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The social worker guy is wailing. It's a horrible sight, the journalist crying out now in pathetic little squeals, blood flowing, as the Plague of Crows deprives her beloved birds of a kill. Slashing and thrusting with the saw, her own breaths coming quickly with the excitement and the anger.

'Fuck!' she shouts again, and soon, very soon, the journalist's bloody head falls forward into her chest. The Plague of Crows stands, engrossed in her slaughter, then holds the saw at the top of the woman's head. Presses down.

'Come on!' she says, exhorting it to cut through bone, as she scythes into the journalist's skull. Already dead, this one is just for show. Just for fun. Just for the Hell of it.

Suddenly she lets the power off and straightens up, gasping for air, her mouth dry, her heart racing. The bloke is wailing. Loud sobs. Jesus, what an awful sound.

'Would you shut the fuck up!' she barks at him, but he doesn't. I don't think he can. Probably hasn't seen that happen to anyone in real life before. I mean, you've got to see some amount of fucking awful shit when you're a social worker, but probably not that.

'God!' she shouts, as if exasperated with her children.

She lets the bone saw fall to the floor, then steps quickly to the side. Stands back between us with the masking tape, then ties it roughly and tightly around his mouth. Round and round she puts it, several times more than is necessary, until there's no sound coming out.

She hasn't strapped his head back yet though, and he continues to move it around frantically. Eyes wide. With all that sobbing his nose is probably full of snot and tears so he's going to have trouble breathing for a few moments. He'll likely get past it, but his future prospects aren't looking too great.

'Fucking happy?' she sneers at me.

The journalist's body drips blood onto the forest floor. I'm not looking at her. I look at the Plague of Crows.

'You killed her,' she says, which is some kind of fucking logic. But then, if you're insane enough to come up with her crows plan… 'You fucking killed her, and you're supposed to protect people. Didn't fucking protect her, did you? You're all the fucking same. How did you fucking like that, you prick?'

I hold her gaze this time. Eyes are still dead. I expect she was looking for some kind of movie reaction. I was supposed to be shouting, no, no, leave the innocent civilian, take me instead!

I missed my lines. If there'd been an actual choice, I would have been happy to take the saw. But there wasn't. She was just looking for some desperation from me, and she didn't get it.

'Seen worse,' I say.

It sounds Python-esque, but fuck it, I'm not lying. I have. I have seen worse. For all my guilt, I haven't done worse, but I've seen it. I've taken the photographs and I've sent them back to London newspaper picture editors, and they've said, you are fucking kidding me, we're not printing that…

'Seen worse,' I repeat, and my head drops.

45

She arrives first. Sits and waits. The house is dark.

She isn't usually so unsure of herself, but this is different. This is the Plague of Crows. Gostkowski is convinced. It's based on nothing more than a coincidence, because why couldn't Clayton's ex-sister-in-law be working as a waitress on the other side of Glasgow? But she knows, absolutely and without doubt.

She'd called it in; hadn't bothered going to anyone other than Taylor. The sister-in-law who worked at the café across the road. First thing he did was run over there to see if there was anyone who met the description. Then he was back and tracking her down. Jane Kettering poured out of distant police files in great torrents of disaffection. From an early age. He cursed that they had given up on the search when they had. Even just a couple of more hours of Gostkowski's investigation and she could have tracked her down.

There was an address, in the hills behind Gourock. Gostkowski was closer. He'd told her to wait for him. As he'd said it she doubted that she would, but now that she's here she hesitates. Turns off the engine and the lights, finds herself making sure the car doors are locked. Sudden fear. Where has that come from?

Five minutes pass. She wonders if she should go in. Starting to steel herself. Starting to prepare for it. Seven-and-a-half minutes and Taylor arrives. She hasn't moved.

She gets out her car as Taylor pulls up.

'Where are the others?' she asks, as Taylor walks quickly towards her.

'It wasn't enough,' he says.

That's all that is needed.

Gostkowski hadn't had much to tell him. A face in a photograph, Clayton's former sister-in-law in a café paying attention to her and Hutton. Now Hutton is missing.

Six months ago it might have been enough, but now there have been too many mistakes, too many conclusions jumped to that have not been proven. More than anything, Taylor has been working on this since the previous summer and has got nowhere in all that time. To believe that he's gone from nowhere to identifying where the killer lives in a matter of minutes seems preposterous. Neither does the connection to Clayton help. To anyone else it is going to seem like another plan from Clayton to fool the police. Only Gostkowski, who has been there, who worked it out for herself, knows that it isn't.

Perhaps there are doubts lingering, too deep yet to come to the surface.

They approach the door, ring the bell. A detached house, not too large, a small front garden. Taylor turns and looks across the road and around at the neighbour's homes while they wait. Quiet Scottish suburbia. The kind of place where the police would get called out to adjudicate over a hedge dispute or to answer a complaint about someone parking their car in front of someone else's house.

He steps away from the front door to take a broader view of the house, bathed in the orange glow of the street lamps. A few bare trees in the front garden lessen the effect of the lights.

'Open the door,' he says.

Gostkowski first of all tries the handle, then finding it locked looks around the garden. There are stones lining the border between the lawn and the path and she lifts one of them and quickly puts in the glass panel on the door closest to the lock. Reaches round, key in the lock, which is all just marginally less difficult than the door being open in the first place.

They enter quickly, Taylor moving in front, close the door and turn on the light. A regulation hall, stairs leading up ahead of them, door to the left and right, another door at the end of the hall beside the cupboard beneath the stairs.

Silence.

'What was it that was suspicious about her in the café?' asks Taylor.

Gostkowski pictures the woman chatting to them.

'Nothing,' she says.

Taylor nods.

'Good. It's good that you didn't miss anything previously.'

All the doors are closed. The floors are wood, a long rug from the Middle East lines the hallway leading to the kitchen. The walls are magnolia, hung with three or four original watercolours. Pastels. Sea and sand and old harbours.

'Nice place for a waitress,' he says.

Hutton had thought the same thing, but he had parked the thought. Sex first, plenty of time to ask questions later.

'Don't like this,' says Taylor. Not used to working with women. 'Stick together.'

Gostkowski doesn't know that he and Hutton would have split up.

When he starts moving he does it boldly and confidently. Having established his bearings he is not about to creep around.

First room, on the left; a study, generally used as a dumping ground for unneeded things. There's a baby grand piano, cluttered and unused.

Second room, on the right. Sitting room. Television. Photographs of the same two children, and of a similar vintage, that Clayton has in his house. Taylor scans the room, takes everything in, turns and walks out. Down the hall, stops to open the door under the stairs. The cupboard has been converted into a very small bathroom. He looks at the floor, wonders if this is where there would be a trap door to the basement. On first inspection it is tiled and solid. He will come back later if he finds nothing else.