by Ashley Dyer
This was the most passionate he’d ever heard the psychologist.
“The ‘why’ is often tightly bound to the ‘how,’ in the way that serial killers operate,” Yi concluded.
Carver let the lesson sink in for a moment before saying. “Are we clear on that?” He waited for the dissenters to chime in with “Yes, boss,” before adding, “If anyone has any bright ideas about what our victims do have in common, let me or Ruth Lake know.”
He was about to move on, when Hughes spoke up again. “A couple more things: the Hutton scientists also found rust particles—presumably from the van interior, as well as sump oil—and a puzzling one: tea powder.”
Carver had thought Ruth too preoccupied with her own concerns to be paying much attention to the briefing, but at the mention of tea powder, she unfolded her arms and turned to Hughes.
“Didn’t you find a brown particulate in the plexiglass disks used in Think Outside the Box?” she asked.
“We did,” the scientist said.
“Could that be tea powder?”
“Impossible to be definitive,” he said. “We didn’t find any pollen grains . . .” He glanced at the nonscientists, regarding him with different levels of bafflement. “The tea plant’s a close cousin to the camellia—you know, the pink roselike blossoms you see in early spring?” A few nods from the gardeners on the team. “Anyway, no pollen, but to answer your question, yes—it could be tea dust.”
Ruth said, “The Ford Transit with the A33 VAN plates was tracked to the north end of the docks the day Norris went missing. Great Howard Street, around the Vauxhall district, wasn’t it?”
A rumble of agreement from the rest.
“What’re you thinking?” Carver asked.
Ruth pulled up Google Maps on the demo screen and tapped in the street name. “That end of the docks has a lot of derelict warehouses,” she said, flicking straight to street view and scooting Google’s Pegman along the roadway, pausing every hundred yards or so, ending at Stone Street, the location of Think Outside the Box.
“There you go.”
On the corner of the street opposite, an ancient redbrick building with barred windows—the storage warehouse they’d approached for CCTV footage the day after Think Outside the Box had appeared. Carver couldn’t see what had arrested her attention until Ruth panned upward to a sign—white lettering on a gray background—painted onto the brickwork high up the building. It was faded by time, and some of the lettering was almost erased, but still legible 140 years on: bonded tea warehouse, and below that, liverpool warehousing.
“We know that building is currently in use, and there’s CCTV all over it, so it’s not likely our guy is using it as his base,” Ruth said. “But what if there are smaller warehouses nearby? Facilities like that would be built in clusters, wouldn’t they?”
“Let’s find out,” Carver said.
68
Task allocations organized, Ruth Lake stopped at DC Ivey’s desk.
“You ready?”
“Sure.”
He suppressed a groan as he got to his feet, and Ruth said, “I can take someone else if—”
“Let’s go,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Well, okay . . .” She followed after him, smiling at his back—Tom Ivey had come a long way in the few months since their first case.
Her phone buzzed as she got to the door; it was Hughes.
“A word in private,” he said.
Whatever this was about, it sounded like trouble.
“Sure,” she said.
“Not here. West stairwell, between the third and fourth floors.”
“Okay.” Ruth saw Ivey waiting for her at the lifts. “Grab us a set of keys off the board,” she said. “We’ll take a fleet car—I’ll meet you in the car park in ten minutes.”
She jogged to the other end of the building, where CSM Hughes was waiting, looking mightily pissed off.
“The print we found in the plexiglass,” he said. “Why did you want it?”
“Like I said, it’s a good teaching tool,” she lied.
“Come off it, Ruth. You think it’s Adam’s.” The disappointment on his craggy face made her feel ashamed.
“I didn’t know what to think, John,” she said. “But I needed to find out.”
“And now you think your suspicions were justified?”
She tilted her head, but didn’t speak, unwilling to condemn her brother, even now.
“My guess is you’ve got his prints on something?” he said.
She gave a single, brief nod.
“Where?”
“In my locker.”
“Go and get it. I’ll wait.”
She was there and back in under six minutes and handed over the evidence box inside an innocuous-looking M&S carrier bag.
He dangled the bag from one bony finger. “If it’s a match, I have to take this to Wilshire and Carver—you know that?”
“Of course. B-b—” She stopped, astonished by her own sudden, stammering uncertainty. “Just . . . let me know first, okay?” she finished.
He hesitated.
“We’ll have Adam’s prints, anyway, when the CSIs have finished processing his house,” she said. “I just need to be . . . ready.”
Ruth had known John since that guest lecture she’d given at the university all those years ago. When he’d passed his master’s degree, she was his first boss. As he’d risen to become a senior member of the team, they became friends. They had continued to work together even after she’d switched careers to policing. Hughes knew her better than most, and she hoped he trusted her, too.
Hughes sighed. “All right.”
69
Soul Art Tattoo Studio was empty when Ruth Lake and Tom Ivey walked in.
The place was as neat and gleaming as the last time Ruth had visited, and the same pierced and tattooed receptionist sat behind the desk. She was flicking through a magazine when they arrived, but seeing Ruth, she sat up.
“Guys!” she called over her shoulder.
“Is he in?” Ruth said.
“MadAd?” the girl said.
Ruth caught Ivey’s quick glance from the corner of her eye but didn’t return the look.
“What’s up?” a male voice said.
The girl looked from Ruth Lake to Tom Ivey. “It’s the police.”
A man appeared from the back of the shop.
Ruth showed her warrant card. “We’re looking for Adam Black,” she said.
“He’s canceled his bookings.” This man hadn’t been among the others during her first visit, but he seemed to be in charge. He was dressed in jeans and a black shirt topped by a fancy waistcoat in blue jacquard material. He would have looked conservative but for the steampunk tattoo of a half hunter watch etched onto the back of his right hand.
“Canceled,” Ruth said, “for the day?”
“Today, tomorrow—and for the foreseeable future.”
“Can you reach him, Mr. . . . ?”
“Nope. His mobile’s switched off.”
They knew this, having tried to ping Adam’s phone to establish his location.
“And you’ve no idea where he might be?”
A slight shrug. “Home, probably.”
Ruth nodded, watching for any hint of uneasiness, and concluded that he was irritated, but not anxious. “I’ll need your name and contact details,” she said. At first, she thought he would refuse, but after a few seconds, he said, “Hugo Watson.” He jerked his chin toward the desk. “Annie will give you anything else you need.”
It sounded like an invented name, but it seemed that was the way they played it here. Ruth might have insisted on getting his details there and then, but she needed his cooperation, so she let the small rebellion pass and took a couple of cleaned-up stills from her pocket—images from the attack on Drew, including close-ups of the neck tattoos.
“I know tattoo artists don’t usually do their own tattoos,” she said, handing him the first pri
ntout. “Was this work done by someone here?”
Hugo took the picture and seemed vaguely amused. After a moment he glanced up at Ruth. “Let’s find out.” He called over his shoulder: “Cap—can you take a look at this?”
A second man appeared out of the break room.
The receptionist came around to the front of the store as two more tattooists Ruth had spoken to the previous day came from different parts of the shop. They were smiling as “Cap” took the stills from Hugo.
Cap was small and pale-skinned, which made the black circuitry tattoos on his arms seem all the more vivid.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Is this a joke?” The skin around his eyes grew pink and his jaw tightened as two of the observers covered their mouths, hiding smiles.
“If it is, I’m not getting it, either,” Ruth said.
Cap shoved the picture at his steampunk rival. “Fuck off.”
“Come on, man, this is serious,” Hugo said. “They’re looking for MadAdaM.”
Cap turned his face to Ruth. “And you assumed this—this piece of shit was my work?”
“I don’t assume anything,” Ruth said. “I’m asking a question.”
He took a couple of breaths, exhaling hard through flared nostrils. The receptionist and one of the other tattooists exchanged an uneasy glance, but Ruth kept an open posture, her gaze fixed on Cap. She sensed that Ivey had tensed, but she was sure enough of him that he would follow her lead. She could see that Cap was genuinely insulted, but the “angry man” posturing was an act.
“Is it yours?” she asked, implacable, calm.
“Like I said—piece of shit. Look at it—there’s no depth or shading,” the tattooist said.
Ruth wasn’t sure how you could achieve depth from a series of unshaded lines, but then she wasn’t an artist, and from the malicious gleam in Hugo’s eyes, she suspected that Cap was often the butt of this sort of windup.
So, she apologized—fully, and without reservation. “I really don’t know much about tattoos,” she went on, “but this was filmed at the scene of an assault last night, and it looked like—”
“MadAd,” he finished for her.
“Yeah . . .” She glanced at his colleagues but addressed Cap directly. “Could we have a chat in private?” She wanted him to take another look at the tattoos, but she also wanted to take a peek inside the break room, and they had no search warrant for the premises.
Cap eyeballed her, his natural suspicion keeping him undecided, but finally he turned and stamped toward the back of the shop, head forward, shoulders back.
Ruth decided to interpret that as an invitation; she followed him, and he waited outside the door and waved her through in an unexpected show of gallantry.
The room was small, but well kitted out with a microwave, kettle, toaster, and sink. They sat at a small oak table, and Cap picked up the mug of coffee he’d apparently abandoned a few minutes earlier.
“Sorry,” he said. “D’you want—?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks.”
On the other side of the shop, Ruth heard DC Ivey begin to take names and contact details, and satisfied that she could focus all her attention on Cap, she said, “Don’t take this the wrong way—I’m asking because I need to explain it to my boss—why are you so sure this isn’t your work?”
He took the pictures with his free hand and set them side by side on the table. “See the lines?” he said. “Gray—my inking’s never gray unless it’s supposed to be.”
“But camera quality—poor lighting—couldn’t they affect how the ink looks?”
He slid an enlarged shot center of the table. “Look at the color of the jacket. The hat. Black—see? MadAd’s ink is as black as that. ’Cos that’s the way I made it—right? And it’s not gonna look less black than a woolly hat on the same photo, just ’cos the camera’s a bit shit, now is it?”
“Makes sense,” Ruth said.
He picked up one of the offending images and held it to the light. “Hang on.” He disappeared into the shop and returned a few moments later with a handheld magnifier. He examined the images, then hissed.
“I’m not even sure that’s a genuine tattoo—look.” He shoved one of the shots into Ruth’s hand, along with the magnifier.
“What am I looking for?”
“See a slight gap between that bit of ink and that?” he said, indicating with a pencil point.
Ruth saw a tiny gap in a line that had looked continuous. “He’s missed a bit.”
“Right,” Cap said. “And you don’t get that with proper inking.”
“So what d’you think it is?” Ruth asked.
He frowned at the remaining images on the table. “Ink drawing . . . a transfer, maybe?” He shrugged. “Whatever. It’s not real. And it’s not mine.”
Ruth felt a burst of optimism. It isn’t Adam. But she had to ask the next question, to be certain: “Just so we’re clear,” she said. “You did do Adam’s neck tattoo?”
“You’re bloody right I did,” he said. “And that is nothing like it.”
Greg Carver was in his office when Lake and Ivey returned, but Ruth didn’t go straight to him. To convince him that the man in the CCTV stills wasn’t Adam, she needed to know her facts—and she needed a plausible theory as to who the tattooed knifeman really was. She had a theory, and she made a few calls to gather further intel.
Carver was working through printed spreadsheets at his desk, highlighting comments, when she finally went to see him. The list of submissions for the Alderson Bank’s Art Awards, she guessed. He set his pen aside and gave her his full attention as she explained what Cap had told her.
After a few moments, he said, “Where’s the evidence, Ruth? All you have is this tattooist’s word for it that the attacker wasn’t Adam.”
“He wasn’t lying, Greg.”
Carver folded his arms, frowning. “Even if Cap believes he’s telling the truth, it’s still a matter of opinion whether the tattoo is genuine or not.”
“So show the photos to a few more tattooists—see what they think.”
She could see he was about to refuse and added, “We’ve done it before.”
Her phone buzzed and she checked the screen. “It’s a text from John Hughes.”
Carver lifted his chin. “What’s he got?”
She looked into Carver’s expectant face and realized she had some explaining to do. “When I recognized the tattoo on the assailant’s neck, I asked John for a favor,” she said.
Carver’s frown deepened to a scowl, and she pressed on: “I gave him a bottle with Adam’s latent fingermarks on it. Asked him to do a physical comparison with the print inside the plexiglass disk.”
Carver sucked his teeth. “And?”
“It’s not Adam.” Ruth smiled, feeling a rush of relief like cool air on her face.
But Carver wasn’t smiling.
“Greg, if it had been a match, I’d’ve filled out the warrant form myself.”
He gave a tacit nod of acceptance. “But you’re not thinking straight, Ruth,” he said. “The print in the plexiglass block suggests that Adam didn’t make the brain sections, but that doesn’t mean he’s not involved. He wouldn’t be the first susceptible individual the Ferryman has roped in as a stooge.”
“I agree. But it wasn’t Adam who leaked the info to the press about the heart being older than we’d first thought, was it?”
“Maybe, maybe not—but anyway, that’s a separate issue.”
“Not necessarily,” Ruth countered. “You said yourself, the Ferryman has been one step ahead of us all the way . . .” She faltered, then said the rest in a rush: “What if he’s police?”
Carver sat back in his chair. “What?”
“Why not? You know how it is—once you’ve been through all the vetting and background checks and passed your training, you’re in. Trusted.”
Carver shook his head. “You heard Doctor Yi—he would need flexibility—time off, or at least some freedo
m to work to his own schedule—maybe not in employment at all—”
“Like a volunteer, for instance?”
“A special?”
She watched his face and saw him think through the idea and discount it a second later.
“No, it won’t wash. Volunteers work full-time jobs—many of them, anyway. Then they spend their evenings and weekends shoring up staffing shortages among the regulars.”
“Many of them,” she said, working hard to contain her excitement, trying to present this as the logical analysis it was, but knowing that her brother’s future depended on it. “But not all are full-time workers. You’ve got retirees and part-timers; carers who take a day or two out of the week to do something to keep them connected to the world; students wanting to build their CV—”
He raised a hand, cutting off the litany. “All right. I’m assuming you’ve narrowed the field: no females, no retirees—we know this guy isn’t old.”
“The man I have in mind is over twenty-five—which is another of Dr. Yi’s criteria,” she said. “He’s taking a year out. Worked in an abattoir as a student.”
She saw Carver focus more intently on what she was saying.
“He dropped out in the middle of the second year.”
“Like your brother,” Carver pointed out.
“Yeah, but Adam didn’t enlist in the army, then buy himself out after eight months. This guy couldn’t hack it. He’s applied to be regular police three times—got knocked back. He says because he didn’t have enough experience, but the truth is, he can’t get on with his peers. He’s high-handed and officious; a braggart and a bully; and he doesn’t take criticism well.”
“You’re talking about Parr.”
It was a statement, not a question.
“How’d you know?”
“Never mind,” he said.
No doubt one of Carver’s weird synesthetic insights.
“The night of Art for Art’s Sake he wasn’t even supposed to be working. He suddenly appears after we missed the Ferryman by minutes, elbows another volunteer off the door, then coolly lets Karl Obrazki walk past him with a recording of the crime scene,” Ruth said.