A Plague Of Crows

Terror. That's what terror looks like.

I've seen it before.

I look away. Head drops. Maybe she glances over to see if I'm paying attention, but I won't notice if she does.

The sound of the low hum is strangely all-consuming.

*

I wake up to her roughly grabbing my head and forcing it back against the chair, strapping it tightly. Quickly look over at the social worker guy. Scalped, skulled, still alive. His eyes are clipped open. His whole body seems to be trembling within the confines of his bondage.

I must have fallen asleep. Would have been perfect to just never have woken up. Gripped, immediately on waking, by a dreadful, oppressive feeling of desolation. Had been almost phlegmatic before. Sitting in hopeless impotence, the pain in my hand occasionally throbbing.

Now, the weight of it all is much heavier. The place I'd got myself into, the place where I didn't care and where pain could be ignored, has gone. Self-loathing has returned, much stronger than before.

A woman was just brutally murdered in front of me and I did nothing. I did not care. Now I hate that I was in no position to do anything. I blame myself. I'm a police officer, for fuck's sake. How could I have taken so long to find the Plague of Crows? How could I have gone to bed with the woman? How could I not know? Where was the gut instinct that I've been sitting here priding myself on?

Notice the first signs of grey light in the sky. Dawn's coming, then the crows will be unleashed. How will the crows be unleashed?

She's good. Sees it in my eyes straight away. The change. She stares for a moment, but she has nothing to say. Maybe thinks that I'll be the one to talk this time.

She moves away for a moment then returns with the razor. Bizarrely, it's quite a nice feeling as she runs it over my head. She's careful not to cut the scalp, as she doesn't want too much bleeding. It has to be as smooth an operation as possible. The crows will do the killing, not her.

When she's done, she runs her hand over the top of my head. Almost lingering. She was making love to me not so long ago. Jesus, not that I know how long ago that was. Lost all track of time.

So convinced was I that it had all been part of some sort of Bosnian revenge tragedy, that it's still hard to get it out of my head. I still associate that moment with revenge. The moment when she broke off the lovemaking to taser me. It was revenge. Except it wasn't.

'You spoke to the idiot,' she says.

Standing slightly back, the razor switched off and at her side.

I look at her. Anger going already. Had there even been anger?

'You spoke to Michael?' she says.

Michael. Clayton. Michael Clayton. Yes, of course I spoke to him. Michael Clayton. I spoke to Michael Clayton, didn't I?

'Yes.'

Can't nod, head strapped. But she hasn't gagged me again. Must want to chat while she slices my scalp off.

'What put you on to him in the first place?'

'Desperation.'

She smiles. Laughs lightly almost.

'Yet you didn't know I was the waitress working in Costa? Sloppy.'

I hold her gaze for a moment. Have I been lying to myself all this time?

'Maybe I knew,' I say. 'Some part of me knew.'

She laughs harshly.

'Yes, of course. You thought I was a multiple murderer so you lay naked on the bed with a hard-on as you prepared to make the arrest. It didn't work.'

'I'm not like other police officers,' I say, which, even under these circumstances, is a pretty fucking bad line.

She snorts and mutters, 'Fucking maverick cop. Asshole.'

Time I shut up. Silence is going to annoy her far more than glib comments. And if she thinks I'm asking her any questions, if she thinks I give a shit, then she's wrong. And I'm not stopping myself asking, so as not to give her the pleasure. I just genuinely don't want to know. I don't want to fucking know.

She takes another step back. On her way to get the saw. The bone saw. To remove the top of my skull, to let the birds in.

The sky is a little less dark, a lighter grey. For the first time I notice that it's cold. That'll be the air on my newly bald head.

'Michael's good,' she says. 'Doesn't make mistakes. I think he might have been a bit naughty. Probably time I moved on.'

That's nice. I don't want to think about Clayton and what she means, but it's lovely for her that she's got somewhere to move on to. There's no escaping the past, however. It goes with you, everywhere you go.

And here am I now, still unable to escape the past, right to the end, even though it appears I'm to die without it ever catching up with me. But it's always been there, burning away inside.

Still saying nothing, she starts to tire of it again.

'What the fuck is it with you?' she says. 'How can you be so… fucking superior? You're about to have your brains eaten out by a bunch of fucking… birds…. birds… and you don't give a shit. What makes you better than this? What makes this beneath you? You fucker…'

She looks round at the social worker, forgotten in her growing violence of humour.

'Jesus, fuck the lot of you.'

She turns away.

He's still crying. The guy with the social worker moondog face is still crying, his eyes plastered wide open for the rest of his life. For fuck's sake, accept your fate will you, you fucking idiot? You were bound to die at some point anyway. At least this way you'll get on the news and a bunch of fuckers will go and lay flowers outside your front gate.

She's back, standing in front of me. Duct tape and bone saw in hand. She lays the saw down on the ground, then quickly wraps the tape around my mouth, tight, making me gag for a moment, a few seconds to adjust my breathing.

'I don't want to fucking listen to you,' she mutters, as she does it. Which is funny, really, because I wasn't saying anything. Then she pulls my eyes open and — one of those moments I hadn't really been looking forward to — pins the eyelids back with a staple gun. Rougher now than she was when she was shaving me, but she knows the blood spilled by the stapling is going to be minimal.

She bends, lifts the bone saw. Stares me dead in the eye and there's not a lot I can do now to avoid the look.

I feel relief. Now that it's here, I feel relief. No more waking up screaming, no more cold sweats. No more searching for the woman I can talk to, or the woman I can make love to, the woman who can erase the memories of what I've done. No more pointless crime solving, no more having to put up with the fucking public, the fucking public who have long since lost any sense of personal responsibility, the fucking public who demand everything from the police and give nothing in return. No more worrying, no more stress, no more having to get up in the morning, no more coming into work.

'You asked for it,' she says, as the buzz of the saw fills the grey morning light. 'Now you're going to g-'

I guess the bullet must travel at roughly the same speed as the sound of the shot. A loud crack. A red hole opens up in her forehead. She stares blankly at me for a few moments, and then she falls backwards, a dead weight. The bone saw, still running, falls onto the social worker's leg and he silently screams.

My stomach wraps itself in a knot.

I wish I could close my eyes.

47

I can't speak. I don't want to speak. Maybe I've forgotten how. I'll probably speak again at some point. Montgomery was in for a long time, asking endless questions.

What a complete arsehole. Didn't seem to appreciate my silence. But I wasn't talking to him. I was barely even looking at him. My eyes might occasionally have been pointing in his direction, but I wasn't interested.

I'm in a hospital bed, but I'm not really sure why. The effects of the taser have worn off, I think. My head has been shaved, and my hand is in a cast, two things that don't normally make you bed ridden. Maybe I'm confined here because I'm not saying anything.