A Plague Of Crows

Why can't he take me? The guy, this guy, the Plague of Crows guy, why can't he take me? If he's got something against the police, take me. I'd be no one's loss. And it's what I deserve. Strapped to a chair, my head sliced open, picked at by birds. Angry birds.

Hah! Angry fucking birds.

End up curled on the forest floor wishing I was dead. Wishing I was dead. Then it could all go away, unless there is a Hell. Unless my mother was right. There's a Hell. And I won't be going there because I used to keep magazines under my pillow when I was fourteen.

Don't want to do this anymore.

Not anymore.

17

Taylor had headed up over Eaglesham moor. He gets back to the office about ten minutes before me, so that when I get back, having answered the call, he's in position. YouTube on the computer, watching the murder scene. The latest murder scene, the one we've been expecting. Everyone out in the station is going mental, they're on the phone, they're shouting, they're clustered around computer screens. For the time being this will transcend the dicks from Edinburgh. They'll get to it on their own when all the shit has settled down. Or, more to the point, when we find out where these latest poor bastards are.

'Any chance they're still alive?' I say to Taylor's shoulder.

He answers with a slight wave of the hand, then points at one of them.

'This guy's dead already. The other two aren't, but they can't last too much longer.'

'You spoken to Baird?'

'No, not long in. Give him a call, will you? He's bound to have watched it.'

It comes to an end and he immediately clicks back to the start.

'Any clue to where it is?'

He snorts.

'There are trees, a few low hills in the background and the weather's miserable as shite…'

I watch it through, start to finish, for the first time. As before, there's absolutely no evidence of the person taking the film. They're doing it on a hand-held, walking around the scene, catching it quickly from all angles. Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds in length. One person dead, two people alive, awake and terrified. Wide eyes. The guy got a great shot of a crow pecking into the middle of an open eye, and then withdrawing quickly as if spooked by what it had just done. The last shot before the end of the film is blood running from the eye. An eye with the eyelid pinned back, an eye that can't be closed.

The noise is just the clamour of the birds. Wings flapping, the occasional squawk as they get in each other's way. There's no sound from the cameraman, not even a muffled footstep or a low breath. No cars to be heard in the distance.

It's real, but of course you watch it as if you're watching Saw II or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just a film. Given that there's not that much blood, maybe it wouldn't even be an 18. Kids today. Played Call of Duty with Andy one day last year. Fucking hell. Having seen the real thing, I didn't last very long.

'He posted this from a new account?' I ask.

'Plague of Crows 2,' says Taylor, and he glances over his shoulder.

'Maybe he's a Hollywood executive.'

'You look fucking awful, what happened?'

In the middle of the woods, with one bar worth of reception, and me lying on the forest floor curled up in the mother of all foetal positions, the phone had rung and dragged me back. Answered in a daze. Got in the car and started driving back without really knowing what I was doing. Finally came out of it somewhere along the last part of the M74. It was only when I'd returned to the station that I noticed the passenger side mirror had been swiped off. There was a note inserted in the socket, squeezed in, so that it hadn't blown off when I'd been hitting eighty-five on the motorway. I had a fleeting moment of thinking that I wouldn't bother contacting the person who had left their name, address and an apology and that I'd just get it fixed myself — or, more than likely, never get it fixed, ever — and then I read the note.

You was parked in the middle of the fukkin road, you wanker. Ive got you're number.

And he's calling me the wanker. People wonder why the police beat the shit out of them sometimes, but really. Hopefully he'll come and find me. Well, I'm saying he, but who knows. All we're looking for is someone who doesn't know the arse end of an apostrophe, but that doesn't really narrow it down, does it?

'Fell over in the woods running back to the car.'

He looks at me and I look down the front of my jacket and trousers. Not that bad. I don't look like I was curled up in a ball like a fucked-up trauma victim. That wasn't what he meant.

He doesn't introduce any more awkwardness into proceedings by pushing me on it.

'Call Baird. Ask if he's got any opinion to offer. Don't bother trying to pin the bastard down. Anything'll do.'

Back out to my desk. Morrow's walking by.

'You seen it?' he says.

'Oh, yes.'

'Fuck.'

'Aye.'

All delivered without breaking stride, and he's off out the door. No idea what he's working on at the moment, but I presume it's not this. Maybe we're all on it until we at least find out where the victims sit, the soft parts of their bodies eaten away by birds.

As usual Baird answers the phone without actually saying anything. Hello is too many words.

'You've seen it,' I say.

'Yes,' he replies abruptly.

He and Balingol are the two pathologists for our part of town. Joint winners of last year's Miserable Cunt Of The Year award. That's a genuine award, I'm not making it up. And as you can imagine, there was some pretty stiff competition around these parts.

'Anything to tell us?'

'I thought you lot had been taken off the case, Sergeant,' he says.

'It's all hands at the moment.'

He grunts, then doesn't say anything. He's not one to fill a silence.

'Any idea how long those two might have lived after that footage was shot?'

'I knew you people were going to ask that,' he mutters.

'So you'll have an answer then.'

'And you know that I can't possibly say.'

'Ball park?'

He grunts again.

'Taking into consideration the level of deterioration you can see in the film, the activity of the birds, what do you think?' I ask.

'Sergeant, tell your boss… with the blood vessels in the brain, they could have bled to death in five minutes, and if one wasn't hit right away, maybe twenty minutes, half an hour.'

'Let's call it somewhere between five and twenty minutes, something like that,' I say.

He grunts. 'I don't think that was exactly what I said.'

'Thanks.'

I hang up, no doubt marginally before he does. He doesn't do goodbyes either. I think his dad must've walked out on him when he was a child.

Go back through to Taylor. He's still watching, leaning forward now, peering closely at the screen.