by Ashley Dyer
“Calls through to the police are routinely recorded,” Carver said, “and as of today, every switchboard operator will have heard a recording of the Ferryman. He’s disguising his voice, but he isn’t using a voice changer, and so far, he’s stuck to the same tone and fake Midlands accent. Our techs are using yesterday’s recording as a baseline and they’ll be able to match it to any calls recorded from here on in. As soon as we can get the right software, they will be able to establish as it comes in whether a call is genuinely from the killer. The problem is, setting it up could take a few days, and we can’t risk a repeat of last night.”
He directed his slightly unfocused gaze toward Ruth, and she realized he was gauging her reaction by the play of lights and colors he saw around her. “So, until we have the live voice analysis up and running,” he said, “any caller claiming to be the Ferryman will be routed through the switchboard to either me or DS Lake.”
Yi’s head came up: this was in direct opposition to his advice, and Ruth saw annoyance in the creases around the psychologist’s mouth.
Ruth shrugged. “Fine by me.”
Carver twitched an eyebrow. “Wait till you hear the whole plan. As I said, calls to the switchboard are routinely recorded, but work-issue mobiles are not. From today, however, our phones will also be adapted to automatically record every call, and we will be allowed to keep them with us off-duty.”
“Effectively, you’ll be available night and day,” Yi said. “I would strongly urge you to reconsider.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s nonnegotiable,” Carver said. “But I can’t speak for Ruth.”
Ruth looked him in the eye. “Like I said, it’s fine.”
Carver’s brow cleared, but Yi blinked, his eyelids closing a fraction of a second longer than was normal: he didn’t like what Carver had said, and he didn’t like what she’d said.
Even so, he uncrossed his arms and offered a small smile. “I suspect I’m not going to be able to change your minds.”
“Not a chance,” Carver said, returning the smile.
“Well, then, I won’t argue.”
But Ruth saw a tiny microshake of Yi’s head, which gave the lie to his words.
He paused. “You said he was faking an accent?”
“Midlands,” Carver said. “Is that significant?”
“It might be, from a geographical profiler’s perspective,” Yi said.
“Given that serial offenders often start close to home, you mean?”
“It’s also close enough to a Liverpool accent, if he was trying to disguise the fact that he’s local,” Ruth said.
“I’ll see if we can get a dialect expert to listen to it,” Carver said. He turned again to Ruth. “How’s the scene analysis going?”
“It’s a difficult site,” she said. “They got footwear marks. Those will be compared with the trainers Robbo was wearing. We’ll know later today, or maybe tomorrow, if there’s any trace on the laptops and the rest of the kit left on the rock.”
She hesitated, and Carver gazed at the space around her head.
“What?” he said.
Ruth knew that Carver had learned to read emotions like anger and guilt accurately, but complex emotions were trickier, and anyway she wasn’t sure if there was a color for freaked out.
“I did some background reading on gamma brain waves overnight,” she said. “They’re typical of the brain state associated with Eureka moments—you know, sudden, unexpected sparks of insight or knowledge.”
Yi nodded. “There’s quite a lot in the literature about gamma brain waves and the ‘A-ha!’ moment.”
“Okay,” Carver said. “And the brain waves on the laptop screens—were they actually gamma waves?”
“I couldn’t tell a gamma wave from a microwave,” Ruth admitted. “Doctor Yi?”
The psychologist leafed through the notes and printouts he’d brought with him. “Yes,” he said. “In my opinion they are.”
They looked to Ruth to take up the story again.
How to explain it? “If you drop a stone in a pond, you’d expect the ripples to get weaker and shallower as the energy dissipates, wouldn’t you?”
Carver nodded.
“Brain waves should behave in the same way,” Ruth said. “So, when the heart stops, brain activity weakens, brain waves slow down, and finally, they stop.”
“Flatlining,” Carver said.
“Kind of . . . An academic study on rats found that a type of brain wave called ‘low gamma waves’ got stronger—for up to thirty seconds after the animals were technically dead.”
“I recall the study,” Yi said. “They thought it might explain so-called near-death experiences.”
“I’m not following,” Carver said.
“Low gamma waves are linked to heightened, organized, focused consciousness. Moments of exceptional clarity,” Ruth explained. “He wanted us to know the victims were aware even after he killed them.”
Carver looked sick.
“I don’t know that we can assume that was the case,” Yi said. “The significance of the increase in low gamma waves has been widely contested. It may be that—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ruth interrupted, before he could warm to his theme. “The killer believed it. The people banging the drum for him believe it, too.”
“And it’s gaining him more support,” Carver said. “Did you notice the graffiti on your way here?”
“The Ferryman symbols . . . yes,” Yi said. “Hangers-on, wanting to be part of the Ferryman phenomenon.”
“Really?” Carver said. “They want to be part of sadistic murder?”
“I’m not sure that’s it,” Yi said. “Thousands of people take part in zombie walks—it doesn’t mean they aspire to be flesh-eating undead. In my opinion, the people attending these events range from the intellectually curious, at one end of the scale, to those for whom the exhibits resonate with their sense of personal dissatisfaction, their alienation from society. The danger is that there’s also an unreal quality to the works. Add to that the destructive impulses resulting from mob anonymity—you’re almost guaranteed the behaviors we’ve witnessed so far.”
“We need to persuade them to stay away.”
“I’m not sure you can do that by appealing to their sense of justice: many who turned out will be troublemakers, known to the police,” Ruth said. “The type who will turn out to a riot because it gives them an opportunity to kick in a few heads.”
“A graphic example,” Yi said, “but largely accurate. In a crowd, guilt is shared, diluted, if you will—allowing people extremes of behavior they would never dream of as individuals.”
“So what do we do to dissuade people from turning out?” Carver asked. “It was pure luck no one died last night.”
Yi thought about it. “You could probably scare the less criminally minded into staying away by emphasizing the dangers.”
Carver nodded. “Can you brief the Press Office on that?”
“Sure,” Yi said.
“Going back to your zombie analogy,” Ruth said. “Should we be worried about wannabes?”
“Ferryman copycats, you mean?” Yi seemed surprised by the question.
Ruth waited.
A quick frown. “If these were simple murders and body dumps, I might share your concern,” the psychologist said. “But the Ferryman’s artwork is far more complex and difficult to replicate.”
“So there’s no immediate danger?” Carver said.
Ruth saw a slight glassy look in Yi’s eye as he turned his thoughts inward to rummage through the possibilities, testing what he was about to say before he spoke.
A fractional nod, more to himself than to anybody else in the room, then: “At this time, I think copycat killings are unlikely.”
Until that moment, Carver had seemed almost coiled with tension. Now Ruth saw relief flood through him, releasing the tightened sinews and muscles of his shoulders and neck.
“You’ve seen the pathologist�
�s report,” he said. “There was a slight difference in the brain sections—the staining was a smidgen darker on the right side. Is that telling us anything?”
“Ah, the question of right-brain creativity versus left-brain logic,” Yi said. “Maybe, if there were anything in the theory. The fact is, it’s a myth. But as Sergeant Lake points out, if the perpetrator thinks there’s something in it, then we should be able to infer something from it.”
“That he values creativity,” Ruth said.
“Precisely.”
“Could our killer be an actual artist?” Carver asked.
Yi answered the question indirectly. “He defines himself as such and expresses himself through his art.”
Carver nodded slowly, absorbing the information. “Tox screen found traces of GHB in Eddings’s and Martin’s brains, but there were no drugs in samples taken from the professor.”
“GHB is commonly used as a recreational drug,” Yi said. “My guess is this is about availability: GHB is still quite easy to get hold of, and as you know, it can have powerful anesthetic effects. Both Eddings and Martin were young and fit; he may have used it to subdue them.”
Carver nodded.
“Why is he targeting men?” Ruth asked. “Friends and family of both Eddings and Martin are convinced they were straight, so it’s unlikely he’s targeting gay men. Is he homosexual himself, or in denial of his sexuality?”
“Could be either,” Yi said. “Or this series of murders may not be sexually motivated at all. It could simply be about power, or fame, or a twisted sense of what art is.”
“Okay, thanks, Doctor Yi,” Carver said, and Ruth heard the sigh in his words. “Is there anything else you wanted to mention?”
Yi thumbed through the report. “No, I think—” He checked himself, turning back to the printouts of brain waves that were displayed on the laptop monitors.
“A problem?” Carver asked.
“No . . . it’s nothing, really. Just a duplicated set of printouts of the gamma waves.”
Ruth felt the hairs on her neck prickle. Those words, “it’s nothing,” so often led to something important. She flicked through to her own copy, finding the trace of gamma waves for all three victims blocked one above the other and printed in landscape orientation on a sheet of A4 paper.
“No,” she said, protective of the integrity of the unit she had once managed. “They’re all correctly labeled. There’s no duplicate.”
The psychologist tugged the sheet of paper from his file and folded it so that Eddings’s gamma wave trace sat directly above Professor Tennent’s. “See?” he said.
“Those are from two different monitors.” Ruth pointed to the evidence labels for each. “See? Scientific Support doesn’t make mistakes like sticking the same label on two different pieces of evidence. But . . .” She took her own sheet and tore it in two, then laid Eddings’s wave trace over the top of Tennent’s and held it up to the light.
“They are identical,” Carver breathed. “If the SSU didn’t duplicate the evidence, then the killer must have.”
“The killer couldn’t risk bringing Professor Tennent alive all the way from London to Liverpool,” Ruth said. “So he improvised, using Eddings’s wave trace because Catch the Gamma Wave wouldn’t be complete without it.”
15
A few people have worked out the meaning of Catch the Gamma Wave. Good for them. Interesting to note that Kharon is among them. He really is keen. Makes me almost nostalgic for the indentured apprentice system of the fifteenth century: the master painters of Bruges put dozens of eager pupils to work on the more mundane aspects of their creations—perhaps I should do the same with Kharon.
But would he have the stomach for the messier aspects of my craft? Preparing the components of my works is physically and mentally challenging. Would Kharon have what it takes to create a Catch the Gamma Wave? Not only the abductions—recording the heartbeats and brain waves of dying men takes a bold spirit and a steadfast mind. I’m no sadist; it wasn’t easy to watch John Eddings and Dillon Martin suffer. I shaved their heads for better contact with the sensors in the EEG cap, hoping that I’d get what I needed on the first take. I taped their mouths—not needing to hear them scream. I’ll confess it was distressing having to make several attempts before it came right, and I prolonged their deaths only for as long as it took to get good EEG traces.
By the third attempt, I swear John Eddings was the very image of Titian’s The Penitent Magdalene. Those eyes! Their look of supplication made me want to take a few digital images for the album. But it wouldn’t be true to the nature of the artwork, so I didn’t—I’m a purist on that point.
16
The Major Incident Room was almost empty. Now that they had two crime scenes to investigate, available staff were stretched thin. DCI Carver had requested extra help for house-to-house inquiries around the old Dingle Station, but budget cuts meant they simply didn’t have the capacity to pull in the number of officers they needed. As divisional commander, Superintendent Wilshire had begun drafting in volunteers. One of them—a new face—had been flitting in and out of the office all morning, picking up any spare keys from the board, fulfilling the mundane task of checking on supplies of evidence bags and scene kits in the pool cars. Many volunteers had day jobs, though, and it would take a day or so to set up rotas.
While others knocked on doors, Detective Sergeant Ruth Lake sat in front of two computer screens, scanning the crowd at Think Outside the Box, comparing it with events at the defunct Dingle Station the night before. They were still waiting on the Matrix team’s videos, so she had to rely on video clips and photographs posted on social media, flipping between screens and clicking through multiple tabs.
Arsonists and murderers were two categories of serial offenders known to linger at crime scenes. House blazes, dump sites, graveyards were haunted by the perpetrators, and many police forces routinely maintained covert surveillance on such places long after fires were extinguished, bodies removed, and mourners gone. So, mind-cramping though it was, Ruth gave her full attention to the work.
But psychopathic serial offenders are never easy to spot: like chameleons, they mimic the humans around them, blending in with the pack, and while Ruth had plenty of material available, it was mostly poor quality and focused on the exhibit, making a difficult job almost impossible.
An hour in, Ruth became vaguely aware of someone hovering in the doorway. She glanced up, expecting to see the volunteer: he’d been trying to catch her eye for the past hour.
She recognized immediately the tall, fair-haired man at the door.
“Looking for DS Lake?” he said.
“You found her.”
She paused the recording and he strode to her desk in easy, fluid strides. A runner, like herself, she guessed. His eyes flicked from whiteboards to desks, sucking up information on the case. Not that she blamed him; she’d done the same, often—it was just something cops did. Like noticing that he carried a bagged DVD in his big mitt of a hand: the CCTV from last night’s crime scene.
“Good of you to bring this in person. Sergeant Rayburn, isn’t it?” she said, although she was in no doubt at all.
That drew a quizzical look. “Have we met?” he asked.
“No.” Ruth remembered Rayburn from an internal memo that had gone the rounds a month ago. It announced Rayburn’s relocation from Greater Manchester Police and his appointment as head of the Matrix team.
His eyebrow quirked at the lack of explanation. “You seem sure.” He spoke in flat, slightly nasal Mancunian tones.
“I am,” she said, not wanting to give the more honest, and more loaded, “I would remember,” because Rayburn was handsome, and he knew it, just as surely as Ruth knew he was chatting her up.
“This is great, thanks,” she added, and meant it.
“Don’t suppose the car park cameras gave you anything?” he said.
Ruth shook her head. “The cams were shot out with an air rifle just before dark.”
He jerked his chin in acknowledgment. “You could try canvassing the businesses that use the casemates,” he said. “They might have security cams.”
“We already thought of that,” she said. Tunneled into the bedrock and fronted by solid steel doorways, the “casemates”—fortified storage units—were practically bombproof.
“You don’t sound hopeful.”
“They survived two world wars; it’s not likely the owners would feel the need for security cams.” She shrugged. “But we’ll try.”
“You are going to search them, though?” he said.
Ruth gave him a blank stare; Rayburn was expecting far too many answers for his one small, courteous act.
His smile somehow managed to convey both apology and mischief.
Her phone rang and she picked up, thinking Rayburn would take the hint and clear off.
It was Sergeant Naylor, who was in charge of house-to-house. “We’ve got an eyewitness,” he said. “He was visiting the gym last night. Says he saw a man in black climbing the rock.”
“Did he get a look at the face?”
“Sorry, Ruth. Climber was wearing a hoodie.”
“Didn’t challenge him?” she said, aware of Rayburn at her elbow.
“He was properly kitted out—rope, harness, and whatnot—and being just outside the gym, the witness thought he was getting a bit of practice on a real wall.”
Ruth thought the ninja clothing might have given him pause. “Could you double-check contact details before you let him go?” she asked. “I might want him to take a look at anything we get off the video clips.”
As she hung up, she leveled her cool gaze at Rayburn, still by her side, peering at the frozen image on her computer screen. “Did you forget something, Sergeant?”
“Rob,” he corrected.
She waited calmly, relying on silence to unnerve him.
After a pause that seemed reflective rather than rattled, he said, “Is it true what they say about you?”
“I don’t know,” Ruth returned, draining her tone of any emotion that might suggest that she in any way cared. “What do they say?”
