by Andrew Lowe
FREE FESTIVE FUN FOR ALL THE FAMILY
2PM TILL LATE
Eva nodded at the sign. ‘That’s tomorrow. It’s nowhere near Christmas yet. Seems to come earlier every year.’
‘The event, or the complaints about it coming earlier every year?’
He parked at the Tea Junction tea room, at Hulme End, and they joined the walking trail that led south to Waterhouses.
Eva led the way. ‘So this is your old childhood hangout?’
‘One of them. I used to come down from Wardlow on weekend trips with my brother. He’s a bit older.’
She pushed through a snarl of bracken. ‘Do you see him now?’
‘Sometimes. He’s not well.’ His burner phone rang. Jensen. ‘Sorry, I need to take this. We won’t have any service further up.’
Eva gave him a mock sigh. ‘Investigate away. I’ll take some pictures.’
Sawyer stepped back a few paces and took the call. ‘Rich.’
‘Jake. How are you getting on with the camera?’
‘Good. Just… experimenting with something.’
Jensen laughed. ‘You do have a remarkable way with shifty euphemisms. Listen, that image you showed me. The eye. I knew it looked familiar. I haven’t checked any deeper yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s from a game I used to play on the PC. I would have been fifteen, sixteen, so it would be late nineties. I can see it sketched out, as you showed me, but animated as a line drawing. A recurring symbol. Maybe a company logo. Something in-game, perhaps. It’s the lines around the centre of the iris. Like a sun. I’m sure that’s what’s pinging my memory.’
Sawyer looked out at the stripped-back farmland off one side of the track. ‘How do we even begin to check that out?’
‘I’m sure your colleagues have done this, but I tried a reverse image search. It looks too much like an eye, though, so the algorithm wasn’t picking anything out. Computers aren’t our infallible overlords yet.’
‘Thanks, Rich.’ He looked up. Eva hovered at the edge of the path, head angled to the side, watching him. ‘Got to go. I’m wanted.’
‘Alive, I hope?’
The track opened out, criss-crossed by quiet connecting roads near Wetton and the disused Swainsley Tunnel. Sawyer realised they were close to Ecton Mine, where he had rescued Luka from Dennis Crawley back in the autumn.
As they approached a road sign for Ecton, he distracted Eva. ‘You ever been here before?’
‘We came to the Dovedale stepping stones a couple of summers ago, with Luka. That’s near here, right?’
He caught her eye, smiled. ‘No. This is Wetton. That’s Dovedale. Clue’s in the title.’
She shoved him. ‘How far is this cave, anyway?’
‘Ten minutes.’ He trudged past her, taking the lead. ‘What does the name “Holden” mean to you?’
Eva frowned. ‘I don’t know anyone called Holden, if that’s what you mean? Is this part of your investigation?’
‘Something I’m looking into, yes.’
They walked in silence for a few seconds.
Eva looked up. ‘The only thing that comes to mind is Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher In The Rye.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘Oh, yeah. Haven’t read that for a while. We had to do it at school, so it felt too much like work to actually enjoy it.’
‘Yeah. I did it at GCSE. I liked it, but it does kill the joy, having to study something, second-guess the essay questions. Holden is the main character and the book is written in his voice. Cynical, teenage.’
‘Didn’t Mark Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, use it to inspire him?’
Eva nodded. ‘He complained that Lennon was a “phoney”. That’s a word Holden uses a lot in the book.’
‘Tell me more about it.’
She laughed, a little breathless from Sawyer’s walking pace. ‘Is this a test?’
‘Yeah. Outline the main themes in JD Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye.’
She waved a hand. ‘It’s just… Holden’s brother dies, doesn’t he? Before the start of the novel. I think that kicks off his alienation, the way he separates himself as special, and sees everyone else, particularly adults, as phonies.’
‘Using alienation as a kind of self-protection.’
‘If you like. It’s about the fear of change. He knows he will become an adult one day, and so he’s terrified of becoming a phoney himself. I remember that feeling when I was a teenager, going through puberty. The way everything is so overwhelming and complicated and you just want things to be easy and fixed.’
‘It sounds a bit like autism, Asperger’s.’
Eva shrugged. ‘It’s probably just a typical teenager. Terrified of the adult world and what it represents. Turning it into this big, cynical place where everything is fake. It’s more complicated than that, of course.’
‘And Holden wanted to stop children becoming phoney and cynical, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah. “Catch” them before they fall out of the rye field, over the cliff into adulthood. Preserve their innocence. It’s a metaphor, Jake.’
Sawyer looked at her. ‘No. It’s womansplaining.’ He turned ahead, and pointed up. ‘There. That’s where we’re going.’
Further ahead, the crag jutted out, high above the track. The entrance to Thor’s Cave loomed down: a ten-metre-high circular hole, bored into the rock.
‘How are we getting up there?’
Sawyer smiled. ‘Steps.’
They climbed the rugged stairs carved into the crag and ate sandwiches in the cave, at Sawyer’s favourite spot: perched at the top of the sloping entrance, looking out over the Manifold Valley. Eva grumbled about the climb and the sludgy rock, but she relaxed when she saw the view, and moved in closer, swinging her long legs over and resting them across Sawyer’s knees.
Sawyer gulped back a lungful of chilly air. ‘We should have bought a flask. Hot tea. Coffee.’
Eva shook her head. ‘I bet you’d have a Teasmade if it wasn’t so sad.’
He smiled. ‘So, was The Catcher In The Rye a big teenage book for you?’
‘Sort of. And The Bell Jar.’
‘Of course.’
She leaned forward, studying him. ‘I bet you were an Outsiders type. Or Bukowski.’
‘American Psycho was my guiding light.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
Sawyer and Eva clambered back down to the track, and bought tea and cake at the Wetton Mill Tea Room. They sat on a bench overlooking the River Hamps: tea mugs on the floor, cake plates balanced on their knees. A group of middle-aged bikers roared in and parked their bikes in the courtyard outside the tea room.
Sawyer turned and watched for a while, then took out his phone. ‘Do you recognise this guy?’
Eva finished a mouthful of Victoria sponge and peered at the picture of Fletcher. ‘I’ve seen him before, yeah. I take it he’s not your new hairdresser?’
Sawyer looked down into the river, swollen by the recent rain. ‘No. I think he’s the one who tried to kill me. And he’s clearly not giving up.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Sawyer gave a subtle tip of his head, gesturing behind him; Eva looked over his shoulder. The man in the image sat alone at one of the wooden picnic benches, with a mug on the table in front of him. He tugged at his baseball cap and raised his head. He held eye contact with Eva for a few seconds, then turned back to his book.
49
Sawyer dropped Eva at home, and called in at the High Peak Bookstore on the way back to Edale, where he bought a new paperback edition of The Catcher In The Rye. Fletcher hadn’t followed them back along the track, and there was no sign of his hired silver Ford Fiesta.
At the cottage, he kicked off his walking boots and sprawled out on the bed, dipping in and out of the book. The connection with the profile name could be irrelevant. The killer might simply be called Holden himself. ‘82’ could be his year of birth, or something else. A random number, the number of his house.
The burner phone b
uzzed. Message from Walker.
Briefing in an hour.
3:30pm. Sawyer browsed the book for a while, with Bruce curled into a ball at the corner of the bed, then made coffee and logged in to the listening device app at 3:45pm, to check the signal. He screwed in his earphones and winced at the pure crackle of static. No office noise.
He fiddled with the settings, reset the app, reinstalled it. Still static.
‘Fuck.’
Bruce leapt off the bed and stalked into the sitting room.
A knock at the front door. Sawyer sighed; he knew the rhythm.
He padded to the door and opened it wide, greeting Shepherd with a big smile. ‘Coffee?’
‘I’m fine.’
Sawyer beckoned him inside. ‘Last time you paid me a surprise visit, you slapped me in handcuffs.’
Shepherd stepped in and closed the door behind him. ‘Just me this time.’
Sawyer took a box of Ritz crackers from a kitchen cupboard. He popped a couple into his mouth, shook the box at Shepherd, who held up a hand. ‘Can I have my listening device back, then?’
Shepherd glared at him. He took the small block of grey metal from his pocket and set it down on the coffee table.
Sawyer nodded, offered a sheepish smile. ‘Walker?’
‘He was using his phone in briefings. And his contributions were too random, too leftfield. This is way off the map, sir. You’re lucky I found it, and not Moran. Or Keating.’
‘Like I said, I can help. I am helping.’
‘You’re not helping Walker.’
Sawyer tossed the cracker box into the recycle bin. ‘Keep him out of it.’
‘I’m saying nothing. But you have to let this play out. Has to be airtight.’
Sawyer shrugged. ‘How’s Maggie? She’s ignoring me.’
Shepherd lingered at the back of the sofa. ‘She’s not ignoring you. She’s been warned about contact. So have I.’
‘And this is “airtight”? Popping in for a chat?’
He pointed at the device. ‘I’m not stopping. I’m doing you a favour.’
‘Maggie’s my friend, Shepherd. I’d like to talk to her.’
‘She’s in pieces. You’re not…’ He gathered himself. ‘You’re not a superhero. Sir, we’ve got good people working on this. We’re doing everything we can.’
Sawyer slurped at his coffee. ‘Any joy with house to house? Near where Holly was found?’
Shepherd sighed. ‘No. Keating still doesn’t buy the idea that Holly Chilton escaped and died accidentally. He thinks it was staged, and she was dumped that way to put us off the scent. He’s relying on Drummond to find something with DNA, toxicology.’
‘He thinks. But he’s wrong. The stabbing in the third crossbow killing. It tells us something. There’s anger. Either new, or renewed. Maybe in reaction to Holly. A message?’
‘Resources are all focused on the children for now. On finding Mia.’
Sawyer scoffed. ‘Nobody cares about dead paedophiles, right?’
‘We’re just prioritising. You know how it works.’
Sawyer moved to him, around the sofa. ‘You’re being too black and white. The two inquiries might be linked. A paedophile abducting children. A killer taking out paedophiles.’
Shepherd smiled. ‘Go on, then. While I’m here. What else do you know?’
‘I think there might be a gaming connection in the crossbow cases. And as for the children, I spoke to a paedophile hunter group. Since you’re forcing me to operate out on the edges, I thought I might as well hang out with the freaks.’
‘What do you mean by “a gaming connection”?’
‘The symbol on the bolts. The eye, with the sun rays around the iris. Look for a computer game from the late nineties. Maybe an independently published game with a similar logo. It might be the company insignia, or a logo related to something in the game. It could mean that the killer has a connection to gaming. Maybe retro gaming.’
Shepherd cast an eye down to Sawyer’s PlayStation.
Sawyer laughed. ‘I’m bored, but not that bored.’
‘I need to get back for the briefing. There’s a press conference, about Mia. So, hypothetically speaking… If, say, you were still an active serving officer, what would you be tasking me with?’
‘I’d be telling you to investigate the child abductions and crossbow killings as connected enquiries.’
Shepherd shook his head. ‘So, as Walker said, via yourself, it’s a tit for tat thing? A child gets taken, and our man kills a paedophile in response. He uses the social networks to source targets, lures them to remote locations.’
‘So, what’s the motive?’
Shepherd’s eyes searched the room. ‘Someone from one of the hunter groups gone rogue? He doesn’t think it’s good enough, handing them over to the police. He thinks they all deserve to die. There are plenty of them who feel that way. Have you seen the comments on the Facebook pages?’
Sawyer shook his head. ‘They’re already rogue. There’s something deeper. Much more than your typical grandstanding fury about “nonces”. Check the timings. The times of death, the abductions.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Maybe it’s the other way round. Maybe one of them is abducting children in response to the other’s killings.’
50
Ash sat back on the PVC sofa. He selected his character for the practice lap of Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64 and took a sip from a can of Monster. The retro gaming section in the Fairfield branch of Players was well stocked with refurbished consoles plugged into a row of cheap flat screen TVs. The patrons were mostly teenage boys, with a few twenty and thirtysomethings hogging the older machines.
‘You’re a Yoshi man, eh? I prefer Toad.’
Ash tossed his dreadlocks and turned his head to the man standing behind. He shifted his backpack away from the side of the sofa and wedged it between his legs. ‘Same difference. Yoshi ain’t called “Toad”, though. That’s slimy, you get me?’
Sawyer stepped round the sofa and sat down next to Ash. He angled his body to face him.
Ash eyed him as he played. ‘Multiplayer, yeah? Be with you after this.’
Sawyer watched the screen. ‘You’re not hopping. Makes all the difference. You need to hop over the gaps at corners. It’ll improve your times.’
Ash looked at him. ‘I know that. Just getting a fix on this new course, innit?’ He smiled. ‘I’m not playing you, bruv. You was probably around when this came out.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘I was thirteen. Used to play it with my brother. He was always Donkey Kong. He only beat me once, when I had flu. Is there anyone here who knows about older games? PC?’
Ash grinned. ‘Looking to revisit your youth, eh?’
‘Yeah. Sold my gaming PC ages ago. It got tedious, trying to keep up with all the graphic and sound cards.’
Ash nodded towards the row of nineties arcade cabinets and pinball tables at the far side of the room. ‘That guy there. Mayhem. He’s in here a lot. Pretty sharp on the older stuff. Couple of gaming PCs back there, too.’
Sawyer nodded, kept his eyes on Ash. ‘Cheers, mate. One more thing.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Do you know where I could get some gear?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
Sawyer raised a small paper pouch, tightly wrapped around a white powder. ‘Well. This was in your backpack. Looks too grainy for coke. And that’s probably outside your pay grade, anyway. So I’d say… bath salts? Monkey dust, that is.’
‘I know what it is, bruv. That’s not mine, though.’
Sawyer smiled. ‘It’s okay. You can have it back.’ He tossed the pouch onto the sofa next to Ash and nodded to the backpack. ‘Plenty more in there, though. Easily enough to bring you in for dealing.’
Ash finished the lap and turned his piggy eyes on Sawyer. ‘You a copper?’
Sawyer stood up. ‘Nothing gets past you, eh?’ He strolled over to the wall of retro cabs. A thickset man in a sheepskin collar ja
cket was hunched over a Track & Field machine, hammering at the buttons. On-screen, a pixelated athlete sprinted across a scrolling playfield, leaping over hurdles. ‘You should use the finger drumming technique.’
The man kept his eyes on the screen. ‘Yeah. Hard to get the rhythm on the hurdles, though. It’s alright on the hundred metres.’ He finished the race and stood upright. ‘Third time round. Didn’t qualify.’
‘Are you Mayhem?’
The man turned to face Sawyer. He was late thirties: jowly, with a prominent overbite. He wore old, oval-rimmed glasses that were barely big enough to cover the width of his face. Dark hair, waxy. He wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s not my real name.’
‘Really?’
Mayhem nodded, sage-like. ‘Sort of a gamer thing. What can I do for you?’
‘Apparently, you’re the man for the older games?’
He laughed. ‘Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.’
‘I’ve been trying to find this game I used to play on the PC.’ Sawyer took out his phone and navigated to the eye symbol. ‘Driving me mad. It had this logo. Do you recognise it?’
Mayhem wrinkled his nose again and peered into the screen. ‘Yeah. That’s an easy one. Looks like Raysoft. They did a few shareware games in the late nineties. Shooters. Quite idiosyncratic. And by that, I mean quirky, culty. Not shit. Just different.’
‘Do you remember any of the game names?’
Mayhem grimaced as he pondered. ‘No, sorry. I’m pretty sure that’s the Raysoft logo, though.’ He smiled. ‘JFGI.’
Sawyer left the Corsa in a side street by the club and walked over to The Source coffee shop. Dean Logan was installed at the table beneath the TV.
He waved Sawyer over. ‘Got you a coffee. The cake’s finished, though.’
Sawyer sat down. ‘I’ll cope. Got something you can take a swing at. Charles Kelly. He’s our old family GP. He used to own a burgundy BMW. 2008 X5.’ Logan made a note. ‘Klein told me he’d seen it following him. I saw it, too. Last time I was with Klein. I want to know who has this car now. Somebody acquired it, and has been keeping it legit with MOTs. It’s fallen through the admin cracks.’
