by Ashley Dyer
I like to plan ahead, and this one is special. This is Marcus: smug, privileged, blithely ignorant of the damage he wrought. Although he was very clear at the end. When I looked into his eyes, he knew me.
My inner metronome counts time, and my heart tick-tick-ticks to the rhythm.
Soon. It must be soon. My hand trembles slightly and I consciously slow the speed of the metronome. It will take as long as it takes; the important thing is to be ready.
Even so, it’s a challenge, curbing my impatience, trying not to be too distracted by the movement and the gabble of voices on-screen. But thirty minutes later, I have completed the first stage of artwork 4 and returned it to cold storage.
At three o’ clock, I sit at my bench, watching the news on all five screens simultaneously. They rehash old footage, play a short loop of CSIs at Think Outside the Box, and recite the official press release that police are “working on strong leads.”
Tick, tick, tick.
I will not rush this, despite the agony of waiting. Ask a moderately well-educated nonartistic type what “pop art” means to them, they’ll probably trot out “the Marilyn picture” or “Campbell’s soup tins.” Everyone knows Andy Warhol. And I’d bet a month’s salary none of them mention Eduardo Paolozzi, even though it was Paolozzi’s I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything that first used the word “pop” in an artwork. It predates Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych by fifteen years. Yet who, outside of the art world, has even heard of him? Who gives a damn? And why do we care about Warhol, with his mass-produced, throwaway art, anyway? Because Andy Warhol saw the commercial and—let’s not be shy—financial benefits of timing his product release to the demands of the market.
So I can wait.
As a distraction, I pick up my phone and trawl social media.
Lots on Twitter. Which is encouraging.
I open my Instagram app: two thousand new followers since six this morning. Comments keep coming in on my exhibit photos, and I can’t resist scrolling through, playing a kind of roulette game.
Scroll, stop.
“OMG, @FerrymanArt.” Dull.
Scroll, stop.
“@FerrymanArt, you are #thebest.” How sweet.
Scroll, stop.
“You are one sick fuck @FerrymanArt.” That’s had a lot of negative replies. Ooh . . . I would not like to be in @mr.kdpics’s virtual shoes—there’s a big outpouring of hate for him.
Scroll, stop.
“Respect to you @FerrymanArt. I’ve created a photomontage of Think Outside the Box. Would be honored to hear what you think.”
Another invitation to connect. But this one shows a little more learning than the rest; it includes the hashtags #UrbanArt #EphemeralArt #FleetingArt #GuerillaArt. And then there’s the choice of Instagram handle: @kharon, after Kharon—sometimes “Charon”—the ferryman of Greek mythology, who carried souls across the river Styx from the land of the living, to the land of the dead.
I click the hyperlink to @Kharon’s account, slightly irritated to have my identity hijacked in this sly way.
Kharon has put together a series of crowd shots with Think Outside the Box as the backdrop. The cascade of light passing through the disks is stunning; I have the peculiar experience of seeing the exhibit through the eyes of the audience and feel a thrill of newness and excitement.
Kharon has made the observers part of the exhibit, reminding me of Martha Cooper’s photographs of New York street art. Flecks of sleet add a hint of van Gogh’s Starry Night to the ensemble. He’s done a good job of balancing darkness and light—not easy when you’re trying to capture figures in front of a lit exhibit, shot in the dark. Beanie hats and backs of heads, mostly, but one has been taken from above.
In this image, you see dozens of hands raised, each holding a phone. He must have climbed up the side of the building opposite to get the perspective. On each phone, a tiny image of Think Outside the Box, and beyond these miniature replicates, the real thing, full-size, washed in mauve light at the instant the camera shutter closed. A kind of picture-in-picture representation of the piece. Quite clever. He signs every image #FerrymanFan and links to my own account.
All in all, it’s a pleasing homage. I won’t reply, but this could be someone worth returning to at a later date.
The words “Breaking news” rise above the mumble from the computers ranged on my bench, and my heart skips a beat. I locate the screen and focus in on it. A panning shot of Stone Street, police tape, a lone officer in uniform on guard.
“Remains discovered near Liverpool’s North Docks three days ago are human,” the newsreader says.
Remains, he says. As if I dumped them like offal.
“Merseyside Police revealed today that Detective Chief Inspector Carver was directed to the macabre display by an anonymous tip-off.”
The newsreader gives some background on Carver and his previous murder inquiry, talking over a short video of my exhibit. They’ve blurred the disks—to protect delicate sensibilities, no doubt.
More blah about the previous case, which is useful from a PR point of view, but only up to a point. The newsreader is making far too much of the chief inspector’s past tribulations.
Tick, tick, tick.
“Come on, come on . . .” I lean forward, willing him to say the words that will trigger the release of my next exhibit.
He frowns at the camera, and it’s almost as if he is speaking directly to me: “In a shocking development, police have revealed that one of the disks contained the remains of Professor Mick Tennent, who disappeared shortly after he presented a popular science program on the so-called Ferryman disappearances in Liverpool just six days ago. That episode was called ‘Learn to Think Outside the Box,’ and it has been widely speculated that police were investigating the possibility of a link between his abduction and the Ferryman.”
From “so-called Ferryman” to “Ferryman” in under a minute. I check my phone—my follower numbers are clocking up like the digits on a gas station fuel pump. Good, but not enough. I need two more names. It’s vital to the impact of the next exhibit that the public knows there are three contributors to Think Outside the Box.
As if he’s heard me, the newsreader says the words I’ve been waiting for: “Two other victims have been named as local men John Eddings and Dillon Martin.” Their photographs appear, side by side on-screen.
The metronome freezes, midswing. That’s the green light. It’s a go.
The equipment is ready: checked, packed in boxes, color coded for ease of assembly. Gloves, overalls, climbing equipment, mask are bagged separately, ready to be packed in the van. But I skim through the inventory one final time—there will be no coming back to pick up a forgotten item.
On-screen, the news has shifted to a press conference: Carver, flanked by the chief constable and another man in uniform—presumably his superintendent. They have a picture of my van—or more accurately, one very like it. They give the number plate. Which I ditched as soon as I got back to Liverpool, of course.
Final checks are complete. Okay, this is it. Drive the van round, then move the boxes to the service entrance. Sliding them into the van, I prepare myself for a slight correction in follower numbers. This exhibit will be difficult for some of them: less visceral, more cerebral. It makes demands on the audience. They won’t be able to passively absorb the message—if they want to appreciate it fully, they’ll have to do some thinking. But I will make it worth their while: those who see the deeper meaning of the work will receive personal invitations to my third exhibit, which is visual and visceral in a way they will never have experienced before.
10
Carver sat at his desk, updating his decision log.
London Met had sent samples of the nylon rope, which was now being examined by the forensics team. He had briefed the family liaison officers who would be attached to the families of the two victims in his jurisdiction; London Met would take care of Professor Tennent’s family. The FLOs’ job was never easy: the bereaved always
wanted more than they as investigators could give without compromising the investigation. Added to which, those dealing with John Eddings’s and Dillon Martin’s families were in a particularly hostile situation, given the delay in beginning the inquiry. The media interest wasn’t helping, either: it was hard to reassure those struggling with loss that everything was being done to bring the killer to justice, while press and social media were screaming police incompetence.
The press conference had been a drain—so much animal passion in the room it seemed awash with light and color. He’d had to focus on a police tech who seemed shut off from the emotion around him, all his attention fixed on his role as sound engineer for the session.
Carver rubbed a spot on the right side of his skull, just above his ear, where a slow, throbbing headache had started. It was six thirty; he’d been at work for nearly twelve hours. Under the terms of his restricted duties he should be at home, resting, by now, but he had an evening debriefing to manage, and his log to finish, so he remained at his desk, feeling spaced out, on the point of exhaustion.
His desk phone rang, jolting him out of drowsiness.
“Sergeant Farrow,” the caller said. “Contact Center.” What used to be called the Calls and Response Unit, renamed under the new consumer model of policing.
“Go ahead,” Carver said.
“We got a call from someone claiming to be the Ferryman. Said he had information about a new exhibit.”
“Put him through.”
“There must be thirty or more cranks out there, claiming to be him—”
“That’s okay, put him through,” Carver said again.
Farrow cleared his throat. “I can’t.”
“What d’you mean, you can’t?”
Farrow cleared his throat again. “He hung up.”
“You mean he left a message and hung up?” Carver said, dreading opening his e-mail account to check for another message.
“Not exactly.”
“What is this, twenty bloody questions? Give me a straight answer, man—did he leave any instructions—a location?”
“The adviser asked for one, but like I say, the caller hung up—”
“Did the operator refuse to put the caller through to me?” Carver interrupted.
A pause.
“Look, Chief Inspector, this is a newbie. He—”
Carver swore under his breath. “I want the original recording in my inbox in ten minutes.”
He ended the call, as a new e-mail message notification popped up like a speech bubble in the bottom right corner of his computer screen.
No subject heading.
The message read “ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE. ~ F” The same address as the Ferryman’s first contact.
He steadied himself and headed to the Major Incident Room. He rapped hard on the first desk he came to and everyone stopped what they were doing.
“We’ve got another, incoming,” he said. “And we don’t know the location.” He spotted DC Ivey standing next to Ruth Lake. “Ivey, see if you can find anything on social media. Ruth, call John Hughes, tell him I’m about to send him a voice recording from Calls and Response—Contact Center—whatever the hell we’re calling it now. I need him to clear his desk, focus on it as priority. Everyone else—” He took a moment to get his temper under control. They were hanging on his every word, and he needed to keep it together. “Be ready to move as soon as we know where this is happening.”
Ruth Lake closed her phone. “John is ready when you are,” she said, businesslike and calm, as always.
Carver nodded. “Put a call through to the Matrix team—we’re going to need crowd control.” He glanced at DC Ivey. “What’s taking so long, Tom?”
“I’m looking on Instagram,” the young detective said, his eyes fixed on his laptop monitor. “He hasn’t given a location this time, boss.”
“Come on—anyone?” Carver said.
Phones appeared out of pockets, heads went down as people started scrolling.
“Got it!” Ivey shouted. He turned the monitor so that Carver could see it.
He had multiple tabs open: Instagram, Vimeo, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube. Thumbnail images, all of which seemed to be showing the same thing: different views of a wall built into a sandstone escarpment. Massive, arched doorways punctuated the wall every ten or fifteen yards, and at the top of the wall, a ledge, on which three lit oblongs were perched. A crowd of thirty or more had already gathered below it, many of the spectators holding phones and tablets up to record the scene.
“Can we get in closer?” Carver said.
Ivey enlarged one of the thumbnails and clicked to full screen. The lit oblongs resolved into a row of laptop computers, propped open on the ledge. “This is being streamed live by someone calling themselves ‘Kharon,’” he said.
Each laptop screen was split into two images, one above the other. Both showed some kind of wave trace, one a pale blue sequence of blips of varying height and wavelength, the other a vivid red, against a black background, and Carver was transported back to the hospital room where he’d spent over a week hooked up to heart and blood pressure monitors after he was shot.
“What is that?” someone asked.
“Some kind of medical trace, I think,” Ruth said. “ECG? EEG?”
“The lower one is a cardio,” Carver said. “Does anyone know where this is?”
There wasn’t enough room for everyone to huddle around the monitor, so Ivey zipped to the front of the room and hooked his laptop up to the data projector. Seconds later the video was playing on the big screen.
As he clicked the mouse to turn up the volume, there was a sudden flash. The crowd—and everyone in the incident room—flinched as one. Yelps of excitement from the spectators were followed by relieved laughter, as a dazzling array of LEDs illuminated the stone wall below the monitors.
The lights flashed up a message three times: “Statistical Uncertainty #2.” It repeated three times, then began spelling out more words, ticker-tape style: “Catch . . . the . . . gamma wave,” Ruth read aloud.
“Jesus,” Ivey exclaimed. “Has he released some kind of radioactive substance?”
“Gamma waves are a type of brain wave,” Ruth said, her voice still sounding calm, though Carver saw a steel-gray shimmer of light around her face—a rare sign of anxiety. “I think the trace at the top of the screens must be an EEG.”
The cardio trace, which had been bumping across the screen the entire time they had been talking, stopped abruptly on the first monitor, then the second, then the third, and the red trace drew a ruler-straight line across the bottom of all three screens.
“They’re flatlining,” Carver breathed.
The blue trace of the gamma brain waves continued, however, the peaks becoming more intense and regular in pattern. Then all the laptops went out, plunging the gathering into darkness.
The ticker tape burst into life again, spelling out a name: “J-o-h-n E—”
Whoops of appreciation rose up from the crowd, followed by applause.
“John Eddings,” Ruth said. “He’s spelling out the names of the victims.”
Someone in the room murmured, “What the hell . . . ?”
“The bastard had them hooked up to monitors as they died,” Carver said.
A chant rose from the crowd: “Fer-ry-man, Fer-ry-man, Fer-ry-man!” They began to stamp in time as they chanted, then as one, they began to move forward.
“What are they doing?” Ivey asked.
“My guess is they’re looking to take a little piece of history home with them,” Ruth said. “And that ledge can’t be more than about fifteen or twenty feet high.” It would be the work of a moment for the crowd to dismantle the computers, effectively destroying the evidence. “We need to get to those laptops before the crowd does.”
“DC Ivey,” Carver said. “Does this Kharon give a location?”
The detective exited full screen to check the video details. “Nothing, boss, but it’s already had two
hundred comments. I could scroll through, see if anyone mentions it?”
“It’d take too long. We need context—another landmark. Try to find images taken from farther away.”
The young detective minimized the screen and clicked through a few more thumbnails.
Carver dialed the Contact Center and Farrow answered. “Have you had any reports of a crowd causing a disturbance or nuisance?”
“Nothing,” Farrow said.
“Call me with a location as soon as you do.”
He turned his attention to the rest of his team. “Has anyone got anything?” he demanded.
A few glanced up, shook their heads, but most kept their eyes on their phone screens.
“Nobody is naming the location,” Ruth Lake said.
“So how did they know where to go? There must be a hundred people there now—they couldn’t all just happened to’ve been passing.”
“Private messaging,” Ruth said.
Carver closed his eyes for a second. This was punishment for not taking the Ferryman’s call.
“Sir.” Ivey pinged a wide-angle shot of the scene up on-screen. Above the ledge to the left end of the escarpment was what looked like an old sandstone railway arch.
Carver squinted at the screen, trying to make out lettering etched into the stonework of the bridge. “L.O.R.,” he said. “The name of a railway?”
“Yeah.” Ruth moved closer to the screen. “Liverpool Overhead.”
“I didn’t know Liverpool had an overhead railway.”
“It doesn’t—not anymore. Closed in the nineteen fifties, I think,” Ruth said. “It ran along the docks from Dingle to Seaforth—can’t have been more than five or six miles long, and there’s not much of it left, so it should be easy to find this section. Get googling, everyone.”