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

start. So why didn’t we nail him?” Carrie suddenly noticed movement at the upstairs window, a fluttering of a net curtain. Someone was there, looking out, watching them.

“It was a start, yes. And we … they … came close. But they screwed up. They pulled Burgess in and felt he was near to confessing. They got an extension. Left him alone to stew in his own juices and then set up an identity parade.”

Gayther laughed sardonically.

“Big mistake. The old fool who’d talked to Burgess and ID’d him picked out someone else. Unbelievable. It was someone who looked nothing like Burgess – we used to pull them off the streets for a fiver in those days to make up the numbers in a line-up.”

“Uh, not so good. Dead in the water, then?” Carrie kept talking, although she had half an eye on the cottage window. No movement. But the dark shadow to one side could be someone monitoring them, she thought. She looked at it, waiting for the darkness to move.

“It needn’t have been if they’d been cute about it,” continued Gayther. “If they’d let everyone leave the line-up at the same time and taken Burgess back to the interview room, they maybe could have, with a nudge and a wink to imply he’d been picked out, got him to admit to the killings. But they held back the man the old boy singled out as the rest of the line-up left and that seemed to give Burgess the impetus to hold on.”

He flicked through the papers. “And then this clown Halom went to the press, same day, next day, whenever, and confessed, so the focus moved to him as the prime suspect … he had his confession all written out and presented to the newspaper … and Burgess just slipped away into the shadows.”

“What about the car, the Burgess van, whatever it was, what did forensics get out of that?” There was no movement at the cottage window. Just the shadow. Carrie was sure the movement was coming. Any second now.

“Effectively nothing. Inside the van, nothing of note. Mud, tiny patches of mud, in the footwell that they tried to match up later with mud from where the victims were found. But he was very careful if it was him. Cleaned everything up well. These days, with the victim’s flakes of skin and strands of hair and smatterings of blood on him, and him then going back to the van at some point, well, we’d have a better chance.”

“Inside the van, guv, you said. Inside the van. What was outside? Mud on the tyres?” Yes, thought Carrie, there it was, the shadow at the window moved back. But still there. Someone watching them sitting there talking.

Gayther breathed out – a long, drawn-out noise. He thought about what he was going to say. “Thing is, Carrie, these days, most members of the public assume the police is some sort of super-powerful organisation with mighty computers and instant access to every database everywhere and CCTV and DNA and so on – and that everything can be solved quickly and easily. Some of it is, but there are still so many variables.”

Carrie was distracted. By the shadow at the window. Thoughts and possibilities rolling helter-skelter through her mind. Then, aware of the lengthening silence and Gayther’s expectation of her next question, she spoke, “What do you mean, guv?”

“Policing, detective work, solving crimes – it’s not just about checking CCTV footage and getting DNA from dandruff on someone’s jacket collar. It’s not that bloody simple most of the time. It’s also about smart policing. Old Man Wilson noticing The Scribbler’s mark in a coroner’s report.

“It’s about lucky policing, too. The Yorkshire Ripper got caught because a traffic cop spotted what turned out to be fake plates on his car. A complete fluke, that was.

“And Dennis Nilsen, who killed and dismembered young gay men at his home in London, was only caught when a Dyno-Rod employee tried unblocking the drains there and found what he thought were flushed-away lumps of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Luck, Carrie, good or bad. That’s how so many cases unravel, not through clever-clever policing.”

And now the shadow was gone. Out of sight. Hiding? Coming downstairs? Out the back and away? She spoke again, to alert Gayther, “Guv…?”

Gayther sighed loudly once more. “And sometimes, not solving crimes is about careless policing. Human error. Mistakes. Not seeing what’s in front of your eyes. Remember The Scribbler always used to go with the victims in their cars. Why? Maybe because there was something about his car that people might notice, that they might remember.”

He rifled quickly through the pages for a blurred photo photocopied onto a page. “Burgess had a teddy bear painted on the doors of the van representing his baby goods business. That’s been there right through – and I only just noticed it myself when I was going through all of the files at the weekend. A long-forgotten, overlooked photo that just slipped through over and again. Unbelievable, but it’s what happens sometimes. It let him get away.”

Or coming towards them? The shadow. Whoever it was. Out the front door and towards the car. “Guvnor…?” she said more emphatically.

And still Gayther went on talking, almost in a reverie, thought Carrie as she turned towards him, as if he’d prepared what he was going to say. “And this girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, wife, ex-wife, God knows what, she then retracted her statement anyway. Because she found herself pregnant … so it wasn’t all schoolboy sex … and then, who knows?”

He laughed again, ignored Carrie, and went on.

“Those days there was still a stigma … unmarried mothers. They move up there, he becomes a photographer, they have a baby, presumably, Thomas and Cotton have nothing on that, and they end up here. Living their days out in this fairy-tale setting … or not.” Finished at last, thought Carrie. About time.

Gayther turned his head towards the cottage.

And pulled back, startled. Carrie glanced over her shoulder and