Splinter in the Blood

by Ashley Dyer

  A moment’s silence. “There’s a huge black hole in the center of your theory,” he says, rubbing more powder, hard, into the fresh puncture wounds with his thumb. “How would Lomax know where Carver lived?”

  Ruth groans in pain, despite herself. He’s distracting you because you’ve almost got it. Stay with it. Lomax was obsessive. What do obsessives do in relationships? Suddenly, she knows.

  “He stalked Adela before she dropped out of sight.”

  He continues drilling into her skin, but she hardly feels it, her excitement anesthetizing the pain.

  “Relevance?” he says.

  “He did what stalkers do,” Ruth says. “He followed her, watched her, got to know her routine: her business meetings, her hotel ‘dating,’ the room she booked into. Maybe he even sneaked up to her hotel room and listened. Watched her boyfriends come and go. Did he see you a few times, watching them? Were you afraid he would identify you?”

  A click and the room is plunged into darkness, the intensity made even greater by the micropore strips over her eyes. Her body cooling, her left arm aflame with heat, Ruth listens for his footsteps, hardly daring to breathe.

  A blast of cold air, then the door clangs shut, and she is alone again.

  “Bull’s-eye,” she murmurs.

  Chapter 53

  Inside the taxi, Carver called Gaines’s mobile number, which Ruth had carefully logged in her notes. No answer. He tried the landline; it went straight through to voice mail. It was a 727 number, the same area code as Carver’s home phone, but 727 covered a large area of the city, from Sefton Park to Aigburth, and right along Ullet Road.

  At the next set of traffic lights, the cabdriver slid back the window and called through to him: “D’you know where you’re going, mate? ’Cause I’m due a tea break.”

  Carver shoved a twenty-pound note through the dividing screen. “Just keep circling,” he said.

  He tried the university switchboard; they put him through to Gaines’s office, but there was no answer there, either. Maybe he could wheedle an address out of the Human Resources section. He dialed the switchboard again and was put through to a recorded message saying that the Human Resources section was closed after 4 p.m. “for training.”

  His only other option was a reverse lookup of the number. He tapped on the window and asked for Canning Place, arriving at the police headquarters in the last of the twilight. He used the rear entrance, relieved that his pass card still worked. He took the lift up to the Thorn Killer Major Incident Room, with nothing worse than a few funny looks to contend with. The room was deserted: every officer available must be out looking for Ruth. It had been rearranged to accommodate more staff, and he couldn’t find Ruth’s desk at first, but a kindly intelligence researcher helped him out, leading him to it and waiting until he was seated.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked.

  “Not so good,” Carver admitted. “Any news?”

  “They sent a team round to her house. No sign of Ruth, but someone’s been rooting around. CSIs are there, now.”

  He nodded, feeling guilty that his actions had pulled resources from where they were needed.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked, still hovering.

  “No,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll just . . .” He gestured to the stacks of papers on Ruth’s desk without elaborating.

  She left, but only after extracting a promise that he would give her a shout if he needed anything.

  Using his password to log in at Ruth’s computer, he accessed the reverse lookup to get an address for Gaines, then called up the university website and found an image of the academic: a trim, gray-haired man, with a hint of New Age hippie about him. He looked innocuous enough, but Carver knew from years of policing that looks could deceive. As he braced himself to stand, his eye snagged on an evidence bag in an in-tray at one corner of the desk. It was clearly marked “CCTV, School Lane.” He flashed to the notes Ruth had made on the CCTV evidence. She’d logged an incident on the recording—a woman who had spoken to Kara Grogan the night she was last seen. Ruth wondered if Kara had told the woman where she was headed. He picked up the bag and found four more under it.

  Hell. He couldn’t walk out with the lot. What was the evidence number Ruth had noted? He dug in his pocket and scrolled through the pictures he’d taken at her house, identified it by the number as the second in the pile. He swiveled the chair, ready to leave, and found DC Ivey blocking his way.

  “You can’t walk out of here with that in your possession, sir,” he said, polite, but implacable.

  Carver said, “The Thorn Killer has Ruth.”

  The younger man’s brow furrowed. “No . . . Lomax tried to abduct her, and she—”

  “I know what they’re saying, and it’s bollocks.”

  Ivey shook his head.

  “Think about it,” Carver said. “Lomax’s car was dumped in sight of Canning Place—why didn’t she just cross the road and walk into police headquarters?”

  “She was hit on the head—she was probably concussed.”

  Carver took a breath. “Okay . . . if she was concussed, she might wander the streets for a bit—but with all the CCTV cameras around the city center they’d have found her in ten minutes. They didn’t. If she was concussed and scared, she might’ve jumped in a cab and headed for home. I know Parsons sent a team to her place; she isn’t there, is she?”

  Ivey shook his head.

  “Did they find anything?”

  Ivey glanced quickly around the room. “Your, um, unofficial file.” He lowered his voice. “She’s been working on the case at home—Parsons isn’t happy.”

  “I’d say that’s the least of her worries, just now, wouldn’t you?”

  Ivey flushed.

  “You’re not gonna find anything on that recording, anyway,” Ivey said. “Ruth would’ve said if there was anything important.”

  “Sometimes you don’t know how important a thing is,” Carver said. “It’s the accumulation of facts that gives it significance.”

  Ivey’s frown deepened, and Carver forced himself to remain calm and take the time to explain Ruth’s theory about the woman who had spoken to Kara after she left the theater.

  Ivey shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I dunno . . . I’ve already stuck my neck out on this one, sir.”

  Carver’s head was beginning to swim. He took a breath and tried again: “Look, if Kara did tell this woman where she was going, at the very least we would be able to seize CCTV footage on the route—which might help us locate where she was picked up. Which might give us a vehicle registration, even an image of the abductor . . .”

  Ivey sighed. “Okay . . . okay . . . I’ll talk to DCI Parsons, see if we can get someone onto it.”

  “Take a look around you, man,” Carver said, indicating the empty room. “Everyone is out searching for Ruth—it could take hours to put together a team. There’s you, and there’s me. Here, now, with the evidence. Could it hurt to take a quick look?”

  Ivey bowed his head, and Carver knew he’d won the argument. He offered the disk to the younger detective, and Ivey took it reluctantly.

  “Focus on the minutes after Kara was kicked out of Jasmine Hart’s psychic performance.” Carver closed his eyes, partly to concentrate, but partly because the room was turning in slow circles. “Eight thirty-four p.m.,” he said.

  When he heard Ivey break the evidence seal, he steadied himself and opened his eyes experimentally. The room was still. He planted his feet carefully, fixed his gaze on the doorway some fifteen feet away, and made ready to push off from the chair.

  “Wait a minute, where are you going?” Ivey said.

  “If I have to watch moving images, I might just throw up,” Carver said. “What do you know about Dr. Lyall Gaines?”

  The younger man shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Clearly, he didn’t even know the name.

  “Okay,” Carver said. “Find the woman on that CCTV footage; she might be able t
o help.”

  Chapter 54

  Ruth’s abductor is circling constantly, hiding in the shadows, stalking her like a cat, but always beyond the drenching curtain of light, so he is no more than a shadow, a shifting form as distorted as his electronically altered voice. The burning pain in her arm has receded a little, and she wonders if she is in shock. He has been working on her again, or the poison is working its way into her system, because the hot, dull throb extends from her forearm to just above her elbow.

  “Why do you hide yourself?” she asks.

  “A more interesting question is why do you?” he says.

  Ruth ignores the bounce-back: “We both know I’m not getting out of here. I won’t be able to identify you—so, tell me—why?”

  Her captor seems to think about this. “Do you read your Bible, Sergeant?”

  She doesn’t answer, and he says, “You really should. Your mother’s name was Jacobs, I believe, and since matrilineal descent is the rule in Judaism, that makes you a Jew. The Old Testament is a vital part of your heritage.”

  “I have no religion.”

  “You may denounce your religion,” he says, “but you cannot denounce your race. You should read the Book of Ruth: your namesake was a Moabite who married an Israelite. A loyal, self-reliant, resourceful woman. When her husband died, she could have returned to her own people, found a new husband, but she remained by her mother-in-law’s side.” He paused. “You see where this is leading?”

  “No.” It was an honest answer, but Ruth was becoming more certain of the man with every word he spoke: the lecturing, pompous tone, the condescending attitude, the references to lineage and culture and heritage.

  “Ah, well, we’ll come back to that,” he says. “Jo Raincliffe understood the benefits of anonymity in confession: she told me secrets and transgressions going back to her childhood—but she was Roman Catholic—they’re fiends for confession.”

  “So, you’re hiding your identity so that I can, what—confess without embarrassing myself?”

  “It’s an opportunity. Will you embrace it?” he says, either not hearing, or refusing to acknowledge, her sarcasm.

  “I’m no expert, but haven’t you got it backward? Doesn’t the penitent usually know who she’s confessing to?”

  “This is not a conventional situation.” She hears amusement in his voice. “But Jo ended her life with a clear conscience and a lighter heart.”

  “Jo didn’t end her life—you did.” Her voice lacks power, but her words seem to have hit their mark. He halts, and for a few seconds the fretful flicker of shadow and light stops.

  “Fair point,” he says, at last. “But they do say confession is good for the soul.”

  Ruth says nothing, processing what she has just heard. Despite his careful modulation, there is tension—perhaps even irritation—in the distorted voice.

  “Since you’re antireligious, perhaps you’ve read Kafka?” he says, beginning his awful pacing again. “One of his stories, ‘In the Penal Settlement,’ features an instrument of execution that pierces the body of the condemned person with hundreds of needles. It writes over and over the law they have broken, driving it deeper and deeper into the skin. It kills them over a period of twelve hours. The beauty of the process is the condemned person doesn’t need to be told what they are charged with, or their punishment. The instrument does that, and eventually the condemned person understands, too. They gain enlightenment.”

  “You see yourself as a judge and executioner?”

  “That’s a simplistic interpretation,” he said. “You’re not listening to what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Oh . . . I’ve disappointed you.”

  “Does that concern you?” he asks. “Did you disappoint your parents, Ruth? Becoming police when you could have entered one of the professions like a good Jewish girl?”

  He has misread her. Ruth has been reading people since childhood. She learned it young and honed it every day of her life. This man doesn’t have her skill—he uses pain and fear, digging confidences from his victims with cruelty. The notion gives her power.

  “Jewish girl desperate to please her mother—is that the best you can do?” she says.

  He laughs, softly. “Deflections, misdirections, answering questions with questions; that’s quite an armory you have.”

  Ignoring the pain in her arm, Ruth forces the corners of her mouth into the beginnings of a smile. “I’m an open book. Read me.”

  “Oh, I am.”

  Liar.

  “Okay. Tell me what I’m thinking, now.”

  A hesitation. “You’re afraid.”

  “Well, duh . . .”

  She hears a sharp intake of breath. Distorted as it is, it sounds like water gurgling down a drain.

  She used the offensive expression deliberately, knowing it would affront him.

  “Anyway, it isn’t fear you want for me, is it? It’s secrets you get off on.”

  “That is gross and uncalled for.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who strapped me, practically naked, to a table,” Ruth says. Right now, she is terrified. But she makes herself go on, uses every ounce of her will to keep pushing, because if she stops, she might just break down and tell him everything he wants to know. “How would you characterize it?”

  “I’m not here to answer your questions.”

  “No,” Ruth says. “It’s answers you want. Well, don’t expect me to make it easy for you.”

  “You sound so calm, but the pulse jumping in your throat betrays you.”

  Bastard. You bastard . . . She works on her breathing, and when she is ready, she says, “It’s true—I don’t seem to be able to control my heart rate. My breathing is a bit more controllable. But where I excel is with microexpressions, microgestures, postural change, voice modulation—the whole gamut—I’ve been working on those for years.”

  “You feel able to brag, strapped, ‘practically naked, to a table.’ Good for you.”

  He pats her arm and Ruth feels the rough texture of his fingers again. She breathes through the urge to scream at the touch of his hand and tries to think ahead: it isn’t enough just to stay alive—she has to find a way out of here.

  “What I mean to discover is why you develop those strategies. Were you hiding from someone? Did Daddy play secret games with you when you were a girl?”

  He’s clueless. Gaining confidence, Ruth begins to think analytically. She has the details of every postmortem report by heart. Not one of the women showed any signs of pressure sores, so he must have allowed them to move about, or at least changed their position on the table from time to time. That meant removing the straps. Such times would be her chance to break free, but not while she’s immobilized with drugs.

  “Sergeant?”

  “You know nothing about my father.”

  “I know he’s dead. I know how he died—have you forgotten I’ve seen your scrapbook?”

  Ruth denies him an answer. Instead she lets her eyes drift closed.

  “Answer me.”

  Ruth feels the spiteful jab of a thorn, deep in her flesh. She gasps, but experiences a moment of triumph. That was a show of frustration and temper. Just don’t push him too far.

  She licks her lips, opens her eyes. “What was the question again?”

  “This little game won’t work,” he says.

  “Hey,” Ruth says, slurring her words. “Pump all those muscle relaxants and narcotics into me, what do you expect?” Her message is clear: if he wants to read her, he’ll have to ease up on the chemical cosh.

  There is a long silence. She strains to hear him, but he must have turned off the voice changer, because she can’t even hear the exaggerated growl of his breathing.

  After a while, she hears a distinct click, as he flips a switch.

  “Is this a negotiation, Sergeant?”

  “A challenge,” Ruth says. “I give, you give.”

  Another pause. “This might be fun,” he says. “You first.”


  She laughs; it’s no more than an out-push of breath, but she sees his shadow snap upright, as if she has physically struck him.

  “Fair’s fair,” she says. “You’ve read my files, thumbed through my album—there’s plenty of secrets in that lot. You owe me a few.”

  She hears three long breaths: in . . . out, in . . . out, in . . . out, like the artificial respirator of a space villain. Then, unexpectedly, he says, “Ask away.”

  “I haven’t worked out how you found the victims, yet—”

  “‘Yet.’” Do you think you’ll get the chance, Sergeant Lake?”

  She closes her eyes so that the hope she cherishes will not betray her. “No,” she says, putting a quiver into her voice. “So is it too much to ask for clarity?”

  He pulls back, deeper into the shadows, a sure sign of vulnerability. Finally, he says, “Go on.”

  “I think they went to psychic readings.”

  “You think I’m a psychic?”

  “I think you’re an opportunist.”

  “Not bad. But Kara didn’t believe in psychics, or mediums. Why would she ask for help from one?”

  “She was about to audition for a film; she wanted to give a good performance.”

  “Hm, the film . . . yes, that was resourceful of you, discovering her ‘big break.’”

  His tone is disparaging, and she matches it. “Yeah, and I didn’t have to torture her to find out.”

  “Your question?”

  “You sat in the audience, listening to people tell their tragic stories, and you singled out the most vulnerable.”

  “I’m really not interested in attention seekers who feel free to unburden themselves to a few hundred total strangers.”

  Ruth thinks it through, framing what she says next as a statement, fearing he will only allow her the one question: “You chose women who asked for a private reading.”

  He snorts. “Wrong again. That type is no better than the disgusting self-aggrandizers who pour out their tawdry lives for vulgar entertainment.”