by Ashley Dyer
“Did he?”
“Ruth, what’s going on?” John said.
“I don’t know where my head is at, just now, John.” The lines and wrinkles in his face realigned to an expression of sympathy, and Ruth shrugged, even smiled a little. “It was snowing—driving conditions were slow.”
He raised a finger, another question forming on his lips.
She checked her watch. “Sorry, John, I’ve got to go—the boss wants to introduce me to my new DCI.”
The distraction worked.
“Already?” John said. “He’s not letting the grass grow.”
“He thinks we’ve got the Thorn Killer backed into a corner.”
“Does he know TK’s got Carver’s case files?”
Ruth bit her lip. “I haven’t told him the files are missing, yet.”
“You need to start communicating with the SIOs, Ruth.”
“I know,” she said, thinking she would have to be very careful precisely how much she communicated. “So there was no sign that anyone else was at Greg’s flat?”
He lifted up the evidence bag with her shoes inside.
“Only the shoeprint.” A shadow crossed Hughes’s face. “This guy is a ghost,” he said. “We searched every inch of the place—there’s no sign that any man other than Greg was ever in his apartment.”
That was dangerously near the truth, so she gave him a sympathetic grimace and wished him luck, then headed off to talk to Superintendent Wilshire.
Chapter 8
Day 3
New Year’s Eve; BBC News is running a feature on the “Thorn Killings.” Most news coverage over the two previous days has been focused on Carver: looped video of the scene outside his apartment; reports on his status—“critical, but stable”; press conferences with appeals to the public for information. But with no information forthcoming, and Carver’s condition unchanged, press interest has returned to the killings.
The subject of the program sips coffee and watches, conscious of being a part of history in the making.
“It is nine days since Kara Grogan’s body was found,” the reporter intones, his solemnity a fair approximation of sincerity. “Apparently the fifth victim of the so-called Thorn Killer.”
Images of the five women appear one after another on-screen.
“In a pattern that has become chillingly familiar, Kara, a student at the Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts, disappeared just over three weeks before she was found,” the commentator goes on. “Police believe she was alive until shortly before her body was discovered in Liverpool’s Sefton Park, at a place known locally as the ‘Fairy Glen.’”
The reporter speaks over footage of the rock feature and the tree where Kara had been found, the foot of which is now littered with cellophane-wrapped flowers, some half buried in snow. The camera pulls back to show a waterfall, complete with picturesque drifts of snow on its rocky outcrops and a few twinkling icicles hanging from the topmost rock formations.
Kara was the most beautifully staged of all of them. The backdrop was dramatic; the dressing, lighting, makeup brilliantly conceived and executed. That night’s frost had heightened the scene, taking what was already gorgeous and rendering it truly exquisite.
“Like the other four victims, Miss Grogan’s body had been extensively inked with tattoos that the police believe were made using a sharp thorn.”
Her skin—so pale! The ink seemed to float above it, so that the eyes etched in her flesh appeared alive, active.
The snowy scene at the glen melts to an image of a smiling Kara Grogan side by side with a recent photograph of Emma Carver, helpfully captioned with her name and her relationship to DCI Greg Carver, described as “the detective in charge of investigating the murders.” Emma’s picture has been airbrushed and retouched to make her look younger, but even without the photoshopping, the two women are strikingly similar.
The reporter rehashes how Kara’s body had been posed, as all the others were, in a place where they would quickly be discovered. “But on this occasion, a text message was sent from Kara Grogan’s mobile phone to Detective Chief Inspector Carver, with a photograph of the scene, and instructions as to where he would find her.”
He maintains a poker face but can’t quite contain the excitement in his voice as he adds, “A confidential source revealed to us today that when she was found, Kara was wearing a pair of earrings that have since been identified by DNA analysis as belonging to Mrs. Carver.”
They switch to a photograph of earrings labeled, in the interests of clarity, as “the same design” as the pair Kara was wearing when she was found.
“Oh . . .” That’s new. Someone has been tattling to the media. The killer feels a return of the dull fury experienced after first discovering that Carver had been shot. The earrings were a message for Carver to reflect on; they were not intended as a topic for vulgar gossip and public speculation.
“In an extraordinary turn of events, two days ago, Chief Inspector Carver was shot in his own home. Police say they are keeping an open mind as to the possibility that the shooting is linked to the so-called Thorn Killer inquiry.”
Obligingly, they show a press conference at which DCI Jansen regurgitates the usual platitudes about police objectivity, and the unhelpfulness of speculation, ending with a request for help from the public.
His appeals don’t seem to have gotten through to the media. The most popular theory to date is that DCI Carver got too close to finding the Thorn Killer and had narrowly escaped becoming his sixth victim. By shooting. How could they compare Kara’s grotto with the ugly mess in Carver’s apartment and call that the Thorn Killer’s work? It was insulting, offensive.
“Detective Chief Inspector Carver remains in a critical condition under twenty-four-hour guard at the Aintree Neurosciences Centre, on the outskirts of Liverpool,” the reporter says.
It’s a matter of public knowledge that Carver was airlifted to the Neurosciences Centre, but it is still somewhat puzzling, since the killer is one of the few who knows for a fact that Carver was shot in the chest.
“Merseyside Police have also placed Chief Inspector Carver’s wife under armed protection.”
“Really?”
The newsreader turns to his left and introduces a retired detective superintendent from the Met and an elderly forensic psychologist. The ex-cop explains that the physical similarities between Kara and Emma Carver, and—more chillingly—the DNA match to Mrs. Carver on the earrings, means that Merseyside Police had to consider the possibility that there is a credible threat to Mrs. Carver’s safety.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake . . .”
In fact, Merseyside Police have declined to comment on this speculation, but the reporter asks the ancient forensic psych for his take on the new evidence. The old man grumbles and wheezes through a Psych 101 explanation of transference, makes a feeble attempt to jazz it up with a confused bit of psychobabble about “misidentification of the object”—a misidentification of his own, ironically, since he seems unintentionally to identify the entire female sex as “objects.”
The fact of the matter is there was no misidentification. Kara was chosen as a facsimile of Emma Carver as she had been in the early days of her marriage. Kara wasn’t intended as a threat to Emma. She carried a message to Carver.
The psychologist rumbles on: “The murderer could be substituting Emma for a hated figure in his early life.”
“Oh, spare me . . .”
“Equally, by selecting a victim who so closely resembled Chief Inspector Carver’s wife, he could be threatening that which Greg Carver holds dearest because he—the killer—felt particularly threatened at that time.”
“Brilliant reasoning: ‘If it’s not X, then it may be Y, and if not Y, then it could be Z.’” The BBC must really be desperate, seeking the opinion of this decrepit blowhard.
“And BTW psycho-hack: ‘Threatening that which Carver holds dearest’? Your female objectification is showing.”
Kara
was never a threat—she was a reminder to Carver that he still cared for his wife. And judging by Carver’s reaction on the night he found Kara’s body, the message had gotten through loud and clear—at least to the one person it was intended for.
When the old man starts in on “unfinished business” and the significance of the thorn as an object of penetration, it’s time to reach for the remote control. But the program switches to new footage of Detective Sergeant Lake leaving the hospital, and the killer stops, finger hovering over the “off” button. Journos yell the usual expressions of concern and questions about the state of Carver’s health. One voice, louder than the others, roars, “Did the Thorn Killer shoot Chief Inspector Carver, Sergeant?”
On previous occasions over the last two days, DS Lake has ignored press questions, but now, she stops.
“I am not qualified to comment on Chief Inspector Carver’s health,” she says. “And I am not directly involved in the investigation into his shooting.”
You’ve been briefed by the press office, haven’t you, my darling?
“The team assigned will be investigating all possibilities,” she goes on. “It’s too early to comment, and it’s unhelpful to speculate, but I have full confidence that the person who did this will be punished.”
Lake ends the discussion with a curt nod and steers through the crowd of reporters without a sideways glance.
“You’re saying all the right things, but you don’t believe a word of it. Now is that because you don’t have faith in Chief Inspector Jansen, or is it because you know something you’re not telling?”
A rewind and replay is not enough to unravel that tangled web, but one thing is certain: Ruth Lake says one thing, but her posture and gestures tell quite a different story.
How marvelous! Sergeant Lake becomes more and more intriguing with every encounter.
Chapter 9
Day 5
Ruth Lake’s terraced house in Wavertree was only a short step from the more desirable location of Carver’s apartment, but it might as well be a world away. The house had belonged to her parents. It backed onto another row of Edwardian redbrick houses, and a dozen more streets just like it.
A back entry running the length of the street was just wide enough to accommodate the wheelie bins on collection days. For a while in the late nineties they’d had a problem with addicts queuing in the alley to get their next fix from dealers who lived in the street. Ruth, just a kid at the time, was warned never to use the alley as a shortcut. She’d promised, but of course she broke that promise and had witnessed a fight between two junkies that ended with one of them being stabbed to death. A criminal prosecution, a couple of evictions, and gates placed at strategic points along the alleys to restrict access had finally purged the street of drug touts, and now the area was again considered a safe place to bring up a family.
A two-story extension was tacked on the back; housing the kitchen and bathroom, it took up most of the tiny rear yard, but Ruth had planted up the remaining strip of garden. In spring, the borders were filled with crocuses and narcissi, while in summer, honeysuckle rambled over the walls and filled the air with heady perfume.
Right now, though, her backyard was eight inches deep in snow.
She shivered on her back doorstep and took a drag on an e-cig. She hadn’t had a craving for months, but stress, and the fear of being caught in all her lies, had triggered a jittery need for nicotine. Seeing that uniformed cop at the hospital puffing away like a steam train was more than she could take—she’d almost asked him if he had a spare she could bum. She had resisted—just—the urge to stop off at a newsagent and buy a pack of the real thing, but succumbed to the siren call of the vape later that same day. Another promise broken.
She blew vapor skyward and murmured, “Sorry, Mum.” It was six a.m. and still dark, except for oblongs of light filtering through the bedroom curtains of the houses across the alley.
Since Detective Superintendent Wilshire had introduced him, she had managed to duck DCI Parsons, who had been drafted to take over the Thorn Killer case. He had spent the best part of the last two days reading Greg Carver’s key decision logs and policy files, trying to get up to speed.
These logs and files were described in the how-to manuals as “crucial elements in the senior investigating officer’s decision-making process.” But in the year she had worked with Carver—and increasingly over the past four months—Ruth had seen him routinely make decisions on the spur of the moment and justify them after the fact. In reality, his policy notes were a joke, imposing a spurious logic over the intuitive and sometimes random actions he’d taken. So, while her new boss pored over Carver’s near-fictional account of the investigation, Ruth was getting acquainted with his unofficial files.
She saw the light go on in next door’s kitchen. She didn’t feel up to a chat with old Peggy, so she turned off the vape and returned to her kitchen to pour a fresh coffee from the machine she’d splurged on in the pre-Christmas sales. Warming her hands on the mug, she sat at the table, stifling a yawn.
Carver had done a lot of research on Kara, finding YouTube videos, SoundCloud podcasts, and recordings of readings linked from a WordPress website the student had put together herself.
Ruth opened her laptop and followed one of the links to a YouTube recording entitled “Kara Grogan as Lady Macbeth—sleepwalking scene (dress rehearsal),” clicked on the image, and sat down to watch.
An end-of-year student production, shot in semidarkness, the audio quality on the recording wasn’t great, but the strength of this young woman’s talent was mesmerizing.
Her eyes glistening with tears, dull horror in her expression as if she peered into the murky depths of hell, Kara held her spotless hand up before a candle flame and whispered, “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this . . . little . . . hand.”
Her peers, arranged in a circle of chairs around her, shifted nervously in their seats as she began a soft exhalation. It rose in tone and volume to a wail of anguish. A male student shrunk back in his chair as she spoke to him, admonishing him for looking so pale, urging him to come to bed. “Come,” she said. “Come, come, come!”
Unnerved, the student glanced at those either side of him. For a moment, it seemed that he might even take her proffered hand. But she turned abruptly, snatched up the candle, and swept it in a semicircle so that it guttered and flared in the faces of the front row. A gasp, followed by a murmur of disquiet from the audience and then the candle was extinguished and she disappeared into the darkness muttering, “To bed, to bed!”
The picture faded to black, then a still photograph of Kara smiled out of the frame, her name and the dates of her birth and death in plain white lettering below the picture.
Ruth shivered, and not from the cold.
With Kara fresh in her mind, she turned again to the postmortem files. Kara Grogan, Jo Raincliffe, Hayley Evans, Evie Dodd, Tali Tredwin.
Tali Tredwin was the first, her body discovered almost twelve months ago, in early January. Tali’s back and shoulders had been marked with circles and spirals, like a Maori ceremonial tattoo. At the center of some circles an image of an eye—closed, or half closed. The inking was unfinished, abandoned as the killer had just started etching a new spiral, extending from the corner of one of the half-closed eyes, as if he had lost interest or been distracted in the middle of his task and never returned to it.
The other women were a different story. Although their faces were entirely unmarked, it was impossible to find a square centimeter of the rest of their skins that had not been inked. Their bodies, arms, legs, hands—even the soles of their feet—were covered in the crudely drawn tattoos: flowers, trees, circles, Celtic knots, snakes. Crowding the gaps between them, heads on elongated necks, or eyes at the end of long stalks. Some of the eyes were closed, some open. The ink had been applied too deeply, bleeding into the subdermal tissues and creating a cloudy effect around the pattern—blowout, tattooists called it, an amateur mistake.
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The victims’ skin had been manually punctured, not machine drilled; thousands of tiny, painful wounds, pricked and inked over days and weeks to create the pattern-work. Two victims had shown signs of an allergic reaction, and some of the markings had become infected. It must have been an agonizing ordeal. Minute traces of woody fibers found in the puncture wounds proved that the killer had used some kind of thorn. Within a week, the first “Thorn Killer” headline appeared.
The pathologists had painstakingly extracted tiny splinters of thorn from the first three victims’ skins and sent them to the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Integrative Biology for identification. Progress had been slow because of the small amount of material they had to work with, compounded by the fact that woody tissue doesn’t contain much DNA, but they knew by April that the killer had used berberis thorns to ink the first two victims.
There was no apparent link between the dump sites, but trace evidence indicated that the women had been held—and killed—at one location. Somewhere cold and damp, probably underground: the pathologists had found the same combination of soil fungal spores in the victims’ airways. Cause of death was asphyxia, but the precise manner and means was still unknown. All of them, apart from Tali, had been kept alive for weeks.
Chemical analysis had told them already that the “ink” was, in fact, natural indigo dye most professional tattooists wouldn’t touch because of allergic reactions, and the possibility of scarring. The killer had completed the tattoos on the second victim, Evie Dodd, but the result reminded Ruth of some of the bad prison tats she’d seen over the years: messy, primitive, with a lot of ink bleed.
It didn’t take an expert to notice that the inking of Hayley Evans showed greater skill, with less bleed into the surrounding skin tissues, and sharper definition, as well as denser patterning.
Practice, someone said.
Ten thousand hours of it, one wag had suggested.
