The Scribbler by Iain Maitland (a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT) 📗

years maybe will yield DNA that, if we can get forensics involved, might match DNA in Lodge’s room that has no right to be there. And relationships change. That Burgess fellow, his wife flip-flopped … did she cover for him because she became pregnant? Are they still married or divorced now? Will she sing the same tune these days if we go and talk to her again? My wife always said …” Gayther’s words tailed away.

“Your wife, guvnor?” Carrie asked, after a moment or two’s silence.

“Annie,” he sighed. “You remember her. I think you met once or twice?”

Carrie nodded, not sure what else to say.

“She worked for the taxman for much of her working life. Until, you know, things got too much. She always said that most of their most successful enquiries … investigations, whatever, came from ex-spouses or partners dishing the dirt … for revenge.”

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,” Carrie said. “Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

“Shakespeare?”

“William Congreve, Restoration playwright.”

“Oh yes, slipped my mind. That English degree of yours … glad to see it’s come in useful for something after all.”

He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Time to go, guv?”

He nodded and then said, “We need to get moving on this as fast as we can. In fact, look, we’ll go back to the station, spend the afternoon going through the papers between us. See if you can pull in one or two other new DCs who can give us an hour or two. Then we can get that big whiteboard out. Allocate tasks and start following through properly, get stuck in, in the morning.”

“We’ve a couple of new direct-entry detectives doing their training at the moment, guv. And they’d be well-suited to this cold case. They’re … you know.”

He looked at her. “Gay? Say so, Carrie; it’s not like you to go all coy. And we’re a modern police force these days, aren’t we? We even take 2.2 university graduates with degrees in Elizabethan poetry.”

“Ooh, low blow. I had glandular fever in my third year … and I think it was a William or a Mary, not Eli—”

“What worries me, Carrie, is this,” interrupted Gayther, as if struck by a sudden, urgent thought. “Is this a one-off murder to silence a witness, which is bad enough and we need to solve that anyway, or is it … quite possibly … the start of another killing spree? If it is, we’ve no time to lose.”

* * *

Gayther stood at one end of the portacabin, in front of a big whiteboard, black marker pen in hand. He wrote ‘Rev Lodge’ in the middle, circled it, and then turned to Carrie, sitting at the desk at the other end of the portacabin alongside two young men, early twenties, Thomas and Cotton.

Gayther was struck by how similar they looked, dark-haired, slim … ‘nerdy’, although he wasn’t sure that was a word used so much these days and knew he probably wasn’t supposed to think it, let alone say it out loud. Someone, somewhere, would be offended. Or be offended for someone else who they thought should be offended.

“Direct-entry detectives, great things expected of them, guvnor,” Carrie had said to him, as they were waiting for the two young men to arrive. “I’ve known them both a while, they’re good lads. I gave them a quick summary along with copies of the papers and they’ve had a look over them, too. They’re sharp, up to speed already.”

“They’re all direct-entry these days, Carrie. No police experience whatsoever and, zoom, straight into being a detective. Took me bloody years. You were three or four years in uniform, weren’t you? They don’t even need that any more … just whizz straight in on the back of a cycling proficiency certificate. There’s no substitute for experience in my opinion.”

“A cycling what, guv?”

“It doesn’t matter, Carrie,” he said, shaking his head as the two young men came through the door. They both look about twelve, he thought, and so white and pasty that they must spend hours playing computer games in their bedrooms with the curtains drawn.

He half expected them to offer their hands to high-five, but they both shook his hand in turn, respectfully enough, and took their seats at the desk before turning towards him. Gayther thought they looked like eager children ready to take part in a spelling test. He resisted the urge to spell the letters ‘C U P B O A R D’ out loud very slowly. Instead, after smiling to himself, he turned back to the board.

“So, the three of you, from what you’ve seen, the connections to Lodge, who could have murdered him?”

“Sally and Jen,” replied Carrie with a straight face.

“Are you being serious?” asked Gayther looking at her.

“Well, we’re always told not to rule anyone in or out at this stage, sir. Just to list them all and then work through them one by one … in order of probability … but not discount anyone who could have done it.”

“Okay … well on that basis, I imagine the window cleaner or the postman or the fellow delivering an Amazon parcel could have …” Gayther stopped himself and sighed, adding their names first together and then, after rubbing them out with the sleeve of his jacket, separately. “But do you really think that’s likely? Really?”

“Well they were the last, officially, to see him alive. So that puts them in the frame, surely? Who’s to say Sally didn’t go back at 8.45 instead of 9.55 and tip him out the window?”

Gayther put the lid back on the black marker and looked straight at Carrie. “Why,” he asked, “would she do that? What possible motive could she have?”

Carrie shrugged. “I don’t know. We were always told … by instructors.” She gathered her thoughts and then added, “Who knows, maybe The Scribbler was her brother … or Jen’s … and one of them heard Lodge’s ramblings and decided to silence him.”

“Sally’s Chinese, in case you hadn’t noticed.