A Plague Of Crows

So now it's one-thirty in the morning and I'm tired and miserable but my head's still buzzing, and there's something there, something right in the middle yet way out of reach, something that I saw today that's saying Me! Me! Look at me! but I just can't pin down what it is and it's driving me nuts and filling me with an ugly, spirit-sapping uneasy feeling, and I'm thinking about forests and all the things I've done that I shouldn't have and I'd presumed I'd have company and I don't, so instead of wildly fucking DI Gostkowski, I'm trawling through the internet looking for some decent porn, and having been here many times before, it's not like I don't know where to look. I've got Bob playing loud, you know those mid-sixties numbers that sound raunchy and laid back and hedonistic, Temporary Like Achilles, that kind of thing, that sound like he was getting sucked off while he was singing. Tonight, however, in the words of the blessed Saint Mick, I can't get no satisfaction.

Blessed Saint Mick. I'm such a stupid fucker.

35

March

Sitting in a school in Rutherglen. The headmaster's office. Called out after a teacher attacked a pupil. A bare-handed job, smacking the kid about the head. The kid fought back. The teacher ended up really laying into him, kicking him repeatedly. All in front of an English class, half of them horrified, the other half training their phones on the action and probably uploading onto Facebook simultaneously.

Badly hung over. Me, not the teacher. Again. Third morning in a row. Late for work today, and I could tell DCI Dorritt was annoyed. Can see I'm getting lax. Haven't made any mistakes yet, just managing to keep ahead of the game, but he's poised with his arse-kicking for when it happens.

And I ought to learn. Going to bed at three in the morning completely hammered out of my face isn't stopping me from waking up a couple of hours later, the image of those women in the forest in my head, the sound of their screams in the air. The silence of the woods with no birds and no insects. The silence that is always shattered by their screams. Their screams that become my screams.

Why am I screaming? Why do I always wake up screaming? Nothing bad is happening to me.

I can believe that if I concentrate hard enough. Nothing bad is happening to me. They can scream. The women can scream. They're dead now. All of them. Are they dead? What the fuck do I know? I just hope they're dead, that's all, because sometimes I can tell myself that I don't have to feel so bad anymore if there's no one left who I hurt.

It doesn't really work like that.

He's not talking. The teacher's not talking. His career is over. The press will get hold of this one. The press love this kind of shit. Teacher assaulting a pupil.

Morrow and I have spoken to most of the pupils in the class, although one or two of them said they were too upset to talk. They sat there blubbing. I have utter contempt for them. The minute our backs were turned, you can bet they were filming each other blubbing. They were filming themselves being professionally upset, so they could put that online.

This is me being upset.

My part in the Downfall of Mr Gower.

I'm going to need counselling. The school haven't offered any counselling yet. It's, like, so annoying.

It's a disgrace. And shit.

Pretty clear from those pupils willing to offer up their version of events, that while they were mostly supportive of the pupil who got a kicking, the little bastard deserved it. Had it coming for months.

This is what happens when you instruct teachers that they have to enforce discipline by engaging their pupils in dialogue. Now, I know walloping kids isn't really the way forward and is definitely off the agenda in these enlightened times. But in its place you have to have respect, because if you don't, then it doesn't work. And, at the same time as getting rid of an effective method of disciplining children, we've also allowed a society to develop where no one has any respect. For anything.

I blame Bob Dylan.

It's been coming since the sixties, and it's just getting worse and worse. Adults have no respect, kids grow up thinking that they don't really need to respect authority because adults don't, and so they do what they want. In schools it's particularly hard for those teachers who spent some years back in the good old days when you could physically enforce discipline. You could make kids listen to you.

What can you do now?

Once again I'm complaining, but I don't have an answer. Society had to slowly ease discipline out of the way, while maintaining a sense of respect. Too late now. Much too late. And it certainly is for the likes of Mr Gower who just finally snapped and beat the shit out of a fifteen-year-old who had it coming.

The boy's mates all had him pegged as some kind of angel, who spent most of his spare time helping disabled children go to the seaside. Reading between the lines, however — those being the lines that say he'd been suspended six times from the school, and had been reported for abusive and unruly behaviour by every single one of his teachers — one gets the impression that if he was an angel of any sort, it was Lucifer.

I'm sitting in the head's office. The teacher is in another room, watched over by a couple of our guys. I see it as some kind of suicide watch. This bloke, this poor middle-aged, middle-class fucker, isn't going to see out the week. A career teacher, and now that career is down the toilet. He faces disgrace, unemployment and, more than likely, prison.

The kid's been taken to hospital, although he was beaten up by an old duffer who'd never swung a punch in his puff, so the chances that he was seriously hurt are pretty low. The kid's stepdad has gone with him. You might think the mum would go with him, but the mum stayed behind so that she could sit in this room with the headmaster, the union rep and the investigating police officer.

Holy fuck.

'I knew something like this was going to happen,' she's saying. 'Fucking knew it, by the way, I says to Michael, I says to him, fucking knew it.'

She's directing her wrath at the headmaster, rather than the presiding police officer. She had been talking to me at the beginning, but I think the fact that I look like a complete sack of sunken shit has put her off. Realises she's not getting anything from me and so is completely ignoring my presence. The headmaster, on the other hand, rather looks like he'd appreciate some support.

'Where's that bastard now?' she says.

Now I would say that the bastard was currently in hospital having his injuries treated, but I don't think she was referring to that specific bastard.

'Mr Gower is in police custody and will be processed accordingly, Mrs Grantham. All we can…'

'I pure want to see him,' she says. 'I'm like that, I'm like that to Michael, they better let me see that cunt. Hitting a defenceless kid. I'll fucking see him off, see how he likes that.'

The headmaster looks at me. I take a deep breath and turn to the aggrieved mother. I would honestly rather someone was poking me in the eye with a chopstick.

'You are not going to see the accused, Mrs…'

'Accused! How many fucking witnesses do youse need?'

'He'll be taken back to the station, he'll be processed, and a decision will be taken on whether or not he's to be charged.'

'Whether or not he's charged?' She looks wonderfully red-faced and incandescent with anger. You know that way Penelope Cruz gets in movies when she gets all feisty and angry and starts shouting, full of Mediterranean passion and flair? Absolutely nothing like that. 'Fuck…' she says, because she seems to be having trouble articulating. She rises out of her chair. 'Are you… are you fucking with my… fuck?'

'Sit down, Mrs Grantham. Calm down.'

Are you fucking with my fuck? Nice. I think I might start using that one myself.