Splinter in the Blood

by Ashley Dyer

  “As you can see, the media are not inclined to wait for the true facts of the case to emerge. However, I sincerely hope that nobody in this investigation is fueling their flights of fancy. Because discussing the case with anyone outside of the investigation would be completely unacceptable.” He clicked again, calling up the next headline, this time from the Daily Mail: “Adela Faraday Death ‘A Mystery,’ Police Source Says.”

  They had her name just an hour after she was found—and from “a police source,” too. No wonder Parsons looked so grim.

  “Let me be clear,” he said, scanning their faces. “Anyone found leaking information to the press will face disciplinary measures.”

  Nobody moved, but Ruth felt the heightened tension in the room, most resenting the implication that anyone on their team might be responsible, a few perhaps wondering if a careless comment of their own had been quoted as the source.

  “Someone close the door.” When the order had been carried out, Parsons shut down the screen and swept his gaze over the team. “What I am about to say is for your ears only,” he said. “It is most unlikely that Ms. Faraday was in any way linked to this investigation. She does not fit the killer’s preferred ‘type.’ In fact there are no significant points of similarity between this lady and the confirmed victims. She was found at home—it looks like she’d been there a week or more—and there are no tattoos.”

  A murmur went around the room: the lack of tattoos had settled any doubts they might have had on that subject.

  Parsons waited for the noise to subside before going on: “I would expect all of you to discourage conjecture of any kind.” He looked around the room. “So . . . if you are approached, you will respond: ‘Talk to the Press Office, they will provide regular updates.’ Do not tell them this isn’t your case—because they will interpret your words to suit the headline of the day. Your answer to any question should be: ‘Talk to the Press Office, they will provide regular updates.’ I don’t care if they ask you for the time of day—that will be your standard answer. Is that clear?”

  A few nods, a muttered, “Yes, boss,” from others.

  He paused, breathing hard through his nostrils for a few seconds before shuffling his papers and starting again in a more measured tone: “All right. Coming back to Kara Grogan: we have house-to-house, motorist canvassing, and the reinterviewing of Kara’s housemates and teachers. Who wants to go first?”

  Ruth listened with half an ear to team reports all saying the same thing: the killer had not been seen leaving Kara’s body in the park. Parsons didn’t seem to think it necessary to comment on the findings, and heads were drooping.

  Ruth spoke up: “You know the drill, folks—it’s not easy with a victim who’s gone missing a while before it’s reported. We all need to stay alert, keep asking questions—and listen carefully to the answers.”

  Parsons looked peeved that she’d taken it upon herself to give the pep talk he should have given himself. “You’ve been off asking questions of your own, over the last few days, DS Lake,” he said. His tone implied that she’d been playing truant. “Anything you’d care to share on that?”

  “Sir.” Ruth Lake had already moved to a more central spot, so she had a good view of the two detectives who had conducted the original interviews with Kara’s peers. Neither looked at her, but she felt their ill will.

  “Kara cut herself off from her peers in the weeks before she disappeared,” Ruth said. “All that stuff about her being ‘reserved’ was a lot of guff. She had shared some very personal fears with her project group, who were also her housemates. She had a phobia about freezing onstage, forgetting her lines. They set up a nasty prank that made her look like she had done just that in front of a live audience.” She paused and the two aggrieved detectives looked uncomfortable.

  “That destroyed her confidence for a bit. But she was a plucky lass and showed more promise than most, according to her teachers. So she changed study groups, insulated herself from the instigators, became more secretive. She was preparing for an audition for a prestigious role.” She nodded to John Hughes. “We have the computer techs to thank for that information.”

  “And that is significant because . . .” Parsons said.

  “Kara’s housemates said she went off in the evenings—they don’t know where—but the techs identified websites she had been accessing a lot—psychics and the like . . .”

  “Research for her audition,” Parsons said, lightly fingering the report she’d placed on his desk earlier in the day. He still seemed unsure how this might be relevant but didn’t want to appear foolish.

  “I think she might have gone to some of the readings,” Ruth said.

  Parsons nodded, and thanked her, then checked something on his order of business, and she realized that he was about to move to the next topic.

  “I’d like to talk to the psychics who appeared in Liverpool around the time of her abduction,” Ruth added, and he frowned, still not getting it.

  “It might help to fill in the gaps in her timeline,” she said, as though she was continuing her theme—it wouldn’t help to put Parsons on the defensive. “Provide more insight into her state of mind in the days before she disappeared.”

  One of the detectives who had first interviewed the housemates piped up: “Think they’ll contact her in the spirit world, Sarge?”

  “If you had done your job first time round, we might’ve had this information at the start,” Parsons snapped, cutting off the laughter before it really got started. A hush descended over the meeting as a good number of the team upgraded Parsons from pen pusher to someone who shouldn’t be underestimated.

  Ruth went on as if nothing had been said: “I’ve read Kara’s research; it seems these psychics are expert cold readers. Her housemates don’t have a clue what Kara was up to—but if she contacted some of the psychics on her list—”

  “You’re not suggesting we consult these . . . people?” Parsons looked alarmed.

  “No, sir—I want to interview them. Kara was vulnerable. Maybe that nudged her into making bad choices. Maybe one of the psychics noticed her with someone, or maybe she told them something during the performance that might help us . . .” She lifted one shoulder as if to say, Worth a try?

  Parsons stared at his clipboard for a few seconds. “All right,” he said. “But I don’t want to wake up tomorrow to the headline ‘Thorn Killer Cop Consults Psychics.’ Understood?”

  She nodded.

  “I need to hear it, Sergeant Lake.”

  “Understood,” Ruth said.

  Chapter 26

  Toward evening, Ruth Lake was trawling “what’s on” sites for Liverpool to make sure she hadn’t missed any of the psychics that Kara had been interested in.

  The online newsfeeds were full of Adela Faraday’s murder, most of them with thumbnail images of crime scene tape and police at the exclusive apartments where she’d lived. One tabloid said that Merseyside Police “were not treating Ms. Faraday’s death as linked to the ‘Thorn Killer’ murders.” They even quoted “a police source” who said that there was no evidence of the serial killer’s “trademark tattoos” on Adela’s body. Parsons would not be happy. Curiosity piqued, Ruth clicked through a few links, eventually landing on the Liverpool Echo website. They had gotten hold of a photo of the murdered woman at what looked like a business event. She looked familiar.

  Ruth clicked the image to enlarge it.

  Adela Faraday was tall, slim, and blond, expensively clothed in a black dress, and wearing what looked like a diamond bracelet on her wrist. She wore red lipstick and carried what the paper described as a Birkin crocodile handbag. Apparently, a Birkin bag cost around six thousand pounds new. Adela was looking over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised, and looked on the point of laughter.

  I know that face.

  Ruth flashed to the CCTV footage of Carver walking into the Old Bank Hotel the evening he was shot.

  An hour later, she was zipping through the CCTV recordings in DC
I Jansen’s Major Incident Room. It had taken all that time to catch the room empty, and with a computer still logged into the system. That was her only way in, since her own ID would not have given her access to the files she was interested in: the investigation into Greg Carver’s shooting was, at least officially, none of her business. She was seated at DC Tom Ivey’s desk—had watched him nip out thirty seconds earlier. If she was caught, Ivey would be in almost as much trouble for leaving his computer vulnerable as she would be for accessing the investigation files without permission. But she had to find out if she was right, and if she was quick and careful, nobody need ever know that anything was amiss.

  On high alert for signs of DC Ivey’s return, she glanced toward the door, thinking she heard footsteps in the corridor, and almost missed Greg Carver on the screen, walking up a snowy street toward the Old Bank Hotel. She let the recording run on for five minutes then rewound, leaning close to the screen, her eyes darting right and left in her eagerness to take it all in.

  There was Greg, stepping backward out of the hotel foyer, vanishing from sight as he went out of range of the camera. She skipped back to ten minutes before he had arrived, took a breath, then set the controls to fast-forward.

  Five minutes in, she found what she was looking for: a woman hurrying along the street, her collar turned up, one hand holding her coat lapels closed at the neck.

  “Turn around,” Ruth muttered. “Let’s see you.”

  As if in response, the woman glanced over her shoulder, and Ruth’s heart stopped. She rewound again, played it forward, and hit the pause button as the woman looked toward the CCTV camera. Ruth exhaled in a whoosh of breath. “Greg . . .” she murmured. “Oh, God, Greg—tell me it isn’t true.”

  But she rarely got a face wrong. She opened her own laptop, setting it next to DC Ivey’s computer, and clicked through to the Liverpool Echo photograph of the murdered woman.

  The woman was Adela Faraday. She had arrived at the Old Bank Hotel only minutes before Greg Carver.

  Ruth printed a still image of Adela from the CCTV recording as well as the image of her from the Liverpool Echo. Heart hammering, she jammed a memory stick into one of the USB ports on Ivey’s computer and performed an illegal download before leaving the office. DC Ivey was heading up the corridor in the opposite direction.

  She said, “Hi, Tom,” and carried on walking, barely glancing at him.

  “Did you want something, Sarge?” he asked.

  Ruth slowed her pace and stopped, turning to greet the younger detective. “Just wondered how things were going with the investigation. Looks like they’ve gone home for the night—all except you.” She’d found that flattery could be a good deflecting tactic.

  “D’you still want to know?” he asked. “I could tell you over coffee.” He made it sound tentative, a question, not wanting to seem pushy.

  She returned his gaze with a cool, steady look, and he blushed.

  “I—I mean, just as a—I didn’t mean—” He was glowing from the neck up by now. “Um, sorry, Sarge . . .”

  “Tom, it’s fine,” she said, easing up now that he wasn’t focusing on the oddness of her visit. “Normally, I’d be glad to, but it’s late, and I should pop over to the hospital on my way home, see how Greg is.”

  It wasn’t until she was on the concrete fire escape stairwell that she thrust her clenched fist into her pocket and let the thumb drive slip from her sweat-slicked hand.

  Accessing DC Ivey’s computer could get her a wrist slap, but performing that download could get her arrested. When her heart had stopped trying to batter its way out of her rib cage, she returned to her office, grabbed her shoulder bag, and jammed her laptop into it.

  Then she headed straight to the hospital.

  An uneaten plate of food lay on the trolley next to his bed, and Carver was standing at the window, staring into the dark. He turned slowly as she came into the room, grazing the window ledge with the tips of his fingers, and she realized he must be having problems with his balance.

  She said, “You okay?”

  He smiled. “Better for seeing you.”

  “Got a moment to look at something?”

  He gestured with his free hand to the empty room. “I’m not exactly snowed under.”

  She dipped into her bag for her laptop and cleared a space for it on his bed trolley, then pulled the thumb drive out of her coat pocket.

  Carver said, “What is it?”

  “CCTV.”

  “From the case?”

  She tilted her head, letting him think what he wanted to think as she set up the video, then let it run, watching his reaction. He froze when he saw the woman hurrying toward the hotel.

  “You know her?” she said.

  He said nothing, and his silence made her doubt him all over again.

  She jumped forward to the moment he walked down the street.

  “Well, you must recognize this character.”

  A fractional hesitation, then he said quietly, “You know that’s me.”

  She paused the video and placed two printouts in front of him: Adela Faraday in the Liverpool Echo, and Adela Faraday from the CCTV recording at the Old Bank.

  “This woman was found murdered today in her apartment on the waterfront. And there she is, walking into a hotel, minutes before you, on the night you were shot. Does that strike you as . . . odd?”

  “Coincidental, maybe.”

  “You don’t know her?”

  “I can’t be sure.”

  “Is that you covering your backside in case I find proof that you did?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “She’d been dead a while, Greg. Maybe even as long as you’ve been in hospital.”

  She saw something, a slight drawing together of his brows.

  “Was this your doing? Did you do this to her, Greg?”

  He looked wounded by the question, but still he didn’t speak.

  “I’ve been beating myself up, thinking I should never have doubted you. But now I’m thinking maybe I was right after all—about the lies, about the booze you tried to drown yourself in that night. About the gun I found by your chair.”

  He began to shake his head.

  “Then explain it to me. Tell me why I should—” She tried to take a breath, but her chest constricted and she felt a sharp pain below her rib cage. She slammed her laptop closed and scooped up the two images.

  “Ruth,” he said.

  She held up a hand to stop him. “You need—” Her lungs failed her and she saw dark blurring at the edges of her vision. She bent double, hands on her knees, and Carver took a step toward her. This seemed to release the locked muscles of her diaphragm and she waved him away, whooping in air.

  “You need to start being honest with me,” she said at last.

  Alone in his hospital room, Carver sat in his armchair and flicked the on switch of the TV remote. BBC News 24 was playing a loop of the main stories of the day; he had been watching it moments before Ruth arrived. The instant he had seen her picture on the TV screen he’d known it was Adela Faraday. She had gone under a different name, but it was her all right. He turned the TV off, but the events of that night continued to play out as if projected onto the screen.

  He remembered full well following her into the hotel—hadn’t he watched her from the lobby, lurking in the background as she signed in, brushing past her, stepping into the lift ahead of her so that he could stand behind her, stroking the wool of her coat lightly with his fingertips, drinking in her scent? She drew away, gathering her coat skirt, moving closer to the door.

  She got out on the second floor and he rode the elevator to the third, returning by the fire escape, seeing her fumble the swipe card in her hurry to get into the room. He’d held back just long enough for her to push the door wide. The lights flicked on and she let the door swing to. He ran, thinking he’d left it too late, heart tripping, ears straining to hear the double click as the lock engaged. But he made it, catching it just in
time. She turned, her coat already shucked off her shoulders; her eyes widened, and the lust he’d felt at that moment was animal, violent.

  They had sex. He remembered an argument, and that Adela was frightened. He couldn’t remember her leaving, and that frightened him, didn’t remember phoning Ruth afterward—didn’t even remember how he’d gotten home—but he did remember vividly a gun flash, a sharp, sulfurous reek of smoke. Then everything faded to shadows.

  “How are you, Greg?”

  A man’s voice. Carver turned from the blank TV screen. The man’s face looked gray and washed out under the hospital lights. Purples and yellows and grays swirled around him, and then dispersed.

  Abruptly the man’s eye magnified, turning dark brown, the edges blood red. It spun like a circular saw, and the features seemed to break into sections. His right jaw slid down and his cheekbones splintered, shattering into a thousand silvery shards.

  Carver braced himself for the grating crash of glass, for the splash of blood.

  “Greg, can you hear me?”

  For an instant the man’s voice distorted, then the image—memory? hallucination?—faded and Carver recognized his neurologist.

  The doctor reached for the tumbler on the night table and crouched next to Carver’s chair. “Here,” he said, “take a sip.”

  Carver wanted to dash the glass from his hand, thinking poison. But he had no strength, couldn’t even raise his hands, and the doctor was gently insistent. He took a sip, and it was only water.

  “Hallucination?” the doctor said. “A flashback?”

  Carver shook his head, unsure of what he’d seen, unable to speak, his tongue thick in his mouth.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “No.” He took another sip of water.

  “So, no headache?”