by Ashley Dyer
“All that staging must’ve taken hours,” Carver said. “And we spoke to Karl, what—thirty, forty minutes before we found him? How the hell did he have time?”
John Hughes spoke up: “I had a sound engineer look at the call you took from Karl.” He glanced around the room before adding, “All calls to both DCI Carver’s and DS Lake’s work phones are being recorded, in case a call from the killer comes in. When the engineer focused on specific components of the background noise, he saw anomalies—traffic noise that seems to vanish from one response to the next, for instance. I asked the language analyst to have a listen, and he said there are some linguistic and tonal anomalies as well.” He dug a flash drive from his pocket. “Can I . . . ?”
Ruth stood to one side, giving him access to the demo laptop at the front of the room.
He played the recording from the loud clang at Karl’s end of the line. It ran on:
RUTH: “Are you all right, Mr. Obrazki?”
KARL: “It’s all good.” A nervous laugh. “I was passing a building site . . .”
RUTH: “Where are you?”
KARL: “I’m on my way into town.”
CARVER: “Where exactly?”
KARL: “I’m on Wood Street.”
Hughes stopped the tape, and Carver glanced at Ruth. Her head tilted slightly, she seemed to be running through the questions and answers again in her head.
“Oh, hell . . .” she breathed.
Carver was stumped—it sounded like a straightforward question and answer to him. “What?” he said.
Ruth looked pained. “He’s reading a script.”
Hughes nodded. “DS Lake says, ‘Where are you?’ You would expect Karl to say, ‘On my way into town.’ He uses the same sentence structure a moment later. When DCI Carver says, ‘Where exactly?’ You would’ve expected the reply to be a sentence fragment—‘Wood Street,’ for example, but Karl answers in a full sentence.”
Hughes glanced at Ruth again. “And when you told him to go to Bold Street, that you’d send a patrol car to pick him up—”
“He said, ‘I’ve really pissed him off.’” Ruth raked her fingers through her hair. “He didn’t respond to what I’d said at all.”
Hughes shook his head. “The whole thing was prerecorded. We found the audio file on his mobile phone.”
“Coerced?” Carver asked.
“It’s hard to be sure, but the linguist thinks not—the way Karl laughs after the building site noise seems spontaneous, he said. And he sounds too relaxed at other points in the recording.”
“So, prerecorded, not coerced, which means he was in collusion with the Ferryman for at least part of this.”
“And the audio file was date-stamped yesterday, at two thirty p.m.” Hughes frowned, his weathered face settling in lines of regret. “My guess is the kid was long dead before you even got the call.”
Carver allowed himself a few moments to process the information.
“The website hosting the livestream from Karl Obrazki’s flat has been taken down,” he said, feeling that time had in some way been fractured by this new evidence, needing to speak his thoughts to reason through the sequence of events.
Hughes nodded. “Even so, images have been circulated. It had two thousand hits within five minutes of it being posted.”
“If the web host closed it down, that means it’s traceable, using, what was it—WHOIS?”
“I’m afraid not. Unlike Karl, this guy covered his tracks. He didn’t even register a domain.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“You can set up a website without registering a domain using one of a dozen blogger domains—WordPress, Weebly, Tumblr—whatever,” Hughes said. “So we tried tracing him through his IP address—that’s the unique number which identifies every computer on a network, and its location. But he used a virtual private network, a VPN.”
“You can’t trace his computer or his location.”
“Precisely.”
Carver blew out air. “Okay. The site went live as we entered the property, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So he must’ve had eyes on the place.”
Hughes nodded. “We’ve found five granny cams secreted around the sitting room, bathroom, and bedroom; there may be others. We’ve got a specialist coming in to sweep the place later tonight, but in the meantime, we’ll just keep jamming the Wi-Fi till we’re sure we’ve got them all.”
“The website was brand-new,” Carver said. “How did his followers know about it?”
“He posted a short video and a link on Instagram.”
DC Ivey spoke up. “Hang on—Instagram doesn’t allow links to outside sites.”
“Not in individual posts,” Hughes said. “But you can paste a link into your profile. The Ferryman changed his bio and included the link to his livestream content as soon as Ruth and Greg were inside Kharon’s flat. The blogsite organized the takedown ten minutes after our request went in.”
“Even so, @FerrymanArt is getting hundreds of comments,” Ivey said, tapping through windows on his smartphone.
Hughes must have seen the concern on Carver’s face because he said, “You want them to close the Instagram account, they said they’ll do it.”
“No,” Carver said. “I don’t want this to disappear onto the Dark Web; at least we can monitor traffic while he stays visible.”
Hughes nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“Let’s see the Instagram video.”
Hughes closed the audio file and clicked to a new folder.
An instant of blurring, then the camera focused on Karl Obrazki, alias Kharon, in the armchair in his flat. Straps around his arms, feet, and chest held him immobile. He was gagged, and his head drooped forward onto his chest. Half-conscious, groaning, as his blood drained into the glass demijohn. The jar looked one-third full.
A murmur of exclamations.
Someone muttered, “Jesus wept.”
He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and as he fought to open his eyes, it was clear that they were intact.
“Good work, containing this so fast,” Carver said.
“The web works faster,” Hughes said. “A few ghouls got screencaps and video GIFs before we could take it down.”
“Video of Karl?” Carver said.
“And of the two of you searching the place.” He avoided Carver’s gaze. “There’s stuff popping up all over the Web.”
How much had the cameras seen? Carver wondered.
Hughes moved on: “He’s calling this one Fly on a Chariot Wheel.”
“Fly on a Chariot Wheel,” Carver said. “What is that?”
“It’s linked to the words ‘What dust do I raise!’ on the center frame of the triptych,” DC Ivey said.
Hughes’s phone buzzed and he excused himself, stepping out into the corridor. Carver kept his focus on the young detective, and Ivey went on.
“In the fable, a fly lands on a chariot wheel during a race and boasts about how much dust he’s kicking up.”
“Claiming credit, when he’s just along for the ride,” Carver said.
“The Ferryman does like his symbolism, doesn’t he?” Yi commented, seemingly to himself, making a note.
“There’s more,” Ivey said. “Wiki says the story first appeared in the fourteen nineties. It was part of a collection by a scholar called Laurentius Abstemius, but most people think it’s one of Aesop’s fables, partly ’cos someone got the source wrong in the sixteen hundreds.”
“Bloody hell, Ivey lad,” the house-to-house organizer grumbled, “you’ve gotta stop googling or you’ll go blind.”
Ivey blushed to the roots of his ginger hair.
Dr. Yi looked up from his notes. “Wrong attribution?” he said. “And an inflated sense of self . . .”
“You think it’s significant?” Carver asked.
Yi stared at a point above Carver’s head for a few seconds. “As I said, the Ferryman likes his symbolism. The vainglory of the f
ly, imagining himself the agent of power and action—and the fact that Aesop was wrongly credited as the author of the fable—could well refer to Karl/Kharon’s unearned celebrity and recognition, which is, after all, based entirely on the Ferryman’s work.”
Naylor turned down the corners of his mouth, considering. “Well, when you put it that way . . .” He turned to Ivey—“Fair dues, lad; you spotted it and I didn’t.”
Bill Naylor might be a dinosaur, but he wasn’t mean-spirited.
The young detective blushed even more violently, and Carver shifted attention away from him by asking about the song track that was playing when they’d arrived at the victim’s house. “Has that been identified yet?”
DC Ivey surprised him by speaking up again. “The Ferryman’s followers nailed it in less than half an hour, boss.” His color remained hectic, but he sounded calm and confident as he continued: “The song title is ‘The Ferryman.’ It’s by an Aussie band called Graveyard Train—they play a type of country music called ‘horror country’ or ‘psychobilly.’”
Layers upon layers of meaning, Carver thought, watching Dr. Yi add to his notes.
“Could you send me the song lyrics?” Yi said, glancing up at Ivey for a second.
Ivey’s thumbs flew over his mobile phone screen. “I texted you a link,” he said.
Hughes returned from the hallway at that moment. “That was the senior CSI at the scene. They haven’t found a weapon. Looks like the killer took the knife and any other tools he used with him.”
But there was some good news—Carver saw it in the gleam in his eye.
“ESLA got us a few good lifts,” Hughes said. The electrostatic lifting apparatus was often the first line of approach in identifying latent footwear impressions.
“And?”
“Preliminary checks of footwear marks on the lino in the sitting room show the killer walking backward and forward as he sets up the scene,” Hughes said. “Then he stands back to admire his work. And leaves a couple of beautiful marks—Adidas Terrex CMTK GTX trail runners—there’s some lovely unique features on them.”
“Unique.” A word to make any detective glow with happiness.
“Did they match the trail runners from previous scenes?” Carver asked.
Hughes nodded. “The partial footwear mark at Steve Norris’s apartment over at Herculaneum Dock, and the partial we got off the cliff at Catch the Gamma Wave.”
“Did we ever establish if Steve Norris owned a pair of Adidas trainers?” Carver asked.
“There’s nothing in his credit card history,” Hughes said.
“He had two brand-new pairs of trainers in his flat,” Ruth said. “Where’d he get them? Were they a gift?” She turned to DC Ivey. “Tom, did you find any sports shoe purchases on the victims’ stolen credit cards?”
Carver saw where she was going with this: if the trainers showed up on a victim’s credit card, Norris could be their man.
Ivey shook his head. “Electronic goods, cash withdrawals, and food—that’s pretty much it.”
“Anyway, Steve Norris wears a size nine,” Hughes chipped in. “And the shoe imprints we found at Kharon’s place are somewhere between eleven and twelve.”
“Norris is looking more and more like a victim,” Ivey said.
“There could be other victims, other credit cards out there,” Carver cautioned. “To be on the safe side, let’s talk to the family—see where those trainers came from.”
“I think I might know, boss.” Naylor was thumbing through his notebook. “When I asked Norris’s neighbor what he was wearing the morning he disappeared, he said Norris changes trainers quicker than most of us change toothbrushes.
“I said it must cost him a bomb, and he said . . .” He leafed through a few more pages. “Here we are . . . ‘I think he had a sponsor.’”
“We need to know who that was,” Carver said. Ruth made a note, and he turned again to Hughes. “Any other trace of the killer?”
“We’re still looking. A tiny amount of residue from the shoes—high-quality analysis might give us a steer toward his location.”
His tone implied a request, and Carver said, “You have a suggestion?”
“I’d like to have a sample couriered to the soil scientists at the Hutton Institute in Aberdeen,” Hughes said, as though he expected a refusal.
Carver recalled his conversation with Ruth Lake about the very same thing, cut short by Dave Ryan’s thugs. He did a quick mental calculation: secure transport and analysis would not come cheap.
“Do it.”
The man who’d given the okay was Detective Superintendent Wilshire. He stood just inside the doorway, in full uniform, looking tense and somber. Probably straight from the press conference, Carver thought.
“Carry on, DCI Carver,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” Carver said, matching the superintendent’s own formality; the press must have given Wilshire hell. He switched his attention back to Hughes and gave him the nod to continue.
“The computer techs are scouring Karl’s laptop for DMs, notes, images, and whatnot to see if there’s anything useful,” Hughes finished.
“In the meantime,” Carver said, “we have house-to-house interviews to conduct and we need to talk to Kharon’s associates and friends.” He turned to Ruth Lake. “He is—or was—an art student, wasn’t he?”
“Film studies,” Ruth corrected. “At Fairfield Art College.”
“Okay—talk to his peers, pals, and tutors. Did anyone know he was Kharon, and did he share anything about his special relationship with the Ferryman. Other suggestions?”
“Are we assuming there wasn’t a break-in at Karl’s place?” Naylor asked.
“You mean apart from DCI Carver kicking the door down?” Hughes said.
That raised a few smiles.
“So it’s possible Karl invited the killer in,” Carver said. “But was he expecting the visit—did he tell his friends he was meeting up with the Ferryman? Or was it an unexpected knock at the door?”
“Either way, there’s got to be a good chance the killer was seen,” Ruth said.
“He must’ve had to carry his materials into the house from the vehicle,” she went on. “There was a lot of kit in there, so it probably took a few journeys to and from the flat to shift it, and that’s a busy road. We should check with traffic patrols: Did they have to move a vehicle on? Were there complaints from the public? Did anyone in the area notice the comings and goings?”
“Looks like we’ll have to open another box of bobbies,” Naylor said, with heavy sarcasm.
Carver sympathized. “We could stand down the canvass around St. Michael’s Station,” he said.
“It’ll take a hell of a lot more than that to do the job,” Naylor complained.
Superintendent Wilshire spoke: “I’ll make some calls. See if Cheshire Police can help out.” He left the room with a nod to Carver and a stilted, “Keep up the good work,” to the rest of the team.
Now Carver asked Dr. Yi for his thoughts. Yi had looked at a recorded version of the livestreaming from Kharon’s flat and Ruth Lake had briefed him before the meeting.
“There are notable differences between this and other scenes,” Yi began. “It’s indoors, for one thing, and the Ferryman made no public announcement beforehand. It seems that he wanted you and DS Lake to be first on the scene—which mirrors the Art for Art’s Sake scenario, but this time, he ensured that he had full control of it, and that his followers would have broader access—but only when he was ready for them to see it.”
He paused, and Carver knew what was coming next.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Yi said, “but you have to accept that there is a real risk of physical harm to you, and possibly Sergeant Lake.”
“Risk of physical harm is part of the job,” Carver said.
Yi looked inclined to argue the point, but Carver said firmly, “Should we be reading any particular message into the fact that he took the eyes?”
For a moment, it seemed he wouldn’t answer; then Yi seemed to give a mental shrug.
“Symbolically,” he said, “it could suggest that Karl appropriated the Ferryman’s artistic ‘vision’ by assimilating his work into his own presentations—which, significantly, were very successful in their own right. The trompe l’oeil eyes painted on the lenses of Kharon’s sunglasses could also reference the imitative, or ‘fake’ nature of Kharon’s work.”
“Is that why he set the scene up as a triptych?” Ruth asked.
“To mock Karl’s triptych?” Yi replied. “It seems likely. And the penny in Karl’s mouth carries its own message: in ancient tradition, the dead were buried with a copper coin called an ‘obol’ in the mouth so that they would have money to pay the ferryman for his efforts in carrying them across the river Styx to Hades.” He paused. “It was often called ‘Kharon’s obol.’”
“I bloody hate this smartarse,” Naylor muttered.
“He does seem to want us to know he’s inventive, smart, well read,” Yi said. “It really isn’t enough that he knows—he wants others to acknowledge his cleverness. He needs to be told how brilliant he is.”
“He’s a narcissist,” Carver said, thinking, We already know this.
“He’s a narcissist with a fragile ego,” Yi countered. “This type seems confident, boastful, even, but underlying that is a rather pathetic need for approval. Which is why he responds with rage if he feels challenged or slighted—or if his ego is threatened or injured in any way.”
A spike of orange light flashed to the left of Carver, followed by a wash of gray. He couldn’t locate the source, but he’d felt a powerful burst of sullen rage in that flash of emotional energy.
“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Carver said, feeling he’d missed part of the argument.
“I am saying that Karl Obrazki wasn’t snatched randomly—he had a strong personal connection with the killer.”
“He felt threatened by the recognition Karl was gaining?” Carver asked.
“It seems likely.”
“All right.” Carver folded his arms and thought for a few seconds. “We need to focus all our attention on Karl’s last few hours. He hasn’t been missing for months—we found him just hours after his death; he didn’t turn up at some impersonal public location, he was in his own home. The Ferryman had to gain access to the flat, and since Karl cooperated in making the recording yesterday, it’s also possible that he gave the Ferryman that access. The exhibit used a lot of materials, as Ruth pointed out: the frames, the jar, the photographs for the montage, the canvas backing for the two end panels. So—did someone see the Ferryman bringing the stuff in? Maybe Karl helped him? Did the neighbors hear anything of what went on? Talk to local PCSOs and special constables. Someone must have seen something.”
