I Do Feel It Was A Fair-play Mystery, But Only Just. Behind The Cut Is The One Clue I Spotted, Along

I do feel it was a fair-play mystery, but only just. Behind the cut is the one clue I spotted, along with some hints. (I didn’t solve it before the reveal, so all of this is stuff I only figured out on rewatch.) Also apparently I wanted to talk about the killer's reasons for outing themself.

In episodes 1-3, it was definitely meant to be a secret that Sam was their main suspect.* You can tell that it was a secret because around the beginning of S1E3 we see Eddie and Dulcie at the station, grilling all the other cops and demanding to know who among them leaked this info. For me this was the biggest clue that Ray was the killer: Ray was the only civilian* who knew that Sam was their main suspect, and and immediately after Ray learns this, Sam’s boat is set on fire, and Sam’s body is left out in plain sight.

*EDITED TO ADD: just kidding! @dodger-chan has pointed out that Ray wasn't the only civilian who knew. In fact, on reflection, Eddie also shared the Sam-is-the-killer theory with both Vic and Skye on the night of Skye's restaurant launch. I still think it's a clue that Sam's boat is burned and his body is left out in plain sight immediately after Ray learns Sam is the prime suspect, but @dodger-chan is correct that this wasn't a strict secret, more controlled information. In light of this, I think I actually agree with @dodger-chan that Deadloch only barely qualifies as a fair-play mystery, because this makes it more plausible that someone else could have learned that Sam was their prime suspect. Good call.

The other hints that I noticed are far subtler:

I do think the swimming thing is a hint. For one thing, it's true that not all people who sail can swim. But most can, and I think this was Ray's way of deflecting suspicion -- of making himself seem less like the sort of person who would own a boat (the kill room).

Also, if you watch Ray during the scene when he tells Eddie that Lou is dead, his crying is fake. Eddie’s too distraught about Bushy to notice, but it’s very obvious if you look. And when Eddie walks away to go and get in the passenger side of the truck, Ray’s face instantly changes, because he was never upset.

Also, serial killers (most famously Ted Bundy) sometimes fake an injury or other signs of weakness in order to make themselves seem nonthreatening to their victims and to onlookers. Ray does this in a general way, both with the swimming thing and in other scenes via body language. In E4 while he’s helping to carry the paella he makes a little “ouch” noise and grabs his back as if it hurt him to lift something heavy. And when Eddie's interviewing him after Jimmy’s body is found, Ray has let them give him oxygen, and has a very smol-and-weak way of huddling under his mylar blanket. (Weirdly, this pretending-to-be-smol-and-weak thing was the one thing that jumped out at me on my first watch, I think because of Eddie's "you're a meaty, meaty lad" line. He is! Ray's a meaty, sturdy person, and that line made me start to notice that he was pretending not to be.)

I do agree that there are some loose ends that just never got wrapped up, like where Ray was storing the bobbing bodies and how he got William’s car. I’m curious about these questions but it feels realistic to me that not everything gets explained.

These aren’t clues but I have thoughts about Ray and his motivations:

1. Ray reveals he is (or was once) religious during his monologue in the barn. Speaking to Skye of their early friendship in Sydney, he says, “You could see I was struggling with my faith, and with my purpose.” 

2. I agree with you that after he met Eddie, Ray was probably mostly leaving clues as a way of showing off to Eddie and keeping Eddie around...but I do think that Ray was toying with Dulcie as well. For a start, Eddie wasn't in Deadloch when Ray very deliberately left Trent's body on the beach. And when he left Gavin's body out, he and Eddie hadn't met yet -- or even seen each other, as far as we see in canon. So I think that at minimum he left those two clues out in plain sight for other reasons, and not because he was interested in Eddie.

I think it was because of Dulcie. Here's why I say so:

Later on in canon (S1E8) we learn that back in Sydney Dulcie was assigned to work a serial killer case that was never solved...because Ray was the killer then, too, and he left town. It's interesting that Ray was friends with Skye, in Sydney, and I have to wonder if maybe he befriended Skye as a way of getting close to Skye's friend Dulcie, the detective who was hunting him. It's not clear if Ray moved to Deadloch before Dulcie or afterward EDITED: Just kidding, Ray moved to Deadloch before Dulcie did -- we know this because he killed Sam before Dulcie arrived. Thanks again for the sharp eye, @dodger-chan. :-) What a hilarious surprise that must have been for Ray, when Dulcie followed him there but still had no idea he was the killer she'd been hunting back in Sydney.

So for the past five years, Ray has been living cheek-by-jowl with the detective who failed to catch him in Sydney. I imagine it would have been something to savor, for him: to know that this woman who had spent so much time and energy hunting him had no idea that he was at it again, right under her nose. And I think he left the first two bodies out because he wanted her to notice at least those two murders, to notice and to start to suspect a connection between them. He wanted her to worry, he wanted to be on her mind, even though she wouldn't know he was the same person she'd been chasing in Sydney. And eventually, he wanted her to know that as well, because it was too tempting not to show off -- hence his using the name of a Sydney victim to book the Airtaskers: he wanted Dulcie specifically to realize that it was him, her old enemy, that she'd been letting him get away with it again. That stabbing was deeply personal, he meant to kill her and honestly I'm surprised she survived. I think Ray was much more interested in Dulcie than he let on, as an enemy, as someone to defeat and dominate.

So, I spent the last week rewatching* Deadloch to determine if it really is a fair play mystery, and my answer is: yes, kinda. Yes, in that you do get all the information the detectives do before the reveal (though sometimes the information will be withheld for a scene or two for dramatic effect). Kinda because the clues given in the first seven episodes** are not enough to point the finger at the murderer without looking at the show as a piece of art, and considering what its themes are and which of the viable suspects would best reflect those themes. Specific spoilers under the cut. Do not read until after you have watched Deadloch, which you should do as it is amazing.

*reading the subtitle files and watching a few key scenes

** I'm not including the 8th episode, where the killer is revealed, because by that point you're not getting clues, you're getting answers.

Every clue I noticed that implicates Ray, with commentary

(episode one) Cath mentions going to treat Ray's pet: Not super useful, as we see Ray with Lou later, and learn that Lou is old and likely to need medical treatment. It doesn't mention the pentobarbital, though presumably Lou is Ray's excuse for getting it from Cath. It also gets his name in the show right away.

(episode two) When Ray takes Eddie to the shack, he mentions Skye O'Dwyer is his best friend. We also know he works for her mom at the bakery, and seems to care for the whole family. So when we start considering who would kill Sam O'Dwyer, he's definitely close enough to the family to be a suspect.

(same scene) We learn Ray isn't from Deadloch, but has been living there for some time. But the line is vague on when specifically he moved. It would have been helpful to know he moved before Sam was killed.

(same scene) Eddie lets Ray know she's leaving as soon as they find Sam and his boat, where she thinks (correctly) the murders happened. It's not a secret, but he's the only non-police character we're shown specifically being told this information.

(episode two) Ray doesn't have any lines after he leaves Eddie at the shack, so I watched the end of the episode and he doesn't rejoin the other main characters at the Bush Wolf. Not suspicious in and of itself, but if you go back and look for alibis, it's clear he doesn't have one for planting Sam's body/setting the boat on fire

(episode three) Sam's body is planted immediately after Eddie keys in on him as a suspect. Amusingly, this seems to be less about Ray wanting to show he's smarter than to cops and more about making sure Eddie stays in town.

(episode three) Eddie again tells Ray she's leaving as soon as they have the DNA match, then leaves him after taking a swab. The next guy in line goes to Ray to get swabbed for the test. This implies it's possible he didn't submit his sample and that's why the blood on the boat didn't match him. It's also possible that the blood was from a previously undiscovered victim. I don't think we ever find out which was the case. My assumption is the latter, because why would he hand over a DNA sample if it might implicate him?

(episode four) Kind of an anti-clue: Ray at the beginner swimmer class. An experienced sailor isn't necessarily a good swimmer, and he used a boat for the first five (discovered) victims. Of course, this turns out to be a lie and Ray's actually an accomplished swimmer, but it doesn't make sense that he'd be pretending to need lessons.

(episode five) Ray is one of the first people to find Jimmy's body and reports it, fits with killer wanting to see other people reacting to his art.

(episode five) Another anti-clue: Ray vomits when he sees the body, and again while telling Eddie about it. The character might have been able to fake it that first time (he was preparing food, he could have snuck a slurry into his mouth like the actor actually did) but I think the character had to be genuinely vomiting the second time.

(episode five) Even with my glasses on I couldn't read the list of names the priest faxed over while it was on the tv. Taking a screenshot and zooming in gave me a better look, but while one of the names looked like it might have been Ray McLintock, it wasn't clear. Given that Eddie didn't know his name (he told her when she took his DNA, but it didn't stick) I think it would have been fine for us to see his name on the list, but not have it ping with her. (Spouse and I were calling him "Ray Pies" when we talked over the episodes, so I doubt the name would have pinged for me, but it would have been nice to have confirmation he knew about the religious stuff).

(episode six) “I’ve made some mistakes with women, and I’ve had some pretty weird interests” okay, it's not much of a clue by itself, but in retrospect, yeah, I think he has.

(episode seven) The six extra bodies surface and it turns out they were frozen and had defrosted over the last forty-eight hours. This means the killer started to defrost them around the time of the DNA testing. Also when Eddie told Ray she'd be leaving soon.

(episode seven) Eddie admits to actually liking Ray. She's a mess with shitty taste, there had to be something wrong about him.

That's pretty much it for clues within the show. It's not a lot, and I'd argue it's not enough to consider the mystery solvable. It's fine when clues don't seem to be relevant before you know who done it, but I think they need to be a little more conclusive when you look back over them. In the first seven episodes we don't know that Ray has access to pentobarbitol, or that his pet is still alive, or about Sam not being his first kill. At no point do we find out where he was storing those frozen corpses for years (sure, Skye has a cool room for her restaurant, but she would be using it) or how he got his hands on William Carruther's old car. And we don't know he moved to Deadloch before the murders began until we find out he was committing them.

Still, if you start with the theme of reinvention, and you eliminate suspects based on definitive alibis and not psychological profiles, Ray is one of the better suspects left, especially if, like me, you'd been assuming Margaret killed her brother from the moment we heard he'd left the country. Ray being the killer wasn't a shock, but I didn't know ahead of the scene in episode eight where Eddie finds Lou, even if I joked about Ray being the killer because Eddie liked him. So in conclusion: fair play, kinda.