The Scribbler Iain Maitland (good books to read txt) 📖

brushed crumbs from his shirt. “We’d better go and get some then, guv, hadn’t we?”

He looked at her, suddenly touched by her response, but then shook his head. “Bosman will have me out the door. You need to steer clear of Barry Johnson and the Williams case. He’s not happy. And don’t go back to Sally or Jen at the care home. They’ve complained too. And don’t make that trip to the caravan park. Halom would kick up a storm if he found out.”

“So,” she asked, sitting back in her seat, “that leaves me with … what … what to do? Burgess. You said it was him for sure. Your instinct.”

Gayther rubbed his forehead, could feel a headache coming on. He knew he needed to go home, get some sleep, come back again tomorrow in a better mood. “No, leave him be. Just … go through the files. See what else there is … something you can look at online … that doesn’t tread on anyone’s toes … or piss people off. I don’t know.”

He shook his head and then carried on, “Maybe someone called someone else a big fat fairy at work thirty years and they’re both now dead … that’s perfect … case closed … write up a report on that saying how we’d press charges if only they were still alive.”

“There’s no point being …” Carrie ground to a halt seeing Gayther’s expression, but then added, almost defiantly, “Where’s that sense of outrage, guv … your brother, my great-uncles, righting wrongs … There’s a murderer on the loose who might kill again at any moment.”

She looked at him, frustrated.

He stared back, now angry and edgy.

They sat there in silence for a moment.

“And give Thomas and Cotton some files to look at … shuffle them about a bit … and tell them not to bother tracking down Wade and Wilkerson … and Burgess for that matter … although Burgess troubles me. Something’s not quite right there.”

“That’s it then, guvnor, is it? For The Scribbler? We’re just giving up?”

He shrugged, knew he was being unreasonable, taking his frustration out on Carrie, who he liked a lot. He couldn’t seem to help himself. “Yes, until that compelling new evidence turns up, Carrie.”

“And what will that be, this compelling new evidence?”

Gayther got to his feet to go. “Another murder, Carrie, with some scribbling all over the corpse. Is that compelling enough?”

“So, we just leave it then, let the criminals go free … let the families who have never known what happened to loved ones carry on with their suffering … leave them without dignity. Just give up. In spite of everything you said. Just so many empty words.”

They looked at each other.

Both angry.

Carrie turned and walked out, slamming the door behind her. 15. THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER, LATE MORNING

A line of men with axes, each man sweating with exertion, chopping down a row of Christmas trees.

The two brothers, one smart, one slow, were among them, one at one end, one at the other.

“Break!” cried the smart brother, the man with the gloves, the man in charge. Barking instructions like his father used to do.

All of the men stopped what they were doing, put down their axes, and made their way to a trestle table topped with holdalls and carrier bags full of flasks and foil-wrapped sandwiches. They then sat at various fold-away chairs dotted around, stretching, cursing and eating. One or two fiddled with mobile phones.

“Good, this year,” one man said, wiping his brow.

“Always is here,” replied another.

“Fucking hard work,” an older man said.

The men, all bluff camaraderie, barely knew each other. They turned up, for cash in hand, from postcards in local newsagents’ and supermarket windows. Ever-changing faces, year after year. Days of cutting, getting the trees ready for various local garden centres, and they were gone, folded notes in their back pockets to be spent in betting shops and pubs.

They knew who the boss was, the smart brother, and nodded respectfully at him, one or two old-timers even touching their fingers to their foreheads as if lifting caps. They were wary. There was something about him. And they knew they had to be respectful of the slow brother, listening to his nonsense and trivia, if they wanted a pocketful of cash to spend without telling the benefits office.

One worker, several years back, not knowing the brotherly connection, had taunted the slow brother, “So, they’ve let you out again this year then have they … from the loony bin?”, his exact words. Another, more recently, had shouted, “Holy mother of Jesus, it’s the Phantom of the Opera.” Last year, a man had mocked the collection of men’s rings that the slow brother, looking around to check the smart brother wasn’t within sight, had shyly shown in his extended hand. “You fucking gannet, where did you get those from?”

The slow brother, answering back, defending himself, straining for a clever answer, rose quickly to inarticulate anger at the continued banter. The smart brother intervened, stepping between his brother and the other men, dismissing them with cash paid up for the day. “What am I going to do with you?” he said afterwards, turning to the now-contrite slow brother. “Every year, every single year, you do this. From now on, you must stay indoors with Mother when we do the trees.”

There would be silence, sullen and resentful.

And then, over time, as the tree-cutting then came round again, the shy comments and the hopeful requests and the solemn promises would come.

Until, finally, the smart brother would give in and agree, deciding that, this time round, he would keep a closer eye on him. But he never really did. There was too much to do.

As they gathered around the trestle table, a well-spoken man in a red bobble hat, never been here before and trying to fit in with his rougher co-workers, leaned towards the slow brother, and asked conversationally, “So, do you do this every year?”

The slow brother thought for ages, for so