I'm out after him, into the car. Straight away he lights it up and we zip out of the car park, wheels spinning, siren wailing. On the charge.
*
A large wood out past Shotts. There would be some officers, seriously, there would be some who would have said nothing. Wouldn't have put the siren on, wouldn't have called in the local plods. Would have wanted to be first on the scene, would have wanted to be the one with the glory.
Taylor, however, ain't one of them. All he's interested in is getting to these people before they die. As soon as we're in the car, I'm calling it in. The local station, the guys from Edinburgh, letting everyone know.
He knows the Plague of Crows won't still be there. It's possible he's wrong in thinking that the footage currently playing online is being broadcast live, but even if it is, it's not going to make any difference. The guy isn't going to have taken any kind of chance. We're not going to find him standing there camera in hand, asking the players in the piece to give him more desperation and inner angst.
This is all about getting to these people before they die to a) save their lives and b) hopefully get some information from them about how they came to be tied to a chair, their feet in concrete and their brain under attack.
'Same setup as last time?' I ask. Heading along the M8, touching a hundred. Could be going faster, but it's just not that great a motorway. Two fucking lanes, for crying out loud. Why improve that when you can flush fifty gazillion down the stank for a tram system in a wee bit of the capital? Bastards.
'Exactly,' he says. 'All three are women this time.'
'You think it's live? Live footage?'
'It's been taken on a grim, cold morning in central Scotland. Could be any morning. We might well find them completely decomposed, but I don't think so. And the last couple were filmed as he circled around them. This one's stationary, implying it's on a tripod, implying that it's happening now and he was making sure he'd be nowhere near it.'
There's another police car away ahead of us, lights on, siren blaring. Presumably going in the same direction. Wonder if Taylor has any fear of everybody turning up at the wrong place? Probably not. He had those trees emblazoned in his head.
Are they already showing it on the news channels? Jesus, they must be dying to, but really, it's nine in the morning. You can't go showing people getting their brains eaten out live on air, even with one of those messages that they have to put in front of everything nowadays. You should be warned that the following clip contains scenes of a somewhat unsavoury nature.
Lurch back into silence. Aware that there are sirens behind us as well. Could be more locals, or could be the Edinburgh guys. We weren't looking to steal a march on them, Taylor just didn't want to take the time to slow down, didn't want to lose the half minute it would have involved, along with the possibility of a bunfight with Montgomery.
That can come after the victims have been saved.
Off the motorway, nearly loses it as he flies onto the Shotts Road, then skids spectacularly as he takes a ninety degree turnoff before we come to the golf course, and he starts gunning it down a small road. See the feds up ahead, and wonder if they're the first on the scene. Must be others here by now, it's taken us nearly twenty minutes.
In the last few months he's visited all the potential places. All of them, all over the country. That's what he's been doing. Driving and thinking. Listening to Adele and Bach… He knows every one off by heart, knows exactly where he's going.
Can see it up ahead, through the trees. Three of our cars are there already and an ambulance. That's good. In my rush I never said ambulance, and just because it's obvious doesn't mean that someone would have thought to do it.
He skids to a halt having slithered along a final stretch of damp muddy track, nearly hitting one of the other police cars and coming up just an inch or two short. Out the car, quick dash into the clearing. There are seven feds and two paramedics. And crows. In the trees, in the air. Still lurking, upset at being interrupted in the middle of breakfast.
There's a sergeant, who appears to be in charge, although he seems as out of his depth as most people are going to be at a scene like this. A couple of the others are looking around the perimeter of the small clearing. There's an officer each beside two of the victims. The ones who are already dead. The paramedics are attending to the survivor. If you can call her that.
The video camera set a little to the side on a tripod has been turned away, and presumably turned off. All those fucking ghouls who've been watching it on their computers are going to be disappointed. The TV networks will now be able to switch to comfortable edited footage that was recorded earlier, footage they've already seen and so know what's coming.
As Taylor and I approach the officers move back to let us have access. The woman, a strange half-head of long blonde hair in thick curls, is sitting bolt upright, still strapped in the position in which she was left. Her mouth is gagged, her eyes stare blankly ahead. There's a little blood running down from one of them. Her whole body seems to be tugging against the bonds, but as we get closer we can see that she's not making it tug. There's no thought involved. She's spasming constantly, violently, her body unnaturally pushing against the restraints.
We both stand and look for a second. A crow flutters past.
'Anyone got a gun?' asks Taylor.
For a second I presume he means for the woman rather than the crows, but that probably says more about me.
'Didn't want to let it off, Sir,' says the Sergeant, 'in case we disturbed her.'
Taylor glances at her again. Another crow swoops in and tries to grab a piece of one of the other two cadavers, is waved away by the attending officer.
'Kill a couple of them, Sergeant,' says Taylor. 'If that's not enough, kill another couple.'
He steps closer to the blonde.
'She gone?' he asks of the paramedics.
They've been working either side of her head, trying to stem the bleeding, and they take their hands away so that we can see the damage.
Jesus fuck. Feel the vomit start to rise, but I can't go throwing up, not in front of all this lot. At that moment I get the smell of it and realise that others have already heaved a couple of times.
Her brain is eaten away, the light grey matter mixed with blood. It's not so different from the ones we saw last time, and yet it is much, much worse. She's still alive. A twitching, quarter of a life.
The gun goes off and I, at least, flinch. Maybe the others do too. Another quick couple of shots, accompanied by the fleeing of crows and the frantic flutter of wings and the crowing and squawking.
I step away — nothing more to see here — and walk into the middle of the clearing. Montgomery is approaching, large strides through small trees. I hear Taylor say, 'What are the chances I'm going to be able to talk to her?' and one of the medics snorts in reply.
I step further away, to the edge of the clearing, looking around. A couple of constables are already doing the same thing, and I wonder if they've been told to or whether they just want to get away from the murder scene. Is that what I'm doing? Do I think there's worth in looking around the area, or do I just not want to look at a grisly murder site in the middle of a wood?
Too many times grisly murder scenes in woods play out in my dreams. Can't stand to look.
But has the killer waited in the undergrowth to watch? Or does he have another camera hidden somewhere in the trees? That would make sense. A camera. Maybe he did that before, although the surrounding areas were thoroughly searched. Yet there are changes each time to the way he operates, and those changes have been related to filming and release of video.