Page 24 of Natural-Born Cullers

Gray looked around to the few faces pressed to windows across the street.

A risky kink-level for a killer: liking a killing field that anyone could wander into, therefore exposing himself. If it was why Cal had called him here, this place, the location, it definitely played close to sexual connotation. He… she, they liked the threat of someone… innocent watching them that had nothing to do with any live streams with the perverted.

“Sir.” Sat next to Gray, Simon handed him his phone, and Gray pressed play a moment later.

“Evening, makers and breakers.” On screen, a man crouched down, a Japanese mask covering his face. “I hope you’ve got your jacking-off cream to hand, ’cause you’re in for one hell of a milking tonight with these beauties who, rather stupidly, live as bros not hoes….”

More was said, but the camera shifted a blond man’s way. Gray could only guess at the colour to his hair with the red light that made a whore of him, but the change in tone suggested a light colour at least. The young manwould have been good-looking usually, but blood and a swollen eye twisted his looks as he’d been forced onto all fours, in a dog cage that made criss-crosses on his skin from its tight confinement. He shivered against what his body had already been put through, or what the grope markings cried out on his sides and ass said he’d been put through. He tried to writhe free, cry out, but the camera cut to a second man, and with the tan to his body, mohawk, and streetwise look, he was the prize between the two. A tear slipped over his cheek, and his look stayed solely on the blond.

A shape shifted in front of the camera, then both men fell quiet as another man placed several items on the floor.

“Petrol tub, funnel, lighter,” said Simon. “The usual razor and a gag, then an eye speculum with a scalpel. Just behind the can, an enucleation spoon.” Simon worked on a second phone, an old habit of a hacker: one phone for official work, the other for deeper searches on the web. “Gets most interesting at 15.03.”

Gray flicked through.

The camera tipped over, then—“Fuck. Get your lard ass off the cable, you fuckwit. Go get it back on its feet.”

The feed went dead a moment later.

“He’s been perfecting his trade for too long for a fuck-up like that,” Simon said quietly, his look going out the window to the group of police personnel who looked their way. Gray had driven here to allow him time to hunt a few things out. If Cal called tunnels, it really did stand to reason what they’d find here.

“It took a while to trace the coding to the private server and gain access to his Red Room.” Simon was back working on his phone, no doubt relaying details back to Cal and their sister department, MI6. “The coding looks similar to a few other Red Rooms I’ve come across over the past year or so, where only the marks in the stream change.” He looked at Gray. “It looks like someone is pulling killers and the twisted likeminded into one room and taking a good cut out of the pay-to-play payments from the punters.”

“Any continuity over signature marks in the different clips you’ve pulled?”

Simon flicked through his notes. “Rape with a preference for cable ties and women, with a more distinguishable love of carving shapes into the vulva with one attacker. Another prefers molestation, no rape, but then goes for amputation: fingers… toes. Victims are bled out. A third couple, man and woman, like their men: more dogs and men and how they get the dogs into a frenzy before attacking and fucking their victims. They prefer twins.”

A policeman started to work his way over from the tent as Gray thought the details over. “That tells us what when it comes to what they’re not filming?” Gray distractedly rested his elbow to the window edge and brushed at his lip.

“That all perps prefer adults over kids. I found no streams with minors.”

“Yeah?” Gray said quietly. “So let’s rethink the working theory on just who organises it all, their Controller.”

Simon frowned. “Shit.” He seemed to catch on. “It’s not the killers or the audience personal preferences that calls the shots here—it’s the Controller, the one who’s bringing the killers together. He likes rape and mutilation, but he doesn’t like paedophilia.” Simon paused for a minute. “So he supplies the meat, the feed, access to a crowd that pays to play, which is how he keeps up funds rolling for the supply on demand. But he only chooses killers to fuel his own personal need.”

Gray started to ease his window down as the policeman made his way over. “Hmm, feels like it, and I trust gut instinct.” He gave a hard sigh. “So if he provides the meat and location, all the equipment and dark web protection for his killers… what’s the bet here he’s also taking money off the killers to provide that level of secure thrill?” The Controller seemed as much in this for money as he was for the thrill, so it wasn’t a far stretch to see where and how he’d pull money in from elsewhere. That niggled under his skin, but he couldn’t quite pin down why.

Simon raised a brow. “The killers pay to… play in the Controller’s Red Room as much as the Controller’s punters pay to watch and interact?” He snorted. “Fuck me. Ten out of ten for the entrepreneur skill. But whoevertheyare, they’re staying pretty buried beneath the server, and they quickly buried access to this live stream under a mass of coding when it went down on Monday.” He tutted. “Nothing’s ever buried for good, not on the net, no matter how deep you think you’ve gone. I’ll catch them out. This one here, though? Our See no Evil mark?” He tapped the screen. “He’s not been as careful.”

Simon handed over his second phone, more an image of the mask the killer wore. “From your father’s lead on the make of masks, close inspection by ours in A-Branch found the images on the video show it’s wood based. With his international travel and concerns over contaminants found in the wood, I ran a check through customs to see if any Japanese masks like that had been held back, in particular looking at a few months prior to the killings after Germany. The videos show a very strong MO of killing, so I assumed the mask would be a must-have routine for him.”

“You got a hit.”

Simon nodded. “Two of. He used a fake passport, but from the composition checks done by Customs at Venice Airport, Italy, only a handful of this make were made, and only one of those came up twice. From where the mask was sent to in Italy, we followed the paper trails and got a name and an address in France.”

He passed Gray his notes.

Dennis Ferguson. French-born. Aged twenty. Media student at A-level but dropped out of sight as he hit eighteen.

There’d been no prevalent accent on the videos, but anyone could hide an accent. Light certainly had been schooled to hide his North Welsh roots. Gray ran a look over the dates on the customs checks. “They were done prior to him signing up to the Red Room, I take it? The first customs record is on him leaving Germany, the second over in Italy a few months later.”

Simon nodded. “Someone with more professional ties took over getting him into and out of a country after that point. He disappeared off the radar after he left Italy.” He took the phones back off Gray. “I sent the name and details through to MI6 this morning,” he added. “Why need us on scene if they have that intel on the mark? They have his name.”

The policeman leaned down close to the window after Gray gave him the nod. He’d waited out of earshot for a moment, allowing them to finish their talk. “Sir, I’m here to guide you through to the scene.” He stepped back and allowed Gray to open his door.

As he got out, Gray was with Simon on this.

If they had intel on Ferguson already, why need them on scene?

---