Carrie sat there, shard of glass in her hand, deciding what to do.
* * *
Carrie heard them first. Somewhere off to the left. In the distance. But coming closer.
The noise of children, running through the trees.
Happy shouts. Sudden bursts of laughter.
She looked over to the front window, where the smart brother stood crouched, gazing out, gun in hand, waiting for Mother’s imminent arrival. The spotlights were off now so close to daylight. There were police officers, mostly armed, spread out in various protected positions in an arc in front of him.
“What’s that?” she shouted urgently.
He tipped his head at an angle, listening. He answered slowly, as if it were of no significance. “Children coming for a Christmas tree. They’re not supposed to be here now. They must be overexcited, coming here before breakfast.”
“No, but I mean …” she struggled to get to her feet.
“Their father will be with them. They live on the other side of the fields. The father’s been helping to cut the Christmas trees. We promised them one. They have come early, that’s all. They have chosen their tree and put their ribbons on it.”
“Yes, but …” she stood up, with a sense of almost overwhelming unease.
“I’m not going to shoot them. And the police won’t. They’ll just gather the children up when they get here.”
He stopped and turned towards her. “Look,” he said, pointing the gun down to the floor. He seemed close to smiling, “they’re safe. I told you. I’ll not shoot them.”
Carrie heard the children again, closer now.
Laughter. Lots of ssshhhing. More giggles.
By the side of the barn, up alongside it and towards the front.
She waited for the police to call out. To shout to the children. Stop. Stand still. A woman PC, maybe two, running over to fetch them. Take them away from any danger. All under the watchful eyes of the waiting armed police.
But all she could hear were the children.
Now at the front of the barn.
Shouting and excited. Almost beside themselves with expectation. An incongruous, joyful noise.
Carrie saw her chance, moving carefully towards the smart brother and the front window. Slowly, so he would not notice. She felt the shard of glass in her hand and was ready to use it.
She could hear a girl clearly now, very close and giggling loudly.
The smart brother watched as Carrie approached, standing back so that she could move up and see out of the window. He seemed to have no sense of danger.
She stopped, though, before she got there, could hear a boy calling, “Hello-oo. Hello-oo,” at the top of his voice. He must be just below the window. It reminded her of someone, a cartoon character Noah liked on the telly.
Expected to hear shouts and movements from the police. Going to get the children. Taking them to safety.
Instead, she turned in sudden shock, hearing the slow brother below moving to the door, wrenching it open and running out of the barn. She felt a surge of fear.
“Children!” he shouted, running towards them as they stood bewildered, midway between the barn and the arc of police. “Little children, come unto me.”
As he moved, he fired once, twice, three times towards the police.
Then turned himself and his gun to the two children as he ran to save them.
The first shot fired by the police hit him in the chest. The second went into his heart. The third shot missed, although, by then, it did not really matter either way. The slow brother was already dead on his feet and sprawling to the ground.
* * *
Carrie heard the gunshots, the split-second silence, the screams of the two children. Guessed what had happened. Brother shot. Children saved.
The anguished, animal cry of The Scribbler as he moved to the window to see his dead brother fall confirmed it. He started firing randomly at the police. Downwards. To kill.
She moved suddenly, one, two, three steps towards him, raised her hand to slash at his gun hand with the shard of glass.
He saw her. Out of the corner of his eye. Just in time.
Turned and hit her across her face with the back of his gun hand.
Sending her sprawling. The shard of glass flung far from her hand, out of sight. Over there somewhere, deep in the straw. Too far away to reach. No time to scramble towards it.
The Scribbler felt quickly in his pocket, reaching for ammunition. Reloading the gun. She thought he would shoot her. But he went back to the window. Firing again now in raging heartbreak. Three, four times.
Stepped back. In the nick of time.
As the police returned fire.
Flashbangs and smoke.
Carrie could not tell, as she scrabbled desperately to find the piece of glass, whether they were shooting to kill him.
Or whether they were simply returning fire to keep him busy, distracted, while other police officers stormed the barn.
Guessed they’d move the children first and then, under cover of more fire to the front and the back, they’d head to the building.
She found the shard of glass and turned to face The Scribbler one last time. She was ready to attack as he turned to shoot her in his wild rage.
But he was crouching now, his head down. Ignoring her. He looked up slowly as she moved towards him.
“My brother,” he said, sobbing angrily, “they shot him as he went to save the little children.”
She stopped and looked back at him, hesitating for a moment. Knowing she had to get him to drop the gun so she could arrest him. Bring him out alive to face justice for all he had done.
“I know,” she answered simply. Not sure what else to say in that instant.
They gazed at each other then. For a second or two. In silence. It was a moment of balance, even surrender, she thought. This is it. No more deaths. The end of all the carnage.
She was about to ask him to hand her the gun, give himself up, was just phrasing the words, the sentences, in her mind before she spoke. One final time. To make the arrest.
Heard, at the same moment, the two of them, police officers rushing through the barn door and, before either of them could say or do anything, heading up the staircase.
The Scribbler reacted fastest, sitting up, full of tears and fury, and firing his final two shots.
As the police reached the top of the stairs.
Carrie was hit first once, then twice, by The Scribbler’s shots and fell to the ground.
And then the police returned fire. Five, six times. And shot The Scribbler dead.
EPILOGUE
MONDAY 10 DECEMBER, 11.25AM
Sharon Carrie stood in the garden of the crematorium at Nacton, a mile or two outside of Ipswich. She held the hand of her restless grandson, Noah, jigging from foot to foot, as they looked across the garden to the huge, swaying trees that surrounded the site.
She could still hear the roaring traffic from the road, the A14, and its endless procession of lorries to and from the docks in Felixstowe.
She turned back to look at the crematorium. An odd, wooden building behind a nondescript car park. This could be anything, she thought, a supermarket, a truck stop, some sort of country warehouse that sold remaindered books, outsized clothes and cheap garden furniture.
What a place to say goodbye to a loved one.
Miserable and soul-destroying.
Like being cremated in the shower and toilet block of a campsite.
She put her arm around her grandson’s shoulders and looked down at him. He stopped moving about and smiled up at her. She smiled back, pleased that he was settling.
They then both turned towards the crematorium as they heard organ music playing to mark the end of the funeral service and, within a minute, the doors had been opened.
They put on a good do, she thought, when one of their own dies. Is killed. Murdered. Police officers lining either side of the road up to the crematorium. A guard of honour. The C
onstabulary drape over the coffin. Bearers. The attendance of the good and the great, including the Chief Constable herself.
The full works. For all the world to see.
More for themselves, she thought, than for Roger Gayther or his loved ones.
To show how kind and caring they all were.
She watched as the mourners came out of the crematorium. The family and personal friends first, no more than half a dozen by the look of things. The police officers inside, who would have filled most of the building, holding back.
A vicar to one side of the doors, commiserating, shaking hands, saying a few words. Opposite him, a tall, fair-haired man in a charcoal grey suit echoing the vicar’s words and actions. He looked familiar.
She suddenly saw Georgia pushing herself out in a wheelchair – her “rocket chair”, as she called it. The latest model, for sure.
The vicar bending, saying a few words, shaking Georgia’s outstretched hand.
Then an unexpected embrace from the sandy-haired man, a long conversation, so it seemed, as the police officers inside the crematorium lined up waiting to file out. And then Georgia was through and away.
“Mama!” the little boy spotted his mum and called out.
Sharon Carrie hushed him quiet and raised her hand towards Georgia, who steered her wheelchair towards them.
The little boy broke free and ran to his mum. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight.
“I’ve had to park over the road,” Sharon Carrie said to her daughter. “You can’t move for police cars round here.”
Georgia laughed. “Hope you don’t get a ticket.”
Sharon Carrie smiled back and then, after a moment or two, looked more serious. “We’ve been reading some of the wreaths and things while we were waiting for you. From the other funerals. There’s one over there, from this week I think, with just one wreath, from the funeral director. Margaret Stenning. Is that the …?”
“Yes,” Georgia replied, “that’s her, the mother. Died of a broken heart, they say … although I don’t believe she had one personally. I think it was a council funeral, so Glyn Thomas said. No one attended.”
“No more than she deserved. What have they done with the brothers?”
Georgia shrugged. “Don’t know. Lou Cotton reckons they’ve been cremated already, all very secretive. So as not to attract the ghouls.”
“They deserved nothing. All those bodies. Monsters. Both of them.”
“The younger one wasn’t so …” Georgia’s words tailed off. “I don’t suppose it matters now.”
“The older one could have crippled you for life, shooting you like that.”
“Maybe.” Carrie thought for a while as she moved her wheelchair to go up the path and on to the road and back to the car. “But I’m not so sure … I was thinking about that during the service.”
“He was so close to me, he could have …” she dropped her voice so the little boy could not hear, “… blown my head off if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t.”
She continued, “If he hadn’t shot me, I could have been killed in the crossfire. Between the police and him. So …”
Sharon Carrie pulled a face as if to say, ‘so what are you saying?’.
“He shot me in the legs so I’d fall down out of the line of fire and he could be shot dead by the police.”
Sharon Carrie made an instinctive snorting noise. “That’s just … silly.”
“Is it?” Georgia asked. “I’m not so sure.”
They both stopped for a minute, each with their own thoughts.
Watching the little boy, now jiggling again, impatient to go.
And they turned to leave the crematorium.
“And that man was Michael Gayther, Roger Gayther’s son? The one who hugged you. He seemed very pleased to see you.”
“Mu-um …” Georgia answered in a long-suffering, please-don’t-start-matchmaking-again voice. “He’s just … you know … because I worked with Roger … on his last case.”
“Is he in the police? He’s another one that looks like a policeman. Like father, like son.”
“He does something undercover in the Met, but there’s talk he may be coming to Suffolk to set something up. I don’t know. He asked if we could meet up for lunch to talk about his dad and I said I’d love to … once I’m out of this chair.”
“Do I see romance in my crystal ball, Georgy?”
“No,” Georgia answered, “you do not. I’ve no time for that … I’ve got to recuperate, get on my feet again … then there’s my course work … loads of that … and Christmas … and New Year … and Noah’s birthday party to sort … busy, busy, busy, Mum. No time for romance. None at all.”
They looked at each other.
A long pause.
Georgia held her mother’s gaze.
Sharon nodded and smiled, taking her grandson’s hand. “Come on then, let’s get back to the car, get you unpacked and loaded up … I’ve promised Noah we can pick up a McDonalds on the way home.”
The older woman and the little boy went ahead, one walking slowly, the other hop-skippity-hopping along.
Georgia Carrie sighed, turning back towards the crematorium.
Saw Michael Gayther standing there looking at her. As if he had been like that for an age, just watching, and waiting to see her leave.
He broke into a sudden smile, raised his arm and waved at her.
She felt herself blush unexpectedly and waved back. Then chuckled to herself as she followed her mother and son out of the crematorium.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTES
So, I’m sitting in a Soho restaurant having lunch with my literary agent Clare and talking about writing – the stuff of dreams for so many would-be writers – and we’re having an enjoyable time.
And then Clare asks me, ‘What’s next?’ So far, I’ve written a couple of memoirs, Dear Michael, Love Dad and Out of the Madhouse, about my eldest son’s battles with mental health issues, and two dark literary thrillers, Sweet William and Mr Todd’s Reckoning.
I hesitate and say I want to write a thriller series featuring two detectives.
Clare laughs. Take a look at this. A million-selling detective novel is on the table in front of me.
We both had the same idea at the same time.
Thing is, there’s a big difference between what I’d been writing and what I now wanted to do. I’ve always just kind of done my own thing. Written what I liked and hoped other people would like it too.
I flick through the detective novel. It’s really good. I’d love to write something like this. Strong characters, gritty and exciting, a plot that rattles along to a great ending.
I’d never written anything like this before. I wasn’t sure I could do it. The characterisation, the twists and turns, the ratcheting up of tension over 300 pages or more.
I’ll have a go, though, I said.
I’ll start writing.
See where it takes me.
I knew from the beginning I wanted to make this a buddy-buddy book where I could run the partnership through a series. An older, world-weary man, something of a maverick, and a younger, keen and enthusiastic woman. He’s a step behind the times in his thoughts and language. She’s not.
I didn’t want to give him a bionic eye or a wooden leg or to have her as a shape-shifting alien with psychic powers – none of that sort of thing just to try to make them stand out. I wanted to write about ordinary people doing their jobs.
Those of you who are Doctor Who fans, as I have been all my life, may recall the relationship between the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, and Jo, Katy Manning. It’s like that, warm and respectful. No funny business, thank you very much.
So, I had the characters in my head. Sorted.
Then the names.
Easy. Roger Gayther and Georgia Carrie.
Roger was the name of my uncle. He died of meningitis when he was twenty and I was five. I remember him clearly. And sitting in a car by green
railings outside the hospital. Asking, “Where’s Roger?” when we visited Nan and Grandpa’s, I guess, a week or two after he died. And my nan’s face. Always my nan’s face. I doubt anyone remembers Roger these days. I do. And he is the hero of my book.
Georgia? My son Michael had eight years and more struggling with mental ill health. He spent time in hospital, and five months in the Priory, and lost pretty much everything. Coming out of that, as if waiting for him at the end of a long road, was Georgia. And now he is happy and his life is on track. And I never thought that would happen. So, there’s the heroine.
I set the book in Suffolk.
I always do. Probably always will.
I like to see locations, real or close to it, in my mind as I write.
And then the plot. I didn’t have one yet. I spent some time thinking of ideas that would spark my imagination.
I didn’t want to write a novel based on something as recent and raw as an unsolved murder still in the news. Loved ones, broken hearts, respect; all of that.
But I couldn’t help thinking about how many unsolved crimes of murder there are – depending on what you read, 20 per cent or more are never solved. About half of those cases are closed down.
Once I started looking into some of these stories, I had a growing sense that crimes against the LGBTQ+ community have often been taken less seriously, especially going back in time. So, my story started to take shape.
Unsolved crimes going back over the years.
In the LGBTQ+ community.
Closed down – cold cases.
Another theme that stood out was how so many investigations started off going in one direction – plod, plod, plod – and then suddenly turned on a sixpence with a lucky break. The Dennis Nilsen case and the Yorkshire Ripper – both referenced in the book – are prime examples where this happened, with the investigations then going in a totally different direction. I wanted to get that ‘twist’ into The Scribbler as well.
And so I began writing. As ever, as I start work, there comes a moment when the book kind of takes on a life of its own and it runs ahead of me. That’s usually when I get inside the mind of the lead character – in this case the wounded and impulsive Gayther with a point to prove – and everything sort of falls into place.
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