I didn't even see Sutcliffe approaching, then suddenly she was sitting beside me. Wearing a light, blue- and-white summer dress, a delicate floral pattern. A cardigan draped over her shoulders. She looked…
It doesn't matter how she looked.
'Sergeant,' she said. She'd found me here before. She was carrying two cups of coffee, and she handed me one. As I took the cup from her our fingers touched.
'Thank you.'
She smiled then looked away. Followed my gaze across the pond.
'The grass smells lovely,' she said.
I nodded. Sipped the coffee. It was still hot. The air was warm, so it wasn't as if I needed the hot drink, but it was reviving all the same.
'You all right?' she asked.
'Just the same,' I said, smiling. The answer she's come to expect.
'When are you going to talk to me?' she asked.
We've moved on from obfuscation and long silences, having long since acknowledged that there's something I need to tell her that I have no intention of ever saying.
I smiled again, didn't reply.
'You can't talk to me today anyway,' she said.
'Why not?' I asked without looking.
'I've got the day off.'
'Why are you here?'
She didn't answer. I looked round at her. There was a smile upon her lips.
*
At any given time, just over one in every ten police officers are off sick.
Taylor comes to see me every now and again. Slowly conversation is returning, although to be honest we have yet to really get beyond awkward.
A few weeks ago he told me that the police had settled out of court with Clayton and his high price legal team. £250k. Just like that. £250k because Taylor and I turned up and interviewed him, he ran away and we fell for it. Taylor has been reprimanded; he didn't mention what was going to happen to me. Maybe they'll wait and see if I ever go back. Maybe they'll forget.
At the time I didn't mention that Clayton had come to see me. Did the next time though. Felt a bit more like talking. Words were coming back.
I remembered it as best I could. Perhaps that wasn't very well. It was all a haze. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if he'd actually come.
Really? Was he really there, sitting by my hospital bed, admitting that he was the power behind the Plague of Crows' demented throne? Or was I just imagining it because somewhere in the depths of my head I needed that justification? I wanted to believe that my instincts had been right.
Taylor asked a few questions. Impossible to judge what he thought. Whether he believed me. They found all the computer files, all the techie skulduggery, all of that stuff, on her hard drive. Yet if Clayton had been doing it all along, and he was smart enough to cover his tracks the way the Plague of Crows had been doing, then couldn't he also have been smart enough to make it look like someone else was doing it?
So Taylor asked some questions, then he left. We haven't talked about it since. Maybe I'll get back to it when I'm one of the ninety percent, rather than one of the ten.
*
And now the doctor and I are lying in bed. It's probably unprofessional of Dr Sutcliffe to sleep with one of her patients. She could get cast out of the psych doctor cooperative.
I could tell she was getting interested after I left hospital. She realised there was something in my need to sleep with every woman I ever met. Perhaps she's justified it to herself. The only way to get to the bottom of it was to sleep with me too.
What the fuck do I know? Maybe she just needed to have sex. Although, if that was it, she probably ought to have found someone who isn't her patient. And who isn't a complete fuck-up.
She's lying beside me. The post-sex glow. (What women see as the post-sex glow, and what men see as the few minutes after sex before you fall asleep or go back to work or go and watch sport.) Her head is resting on my arm. Her fingers are making soft patterns on my stomach. Occasionally she kisses my chest.
A warm early afternoon breeze comes in through the open window. Summer is almost here. The leaves are coming. The woods are changing.
