The Cutting Room

by Ashley Dyer

  She shook the mouse on her desk to wake up her computer and tapped in commands, clicking through screens. “Adam Black . . .” she murmured. “Adam Black . . . No. Sorry, Sergeant. He’s not there.”

  “He might be registered under a street name,” Ruth suggested. “MadAdaM.”

  The woman’s eyebrows twitched, but she didn’t comment.

  Ruth dictated the spelling and capitalization, and the admin officer typed it in and resumed her search.

  “Oh.” She stopped, clicked through some more tabs, and a new screen came up. “There he is—MadAdaM. Apparently, we suggested several possible properties. I’ll print the list.”

  She clicked through the printing instructions, logged out, and stood. “I need to go to the printer room to pick it up,” she said, adding dryly, “Efficiency measures devised by a man.” She squinted to a glass-fronted office at the end of the room. “Looks like there’s a queue at the machines, but I’ll be as fast as I can.”

  Ruth sat in the waiting area, thinking about the Pools syndicate and what it must be like to just walk away from your old life, start a new one with none of the baggage attached to it. The idea had its attractions, and the Ferryman’s known victims—and many of those who were still missing—had expressed a hankering for travel and adventure.

  The fact was, in the end they had stayed put. Sure, Eddings had talked about using his lottery win to travel the world, but he’d ended up buying a property instead. Martin, too, had dug in and worked hard, even postponing his engagement to keep his focus.

  An idea was beginning to form in her head. It didn’t have substance, yet, but her blood fizzed. The connection was there—she just had to find it.

  She took out her phone and searched for the Echo article on Eddings, found a beaming photo of him accepting his check. Norris was in the local paper, too, photographed streaking through the finish line at the London Marathon the previous year. A “ballot” entry, he’d nevertheless completed the course in just two hours twenty—only eleven minutes behind the leaders on one of the hottest marathon days on record. Scrolling down the page, she found a link to a second article; Norris was pictured shaking hands with a sports retailer who’d stepped in to sponsor his Commonwealth Games ambitions. Norris’s sponsorship, Eddings’s lottery win—and then there was Karl Obrazki, beaming out of the front pages of the nationals.

  Could the Ferryman be choosing his victims because he happened to see them online, or in the local press? Karl had been on BBC local news, too, after they’d brought him in for questioning.

  Her heart thrumming, she typed in a new search for Dillon Martin but found nothing. And what about Tyler Matlock? The council would hardly have publicized the fact that they’d made a payout to him—they’d have been inundated with claims from anyone who’d skidded on ice during the winter they ran out of road salt.

  Even so, she sent a text to Carver—it’d be worth talking to Martin’s relatives, see if there was any publicity around his bursary.

  Then the administrator called her name, and for a time, she forgot all about her tentative theory.

  74

  The sun has a rare clarity and warmth for the time of year, and I’m driving with the window down. Traffic is heavy; I don’t enjoy the fumes, but the sonic vibrations of the heavy goods lorries that pound up and down this stretch of the docks are as good as any hard-rock riff.

  I left the van at the usual place. I’ve been driving the Toyota hatchback for the last hour, trying to clear my head. The incident in Vauxhall was hairy; I’m fairly sure the old tosser didn’t get a good look at me, but he saw the vehicle all right, and he might have spotted the plate.

  Time to find new transport. I should’ve dumped the damn thing on the next patch of scrubland and torched it, but I’ll admit the old guy rattled me. Problem is I can’t risk leaving the van where it is—it’s too close to my gallery. Which means I’ll have to pick it up, do what I should have done after the old bastard challenged me: torch it.

  It’s well hidden off the main road, along a side street of disused warehouses and empty lots, under a railway bridge, left, then right. Abandoned commercial properties, on isolated, empty streets, unlit at night.

  Almost there; at the end of the next street is the entrance to a disused junkyard. Anything salable is long gone, leaving only a few bits of rusted scrap and black oil stains on the poisoned earth. The van is parked out of sight, around the back of a tilting wooden shack that used to serve as an office.

  I slow for the turn and catch a flash of blue-and-lemon-yellow checkerboard livery.

  Police.

  Shit. I ease past. Three cars, at least five police in uniform.

  They’ve found the van!

  How the hell . . . ?

  A helicopter clatters overhead.

  Oh, Jesus, no. This cannot be happening.

  I carry on, at a slow pace, driving around potholes, taking my time. Perhaps they’ll think I’m just another idiot who put too much trust in the SatNav.

  75

  Greg Carver was at his desk, working through the list of art competition entrants. He’d passed Ruth’s query on to the liaison officers dealing with the victims’ families and apparently, Dillon Martin had been interviewed on BBC Radio Merseyside when his firm won a regional business award. Matlock’s cronies said he’d boasted about his compensation payment in just about every pub and bar in the city. As Carver sat highlighting the names of the bank’s Art Awards rejects, a team was sifting through the list of missing men, searching for anyone who’d been featured on local media after a stroke of good fortune. Meanwhile, three disused tea warehouses had been identified in the North Docks; a team of three was in the process of contacting landlords and checking them out.

  His desk phone rang. The call had been patched through from a patrol unit at the North Docks.

  “We’ve got the van,” the cop said.

  “Where?”

  “Parked in an abandoned junkyard in the middle of no-man’s-land at the north end of the Dock Road.”

  Carver remembered the sump-oil residue the scientists had identified from the trace at Norris’s flat. It seemed Ruth was right to put her faith in the shoe print analysis. “How did you find it?”

  “Eye in the sky caught the heat of the engine on thermal imaging,” the cop said. “The vanity plates are still inside.”

  “And it’s still warm? He could be around then.”

  “It isn’t exactly hot,” the cop said. “Could’ve been parked awhile. We’ve got a two-crewed unit cruising the area—but in all honesty, he could be long gone.”

  “It’s still a win,” Carver said. “If the van is intact?”

  “All in one piece,” the cop said.

  Carver punched the air. “You’ve secured the scene?”

  “Setting up the perimeter as we—” The cop broke off. “Is he lost, or what?”

  “Talk to me,” Carver said.

  “A steel-gray Toyota Yaris just cruised past the end of the street. Gimme a minute.”

  The line went quiet for a short while.

  “I put a call through to the mobile unit,” the cop said, when he came back. “They’re only a couple of blocks away—they’ll see what’s what.”

  “Tell them to approach with extreme caution,” Carver said.

  “Will do.”

  “Give me your coordinates,” he added, thinking of the Ferryman’s army of followers descending on the Art for Art’s Sake exhibit, besieging the garden, throwing missiles. “I’ll get Scientific Support and a Matrix unit out to you just as soon as possible. And keep me informed.”

  76

  How did they find the van? There’s no CCTV for half a mile around, no bystanders, no witnesses—even a gutter-crawling smackhead would turn its nose up at this crumbling quarter of the city.

  Jesus—how long have they been there? What have they found?

  Nothing. A few fingerprints, maybe—but since they’re not on record . . . And I’ve been careful—
haven’t even driven the van onto a petrol station forecourt since I got back from London.

  Shit. I stopped for diesel a couple of nights ago. Filled a couple of cans, stuck them in the boot of the Toyota. What did I do with the receipt?

  I drag my wallet out of my back pocket, keep one eye on the road as I check.

  It’s not there.

  Oh, God. I threw it on the passenger seat when I got in the van. Paid by credit card. Fuck!

  For a full five seconds I’m driving blind. I literally cannot see past the black fog clouding my vision.

  Look. It’s fine. Just a receipt, right? The van is clean—you gloved up whenever you used it. Ditch the card, tell them you didn’t notice it was missing.

  A fresh kick of fear. The gallery—there’s plenty of evidence in the gallery.

  “Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”

  Calm down. You paid cash for the gallery—it’s untraceable.

  Sure, until my face is all over the media—that should jog the memory of the guys who brought the meat locker across town from the delivery address. And what about the electrician who wired it into the mains?

  Stop panicking and think. There’s time to sort the gallery; they’re not going to find it straightaway. I just need to get to it before they do, get rid of paperwork, the laptops.

  A police car appears in my rearview mirror.

  Take it slow and easy.

  It accelerates down the cobbled road, gaining on me. They turn on the light bar. If they pick me up now, I might not get to the gallery in time. If they find that, I’m finished.

  I hit the gas, my chest constricting, a throbbing pulse blocking my throat.

  The police siren blasts behind me; they flash their headlights. I throw the car right, feel it fishtail. I fight with the wheel, hear a crunch, feel an impact—the rear panel on the passenger side scrapes along the corner of a building and sparks fly. I brake, hit the accelerator again. If I can get onto the Dock Road, head for the city center, I’ll dump the car and disappear into the crowds.

  Turn the car around. Drive it straight at the bastards. I twitch the wheel, but the tire bumps the curb and the car leaps a foot in the air then crashes, nose down, into a pothole.

  I jink left, squeezing the Toyota down a narrow alleyway. The police car slews around the bend after me, hits the walls on both sides. Metal groans—both front panels of the cop car crumple like tinfoil; the impact seems to rush past me as a judder of air and sound.

  “Yes!”

  Keep a cool head, you can still beat this. You just have to get to the gallery before they find it.

  All I need is a few minutes—and a little strategic distraction.

  77

  Carver’s work mobile rang.

  “Bill Naylor, boss. I’m at one of the old tea warehouses off the Dock Road. Landlord’s with me. We can’t gain access—he says the locks’ve been changed.”

  Carver felt a prickling in the back of his skull. “I’m going to request an ARV.” He reached for the desk phone and keyed through to the switchboard as he spoke: “Be advised, a patrol unit has located the van, and they had a suspicious vehicle near the scene—a gray Toyota Yaris. If it’s him, there’s no telling what he’ll do—so be careful.”

  “I was born careful,” Naylor said, with a chuckle.

  Request for backup made, Carver hung up the landline.

  “They’re on their way—ETA eight minutes.” The phone buzzed in his hand. “Stand by, Bill.”

  He tapped the swap icon to take the second call. It was from the patrol unit guarding the van.

  “The lads in the other unit intercepted the Toyota, but he made a run for it. Pursuit vehicle crashed.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Not unless you count the car—that’s a write-off.”

  “They lost him?” Carver said. The main set in the patrol vehicle blared out, but he couldn’t make out the words. “What’s happening?”

  “That was our eye in the sky—they’ve got eyeballs on him. He’s going nowhere,” the cop said with grim satisfaction.

  “Have we got the registered keeper’s ID?”

  “A seventy-five-year-old man from Kirkby who actually drives a Volvo.”

  “Stolen plates again,” Carver said.

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “The Matrix unit is dispatched. Hang tight.” He switched back to Naylor’s call. “Bill, are you still there?”

  “Like patience on a monument,” Naylor said.

  Carver updated him on the situation as he made his way down the corridor to the incident room.

  “I can hear the chopper,” Naylor said. “Can’t see it yet, though. The landlord said there’s another way in round the back—a roller door for vehicle access—but he didn’t have the remote with him. He’s gone to fetch it.”

  Carver briefed the few detectives in the MIR and gave orders for the house-to-house teams to stand by; they might be needed elsewhere.

  Tom Ivey listened with one eye on his computer; his shiner was turning black as the hours passed.

  Carver considered sending him home, but he decided that would be hypocritical, under the circumstances.

  Ivey suddenly snapped upright. “Boss. The Ferryman just sent out a public message. He’s mobilizing his fans—sending them to the scrapyard, looks like. Says there’s a new exhibit.”

  “Great—half the scallies in the north end’ll be out looking for a bit of aggro,” DC Gorman grumbled.

  “Well, you’d better get out there and sort them, hadn’t you?” Carver said.

  The rest of the crew were already reaching for jackets, patting pockets for car keys.

  “You know where to go,” Carver said, as they made their way to the door. “I want everyone in body armor. No exceptions. You’ll take your lead from the Matrix team, clear?”

  Nods, a few ragged shouts of “Sir” and “Boss!”

  Carver saw DC Ivey limping toward the door. “Not you, Tom,” he said.

  Ivey began to argue and Carver said, “That’s an order.”

  “What am I supposed to do, stuck here?” Ivey protested.

  “Keep an eye on Instagram traffic—let me know if anything new crops up, take any calls that come in.” It wasn’t much to offer by way of compensation, but Ivey was in no fit state to tackle an ugly crowd, and it was the best he could do.

  Moments later, he was talking to Sergeant Farrow at the Contact Center.

  “We’ll set up a couple of roadblocks, see if we can hold them back,” the Contact Center manager said. “But there’s a lot of wasteland in the area—they could just drive over it if they don’t mind risking their tires.”

  “What’s the word on the Toyota?” Carver asked.

  “It stopped for about a minute, then drove off again. We’ve got it heading south on the backstreets.”

  Carver checked the map on his laptop screen.

  “He’s heading toward the warehouse, using his fans to draw police away. We need that ARV at Naylor’s location.” He heard someone shout in the background.

  “Stand by,” Farrow said.

  Carver heard a muffled exchange, then:

  “We just lost the chopper—a couple of clowns shining laser lights into the cockpit. They’ve had to return to base.”

  Carver muttered a curse. “Bill Naylor’s at the warehouse with no backup—do we know when that ARV will arrive?”

  “It’s en route. Stand by—we’ve just had a shout from Naylor.”

  “Put me on speaker,” Carver said.

  The hum of voices from the Contact Center got louder, and Carver heard Naylor’s voice. “—steel gray Toyota Yaris.” He reeled off the registration.

  “That’s him,” Carver said.

  “Charlie Tango; this is Lima Mike four-two. He’s just sitting there, over.”

  “Do not approach,” Carver said.

  “That you, boss?” Naylor said. “Like I said, born careful, over.”

  A second later, he spoke again, all informa
lity gone: “Charlie Tango; Lima Mike four-two. Urgent call.”

  The Contact Center chatter dropped to almost nothing, call handlers and police officers citywide clearing the airwaves for Naylor’s message. As a career bobby, Naylor had seen just about everything there was to see in the job—he wouldn’t request radio silence unless something serious was brewing.

  “Toyota is approaching.” A pause. “What the hell—?”

  A second later, the roar of an engine, a shout of dismay. A thud. Then silence.

  78

  The police were waiting. I don’t know how they could’ve . . . But there’s no time for that. Deal with the situation, there’ll be time for analysis later.

  I’ve gathered my laptops. I know better than to leave them for the police techs to play with. The rest can burn, pile incriminating items on the dissection table: paperwork; credit cards; letters sent to my work address.

  I open the cold store as I hear the sirens. They won’t get in through the front door. I made sure of that. But I still need a way out. I’ve sent DMs to a few local supporters—offered a cash reward for what I need. Well, I am asking them to enter a burning building, when all’s said—I had to offer a greater incentive than thwarting the police and earning a place in art history—

  I pour petrol over everything, lay a trail to the door, step into the corridor, pluck a match from the book, light the rest with it, and toss the lot inside. A blast of hot air knocks me sideways. I leave the door open, feel cool air rush past me, sucked in by the fire. The other flammables in the workshop will feed the blaze.

  79

  Carver had only just reached his office when his mobile rang. It was Sergeant Farrow with an update.

  “The Toyota mounted the pavement and crashed,” he said, without preamble. “The ARV is on-site. Blood at the entrance to the building; no sign of Bill Naylor. His PR’s still working, but he’s not responding. Matrix team arrival is imminent, and an ambulance is on its way.”