The clapping stopped, the laughter increased ten fold. The look in her eyes became ever more desperate. In a final pathetic gesture, she even squeezed one of her dirty, bite marked, bloody breasts in an effort to get me excited.
I fell to my knees. It felt like my penis shrivelled into nothingness.
John put a bullet in her head.
'You could have saved her, Tommy,' he said. 'But you're not a real man.'
He put a gun in my hand. That seemed strange at the time. He took a gun from one of the others — think it was Ringo — and put it in my hand.
'Kill the old guy,' he said. 'If you don't, the other women will die. If you kill the old guy, I'll let them go. You think you can do that much for me, Tommy?'
I had a gun in my hand. That's the moment I think most about when I think about that night. The moment he gave me a gun, knowing I would do nothing with it other than what he was telling me to do.
I should have shot him. John. I should have shot John when I had the chance. Then I would have died. Or I should have turned the gun on myself.
Except, I believed him. The whole idea was to mock me further, to complete my humiliation. He fully intended to let those women live if I killed the grandfather, so that I would know that he would have let the first woman live if only I'd been able to penetrate her.
I looked at the grandfather. His dead eyes looked back. His dead eyes. I stood there, my trousers still at my knees, my pathetic, impotent penis resting woefully on my balls, and I shot him. Twice. In the chest.
John didn't kill the other women. A man of his word.
*
Right from that night, that first night, I woke up gasping, my voice straining, silently screaming into the dark. In the forest, in the dead of night. Woke up, sweating, the guilt of a million years crawling over my skin like cockroaches. I'd wet myself.
They were sleeping. One of them was supposed to be the guard, but he was keeled over as well. The Bosnian women were gone. They weren't a threat.
They were gone. The bodies of the dead were gone.
I stood up. The dead of night in a forest in the middle of a war. Picked up my bag, picked up my camera, and stinking of piss and cheap booze and shame I walked out of there. Didn't look back. Some part of me wondered whether I should pick up a gun and kill the four of them while they slept. Then I could have turned the gun on myself.
I didn't pick up the gun. I kept on walking. I wondered if they'd come after me, or whether they'd search through the forest for the women. Didn't even look over my shoulder. Didn't care. They could have come after me if they'd wanted. They could have caught me, tortured me. They could have come invisibly from behind, a sniper in a tree, and taken me out.
I walked on. Every now and again I came across evidence of the war. I realised I wanted to see the women. I wanted to see them, wanted to apologise, as if that would make everything all right. As if that would bring back the old man, as if that would mean I'd stood up for them, or at the very least, that I'd been able to save her. The woman who'd been desperate for me to penetrate her. I'd apologise, they'd forgive me and I would receive absolution. Instant. There and then. Or else I could give them a knife and offer myself to them for vengeance.
I wake up. There is no sound. I can open my eyes, but there is total darkness. Darkness so complete that it appears solid. As if I'm inside a solid block. Wonder if I've been buried alive. Maybe I'm not alive.
But then there's the pain.
39
Taylor looks at his watch. Just after two in the afternoon. His heart sinks, although he immediately questions himself. The day is already dragging and there's a long way to go. But what is it he's looking forward to that evening?
Gostkowski beside him, they walk back upstairs from the interrogation room. An ugly day questioning people, most of whom were lying; or, at the very least, skewering their stories as far as possible from the truth.
What is Gostkowski doing that night? He's never wondered before. He knows she's not married, but that's all he knows. He would probably have heard from Hutton, but they haven't seen much of each other. Even when they were working together, he didn't talk about her. Which was peculiar, for Hutton.
Taylor glances at her and understands. Of course. He smiles ruefully to himself. Fucking Hutton.
He envies him. A carefree life, happily drinking and shagging. Slight glitch every time the possibility of getting back together with his wife comes along, and a moderate amount of remorse about the fact that he rarely sees his children, but that aside, a guilt-free life devoted to indulging himself in his pleasures of women and alcohol, both of which he finds in endless supply.
'You talk to Sgt Hutton much since the Plague of Crows thing?' he asks.
Hasn't seen Hutton and Gostkowski talk at all, but knows that his sergeant is capable, on occasion, of a degree of discretion.
Gostkowski glances briefly at Taylor, then looks away as she surprises herself with a rare moment of candour.
'We got a bit too involved during the Crows investigation, Sir,' she says. 'It was unprofessional. I haven't really spoken to him since.'
'Hmm,' says Taylor.
That they'd had sex in the first place was entirely in keeping with Hutton's character, that the DI had ended it because it was unprofessional in keeping with hers.
They come to the front desk, Ramsay holding dominion over his territory, never seeming to be off duty.
'Sergeant,' says Taylor. 'We'll release Masters later, but I'm not in a rush. Leave him for another hour or two, make him think the worst.'
Ramsay nods.
'Hutton around?' asks Taylor.
'Haven't seen him today,' says Ramsay.
Taylor has talked as he walked, but now he takes a couple more paces and then stops.
'What's he been working on the last couple of days?'
'Principally the school beating.'
'He passed that onto Dorritt,' says Taylor.
'He was writing up a report on it for him. I presumed he was continuing to work for the DCI…'
'What else have you given him?' asks Taylor sharply, aware that Dorritt would no more have wanted Hutton working for him on the school beating than the other way round.
'He had several ongoing cases, and I know it was logged in yesterday evening that he was given first sight of an insurance fraud case involving a small building firm in Westburn,' said Ramsay firmly. Undaunted by his superior officer's sharpness of tone, having been many years in the job.
'You didn't think to check his whereabouts this morning when he didn't come in?' said Taylor.
'If he was late,' said Ramsay firmly, 'it would hardly be the first time. He has prior. If he was out on a case, then I can't be expected to keep minute-by-minute checks on all our detectives.'
'These are hardly normal times,' says Taylor.
'It's been two months,' replies Ramsay.
'Jesus,' says Taylor, 'it was two months between the last two. There isn't a set length of time after which it's all right.'
'And there isn't enough manpower in the station for us to keep any kind of regular check on the precise whereabouts of everyone who works here. There has to be a certain amount of personal responsibility. Sir.'
Taylor stares for a little while longer then turns away, takes out his mobile. Gostkowski stands slightly awkwardly. She thinks Taylor is overreacting. Thinks that the men are having some kind of ridiculous, testosterone-laden alpha male power struggle. Also believes that Hutton is liable to have been too hungover to come in, or is off on some absurd tangent of an investigation.
An unreliable officer, that's how she sees him. Does not feel very good about getting carried away in January and allowing herself to be added to Hutton's absurdly long list. The sex was good, once or twice. The third had been too much.