The doctor nodded and smiled slightly. “It would seem to be the case.”
“Not suicide?”
He raised his hands, palms upward, and smiled blandly as if to say, ‘it could be, but an accident suits everyone better’.
“Or murder?”
The doctor laughed out loud. Mrs Coombes laughed too, although her laugh, thought Gayther, was a nervous, uncertain one. Carrie ignored the look that DI Gayther gave her as she asked again.
“Could it be murder?”
DI Gayther interrupted before the doctor could answer. “The drawing on the stomach, the criss-cross scratches … what are your thoughts on those, Doctor Khan?”
The doctor paused and waited for a few moments before replying. DI Gayther thought he enjoyed being the centre of attention, his moment in the spotlight.
“A crudely scratched face possibly, a few lines back and forth – patients like Mr Lodge … it’s not commonplace for elderly dementia patients to self-harm, but it’s certainly not unique. I have seen other cases during my career.”
“And the cuts, were they old or fresh?” pressed Gayther.
“Oh, fresh, there were lines of blood on his pyjama top. From just before his fall.”
“Did Mr Lodge have the strength to get out of bed unaided and cross to the window?” asked Carrie.
“I believe so.”
“And open it?” added Carrie.
Gayther noted how Mrs Coombes stared fixedly ahead as the doctor answered.
“It’s conceivable.”
“So that’s that, end of,” concluded Carrie, a touch of anger in her voice.
Gayther tried to catch her eye, but she avoided it.
“I’m not sure why you persist …” the doctor started to answer Carrie and then stopped before saying, in a calm and steady voice, “Everything I have seen … the coroner has seen … Mrs Coombes and her team have seen … points overwhelmingly … conclusively, I would say … to death by misadventure. If …” He added, looking straight at Carrie, “… you want me to be blunt with you, it is a simple and straightforward matter. The Reverend Lodge died from his own foolish mistake.” 3. MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER, LUNCHTIME
“Here’s the reverend’s room,” said Mrs Coombes, unlocking the door for Gayther and Carrie. “If you want to take a look, I’ll go and see if I can find Sally and Jen. They’re both in today.”
DI Gayther nodded his thanks as she left the room.
“What do you reckon, then … Doctor Khan … Mrs Coombes?” Carrie asked.
“They toed the line, said what they were expected to say. The doctor seemed to believe it more than Mrs Coombes … maybe he’s just a better actor.”
“You don’t think … you know, they could be right? That it’s just that, a stupid mistake.”
“A foolish accident? No, and even without The Scribbler’s mark, I’d be hard pressed to accept suicide. No family, see, no friends, no one to fight his corner, ask awkward questions. No one bloody cares … cared … if he lived or died at all. He’s old. He’s gay. He doesn’t matter … well, he does to me.”
“The room’s still empty?” queried Carrie, looking across to the windows. She noted the anger rising in Gayther’s voice and thought it best to move the conversation on.
“I doubt anyone’s going to want to send their loved one to a home in special measures, let alone one with patients falling out of the windows willy-nilly,” answered Gayther. He scanned the room too, taking in the soft grey carpet, the lemon-coloured walls, the cheap white furniture and the hospital-looking bed. “Not a place I’d want to die. Soulless. Antiseptic.”
“You’d think …” said Carrie, crossing to the window, “… in this day and age, all care homes would have locks on windows that allowed them to be opened only a fraction, not the whole way. This isn’t good, is it? My friend’s grandad’s in one on the south coast and when we visited in the summer he was complaining about the heat because he couldn’t open his windows enough to let in a breeze … guv, look at this …”
She pointed to a dark, centimetre-long mark on the inside ledge of the windowsill. “Blood? Mr Lodge’s as he struggled to stop The Scribbler throwing him out?”
Gayther moved across and looked at it and shrugged, “Could be … anything really. Even if it is blood, it could be the window cleaner’s from last week or the fellow who fitted the window however many years ago.”
“Forensics? Is it worth asking?”
“For what? To come and check it, and the room, because an old has-been and a new DC working on a file of LGBTQ+ cold cases from ten, twenty, thirty years ago think they’re on to something that no one else noticed? It would be a black mark, Carrie. We just need to keep our heads down, do this quietly. If I, we, you and I, can solve this case, well, I think you’ve probably heard they’d really rather have me out the door. I’m not going to give them any reason to do that. Not until I’m good and ready to go, anyway. And I’d rather go out on a high, bringing in The Scribbler.”
As Carrie went to answer, the door behind them was opened and the two care assistants, Sally and Jen, stood there. Late forties, early fifties, thought Gayther. Sally, a small and petite Chinese woman, smiling and open-faced; Jen, a straggly beanpole sort of woman who would not meet his eye at first but who, as the silence lengthened into a sense of tension, spoke first.
“We have been over this with the regular police already … do we need to do it all again? We’ve so many things to do.”
“We’ll be quick,” replied DI Gayther. “We just have to tick various boxes so we can say we’ve done what we should have done. Red tape, the curse of us all. You must have it too. Great boxloads of it, I expect?”
Sally and Jen nodded in turn, both half-smiling at Gayther.
“We’ve established that Mr Lodge had been declining
