A Plague Of Crows

completely on the brain. But the other two would have watched it, and that person would have known something was happening. And then, as word travelled around the crow community, and the flock descended, they would have been covered in birds and through the mass of flapping wings they would have watched as the blood started to run. Probably not much space on the average scalped human head for more than two crows at a time, so there would have been a lot of avian squabbling.

Scalped? It's a bit more than scalped, isn't it? Superscalped, they'd call it in McDonald's.

Would any of them have stayed alive long enough to start losing various faculties of their bodies as their brains slowly disappeared? Baird and Balingol, the pathologists, don't have an answer to that yet.

'You all right?' says Taylor.

We're standing on the spot, looking down at the three chairs. He doesn't know my story. He doesn't know what happened to me in the Balkan forests eighteen years ago. I try not to think about it, and try to suppress it as much as possible. Maybe I don't really know any more.

What happened to you? That's one way of putting it.

But this, this doesn't bring it back anyway. I saw some horrible things. Horrible. But they were random and spontaneous, brutal, vicious. Barbaric and indiscriminate acts that spoke of the general depths that humanity will sink to in wartime.

This is cold and calculated.

Genius.

'Sure,' I say. 'This is some fucking guy we're dealing with. Scary. And I mean, really fucking scary. With your usual nutjob kind of bloke, woman, whatever, there's a physical aspect, some sort of thing where you imagine that it'll come down to a fight and you'll be able to take them. It'll be brute force. If it ever gets tricky, there'll be a way out. But not this. This is one cool fucker we've got here. He gets his hands on you…'

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