“Okay, well, so … what … the evidence, the compelling evidence … what are you saying … you’re saying it’s The Scribbler?”
“Hold on, sir,” Carrie grinned again. “We’ll get to that … we’ve just been to the dentist and Taylor left there at about three forty-five. They’ve got CCTV, so we have clear images of what he looks like and is wearing. Then he just vanished. His car, we got the plate from Mrs Taylor and put it straight out, has already been found by a park nearby. No CCTV there, but I’ve asked if we can get it picked up so it can be checked over properly.”
“Okay, well, that sounds like a missing person case as it stands. I mean, you know, maybe, I guess. We can but hope. I’ve known cases to turn on a sixpence like this. What we need to do is—”
“No, sir. That’s not all, sir. There’s more,” Carrie interrupted. She looks fit to burst, thought Gayther, who nodded, go on.
“Cotton’s been seeing the cases coming in and yesterday morning, well, two and two usually make four … a boy, a twelve-year old boy walking his dog in woods the other side of Ipswich, saw a man acting suspiciously the night before … a couple of hours after Philip Taylor went missing … loading … well, the boy didn’t know what it was … something big and heavy into the back of the man’s van. He told his mum and she’s been in touch. She thought it might be someone poaching deer.”
Gayther laughed.
“While we, me and Thomas, have been up to speak to Mrs Taylor, Cotton tagged along to the … well, Cotton, you say.”
Cotton flicked open his notebook.
“I went along this afternoon with Joe White, he sends his regards, and … Sarah, the new liaison officer … to speak to the mother, Laura Wilding, and her boy, Jacob. They live at …”
“Cut to the chase, Cotton. Is it … is it him, The Scribbler?”
Cotton nodded. “The boy described the man and his height and build … and on that basis, yes, it could be The Scribbler. He didn’t get a clear view of the man’s face, though.”
“Well, that’s The Scribbler’s modus operandi …”
“He couldn’t tell the man’s age but thought he was old by the way he walked. What’s old to a twelve-year-old-boy is pretty subjective … he said the man walked a bit like his grandpa … his mum said he was about sixty.”
“Anything else?” Gayther pressed.
“I showed the boy the old picture we had of The Scribbler and he wasn’t sure. He said yes at first and then said he didn’t think so. I wasn’t allowed to press him on it.”
“No, fair enough. So …” Gayther turned to Carrie. “We’re, what, going to see if we can get some of Dave Green’s team up to check out the location?”
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t think anyone’s really joined up all the dots yet. It’s not been allocated. Probably Monday, I’d say. If someone higher up thinks it’s all a match to The Scribbler … or not … just a man who’s gone off for the weekend and a lad who’s seen a poacher with a muntjac in the woods.”
“So,” Gayther shrugged. “What’s next then, Carrie?”
Carrie pulled out a piece of folded-up paper from the inside pocket of her jacket with the air of a magician about to shout “Ta-Da!”. Opened it. Handed it to Gayther, who looked down at a list of car registrations, names and addresses.
“The boy told us more about the van than the man. White. Medium-sized, he said. We showed him pictures and it looks like it’s a Ford Transit Connect.”
“A lot of them about …”
“Better still, he remembered the first four digits of the plate, AP55, though not the rest, but … hey presto … there are sixteen possible matches across East Anglia … sixteen vans … four of us … two days … before Boss Man gives the case to someone.”
“And not to me, I’d guess,” Gayther said.
Carrie, Thomas and Cotton nodded and agreed.
“Well, we can wait for this to be risk assessed and given a number and actioned … blah, blah, blah … or we can crack on and catch The Scribbler before someone else is killed.”
Carrie, Thomas and Cotton stood waiting.
“First thing in the morning, bright and early, we visit them all one-by-one,” Gayther concluded.
18. SATURDAY 17 NOVEMBER, MORNING
The three of them sat around the kitchen table. The mother. The smart brother. The slow brother. Having their breakfast of porridge and toast and marmalade and mugs of tea.
As they did every day. At the same time. In the same way. Heads down, working methodically through it all from beginning to end.
Mostly in silence except for the old woman’s clacking teeth and occasional bursts of tuneless humming. The brothers ate quietly, waiting for their mother to start and finish any conversation.
“What are you doing today, Chopsy?” she asked finally, as she raised her mug of tea carefully to her lips.
The smart brother swallowed a mouthful of toast before looking up. Thinking he had not heard her, she went to say “eh?” just as he spoke.
“I need to go up to the cottages again. We carted away Hempshell’s stuff yesterday. And Collins … we’ve not had a chance to look that over properly. But it shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll do that this morning and we can move anything this afternoon.”
“You’ll want to get them tenanted before Christmas. We can’t manage without the money for long.” She laughed bitterly through tombstone teeth. “I’m too old to go out and scrub steps.”
“You do not need to do that, Mother,” the slow brother said, taking her comment at face value.
The smart brother nodded his head, agreeing.
“They’ll need some work over the next week or two. Bring them up to standard. I’ll get on to it the week after, once we’ve got the trees sorted. We’re all right for money for a while longer.”
“You see that we are. We can’t make do much more. We can’t go without anything … there’s nothing left that we can go without.” Her voice rose, cracking, “We shouldn’t have to live in this … filth. Honour thy mother … that …” She stopped to think of the precise words, “… thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
She nodded to herself, yes, that’s about right.
The slow brother shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Struggling to find the words to say. He looked pained.
“We honour you, Mother. And we take care of you. And we look after you as you looked after us when we were little. Because we are your boys, Mother. We are your best—”
“Shut up with your nonsense, stupid.” The old woman put her mug of tea down on the table. “Your silly homilies don’t put food on the table … clothes on our backs … they don’t pay the bills … we’ll have bailiffs at the door next. It won’t be the first time.”
“We won’t have bailiffs,” the smart brother said quietly. “We don’t have much, Mother, but we have enough.”
“Not with the cottages standing empty, going to rack and ruin. That’s where we’ll end up. Rack and ruin.” She sobbed suddenly, angrily. “It shouldn’t be like this. I worked hard, morning, noon and night, after your father …”
The slow brother glanced nervously at the smart brother.
The smart brother ignored him. Reached out instead to put his hand on the old woman’s bony fingers. She shook it off.
“And look at us now,” she said bitterly, “living off rents and Christmas trees once a year. Everything else … you’ve lost everything else. This was a good farm once. I made it so. It made money. A living. More than a living.”
“That was a long time ago, Mother,” the smart brother spoke soothing words. “It’s not been easy … since Father … since before Father. He had to take that sales job to make ends meet … and Europe … and subsidies being cut all the time.”
She shook her head dismally as he carried on.
“And we had … so much bad luck … every year there was something. All through the 1990s. And the land, no one wants the land. Over at Woodbridge, th
e Hensons sold up and they built … so many houses. Set them up nicely. We’re too far off the beaten track. Nobody wants to live this far out, so far from anywhere,” he added sadly.
“It will be the death of me, all this. I won’t make it through this winter. Not if it’s a cold one.”
“Yes, you will. You wait. Once we’ve got the money for the trees in, we’ll go over to Ipswich and buy you a new coat. And a bigger heater for your bedroom. Whatever you want.”
She smiled, unexpectedly, to herself. Mopping at the spittle from her mouth with her fingers. “And we’ll have a slap-up meal upstairs at the Co-op, like we used to do.”
“Mother, the Co-op is not—”
The smart brother finished the slow brother’s sentence, before he could say “not there any more”.
“Not the talk of the town any more, Mother. But there’s a new place to eat. Where you can have a proper three-course meal, roast beef and all the trimmings. Served by proper waitresses, all dressed up nice and proper in their black and white uniforms.”
The old woman pretended to lick her lips, her thin, probing tongue somehow grotesque.
The three of them fell silent again, thinking their own thoughts as they finished their mugs of tea, had one last scrape of their bowls and spread a final smear of marmalade on the corner of their pieces of toast.
“I shall make shortbread this morning. I have plenty of sugar and flour and butter,” the old woman said emphatically, suddenly more cheerful. “You can have it with your lunch.”
The slow brother smiled. He liked shortbread. His favourite.
“And what will you do this morning?” The old woman turned towards the slow brother.
“I am taking the gun and going ratting.”
“There’s a nest of them somewhere behind the outhouse,” added the smart brother. “We’ll need to put poison down once we’re done with the trees.”
The old woman reached into the pocket of her overall, pulled out her purse and opened it, checking the contents.
“Bring me the tails and I’ll give you a shiny gold coin for each of them.”
The slow brother mimed loading a gun, cocking it, taking aim and firing.
The smart brother made a squelching noise at each imaginary shot, “There’ll be nothing left but tails mother, he’s the sharpest shooter …”
“The smartest shooter …”
“The rooting-tooting …”
“… super-duper …”
“… best-ever shooter in town.”
The three of them laughed. A moment of peace, if not quite happiness. The smart brother then rose from the chair, clearing away the breakfast plates and mugs. The slow brother went towards the cupboard by the door to the staircase to get the gun and ammunition. The mother thought for a while and then spoke to the slow brother.
“Before you start ratting, go up to the fields and get me a big strong rabbit for the pot. We’ll have ourselves a rabbit pie.”
The slow brother, loading the gun and feeling its weight in his hands, nodded and smiled.
“The biggest, strongest rabbit … for the shiniest, brightest gold coin,” he said cheerfully.
* * *
The slow brother moved carefully through the Christmas trees and out towards the fields. His gun was cocked, ready to use.
He crouched, the Christmas trees behind him, and looked over to the boundary of their land to the edge of the forest.
Knew that if he waited there for a while, probably not too long, rabbits would appear. And if he stayed still, they would come across the field towards him. He could shoot them easily. Whichever he wanted.
He did not shoot the baby rabbits with their fluffy tails.
Nor the mummy rabbits. The baby rabbits needed their mummy rabbits.
Only the big rabbits, the older, slower ones that no one loved. The father rabbits.
As he waited, he remembered when he shot his first rabbit. It was here, or close enough to it to make no difference. It was his seventh birthday. Father made him crouch down between his legs and he could feel his breath upon his neck and the smell of tobacco from his lips.
Father had made him hold the gun, finger on the trigger, and had then wrapped his big hands around his own smaller ones. He felt Father’s body pressed against his, the hardness of it, although he did not really understand it at the time nor his father’s heavier breathing.
He remembered the shot, the smell, the power of the gun in his hands. And, after crossing the field, the bulging-eyed rabbit that lay twitching by their feet. “Mix a my toes-ees,” was what he thought his father had said.
Myxomatosis, the reality, with the two of them, and the smart brother and the mother, shooting rabbits for what seemed like forever after that. Maybe just the summer, he thought, but he could not be sure.
He sighed. Sad suddenly.
At the memories of his father.
So many of them. Forcing their way into his mind.
The nights Father would bathe the two of them. Soaping away softly and carefully, at first, until their bodies were covered with lather. The careful drying and attention to detail so they’d avoid chafing and sores.
And then the stories at bedtime, with Mother downstairs darning and sewing by the fire. The acting out of stories. Of dragons and knights. The boys kneeling and bending before him. On and on.
And the burning. With the iron. The day he had fought back, the brother, the smart brother, standing there horrified, unable even to scream. And the lies. A fire in a barn. A brave boy burned.
It was the 1960s. Another world. No one investigated, nobody cared. A respectable father. Compliant children. A silent mother. And children were seen but not heard then. Life carried on.
He felt sudden anger. Raised his gun. Ready to shoot.
And he recalled the end. When he was grown up.
The words mostly. He remembered each one. Could almost say them as a rhyme.
Father, old now, a man in his late fifties, taunting and mocking the slow brother as he stood, in the outhouse, struggling, all fingers and thumbs, to skin a rabbit.
Stupid. Ugly. Good for nothing. Waste of space. Homo. Thick as shit. Mummy’s boy. Only good for fucking up the …”
And he remembered stabbing him. In the throat with the knife. Over and over again. Until he fell. Calling the smart brother. Hiding the body. The first in the old, long-since-unused cesspit.
The story the smart brother dreamed up. Rehearsed. Repeated. On and on. For ever and ever. Say this. Say that. Never anything else. Pretend you don’t understand. Nor know what to say. Act dumb if you have to. That should be easy enough.
He saw movement in the trees in the forest. Rabbits.
Swung the gun in that direction. Watched closely.
But there was nothing there, just his imagination. Wind in the trees.
They saved children like them. Abused by fathers who presented one face, happy and smiling, to the world and another, of fear and loathing, at home.
At first going out together, until the smart brother said the slow brother would be recognised one day. That they would be caught. Imprisoned. Mother left alone. Then the smart brother went out on his own, until he almost got caught and stopped for a while.
And then, in recent years, more occasionally, and far and wide, the slow brother waiting patiently among the trees for the smart brother’s return. To do what he did with the bodies.
And they had got away with it. All of it. For all these years. The two of them here at the farm with Mother. The smart brother out and about. The slow brother at home looking after Mother. And, in turn, Mother taking care of them.
A sudden noise behind. Rustling. The sound of a rabbit. He turned, raising his gun.
A little girl there, blonde and blue-eyed, the sweet child of his dreams.
She looked at the man with the melted face and screamed as he fired the gun.
* * *
The shot went up and over her head.
His instinct, to
recoil as he shot the gun.
A moment’s silence as she stopped screaming then turned and ran, screaming again.
The slow brother stood for a second or two, as if dazed by what had happened. And then he was after her, running between the Christmas trees in a straight line following her footsteps, without thinking or hesitating.
And now he could not hear her screaming.
She ran silently. And not in a straight line.
Left to right. Running for her life.
He stopped for a moment, listening now, the gun at his side, struggling for breath. He could not hear her footsteps crunching and crackling as he might expect on dry land, nor squelching in the muddier patches.
Wondered suddenly, whether she might have taken cover.
Dropped down. Hidden somewhere between the trees.
Lying low. Waiting for him to walk slowly by. Then up and away again in the opposite direction.
He sat on his haunches, listening for the slightest noise. He could hear voices, off in the distance, his brother maybe and someone else, a man, somebody who had come to the farm that morning.
Unexpectedly, for something or other. Two men talking, maybe one looking for work. Helping with the trees.
He rose to his feet. Walked steadily, step by step, towards the farmhouse.
Deliberately making a noise, much louder than he needed to be.
Then stopped again suddenly, unexpectedly, turning around quickly, looking back into the silent woods.
A noise. A movement now. Two children, a handsome boy, that pretty girl, rising from a dip in the ground as if by magic. Turning to look at him, horror on their faces. The boy, a touch faster, wriggling to get away as the slow brother’s hand reached for his arm. The girl, too timid, wincing in pain and fright as the slow brother grabbed her arm instead.
She went to scream again. The slow brother clamped his hand over her mouth, dropping his gun as he put his other hand to the back of her head so she could not pull away.
The boy stopped, looked back, too scared to run, too frightened to help his sister. He stared at the slow brother’s damaged face and then at his sister and went to speak. But no words came out. The slow brother spoke instead.
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