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

New structures and systems coming into place. A complete overhaul, but there’s still talk of closure. It’s not an instant thing anyway. They need to find places for twenty or so residents. The woman I spoke to, Coombes, who told me all this, she is … at least was … in charge. She sounded really bitter. As if she had been blamed for everything and it was nothing to do with her at all.”

He watched two young female members of staff coming out of the front door, chatting as they made their way towards the staff car park. He thought they looked happy, carefree even.

“She, Ruth Coombes, as good as says it’s all their fault.” He pointed to the young women as they got into a car. “It’s been down to a turnover of staff … low pay, long hours, her hands were tied, she did her best blah blah blah … problems with getting new employees in and training and then keeping them seems to be the gist of it. More than a touch of the ‘bloody foreigners’ about it all.”

“No CCTV cameras,” Carrie pointed suddenly to the building. “Should there be? It would make life a lot easier if we could rewind and see everyone coming in and out at the time of Mr Lodge’s death. Might there be some elsewhere? Covert recordings we could check?”

He paused, seeing a grey-haired gardener, carrying a tray of bedding plants and a handheld spade, coming out from around the far side of the building to the left and making his way to the entrance. There, he knelt and started digging out dead plants from two urns to either side of the front doors.

“Guv…?” she said, after a few moments’ silence.

“Sorry Carrie, I was just thinking … Big issue, apparently, CCTV in care homes – privacy and dignity and all of that. Anything that’s up has to be overt; all out in the open for everyone to see. They’ve not done it here because of the costs, so Mrs Coombes said.”

He stopped for a further second or two, looking at the gardener, before shaking his head and going on.

“The fact is, Carrie, if The Scribbler was here, and he did kill Edwin Lodge, he could pretty much stroll in and out as he pleased at visiting times. I asked Mrs Coombes about security and she didn’t seem to know what to say. From what I can make out, a signing-in book’s about the be-all and end-all of it – and that seems to be pretty lax. Visitors pretty much come and go as they wish.”

He watched as the grey-haired gardener put the old plants into a plastic bag he had in his pocket, then started placing bulbs into the first urn. He could, thought Gayther, be The Scribbler. Same sort of age and build, forgettable, overlooked, maybe a new employee who then came face-to-face with one of his victims and had no choice but to silence him and his ravings. Gayther sighed. If only it were that easy, but he made a mental note to check on him later.

“So, what are your thoughts, guvnor?” Carrie asked. “If Mr Lodge was murdered by The Scribbler, did he recognise a member of staff? Someone who came to visit another resident? A workman fixing a radiator? Did The Scribbler realise and then come and kill him?”

DI Gayther raised his arms and spread his hands out wide as if to say, ‘who knows?’.

She went on, “Or could it just be that, in his dying days, Mr Lodge was tormented about his homosexuality, which he saw as an ungodly thing, had visions of The Scribbler and then took his own life … and this is just us …” she hesitated for a second because of Gayther’s expression but then went on, “… chasing ghosts?”

“Well that, Constable,” replied the older man, “is what we are here to find out. Come on, we’ve an appointment with Mrs Coombes in …” he checked his watch, “five minutes ago.”

* * *

DI Gayther and DC Carrie sat in the reception area of the care home, the entrance behind them. They’d been directed there by a young, stick-thin woman in the office to the right as they went in through the front doors. She slid back the glass pane, asked their names, and waved them through the next set of doors into reception. There was a moment’s confusion as Carrie pushed the doors, found they were locked, and had to ask the thin-as-a-rake woman to let them in. She pressed a button on the office wall and the doors opened.

“There is some security then,” said Carrie, walking through and leading the way. “Of sorts.”

Gayther nodded and replied, “Some, but at busy times, visiting times, when The Scribbler would have come in unnoticed, they’d all just pass straight through.”

“They need a CCTV camera up there in the office,” Carrie replied as she sat down. “Just there.” She pointed. “Solve everything, that would.”

He nodded again as he sat down too and looked around.

The reception area’s walls were magnolia-painted, the sofa and chairs a brown-and-orange stripe; the floor looked like wood, but was more likely, thought Gayther, laminate. The place smelled of antiseptic and possibly vomit and urine, although that may just have been his over-active imagination.

The reception area was an almost perfect rectangle, with a gated-off flight of stairs to one side, leading up, he assumed, to a floor of bedrooms. Another door led to a long corridor where he guessed most of the patients’ rooms were located. He could see, through the windows, a wide garden behind the building. To the left through more doors, he assumed, would be a lounge and other communal areas, and maybe a kitchen.

“I told you, I’ve been through this before, we all have, weeks ago, with the proper police, just after the reverend’s death,” said Mrs Coombes in a sharp voice, as she came through the doors towards them. A tall, thin, old-fashioned-looking woman, she seemed harassed, as