She nodded and they drove along quietly for a few minutes, sucking mints and reflecting on the visit. She then reached for the file between the seats and started flicking through papers, as if searching for something. DI Gayther drove the car in silence along the twisting road that led back up to the A12, and down south to the police station. As they approached the A12, Gayther spoke.
“There are three options, Carrie, so far as I can see. Play devil’s advocate with me. One, Lodge simply decided, whether in the fog of his mind or a moment of clarity, that he was going to take his own life for whatever reason and going through the window was the quickest, and possibly the only, way to do that.”
“Okay,” Carrie replied, “so, um, I’ve lots of questions about that. On the one hand, he seemed happy, up until a day or two before. There’s no reason to suggest he would do that. He is … was … a religious man, so suicide would be against his principles, surely? On the other hand, everything – the undisturbed room, no sign of a struggle – suggests he went out of the window without a fight. If he believed he saw The Scribbler, whether he did or not, that could be enough to frighten him. And he was suffering from dementia, so we have no idea what was going on in his mind at the time. Could be anything.”
DI Gayther nodded. He looked across at her as he turned the car to the left and on to the A12. “Okay, so the second option is the one that the care home, the doctor and the coroner and everyone else seems to accept … to want to be true. The one that’s most convenient and tidy and easiest to sweep away under the carpet. He got up, decided he needed some fresh air, went over to the window, opened it and, oops, somehow managed to fall out. How likely is that?”
Carrie thought for a minute and then replied, “The thing is, we need to bear in mind that he was, as Mrs Coombes put it when we arrived, ‘befuddled’. So, a rational person is not going to go up to the window and fall out. Mr Lodge, it says in the file here, is, was, 1.80 metres. A fair bit taller than me but even so …”
He nodded, “And …?”
She paused, thinking, and carried on. “When you were talking to the assistants, I stood with my back to the window and I would have had to lift myself up with my hands to get my bum onto the ledge, let alone over the edge. You could not, accidentally, go out head-first. But if he sat on the ledge, I don’t know why, he would then fall backwards, landing on his back, and possibly surviving, rather than falling slap-bang on his head. He could not have fallen accidentally. He either lifted himself or was lifted.”
“They seem to be sticking to the line that he lifted himself up, as if to sit and look out … backwards? … and lost his balance … anyway, option three, Carrie. He really did see The Scribbler. The Scribbler knows it and came and silenced him as soon as he could. He visited when the home was at its busiest. Walked into the room … opened the window. Crossed to the bed, lifted up a dozing, medicated Lodge, dragged him to the window and threw him out. Then left, as if he were a visitor who was a little slow to leave … so, is that possible?”
Carrie shut her eyes in thought. “Yes … let’s suppose The Scribbler was at the fete … or was the singer, maybe … they saw and recognised each other after all these years? Is that possible? Maybe. The Scribbler … I don’t know … would he come back? How would he know there wasn’t CCTV everywhere? And the sketch and the scratches – does he hold Lodge down and keep him quiet while he cuts him with a knife … it’s possible I suppose, but it’s more likely, for me anyway … I don’t buy the accident line either … that Mr Lodge did it himself in torment and, although no one wants to say it, took his own life … there, case closed, done and dusted.”
Gayther thought before speaking. He then said, “That all makes sense, Carrie. All of it. Except for one thing … well, two actually …”
Carrie turned towards him, a sudden look of ‘here we go again’ on her face before she masked it with a smile.
“… two things that tell me it’s murder and it’s The Scribbler.”
“Oh yes?”
“One, Lodge might have known about the cartoon likeness from the papers, whatever, but he would not have known about the criss-cross scratching out. It’s far too much of a coincidence that he’d self-inflict the exact same wounds as The Scribbler. Millions and millions to one chance, that.”
“Okay, and the other thing?”
“The knife, Carrie, the knife.” Gayther laughed loudly. “If he’d done it to himself and then killed himself, where the bloody hell is the knife?” 4. MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER, AFTERNOON
Gayther sat in his Silver Ford Focus in a layby on the A12, undid his seat belt and turned to Carrie as she climbed back into the passenger seat.
“So…” she said, “I was wondering—”
“Chips first,” he interrupted, before she could go on. “I’m starving.”
She passed him his wrapped chips before sitting back and opening her own.
“That’s good,” she murmured. “You can’t beat cheesy chips.”
He looked at her, went to say something and then thought better of it; instead he pushed three fat chips into his mouth all in one go.
“Tartare sauce,” he said after a few minutes.
“What?”
“Tartare sauce … it’s what we used to have with chips when I was young.”
“What was that like then?”
Gayther laughed. “Horrible, actually. I
