The balding man made eye contact, nodded and smiled briefly at him, maybe walked a little slower. A sign of interest.
Stopped again then, at the step up to the toilets, glancing round, before entering. Another tell-tale sign for sure. This would be the next, the man with the gloves decided, his thirtieth kill. Easy to overpower, this one. A manageable corpse. He reached into the left pocket of his fleece, checked the screwdriver and the Stanley knife were there.
Bin bags and black tape in his trouser pockets.
Ready to use.
If he got lucky with this one.
He savoured the moment, counting the seconds. Knew, if he had judged it correctly, that he should give the balding man in the toilet two or three minutes before following him in. He counted down from 180 in his head. Got to 120, 90, close to 60 and then, impatient, started walking across as slowly as he could. He tucked his binoculars into the right pocket of his fleece, checking around to make sure no one was in sight. All clear, and so he went into the toilets.
He paused for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He almost recoiled from the stench, although he had known worse. Wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He drew breath in through his mouth.
Three urinals, all filthy, overflowing. Dirt and tissues and Godknows-what beneath.
Three cubicles, two half-open, the other with its door pushed to. The balding man would be in there, shifting nervously, full of excitement.
The man hesitated. Even after all this time, he never quite knew whether to tap on the door or wait outside for a signal. He coughed, then paused, listening for a response. He could hear the man on the other side of the door, waiting for him, breathing heavily in expectation. So, he stepped forward, pushed at the door, which seemed to be sticking, pressed harder as it slipped its latch and opened fast.
The balding man sitting there, his head down.
Moving back, startled, as the door hit him; either on his head or on his knees. He wasn’t sure which.
Looking up, face full of fear as he stared at the man with the latex gloves standing there in the doorway.
“What the …?” The man struggled to his feet, covering himself then pulling his underwear and trousers up and buttoning them. “How dare you …” he added angrily, stepping forward now and pushing the man with the gloves back, outside of the cubicle.
The man with the latex gloves stumbled backwards, steadied himself.
Dipped his head down, brought his gloves to his face, as if wiping his brow.
“Sorry,” he said, as he turned away. “Didn’t know you were in there.”
He hurried out of the toilets. Across to the trees and to the path that wound its way towards the exit and his van parked in a quiet street. He cursed himself for rushing forward in his enthusiasm and desire, for not waiting for a clear sign from the man that he was interested.
He had made this mistake before.
Been chased.
And been lucky to get away.
He sat there in his van, coughing, and then slowing his breathing as best he could until it was regular. Watched in the van’s wing mirror to see if the man in the toilets was coming this way. Knew that if he had judged correctly, if the man was a secret middle-aged homosexual, he might have changed his mind, come looking for a second chance.
He sighed, knowing too that he dare not wait to find out. He had spent so long checking the park, the entrances and exits, the hiding places, the absence of CCTV, the busy and the quiet areas, that he knew he was safe so long as he left now. Could not risk the man in the toilet seeing him in the van, noting the number, maybe reporting him to the police.
He started the van’s engine. Wiped his nose one more time.
Looked back over his shoulder, seeing the road was clear, pulling out and away.
Thinking already of the place he would go tomorrow evening. To find his next kill.
PART TWO
THE SUSPECTS
6. TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER, EARLY MORNING
The four of them – Gayther, Carrie, Thomas and Cotton – sat around the table in the portacabin the next morning.
Carrie pushed a cup of coffee across the table towards Gayther. He stopped rummaging through his papers and looked at it.
“What … exactly is that, Carrie?”
“New cups from the new machine, sir. They’re called ripple cups. Because of these ridges here, see. Eco-packaging, sir, environmentally friendly. Save the dolphins, sir.”
Gayther grunted. “I meant the drink, Carrie, what is it, tea or coffee?”
“Hard to say for sure, sir. I pressed the button for coffee, with milk but no sugar, sir, what with you paddling in the shallows, sir.”
Gayther saw Thomas and Cotton exchange puzzled glances over their coffees. “Ignore Carrie,” he said, “you’ll only encourage her.” He smiled at them and then continued. “Look, okay, let’s get ourselves up-to-date on this Scribbler case.”
Gayther shuffled his notes, put them to one side and pulled the cup towards him. He looked across at Carrie as she sipped hers first. She mock-shuddered. Gayther laughed.
“Okay, as I texted you all last night,” he looked at them in turn and they nodded to confirm, “I had a chat with Karen Williams, the woman at the care home who met Miss Bright’s … Mrs Smith’s alleged nephew. Her description of him matches how I think The Scribbler would look now, so … yes, Thomas?”
Thomas put his raised hand down. “Sorry, sir, but if Mrs Smith had a nephew, would her nephew be Smith as well … if she’d married? Wouldn’t they have different surnames.”
“I assume The Scribbler just picked the name Smith on the basis that it, or maybe Jones … possibly Patel these days … was a really common surname and there was likely to be someone of that name at the home. Maybe he caught one of the foreign care assistants on the way in and talked to them about residents, who knows? Anyhow, the name Smith gave him his entry point. That then gave him his chance to ask about a vicar and where he was, which room he was in.”
“But could he, this man, actually be her nephew, sir?” Thomas pressed. “Perhaps he might just be that and not be anything to do with anything else at all?”
“I suppose so, possibly,” Gayther replied slowly. “If he were her husband’s blood nephew and hers by marriage. Or if she had never married and the Mrs became a sort of courtesy title over the years. Carrie, make a note … that’s something you can check please. I want you to go back and talk to Mrs Smith, see if you can get any sense out of her … did you get to see Sally and Jen yesterday afternoon?”
Carrie shook her head. “I got waylaid, sir. Did a bit of desk research … some background reading … then ran out of time. I had to pick Noah up from after-school club at five. Going to do it today, sir.”
Gayther nodded but then added, “Just hold fire on Kings Court for now, then; let’s see if we can get a decent sketch from Karen Williams first. I want to get someone round there. Then see if Mrs Smith recognises her so-called nephew … or Sally or Jen. Who knows, they may turn round and say he’s the local odd-job man.”
“Did anyone say he actually called himself John Smith?” Thomas persisted.
“Yes,” sighed Gayther, “Karen Williams referred to him as Smith … John Smith, I think. Not a very imaginative name, that. Anyway, look, let’s move on for now.” With that, he stood up and moved to the whiteboard at the other end of the portacabin.
“I’m sure this man … let’s call him John Smith … as good a made-up name as any … is The Scribbler.” He turned to the board and wrote ‘John Smith’ at the top, circling it two and then three times for emphasis. “In fact, let’s put ‘John Smith’ in the middle and work outwards from there.”
After rubbing out the name and writing ‘John Smith’ again, Gayther continued. “I’m going to have a word with Peter, the new artist, to see if I can get him over there … to Karen Williams … to do a sketch. That will be useful. I want to see if upstairs will let us put something out … a press r
elease … if we need to … down the line. Thomas, Cotton, how did you get on with tracing Challis, Halom and the other one … Burgess?” Gayther wrote the three names, with question marks, in a circle around ‘John Smith’ on the board.
“Three suspects. Ray Challis was the first. A plumber … frequented some of The Scribbler’s pubs … had alibis for some … but not others … anything on him on the PNC, the Police National Computer?” Gayther added.
Thomas shook his head. “Not for the father, no. He’s a builder these days. Saxmundham-based. Works with his two sons. One of the sons, Tobias, was arrested but not convicted of a burglary last year. Interestingly, it was up Dunwich way. An ordinary house, not the vicarage. A solicitor from London applied to have his information removed from the files, DNA, fingerprints, on the grounds that there was corroborative evidence that he had a proven alibi.”
Gayther grunted, “Unusual, that. I’d maybe expect a lefty-liberal type from London to want to have DNA and fingerprints removed, civil rights and all that, but a hairy-arsed builder’s boy from Suffolk? That’s odd. We’ll follow that up.”
“We were thinking of familial DNA searching, sir,” Cotton said. “If the father was The Scribbler, he’d not want his son’s DNA on the database in case it was a close match for any DNA found at any of The Scribbler’s murder scenes.”
He looked at Thomas and went on. “We did this course, see, sir, the two of us. And there was a case where … if you compare twenty DNA markers, most people, like any two random people, just by chance, would have maybe half a dozen markers in common. But close relatives can have maybe a dozen or more.”
“I take your point,” said Gayther and then added, “although we don’t have any, do we, Carrie, on file? DNA?”
Carrie shook her head. “I’m amazed at how little we have sir, just notes … in what you gave me anyway.”
“Different age, Carrie.” Gayther stopped for a second and then added, “I think there are some clothes kept somewhere. From the murders. God knows where they’d be now. But there may be something. Can you …”
“Noted sir,” Carried replied, writing in her notebook. “I’ll get that checked today.”
Gayther addressed Carrie, Thomas and Cotton together. “Unless … until … it may be until … The Scribbler strikes again and conveniently leaves his DNA somewhere for us, we’ll crack this case the old-fashioned way. Plod. Plod. Plod. Check. Check. Check. And then a lucky break. But we have to work hard to create that break. Cross-referencing. Spotting something odd. Following it up. Proper policing. Like it used to be done, without technology and predictive algorithms and all of that shi … stuff.”
Carrie laughed.
The other two smiled politely.
Gayther turned back to Thomas and Cotton.
“Anyway, Halom? The drag act fellow. Is he still playing at being Danny La Rue?”
Thomas and Cotton looked blankly at him.
“Oh, forget it. What have you got on him? Is he still doing his act?”
Cotton spoke this time. “He’s got a record as long as your arm, sir. Handling stolen goods going way back, also credit cards in his parents’ names, fraud too. All low-level, petty stuff. Most recently, past couple of years, he set up fake profiles on Facebook and sold non-existent goods. Took money from people and then tried to disappear. Not very successfully. He was sentenced to twelve months’ suspended in May and a hundred hours of community service.”
“So, we’ve got his DNA and fingerprints then, in case we need them. Do we know where he’s doing his community service?”
“No, sir, not yet, but he’s based up the road in Wickham Market and does a karaoke evening at a caravan park in Great Yarmouth Friday evenings. We made a call, sir, and he’s on this Friday … if you want to have a word. He’s up and down the A12 fairly regularly. His mother, who gave a statement about the credit cards and then withdrew it, lives in sheltered housing in Leiston. We were wondering, sir …” Cotton turned to Thomas, “… whether, given her age, she’s in her eighties, Halom might have been looking at Kings Court for her, sir …”
“Yes, good work, one to follow up, too. And Burgess, what about Burgess? Looking at the case history, if I had 50p to spare, he’d be the man I’d put it on. What’s on the computer?”
“Nothing on the PNC, sir,” Thomas answered. “But, and this is odd, sir, certainly a coincidence anyway. He … from Google … appears to have moved from wherever he was, Sussex, to Aldeburgh in the early 1990s and became a wedding photographer for a while. Bit of a shift, but we’ve cross-referenced and it’s definitely him.”
“Go on,” said Gayther.
“He then seems to have retired recently, sir, past year or two, and has vanished off the radar as far as we can see. Nothing online we can find. But his wife, Angela, appears to be still living just outside of Aldeburgh on her own.”
Carrie leaned towards Gayther, pushing his cup to one side. “So, it should be easy for us to start by checking to see where Challis and Halom were on the night that Reverend Lodge died … then get their DNA and see if we can match it with what we can find at the care home, sir.”
Gayther turned back to Cotton and Thomas. “Well, one step at a time, before we think about interviewing anyone, trying to get DNA, checking cars and CCTV and so on. We can sort this quickly. Are there photos anywhere of Challis, Halom or Burgess? On social media? Facebook? A poster of Halom dancing about at the caravan park? If so, we can show them to Karen Williams and see if she recognises any of them as this John Smith character. Job done. Can’t get simpler than that.”
“Is that legal, sir? Doing that?” Thomas asked.
“PACE. Aren’t we supposed to follow some sort of procedure on that, sir?” Cotton echoed.
Gayther sat down, tapping his fingers, thinking of the right words to put into his next sentence; a sentence that, ideally, he thought, should not include the words ‘snowflakes’, ‘millennials’, ‘PC bloody crap’, ‘balls’ or ‘bollocks to all that’.
After an awkward pause, he concluded, “We’re trying to catch a serial killer … Thomas … Cotton … kindly go and find a computer and see if you can, somehow or other, get photos of the three of them. Print them off, just the photos, no names or identifying material, and bring them to me as soon as you’ve done that. Thank you … Carrie, you wait here please, I want a word with you…”
* * *
“Kids, eh, guv?” Carrie smiled at Gayther. “Fifteen-year-olds. What can we do with them?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Gayther caught Carrie’s eye. “Oh, you’re quoting my own words back at me … from … whenever … so many possibles … yes, very good, well done, Carrie. Very droll.”
“They’re good lads, guv – clever, smart, that’s why they’ve been fast-tracked. They know how to do desk research.” She paused, a worried look on her face. “What about PACE, though, guv. This is hardly by the book, is it?” She looked at Gayther, clearly not happy.
“Carrie,” he said forcefully. “We have a serial killer on our hands … who may kill again at any moment. So, we can do this by the book, line by bloody line, and shuffle bits of paper … whatever, these days … around and by everyone … tick all the boxes … wait forever for the go-ahead … or until someone else is murdered. Or we can crack on, do it like we used to do in the old days. It’s quick. It’s effective. We’ll catch him. But I’ll make a note you’re not happy.”
She smiled at him, not sure what to say.
He smiled back, waiting for her. Another awkward moment.
And then she nodded her tense agreement.
“You know what, Carrie. This … this Scribbler business … it’s an outrage. The way it was all downgraded because it was ‘only’ gay men being killed. The world’s moved on since then, thank God, and the police have, too. But there’s still that sense of LGBTQ+ people somehow not being quite as important. The world’s got to change more.”
He paused, before going on, his voice rising.
&nbs
p; “There must be damned few people these days who don’t have an LBGTQ+ loved one … son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, work colleague.” Gayther stopped, emotional. “… Sorry … rant over … I just hate homophobia and all the harm it does. I had a brother …” Gayther stopped again, struggling for words.
“I have two great-uncles, well one is a proper uncle, the other is his … partner, really,” Carrie said, simply. “They’ve told me what it was like when they were growing up. The discrimination. Things that were put through the letter box. Disgusting.”
“My older brother, Mike, was hounded to his death because he was gay. He was in the army in the 1970s. He took his own life, eventually. But that’s another story.”
They looked at each other, a sense of understanding between them.
A shared anger.
The joint, unspoken commitment to bring The Scribbler to justice.
“Okay, good … look, can you text Peter, the sketch artist. See when he’s free so we can get him … no, wait, let’s show any pictures they get to Karen Williams first. You and I can run over there this afternoon, lunchtime maybe, catch her on her lunch break. Let’s see. Meantime, in case she doesn’t recognise any of them and I’m taking us all up a blind alley, what did you manage to dig up yesterday?”
Carrie sat back in her chair, stretching her shoulders. She then leaned forward and fiddled with her phone. “The number of people who go missing, guv. I’ve not got county figures yet, but nationally, depending on who you read, and I’ve got this off a missing persons website, … some 180,000 people are reported missing every year. Another 160,000 go missing without being reported, so the site says. In all, 340,000 missing incidents a year. To put that into context, and according to the last census, it’s like the whole of Bradford or Cardiff just vanishing. Every year.”
Gayther thought of a joke, then thought better of it and just nodded and asked, “What about the National Crime Agency and the Missing Persons Unit? Any joy?”
The Scribbler Page 8