A Plague Of Crows

areas, but then you go to them, and you realise, he's never going to do the kind of thing he does right here. You realise that it must be somewhere else. Then, every now and again you think, wait a minute, this would be perfect.'

He's staring at me. You can see him almost fighting internally on whether or not he's going to allow himself to be dragged out of his moment of temporary despair.

'Coffee shop,' I say. 'Thirty minutes, chew the fat of the case, then head off. If nothing else, we get to sit in our respective cars and listen to Bob.'

Big sigh.

'Fuck,' he says.

I stand up.

'Come on, shift your arse,' I say.

Not terribly respectful, but you have to judge your moment.

'Fine,' he says, and he stands and grabs his coat from the back of his chair.

We walk out together. Since I'm in one of my rare moments of not believing that the entire world revolves around me, I don't presume that everyone is looking at us, thinking, where the fuck are they going now?

'What you listening to at the moment?' I ask, as we head outside and start walking down the street. Light drizzle in the air. You know, the soaking, horrible kind.

He doesn't immediately reply.

'I'm still on a Together Through Life kick,' I say. 'Been listening to it all week.' Of course, he knows that, as he had to listen to it on the way out to Aberfoyle. And back.

He grunts. Give him a glance.

'Been listening to Adele,' he says, his voice low.

What the actual fuck?

I give him the appropriate look.

'What the actual fuck?' I say.

'You just hear it so much. Quite catchy. Thought I'd give it a go.'

Feel a weird, genuine sense of revulsion. Like cockroaches crawling over my skin. Like finding out your wife's a man. Like Scotland getting beaten 1–0 by Andorra.

'What? I mean, seriously? You can't listen to that. Jesus.'

'It's just… you know, bugger off, Sergeant, I can listen to something other than Bob for once. He won't mind.'

'Fine, listen to something other than Bob, but for God's sake, make it Leonard Cohen or, if you must be populist, Springsteen maybe. But fucking Adele? Seriously. What are you? You're like, fifty-something aren't you? And a man. You're a man in his 50s.'

'Fuck off, Sergeant.'

'She's a chav, 'n' all. We'd probably arrest her given the chance.'

'Sergeant, shut the fuck up,' he says as we reach the café. 'I've been listening to it for a few weeks, but out of respect to you, not when you've been in the car. But you're on warning. Some respect for your senior officer, or I'll play it every time you're in the fucking motor.'

Holy Jesus. He sits down and I head to the counter to place the order. Don't think it's too much to say that my faith in my fellow man — which was already on a very shaky peg — has just been shafted that little bit more.

16

Headed up the Clyde valley, past the garden centres and the old people out for their morning cup of tea. Plenty of available spots out here for your demented killer to murder someone in the woods. This whole section is the kind of area that just makes our task look impossible.

There are, actually, huge chunks of the country that can be ignored. All those swathes of open farmland and moor with neatly planted forests stuck in the middle. Populated and built up areas. Lots of them. But areas like the Clyde valley, roads snaking up the length of the river, towns and villages and individual homes strung out, patches of wood all over the place. This is the kind of place I'd go for if it was me.

It happens to me the third patch of wood that I stop beside. Up past Larkhall, to the west of the river. Up a slight hill from the road. Park the car on the verge, still sticking out a little, so turn the hazards on.

Over the brow of the hill, the wood stretches away far enough that I can't see where it ends, although I've already got a decent idea from the map. Don't know enough about trees to know what we have here. Most of them have shed; there are a few conifers around. It's an old wood, a naturally occurring wood. Almost seems odd that it hasn't been turned into a turnip field or an extraordinary development of four-bedroomed homes for the young professional.

Head towards what I think will be the middle of it. Away from the noise of the road, a sound that dimmed naturally as soon as I got over the brow of the hill. Looking all around me. A few birds in the trees, a few nests up above, but not yet that cluster of large crows' nests that we're looking for.

I reach the heart of the forest. It might be further still to the other side, to the border with farmland, but I get to the point where I can't see my way out. The forest isn't too dense, but there's enough of it that the perimeter and what lies beyond is lost. And two things happen.

Firstly, I get an all-encompassing feeling of utter hopelessness and dejection. What is the point? So, I'm in a wood that the killer might use. There will be others. And even in this wood, I need to trawl through it for the next… what?… fifteen minutes?… half an hour?… working out the most likely spot for the guy to use.

Then it gets worse. The past comes back, and the past is so much worse than the hopeless present. I don't want to know the past. There should be enough in my life for me to be able to forget it. Enough police work, enough women, enough evenings lost in alcohol. But all those things are like taking ibuprofen for toothache. You can keep it at bay, maybe you can cover it up, but when the painkiller wears off, it's still there. Nagging. Waiting to eat into you, stab at you, to not let you forget that it exists until you've done something about it.

Except there's no dentist for the past. You can't go and sit in a small room, get an injection in your brain and undo the things that you've done.

Maybe all you have to do is face up to it. Look yourself in the mirror. Accept what you did. Maybe you have to look someone else in the face and tell them what you did.

It was me. That fucking awful thing. I didn't just see it. I was supposed to be an impartial observer, I was supposed to be working. But it was more than that. I wasn't just an observer. I became part of the story.

This wood, this old wood with trees that just happened to grow here for whatever reason, and not because some forestry manager decided they would, this wood takes me back. It shouldn't. It's really not that similar to the forest where it happened. Perhaps it's just because it's natural. Feels natural in a way that so many woods in Scotland don't. So many woods. So many trees. Planted by big companies, or natural woods close to populated areas that end up filled with crap, the detritus of all our lives. Crisp packets and needles and condoms and beer cans and fucking shit.

This feels natural, like all those woods that are all over Bosnia. Nobody planted them. Of course, worse has happened in those forests in recent years than has ever happened in a small wood up the Clyde valley.

I end up sitting at the base of a tree, resting my head back against it, staring straight up at the bare branches out at a damp, grey sky. Immediately feel the dampness soak through my trousers, soak my underwear. Just as quickly forget it, ignore it. It doesn't matter.

Close my eyes. Can feel spots of rain on my face, or drips from the branches above. But I'm lost. Eighteen years ago. Nineteen? A long time, not long enough. I can hear it, see every detail. Every detail. If I could apply that kind of memory and analysis to every other crime scene, I'd be a far better copper than I currently am.

Hands over my head, bring my head down between my knees. But it's not going away. It's here now, just like it comes every now and again.

Guilt. Fear. Self-hatred. Shame. What could I have done differently? That's always the question. What could I possibly have done that night that I wouldn't be sitting here now in this position?