There were bad guys on every side in the Balkans. But there's no ignoring some things. There's no ignoring Srebrenica, for example. There was no other side did anything else on that scale. No other side lined up thousands of men and boys and slaughtered them all. They all did some fucking horrible shit, but no one else did that. Just the Serbs. The Bosnian Serbs.
The side that I took.
27
Get into work for 6:53am. Not bad, under the circumstances, but I'm pretty wired as soon as the alarm goes at six. Very commendably, DI Gostkowski did not stay over, barely even lay in bed, me with my arm draped around her, after we'd finished. She came, she fucked, she came, she left.
Thinking about her as I sit at my desk, but not in any proactively vomit-inducing romantic way. Would be nice if we quickly developed into fuck buddies. Been a while since I had an out-and-out fuck buddy. Such a rare thing to find. There's usually one of you, if not both, ends up thinking romantic thoughts, and before you know it something's said, and there goes the fuck buddy relationship and then not long afterwards, there goes any kind of relationship.
Enjoy it while you can, as much as you can, in the sure and certain knowledge that it won't last.
Grabbed a look at the newspaper headlines on the way in. The Sun led with The Crow Must Go On, which was my favourite, although the Mirror's Let It Crow, Let It Crow, Let It Crow ran it a close second. Plenty of them happy to potentially offend their readers, or anyone who happens to notice the front page, with large graphic pictures of the dead and dying. At least three of them promise even more graphic pictures inside, promoted with the usual warning about not looking if you're squeamish which is just aimed at attracting as many readers as possible.
The victim who managed to last until the cavalry arrived — although it's doubtful she knew anything about it — didn't make it through the night. Heard the news on the radio as I was getting breakfast. Extraordinary that she lasted that long. She remained sedated once the paramedics had finally done the job, and had never had anywhere to go. There was never a chance of recovery. If she died because someone decided to pull the plug in the middle of night, then you couldn't blame them.
Taylor arrives just after seven. Stops at the desk, acknowledges my presence with a nod. I read into it that he's desperately impressed that I'm here, what with me having previous.
'Can you spend some time looking at the three dates?' he says.
'What am I looking for?'
'Whatever you can find. See if there's a connection. And I don't mean, you know, anything big, anything that would be obviously flagged up as happening on those dates, the This Day in History section. Check newspapers for the day after each of those three dates, note down every story that might be of worth, see if there's anything that recurs, any theme, any name. Anything.'
'You have a hunch or something specific?' I ask.
He stops. He'd been slowly edging towards his office as he spoke, as if he didn't even have time to get the words out.
'Neither,' he says, and suddenly, just for a moment, seems a lot less dynamic than a few seconds ago. Gives himself a shake, snaps out of it. 'Just a thought, nothing more. Clutching at straws. I assume…' He pauses at the use of the word. Never assume anything in this game, and he knows it. 'I'm thinking that he does it when he's ready, and the fact that there's less of a gap between the second and third than between the first and second, is an indicator that he's getting better, able to put his plans together more quickly. That's what I think. Nevertheless, it's no reason not to consider other angles. Let's give it a go.'
He looks around the office, maybe making a note of those already at work, but more than likely just collecting his thoughts, then turns back.
'The downside is that, even if you don't find anything, it doesn't rule it out. He could be committing the crimes on specific dates, but there's no public record of what those dates are. So…'
And he just lets the sentence drift off, waves a haphazard hand then walks to his office.
Turn back to my computer screen and start looking through the newspaper archives. Might as well begin with the Evening Times. My heart isn't exactly singing at the prospect, but at least it's something constructive.
Suddenly DI Gostkowski is standing beside my desk. Not sure what she's working on at the moment, how many of us are being placed under Edinburgh command and control. I'm very happily staying out of the office politics, leaving it all to Taylor. From the general lack of grown men shouting, throwing teddies in the corner and behaving like football supporters, I'm guessing that some sort of mutually beneficial agreement has been reached between the two forces — and let's not pretend that that would have been reached by anything other than total desperation — and we are all, like the High School Musical kids and George fucking Osborne, in it together.
She looks fresh. I'm guessing — although it's not a word I would usually use to describe a forty-five-year-old, marginally overweight bloke who smokes too much — that I probably look reasonably fresh as well. Rather than go home and lie awake in bed thinking too much about the day gone by, we banged each other's brains out and sleep came very easily.
'Fuck buddy,' she says, and a small smile comes to her face.
Interesting etiquette. Some would say that just the acknowledgement of the notion that you might be fuck buddies is overstepping the mark, that the person saying it is laying down some sort of rule and talking about the situation, which in itself is denying the very nature of one's fuck buddy role. You have sex, you don't talk, you don't acknowledge. So this is a bold move, early on in the fuck buddy relationship. I'd never make the move myself, but it probably is the case that if anyone's going to do it successfully, it has to be the woman.
And that smile. Intriguing. Beautiful. Almost not even there before it's completely gone. I attempt what I hope will be an equally small and intriguing smile in return and nod. She taps her closed fist on the desk, as if asking to come in, and then walks on her way. I watch her go, and I'm pleased to say that as I look at her, all I think is how great she looks naked and that I can't wait to sleep with her again tonight, and barely a romantic thought crosses my mind.
*
I never thought the dates idea was up to much. If that was what the Plague of Crows has done, then he was leaving something to chance. Using specific dates might have been a tricky one for us to work out perhaps, but if we did it, then we might have an in. So it was a long shot, like Taylor said. Something that he probably thought of while lying awake in the middle of the night, because he didn't have a fuck buddy.
Anyway. Four-and-a-half hours later — and I realise that this is something I could spend much longer on, but four and a half hours somehow seems enough — I'm standing at the door of his office.
'Nothing,' he says, without looking up. Not even a question. He knows.
'Nothing,' I say.
He sits back. Stares out the window. Another grey, cold day in January. There's a guy snooping around the car park, looking in windows. It could be someone hoping to nick a car — it's not like there aren't people around here with the sheer balls to nick a car from outside a police station — but we both know it's a journalist.
He lifts up the phone.
'Sergeant,' he says, to Ramsay at the front desk, 'there's an intruder in the car park. Send a couple of guys out to put the wind up him, eh?'