A Plague Of Crows

It also wouldn't be in keeping with the obvious desire for anonymity. It's one thing the police turning up out of the blue uninvited — like Adele and Alanis — but to then keep the contact going, make them mad at you again, get your face in the newspapers if at all possible. That's not the Plague of Crows.

I've also realised that I need to chop the footballer off the list. Sure, he was an odious little bastard, but he's also a footballer, dyed-in-the-wool, which is to say he's thick as fuck. This guy probably hasn't worked out yet how to tie his boot laces, which is the real reason his career stank up the lower divisions of Scottish football. I was just keeping him on the list because I was in a bad mood and he's an obnoxious arsehole. If I did about ten more minutes of investigation on the bloke I could probably find at least three reasons to arrest him, but none of them would be for having the wit to carry out the crimes of the Plague of Crows.

That's what we're talking about. The crimes may be vile, horrendous, brutal, vicious, depraved, whatever you want to call them, but they're the work of a man who knows what he's doing, a man of creativity and acumen, a man who knows how to play his audience. A man of quality, who has decided for one reason or another to put those qualities towards perpetrating the most appalling murder. So, whoever he is, he ain't some dipshit footballer.

Which leaves the guy with the ugly kids in the big house to the north of the city. Married to a woman who used to be on High Road, that's what he said. There was no sign of the wife, and for all the photographs of the bloody spawn, there were none of the missus. Or of him. It was all about the kids.

Maybe that was why he went on the list in the first place. These people with endless photos of their damn kids all over the place. Fair enough, if that's what you want to do, once the damn kids have left home. Maybe you actually want to be reminded of them. But while they're living in the house with you? Really? What's the point? You finally get the little bastards off to bed after they've spent the day torturing you and ripping out your soul, then you look round and there's a fucking photograph of them smiling back at you. Laughing at you. Mocking you, letting you know that there's no escape. They will be there, sucking you dry, for all time.

Whereas, give yourself a few hours without the evil grinning faces of your kids garishly looking down upon you like some insane, murderous clown in a Stephen King novel, and you might be quite glad to see them when they get up the following morning.

Haven't seen my own kids since two days before Christmas. Some days I miss them. Some days I never give them any thought. Some days I feel guilty. Maybe that's what leads me to feel resentment against the brigade who fill their home with evidence that they've reproduced.

There was no sign of the wife, however. The wife who had been on High Road. And there was a smugness about the guy. Like he was laughing at the police for being so lost. Being so desperate that they're searching around for any old person to interview.

And maybe he's right to be smug, maybe he's right to hate the police, and maybe he's right to be laughing at us and our desperation. But the fact that he's laughing, the way he was laughing, it was just the way that I'd expect the Plague of Crows to be laughing when he's sitting watching our press conferences on the TV.

So, that's what I thought while I was drinking coffee. That I'd discard the rapist and the idiot footballer and concentrate on this guy. The guy who does something in stationery, the guy who was accused of murdering a schoolgirl, but who was never charged, and who makes enough to keep the large house he bought thanks to the police and who has a Lexus parked on the front driveway.

*

I read the files, but it's always best to get the subtext, get the information that was never written down. Twelve years later, and the officer in charge of the investigation has been retired about nine years. Ex-DCI Lynch isn't old. At least, he didn't retire because he'd hit pensionable age. He just chucked it because he'd had enough.

Find him at a trout farm up by Larkhall. Comes here twice a week. Four of the other days he splits between river, sea and loch fishing. Doesn't fish on a Saturday. Goes to watch the Celtic. Divorced. No kids. As miserable a bastard as you could wish to meet.

He's flicking his line over the water. I'm standing far enough away to avoid getting a hook in my hair. He clearly did not enjoy being interrupted. Acted like he was being forever questioned about old cases, although the sergeant I talked to at his station pretty much said that none of them had heard anything about him since he left. He wasn't easy to track down.

'But you didn't catch the real killer?'

So far he's answered most questions with one or two words. Coming to be of the mind that I might just push him in. And he's yet to look me in the eye.

'We did,' he says.

'You did what?'

'Catch him.'

There's a fair amount of disconnect going on here, which would be helped if he'd put down the fucking rod, speak to me properly and stop answering questions in mini sound-bite size chunks.

'I thought the case remained unsolved? That that was part of the suspicion that continued to hang over Clayton?'

'We solved it,' he says. 'Just couldn't nail the bastard.'

'Who?'

He finally glances round at me. He's looking at me like I'm the idiot.

'What?' he says, continuing the theme where he thinks I'm the one being obtuse.

'Who couldn't you nail?'

He continues to stare at me with the clear implication that I'm being thick as shit. And he's right. Finally sinks in.

'Ah,' I say eventually. 'Clayton…'

'Thank Christ,' he mutters, and at last he can drag his contemptuous look away from me back to the dark water of the pond, then he flicks the line over his shoulder for all the world like he's Brad fucking Pitt in that fishing movie.

'You sure it was him?' I ask, risking opprobrium by even continuing the conversation.

'Aye,' he says. 'But he was good. Knew what he was doing. Covered up after himself. A real pro.'

I stare at the miserable old bastard. There we are, the kind of thing that we've been looking for. Knew what he was doing. Covered up after himself like a pro.

'You been following the Plague of Crows business?' I ask.

He snorts. I wait for him to say something. He doesn't.

'You been following the Plague of Crows business?' I say again.

He grunts, this time says, 'Aye. Fucking glad it's nothing to do with me 'n' all.'

'You think Clayton is the kind of man who could be pulling this off?'

He'd been about to cast the line again, then lets it fall and lie limply in the water. He stares straight ahead of him, although his eyes are vague, looking at nothing.

'That's what this is all about, is it?'

'Yes.'

He's still thinking, still looking at an indistinct point in the middle of nothing.

'What led you to him?' he asks.

It would be fun to answer him with a grunt and few words, but one of us has to be a grown up.

'Fishing around. Pretty clueless, to be honest. Ended up talking to people who might resent the police and the media, as the Plague of Crows appears to do. Spoke to several people yesterday, he was one of them.'

'Why'd he stand out?'

'He was an irritating, smug fuck,' I say. He snorts again. 'Lived in a nice house, seemed to have done well for himself…'

'Fucking too right, he did.'

'… just something about him. Didn't like the cut of his jib. When I think about all the people I've talked to in the course of the investigation, he stands out. You sure he killed that schoolgirl?'