by Ashley Dyer
At first, he thinks it’s Ruth.
Fuck’s sake, keep it down, he wants to tell her. Can’t you see I’ve got a headache?
But he’s plunged into darkness, and Ruth is gone. A blinding flash, and pain sears behind his eyeballs like a knife.
Someone says, “Pupils equal and reactive to light.”
Carver doesn’t recognize the voice. He tries to speak.
“Positive RAPD, left eye,” the voice says. “Can we get a portable CT in here?”
Carver thinks he should answer, but still he can’t speak.
The shadows pass like ghosts above him. At least the jet engine has shut up. This is wrong. He was in his flat, drinking. Someone else was there. A woman. He remembers having sex. In the flat? No, somewhere else, but it feels familiar. He’s yelling at the woman. A gun. Was I holding a gun? That blinding flash again, then more shadows. Someone is moving around his flat. Now—or then? Time is messed up. And anyway, you weren’t in your flat—not with the woman.
Then where? Suddenly, he understands: being there/not being there; ghosts; jet engines; and airstrip lights that float above—this is the logic of dreams. He just needs to wake up.
Instantaneously, he’s back in his flat, and the presence in the room feels tangible, a shadow, a dark something just out of his line of vision. He wants to turn his head, but he’s paralyzed; the fear is crushing, like a physical weight on his chest. Night terror, he thinks. He’s had them before—usually after his drinking binges. If he can just move—a finger, an eyebrow—he’ll wake, and the nightmare will end.
The shadow swoops in, stares into his face. Ruth. Relief floods through him.
He wants to say, Ruth, I’m off my face drunk, and this is a bastard horrible dream. Wake me the hell up.
But he blinks, and she’s gone.
Sounds, movement. His eyes won’t focus; he still can’t move, but the frightening presence is gone, and the crushing pressure on his chest is lifted—he can breathe again. Blue lights strobe beyond the curtains of his sitting room, and he thinks of a rave he once went to with Emma. He hears the clatter of a helicopter’s rotor blades.
Then darkness again.
Chapter 4
Across the Mersey River, a twenty-minute drive from Greg Carver’s apartment, in a 1930s house on a quiet lane, the Thorn Killer watches BBC News 24 on TV. Paramedics carry their patient on a trolley down the steep front steps of his home; the drone of a police helicopter drowns out the voice of the reporter as it hovers, its beam focused on the scene, and for a few seconds DCI Carver is drenched in light. He looks dead.
The killer stands impulsively and paces the room. Months of planning followed by three weeks of backbreaking toil, fingers calloused and sore, hands cramped and aching, eyes burning under the glare of the lamps. Three weeks’ work on Kara’s skin art, preparing her, making her ready—for this?
Carver, as good as dead. And even if he survives, what possible use could he be?
An irritated glance at the TV reveals Ruth Lake following the paramedics down the steps of Carver’s house. The camera zooms in on her, huddled in an overcoat. She breaks away to talk to a CSI, although her gaze is fixed on Carver as they slide the trolley into the ambulance. Her face is empty of emotion. The killer stops midstep and turns to face the screen, wondering, not for the first time, what she’s thinking. Snow gathers like confetti in the cascade of Sergeant Lake’s hair; it looks dark under the arc lamps, but the killer knows those curls are a light brown; in the right light, the highlights appear auburn.
The imposing person of Superintendent Wilshire appears suddenly, already on the other side of the police tape, his back to the camera, and a couple of journos scramble for a comment.
Oops—missed that one, boys.
“Superintendent,” one of the newsmen yells. “Sir—is it the Thorn Killer?”
Detective Sergeant Lake says a few words to the CSI and turns to meet her boss. She draws herself to her full height, shoulders back, chin up.
Now, there’s a woman steeling herself for something. The killer’s suppressed rage retreats a little, tempered by curiosity about this sphinx of a woman.
The detective is lost from view for a moment, hidden under Wilshire’s protective umbrella. How symbolic.
A cable TV van slides to a stop on the far side of the cordon, and a fraction of a second later, the news team cuts to a more revealing perspective. The recording has been nicely spliced with the original footage, but the lighting is different. The execs at the hand-to-mouth cable TV station that got that angle must be rubbing their hands at the money coming in from news teams, eager to get the stricken face of DCI Carver’s right-hand woman on their screens. Except it’s impossible to read any emotion at all on that pale, pretty face.
From this angle, the crowd is visible and the killer switches attention away from Ruth and her superintendent, focusing instead on the rubberneckers, seeing curiosity, excitement in their faces. Everyone loves a good murder.
The superintendent says something and DS Lake replies, confusion written in the furrow of her brow. He speaks again and her shoulders go rigid for a second. So tense. Then she lifts her head and the whites of her eyes catch flashes from the emergency vehicles’ light bars. Could Ruth Lake actually care about Carver?
Is she shaking? She is—she’s losing it. The killer moves in closer: this just got interesting.
A sharp word from Superintendent Wilshire brings the sergeant to herself again, but her control seems tenuous. She nods toward her car (it is her car—the viewer knows this, and a lot more besides about Ruth Lake). Wilshire takes her arm, and she jerks free. She can’t be heard, but it doesn’t take a lip-reader to see that DS Lake is saying, “No.” She leans back, body angled away from the direction the superintendent wants her to take—classic signs of refusal, literally digging her heels into the snow. She really doesn’t want to leave. And then suddenly she does, and she’s moving fast, dragging her car key out of her pocket so fast that it practically turns inside out.
Well, now that’s . . . odd.
A rewind, pause, replay reveals a little more. The viewer reads alarm, and then relief in Sergeant Lake’s face. This isn’t just odd, it’s fascinating.
Playing the sequence one more time, the viewer leans forward, looking for the instant that alarm turns to relief.
The camera zooms in on Ruth’s face as she follows the ambulance past the tape. Her jaw is clenched tight enough to break a molar.
“Sergeant Lake, what have you been up to?”
Chapter 5
Forty minutes later, having safely stashed the files and the gun, DS Lake headed over to the hospital. A marked police car was parked in one of the emergency bays; the driver stood under the awning, out of the steadily falling snow, taking crafty puffs on a vape. He tucked the e-cig out of sight when he saw her.
“You brought Emma Carver here?” she said.
“Half an hour ago, Sarge.”
“And you’re hanging around because . . . ?”
“It’s quiet, and I thought . . .”
“You know what you should do when it’s quiet?” An answer didn’t leap readily to the constable’s lips and she said, “Bimble about; be seen, deter crime with your highly visible presence. Help someone out of a snowdrift. The glow of righteousness will keep you warm—and it’s better for your health.” She cocked her head to let him know that she’d seen him sucking on his e-cig.
She walked through the staff entrance and the doors slid shut behind her. She stamped her feet on the rubber matting and shook herself to shed some of the snow that had gathered on her shoulders and hair. A nurse hurried out of one of the cubicles opposite the nursing station; she glanced at Ruth, beckoned to someone out of her view, but carried on.
“Greg Carver?” Ruth called.
The nurse slowed, and at the same moment, a security guard appeared. “Are you family?” the nurse asked.
“Police.” She showed her warrant card.
�
��He’s in no state to answer questions,” the nurse said, walking on. “And I haven’t got time—”
“Emma arrived half an hour ago—Greg’s wife. I was wondering how she’s—”
The nurse frowned.
“You see,” Ruth went on, “Greg is a friend, and—” That word, “friend,” almost undid her. A spasm twisted her mouth, and she took a breath, letting it go slowly.
The nurse stopped, considering her for a moment. “Let me see that warrant card again.”
Ruth handed it over. The nurse checked it and, with a nod to the security guy, gave it back.
“We’ve had reporters trying to get in,” she explained. “Mrs. Carver’s in the waiting area—through the doors on the right.”
“Before I talk to her,” Ruth said, detaining the nurse for just a few moments longer, “is there anything I should know?”
“He had a few problems in the ambulance coming over,” the nurse said, keeping her voice low. “But he’s stable, for now.”
“For now? What does that mean?”
“It means his BP dropped dangerously low for a short time, but we got it under control, and now he’s being assessed.”
Not much of an answer, but Ruth understood that medics had their protocols, just as police did, and she didn’t push for more.
Emma was seated alone. When her eyes finally focused on Ruth, she leaped to her feet and seized her by the hands. They were desperately cold. Her skin usually had a peaches-and-cream complexion Ruth envied, but tonight it was paper white and seemed stretched too tight over the bones of her face.
“They said he was shot?” It came out as a question, as if it was too implausible to be real.
Ruth nodded.
“And what they’re saying on the news—is that true?” she asked. “Is it the Thorn Killer, Ruth?”
“I don’t know,” Ruth said, keeping her answers short to avoid building lies she couldn’t keep track of.
“Had Greg made a breakthrough? He’d tell you, wouldn’t he? They said you found him—did he say anything?”
“He wasn’t . . .” She looked into Emma’s blue eyes and saw Carver’s staring back at her, unblinking. “He couldn’t . . .” Shit. “He wasn’t conscious,” she said finally, as the closest to the truth that she could manage.
Her mobile phone buzzed in her pocket, and she checked the screen. John Hughes, the crime scene manager. She excused herself, walking through to the emergency treatment area to take the call in private.
“You need to take that outside, Sergeant.” The nurse had returned with a box of nitrile gloves.
Ruth apologized and stepped into the freezing night before moving the slider to answer. The sky had cleared, leaving eight inches of new snow on top of the ice-crusted remnants of the last fall. It softened the contours of the taxis and emergency vehicles parked on the forecourt and reflected the ghost-white glow of the streetlight LEDs.
“How is he?” Hughes said, without preamble. “Have you heard?”
“I’m at the hospital now. He’s still being assessed,” she said. “How about you—did you find anything?” Hughes getting in touch so soon meant one of two things—they had found something, or they didn’t think there was anything to find. She held her breath.
“A small amount of blood spatter on the chair. No signs of struggle, a whisky spill on the floor—could be he passed out, didn’t hear the shooter come in.”
“Footwear marks, fingermarks?”
“The paramedics trampled all over the scene,” he said. “But we did get a small size footwear impression on the rug in the bedroom—could be a woman’s shoe.”
Crap. Leaving her shoeprints in his living room was one thing, but in his bedroom . . . Wilshire was right—she must be in shock, missing something as simple as that. But she would hand over a different pair of shoes for comparison, so it wasn’t a major problem.
“It looks like surfaces, light switches, and door handles have been wiped down,” he said. “The only fingermarks we’ve found are yours.”
She sighed, hoping it didn’t sound too theatrical.
“And a void on the carpet of the bedroom—looks like a heavy square object has been sitting there for a while—a box most likely. It looks like Blu Tack has recently been removed from the walls in there, so maybe he used the bedroom as his unofficial war room?”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, Ruth, don’t be so tight-lipped. If anyone would know, it’d be you.”
“He didn’t invite me into his bedroom, but I’d say it was a fair bet he worked on the case at home.”
“Jansen’s the OIC, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’d better let him know.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Jesus, Ruth—you’re not thinking straight! Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Carver did keep a private dossier: whatever you’ve got on the murders—”
“—could now be in the Thorn Killer’s hands,” she finished for him. “And if that’s the case, the whole investigation is screwed.” Hughes was right, she wasn’t thinking straight. Couldn’t get that image out of her head: Greg Carver in his chair, blood oozing from the bullet wound in his chest, his eyes fixed on her while she cleared up the evidence.
“So, are you going to tell Jansen, or shall I?” Hughes said. “Only, it might be better coming from you.”
“I’ll do it,” she said. “Just give me an hour to find out what’s happening with Greg.”
“All right,” he said. “And Ruth?”
“Yeah?”
“When you’ve done that, go home and get some sleep.”
As Ruth returned to the waiting room, a doctor in scrubs came through a side door and called for Mrs. Carver. Emma gazed round in panic, seeking out Ruth. The two women reached the doctor at the same time, and for a moment the medic looked confused, and a little embarrassed.
“DS Lake—I’m a friend and colleague of Greg’s,” Ruth explained.
“Best we talk in private,” the doctor said, holding the door.
Emma seized Ruth’s hand.
“Sergeant Lake can come, if you want her to,” the doctor said.
He showed them through to a private room with armchairs around a low table, a box of tissues within easy reach. The nurse Ruth had spoken to earlier hovered next to the door.
“Is he all right?” Emma said. “Can I see him?”
“We’ve performed a CT scan,” the doctor said. “The bullet is lodged about here”—he pointed to the center of his own chest—“between the aorta, which is the major artery, and the spinal cord. We need to give Greg antibiotics to lower his chances of infection. Does he have any allergies?”
“No,” Emma said.
The doctor turned to the nurse. “Tell them they can make a start.”
“A start?” Emma said. “Haven’t you operated on him, yet?”
“It’s a complicated picture,” he said, his tone calm and firm. “He’s had a blood transfusion, and his vital signs are stable, so we don’t have to rush in. But your husband also has some swelling of the brain.”
“I don’t understand,” Emma said, her voice shrill with anxiety. “You said he was shot in the chest.”
“He was,” the doctor said. “The head injury isn’t obvious, but it’s something we routinely check for in cases like this. It may or may not be related to the shooting.” He looked at Ruth. “He was found sitting up in a chair?”
“Yes,” she said. “I found him.”
“Is it possible he fell and hit his head after he was shot, managed to crawl to the chair?”
Ruth thought about it. There was no blood spatter, no blood anywhere in the room, except for on the armchair. She shook her head. “Unlikely.”
“Well, brain swelling can happen quite a while after the trauma. Has he been involved in a fight, or a car accident recently?”
Emma turned helplessly to Ruth.
“Greg and Emma are separated, just now,” she
explained. “He and I work closely, and I’m sure he would have mentioned something like that. But when he rang to ask me to call round this evening, he sounded, uh”—she glanced at Emma—“intoxicated. So I suppose he might have fallen before the shooting.”
“Okay, so the injury is probably very recent—which is good, because it means we’re treating the injury fast.”
“You seem more concerned about the brain swelling than the bullet lodged near his spine,” Ruth said.
“Greg has significant buildup of fluid, and that’s causing pressure on his brain,” the doctor said, tapping the top of his own head lightly. “Reducing the intracranial pressure is our first priority. So a neurosurgeon will insert tubes into his brain cavities to drain the extra fluid off. That should do the trick.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Emma said.
“There are other, more radical, options. A team of specialists at the Aintree Neurosciences Centre is ready to operate.”
“But that’s miles away,” Emma wailed. “Why can’t you do it here?”
“It’s his best chance, Mrs. Carver,” the doctor said gently. “They have the best resources in the northwest for injuries like this.”
She gave a juddering sigh.
“We’ll airlift him, which is quicker, and safer, because there’s less risk of any jarring on the journey. But before I give the word, I need to ask you something, and it’s important you’re honest with me.”
Emma blinked. “Of course.”
He looked into her face, as if watching carefully for her reaction. “Greg’s blood alcohol is dangerously high. Now, we can still operate, but the team will need to know if this is a one-off, or if Greg has a long-standing problem with drink.”
“He’s been drinking heavily for some time, but I can’t believe it got so bad.” Emma looked to Ruth for confirmation.
“He drinks. Maybe a bit more than most,” Ruth said, being honest in this, at least. “But . . .” She recalled the empty whisky bottle lying next to Carver’s chair. “This is . . . unusual.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s helpful.”