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

to bring him back here later was all that was needed. Then they were walking through the park and out to the anonymous small dark van parked in a shady, tree-lined side street.

Stilted conversation. The exchange of first names, both false.

A short journey. No more than four or five miles.

Down a maze of country lanes into thick woods, where he pulled in and parked among trees. Hidden away.

“It’s nice here.” The older man looked across at the trees and nodded agreement. He had a thin sheen of sweat on his face and upper lip. Inexperienced, thought the man with the gloves. Can’t believe his luck. Two in one day. And him so old and flaccid, a washed-up nobody in his cheap, department store suit. Hanging around filthy public toilets.

“This way,” said the man with the gloves, getting out of the car and walking into the woods. “The van’s fine here, no one will ever notice it.”

He turned and smiled at the older man climbing slowly, reluctantly now, out of the van. “I don’t normally do this kind of …” he tailed off.

“I’ve been here before; I know a little place. It’s nice. Private. Just the two of us. It’s a minute’s walk, no more.”

And so they walked together, one confident, the other less so, through the trees into the deepest part of the wood. The man in front turned on to a little path to the left, led the older man along and then stepped to the side and into a thicket of shrubs. He held the swathe of shrubs back as they moved on to a patch of grass, no bigger than a blanket, surrounded and protected from view by six-foot shrubbery.

“Do you c … come here often?” the older man asked, trying to sound relaxed and jovial, although the brief stutter gave him away. “This is new to me, this is.”

The man with the gloves shook his head.

“Once or twice, that’s all. It’s good here. Safe. The van’s hidden away from the road and I’ve never seen anyone in this part of the woods.”

The man with the gloves sat down on the ground. He beckoned the older man to sit next to him. After a moment’s pause, he did so and, side-by-side, they made more small talk, the weather, cold and crisp, and the patch of grass, quite lush and green considering, for a few minutes. Then, as a second or two of silence between them moved towards uncertainty and second thoughts, the man with the gloves gestured to the older man to undress. He hesitated, not sure what to do.

“What do you want …?”

The man with the gloves smiled, “Just take your jacket off and lie it on the ground. Then loosen your trousers and lie down on top of it … on your front. Leave the rest to me.”

“I don’t want to get anything on my jacket … any stuff.”

The man with the gloves smiled again, helping the older man off with his jacket and lying it on its front on the grass. The older man crouched carefully on his knees. “My … wife will want to know why I’ve got muddy …” The man with the gloves, controlling his excitement, hushed him down as the older man undid the top button of his trousers and then lay forward. “Gloves,” the older man said as he did so. “Why do you wear gloves … do you have dermatitis?”

“Ssshhh,” the man with the gloves said as he crouched down and put his hands on the older man’s trousers. “Lift yourself up a little. Wriggle.”

The older man did as he was asked as his trousers and his underwear were pulled slowly down exposing his buttocks.

“Bring your knees up nice and slowly,” added the man with the gloves, smiling to himself as the older man did so.

Perfect, he thought as he took a Stanley knife out of one pocket of his fleece and then, relishing every moment, the screwdriver from the other.

He knew, from so many times in the past, that he had about thirty to forty seconds of crouching here, anticipating, enjoying the moment, relishing it. before the old man turned his head with a ‘what are you doing?’ look on his face.

And he leaned forward and pushed a cloth from his trouser pocket into the older man’s mouth at the exact moment that he struck the first savage blow.

* * *

The man with the latex gloves had taken many lives.

This was the thirtieth, something of a milestone.

So many that he knew by now how each would unfold.

The first stabbing, the second, even the third, fourth and fifth, were carried out on the brink of ecstasy. The element of surprise and the fury of attack close to taking the life of the old man. Pinned down by the man with the gloves, he had made a series of squeals and gasping noises with each stabbing blow. Further blows, this time to the middle of the man’s back, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and more seemed to extinguish the life from him. As they always did.

Rolled over, the man with the gloves listened to the old man’s breathing.

It seemed still, gone, the man was all but dead.

But the man with the gloves pushed the screwdriver into the man’s chest several more times. To be sure. Probing, searching for the heart, pressing hard time and again. To be certain.

The man with the gloves then looked at the old man’s face. He needed to see what he looked like, this ‘Edward’, even though he knew that would not be his real name. Reaching out, he lifted up the man’s lolling head, tipped it forward to see, really see, how he looked.

Dyed hair, a clumsy ginger, eyes staring and bloodshot, cheeks sunken, he had a hooked nose and protruding ears. The man with the gloves let the head fall back with a thud. He reached for his Stanley knife on the ground next to the body.

Ripped open the old man’s shirt.

Wiped at