'Wouldn't you?'
Lets out a long sigh, says, 'Aye', and descends into silence.
We approach Tarbet, glad to see all the slow traffic continue along the Lomond road while we turn off.
'Did you know already?' I ask as we pass the Black Sheep, the ubiquitous two cars sitting out front.
'Know what?'
'What I just told you. That they stitched the guy up, not the bit about Crow.'
'Not the specifics. Same as you, same as the rest of us. I knew they'd stitched him, but I didn't know exactly how and I assumed they still had the right guy. Not the rest of it, though.' Thank God for that.
'And what about this? You think Crow is the killer?'
'Don't know. Is he capable of it? Aye, course he is. But any identification we've had of the guy this week, none of it's indicated Crow. And you said yourself about the way he acted when you went to see him. He'd no idea why you were there. And the one thing about Crow was there was no artifice to him. The man was an open fucking book.'
'What about Jonah?'
Down into Arrochar, a few lights dotted around the head of Loch Long.
Shakes his head again. 'Just don't see it, Sergeant. The guy's a lush. This week, he's no idea what he's doing. His career is disappearing down the toilet. He's about to get presented with his cheque and a pension, and in three months time it'll all be gone. We'll see him hanging out on the streets of Glasgow.' Slows down as we come to Crow's house. 'He ain't pulling any rabbits out the hat this time.'
He turns off the engine and we step out into the wet, dark of evening. The house looks deserted, no sound from within, no lights. That old car of his has gone. We stand and look at the house, feel the light drizzle in my hair. Taylor leads the way up the garden path, says:
'Think we've missed him.'
He rings the bell and we stand out in the cold and wait. Look out over the loch, dark and dead in the night, a few lights away along its banks. Can hear the water lapping quietly on the shore, fifty yards away. Shiver.
Taylor rings the bell again, shouts in through the letterbox.
'Gerry! You in there Gerry?'
Nothing. He tries the door but it's locked.
'How's your shoulder, sergeant?' he says.
My shoulder's fine, thank you. I'll use the soul of my right boot if you don't mind. He steps back. I'm about to kick at the lock when the door of the adjoining house opens up. Old guy appears, looking suspicious, annoyed about his Saturday night being disturbed.
He stares at us, doesn't look happy. Taylor produces his badge, but it's dark and from the way the guy is squinting, he could have brought out a parking ticket and he wouldn't have noticed the difference.
'Detective Chief Inspector Taylor, this is Detective Sergeant Hutton. We're looking for Gerry Crow,' he says.
The old man stares warily, grunts after a while.
'Well, you'll no find him,' he says.
'Why not?' says Taylor, taking a step closer.
'He's pissed off.' — A voice comes from within: 'Would you close the fucking door, it's freezing in here!' — 'Called me up, says he was going away for a few days, asked me to look after the place. Cheeky bastard. Look at it.'
'When was this?'
'Close the fucking door, ya eejit!'
'When was what?' says the old guy.
'When did he call you?'
'I don't know, do I? Fuck's sake, you think I log every one of my fucking telephone calls?'
Taylor continues, patient, understanding. I admire that in him. I'm ready to club the bastard.
'Well, was it this morning, yesterday? When?'
The old guy looks over his shoulder, sees something on the television.
'Look, I'm going to have to go. I think it was this morning, all right?'
'And did you see him go?'
'Naw, naw. I told you, he phoned. Now, are you finished?'
Taylor nods, the old guy turns away.
'He didn't leave you a key, did he?' he asks as the door begins to close, and gets the negative reply as it slams shut.
He turns and looks at me.
'Don't you just love the public sometimes?' he says.
'Think we should arrest him?' I say.
'Bad hair?'
'Aye.'
He smiles then says, 'Right you, the door.'
Haven't had to do this in a while. Usually there's some strapping young constable not long out of Kicking the Door Down School on hand to do the job for you.
Boot to the door, as high up and close to the lock as possible. First kick and the whole thing creaks, and suddenly I'm not surprised because I remember what a shit-tip the entire house is. Second kick and the door smashes open, the lock flying backwards up the hall.
'Feet of steel, or rotting door frame?' he says.
'Very funny.'
He leads the way — no need for subterfuge — and puts on the hall light. You can smell the alcohol, the decay, and we split up and go room to room, through everything.
There are no surprises. The house looks much as it had done the previous day, certainly smells the same. Empty beer cans or wine bottles in every room. Liked his cheap German shite by the looks of things. The walls are bare and sad. Some of the drawers in the bedroom have been left open, a few clothes scattered about. Either someone else has been here searching — an incomplete search — or, more likely, Crow hurriedly packed a bag and grabbed a few stinking clothes before he went. Although it might be that he lived with drawers open and clothes strewn about his bedroom in any case.
Don't bother to count but find approximately two hundred porn magazines under his mattress. That's really sad. That's where you keep them when you still live with your parents, but when you're a middle-aged man living on your own? Why not just have them lying out on the bedside cabinet? Habit, presumably. He's kept them under his mattress for forty years. There were a couple of them off-the-shelf from the newsagent, but most of them were a lot more disgusting. Sick Scandinavian things, with animals and women being used in ways that go far beyond the usual extent of women being used in pornography; the more we search his house, the sicker we realise he was.
In a cabinet in another room, Taylor finds the wholly expected and utterly massive DVD collection. Most of them are in unmarked boxes but we don't bother to check them out. He must have picked up most of this stuff from company hauls. We have warehouses jumping with this kind of crap, as well as a variety of other illegal products, and there are plenty of rozzers who'll use these places like a supermarket.
No sign of a computer anywhere. Try to think if I'd seen one the previous day but I didn't notice. Crow was a simple man, whose familiarity and comfort with technology didn't really extend much beyond the TV remote and the ring pull on a beer can, so it's quite possible that he lived a life with his head buried in the non-tech sand.
It's not a big house; half an hour and it's done. I need a shower, feel disgusting. We stand in the middle of the sitting room. Depressed. Morbid. This guy was one of us.
'You surprised?' says Taylor.
'No, but it's horrible. Jesus, the man's a slime. If he ever comes back and he's not the one committing murder, I want to get him for something. Weird porn, whatever.'
Taylor nods his head, looks around, thinking.
'He isn't coming back though, is he?'
Rhetorical question. There's no way he's coming back.
