* * *
“All good?” said Mrs Coombes once Sally and Jen had left the room. “Are we finished now?” She smiled, her words sounding more like an instruction than a question.
Gayther nodded again and moved, with Carrie close behind, to the door and out. The three of them walked alongside each other towards the stairs at the far end of the corridor, taking them to the reception where they had entered the building.
As they were about halfway along, an elderly woman, in her late eighties or so, and using a frame, came out of her room, accompanied by a young, dark-haired female care assistant. The old woman stopped and peered at Mrs Coombes.
“Is my daughter dead?” she asked, her voice raised and cracking with emotion.
Mrs Coombes slowed in front of the old woman and then turned towards her. Gayther wondered, from her manner, whether she would have just brushed by and ignored the woman had they not been there.
“Jean says my daughter is dead. Is that true?” The elderly woman was close to sobbing out the words.
Mr Coombes looked at the care assistant. “Jean?” she asked.
The young care assistant shook her head, as if to dismiss the matter, then said quietly, “Miss Baker, Dot’s friend, can be …” her voice dropped and she mouthed the last word “… mean.”
“Who is your daughter?” asked Mrs Coombes. “What is her name? I will check for you.”
The elderly woman stopped and Gayther could see she was thinking, searching for a name or even a word or a phrase, something to say back. Mrs Coombes stood there, waiting, and Gayther could sense the impatience in this dismissive woman.
The elderly woman spoke again at last, bewildered now, uncertain. “I … I don’t know …” She thought for a while longer and Gayther could see Mrs Coombes’ patience running out. “Is my daughter dead?”
Mrs Coombes smiled tightly and answered her, “I’ll go and find out for you and let you know. Don’t worry. I’m sure all is well.”
As the three of them reached the doors to the stairs, Mrs Coombes pressed 6 9 2 1 on a keypad to let them through and then turned and said, “It’s sad, isn’t it, that they come to this?”
“Is her daughter dead?” asked Carrie.
Mrs Coombes laughed drily. “I doubt it … I’m not sure she even has a daughter. It’s something of a madhouse in here. An Alice in Wonderland world. We have an old headmistress who goes round opening and shutting windows for no apparent reason. Another old lady, strong as an ox, lets off fire extinguishers. Another who heads for the fire escape every chance she gets. That old woman … she’ll have forgotten all about it in five minutes, they always do.”
“Mrs Coombes,” asked Gayther as they walked down the stairs, “before we go, I have a couple of things I want to follow up.”
Gayther saw the flash of annoyance, anger even, in Mrs Coombes’ eyes as she turned and looked at him. He pressed on.
“I’d like to have some details, a phone number, an address, for the care assistant called Karen who’s just left? … and details of the man who came in and did a sing-a-long on the Sunday after the fete … and I’d like to see the DBS of your gard—”
Mrs Coombes looked at him with barely disguised anger. “Yes, we can do all that, that’s all in the office, but I don’t see why. I thought you were good and done? So you said. Obviously not.”
“And I’d like to have a word with Alan, your gardener. Just a quick word if you—”
“Aland, his name is Aland with a d, not Alan,” she replied. “Although goodness knows what he has to do with anything. I have his papers in the office.”
She stopped as they entered the reception area and, with Gayther and Carrie behind her, she pointed towards the window that looked into the garden.
“That’s him there, Aland, the man doing the weeding. If one of you wants to go and speak to him, I’ll go to the office and we can also photocopy those details for Karen Williams and the singer who came in. Mr Elsworthy. Hopefully, we can then all get on with what we’re supposed to be doing. Our jobs. What we’re actually paid for.”
As she pointed, the man, the same man Gayther had seen gardening when they arrived, looked up. He glanced slowly and casually from Mrs Coombes to Gayther and on to Carrie. Then looked down, still crouched on his haunches, and continued weeding. Gayther sensed that the man was half-watching them from the corner of his eye.
“You go and get those details, Carrie. I’ll go and talk to the gardener … which is the quickest way to get into the garden?”
Mrs Coombes sighed, as if this was all too much trouble for her. She pointed to the doors to the left of reception. “Go through there,” she said, “you don’t need … go to the far end of the corridor and, just before you get to the kitchen, turn right into the residents’ lounge, straight through the doors into the garden and double back up to him.”
“Is there another way?” Gayther pressed.
Carrie looked at him, thinking that he maybe wanted her to go one way, him the other.
“No,” Mrs Coombes answered. “He’s in the corner. There’s a window there, but no door,” she added, a note of incredulity in her rising voice. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s weeding a flowerbed.”
Gayther nodded and stood there quietly, watching the man. He carried on digging slowly, as if he knew he was being observed.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” said Mrs Coombes, “we’ve all got work to do.” She turned and walked briskly towards the office. “Come with me,” she snapped at Carrie.
As Carrie followed her, Gayther just watched the man weeding. He was too precise, too mannered in what he was doing, thought Gayther. It just didn’t seem natural.
Look up, you bastard, thought Gayther.
Go on, look at me. Give yourself away.
But the man continued weeding, slowly and methodically, as if he were unaware that Gayther was standing there.
Gayther turned, moving towards the doors to the left of reception. As he put his hand to the door, he looked back through the window, expecting the man to be up and running. The man was still there, but standing now, his back to Gayther.
Turn round and look at me, thought Gayther.
Check I’m coming for you. Then run and give the game away. Show me you’re The Scribbler.
Gayther pushed through the doors, striding into the corridor. He saw the kitchen at the far end. To the right, just before it, doors into the residents’ lounge.
Ten, nine, eight strides away.
Had to stop himself breaking into a run.
Seven, six, five. Almost there.
An old lady came through the doors of the residents’ lounge. She walked unaided but was painfully slow.
She stopped in the middle of the doorway.
Gayther tried to pass on one side, then the other.
Stood in frustration and smiled at her.
“I’m not supposed to be here, you know,” she said, looking up at him.
“Can I just …”
“My son knows I am here and he is coming to get me,” she said firmly, and then added, “I have to meet him outside. Can you take me, please?”
“Wait here, my love,” he said, guiding her slowly by the arm into the corridor so that he could slip through the doorway. “Someone will come and help you in a minute.”
She turned to say something back, but Gayther was already moving quickly through the residents’ lounge. Four or five semi-conscious old ladies sat in a half-circle of armchairs in front of a quiz programme on the television. The care assistant there, a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, looked up and smiled vaguely at him as he rushed by.
He reached the doors to the garden, turned to the right and saw the gardener was no longer at the far end of the garden. His tools and equipment had gone too.
“Have you seen Aland?” Gayther said to the young care assistant as he turned around. “The gardener, Aland, he must have passed by these doors a moment ago.”
The care assistant smiled back
and answered in fractured English, “I not know.”
“Oh for God’s …” Gayther turned and ran back outside. The garden was a long thin rectangle. The gardener could only have gone one of two ways. To the left, by the residents’ lounge, out and around into the staff car park. Or he could have gone through the window in the corner, into the main part of the building where the residents’ bedrooms were spread over two floors. Either way, he must have been fast, moving the moment Gayther was gone from sight.
Gayther thought for a second; he had only one chance.
Guessed the gardener would not have gone to the car park, as he’d risk coming face-to-face with Gayther by the doors to the residents’ lounge.
Through the window, then, somewhere inside the main building now, maybe hiding out in an empty bedroom until Gayther had gone.
Gayther ran back down towards the window, tugged it open wider, and pulled himself through into the corridor where most of the dementia patients had their bedrooms. He stumbled and fell and, as he got to his feet, he noted soil on the floor and guessed it must have come from the gardener – a minute or two ago. That was the giveaway – why would an innocent man scramble through a window to run away?
Somewhere, on these two floors of bedrooms, The Scribbler was hiding.
Gayther knew he had to be quick, act fast, before he got away.
There was no time to go and get Carrie. He had to do this himself, find this man and bring him in. They’d not be able to put him out to pasture then.
* * *
Gayther stood in the corridor, on the ground floor of the main building. Breathing heavily, he knew he would struggle to apprehend The Scribbler. He was too old, too out of condition. And the medication he was on didn’t help.
But he had to try. He wouldn’t be intimidated. He’d fight if he had to. He’d had his fair share of violent encounters over the years and had won most of them.
This was his chance. To make the capture, show that he wasn’t the has-been everyone believed he was.
Behind him were the doors, identical to the ones he’d come through with Carrie and Mrs Coombes on the floor above. He pushed at the doors with his hands, but they were locked and needed a key card to get through rather than the 6921 code used upstairs. He thought it unlikely a gardener would have a key card to enable him to escape that way.
At the far end of the corridor was another pair of doors, again needing a key card to open them. Beyond the doors, Gayther imagined there was the lift and the gated staircase to the upper floor. Again, the gardener would not have a key card to escape that way.
So, he must be on this floor then. The Scribbler. Hiding, skulking in the corner of an old woman’s room. Like a bloody coward.
Gayther wished he had his mobile phone on him, had not left it in the side of the car with the file of notes, so he could call Carrie for back-up.
He looked along at twelve or so closed doors. Each, he assumed, had an elderly resident suffering from dementia in it. And one, he was sure, also had The Scribbler inside. So be it. He was ready to take him on.
He moved to the first door, paused, checking the carpet for any tell-tale signs of soil or grass. Nothing. He put his ear to the door. All silent. He hesitated for a moment. An empty room maybe. Or The Scribbler inside ready to attack?
Gayther pushed the door open ever-so-slowly, pushing it right back so he could see across the whole room. And to be certain The Scribbler wasn’t hiding behind the door, knife in hand.
He looked in. An old woman, at least he thought it was a woman, lay propped up in the bed in front of him. Her head was little more than a skull. Wisps of white hair covered some of the pink-white scalp. Eyes stared vacantly into space. The jaw hung open. She, he – whatever – had no teeth, just a desiccated, lifeless tongue lolling there. The stuff of nightmares, thought Gayther, that we might all come to this at the end.
He watched as, hearing the door open, the woman tilted her head, slowly, almost painfully, to the side, listening. Her hands, clasped together in front of her on the bed, moved slightly. Signs of life, of a sort. He saw her mouth move, trying to form words, a sound, anything.
He looked around. A wardrobe, too small for a grown man to hide in. The bed, too low for anyone to slide beneath. Windows, with curtains pulled to, hanging lower than the windowsill but not as far as the floor. No one there.
He stepped back, pulled the door closed behind him.
Moved into the corridor.
Open each door, one by one, that’s all he had to do, until he found the room with The Scribbler in it.
Gayther moved to the next door. He checked the floor outside for fresh grass or mud stains. Nothing. Leaned in, his right ear close to the door, his hand upon it. Heard voices, two women’s, one raised, the other calm and measured.
“Bitch,” said the woman with the raised voice. “The bitch comes in my room.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t, Moira,” replied the woman with the calm voice. “Debbie doesn’t work here any more.”
Gayther heard a buzzing, angry noise coming, he thought, from the woman with the raised voice. It grew into a roar and then the woman shouted at the top of her voice. “She comes into my room … when I am asleep … and she moves my things around.”
He moved to the next door. The third of twelve. Could be this one. The odds were shortening. He felt his body tense.
Put his ear to it again. Silence.
This is it, he thought. The moment of truth. In here. The Scribbler. With a knife. I have to be bold and attack. Hard and fast.
As he stood there, hesitating, he heard a door opening, four or five away, further along the corridor. He turned, not sure what to expect. A young care assistant: a big, Eastern European-looking boy of twenty to twenty-five stood there, staring back at him.
“Can I help you?” the boy asked, his voice rising, “Who are you visiting, please?”
Gayther put a finger to his lips and made a hushing sound before pointing to the door.
“What? … What?” the boy said, taking a step towards Gayther. “Wait a minute … who are you? … How did you get in?”
Gayther turned and pushed the door of the room open. Stepped inside quickly, ready to attack.
He saw the room was empty, other than a bed, two piles of folded-up clothing and belongings, and a wardrobe. Again, too small to hide anyone.
As he turned back, he heard an alarm going off in the corridor, the sound of doors opening, people running.
The boy stood there blocking the doorway as other care assistants came up behind him.
Gayther breathed heavily, “I’m a police officer, doing my job. I’m looking for Aland, the gardener. I just need to have a word,” he added wearily.
The boy did not seem to know what to say. He looked at Gayther, down at the floor, and then at the care assistants gathering around him before he finally spoke. “You shouldn’t be here. These are our residents’ rooms. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I know,” Gayther replied slowly. “Yes, I know.” He edged towards the boy and the care assistants, realising that he needed to get by them to search the other rooms. The boy shifted slightly to fill the doorway. The alarm kept ringing and Gayther wished someone would switch it off. “But I need to speak to Aland. Have you seen him … any of you?”
He looked at the group of care assistants, waiting for one of them, some of them, any of them to say something. An older woman with a ‘Tracey’ name badge put her hand up, was about to say something. But then the doors at the end of the corridor opened and they all turned in unison to look towards them. They stepped back from the door and Gayther took the opportunity to step forward and through.
“Detective Gayther?” Mrs Coombes walked briskly towards him, with Carrie a step or two behind. “What is going on here?”
He noticed the look of suppressed laughter on Carrie’s face. Really, it was too much.
She treated him as if he were simple.
“I wanted to speak
to the gardener, Aland. He ran away from me. Climbed through the window where he was weeding into this corridor. He’s hiding in one of these rooms.”
She looked at him with something close to open-mouthed disbelief.
Gayther realised suddenly how foolish this must appear, feeling somehow that he needed to explain himself further in some way but without revealing too much.
He ignored the expression on Carrie’s face as he spoke.
“We’re looking for a man who matches Aland’s description very closely … for crimes … serious crimes … going back a while.”
Mrs Coombes laughed in his face, an embarrassing, scornful noise. “He’s only been in the country for four months. For goodness sake. He’s on a VPRS … vulnerable persons resettlement scheme – displaced by the Syrian conflict.”
“Ah,” said Gayther, nodding, as if fully understanding what Mrs Coombes was saying to him.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss his case with you … but he’s here perfectly legally and he has all his papers. He’s a refugee, not an asylum seeker. I had them in the office for you … we were taking copies if you remember … your colleague left them there when we heard the alarm.”
“Yes,” Gayther replied, “Carrie will pick them up on the way out … now that we’re leaving.” He started to move away towards the doors, hoping Mrs Coombes and Carrie would follow. They did and Mrs Coombes continued talking.
“You’re clearly from the police … your whole manner. The way you dress. I imagine Aland saw you coming towards him … assumed you were the secret police … an immigration officer … or some such. He took fright and ran. And who could blame him? Look at yourself,” she added witheringly.
He looked instead at Carrie.
She looked him up and down.
Clearly thinking this was hilarious.
As they got to the door and Mrs Coombes reached for the key card in her pocket, Gayther saw her turn and look back along the corridor. He followed her gaze, past the care assistants going back into different rooms and saw Aland, standing at the far end, by the final door.
The Scribbler Page 5