Wednesday 2 July 2014

5.43 a.m.

Karen Holmes waited anxiously for the next traffic report. She never slept particularly well before these early mornings and had been woken several times during the night by the raging storm. She had left her Gloucester bungalow in the dark to find her wheelie bin lying in the middle of the road and one of her fence panels resting against next door’s car. She propped the heavy wooden panel back up as quietly as she could and prayed that her unpleasant neighbour would fail to notice the additional scratches to his bonnet.

Karen dreaded her monthly visit to the firm’s main offices in the capital. Her colleagues all claimed hotels and dinners on expenses; but she had nobody that she could reasonably ask to look after her dogs on such a regular basis, and their well-being was her priority.

The traffic on the motorway was already beginning to build, and a seemingly endless average speed check had slowed her progress in order to protect mile upon mile of plastic cones, teasing that somebody might possibly commence some work, somewhere, at some point in the near future.

Karen looked down to fiddle with her radio, paranoid that she had missed a report. As she glimpsed back up at the road, she noticed a large black bag lying between the steel barriers of the central reservation. Something about the size and shape of it struck her as unusual. Just as she drew level with it, at forty-nine miles per hour, she could have sworn that she saw it move. When she glanced in the rear-view mirror, all she could see was the Audi saloon that had inexplicably decided to accelerate right up to her bumper before overtaking at ninety miles per hour, either too rich or too stupid to be concerned with speed cameras.

She continued along the motorway, noting that there was a junction in another two miles. She did not have time to stop, even if she had been sure that she had seen something, which she was not. The bag had probably been blown there in the high winds and her car had disturbed it as she passed, yet Karen was unable to shake the feeling that there was something inside, something about the way that it had moved.

Both of her Staffordshire bull terriers had been rescue dogs, found together and left for dead in a skip. The thought always made her feel physically sick. As she came out of the roadworks, a BMW flew past at over a hundred miles per hour, and Karen was confident that anything alive inside would not be for much longer.

She turned the wheel suddenly and her ancient Fiesta vibrated violently as she drove across the rumble strips and pulled onto the slip road. She would only delay her journey by fifteen minutes by going back to check. She looped around the roundabout and rejoined the motorway in the opposite direction.

It was difficult to remember exactly how far down the monotonous road the bag had been, so Karen slowed down when she thought she was getting close. She spotted it ahead, switched on her hazard lights and pulled onto the hard shoulder, stopping level with it. She watched the black bag for over a minute, feeling foolish and angry with herself, as it sat perfectly still until being blown about by the next speeding vehicle. She indicated right and was about to pull back into the inside lane when the bag suddenly lurched forward.

Karen’s heart was racing as she waited for a gap in the traffic, got out of the car and ran across three lanes to climb over the central reservation. She could feel the force of the cars passing only a few metres away, spraying her with dirt and oily water. She knelt down and hesitated.

‘Don’t be snakes. Please don’t be snakes,’ she whispered to herself.

As she spoke, something in the bag made another deliberate movement towards her, and she thought that she could hear whimpering. Cautiously, she took hold of the papery material and tore a small hole in one end. Slowly, Karen ripped the gap wider and wider, worried that whatever was inside might run straight out into the oncoming traffic. In her heightened state, she accidentally tore halfway down the material and fell back in horror as a head of dirty blonde hair spilled out over the tarmac and the bound and gagged woman feverishly took in her surroundings. She looked up at Karen with huge pleading eyes and lost consciousness.

Edmunds had a spring in his step as he passed through security at New Scotland Yard. He had made it home in time to take Tia out for dinner as an apology for the previous night. They had both made an effort to get dressed up and, for a couple of hours, were happy to pretend that such extravagances came naturally to them. They enjoyed three courses and Edmunds had even ordered a steak. The illusion had only been ruined by the irascible waitress, who had yelled to her supervisor across the restaurant that she had no idea how to put Tesco Clubcard vouchers through the till.

Edmunds’ mood had also been lifted by finally finding a match to the nail polish. He was not yet sure how this information would be of help, only that it was an important step towards identifying the Ragdoll’s female right arm. He entered the office and saw that Baxter was already at her desk. Even from the opposite side of the room, he could tell that she was in a foul mood.

‘Morning,’ tried Edmunds cheerfully.

‘What the hell are you grinning at?’ she snapped.

‘Nice night,’ said Edmunds with a shrug.

‘Not for Vijay Rana it wasn’t.’

Edmunds sat down to listen. ‘Is he …?’

‘Not for a woman I’ve known for years called Elizabeth Tate. And not for Wolf.’

‘Is Wolf all right? What happened?’

Baxter briefed Edmunds on the events of the previous night and the discovery of the young woman earlier that morning.

‘The bag’s with forensics, but when the ambulance crew got there they found this hanging off her foot.’

Baxter handed Edmunds a small plastic evidence bag containing a morgue toe-tag.

‘“Care of: Detective Sergeant William Fawkes”,’ read Edmunds. ‘Does he know yet?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Wolf and Finlay were up all night. They’ve been stood down for the rest of the day.’

An hour later, a female officer escorted the petrified woman through the busy office. She had been brought in directly from the hospital and was still caked in grime. Her face and arms were decorated in cuts and bruises and her matted hair covered every shade between bleached blonde and black. She reacted in alarm to every sudden noise and new voice.

News had already reached the department that she had been identified as Georgina Tate, Elizabeth’s daughter. She had apparently been absent from work for two days and her mother had phoned in on her behalf citing personal issues. No missing persons report had been filed. Even from these snippets of information, it was not difficult to piece together what had transpired, and Baxter felt unsettled by how easy it had been to coerce a woman that she knew to be strong, resourceful and unwaveringly moral into murder.

‘She doesn’t know yet,’ said Baxter solemnly as Georgina Tate was shown into the renovated interview room.

‘About her mother?’ asked Edmunds.

‘Doesn’t look in any fit state to hear it, does she?’

Baxter started packing up her things.

‘Are we going somewhere?’

‘We’re not,’ said Baxter. ‘I am. With no Wolf or Finlay, guess which mug’s been left to sort all their shit out on top of my own. Who’s number four on the list?’

‘Andrew Ford, the security guard,’ said Edmunds, a little surprised that Baxter needed to ask.

‘Complete arsehole. Big drinker. Managed to knock out a female officer’s tooth last night when she tried to stop him trashing the place.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I can handle it. Then I’ve got a meeting with Jarred Garland, the journalist, who’s due to die in …’ Baxter counted it out on her fingers, ‘three days. He’s decided to spend his final week reporting how useless he thinks we all are and how it feels to be on a serial killer’s hit list. I’ve been asked to “pacify” and “reassure” him.’

‘You?’ asked Edmunds incredulously. Fortunately Baxter took his disbelief as a compliment. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Find out if Georgina Tate remembers anything useful. Chase up about the ring; we need to know who it was made for. See if the medical examiners have anything new for us, and get hold of Elizabeth Tate’s mobile phone the second it’s released by forensics.’

Baxter left the office, and Edmunds realised that he had not even told her about the nail varnish. He placed the small bottle on the desk, feeling foolish for getting so excited about his trivial investigation while Wolf was out there chasing reluctant killers around Southall, having kidnapped women delivered to the office and holding phone conversations with criminal royalty. It was all horrible, of course, but he had to admit he was a little jealous.

‘This is beautiful,’ laughed Elijah excitedly as the photograph he had just purchased for two thousand pounds was projected onto the conference room wall. ‘And I mean beautiful.’

Andrea was holding her hand over her mouth and was grateful that no one else in the darkened room could see the tears rolling down her cheeks. The picture was anything but beautiful; in fact, it was probably the saddest thing that she had ever seen: a black-and-white photograph of Wolf on his knees, lit beneath a solitary streetlight, the sparkling rain and car headlights reflecting off the puddles and shop windows like stage lights. She had seen Wolf cry perhaps two or three times during their marriage and each time it had broken her heart.

This was so much worse.

He was sat in the flooded road beside the mangled body of an older woman, still gently holding her bloodied hand as he stared into space with a look of utter defeat painted across his face.

He was broken.

Andrea glanced around at the faces of her colleagues: smiling, applauding, laughing. She could feel herself shaking in anger and disgust. At that moment she despised each and every one of them and wondered whether she would have worn the same delighted look had she not once loved the man in the photograph. She was disturbed to admit that she might.

‘Who’s the roadkill?’ Elijah asked the room to a series of shrugs and shaking heads. ‘Andrea?’

Andrea focused on the image, attempting to hide her eyes from the others.

‘How would I know who that poor lady is?’

‘Your ex-husband seems keen on her,’ said Elijah.

‘A little too keen,’ the balding producer in the corner of the room shouted out to the amusement of the others.

‘Thought you might recognise her,’ finished Elijah.

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Andrea as pleasantly as she could, although, several people shared surprised looks.

‘No matter. It’s TV gold either way,’ said Elijah, unfazed by her tone. ‘We’ll open with the photograph and the counter ticking down the hours that Rana, or whatever his name is, has to live. We’ll do a bit about the ongoing search for him and then back to the photograph for speculation and fabrication.’

Everyone in the room apart from Andrea chuckled.

‘Who is this woman? Why’s the lead detective on the Ragdoll case at a traffic accident rather than searching for the next victim? Or was this somehow connected to the murders? The usual.’ Elijah waited expectantly. ‘Anything else?’

‘“Hashtag: notonthelist” is trending right now,’ said an irritating young man, who Andrea had never seen without a phone in his hand, ‘and our Death Clock app’s been downloaded over fifty thousand times already.’

‘Shit. Should’ve charged for it,’ cursed Elijah. ‘How’s the Ragdoll emoji coming?’

Another man tentatively slid a piece of paper across the table to him. Elijah picked it up and stared at it in confusion.

‘It’s hard to capture the full extent of the horror in a cartoon,’ the nervy man explained defensively.

‘It’ll do,’ Elijah told him, tossing the picture back in his direction. ‘But lose the boobs. Bit inappropriate for the kids, don’t you think?’

Apparently satisfied that he had done his good deed for the decade, Elijah adjourned the meeting. Andrea was the first to get up and leave the conference room. She was not sure herself whether she was going to head down to make-up or carry straight on out through the exit. She only knew that she desperately wanted to see Wolf.

Simmons stood staring at the enormous Ragdoll collages on the meeting room wall. He looked immaculate, wearing full dress uniform, apart from the deep scuff to his right shoe that he had not been able to polish out. He had damaged the leather while furiously kicking the metal filing cabinet in his office just minutes after seeing his friend lying charred and still on the flooded interview room floor. It seemed fitting, somehow, to wear them that afternoon, a private symbol of loss and friendship in what was sure to be an impersonally regimented and formal affair.

The service for Mayor Turnble was due to take place at St Margaret’s, in the grounds of Westminster Abbey, at 1 p.m., his family having requested a private funeral at a later date once the body was released. Before that, Simmons was scheduled to hold a press conference to confirm the deaths of Vijay Rana and Elizabeth Tate. He was struggling to keep his temper in check as the PR team bickered amongst themselves regarding the best way to put a ‘positive spin’ on the situation.

Simmons watched as Georgina Tate was led out of the interview room that he had not yet worked up the courage to return to and was not at all sure he ever would. He would never forget the sight of his friend’s blistered and peeling face, and he could still smell burning flesh whenever he revisited the unwelcome memory.

‘OK, how about this: focusing on the fact that we managed to stop this Tate woman,’ suggested a lanky young man, who looked about fifteen years old to Simmons, ‘one less killer out on our streets, isn’t it?’

Simmons slowly turned round to face the three-person team, armed with their charts and graphs, highlighted sections of the morning’s newspapers glowing like the toxic waste that it was. He went to say something, shook his head in blatant disgust, and left the room.

Отправить