by Andrew Lowe
‘Sometimes, there’s a tingling sensation. Like my body is reacting to something. But it’s… out of reach. I can sense it, but I can’t feel it.’
‘Interpret it?’
‘Yes.’
Alex took out her phone and navigated to something. ‘What happened to your hand, Jake?’
‘Training thing. Missed a mark.’
She looked up, narrowed her eyes. ‘YouTube.’ She handed over the phone. ‘Watch that.’
Sawyer looked at the title of the video: Why Whispering Gives Some People The Tingles. ‘Is this ASMR?’
‘Yes. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. A tingling feeling when hearing whispers or certain repetitive sounds. It’s still being researched, but some people see it as a form of benign seizure, perhaps connected to empathy.’
He handed the phone back to her. ‘I’ve tried it.’
‘And?’
‘It just gave me a vague, tingly feeling of bullshit. Pseudoscience. The sort of thing that didn’t exist before the internet.’
She took the phone and set it down on the table, keeping her eyes on him. ‘I think your brain function is fine. That’s shown by the sensations, the panic attack you mentioned. But it’s interesting that you can’t make clear sense of it. Maybe there is some damage or disruption. You have the same hardware as the rest of us, Jake. Empathy, impulse control, emotion, decision-making. Anterior cingulate cortex. Fusiform gyrus. Superior temporal gyrus. Amygdala. But something is disrupted, compromised. You said you were self-medicating?’
‘I suppose. Just—’
‘Taking risks? Seeking out danger? Thrill?’
‘I’m trying to…’ Again, he searched the room, the walls. ‘Feel it again. The panic. The fear.’
She frowned. ‘Because that normalises you, right? Shows you’re unbroken. How is it working out?’
‘Not well.’
‘Do you worry that you might be sociopathic? Even psychopathic?’
He snorted. ‘Of course I don’t.’
Alex raised an eyebrow at his reaction. ‘Difficulty with empathy. Risk-taking. Easily bored. Charming but manipulative. Acute emotional intelligence and an understanding of how to push buttons to get what you want. Maybe a touch of narcissism? Inflated sense of self?’
He watched her, smiling. ‘It all sounds like my job description.’
‘Psychopaths are usually happy to commit crimes to get what they want. I assume you don’t cut corners to solve cases? Play it on the edge?’
He leaned forward. ‘By definition, a psychopath wouldn’t be concerned about whether or not he was a psychopath.’
Alex didn’t smile. She looked down and wrote something in her pad, taking her time. Sawyer recognised the technique from interrogation training: intimidate with silence. He also knew the counter: patience.
She looked up. ‘Do you like women, Jake?’
‘I’m straight, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Is that what you think I mean? What do you look for in a woman? What attracts you?’
He sighed. ‘Someone who reminds me of my mother.’
Alex smiled, nodded. ‘Thank you for cutting to the chase. But these sessions are going to be of limited use if you only tell me what you think I want to hear. Do you go for strong women? Vulnerable women?’
‘I’m not afraid of strong women.’
She laid the pad on her knee and rested her hands on top, fingers clasped. ‘Why would you be? You know they can’t hurt you. Not physically, at least.’ Sawyer licked his finger and dabbed at the biscuit crumbs on his knee. ‘And how about when you look in the mirror? Or fall asleep at night? Do you like what you see? Are you happy with your thoughts?’
He didn’t look up. ‘Thoughts?’
‘The things you don’t share with anyone else. The things that go through your head as you drift off.’
‘I don’t see frolicking puppies and kittens, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Why did you shave your head?’
He frowned. ‘When?’
‘Maggie mentioned it. Did you just fancy a change? Or was your hair something to remove from the list of things you had to manage? The feeling of not being able to cope? Of looking for things you can—’
‘—throw out of the boat.’
She nodded. ‘Yes! Exactly.’ Alex had momentum now. She leaned forward. Sawyer felt like a nervous paddler, aware of a gathering wave. ‘Would you think it’s fair to say, Jake, that your life has been pretty much defined by death? Your cases. All those puzzles to solve. All instigated by death.’
‘You’ve got a theme, yes.’
She unclasped her hands and held her arms out briefly, as if waiting for a hug. ‘But here’s the thing! You’re the survivor, Jake.’ She sprang up and wandered over to a bookshelf, surprising Sawyer with her spritely movement. ‘Behind it all, is the one puzzle you can’t solve. The one case you can’t close.’ She reached the bookcase and turned. ‘I don’t think there’s anything physically wrong with your brain. I think you’re traumatised. The six-year-old who witnessed something too terrible to contemplate. He’s still inside you. Frozen. And you can’t unfreeze, get on with your own life, until he’s—’
‘—melted?’
‘It’s an unpleasant image, but it serves our purpose.’ Alex walked back to her chair and sat down. ‘So, we’re going to work together on that.’ She gestured out of the window. ‘It’s perhaps not the kind of thing you would want to do on a beautiful autumn afternoon, but I’d like you to take me through the whole thing. The day it happened. Every little event you remember. And then I want to know what happened next. Your life before and after.’
Sawyer tilted back his head. ‘So you want me to talk you through my difficult childhood?’
‘There may be some neurological impairment, given how you were assaulted. But I feel your difficulties are all based on the heightened drama of that appalling day. I want to try something with you. It’s a technique used in trauma therapy, called “reliving”. It can be painful, but extremely effective, to break free from the origins of the trauma. But you don’t mind a little pain. You eat pain for breakfast, right?’
‘I prefer Weetabix.’
Alex smiled. ‘All of that will come later, though. For now, why don’t you lie back on the couch and tell me about your mother?’
29
Sawyer bought a cheese sandwich in Stanshope village and drove down into the Manifold Valley. He parked at Wetton Mill and walked along the old railway line. There was something about the case that was nagging him, simmering at the back of his mind, and there was only one place to see if he could bring it to the boil.
The therapy had left him drained and leaden, but he pressed on up the steps carved into the crag and edged up the rocky slope into the mouth of Thor’s Cave. A party of walkers in fluorescent waterproofs were gathered in the central chamber; they eyed him as he clambered past in his work suit and shoes. He found his usual place, near the natural slitted window that looked down onto the valley, and gazed out at the soft afternoon light, filtered by drizzle.
The walkers settled into the open space at the top of the slope. They all sat down on raised sections of rock, apart from a broad, bearded man in an unsullied North Face jacket, dabbing at the screen of his phone. He read aloud to the group. ‘The cave entrance is ten metres high. Apparently, it was occupied as long as ten thousand years ago, probably until Roman or Saxon times. So it’s one of the oldest sites of human activity in the area.’
Sawyer blocked them out, shifted their murmuring to the background. He pondered the details of the case, trying to identify the source of his irritation.
No sexual motive. Both victims received organs from donors who died at the same hospital. Was there a connection to the hospital? To the nurse? Was that all a dead end? Pure coincidence? Possibly. They were both local to the area and so Sheffield would be the natural source.
The bearded man continued. ‘The name doesn’t come from the Norse Thunde
r God. It’s taken from the word “tor”, which fits the geology.’
No official religions had a problem with organ donation, but was this a lone God freak with issues around artificially prolonging life? Why keep everything so clean? No blood? Why cauterise the wounds? Wrap them in polythene? Cover the private areas?
No external damage. Minimal damage. Efficient.
‘But of course, it’s the legend that persists. Not the boring reality.’
He thought of Ainsworth’s comment. ‘Inconveniently naked.’
‘They’ve found stone tools here. And the remains of extinct animals.’
There was always something left behind.
He hurried down the steps and speed-walked back to the car. As he rose out of the valley at Hulme End, his phone found service and he called Shepherd.
‘Sir. Been trying to reach you. Nothing major. Moran says he’s got nothing from ANPR for the van in the CCTV.’
‘He abandons the vehicles somewhere once they’re used. Somewhere private. Any other recent stolen vans matching the type?’
‘Yes. But no ANPR hits yet.’
Sawyer turned onto the A515, the central North to South arterial road which bisected the National Park. He squeezed the accelerator, aiming for Monyash and the Barrel Inn. ‘I assume Moran is cheerily checking the stolen vehicles for CCTV?’
‘Of course.’
‘Any links coming through from Myers for the potential liver donors? Connections to Susan Bishop?’
‘As I mentioned before, there are five potentials based on deaths at Sheffield at times which fit Palmer’s transplant. Working on links to Bishop and Palmer.’
Sawyer took a packet of salt and vinegar crisps out of the dash and opened it with his teeth. ‘Six.’
‘Sir?’
‘Six matches. Including Roy Tyler.’
Shepherd hesitated. ‘Susan Bishop’s heart donor?’
‘Right. I assume he fits the bill in terms of age and parameters. But we don’t know anything about the condition of these people, their viability for transplants. And, anyway—’
‘It could be a blind alley. The transplant thing.’
Sawyer pulled in to the Barrel Inn car park and unwrapped the bandage from his hand; the cuts were healed but still sore. Klein sat on the wooden bench that looked down towards the fields around Eyam, already veiled by dusk. A few lights twinkled from the farm buildings, with a denser constellation from Bakewell forming on the horizon. ‘Get Sally in on the briefing tomorrow. We’re groping in the dark with victimology. We need to review the scenes, the forensics. The fact that he leaves us nothing tells us something.’
30
They took the back lanes, bypassing Bakewell. Klein was silent, head resting against the window, gazing out. Sawyer slowed behind a hay lorry and flicked on the Mini’s headlights. The beams glared against the bales, stacked impossibly high. He monitored the lorry as it wheezed up an incline. It wouldn’t take much to topple the pile: an error in the tethering, a clunk into an unseen pothole. The bales would dislodge and tumble down onto the car, pestling Sawyer and Klein through the chassis and into the concrete below. It would take all night to scrape them out, to excavate them from the pulverised metal and glass. He imagined the inquest: cop and criminal, out for a night drive. The son of a murdered woman, delivering her killer to a vigilante justice.
‘That’s Robin Hood’s Stride,’ said Klein, pointing at a shadowy cluster of rocks at the back of the fields. ‘Gritstone. Not far to Cratcliffe Tor. Stone circle. Used to hang out there.’ He sighed. ‘So long ago.’ He took off his cap and laid it across his knees. ‘They filmed a scene from The Princess Bride there. I remember going to see it at the old cinema in Leek. The summer before…. Went there with Jess a couple of times.’
‘Were you close to her?’
Klein nodded. ‘We were lovers, Mr Robbins. Let’s not be coy. My parents moved to Wardlow halfway through my A levels. I scraped through and studied at Manchester. Teacher training. I worked with her and we became close.’
‘Did you know she was married?’
‘Yes. Unhappily. Do you remember back at the prison, when I told you that Jess had said she’d got herself into something and was trying to get out of it?’
Sawyer nodded. ‘Her marriage?’
‘I wonder if there was something more. Unhappy people often build themselves multiple distractions.’
The hay lorry pulled into a lay-by and turned on its hazard lights. Sawyer overtook, giving it a friendly double-blast on the horn. He turned off towards Elton and Matlock. ‘Did she mention anyone else?’
‘No. She never spoke about her marriage. But I had the sense there were secrets there. And not the kind of secrets you confide to a young supply teacher. An inbetweener.’
Sawyer glanced over. Klein had taken off his glasses and was wiping the lenses with the end of his shirt. He was again struck by how old he looked, how spent. It was common for long-term prisoners to struggle after their release: away from the insulating isolation of the prison walls, the longing for freedom could be replaced by a sense of exposure, and a panic over the lack of structure. ‘How are you coping in general? It must be quite an adjustment for you.’
Klein startled and turned to Sawyer. ‘Sorry. Miles away. I feel like a child again. In cars.’ He settled in his seat. ‘It’s… not an overnight transition. Incarceration is terrible at first. The worst thing in the world. Over time, of course, it normalises. It becomes all you know. You live to the rhythm of roll-calls and spins.’
‘Cell search.’
‘Yes. And now, here in “The Out”, it all seems so open-ended. All these people, on their own timelines, doing whatever the hell they like, whenever the hell they like.’ He replaced his glasses. ‘Are we going to be okay here, Mr Robbins? I’ve heard that Traveller communities can be quite hostile to outsiders.’
Sawyer shrugged. ‘They’re just marginalised. Their lifestyle doesn’t conveniently fit in, and they’ve been antagonised rather than accommodated. You can hardly blame them for circling the wagons. It’s like everything else. You can’t demand respect if you don’t give it.’
The address given by Reeves led to a dilapidated farm in Slaley, on the edge of Bonsall. The main gate opened to a muddy and cratered dirt track, so Sawyer left the car on a verge off the narrow adjoining lane. They side-stepped along a fringe of grass below the property’s stone boundary wall. The outbuildings had mostly been converted for storage—old cars, building materials—but one had been refashioned into a makeshift gymnasium, with stacks of barbells and dented punch-bags.
The farmhouse was low-lit and quiet, but music throbbed from the woodland behind the farm. As Sawyer reached the end of the track, he could see a cluster of white caravans flickering in firelight. Shouting. Laughing. Cheering. A crowd jostled near the fire. Groups of twos and threes milled around nearby, some seated at tables.
‘Look,’ said Klein. ‘I’d be happy to wait in the car. Really.’
Sawyer squinted at him. He was only half-joking. ‘It’ll help us to establish trust, rolling out the guy who suffered because of police injustice.’
A bald, heavyset man in an ill-fitting suit walked over from the farmhouse porch. ‘Yiz lost, lads?’ He spoke quickly, the words blurring into each other.
‘Hoping to talk to Ryan,’ said Sawyer. ‘Ryan Casey?’
The man looked from Sawyer to Klein and back again. ‘Coppers, eh?’
‘I’m an author, writing a book about this man.’ He gestured to Klein, who dipped his head. ‘He’s the victim of police malpractice and I think Ryan can help me with the case.’
The man folded his arms; most of the skin was hidden beneath tapestries of amateur tattoos.
Sawyer kept going. ‘He’s been in prison for thirty years. He’s looking to clear his name. He’s innocent.’
The man coughed, and styled it into mocking laughter. ‘Aren’t we fuckin’ all?’ He gathered himself. ‘Money in this?’
�
�We might be able to work something out. But I can’t guarantee—’
‘Fuck yiz, then.’ The man turned his back on them and headed back towards the house.
‘We can definitely work something out,’ said Klein.
The man kept walking, didn’t turn. He held up an index finger. ‘He’s got the right answer! Ryan’s out back. Follow me.’
He led them around the back of the farmhouse to a roofed veranda with raised decking. Cliques of burly men sat at white plastic tables cluttered with glasses and beer bottles. A battered old barbecue flared and sizzled beneath a pop-up gazebo, tended by a walking whale of a man who wore a string vest, despite the chill in the air. Wafts of sweat, cheap sausage, fake designer perfume. Music—deep, bassy hip-hop—rattled the wood beneath their feet. Small children scampered in and out of the house, shepherded by women and teenagers. Two piebald ponies grazed in a stubbly field by the caravan camp.
The suited man turned and beckoned Sawyer and Klein to a large table in the corner, where an elderly man sat flanked by two larger, younger colleagues, both wearing tight black T-shirts which exposed their tattoos: Celtic designs, with tendrils curling around the contours of hard-won muscles. One of them turned, saw the suited man, and lifted himself to his feet, slow and calm. His hair was shaven at the back and sides, with a neat frizzy patch on top. He bent forward and glared at Sawyer and Klein.
The elderly man waved a hand. ‘Visitors, Joe?’
Sawyer stepped towards the muscled man. ‘Ryan? Could you spare us a few minutes?’
Ryan Casey sat back in his chair. He was well into his seventies, but had worn the years well: held his shape, kept his hair (thin on top, with something dangerously close to a mullet round the back). He looked a little unevolved—crude, simian features, with a flattened nose and wide mouth—but there was guile behind the deep-set eyes. ‘No problem, son. Sit yourselves down. Keep it quick, mind.’
The muscled man stepped aside and pulled out two chairs, away from the table. The message was clear: a qualified welcome, open to evaluation.