A Plague Of Crows: The Second Detective Thomas Hutton Thriller Read Online Free PDF

workmanship. They got a brain guy in from the Western to take a look, and he said the work was done with surgical precision.'
    'So do we think we're looking for a brain surgeon?'
    'Not necessarily. It wasn't as if the bloke performed surgery on the brains. He was just a dab hand at removing an area of the skull without inducing fatal bleeding. He could have practiced on animals. And maybe on humans. I did wonder if there were missing persons that he might be responsible for, where he practiced his craft before going public.'
    Taylor stares at him for a second, then looks at the floor. Thinking it over. That's a decent thought from Morrow, but it's a tough one to move on. Does he put one of his officers on something that might be a complete waste of time? Where would you start?
    Well, with a list of missing persons obviously.
    'Give it a go,' said Taylor. 'Yep, you know, don't spend a week on it or anything, but just stick your toe in the water.'
    'Yes, Sir.'
    'Constable Grant, you help him out. It'll be one of those you'll-know–it-when-you-find-it things.'
    'I'm used to that,' says Morrow, immediately shaking his head at the comment.
    Taylor ignores it, glances around the room. Eyes settle on DI Gostkowski. When she says her name, she still pronounces the w as a v , so it can't be too long since her family left eastern Europe, although there's no trace of an accent. She's the number two here, and he hasn't referenced her yet. Wonder what he's had her working on.
    She was brought in to replace Leander because, when he was finally able to return to work, he didn't want to come back here. Thought everyone would be talking about him. Which they were. He was packed off to the other side of the city. Just as well, or it would have been me being packed off to the other side of the city.
    'Stephanie, how's it looking on possible revenge motives?'
    She manages to talk without looking at her notebook. That's the talent that comes with being higher up the pay scale.
    'Blank,' she says. 'Sergeant Goodwin… well, you don't know what kind of petty grudge people are going to bear, but there's really nothing there. A regular policeman's life…' She shakes her head. This time she does glance at her notebook, although she's not actually looking at it. 'A regular police officer's life, no stand-out cases. Recently he's been spending a lot of time going round schools, speaking to youth groups.'
    'If this is revenge, it's old, been a long time in the planning,' says Taylor.
    'I know. It's hard to imagine that any of the people he's arrested over the years would want to do anything other than put a brick through his car window.'
    'All right. Tucker. He's a journalist. He must have fucked someone off. I'm fucked off at him and I'd never even heard of him…'
    She answers without any trace of the black humour that Taylor has just introduced into the conversation. I start to drift away, crossing her off the list as I go.
    Did I say list?
    She's too … I don't know… serious is probably the word. She's a grown-up. You know the sort. Has that air of humourless responsibility about her. You can imagine she's been this way since she was eight. Then later, when all her friends were doing standard teenage things, like getting drunk and listening to indie bands and smoking weird shit and getting annoyed at things that happened a hundred years ago and being outraged at that year's genocide, she was looking disdainfully upon it all and writing in her diary the precise plan of how she was going to become Chief Constable of the Met by the time she was forty-seven. And a half. Marry George. Take two months off to have a child. Harry or Imogen. She probably had the kid signed up to the nursery school of her choice even before she met George.
    No, I don't want to get involved with DI Gostkowski. And given the events that led her to be posted here in the first place, it's probably a good idea to leave well alone.
    She's still talking.
    With Sergeant Harrison