A Plague Of Crows

Taylor's nodding.

'Let's just concentrate on catching him.'

'We know it's a man?'

'No,' he says. 'We're just making an assumption for the moment. My mind is open. Just don't want to be saying him or her every sentence. We'll call him him until we know otherwise.'

'A bit like God really.'

He glances up at me, looks to see if I'm being serious or anything, then shakes his head.

'Fucking Hutton,' he mumbles.

4

I'm staring at the same painting as before, but this time I've only just sat down, and I've only looked at the picture because I was following Sutcliffe's eyes.

'What do you think it represents?' she asks.

After spending some time back with Taylor I realise that part of the problem was that I just hadn't been speaking to anyone. I'd been out of practice. I'd stopped talking altogether, found that I didn't really need it, so that when I pitched up here at Sutcliffe's office, I was just thinking, what's the point? I'm getting by just fine without saying anything.

A few months ago, I may well have thought that Sutcliffe and her ilk were the real nutjobs and that it was all a waste of time, but I'd at least have made some effort in talking to her, even if it was just to try to get her into bed.

I look round at her and smile. Still haven't had any alcohol, eyes are bright, the hillside tan is still a few days away from fading. Suddenly I'm talking to an attractive, intelligent woman and I'm full of myself.

'Just a painting,' I say. 'Red on top, orange on the bottom. It could be a red sky over the desert, it could be strawberry jelly on top of orange jelly, but you know, I think the artist just thought it looked nice and he — or she — left it up to the viewer to make up their own mind about its meaning. In fact, they might not even have got as far as thinking that anyone would read meaning into it. But, of course, you stick a picture on a psychiatrist's wall and it immediately has to mean something.'

She smiles, doesn't nod or anything. She makes a quick note — although I reckon she's just doodling a bloke with a button nose and a moustache — and then looks up.

'My daughter painted it when she was six.'

Ah. She has a daughter. Doesn't mean she's still with the father, but it might not be a good idea to go hitting on any more married women. Just yet.

'How many times did you sleep with Detective Inspector Leander's wife?'

'You think I counted?'

'Possibly.'

'Seventeen.'

'Did you just make that up, is it a guess, or did you really count?'

'It's a guess. But a fairly good one.'

'Did you ever think about DI Leander? What this would do to him?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I was too busy sleeping with his wife. It was sex. It happens. She's gorgeous and, as far as anyone knows, doesn't keep it to herself. I wasn't the only one. Am I proud of what I did? No. But the sex was great.'

'You were aware that it was becoming a scandal around the station. You'd been told to stop.'

Now that's true. It had started to get a bit uncomfortable. Taylor was getting pissed off at me. Everyone knew. Everyone. DS Hutton was shagging the DI's wife. Open secret. That was awkward. I did almost think about ending it one of the times that Taylor told me to, but then she called up and invited herself over and she stands on the doorstep of my flat, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm solid, this is it and I'm going to tell her she has to leave and that we're finished, and then she opens her coat and she's wearing black underwear. Just, you know, the kind that's supposed to go straight to a man's cock. And it does. And I sleep with her.

That was a couple of weeks before the bottle of wine at the Whale incident.

'Have you got a problem with sex?' Sutcliffe asks, when I don't say anything.

Hmm. Well, I haven't had any in the last four months.

'I don't think so,' I say.

She glances down at a thin file, looks at a couple of pieces of paper.

'Your history suggests otherwise,' she says. 'You seem insatiable. It's peculiar in a man your age.'

I give her the dead pan after that one. Saying nothing, although the words 'you can find out for yourself if you want, darlin'' aren't far from my lips.

'There's not much in your file about your time in Bosnia,' she says, cutting to the big one. But I'm in a good place today. Back in the zone. Back in the denial zone. 'You've never talked about it.'

'No, you're right.'

'Why is that?'

'It was horrible,' I say, but without accessing any of it in my brain. 'There's nothing about it that I want to talk about.'

'But there's some suggestion here that that's your problem. Your time there, your time spent in a war zone, it has impacted on you ever since you came back, made you reckless.' She takes another quick glance down. 'Even though it was a long time ago. If these things aren't dealt with properly, they can hang around in the head for a long time. Forever.'

Nothing to say to that.

'Reckless is a bad word for a police officer. Your affair with Mrs Leander, accompanied by a host of other incidents and affairs and marriages over the years, all point to an inherent recklessness.'

I'm staring across the room at her. She's only four yards away. And she's right. I was reckless before I ever got to Bosnia — given that I went there just to check it out and have a look at war, death and suffering first hand, it was implicit in my even going — but I've been a lot worse since.

'Do you have examples of any cases in which I've been involved where it's negatively impacted on the outcome?' I ask.

Aye, there's the rub.

She doesn't immediately answer.

It's been close a few times, and maybe there'd be some legitimate suggestion that I should be dealt with before I negatively impact, rather than after, but really, there it is, there's the fucking rub. I always get by.

'You don't think you negatively impacted the work of the station by hospitalising Inspector Leander?'

'He hit me over the head with a bottle of wine.'

'You slept with his wife.'

'An act of love and affection. It was him that brought violence to the table.'

She gives me a bit of an eyebrow for that one, and well deserved. Love and affection? Tuck it in, Hutton, you wanker. Still, I've got her pegged as a tree hugging liberal, the type who wants to believe in people, the type who wants to think there's good in everyone and that everyone can be rescued.

'I was wrong,' I say, finally getting around to coming out with the kind of standard arsewipe that Taylor was looking for me to say. 'I shouldn't have slept with Maggie and, at the very least, I should have stopped when the Chief Inspector told me to stop. Leander only did what any self-respecting man would have done.'

Apart from the fact that he took weeks to do it and then he came at me from behind my back because he's a pussy.

She's melting. Piece of cake really. I haven't quite put the ball in the net yet, but I've made steady progression into her half. The main thing now is to concentrate and not blow it by asking her what she's doing after work.

5

Three o'clock, my first afternoon briefing. The keys to the castle have been returned to my good keeping, and I can once more join the police fold, once more strike boldly forth and legally kick the fuck out of people. Wouldn't have happened so fast without Taylor demanding it, but he's now the senior DCI around these parts and he's risen to the challenge. Knows what he's doing, gets results.

This'll be the first time he's had to find the killer of three people who've ultimately had their brains eaten by crows, however.

Seventeen people in the room. The walls are covered in the pictures Taylor tried showing me on the train. My head's in the right place now, which it wasn't yesterday. I can look at this shit without wanting to shut down. It's a constant adjustment process.