The Scribbler by Iain Maitland (life changing books txt) 📕

“Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction and understanding.”

He looked at the window, smeared thick with dust and dirt, apart from a small, fist-sized circle that had been wiped clear in one of the small panes. He leaned in and looked through the circle, down to the front of the farmhouse and up the driveway and away.

Where the workers parked their cars and vans before walking up to the rows of trees.

Where, in that outbuilding just over the way, there was the cesspit where so many bodies were buried.

Where he had dragged them up the path, stopping for breath beneath the window of his mother’s bedroom. All below that little, smear-free circle.

“The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him. Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.”

And he wondered, in that slow old brain, whether Mother had sat in that chair, looking out of the window at night.

When he thought, they thought, she was fast asleep.

And what, as she rubbed her bony hand back and forth on the glass, she had seen. 17. FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER, MORNING

DI Gayther sat alone in his portacabin office, looking out of the window. It was overcast and wet; a persistent drizzle had been falling for what seemed like hours. He checked his watch, 10.25am – an hour and thirty-five minutes since he’d sat down at this chair. It seemed much longer.

He’d done sweet F.A. since then.

Opened files, sorted papers into piles.

Moved them about and back again.

He was on his own, half-heartedly looking for a case that might be as satisfying to investigate as The Scribbler. But most, almost all, looked long dead and buried; one or two serious sexual assaults caught his eye, but looked impossible to progress through lack of evidence then, let alone now. A series of poison pen letters sent to local figures of authority accusing them of sex crimes against children might be a possibility, he thought, what with modern DNA techniques, but cack-handed police from the 1980s had probably destroyed any chances there.

Carrie had stormed off somewhere.

Thomas and Cotton seemed to have vanished. He suspected Bosman may have transferred them to someone else.

He sat there, trying to find a case, maybe two, that he could work on with Carrie when she was back with him on Monday.

And then, as he flicked aimlessly through a pile of papers, he noticed the words ‘John’ and ‘Donkin’, common-enough in Norfolk, but notable to Gayther as it was the name of a childhood friend. He stopped, looked through to see if it were one and the same person but saw that it was not – this Donkin had been born twenty, twenty-five years earlier. Not him then. Maybe his friend’s father. Gayther looked idly at the photo for a resemblance but could not really remember what the child had looked like, let alone the father.

Gayther worked through the details of the case and then sat up. John Andrew Donkin. Fifty years old in 1991. Worked in an insurance office in Ipswich. Married, to Rita, for twenty-five years, two children, twelve and fourteen, older boy, younger girl. Had been reported missing one Friday evening in September. Never came home from work.

He shuffled through the scant papers; the wife had reported him missing, but then, when interviewed, revealed Donkin had told her not long before that he was homosexual and the marriage was in crisis. He’d met someone else. A man. From what Gayther could see, assumptions had been made but never followed through, and the case had somehow found its way into the LGBTQ+ pile of files. He wondered if this Donkin had returned home or left to start a new life with his male lover or … maybe, just maybe…

He would follow it up himself. See if this might be another victim of The Scribbler.

Then sat back, realising that, even if it were, he had nowhere to go with it. He needed compelling evidence.

He opened other files with renewed vigour, to see if he could find cases like this that had somehow slipped through the net. Maybe the sheer weight of numbers would make Bosman change his mind.

Some thirty, forty minutes later, he had two more cases. A Graham Wellman and a David Nicholas, both from out-of-the-way Suffolk villages.

Middle-aged men who had disappeared over the years. Believed by their wives to have been secretly gay. Reported missing. Two and two put together – and made five by everyone, thought Gayther.

If they’d been reported missing, full stop, the cases might have been linked to The Scribbler, even though they were years later, seven and ten years after the last reported Scribbler case. The post-disappearance revelation that they were gay seemed to lead to these cases being filed away as little more than routine matters.

Gayther wondered whether there was any mileage in checking out these men and their whereabouts himself. Decided, again, that even if they seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, it was still some way short of that all-important compelling evidence.

Gayther looked up at the knock at the door and smiled as Carrie entered the portacabin. She smiled back, a file under one arm, holding out a plate with two slices of cut toast with butter and marmalade with the other.

“Got you this, in case you didn’t have breakfast today? Carbs and sugar.” She smacked her lips. “Lovely.”

She put the plate on the desk in front of Gayther, who pulled it towards him, picking up one of the pieces.

“I shouldn’t,” he said, laughing, “but I’ll make an exception for you … just this once … thank you, Carrie, that’s kind of you.”

He ate the first and then the second piece, one after the other, in rapid succession, leaving two more pieces remaining. He hesitated and then pushed the plate halfway towards Carrie as she sat down opposite him.

“Here,” he said, “take one … one each.” He