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

“Exhibits?”

“Items of evidence, Carrie. Wakey, wakey. From the deceased victims. There’s not much. Most of them were discovered face down and rotting in a ditch six months after they went missing. But we’ve two or three items. A boot from Marven found close to where the body was discovered in a ditch. Shoes from MacGowan that were pulled off before he was dumped in another ditch. A hair found under the fingernail of Davies; he maybe pulled it out during a struggle with The Scribbler.”

“Any good?”

“I think Marven’s boot is too much of a long shot. It’s likely it just came off as The Scribbler dragged the victim’s body to the ditch. He probably never actually touched it. The other boot was found in the water at the bottom of the ditch. MacGowan’s shoes might be a possible – it depends on whether The Scribbler pulled them off and, if so, whether he still had his latex gloves on. If he did pull them off, why did he leave them there? I don’t think we’ll get lucky with them.”

“Waste of time then, guv, asking for them to be DNA tested?”

“Maybe, but who knows. I can put it through on the basis that if we can get some DNA we can see if there’s a match on the main database. But there’s a problem, well two problems really. Back then, we pretty much just fingerprinted items. These days, with DNA, we can retrieve DNA from skin cells left behind when – if – The Scribbler – came into contact with an object such as the boot. But it’s a big if, whether there are any skin cells on, say, the shoes that we recovered. If The Scribbler pulled them off, well he was wearing latex gloves, so that’s a non-starter.”

“And the other problem?” Carrie asked.

The other issue is that we, well some of us, were pretty gung-ho, PC Plod, in those days in the way we handled things. A year or two ago, they looked at the rape and murder of an old lady, in her eighties, walking her dog on old Felixstowe beach in 1979. Funnily enough, they had her boots and reckoned the rapist … the murderer … ripped them off, and so, DNA-wise, there might have been skin cells on those. Nothing … they reckon the way the boots were fingerprinted at the time destroyed any chance of DNA.”

“And the hair, under the nail, that’s a possibility, surely? Got lucky there,” Carrie queried.

“If it’s his, maybe. And if there’s a root. And if they’ll DNA test it. If. If. If. Thing is, without a root, you can’t get a full profile, not at present anyway, and upstairs may say no because they want to preserve the little bit of hair they’ve got. If the hair’s rootless, and I’m no expert, you can establish ethnicity, but that’s about it. If we get DNA from a suspect and there is a match, it would not be complete, so the evidence wouldn’t be … the reality is that, given its age and everything, it’s probably degraded so much and will be of too poor quality to do much with it.”

Carrie swept up the crumbs of her biscuit and tipped them into the cellophane wrapper in front of her before pushing it into the bottom of her emptied coffee cup. She glanced at Gayther’s forehead, paused and went to speak, but then thought better of it.

“So, what are we doing today, guv? Going to see the two victims who got away, Wade the teacher and Wilkerson the bank manager? In case they’re next on The Scribbler’s ‘to do’ list?”

Gayther looked at Carrie and shook his head as if to say the ‘to do’ list comment wasn’t appropriate. He finished the rest of his coffee and squashed the cup down into Carrie’s and then spoke.

“We’re going to cut to the chase, Carrie. We’ve got Thomas and Cotton’s notes and are going to pay visits to Challis and Halom and, in his absence, to the wife of Burgess. One of them’s The Scribbler. Let’s see if we can find out what they were doing the night of Lodge’s death. We’ll give them all a little squeeze and see if one of them bursts open.”

* * *

“So, which one’s first, guv?” Carrie asked, as they sat in the car in a layby on the A12. “Challis … Halom … Burgess?”

Gayther rifled back and forth through the file on his lap in front of him.

“Halom … he’s the closest. I’ve a photocopy of The News of the World front page from … whatever the date was. 1989, I think. Let me show you. Refresh your memory.”

He passed an A4 sheet of paper to Carrie and then carried on speaking as she began reading it.

“This is the drag-act guy who … dear God, where to start? Obsessed, for whatever reason, with the case. His bedroom was covered with cuttings about the killings. Came forward to say he thought he did them while in a trance … said he had blackouts … the ‘zombie killer’ some of the lads at the station called him. Anyway, the desk sergeant initially humoured him and took a statement and filed it under a pile of papers at the bottom of a cabinet and forgot about it.”

“So, how did he end up on the front page?” Carrie held up the piece of paper. “With his face all over this rag?”

“Halom kept coming back demanding to be charged with the murders. Made a nuisance of himself, hanging around the car park, stopping the senior officers, the cleaners, anyone who’d listen. He got short shrift. He then went to the newspapers. The News of the World ran a front page. God knows why. We were then instructed from on high to interview him under caution, but, well, these days you have to be sympathetic to mental health issues, but then, he was just a swivel-eyed loon