smell Charlotte Miller. Taste her.
Crow's old Vauxhall is parked outside, still in need of massive bodywork repair. There's a spit of rain in the air. Feels colder down here, underneath the hills.
Mobile rings just as I'm getting out the car. Herrod. I'm not answering that. Throw it onto the passenger seat, pull my jacket tighter and go to the door, ring the bell. Can hear the faint sound of a television. Creaking floorboard, then a second later the door opens.
Crow stands before me. He breathes, I nearly choke on the fumes. He never went in for spirits. Beer man, and a bottle of wine if he felt like it. His face is a disaster site, and he looks like every jake you ever passed in the centre of town.
The smell from the house isn't too fine, and I'm not sure that I want to get invited in. Wonder how long his pension will keep him in this, before he gets kicked out of the house and ends up where he belongs.
'Hutton?' he says, unpleasantly. 'What?'
'Thought I might have a word, Chief Inspector.' Show respect, even though I can think of no one less deserving.
'Jonah sent you on an errand?' he grumbles. 'Let you in on the secret. Herrod told him to piss off, I expect. Need someone to do their dirty work after last month. Well you can tell him to fuck… off.'
He begins to close the door.
'This has nothing to do with Jonah. I don't know what you're talking about.'
He stops. A half-truth — I haven't the faintest idea what that was all about. I can worry about it later.
'What is it, then?'
'Christmas. Thought I'd just come and see you, see how you're getting on.' An absolute shitstorm of bollocks. Serves me right for not giving it more thought on the way down here.
He steps back from the door, ushers me in.
'Fucking shite, Hutton, but you might as well come in since you're here.'
He walks down the short hall and into the room with the TV playing. I close the front door behind me.
The room is a tip. Empty wine bottles, beer cans, dinner plates, microwave oven-ready meal containers. Crow's wife left him ten years ago, taking all four of the kids with her. He moved into this place just after that, and some of this stuff looks as if it's been sitting here since then.
He slumps into his favourite chair — the one surrounded by the greatest amount of detritus — and stares at the television. A Morcambe and Wise re-run. At least, you have to assume it's a re-run. The bloody BBC will do anything to try and get an audience.
'Have a seat,' he says, and gestures to an old settee. I sit on the edge, clearing junk out of the way.
'Here,' he says, and tosses me an unopened can of warm McEwan's. Seriously.
'Thanks.' Rather drink my own urine, but I try not offend. Open it, take the merest sip and put it on the coffee table with all the other litter.
I really don't know what to say — beginning to feel stupid — so sit and watch the TV. Eric and Ernie are in bed together. By God, the '70s were innocent times.
'Well, what is it Hutton?' he says. 'You didn't come down here to drink my fucking Export.' Ain't that the truth.
Consider subtlety, but that's not really an option. It would have required some prior thought. Have no option but to be straightforward. Not completely straightforward, however. I have learned the odd thing about interviewing suspects in the last twenty years.
'Heard a rumour,' I say.
He looks at me. Can tell he's interested.
'What kind?' he says.
'About you and Bloonsbury stitching up your man over the murder trial last year.'
He nods, takes a loud slurp from the can.
'What about it?'
What about it? I don't know.
'Did you do it?'
'What?'
'Plant evidence? Incriminate him, because you didn't have enough to put him away?'
He looks me full in the eye. Contempt.
'What is this, Hutton? You working for some polis commission? You on some fucking crusade against injustice? Fighting on behalf of the wrongfully imprisoned Fucking Headcase Killer Bastard One?'
'What did you mean about Bloonsbury needing someone to do his dirty work after last month?'
He barks out a laugh, chokes on a swallow of McEwan's, washes it away with another loud slurp from the can.
'Listen, Wee Man, why don't you just fuck off? You obviously don't know fuck, so take a hike. You're out your depth, Wee Man, out your fucking depth.'
Stand up to go. This is getting me nowhere and I'm not going to tell him everything I know. And what difference does it make if he did murder that woman last year? Really?
As crusaders for truth go, I'm completely shit.
One last question, because I don't care what he thinks about me asking it.
'You have anything to do with the murder the other night?'
He looks up at me, but there's nothing in those eyes. No giveaway, no hint.
'What the fuck are you talking about?'
'Ann Keller. She was murdered in Cambuslang on Monday night.'
He shakes his head, rolls his eyes. Plenty of drink, no acting. Nothing to do with it. Gut instinct.
'Wee Man, the only times I've left this seat in the last five months is to go for a shite, and to open the door to you. Now fuck off. And excuse me if I don't see you out.'
Look down at him. Had enough. The stench, everything is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. And I hate getting called Wee Man, particularly by drunken old farts who're about a foot shorter than me.
I see myself to the front door, step out into the rain. It feels clean and cold, and the grey day seems a lot fresher than it was ten minutes ago.
21
I was sitting by the side of the road. It had been raining, but the sun had just come out and the heat was making steam rise from what tarmac there was left on the road. I hadn't slept in a couple of nights, but at some point in the Balkan summer that seemed to have begun in March, my body had become used to it.
Sleep was when bad things happened. When you lay still the world around you changed. You went to sleep in a bed in a small room in a quiet house in a nondescript village, and woke up to find you'd been surrounded by armoured vehicles, or that there were soldiers from God only knew what side, going from house to house. Your body got to learn that no sleep was bad, but that sleep itself could be much worse.
I had a bottle of water in my hands. I'd dropped my backpack on the ground behind me and lain my camera on a large stone set back from the road. I hadn't taken a photograph in five days. There were probably a couple of editors back in London wondering what the fuck I was doing, but I wasn't thinking about them at the time.
There was a kid walking towards me along the road, dragging a tired old doll alongside. I could see that she was crying before I could hear her. A kid walking alone in the middle of a forest, miles away from the nearest town. Jesus, I couldn't have wanted to know her story less. At the very least it would have been a great photo, but I was through with that. I was only picking up my camera again to move it from one shit hole to another.
She got closer, walking in my direction, but she had no interest in me. She possibly couldn't even see me. She was walking along a road, and I doubt she had the faintest idea where she was going. The tears had made lines through the dirt on her face, her mouth was open in a frozen grimace. I think I knew as soon as I saw her that it wasn't a doll that she was pulling along beside her. It had a weight that a doll would never have had.
The thing that really got me about the fact that she was dragging a baby beside her along a potholed road,
