She's giving me a slightly resentful look. Don't know why. Don't care. Our mouths are gagged with thick silver tape and she grabs the end of it at the back of my head and unwinds it quickly, before ripping it off, the last pull tugging painfully at my hair.
I let out a low grunt and my head falls forward. Jesus. Nothing to say. It's just one pain after another. I realise that I'd known the position of our heads wasn't quite right as we'd been sitting there, not yet bound the same as those from past murders. Obviously some way to go in the process.
She quickly does the same to the other two. The bloke yelps, the woman sobs. The Plague of Crows, wearing thin rubber gloves, sticks the tape together while somehow not getting it stuck to the gloves, and places it in a black plastic bin liner.
She looks at the three of us in turn. This is the payoff for her. This is the moment when she gets to play God. She has complete dominion throughout, from the moment she zapped us with the taser, right to the crow-feasting end; but this is the moment when God will speak to her desperate, pitiful subjects.
'You all know what's coming,' she says.
'Please…' gasps the journalist.
I close my eyes and bow my head still further, as if closing my eyes is a way to block out the sound.
I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear the whining and the pleading and the desperation. It never works. It won't work in the woods with the Plague of Crows, just as it didn't work for so many people in the woods of Bosnia.
'Why?' says the guy, desperately. 'What have we done?'
'You assholes fucked me up from day one,' she says. Matter of fact. Cold. Not getting into it.
'What?' he says. 'We can talk about it. Make amends.'
In the silence that's only punctuated by the sobs from the journalist, I can imagine the Plague of Crows staring at him with utter contempt. My eyes are shut, my head is bowed. I'm not looking. I don't care.
She's not getting any tears from me. Nothing. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm empty.
'Let the woman go,' says the bloke.
How can you appeal to the chivalry in a female killer, you idiot?
'You?'
I don't look up, although I know.
'You!' Voice sharper this time. Don't raise my head. Sinking. I just want to sink. Keep going down until it's all darkness. Dark and cold. And there's nothing left. I don't want there to be anything left.
I hear the crack and fizz of the taser as she lets it go just to my side. Grabbing my attention as it zings into a tree behind me. Lift my head slowly. It's coming. Death is coming. And pain. Maybe I don't even care if she hits me with that thing again. Yet I've lifted my head.
'You,' she says again. 'Look at me. Look at me!'
I'm already looking at her. But I know what she means. My eyes are dead. What's the point of terrorising someone if they're not interested? How can you instil fear into someone when they feel nothing?
'You invited me in,' she says. 'You looked in the camera. You asked for this. Now look at you. Not so fucking… tough now.'
I continue to look at her with dead eyes. So bereft of spirit that I'm not even interested in telling her that I couldn't care less about this. Go on. Kill me. Kill the three of us. Go on killing until you've got everyone in Scotland.
All those things that mattered. Partick Thistle getting into the SPL. Going to see Bob. Cigarettes and alcohol. Perfect, redemptive sex. Italy beating Scotland 2–1 at Hampden in 2007. Archie Gemmill's goal against the Netherlands. Ullapool. Peggy. The kids. Alison and Jean. Stupid politicians. Stupid newspapers. Stupid questions. Arrests, charges, convictions. Getting wasted. Forgetting. Bosnia. Rape. Death. Guilt. Anger. Fear.
None of it. None of it matters.
Anyway, I always thought it. Right from the start. It's worse for people watching than the people to whom it's happening. It looks horrific. Sure, you know what's happening to you, but you can't really feel it. You can't feel your brain getting eaten. That's why she does it this way. That's why the victims are arranged like this. So they can watch the others, and know what's happening to them.
I suppose some people are going to be freaked by that. I just thought, fuck it. Fuck it.
I thought it, I really did. But not as much as I think it now. And she knows. That's why she's angry. I bet she's not usually angry. I bet when she does this she's committed and cold and calculating. Doesn't make mistakes. But this time she's angry. She's angry at me, and she's off her game.
Maybe she'll make mistakes. Probably will. Won't save me. Won't save these two sad fuckers sitting with me, but it'll allow Taylor to get that bit closer. Close enough to make a difference.
Do I want to make her angrier? Do I care enough about this to try to throw her off her game? Do I care if she gets caught? Fuck, I'll be dead. Like I give a shit about the rest of society.
'Sex was good until you ruined it,' I say.
Suddenly find myself glancing at the social worker. Did she get him into bed too? Bastard. Doesn't look like it.
I get the back of her hand across my face. Compared to the rest of the pain she's been doling out, this is pretty insubstantial. An angry gut reaction, rather than all the rest of the calculated brutality.
'Fucking police,' she says.
I've been holding her gaze for a few moments, but can't any longer. My head drops.
'Don't you pretend you don't fucking care,' she growls at me.
'Thought you were someone else,' I say.
My voice is dead. Has to be disconcerting. I hear a whimper, but it's from the bloke, not the journalist. The journalist has silent tears streaming down her face.
'What? What? What the fuck does that even mean?'
I don't look at her. No, I've thought about it. I'm not interested in getting her even more annoyed than she already is. It makes no difference. Yet, my indifference is what will get her more annoyed, whether it's what I'm after or not.
'Fuck!'
She screams. That's got to be upsetting to the crows. She turns her back. The other two are watching her as I look up. Two shit-scared people, as well they might be. She has lost control. Because of me. Because of someone who is hitting the exact opposite end of the scale. Someone who has switched off. Someone who is not as impressed as he's supposed to be.
She turns around. She's holding a vicious-looking surgical tool. This will be the GPC oscillating amp; rotary thing. Whatever. Quite familiar with it, having done our research on what equipment the Plague of Crows had been using, even if I can't think of its precise designation for the moment.
She obviously has some power source somewhere, although it must be running quietly. Can't hear anything. She's looking at me. Standing between the whimpering bloke and the journalist. She lifts the bone saw, so that's she's holding it like she might hold a gun, and presses her thumb down on the controls.
It buzzes into action with a low sound. An expensive sound. The sound of top of the range bone-cutting equipment. She snarls. Wonder, in an almost disinterested way, what she's about to do. My head isn't strapped down; she'll never get the clean cut that would allow me to stay alive long enough for the crows to get involved.
'Fucking watch,' she says. 'See how you like it.'
Then she turns quickly and thrusts the bone saw into the eye socket of the journalist. Her mouth opens in a silent scream. No reason for there to be no sound coming out, except perhaps her vocal chords are frozen in horror. She wriggles her head desperately, but that just increases the damage as the Plague of Crows presses down tightly with the saw and it begins to cut down through her face.
She then draws it out and starts using it to stab at her, repeatedly, in the face, briefly drilling into her skin and bone. Chops off an ear. Drags it across the other cheek. A nick at the throat. Teasing her and taunting, a brutal display of torture.