by Ashley Dyer
The landlord was the keyholder. He met them at the entrance gates and they parked, following him into the complex on foot. He took them through a side gate, and Ruth caught a glimpse of water around the curve of the footpath. She made a detour to take a look.
“That’s the back of the development,” the landlord called. “You’ve gotta go round the front to get in.”
Ruth stared at a wind-rippled body of water, stretching for a couple hundred yards and lined end to end by the apartment blocks in pinkish brick.
“Weird shape for a pond.” It was straight along the sides and curved at the ends, like a drug capsule.
“One of the old gravings,” the landlord said.
“A dry dock?” Oh, boy . . . That would be deep, and if Norris had gone into its greenish water, it would be a bastard to search. But the railings around the edge looked solid enough, so maybe it wouldn’t come to that.
Ruth followed the landlord to the front of the building, with only a quick glance in DC Ivey’s direction.
“It’s on the top floor, I’m afraid,” he said, peering ruefully up the stairwell. “And there’s no lift in this building.”
“We can manage a few stairs,” Ruth said. “Lead the way.”
He was in his late fifties, on the heavy side. He looked torn: hand the keys over and let them get on with it, or face a slog up the stairs? After a moment’s hesitation, he took the second option; Ruth guessed he wanted a chance to find out what his tenant had been up to.
“He’s not in any trouble, is he?” the landlord said, pausing, puffing slightly, at a turn in the stairs. They had taken the fire escape staircase, their footsteps echoing up the concrete well.
“Not that we know of,” Ruth said. “Is he a good tenant?”
The landlord shrugged.
“Pays his rent on time. Never had any complaints from the people on his landing.” He blocked the stairwell with his bulk. “So, if he’s not in any bother, why are you looking for him?”
“Does he have friends staying over?”
“None of my business.” The landlord turned his back and began trudging up the steps again. Apparently, he resented the lack of give-and-take in the conversation.
“You don’t care what happens on your property?” Ruth asked.
“As long as he doesn’t sublet, he can have who he likes to stay.”
They hiked up ten flights in all, the landlord trying to wheedle information out of them, literally, at every turn.
At Norris’s flat door, panting heavily, he pulled out a latchkey.
“Just a minute.” Ruth examined the lock and door frame. There were no signs of forced entry, no telltale scratches around the key slot to indicate that it had been picked. She stepped back. “Okay.” She held out her hand and the landlord handed over the key.
“If you wouldn’t mind waiting outside, sir.”
“Well, you could’ve told me that before we climbed this lot,” he said.
But then she wouldn’t have gotten a feel for the kind of relationship he had with his tenant.
She thanked him, closing the door after them, before producing a couple of pairs of nitrile gloves and handing a pair to DC Ivey.
She stood at the front door for a few moments.
“What’s up, Sarge?” Ivey said, pulling on his gloves.
“Just getting a feel for the place,” she said. “Notice any smells, any unusual noises?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a good sign, isn’t it?” Bad smells and buzzing insects were two things her years as a CSI had taught her to dread. Two doors across a narrow hallway; one, to the left, was closed. The other, directly ahead, stood wide, revealing an open plan kitchen/sitting room.
A hooded jacket lay on a sofa under the window. “Mr. Norris?” Ruth called. “It’s the police.”
No answer.
Ruth signaled Ivey to take the closed door, while she stepped into the living area. It was bright, with light coming in from the window above the sofa, and from a sliding door to the right, which gave onto a small balcony. What she glimpsed through them made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
“Bed’s unmade, and there’s a half-finished glass of beer growing mold on the nightstand,” Ivey shouted.
A moment later, he appeared by her side. “Is something wrong, Sarge?”
She hadn’t moved since he’d left the room.
“Did you check under the bed, and in the wardrobe?” Ruth asked.
“Yeah.” He looked at her in question.
She nodded to the door onto the balcony. “What do you see?”
He followed her line of sight. “Is that—?”
“Yep.”
She called CSM Hughes first and asked for a Scientific Support team.
“Are we looking at a crime scene?” he asked.
“Not sure,” she said. “But if you can find anyone who hasn’t dealt with the other scenes, that’d be good.”
“Okay. Who’s going to brief them?”
“I’ll try to get hold of DCI Carver. If I can’t—it’ll be me.” She ended the call and tried Carver’s number again. This time, he answered.
“I got your voice mail,” he said. “What did you find?”
She looked around her, without venturing farther into the apartment. “Signs of recent occupation, but none of the missing man, and no signs of struggle. It’s a small apartment, but it’s neat, and it looks undisturbed.” The only mess she could see were the discarded jacket on the sofa and an empty bowl and spoon on the breakfast bar.
“So you’ve asked for forensics because . . . ?” Carver sounded puzzled.
“We’re at the southern end of the riverside docks,” she said. “By the Dingle.”
She felt his close attention.
“I’m looking down at Dingle Railway Station—the CSIs are just packing up.”
Carver swore softly.
“And there’s a camera tripod on the balcony.” She took a breath. “He was watching us, Greg.”
27
Factions have begun to develop—pro and anti. Threats are being bandied back and forth like trading cards. Demands made that I explain myself. The notion is laughable—it’s for others to interpret my art; I don’t have to explain it.
Think Outside the Box captured their attention; they responded to the color and light of the first exhibit like babies drawn to a nursery mobile, excited by its three-dimensional appeal. And—like babies—they are tethered to the world by the concrete and tangible. Small wonder they couldn’t cope with the abstract concepts inherent in Catch the Gamma Wave and Life Passes—after all, both require active brainwork. I had thought them capable of interpolating from the EEG readings back to the brain tissue of Think Outside the Box, building connections between the exhibits. Sadly, they don’t have the maturity, the imagination, or the intellect. For such limited minds, a thing only exists if it is physically present.
If I’d had the option, I would have presented the trilogy in its true order, with the subjects’ brain tissue preserved—symbolically suspended—as the end point, but priming followers with Think Outside the Box made it possible for them to see Life Passes as art, rather than butchery. There is no question in my mind that they would not have the wit to make that judgment unprompted. Reversing the natural order was the only choice available to me.
It’s depressing, trawling through my Instagram feed. My supporters seem shamefully apologetic, trying to explain the works on my behalf—as if they ever could.
I should turn the damned phone off, but I feel compelled to check the screen once more. A new hashtag has appeared in my feed: #Triptych. It’s trending, apparently; curiosity gets the better of me.
“#Triptych makes sense of @FerrymanArt.”
“Look at this! #FerrymanFan #Triptych—now I get it!”
“Integrative #Triptych by #FerrymanFan @Kharon NAILS what @FerrymanArt is trying to do.”
Trying to do . . . I wonder what this peasant has ever �
��tried” to achieve.
The pattern is repeated on Twitter and Facebook—and, it seems, Kharon is at the center of all this “buzz.” News of his “Triptych” has been shared so many times that it takes a few minutes to drill down to the original post.
“Triptych is my homage to your mind-blowing artwork, @FerrymanArt—you inspire me.”
He is respectful, I’ll give him that.
He has hashtagged a few keywords to attract wider interest and attached a still from Think Outside the Box, adding a link to YouTube. Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links, so I copy the address and paste it into a new Google tab. But watching the cursor blink, I can’t seem to bring myself to click through.
Instead, I set the phone down on my workbench and walk away. It buzzes. I stare at it. It buzzes again, angry and insistent. I pick it up.
Two notifications—new followers. It buzzes again. And again. And again—until it’s fizzing in my hand!
This has to be Kharon’s doing, his homage, he calls it.
I click the link.
The screen is split three ways—one-third for each of the exhibits. In the first, the plexiglass disks displaying slices of brain tissue rotate in the wind, flashing blue and purple and green under the LEDs as they spin. The EEG traces of Catch the Gamma Wave, in the second segment, seem to pulse in rhythm with them; and in the third, the video of Life Passes adds energy and thrilling immediacy. The screen flickers, strobes, dies, reignites. The video of a beating heart retreats into the background and vanishes. A moment later, the panel housing Think Outside the Box jolts forward and seems to pop out of the screen. It slides right, as if on a carousel, over the heart, over the brain wave traces of Catch the Gamma Wave in the center panel, coming to rest on the far right of the screen. Life Passes emerges from the shadows and takes position as the left panel of the triptych. Life Passes, Catch the Gamma Wave, and finally, Think Outside the Box. Now the exhibits are in the order in which I created them. My God . . . he really does understand.
I feel a burning ache in the center of my chest, but I can’t identify the emotion.
A burst of light, then the heart begins fibrillating in shock. A duplicate red ECG trace glides like a veil from the central panel, onto the first, tracing the heart’s final death throes, and simultaneously, the blue peaks and troughs of brain wave activity ghost over the face of the disks in the last panel of the triptych.
The images begin to flicker: heart muscle; brain waves; heart trace; brain tissue, presented in briefer and briefer flashes, producing a strobe effect. Darkness for a second. A supernova of light explodes from the screen, and when the afterimage fades, I see a still of the crowd standing in front of Think Outside the Box. The cameras in their hands replicate the scene; dozens of tiny images, capturing the spectacle of brain tissue captured in plexiglass, suspended in the box, lit gorgeously with the LEDs at the point of transition from purple to green. The image doubles, quadruples, spiraling inward, in fractal of my original, on and on into infinity.
28
With so many detectives needed to check Norris’s apartment building, DCI Carver had to call off the morning briefing. He read through the written actions and reports that had come in, then called Ruth Lake to his office.
“The killer hasn’t used Matlock’s debit card since shortly after the laptop purchases,” he said.
They both knew that lowered their chances of catching the offender by a country mile.
“And the mysterious visitor to his flat was only seen a few times right after things went quiet on the block,” Ruth added. “We’re not going to catch him there.”
“But Norris’s is a different story,” Carver said. “It’s possible the offender isn’t finished with the place. You’ve kept the CSI presence low-key?”
She nodded. “We’re trying to do the same with house-to-house. But people are going to put two and two together—and this is big news—all it takes is one person to call the media or send a tweet.”
“Let’s hope we get lucky, then,” Carver said. “This bastard has had things his own way for far too long.”
“Steve Norris’s parents have agreed to leave his credit card open,” Ruth said. “And the card company will notify us of any activity as soon as they’re aware of it.”
Which reminded him: “Where is DC Ivey on the other credit cards?”
“Still working it,” Ruth said. “He’s identified several ATMs in small convenience stores that the killer used on multiple occasions.”
“Anything Yi might use on his geographic profile?”
Ruth shook her head. “He used tills all over the city. But Ivey’s gone to talk to the shop owners—see if they know any more—and he’s taken photos of both Matlock and Norris.”
Coming back to their new missing person, Carver said: “The partial footwear impression on Norris’s balcony?”
“They’re analyzing it now,” Ruth said. “And they’ve already confirmed it’s an Adidas trail running shoe.”
“Same as the shoe impression we got above the railway arch,” Carver said. “What does Norris wear?”
“The CSIs found two brand-new pairs of Asics shoes in the wardrobe: Metaruns and Gel-Blade 5s—both men’s size nine.”
“Brand-new, you say?” It was possible that Norris got rid of an old pair because it might incriminate him. “Do we know if he owns Adidas shoes?”
Ruth nodded—an indication that she followed his line of thought. “I’ve got a couple of volunteers checking till receipts from his flat,” she said.
“Any sightings of him leaving his apartment the day he vanished?”
Ruth lifted one shoulder. “It’s early days yet, but if I can show you on your PC—” He logged in, and she called up Google Maps, typed in the address, and clicked through a set of street-view photos.
Carver sneaked a look at her; she was her usual efficient and professional self, but he sensed a tension in her bearing. He knew that his resistance to talk to the psychologist had caused Ruth some trouble, but she didn’t seem annoyed or resentful. Reading Ruth was never easy, but something was going on with her, and Carver was fairly sure it had nothing to do with him.
“There you go,” she said.
The photograph showed a long, dead-end street, with parking bays and pools of tree plantings and bushes. The design of the buildings either side reminded Carver of the old tenements in London’s East End—newer, cleaner versions, it had to be said, with neat parking bays and soft landscaping. He counted at least eight blocks on each side of the access road, each three or four stories high. There must be scores of windows overlooking the bays.
“There’s a good chance Norris was seen,” he said.
Ruth lifted her chin. “Yeah. But he was working early shifts before he disappeared, so there’d be fewer people about. And his car is still parked on the complex, so he may have gone out on foot.”
Carver noticed a dazzle of light at the corner of the building, a hint of reflections on water. “Is there a pond at the back of the development?” he asked.
Ruth gave him a look that said, Wait till you see it.
She clicked to a photo of a brick-edged water feature large enough to have three sets of fountains along its length.
“It looks huge.”
“It’s about two hundred and fifty meters long,” Ruth said. “Apparently, it’s an old graving dock, used to dock cargo ships for repairs. In terms of depth, I’m thinking . . . ten meters?”
“Maybe more,” Carver said, almost wincing as he asked, “Do we need to bring in divers?” Ruth would know the feasibility of such a move better than most.
“A search on that scale would cost.”
“It would.”
“And attract a lot of attention.” Ruth tilted her head. “Anyway, drowning isn’t really the Ferryman’s MO.”
“Okay. We can hold off for now,” Carver said. “But when the CSIs have cleared out, I really want to have someone watch Norris’s place. We know our guy went back to
victims’ properties, used them as drop-offs.”
“D’you think Superintendent Wilshire would sanction it?”
“I doubt it,” Carver said. “Last night’s overtime alone is pushing us to the limits of our budget.”
He felt a doomy sense of failure.
“D’you think he might cough up enough to monitor the flat electronically?” Ruth asked.
“Covert video?” Carver nodded. “That’s a great idea.”
“I could ask John Hughes to ask his lot to clear up any obvious evidence they’ve been there,” Ruth said. “It’d cost next to nothing.”
“I don’t think Norris’s family would have any objection,” Carver said. “I’ll give it a try.”
His mobile rang.
The caller identified himself as Sergeant Bill Naylor, who was leading house-to-house inquiries at Norris’s apartment block.
“Just a minute,” Carver said. “I’ve got DS Lake with me, I’m putting you on speaker.” He tapped the icon and held the phone on the palm of his hand. “Go ahead.”
“I thought you’d want this ahead of the debrief, boss,” the sergeant said. “Norris’s next-door neighbor saw him leave for work at five thirty a.m. the day he went AWOL—that would’ve been in time for him to fit in a run before an early shift at St. Michael’s Railway Station. On fine days, he always runs to work; it’s a mile and a bit from his place, but he makes a detour through the Festival Gardens to boost it to two. This was four days ago.”
“One day before Catch the Gamma Wave,” Carver said. “The witness is sure about the day?”
“Yup. Says he remembers because they had a chat about Norris going to his parents’ anniversary party,” the sergeant said. “By coincidence, it was the neighbor’s birthday, and he was heading out to catch an early train to London for a two-day minibreak.”
“Was Norris wearing running gear when he set off?” Ruth asked.
