he's never been in at 5.30. Nod. He drags his hand across his face and leans back, as if just the thought of my sleeplessness affects him.
'Find anything new?'
Pause, long sigh, in the end don't even bother answering. Nothing found, other than a few random thoughts.
'I did wonder if we should apply the same methodology to each aspect of the case as we have to the woods, and then see if we get a convergence.'
He thinks about this for a second then indicates for me to go on.
'We only needed to speak to one person about the woods. That one person talked us through all the woods we need to look at. So, if we take other aspects of the case, we know there are crows. Now we spoke to a couple of guys about crows in the summer. Just a couple. Let's throw the net wide and talk to everyone we can find who might have some knowledge. Maybe we'll even stumble across the actual guy, given that there seems to be an innate understanding of how crows are going to act, or react. We already chased down every angle on the possible provenance of the bone-cutting tool, so let's revisit that and see if anything ties in with the woods and the crows. Same with the Ford Transit. It all seems so disparate, so unlikely that they could be drawn together, so — you know, in the case of the woods — so random, that it might be highly improbable. But let's start getting that together, and then if the Inspector brings us anything from the other lot, we feed that in too, and maybe we get a break.'
Pause. He's thinking about it. I've been thinking too. Need to think. Try to keep the rest of the shit out of my head.
'Pretty fucking lucky break,' I admit, 'but you never know.'
He's been looking at me, and now he's looking at the desk, computing it all. Let's face it, all I've suggested is let's do basic police work. What the fuck else are we going to be doing?
'And you've got to ask for more people,' I say. He glances up. 'If this was a regular case, a few definite leads, a specific area of inquiry, the two of us might be able to make some headway. But this… a thousand different strands, a thousand people to see or places to visit. It's nuts. In one way we were onto something with the woods. We had that place on our list, but it's so damned far-fetched, so many to choose from, we were never going to just stumble across it at the same time. At the very least, we need someone else doing the woods.'
He's thinking about it, contemplating taking it to Connor and how that will go.
'We don't know the bloke's time scale, whether this is an escalation, whether he'll wait another three months, whether he just does it when he's ready… but the leaves are gone until April or May. Any survey of possible woods that he could use will be extant until late spring. I say four guys on the job for a few days. If he's got any favours to call in with stations further afield, then go for it. Otherwise, get a team on to it. Split the country up, tell them to get going. We can concentrate on the other shit.'
He claps his hand down on the desk before I can get into my full dogs-of-war, up and at 'em speech, and stands up.
'You're right. If he wants us to make some headway, he's going to have to staff it properly. I'll ask for eight guys and hope we get four.' Glances at his watch. 'Right, you get us a list of bird experts. I'll put a submission together for Connor, and before we head out today you can get everything together on the cutting saw that we dug up last time.'