The Cutting Room

by Ashley Dyer

  There was a brief, muffled conversation, then the detective said, “Bright orange trainers, dark joggers, and T-shirt.”

  “The Metaruns in his wardrobe are black, and Gel-Blade 5s are bright green,” Ruth said. “But Adidas and Nike both do orange running shoes.” She fished her phone out of her jacket pocket and clicked through some webpages. “The soul plate patterns don’t match the prints we found at Dingle Station.”

  “It’s looking more and more like Norris never came home, isn’t it?” Carver said.

  “The neighbor hasn’t seen him since,” the sergeant said. “But there was someone in his flat.”

  “When?”

  “Three days ago—the night of the light show at the old Dingle Station.”

  Carver felt a thrill of excitement.

  “The neighbor’s flat looks out onto the cliff and the station archway,” Sergeant Naylor went on. “He’d just got back from his trip, heard the police sirens. He hasn’t got a balcony, but he stuck his head out the window to get a better look, saw someone filming the goings-on from Norris’s.”

  “Did he see who it was?” Ruth asked.

  “Not well. Bloke was wearing a hoodie, and the angle isn’t good—I took a squint at it myself—the window opens the wrong way for you to lean out and look toward Norris’s. Witness says he assumed it was Steve Norris, but when he called across, he didn’t get an answer.”

  Carver thanked him and ended the call. “Do we think the neighbor disturbed the Ferryman?”

  “It would explain why he left the tripod behind,” Ruth said. “Could be he cleared out fast after the neighbor called over to him.”

  “Is it possible that Norris was deliberately targeted so that the killer could use his apartment to film Catch the Gamma Wave?”

  Ruth lifted one shoulder. “If he was, he must have been grabbed up on his run to work.”

  “Let’s take a look at the route.” Carver called up Google Maps and entered details of the start point, then switched to satellite view.

  “The obvious way would be straight down to the river, hang a left along the roadway, then into the Festival Gardens,” Ruth said.

  “Agreed,” Carver said. “But once inside the gardens, he could have taken half a dozen different paths.”

  “His family said he was training for a marathon—fitted in as much running as he could in a workday. If it was me, I’d go the longest circular route, keeping the river on my right . . .” Ruth traced a pathway that dipped down toward the river and ran almost along the length of the gardens. “This is where I’d turn my back to the river.” She pointed to a place where the pathway met an access road. “Then I’d head up onto the roundabout and loop back via Riverside Drive, toward St. Michael’s Station.”

  “I can’t see him being ambushed on the first stretch of the route,” Carver said, scouring the image. “It’s too open. And anyway, there’s so much CCTV in that area. The gardens don’t allow cars, so if Norris was clobbered there, the abductor would have had to drag him to a vehicle to spirit him away.”

  Ruth peered at the monitor. “Can you zoom in on the gray patch to the bottom right?”

  Carver obliged.

  “That’s a car park,” Ruth said. “He wouldn’t have had far to drag Norris if he parked the van there and ambushed him on his way out of the gardens.”

  “Let’s get in touch with the council, see if they have CCTV,” Carver said.

  Ruth nodded. “Otherwise, it’s got to be somewhere on Riverside Drive, before he heads in to the station.”

  “So what’s his most likely route from Riverside Drive to the station?” Carver mused.

  Most of Riverside Drive was wide open; a busy two-lane road with traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. To the north of it was a medium-sized housing development, bounded by the railway line. But the roads within the development were either crescents, curving back to the main road, or else dead ends.

  “I don’t see a way through to the station,” he said.

  “Zoom out a bit.”

  “There you are . . .” Carver murmured. A faint gray ribbon overlaid a patch of woodland on the map, beginning at the main road, and ending at St. Michael’s Station.

  A few hundred yards of wooded footpath seemed a perfect place to lie in wait. He switched to street view. At the far end, the pathway accessed the station frontage through a small gap in a sandstone wall. At Riverside Drive, the path started at a pedestrian crossing. Both sides of the road were signposted with heritage-style waymarkers to the Riverside Walkway in one direction and St. Michael’s Station in the other.

  A thin black line of shadow fell across the road at the crossing. Carver turned Google Maps’s yellow Pegman full circle, then looked up. The shadow line was a CCTV camera pole, and the three domes perched at the top of it looked like high-end kit.

  “Gotcha,” he said. “If Norris was abducted nearby, we’ll have it on camera.”

  “Mm,” Ruth said. “But it’s more likely he was attacked in the woods—which gives the abductor the same dilemma: where to park the abduction vehicle?”

  They both knew that a car parked on a busy two-lane road with no laybys would be targeted by police in a matter of minutes.

  As Ruth stared at the screen, he could swear he felt the intensity of her concentration coming off her like heat.

  “Is there any access to the woods from the housing estate?” she asked.

  Carver clicked to the east of the woods, and Pegman jumped to Moel Famau View, the last cluster of houses on the development.

  “Could that be a cut-through just before the first house?” Ruth asked. About twenty yards along Moel Famau View, the grass edging seemed to dip down to a faint black line, heading left into the trees.

  He marched Pegman up the slope of the road and swung him left.

  Sure enough, a narrow footpath, shaded on both sides by trees, gave access into the woods along the boundary fence of the end house.

  For a few seconds, neither spoke, simply enjoying the sheer exhilaration of the moment.

  “I’m guessing you’ll want a team down there,” Ruth said, with a grin that lit up the room.

  29

  Ruth Lake was sorting out task allocations, ensuring that the special constables had adequate supervision from fully qualified officers, and wondering how long they could ask these volunteers to work full days at their paid jobs and then spend another eight hours unpaid on police work.

  Parr came into the MIR with a set of car keys.

  “Busy?” she said.

  “Scut work.” He hung the keys on the board and turned to face her. “What d’you need?”

  “More scut work, I’m afraid.”

  He smiled. It was weary and knowing, but there was no resentment behind it. “What I’m here for, Sarge.”

  “I just sent a batch of questions to the printer. They’re for the house-to-house teams at Moel Famau View. Can you get them to Sergeant Naylor for distribution?”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  She watched him walk to the corner of the room and pick up the batches of collated and stapled questions. Parr was thirty or so, she estimated. Fit-looking, attractive, in an understated way. He wore his hair short, and he was always neatly turned out. He was focused, calm, and efficient—and he never complained. She made a mental note to have a word with the shift sergeant, try to get him on duties that would make better use of his talents.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a call from CSM Hughes.

  “We’ve found Kharon,” he said, without preamble.

  “Wow. I thought the warrant application to trace his IP address was refused.”

  “It was, but he posted a new ‘appreciation’ of the Ferryman’s exhibits on YouTube—have you seen it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You should take a look,” he said.

  She was already clicking through to Kharon’s Instagram account on her laptop. “Got it.” She watched the video for a few seconds. She had to admit it
had a hypnotic quality—weird, and slightly nauseating, but there was certainly some skill at work.

  “Scroll through the comments,” Hughes said, with barely concealed glee.

  “He seems to have quite the fan base.” Ruth stopped at the third comment. “Aw, that’s sweet—he’s given a direct link to his website.”

  The link wasn’t clickable, so she copied and pasted it into a new tab. It took her to a site called KharonMedia.

  There wasn’t much to see—a homepage, contacts, and a page of videos and images, mostly linked back to YouTube. “It’s a bit light on content,” she said.

  “It’s new—only went live last night,” Hughes said. “He’s been getting a lot of interest. I’m guessing he’s hoping to start making money from his work, decided to set up in business.”

  Ruth checked out the contacts page, still trying to work out why Hughes sounded so pleased with himself. It had a contact form. “You traced the e-mail?” she speculated.

  “That links to a Hotmail account,” he said, his tone dismissive. “It’s untraceable.”

  “Oh, now you’re teasing me,” Ruth said, smiling. She drummed her fingers on the desk. New website, set up in haste—there was only one way she could think to trace the owner without a warrant. Every website had to have a listing with a named owner and a physical address on the WHOIS database.

  “You looked up the website URL on WHOIS?” she said.

  “Yup,” Hughes said. “And he left it set to default.”

  The default setting for WHOIS was “public”—if you didn’t switch it to “private,” anyone who cared to search the database could find your physical address.

  Ruth laughed. “Could he really be that naive?”

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Hughes said, and she heard the smile in his voice. “He’s been a busy boy these last few days.”

  “I suppose he has. So—what’ve you got?”

  “Take your pick—we’ve got his real name, his e-mail, mobile phone number, and street address—also genuine.”

  “Just ping the lot to my phone,” Ruth said, snapping her laptop closed and gathering her things. “We’d better go and scoop him up before somebody warns him.”

  An hour later, Ruth was sitting opposite Karl Obrazki, aka Kharon, in interview room 3. He was a dark-eyed, full-lipped kid, no older than nineteen or twenty, with a soft sweep of black hair that gleamed almost bluish under the cold light of the overhead fluorescents. His coffee-colored skin tone defied the sickening effect of the room’s sage green walls and unforgiving lighting. He slouched, self-aware but not self-conscious, in his chair, his gray hoodie open, revealing a pristine white tee that gleamed under the lights.

  “It’s good of you to come in and talk to us, Mr. Obrazki.” Ruth sat back from the table so that she could get a good look at him. This was not a formal interview, and Mr. Obrazki was not under caution, so for now it was just him and Ruth Lake; Carver was watching their “informal chat” via video link in a nearby room. Their aim was to find out how deeply involved Karl/Kharon was in the events of the last week.

  Obrazki half closed his eyes in sleepy acknowledgment of her thanks, but under the table, his left foot was trapped behind his right ankle, and his right knee jittered, betraying his anxiety.

  “I understand you’re a student?”

  “Film studies,” he said, staring at the corner of the table.

  “Fairfield Arts College, isn’t it?” His eyes widened in a slight flare of anxiety—perhaps his tutors wouldn’t approve of his extracurricular activities. “Well, what you’re doing is impressive,” she added, not wanting to rattle him into sullen silence.

  She saw a slight shift in stance, a chin lift that might have been a shade on the defensive side, but the brief, dismissive eye contact he made suggested that he was thinking, What would you know?

  “Seriously,” she said. “A lot of people are saying you’re really in tune with the Ferryman’s art.” It hurt her to call the crime scenes “art,” but Ruth was expert at hiding her feelings.

  “He’s a genius,” Karl said.

  “Not everyone thought so, but you seem to’ve convinced a lot of people.” By implication, that made him the greater genius. Karl nodded, slowly, just twice, and barely perceptibly, but Ruth saw it. “He was hemorrhaging followers before you broadcast Triptych.”

  Using the title of his work reinforced the positivity of her words, and he eased out of the “anchoring” position, placing both feet on the floor and widening his stance a little. They chatted for a few minutes about the montage, and he loosened up some more.

  After he had explained the film origins of the split screen, Ruth asked, “How did you get that ghosting effect with the images?”

  “Just video layers and shit,” he said, with patent false modesty.

  “Oh, I suppose there’s programs for that kind of thing,” she said, deliberately dismissive. “Just flick a switch and . . .”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said, his pride pricked. “You’ve got to know how to use the programs. It takes practice and, you know, skill.”

  “And imagination,” Ruth agreed, thinking, This definitely is not the Ferryman.

  A slight shoulder lift said he’d accepted the compliment.

  “So, d’you get paid to do this?”

  “Paid?” He seemed offended by the suggestion. “This isn’t about money.”

  “No . . . sorry,” Ruth said. “It’s just, you seem to have a direct line to—whoever this is.” She wouldn’t ask him directly. Not yet. “It was you who sent out word about the display at the old railway station, wasn’t it?”

  “He messaged me,” Karl said.

  “Messaged?”

  “On Instagram. Said he wanted me to put the word out about Catch the Gamma Wave, but he wanted to keep it under the radar.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No, just—you know—he didn’t want it to go through the usual channels.”

  The Ferryman was furious that he’d been kept waiting by the Contact Center, yet he hadn’t confided in Kharon. That was significant; Karl may be a hireling, or some kind of protégé—but it seemed unlikely that he was a conspirator in the killings.

  “You didn’t mind—him just telling you what to do?”

  “Like I said—he’s a genius.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And I didn’t really think there’d be any harm . . .”

  Ruth wondered if Karl fully understood that three men had been murdered in the course of the “harmless” enterprise he so eagerly supported. But the best way to get information from a suspect is to keep him talking, so she gave a neutral nod and said, “This new video of yours—d’you think he minds you using his stuff?”

  For a microsecond, he looked stricken, but he recovered quickly. “No . . . No.”

  That was one too many nos but she let it pass.

  “Triptych is an integrative piece,” he said. “It’s a bit like ‘sampling’ in rap. You see something you like or admire, reshape it into something that is yours, but the original work is still—you know—in there.”

  “So you didn’t help the Ferryman make the originals?”

  At first, his face didn’t register anything at all—it seemed the suggestion was simply too far from anything he’d ever considered before. Then his eyes widened.

  With shock?

  “Hah!” He stared past her, and Ruth realized that he was visualizing the possibilities—he wasn’t shocked by the idea, he was excited. Which was bad, because although it looked like the Ferryman had been acting alone, Kharon would be a willing acolyte, and the possibility of persuading him to help the investigation was just about zero.

  Ruth didn’t show any of the thoughts that raced through her mind; her job was to keep Karl talking, give him time to let something slip. “Oh,” she said, letting a hint of disappointment creep into her tone, “the way he trusts you, I got the feeling you knew him pretty well.”

  “You do
n’t need to know the person to understand the art. He trusts me because I understand what drives him, artistically. Nobody knows who he really is. That’s part of his charisma.”

  She thought it was a genuine response, but she pushed a little harder: “Seems weird, him not actually claiming his art, though?”

  He scoffed. “You’ve heard of Banksy, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But even Banksy has a few trusted friends who know his true identity.”

  “Not at the start. Not until he was a global name.”

  She tilted her head; maybe Obrazki hoped that, as the Ferryman became a global name, he would be one of the faithful allowed into his inner circle.

  “You think the Ferryman will message you again?” She framed this in a dubious tone, and his eyes flashed defiantly.

  “I know he will.”

  She wondered if he already had.

  “Well, next time he does, you need to let me know,” she said.

  Obrazki slammed shut like a trapdoor—eyebrows lowered, shoulders hunched, legs twisted around each other like a pretzel. “No,” he said. “I mean I don’t know. I’m in a position of trust—I couldn’t—”

  “Karl, listen to me,” Ruth said, thinking, You moved too fast. “This man is a killer. He enjoys killing. And he won’t stop. If you help him, that’s conspiracy to murder.”

  “No—that’s not true—they were already dead.”

  “You might want to replay that last sentence in your head.” Ruth stared at him for so long that he began to flush, but he looked more pissed off than ashamed. He just isn’t getting it.

  She gave him a few seconds longer to rethink, but he glared at her defiantly.

  “Okay,” she said. “I can see I’m going to have to spell it out: people are still going missing—young men—just like you. And the way it works is, if you know something that could help us to find the murderer, and you don’t tell us, that’s a crime. You could be charged with obstruction of justice, or impeding the police in the course of their duties.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Let’s say someone else goes missing—a young man.” She watched for his reaction, saw no telltale signs that he knew about Steve Norris. “Say someone gets hurt—like they were hurt at the old railway station—you could be charged with aiding and abetting the man who murdered these people.”