His office walls are covered in photographs of woodland areas around the country. Potential murder sites. His hunch is that next time the Plague of Crows will be even bolder. There will be a natural progression. From much delayed video, to video filmed only hours earlier, to something altogether more sinister. Next time, he thinks, it will be a live webcam. Sure of it.
And he's right. After all this time, trying to get inside the head of this killer, a killer who has been calculatingly brilliant in everything he's done, it's the natural progression. Live webcam, taunting us, laughing at us, mocking the entire force, every station and unit in the country. That's what's coming.
Taylor spends his days getting to know these places. There's not enough space on his walls for the photos, so he rotates them. Studies the photographs as he takes them down and puts them up. Has them on his computer, so he can watch them flash by when he's sitting thinking. When the next piece of footage starts to circulate around the web, and has gone viral within minutes, he wants to know where it is. Right there, that first instant.
In this regard, he needs the killer to strike again before late spring, because once the leaves come back, the number of potential woodland sites increases exponentially and we're fucked.
It seemed preposterous to start with. Of course it does. Just look out your window or pay attention when you drive to work or sit on the bus. There are hundreds of potential sites. Thousands. How could one man learn them all? But he's taken the time, visited them all. Stood in the middle of them and worked out what the killer will have worked out. Natural clearing. No one, or at least no more than the occasional house, within close range. Crows' nests. Good cover, even in winter. Decent access to allow him to get a Transit in.
Taylor worked at it, he narrowed it down, which meant his list was just incredibly long, rather than ridiculously unworkable.
Some are going to think he's obsessing, but all he's doing is giving himself the best chance of success. Although, of course, what will it do for us? The killer would be incredibly bold, and taking the kind of chance he appears not to take, if he were to hang around while the murders were broadcasting. He would have to make the assumption that some police officer somewhere might know where it was and therefore be long gone by the time the webcam went live.
And Taylor has started drinking again. The Plague of Crows would love what this is doing to him. He's not an alcoholic, it's not getting in the way of his work, but for a while, for a long while, he became the job, he became the authority figure in the station, he became his work; stronger, fitter, healthier. So now that he's started going back to the pub, and is having a drink when he gets home after work, regardless of time, it shows on him. He's not coming into work drunk or reeking of it, he's not drinking any more than your average middle-aged, middle-class bloke, but you can tell on his face. And I can tell from the fact that he's started coming to the pub with me.
Walk into his office, catch him standing at the window looking out at the car park. The same view, from one storey up, that you get from the back door area where all us smokers congregate these days.
'How's it going?' I ask.
He shrugs without turning.
'Nothing to report, Sergeant,' he says.
I stand at the window beside him, looking down on a sea of Hondas and dull Fords and cars that were in their prime fifteen years ago.
'It's coming,' I say.
'Seventeen days,' he says.
We've been working to a calendar. The number of days it will be before the next killing, if the Plague of Crows waits the same number of days as the last time, as if there might have been a specific reason for choosing that precise time gap.
Neither of us believe it though. It'll be sooner than that. Or later. To do it on the exact day might not be to invite capture, but it would certainly put the police in a better position. Give them a few cards perhaps. So it won't happen.
'Feels like one of those war movies,' I say, 'when they're waiting at the airfield to see who's going to make it back from the bombing raid. Or they've sent Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton out on a mission and there's nothing they can do other than wait for the phone or radio to start going.'
'Broadsword to Danny Boy…' says Taylor humourlessly. 'Yes, I suppose it feels something like that. What've you got on this morning?' he asks, turning, his tone picking up, shaking off the maudlin feeling of hopelessness.
'Usual,' I say. 'Thirteen year-old kicked fuck out her mum… a child abuse case… couple of stabbings, gang-related probably… and there were a few leftovers out our way last night after the Celtic — United game.'
'What are you doing standing here then?' he asks.
'Everything seems to be in hand,' I say. 'Everyone who had to be brought in, has been. Questioning has been done or is in order. Mostly just the paperwork and the odd talking-to to be delivered. Thought we could have lunch.'
He glances over his shoulder.
'It's 9.47.'
'Yes,' I say, 'it is. I meant, I was coming in to ask if you wanted to have lunch today. Talk about the case.'
He looks at me. Wonderfully expressive, lugubrious eyes, like an orang-utan whose forest has just been burned down, killing all his relatives and destroying his collection of David Attenborough DVDs.
'Sure,' he says. 'Twelve will suit me.'
'Right.'
I stand beside him looking out on the car park for a while. Nothing happens. No cars come or go, barely a pedestrian in the street beyond. The day is grey and flat and perfectly befitting of the mood. Eventually I turn away without speaking, and head back to my desk.
24
Back in the pub after work. Getting to be a regular occurrence again. You can't change your spots etc., etc. For a while there, after I'd gone up the mountain, and Taylor was determinedly getting his feet under the desk of responsibility, we went months without coming here. Then we came once, and then without really thinking about it here we are, several nights a week. Two divorced, miserable, single men out on the lash. Boo-yah!
Inevitably we always end up talking about Taylor's obsession. Sometimes I manage to get the conversation around to the new Bob album, or whether Thistle are going to get relegated or which one of the women at the station I'd like to sleep with next — although weirdly I never mention Gostkowski — but those conversations always end up rather one-sided and so I give in to the inevitable and let him elucidate what he's thinking. Because he certainly ain't thinking about Bob, the Thistle or women.
Of course, at the moment we're not talking about anything. Two fat old wankers sitting in a pub in complete silence. Silence, that is, apart from the rest of the general chatter and the fact that they're playing an entire album by that noxious little shit Olly Murs. Fucking hate Olly Murs. He'll be doing the Eurovision Song Contest soon, just you wait and see. That's his level.
Although, you know, I can imagine Bob doing Eurovision one year. It's the kind of crazy, fucked-up, completely out of left field kind of shit he'd do. Pop up out of nowhere representing Armenia or Latvia, some shit like that. Wouldn't be that much weirder than singing O! Little Town of Bethlehem.
'How are you and Adele getting on?' I ask Taylor, to break the near ten-minute silence.
He takes a moment, while he gets dragged back from whatever woods it is he's inhabiting, says, 'Who the fuck's Adele?'