by Ashley Dyer
“So what?”
“I think they got it wrong.” Carver jerked his head, indicating the uniform police controlling the crowd.
The man looked past him, regarding the police presence with impotent hostility.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Carver said, deliberately putting himself in the wrong. “But that mad bastard has barricaded the door into Adam’s studio. He’s already torched one building—and I swear he’s looking to go out in a blaze of glory.”
He could see the man was torn, so he pushed harder. “The fire at the warehouse in the North Docks is still blazing.”
The man passed a trembling hand over his brow and stared at the sweat on his palm for a good ten seconds. Finally, he looked Carver in the eyes.
“No awkward questions? No comeback?”
“I just want to get in there,” Carver said. “I don’t care how.”
The man nodded. “Follow me.”
86
I’ll need to improvise. Yin-Yang is going to be special: art as performance; performance as art.
I face the screen and look into the laptop camera, not afraid to be seen anymore.
“I want to incorporate the S-shape into the design, but I’ll have to break bones to make it work.”
A flurry of comments comes in—some horrified, but many encouraging, telling me to “go for it,” as if I need their approval.
“I’ve already decided on the representation of the seed of Yin-Yang.” I’m so amped, I have to steady myself before I tell them: “I’ll dissect out the hearts of the two subjects and swap them over.”
Adam groans.
Ruth Lake is harder to read.
I turn the laptop to allow my followers to see them, and the comments go wild! So many coming in I can’t keep pace.
I’m loving the Q&A element of Facebook Live.
“Adam,” Ruth murmured, keeping a careful eye on Milner as he greedily bashed out responses to his fans on the laptop keyboard.
Adam was weeping silently.
“Adam, come on.” Ruth shifted slightly and grunted as a muscle spasm ripped through her side, sending shafts of pain through her injured ribs.
Suddenly, a voice boomed into the room and Milner jumped like a cat.
“Mr. Milner. Can we talk?”
The negotiator.
“You can end this now, with no more bloodshed. It’s in your hands.”
Milner had reached instinctively for the length of wood on the table next to the laptop, but now he set it down and sucked his teeth, that snarl of contempt appearing again for an instant. He typed a few words into the computer, then closed the lid.
He looked at Ruth and Adam and winked. “Wouldn’t want any interruptions for this,” he said. Then he walked calmly to the tarp rumpled against the wall and extracted a petrol can.
Ruth’s mouth dried. “Don’t—”
She coughed, tried again. “Don’t do this, Milner.”
He smiled. In a matter of moments, he’d gathered a glass jar and rags. He poured petrol into the jar and stuffed a rag inside.
“Don’t,” Ruth said, holding Adam close, tears blinding her. “Please.”
He took out a lighter, lit the rag; she heard the growl of flame and air as he turned fast, moving to the window.
Too late, she roared, “FIRE! Look out below!”
People started screaming.
“I don’t think we’ll be hearing from the negotiator again,” Milner said.
“Bastard . . . You bastard,” Ruth gasped.
He grasped her chin and tilted her face to him. “Tears?” he said.
His expression was flat, dead. Like there was nothing behind the eyes.
“One more reply, then I think we should make a start.”
He stepped up to the laptop again.
Ruth held her breath, waiting for sound of the tactical unit breaching the building, willing the whistle of rappel ropes as they made their way from the roof. But all she heard were screams and frightened sobbing from the crowd; urgent shouting as the police pushed the crowd back.
DC Ivey, shielded inside one of the Matrix vans, was thumb-typing comments to Milner’s Facebook Live session on his phone.
“Is it true you got banned off the Alderson Bank comp because UR too OLD???”
A female PCSO sat next to him, tapping the keyboard on her own smartphone, her face intent. Ivey knew that in the Scientific Support Unit, everyone available—from CSIs to office staff—was doing the same thing. Merseyside Police had not asked for the page to be taken down because they needed to see what was happening inside the room, but that didn’t mean Milner should get things all his own way.
“You had your chance for FORTY YEARS,” Ivey typed. “Isn’t it time you gave the next generation their go?”
“And what about the victims? Why pick on the young guys? What did they ever do 2 U?”
“Heard you had a grudge against Adam Black. Wanna Xplain?”
“Hey—anyone out there know MadAdaM? THAT’S who this OLD FART’s gonna kill next. Me I LIKE Ad’s stuff.” To this one, Ivey added an image of one of Adam’s trompe l’oeils.
He paged down to the comments following on from his. He was getting a response. Comments were coming in fast, condemning the Ferryman, calling him a fraud. A bitter old failure.
He scrolled to the top of the page. People were “unliking.”
Nudging the PCSO, he tilted the phone for her to see. “It’s working,” he said.
Ruth watched as Milner picked up the length of the two-by-four and began tapping it absently against his leg, his eyes still on the laptop screen.
Help was not coming. She blinked tears from her eyes. This bastard isn’t going to get it all his own way. The knife she’d taken from Adam lay on the floor a good ten feet away from them; if she could get to it . . .
“He’s going to move in,” she whispered to her brother. “I’ll go for the knife, but . . . Adam—I need your help.”
His eyes closed.
“Listen to me,” she hissed, forcing back tears of rage and helplessness. “Do not give up on me.”
“What’s the point, Ruth?” His voice was no more than a whisper. “What’s the . . . ?”
Oh, God, she thought, he’s dying—my brother is dying, and he doesn’t know the truth!
She leaned in close, speaking urgently into her brother’s ear: “Remember when Dad came to the house that day? The day his girlfriend was murdered?”
Adam roused a little. Sick heat came off him in waves.
“Adam. Dad didn’t kill Mum. I swear—that’s the truth.”
He nodded, his eyes hooded, almost closed.
“Did you hear me?”
“Mmph.”
She estimated the distance from their position to the knife. She might never make it, but she couldn’t see any other way; Adam couldn’t last much longer.
Milner was poised to turn the laptop around, put the two of them in the frame.
Ruth gathered all her strength.
A muffled exclamation. Milner took a step back, distancing himself from the screen.
“Fuckers,” Milner spat. “Intellectual pygmies.” It seemed his followers weren’t reacting well to his new “artwork.”
Milner cast about, and his eyes lit on the knife. He bared his teeth and in three long strides snatched it up and was on them in a second.
“Adam, MOVE!” Ruth yelled.
Adam screamed in agony, but he rolled, kicking his legs out, catching Milner on the ankle.
Milner yelled, darting out of reach, and even as Ruth launched herself forward, she knew she wouldn’t make it.
A panicked hammering at the door signaled that the Matrix team had finally made a decision.
Too late! Ruth saw the blade flash.
Darkness shadowed her vision.
It’s over, she thought.
The shape took form and bulk.
Carver?
He hit the killer at hip level in a flying
rugby tackle.
The knife sailed across the room, embedding itself in a picture frame. The two men grappled, moving perilously close to what was left of the shattered window.
Carver, not yet at full strength, was losing. He stumbled backward, ending at the shattered window. Ruth sprang up but fell to one knee, feeling a piercing shock as the broken rib stabbed into muscles and tendons. Cold sweat broke out on her face and neck and she panted, fighting the pain.
Seizing him by the lapels, the killer forced Carver back, back, back into the gaping space.
Carver scrambled for a hold of what was left of the window frame and gasps and shrieks rose from the crowd below. Ruth crawled to them, her breath coming in short, painful coughs. She wrapped her arms around Carver’s legs and held on, digging her nails into the cloth of his suit pants as rappel ropes snaked past the window from the rooftop.
Milner let go with his right hand and swung a punch at Carver. Carver twisted left to avoid it, letting go of the window frame, relying on Ruth to anchor him, and shoved Milner’s right shoulder with the flat of his hand, using the killer’s momentum to catch him off-balance.
Milner spun, his momentum carrying him forward into empty air. He snatched at Carver, a look of terror on his face, caught a handful of shirt fabric.
Carver felt himself slipping from Ruth’s grasp, but she dug in, roaring against the pain in her rib cage. Carver’s shirt tore in Milner’s hands and with a cry of surprise, he clutched at the sagging remains of the rotten window—frame, plaster, splintered glass, but could not save himself.
Screams from the street. Cries of “Stay back!”
Then the whistling sound of a Matrix team rappeler sliding down the rope. A second later, Rayburn was inside the room, prying Ruth’s fingers from around Carver’s legs.
“You can let go, Ruth,” he murmured. “I’ve got him—he’s safe now.”
87
Carver arrived at his office three hours later, deflated and exhausted after a bollocking from Detective Superintendent Wilshire. When he sought Ruth out at the hospital, she was snoozing in a chair in the waiting area, dressed in surgical scrubs, shivering with cold and the aftereffects of the attack. Her own bloody clothes had been taken by Scientific Support. He draped his jacket over her.
“I hear you refused a lift home.”
She didn’t answer.
“Adam will be in surgery for another two hours, according to the surgical staff,” Carver went on. “Why don’t you go home, take a shower, get some sleep—or at least rest up while you can?”
She looked at her hands; they were stained red with Adam’s blood, and Carver saw that the rope burns on her wrists were seeping.
“I can’t leave him, Greg.” Her eyes filled with tears and she dashed them away. “Bloody hell,” she muttered. Then, “How did you get into Adam’s studio? I mean, I know you’ve got these mad superpowers now, but . . .”
“Rayburn asked the same question,” Carver said.
In fact, the Matrix team leader had said, How the bloody hell did you get in here? What are you, Spider-Man?
“I came in the old-fashioned way—through a door.”
“The door was barred,” Ruth said. “I heard them pounding on it.”
“Different door.”
Ruth’s brow furrowed. “Greg, I’m too tired for this.”
“If I tell you, will you promise to go home?”
She took her time thinking about it. Finally, she gave a single nod.
He told her about his encounter with the paranoid businessman, whose name, it turned out, was Unwin. Mr. Unwin had taken Carver to the building next door, where a police officer stood guard.
“If you get in, go up to the third floor,” Unwin said. “There’s an office with the name ‘Springer’ on the door.” Catching Carver’s look, he added, “Well, I wasn’t gonna use me own name, was I?”
He’d shown Carver a keyring with two keys on it. “The Yale will get you into the office. This one”—he lifted the mortice key—“gets you into my office—the one next to Adam’s. This used to be all one building, like. There’s a filing cabinet in front of a door. The door is bolted top and bottom.”
“It leads to Adam’s studio?” Carver asked.
A brief nod.
“What if it’s locked on the other side?”
“It isn’t.”
Carver took a breath.
“Don’t ask,” Unwin warned.
“Okay.” Carver reached for the keys, but Unwin snatched them away.
“And don’t be sending no one asking questions on your behalf, after.”
“You have my word,” Carver said.
“What the hell is he up to?” Ruth asked.
Carver shrugged. “I didn’t ask, and I didn’t send anyone to inquire—a promise is a promise.”
She nodded, but he could see that her mind was elsewhere. “So how’d you get past the bobbies guarding the place?”
“Mr. Unwin provided a distraction,” Carver said, smiling at the memory.
Everything had been as Unwin had described. The office desk was piled with papers, schematics, what looked like plans for bunkers or saferooms, but Carver didn’t give those a second glance.
He had a few moments of anxiety over the filing cabinet, but it turned out that Unwin had left it empty, no doubt to make for easier access or escape through Adam’s studio.
“If you hadn’t come in when you did . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“You were right about how he found his victims, by the way,” he said, as a way to change the subject. “They’d all been featured on local news in the weeks before they vanished. We think we’ve identified three more.”
“So what set Milner off?” she asked.
“Ivey had a word with Milner’s head of department at Fairfield: things didn’t go quite as smoothly for him as he tried to make out. Adam’s complaint to the ethics committee was time-consuming, and Milner missed the deadline for Alderson Bank’s Art Awards last year. When he applied again this year, the age criterion had been changed—he was refused entry.”
“And Adam won a Street Art Award—in the Young Talent category, no less.” Ruth sighed and shook her head. “That was the trigger, wasn’t it?”
Carver nodded. “All the victims were around Adam’s age. All blessed with good fortune. But Yi thinks Adam was the primary target all along. Milner just didn’t have the emotional insight to see it.”
She sat deep in thought for some time. Suddenly, she roused, her eyes wide. “The negotiator—I should’ve asked—”
“He’s fine,” Carver said. “His pride’s a bit singed, but he’s okay.”
“I heard Bill Naylor didn’t make it.”
“Extensive internal injuries,” Carver said. “Pathologist says it was instant.”
She nodded and he said, “Okay. Now you know everything I know—and it’s time you went home.”
It would be several more days to process the scenes: the warehouse; the van; Adam’s studio; to identify the remains they’d found in freezers and preserved in blocks of plexiglass.
Ruth allowed him to guide her to a waiting police car, but she insisted, in true Ruth Lake style, on handing his jacket back.
Now, at headquarters, his head still full of the craziness of the day, Carver felt flat. The corridors were empty—everyone with any sense having clocked off for the night—tomorrow would be a busy day. The building had taken on its nighttime dullness, giving itself up to sighs and creaks, and then he became aware of the hum of the air-conditioning.
He unlocked his office door, shucked off his jacket, and flicked on the light.
A bright red-and-blue Spider-Man model had been placed square in the middle of his desk. Next to it, a card, signed by Sergeant Rayburn and what looked like every member of the Matrix team.
He took out his phone and tapped in a reply to Rayburn. “Apology accepted.”
88
Ruth told the cop who dropped her at home not to wait
—she would call for a cab when she was ready to go back to the hospital. She turned the key in the lock thinking she would fix things with Adam. It wouldn’t be easy while she was still lying to him about their parents’ deaths, but she would find a way.
The stairs had never seemed so steep. She hauled herself up them step by aching step, pausing at the turn to catch her breath. The front bedroom door stood open. But she always closed interior doors before leaving the house.
Ruth reached for her Casco baton and realized it was in evidence, along with her clothing. The other doors were all shut.
With the image of Karl Obrazki’s mutilated body imprinted on her mind, she took a breath and pressed the door lightly with her fingertips. The wardrobe was ransacked—every item of clothing dumped on the floor—shoeboxes, shoes, the lot. Stepping over them, she looked inside and felt a stab of horror.
The album was missing.
Adam?
Ruth searched every room upstairs before heading below. The front and TV rooms were untouched, which left only the kitchen.
The blue leatherette album lay closed on the kitchen table. On top of it, the house key Adam had returned to her; he must have borrowed it from old Peggy again. It was almost funny: all the time she’d been searching the city for him, Adam was here, sitting in their family home, refreshing his memory. She turned the pages.
He had added press clippings, filling in some of the details she had so carefully kept hidden, populating the timeline around her mother’s death—and after. She found printed clippings from the Liverpool Echo announcing the double murders of Dave Ryan’s son and his daughter-in-law. She had expected this much, but she hadn’t thought that Adam would make the connection to the other, much later double murder of John and Millie Garrod. He had photocopied a series of features from the national press, reporting on the elderly couple, battered to death with a hammer in their retirement bungalow. They were key witnesses two days away from testifying in a drug trial against Alan Jones. Without their testimony, the trial foundered and the Crown Prosecution Service had reluctantly dropped charges.