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

You might be recognised. Your face. We nearly got caught … once or twice before, all those years ago. That pub. Do you remember? … we can’t risk it again. You’re too memorable, even if you wear a hood.”

The slow brother touched his face as the smart brother went on.

“But I will tell you when I will be going, and you can wait in the trees until you see me get back, and you can come and put him in the cesspit on your own.”

“I will do that.” The slow brother looked excited. He then thought for a minute and carried on talking.

“You will find him and kill him and save the little children?”

The smart brother nodded.

“You will then bring him back here to me and I will make sure he is dead, and I will put him in the cesspit with the other bad men?”

The smart brother smiled in agreement.

“And the children, all of the little handsome boys and all of the pretty little girls, will all live happily ever after?”

The smart brother embraced the slow brother.

“Because we’re …”

They spoke together, “Super-heroes.”

* * *

As the daylight faded, the smart brother raised his arm and whistled. “That’s it everyone, finish up, two, three minutes please. Job’s done for today.”

The workmen, with aching backs and words of relief, finished what they were doing, chopping trees, dragging them towards the piles, getting them ready for the garden centres.

Then made their way to the trestle table, reaching for their holdalls, swigging cans of drink, lighting cigarettes, chewing on chocolate bars.

“Everyone, form a queue, please. You, Roy, at the front … you, Where’s Wally, at the back.”

The smart brother moved to the trestle table, pulled up a chair and lifted a holdall onto the chair next to him. He nodded the slow brother over to sit on the other side of that. To do what he used to do with Father. The slow brother unzipped the bag and took out a handful of ten-pound notes, ready and waiting.

“Okay, other bags off the table, please … make some room … First one … Roy? Here’s your money … sign this …” A moment or two to sign, to nod and smile at each other, to shake hands. “No work tomorrow. We’re busy. See you on Monday? We’ve more to do then. Good … and the next?”

One by one, the workmen lined up to take their cash and sign and print their names, real or fictitious, it did not matter.

Then, finally, with farewells and checks of their mobile phones and shouts to be at the pub at eight, all but one made their way off, back towards the farmhouse and their cars and vans.

“Sign here,” the smart brother said to the man in the bobble hat as the slow brother took out the final few notes and counted them carefully onto the trestle table. “Ten pounds … and twenty pounds … and thirty pounds … and forty pounds … and …”

The man with the bobble hat held out his hand and the slow brother, having counted the notes onto the trestle table, counted the notes out again into the outstretched hand. “Ten pounds … and twenty pounds … and …”

“What does this say? Alan? White?” the smart brother asked, looking at the scrawled signature and scribbled, printed name. “I can’t keep calling you Where’s Wally … because of your hat.”

The man smiled and nodded, acknowledging the cash and the question. “It’s Whyte. Y. T. E. Adam Whyte. Adam will do … will you want me back on Monday, too? I just wondered … you asked me to get to the back … am I … too slow? I’m not used to rough work like this.” He smiled, slightly flushed and embarrassed.

“Your work’s fine … I just wondered if you might want some more … keep it to yourself for now, but we might have some work coming up that you might do … if your family … your wife … would be okay with that?” He gestured to the man in the hat to sit down. “If you could write down your address and phone number … Adam … I can give you a call some time?”

The man reached out for a chair, sat down opposite the brothers. Then wrote down his details next to his name and signature on the sheet of paper on the table.

He smiled shyly at the slow brother. Felt perturbed at the brother’s unsettling look.

Hesitated, but needed the work, something to do, some sort of prospects. A future.

“I’m widowed … I lost my wife … breast cancer … end of last year. And then I’ve been made redundant this year, so I’ve got some redundancy money but that won’t last long … and I’ve two children … as I say …” he tailed off as the slow brother suddenly looked angry, as if he did not want to hear of such matters.

The smart brother spoke. “So, it’s just you and your children at home? You don’t have your mother or father there with you or a sister … anyone?”

The man shook his head. “Just us. We live just over the fields, actually, ten minutes through the woods. My parents live the other side of Norwich, well, up near Cromer, really. We see them now and then. My wife’s parents live in Stirling in Scotland. We don’t really …”

“So, what do you do … I mean work … and going out … with children? Do you have neighbours who help out … watch over you?”

The man shrugged. “No, not really. It’s just the three of us. There’s a young girl with a baby in the village – she’s got one of the council houses down by the old watermill – the children go there after school and if I need to go out at all … which isn’t very often, lately. She was a friend of my wife’s.”

The smart brother nodded. He looked thoughtful, caring even, assumed the man with the hat.

“We’ve