Ha! If detective work doesn't get you there, sheer bloody-minded burying your head in the sand will see you through.
Just as we get to the cadavers a crow squawks high in the trees. We both stop and look up. The others all do the same. Just for a moment. The real killers are all up there, watching over their victims, wondering if they're going to get another chance to pick at the bones.
Wonder if the public will start going bat-shit crazy for killing crows. That collective mentality is so fucked up sometimes. Someone will point out that yes, it was the crows that were committing the murders, the other bloke just facilitated it. The crows are the real killers. Let's get the bastards! And off they'll go, all Henry the fucking Fifth, and crows will be laid waste all over. Not like I give a shit, but there's nothing worse than crowd violence just for the hell of it. Even if it is against crows.
We get right up to them before anyone intervenes. Two feet away, as close as we want to get. Stand in silence over the three cadavers, each of them exposed to the elements.
One of them, the guy who looked like he was already dead in the video, has had the inside of his head almost completely cleaned out. Fuck, I've never seen anything like this. It's so grotesque, so absolutely horrible, that it's almost like standing over a waxwork, or playing one of those god-awful video games that Andy spends all his time on.
With the other two there's a little more brain matter left in the cavity. A munge of grey/red soup. Vichyssoise or some shit like that. Damned disgusting. The heads are supported so that they can't tip forward, the remains of the brain matter can't spill out. Hard to read the expressions on the faces, as they've all had their eyes picked. Carbon copy of last time.
The possibility that that's what it might be — a copy — flits through my head, but it's not that. This is the same guy.
'Detective Chief Inspector,' says a voice approaching quickly from four o'clock. Here we go. We both turn, although obviously I don't really answer to Detective Chief Inspector. Give it another few decades.
We are met by Detective Chief Inspector Montgomery. He's the same rank as Taylor but obviously, in ranking terms, being from Edinburgh is like an away goal in Europe.
'Why are you here?'
Straight to the point. It was always going to get down to some sort of bitch fight pretty quickly. Would have been nice to get a bit more of a look before we got tossed. I do the sensible thing, turn away from the awkward handbags situation, and start making a mental note of everything that I can see before we get ejected.
'I thought it would be instructive for two of the investigating officers who were at the first crime scene to visit the second one, so that there could be some sort of direct comparison.'
Which is, of course, a perfectly valid point. But let's not let common sense get in the way of some dick jousting.
Taylor stares it out for a moment, but then Montgomery probably realises that the longer we stand here like we're in a Steven Segal film on Channel 5 at 11pm on a Friday night, the longer we get to take in the crime scene. A situation like this would have been so much more fun back in Bogart's day. There would have been punches thrown, we'd have cracked open a bottle of whisky and all three of us would have nailed the blonde broad.
What with it not being Bogart's day, Montgomery pulls his phone from his pocket. He stares at us as he makes his call, it's just that I'm not looking. Start walking round the small triangle of the dead, examining their bonds.
Duct tape, largely, but tight. Unbreakable from inside the bond. Bare feet cemented in concrete as before. High-backed chairs, the neck bound to the wooden slats as is the forehead, or what's left of the forehead after he's superscalped them. Eyelids stapled open. Lovely touch.
'Glasgow are here,' he says. Crisp voice. Sharp. I've nothing against the guy, and Taylor won't have either. Just doing what he's been told. Might even be worthwhile trying to be nice to him for a minute or two. Might be. He hangs up without saying anything. He must have been watching the movies too.
Taylor breaks eye contact, turns and starts looking over the bodies. Face impassive. Jesus, what other kind of face can you have when confronted with this? Having seen it before, he quickly makes the assessment that it looks exactly as it did previously, then he looks round the clearing, up at the tree tops. A few crows visible. Watching. Not as many as we saw in the footage. Maybe the others have all gone off to another killing.
Taylor's phone rings. He glances at Montgomery as he takes it from his pocket. Can see him briefly curse himself for not having thought to turn it off.
Taylor answers and doesn't say anything at all. Nice. The movie people would love him. Listens for a moment, then clicks the phone off and puts it back in his pocket. He takes a last glance around the area then looks at me. That last call might as well have been on loudspeaker. We all know what was said.
'Where was the van parked?' he says, looking at Montgomery.
This is where we find out how much of a wanker we're dealing with. If Taylor had asked before the phone call, Montgomery would have been obliged to tell him to clear off. Now, however, he knows he's won. He can afford a moment of magnanimity.
'Need to know basis,' says Montgomery, nailing his colours high on the wanker mast, 'and you don't need to know. I'll trust you not to interfere any further in the investigation.'
He takes a step closer.
'Now fuck off,' he adds.
Take a quick glance around the clearing while the two bulls mentally wrestle over shagging rights. The logical thing would be for the van to have approached the same way as the rest of us, up the track that leads most quickly back to the A85. Logic doesn't enter into it though.
There's another track on the far side of the clearing, leading away in the opposite direction, and there are three of the white jump suit collective in the vicinity examining shit on the ground. That'll be it then.
'Come on, Sir,' I say, to break the Mexican stand-off. Although, to be honest, it's not really a Mexican stand-off, is it? These days Mexican stand-offs usually last about a second-and-a-half and then fifty innocent civilians get massacred. 'We parked our car over this way,' I say to Montgomery, and nod.
Start to walk off, Taylor alongside. He's staring at the ground, fighting the annoyance, trying to gather as much information as he can in the short time that we have.
The short time that we have… Fuck's sake. Sound like a pair of cancer patients. Bucket list: walk the Silk Road, sleep with Kate Beckinsale, climb Kilimanjaro, establish if the killer's tyre tracks were the same as the last time.
'Don't tread on anything, don't speak to anyone, don't tamper with any evidence, and keep on walking,' gets thrown after us.
Into the trees on the other side. Taylor glances back over his shoulder. The camera never looked this way, there was never a shot from the other side showing this part of the clearing. He kept the van behind him the whole time.
We stop behind the forensics fellows.
'Same tracks as the last time?' he asks.
Can feel Montgomery's bitter little eyes burrowing into the back of us, but Taylor has hardly slowed down.
'Think so, Sir,' comes the reply.
And on we go, without breaking stride. We walk on down the track up which the killer drove his van packed with prospective victims, and soon enough we come to the police cordon and walk once more out of the crime scene.
19
Long day. 11:32pm. Sitting in Taylor's office. This time last year we would have conducted this part of the discussion in the pub. Suddenly it all seems much more grown-up around here, and it all comes from Taylor.
He had a shit time of it while his wife left him and DCI Bloonsbury was flushing his life down the toilet, taking as much of the station with him as he could. Nevertheless, he came out of all that a much stronger man. He was
