“Okay, as I texted you all last night,” he looked at them in turn and they nodded to confirm, “I had a chat with Karen Williams, the woman at the care home who met Miss Bright’s … Mrs Smith’s alleged nephew. Her description of him matches how I think The Scribbler would look now, so … yes, Thomas?”
Thomas put his raised hand down. “Sorry, sir, but if Mrs Smith had a nephew, would her nephew be Smith as well … if she’d married? Wouldn’t they have different surnames.”
“I assume The Scribbler just picked the name Smith on the basis that it, or maybe Jones … possibly Patel these days … was a really common surname and there was likely to be someone of that name at the home. Maybe he caught one of the foreign care assistants on the way in and talked to them about residents, who knows? Anyhow, the name Smith gave him his entry point. That then gave him his chance to ask about a vicar and where he was, which room he was in.”
“But could he, this man, actually be her nephew, sir?” Thomas pressed. “Perhaps he might just be that and not be anything to do with anything else at all?”
“I suppose so, possibly,” Gayther replied slowly. “If he were her husband’s blood nephew and hers by marriage. Or if she had never married and the Mrs became a sort of courtesy title over the years. Carrie, make a note … that’s something you can check please. I want you to go back and talk to Mrs Smith, see if you can get any sense out of her … did you get to see Sally and Jen yesterday afternoon?”
Carrie shook her head. “I got waylaid, sir. Did a bit of desk research … some background reading … then ran out of time. I had to pick Noah up from after-school club at five. Going to do it today, sir.”
Gayther nodded but then added, “Just hold fire on Kings Court for now, then; let’s see if we can get a decent sketch from Karen Williams first. I want to get someone round there. Then see if Mrs Smith recognises her so-called nephew … or Sally or Jen. Who knows, they may turn round and say he’s the local odd-job man.”
“Did anyone say he actually called himself John Smith?” Thomas persisted.
“Yes,” sighed Gayther, “Karen Williams referred to him as Smith … John Smith, I think. Not a very imaginative name, that. Anyway, look, let’s move on for now.” With that, he stood up and moved to the whiteboard at the other end of the portacabin.
“I’m sure this man … let’s call him John Smith … as good a made-up name as any … is The Scribbler.” He turned to the board and wrote ‘John Smith’ at the top, circling it two and then three times for emphasis. “In fact, let’s put ‘John Smith’ in the middle and work outwards from there.”
After rubbing out the name and writing ‘John Smith’ again, Gayther continued. “I’m going to have a word with Peter, the new artist, to see if I can get him over there … to Karen Williams … to do a sketch. That will be useful. I want to see if upstairs will let us put something out … a press release … if we need to … down the line. Thomas, Cotton, how did you get on with tracing Challis, Halom and the other one … Burgess?” Gayther wrote the three names, with question marks, in a circle around ‘John Smith’ on the board.
“Three suspects. Ray Challis was the first. A plumber … frequented some of The Scribbler’s pubs … had alibis for some … but not others … anything on him on the PNC, the Police National Computer?” Gayther added.
Thomas shook his head. “Not for the father, no. He’s a builder these days. Saxmundham-based. Works with his two sons. One of the sons, Tobias, was arrested but not convicted of a burglary last year. Interestingly, it was up Dunwich way. An ordinary house, not the vicarage. A solicitor from London applied to have his information removed from the files, DNA, fingerprints, on the grounds that there was corroborative evidence that he had a proven alibi.”
Gayther grunted, “Unusual, that. I’d maybe expect a lefty-liberal type from London to want to have DNA and fingerprints removed, civil rights and all that, but a hairy-arsed builder’s boy from Suffolk? That’s odd. We’ll follow that up.”
“We were thinking of familial DNA searching, sir,” Cotton said. “If the father was The Scribbler, he’d not want his son’s DNA on the database in case it was a close match for any DNA found at any of The Scribbler’s murder scenes.”
He looked at Thomas and went on. “We did this course, see, sir, the two of us. And there was a case where … if you compare twenty DNA markers, most people, like any two random people, just by chance, would have maybe half a dozen markers in common. But close relatives can have maybe a dozen or more.”
“I take your point,” said Gayther and then added, “although we don’t have any, do we, Carrie, on file? DNA?”
Carrie shook her head. “I’m amazed at how little we have sir, just notes … in what you gave me anyway.”
“Different age, Carrie.” Gayther stopped for a second and then added, “I think there are some clothes kept somewhere. From the murders. God knows where they’d be now. But there may be something. Can you …”
“Noted sir,” Carried replied, writing in her notebook. “I’ll get that checked today.”
Gayther addressed Carrie, Thomas and Cotton together. “Unless … until … it may be until … The Scribbler strikes again and conveniently leaves his DNA somewhere for us, we’ll crack this case the old-fashioned way. Plod. Plod. Plod. Check. Check. Check. And then a lucky break. But we have to
