The Cutting Room

by Ashley Dyer

  “I left a message on his phone.”

  “Good. What’s the status of the search?”

  Marked cars and a couple of Matrix vans had descended on the area within minutes of Tom Ivey’s emergency call.

  “He’s gone to ground,” Ruth said.

  “And the crime scene?”

  “CSIs are working on them as we speak.”

  “There’s more than one scene?”

  “Our man laid in wait in the garden of an empty house.”

  Carver nodded; when offenders got bored waiting, they did stupid things—like leaving trace of themselves at a crime scene. “Where’s Scanlon now?”

  “Waiting in one of the interview rooms, working through a takeaway meal and a can of Coke.” Ruth paused. “It’s already on the Web. And someone named him.”

  “One of his drinking pals looking for his fifteen minutes of fame, or another leak?” Carver asked.

  “Impossible to say.”

  “We’ll need to sort out a place of safety for him.”

  “Sure. I’ll get that organized.”

  She drove the rest of the way in silence, mulling over what Mick Driscoll had told her about Jason Parr. Was he the source of the leak? Was it possible he got himself the job of logging people in and out at Art for Art’s Sake because he knew Karl Obrazki was inside filming? Did he deliberately let Karl leave unchallenged? It seemed far-fetched, unless he had a line of communication with the Ferryman—and she didn’t even want to think about that. But the question remained: Why was he even there when his name wasn’t on the rota? Not out of a sense of duty, that was for sure. Of course, it was possible he’d picked up on the social media buzz and headed out like the Ferryman’s followers, looking for glory. And why let Karl go? For power? . . . Possibly. Control? She didn’t need a diagnosis from Yi to tell her that Parr was a narcissist as well as a bully—the row she’d overheard between Parr and Tom Ivey was proof of that. He was also arrogant and intrusive, constantly lurking at the edges, digging for information, stowing it away for later use. She could tell Greg Carver—but what would be the point? Dealing with difficult work colleagues was part of the job, and all she had now was a bad feeling about Parr. If she wanted to take this to the boss, she needed evidence that he had stepped over the line.

  At headquarters, they headed straight to the incident room, where a skeleton crew was waiting, called back in from their beds or a rare night in front of the TV. They’d had more offers, as word got out that one of their own had been injured, but Carver had limited the number—they would be needed, rested and keen, when the investigation really got going in the morning.

  “Anything further on Tom Ivey?” he asked.

  Ruth shook her head.

  Carver knew Ruth had been mentoring the detective, and as she walked through the doorway ahead of him, he saw a troubled shimmer of blue around her, which she quelled in a moment.

  “Call the hospital when you have a minute, will you?” Carver said, just to give her the excuse.

  Ruth opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” She nodded toward the interior of the room.

  Ivey was sitting in front of the projector screen, larger than life, his back to them, watching CCTV footage of the attack.

  “Ivey,” Carver said, “what the hell are you doing here?”

  Ivey turned stiffly in his seat. His right eye was bruised, his left arm bulked up by a dressing under his shirtsleeve. “I’m fine, boss,” he said.

  “Well, you look terrible. How’s the arm?”

  Ivey dismissed his injury with a shrug. “It only took a few stitches.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Carver said. “You should be resting.”

  “I’m a bit vague on the details, sir,” Ivey said. “I wanted to see if the security footage jogged my memory—before it goes right out of my mind.”

  Carver shook his head, and Ivey seemed to misinterpret his exasperation for disappointment.

  “I know,” he said. “I messed up.” Behind him, his violent tussle with the would-be killer played out on the projector screen.

  “Tom,” Carver said, “you came within an inch of catching the Ferryman. And if you hadn’t acted so fast, we’d be looking at another murder victim—you saved Drew Scanlon’s life.”

  DC Ivey shook his head. “I let the bastard get away.”

  “You did what you’re supposed to do: you protected the witness. Now—”

  Ruth Lake cleared her throat; her eyebrows raised, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth, she was challenging him.

  He glared at her, and she bugged her eyes. He began to wish he hadn’t become so adept at reading people, but he knew exactly what she meant with that look: Hadn’t he hauled himself to work and stayed long hours when he was supposed to be on limited duties? Hadn’t he dragged Ruth into the deception with his “ride-alongs” in her car, when he was supposed to be at home?

  He looked away for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “All right . . .”

  By then, ten members of the team had gathered. They sat on chairs or perched on desks close to the screen. Parr hurried through the door looking slightly disheveled, and Carver read surprise in Parr’s face as he noticed Tom Ivey, followed by a snarl of dislike.

  A vivid flash of orange surged around Ruth as she watched the late arrival take his seat.

  Carver decided to ask her what was going on between her and the special constable after the meeting, but for now he turned to the tech and said, “Play the recording from the start, will you?”

  “It’ll take a minute to set up,” the CSI said, looking pressured by the attention. “I’ve had to grab footage off two different cameras.”

  “That’s all right,” Carver said. “DC Ivey can talk us through events up to the attack.”

  Ivey had his notebook on the desk in front of him; he glanced at it before making a start. “Scanlon got home from police HQ at nineteen thirty-seven hours,” he said. “He was a bit twitchy—almost gave me the slip a couple of times. Didn’t stay home long, though. At twenty thirteen, he walked half a mile to the Arkles pub, corner of Arkles Lane and Anfield Road.”

  “Any suspicious activity?”

  “No, but Scanlon was expecting trouble, checked over his shoulder every five seconds, so I hung back. I didn’t see anyone following.”

  Carver nodded.

  “I found a spot where I could keep an eye on him, he stayed till twenty-two fifty, then walked—I should say staggered—home. I kept my distance—again, didn’t notice anything suspect on the way.

  “I didn’t want to spook him, so I waited till he’d turned the corner into his street before following him round. Must’ve been—I dunno—twenty meters back, when I saw someone coming out of the garden of a derelict house ahead of me. I called it in; they said they had a unit on the way . . .” He frowned, as if he was having trouble remembering. “I saw a glint of light on metal, yelled to warn Scanlon—I was sure it was a knife.”

  Ivey shook his head. “It gets fuzzy after that.”

  The technician caught his eye, and Carver gave him the nod to run the security video.

  The footage showed Drew Scanlon taking a key out of his pocket and squinting at the door frame. A few seconds later, he turned, bringing his hand up defensively, eyes widening, mouth open in a yell. A blur of movement, then Scanlon lying on the ground, a knife close by. The image was blurred and kept breaking up into clusters of blocky pixels, but in the clearer images between, they could see the attacker was wearing a balaclava, a dark coat, and gloves.

  “Yeah,” Ivey said, his eyes fixed on the screen, following the action. “I remember now. I whacked the attacker a good one on the elbow, and he dropped the knife. He punched me in the face, then . . .”

  He seemed confused, and Carver wondered if the hospital had checked him for concussion.

  Ruth spoke up: “The other recording looked better quality.”

  “It is.” The technician stopped th
e recording and switched to the second camera. “This machine is newer, better in low light.”

  The struggle between Ivey and the attacker continued. The offender had recovered the knife and began swinging it at Ivey, on the ground. Ivey rolled and was on his feet in a second. Then Scanlon half rose and abruptly pitched face forward, knocking Ivey off-balance.

  “Ah . . .” Ivey said. “I thought the attacker had punched me again, but that was Scanlon. Then I felt the knife go in. Knew what it was—it was so cold. I was too slow . . .”

  “No,” Carver said, “you were fast. You’d just had the wind knocked out of you, but you bounced to your feet like it was nothing at all. You didn’t see his face because you couldn’t have. It was covered. You did everything you could.”

  On-screen, the attacker froze for a second and light flared off the camera. This was the moment the first responders had arrived. He turned and ran.

  Ruth was staring at the screen; it was her stillness that Carver responded to: “Did you see something?”

  “Not sure. Can you go back and freeze the screen when he starts swinging the knife at Tom?”

  The tech obliged.

  “Now advance it frame by frame.”

  The attacker’s coat sleeve had ridden up in the struggle. The tattoos on them were clearly visible.

  “Ruth?” Carver said.

  “There’s a second as he turns to run,” she said. “You get a glimpse of the back of his neck.” Her voice gave nothing away.

  The attacker’s neck had been tattooed with parallel lines ending in nodes. They seemed familiar. Carver leaned in for a closer look.

  “Now, where have I seen those before?”

  “It’s Adam,” Ruth said, and Carver thought he heard a small click as she swallowed. “Adam Black.”

  67

  Day 13

  Armed police raided Adam’s shared house at two a.m. He wasn’t there, nor was there any sign of the white van. They searched every inch of the place, including the loft space, got nothing. Carver asked the police search adviser to keep a look out for the picture Adam submitted to Alderson Bank’s Art Awards.

  “We can do that,” the PolSA said. “What do I tell them to look for?”

  Carver hardly knew. All he had to work with was the title, so he went with that. But if it was ever there, it wasn’t now—in fact, very few of Adam’s paintings were in the flat, and there was nothing in his room to indicate where he might have gone. His flatmates claimed they hadn’t heard from him since the previous morning.

  Meanwhile, Drew Scanlon was still waiting for his escort to a safe house. They showed him a still of the attacker’s tattoos; he didn’t recognize them. Didn’t pick Adam out of an array of photos, either, but he was still in shock, not really thinking straight—he might see things differently when they had him tucked away safe.

  Carver went home at three thirty a.m. and slept like he’d been felled by a sledgehammer but woke at six feeling alert and ready for work. With the morning briefing scheduled for eight a.m., he wanted to be on top of any reports that had come through overnight, so he phoned for a cab and was at his desk before seven.

  Blood found at the scene of the attack was still being analyzed, he discovered. There had been no reported sightings of Adam Black overnight, and the Ferryman’s Instagram account remained ominously silent. Carver would have to decide soon if they should go public on Adam’s arrest warrant.

  Scanning down the list of e-mails in his inbox, his eye snagged on one from Alderson Bank. It was Marcus Fenst’s PA, apologizing for the delay, but they’d had an unusually large number of entries last year, and the archived submissions had been housed in another part of the country. He would have them sent by courier to Merseyside Police HQ; Carver should expect them by the end of the day.

  Dismayed by the thought of hundreds of forms arriving in the middle of the chaos he was already dealing with, Carver skipped to the bottom of the e-mail and found a direct landline contact. He dialed through, expecting to be connected to voice mail, but the phone was picked up immediately, and Mr. Concannon seemed pretty chipper, given the early hour.

  Carver introduced himself and explained that he was really only interested in grant applications or competition entries Fenst had knocked back.

  “Oh,” Concannon said. “I’m afraid we don’t separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the paper trail—we find it’s easier to keep everything for a particular year together.”

  “How many entries are we looking at?” Carver asked.

  “Over seven hundred forms—and then there’s quite a stack of correspondence, too.”

  Concannon broke Carver’s appalled silence: “The judges felt the same way,” he said. “The burden of dealing with so many entries took its toll—in fact, that was the impetus for changing the entry requirements.”

  “You changed the rules? When was that?”

  “Last year,” Concannon said. “That is—for this round of submissions.”

  “What was the change?”

  “The age range. Previously it was twenty-five and up, but Marcus petitioned the board for an upper age limit of forty years.”

  “Did it help?”

  “We got slightly more entries, if anything,” Concannon said, with a chuckle. “The press made a few ‘ageist’ headlines out of it. But almost half were disqualified on the age criterion, so it meant a lot less work for Marcus and Jim in the long run.”

  “There must have been fallout?”

  “Some did find it hard to accept.”

  “Any who were particularly vocal?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Could you give it some thought, let me know?”

  “Well, I’ll do my best . . .” For the first time in the conversation, Concannon sounded flustered. “But we’re just coming up to our annual general meeting and I have a heavy workload—and since Marcus . . .” Mentioning his boss’s name seemed to give him pause, and for a moment, he was silent. “I could send you a spreadsheet of names—like the one Jim sent you. We had an intern weed out the ineligible entries—he and Marcus worked out a code for rejection criteria—that might help you to select those for whom you would want further details.”

  Carver called up the spreadsheet he’d had from Jim Barrow. “Okay—how does the code work?”

  “If you see ‘R/A,’ in the rejection column, you know that they failed to meet the age criterion,” Concannon said.

  “Just a minute.” Carver scanned across the columns. “I don’t see that code on Jim Barrow’s spreadsheet. In fact, I can’t find a rejection column at all.”

  A moment’s silence, then, “Oh, lord . . . Sorry—no—you wouldn’t,” Concannon said. “My mistake—Marcus and Jim only saw the entries that fit the criteria. They created their long list from the vetted entries.”

  “Can you send me the spreadsheets for this year and last?” Carver said.

  “Yes, of course,” Concannon said. “I’m so sorry for the mix-up.”

  At the morning briefing, Ruth herself handed out photos of Adam—screen captures from his interview under caution the previous day. The search for him had continued overnight, and Ruth would go with DC Ivey to the tattoo studio and interview the staff as soon as it opened.

  “Adam Black, aka ‘MadAdaM,’ has sleeve tattoos on both arms, similar to these,” she said, clicking to example photos she must have downloaded from the Web. “He’ll probably hide those. You’re more likely to see his neck tattoos.” She clicked to a still from the CCTV recording outside Drew Scanlon’s apartment block. A few people sketched the image into their notebooks.

  She looked around the room, her gaze cool, her face expressionless. “You should also know”—she paused as heads came up—“that Adam Black is my brother.”

  Among the exclamations and comments, no one seemed more shocked than John Hughes.

  Carver saw Ruth retreat into herself, shut down, as if she’d thrown up a physical barrier, and he called on the crime sc
ene manager to talk through his report. Like the pro he was, Hughes clicked straight into presentation mode.

  “Hutton sent their analysis of the soil sample trace from the shoe print we found at Steve Norris’s apartment,” Hughes said. “It’s a unique mix of alluvial clay-size particles and Shirdley Hill sand, plus a combination of pollens, spores, and organic matter that is a match to Priory Wood, where we believe Norris was abducted.”

  “So the Ferryman grabbed Norris in the woods as he ran to work, then came back to the victim’s flat to record Catch the Gamma Wave at the old railway station across the way?” Carver said.

  “It looks like it.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting Norris was killed for the view from his flat?” This was DC Gorman, the paunchy detective with a bad attitude.

  “Why not?”

  Heads turned. It seemed that Dr. Yi had rearranged his schedule to be at the briefing. He stood at the back of the room, unruffled by the dozens of pairs of eyes on him. “Serial killers choose victims because they look like someone the killer hates or is fixated on. Or because they’re wearing a particular style of shoe. I once treated a patient who stabbed a waiter to death because he didn’t like the man’s line in table patter.”

  Carver heard his team take a collective breath.

  “Even so—does it matter why?” Sergeant Naylor said. “He picks them for whatever reason and uses their apartments as a base. Maybe he snatched Norris, took him back to where he does what he does, then nipped over to Norris’s flat to pick up his credit cards and anything else worth lifting. He looks out the window and sees the cliff and thinks, ‘That’ll do for the next show.’”

  A few nods from the rest. Carver was ready to speak up on the need to find links between the victims, but Yi wasn’t finished.

  “You say his motivation is of no interest,” he said. “But if you knew how the killer was choosing his victims, it would help you to identify the actual victims out of the twelve or more you have on your list of missing persons. Which would free up more personnel to ask the right people questions and give you a better chance of creating real meaningful leads.”