Thursday 3 July 2014

3.20 p.m.

Wolf had to catch an overground train to Peckham Rye Station, which felt like an irrationally enormous undertaking to him. To reward himself, he bought an extra-hot, double-shot skinny macchiato with sugar-free syrup but then felt rather emasculated when the man behind simply ordered ‘Coffee. Black’.

He ambled along the main road towards a set of three council tower blocks standing proudly over everything else in the vicinity, blissfully unaware or merely undeterred that the rest of the population regarded them as unwelcome eyesores and would tear them down given half a chance. At least the designers of these particular monstrosities had chosen to paint them a perfect ‘miserable, drizzly, smoggy, London-sky grey’, which rendered them almost invisible for 90 per cent of the year.

Wolf approached the one labelled ‘Shakespeare Tower’, unconvinced how much of an honour the great man would have considered it, and sighed as he took in the familiar sights and sounds. Perhaps a dozen flags depicting the St George Cross had been draped out of windows, pledging allegiance to this great country or at least to eleven dependably disappointing footballers. A dog, Wolf guessed a Staffordshire bull terrier or German Shepherd, was barking incessantly from the five-foot balcony that it had been shut out on, and an exhibition of rancid undergarments had been displayed, drying in the rain like grotesque modern art.

Some would accuse him of being bigoted or classist, but they had not spent half of their working lives in identical buildings to this all over the city. He felt that he had earned the right to hate them.

As he approached the main entrance, he could hear shouting from round the back of the building. He walked along the side of the tower block and was surprised to find a grubby-looking man, wearing only a vest and underpants, hanging off a balcony above him. Two police officers were trying in vain to pull him back over, and several neighbours had ventured out onto their own balconies, camera phones at the ready in case they were fortunate enough to capture him fall. Wolf watched the bizarre scene in amusement until one pyjama-clad neighbour eventually recognised him.

‘Ain’t you that detective off of the telly?’ she shouted down at him in a husky voice.

Wolf ignored the nosy woman. The man hanging off the balcony suddenly stopped yelling and peered down at him casually sipping his coffee.

‘Andrew Ford, I presume?’ said Wolf.

‘Detective Fawkes?’ asked Ford with an Irish twang.

‘Yep.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘All right.’

‘Not here. Come up.’

‘All right.’

Wolf shrugged indifferently and headed for the main entrance while Ford inelegantly clambered back over the railings. When he got upstairs, he met an attractive Asian police officer at the door.

‘Are we glad to see you,’ she told him.

When she spoke, Wolf noticed the large gap in her smile and could feel himself getting angry.

‘Did he do that to you?’ he asked, gesturing to his own mouth.

‘Not intentionally. He was thrashing about and I should have left him to it. My own stupid fault.’

‘Bit unstable to be a security guard, isn’t he?’

‘He’s been signed off work for the past year. He basically just drinks and rants now.’

‘Where did he work?’

‘Debenhams, I think.’

‘What does he want with me?’

‘He says he knows you.’

Wolf looked surprised: ‘Probably arrested him.’

‘Probably.’

The officer showed Wolf into the cluttered flat. DVDs and magazines littered the hallway, while the bedroom appeared to be no more than a dumping ground. They entered the poky lounge, where bottles of cheap vodka and boxes of extra-strength lager covered every surface. The only sofa was hidden beneath a cigarette-burned duvet, and the whole place had a faint odour of sweat, vomit, ash and overflowing rubbish.

Andrew Ford was almost ten years his junior, yet looked far older than Wolf. His unkempt hair grew in sporadic patches around his balding head. He was ill-proportioned – gaunt, with a small but defined beer belly, and he had a yellow tinge of jaundice to his skin. Wolf waved in greeting. He had no intention of touching the filthy man.

‘Metropolitan police officer and lead investigator on the Ragdoll murders … Detective Sergeant William Oliver Layton-Fawkes,’ Ford recited excitedly, giving him a short applause. ‘But it’s Wolf, right? Cool name. Just a wolf amongst sheep, aren’t you?’

‘Or pigs,’ Wolf said indelicately as he looked around the revolting room.

Ford looked as though he was about to attack him but then burst into laughter instead.

‘Coz you’re a cop. I get your meaning,’ he said, in no way getting Wolf’s meaning.

‘You wanted to talk?’ asked Wolf, hoping that Baxter might want to take the lead on this one as well.

‘Not with all these …’ he screamed the next words, ‘pigs around!’

Wolf nodded to the two officers and they left the room.

‘We’re sort of brothers in arms, aren’t we?’ said Ford. ‘Just two upstanding gentlemen of the law.’

Wolf felt it a bit of a leap, the man from Debenhams describing himself as a ‘gentleman of the law’, but he let it slide. He was, however, getting impatient.

‘What did you want to talk about?’ he asked.

‘I want to help you Wolf.’ Ford tilted his head back and howled loudly.

‘Well, you’re not.’

‘You’ve missed something,’ said Ford smugly. ‘Something important.’

Wolf waited for him to continue.

‘I know something you don’t know,’ Ford sang childishly, enjoying this unfamiliar position of power.

‘That pretty officer whose tooth you knocked out …’

‘The Indian?’ Ford made a dismissive gesture.

‘… She said you knew me.’

‘Oh, I know you Wolf, but you don’t remember me at all, do you?’

‘So give me a clue.’

‘We spent forty-six days in the same room, but we never spoke.’

‘OK,’ said Wolf uncertainly, hoping that the two officers had not wandered too far.

‘I didn’t always work at a department store. I used to be somebody.’

Wolf looked blank.

‘And I can see that you’re still wearing something that I gave you.’

Wolf looked down at his shirt and trousers in confusion. He patted his pockets and glanced at his watch.

‘Warmer!’

Wolf rolled up his sleeve, exposing the substantial burns to his left arm and his digital wristwatch. It was only a cheap model that his mother had bought him last Christmas.

‘Hot, hot, hot!’

Wolf removed the watch to reveal the rest of the thin white scar that ran across his wrist.

‘The dock security officer?’ asked Wolf through gritted teeth.

Ford did not answer straight away. He rubbed his face agitatedly and walked over to the kitchen to collect a bottle of vodka.

‘You’re selling me short,’ he finally replied in mock offence. ‘I am Andrew Ford: the man who saved the Cremation Killer’s life!’

He took an angry swig from the bottle, which dribbled down his chin.

‘If I hadn’t been so heroic dragging you off him, he wouldn’t have survived to murder that last little girl. Saint Andrew! That’s what I want on my gravestone. Saint Andrew: assistant child killer.’

Ford began to cry. He slumped down onto the sofa and pulled his disgusting duvet over him, knocking a precariously balanced ashtray over the floor.

‘There, that’s all. Send those pigs away. I don’t want saving. I just wanted to tell you … to help you.’

Wolf stared at the wretched creature as it took another swig from the bottle and switched on the television. The theme tune to a children’s programme blared at full volume as Wolf showed himself out.

Andrea watched in stunned silence as her cameraman, Rory, dressed as a spaceship captain, beheaded an alien being (that looked suspiciously like his friend Sam) with a Pulse-Bō (foil-covered stick). Green slime exploded liberally from the resultant stump as the rest of the overacting body eventually ceased to move.

Rory hit the pause button.

‘So, what d’ya think?’

Rory was in his mid-thirties but was dressed like a scruffy teenager. He was a little overweight, had a thick ginger beard and a friendly face.

‘The blood was green,’ said Andrea, still a little dazed by the gory video. It had been low-budget but effective.

‘He was a Kruutar … an alien.’

‘Right. I appreciate that, but Emily will need to see red blood if we’re going to stand any chance of convincing her to do this.’

Andrea had arranged to meet Baxter and Garland at Rory’s film studio: StarElf Pictures, which had turned out to be a garage round the back of Brockley Station. Although in no way related to the plan discussed the previous evening, she, Garland, Rory and his co-producer/actor/best friend Sam were debating the best way to fake a person’s death while they waited for Baxter to arrive.

After watching over a dozen death scenes from StarElf’s back catalogue, they had concluded that eviscerations were problematic, beheadings were realistic but perhaps a little excessive and that explosions occasionally went wrong (Sam’s big toe still sat pride of place in a pickling jar above the workstation). The decision was made that a straightforward bullet to the chest was the way to go.

A flustered Baxter had finally arrived forty minutes late and been less than impressed to find Rory and Sam wasting time indulging Garland by setting up a live test of the gunshot. After fifteen solid minutes of arguing and Garland threatening several times to take his chances alone, Baxter begrudgingly agreed to stop shouting long enough to hear them out. She inspected her surroundings dubiously and Garland could tell that she was understandably sceptical regarding the competence of the StarElf team. Fortunately, she was yet to notice the toe-jar above her head.

‘I know you have reservations, but we can do this,’ Rory enthused as he prepared his presentation. They had met in passing five days earlier, when Baxter had accidentally introduced his beloved camera to the Kentish Town pavement. Luckily Rory was not one to hold a grudge and seemed genuinely excited by the prospect of their clandestine assignment.

He and Sam explained animatedly how the incredibly realistic effect, used in motion pictures and theatre productions all over the world, was achieved by concealing a thin bag (usually a condom) filled with fake blood underneath a person’s clothing. A small explosive called a squib, which looked troublingly like a tiny stick of dynamite, was attached to the rear of the bag to propel the blood outwards. They would be using a watch battery to supply the current to spark the contained explosion, powered by a transmitter of Rory’s own design. Finally, a thick rubber-lined belt had to be worn between the skin and the explosive to protect from burns and projectiles.

As Andrea stepped outside to make a phone call, Rory bumbled over wielding the Glock 22 that he intended to shoot Garland with and casually offered him the weighty weapon as though it were a bag of crisps. Garland looked uncomfortable as he inexpertly inspected the gun, and Baxter winced as he trustingly peered down the end of the barrel.

‘Looks real,’ said Garland with a shrug.

‘It is,’ said Rory cheerfully. ‘It’s the bullets that aren’t.’

He poured a pile of blanks into Garland’s hand.

‘Cartridges filled with gunpowder to create the muzzle flash and the bang but with no bullet on top.’

‘But they remove the firing pins from prop guns, right?’ asked Baxter, instinctively ducking as Garland waved it in her general direction.

‘Usually they do, yeah,’ said Rory, avoiding the obvious question.

‘And on this one?’ Baxter pushed him.

‘Not so much, no.’

Baxter put her head in her hands.

‘It’s totally legal,’ said Rory defensively. ‘I’ve got a licence. We know what we’re doing. It’s completely safe. Look …’

He turned to Sam, who was adjusting one of the video cameras.

‘You filming?’ he asked.

‘Yeah?’ said Sam, looking worried.

Without warning, he disengaged the safety and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang as a spray of dark red blood exploded out from Sam’s chest. Andrea came rushing back inside. Baxter and Garland stared in horror at the rapidly growing puddle of blood. Sam threw his screwdriver down and frowned at Rory.

‘I was going to change my t-shirt first, you penis,’ he said before returning to the camera.

‘That looked incredible!’ exclaimed Garland.

They all looked at Baxter expectantly, whose expression remained decidedly unimpressed.

She turned to Garland: ‘Could I speak to you outside a minute?’

Baxter unlocked the car so that they could talk in private. She cleared the mess on the passenger seat into the footwell.

‘Just to make myself perfectly clear,’ she started. ‘We are not going to fake your death. It is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’

‘But—’

‘I told you I had a plan.’

‘But didn’t you—’

‘We’re already placing far too much trust in these people as it is. Can you imagine what would happen if word got out that the Metropolitan Police had been reduced to faking deaths to keep people alive?’

‘“To keep people alive”, being the important part of that sentence,’ said Garland, who was becoming increasingly agitated. ‘You’re thinking like a police officer!’

‘I am a police officer.’

‘It’s my life; it’s my decision.’

‘I won’t do it,’ said Baxter. ‘Final answer. If you don’t want my help, fine. But I’ve got a plan, and I’m asking you to trust me.’

She pulled a face, appalled by the words that had just come out of her mouth. Garland looked equally surprised. Not one to miss out on an opportunity to use his impending murder as a dating tool, he reached for Baxter’s hand.

‘OK … I trust you,’ he said before whimpering pathetically as Baxter twisted his wrist in on itself.

‘OK, OK, OK!’ he gasped until she finally let go.

‘Dinner?’ he asked, unperturbed.

‘I told you, you’re not my type.’

‘Successful? Determined? Handsome?’

‘Doomed,’ said Baxter with a smirk as she watched his self-satisfied expression crumble.

She would never normally have tolerated his sleazy advances, but after her disastrous failed seduction of Wolf the night before, she was quite enjoying the attention.

‘Good safety net though, if you didn’t fancy a second date,’ said Garland, quickly recapturing his self-assurance.

‘I suppose it is,’ smiled Baxter.

‘Is that a yes then?’ asked Garland hopefully.

‘No,’ she said, smiling.

‘But it’s not a no either, is it?’

Baxter thought about it for a moment: ‘No.’

A towering floodlight cast counterfeit moonlight over the seemingly endless underground archives, spilling long shadows across row after row of metal shelving units and reaching down the narrow aisles like fingers extending out of the dark. Edmunds had lost all track of time as he sat reading, cross-legged, on the hard warehouse floor. Scattered around him lay the contents of the seventeenth cardboard evidence box on his list: photographs, DNA samples, witness statements.

With both Baxter and Wolf otherwise engaged, he had seized this opportunity to visit the Central Storage Warehouse, located in a secure facility on the outskirts of Watford. Over a gruelling five-year period, the inconceivable feat of scanning, logging and photographing every record held by the Metropolitan Police had been completed; however, the physical evidence still had to be retained.

While items relating to lesser crimes could be returned to the families or destroyed after a period of time set by the court, all evidence concerning homicide or serious crimes was kept indefinitely. This would be stored locally at the relevant police station for a time, dependent on space and resources, and then transferred to the secure temperature-controlled archives. Cases were so often reopened when fresh evidence came to light, appeals were made or when advancements in technology revealed something new, that these assorted souvenirs of death would be preserved to long outlive those involved.

Edmunds stretched his arms out and yawned. He had heard another person wheeling a trolley a couple of hours earlier but was now alone in the colossal warehouse. He packed the evidence carefully back into the box, finding nothing to suggest a connection between this headless victim and the Ragdoll Killer. Sliding the box back onto the shelf, he crossed it off his list. It was only then that he realised the time: 7.47 p.m. Cursing loudly, he jogged towards the distant exit.

His phone was returned to him once he had passed through security and he climbed up the stairs to ground level to discover that he had five missed calls from Tia. He had to return the pool car to New Scotland Yard and drop into the office before he could even think about heading home. He dialled Tia’s number and braced himself for her reaction.

Wolf was approaching the end of his second pint of Estrella as he sat outside the Dog & Fox on Wimbledon high street. He was the only person braving the chilly outdoor tables, especially now that an ominous rain cloud had settled overhead, but he did not want to miss Baxter returning home to her trendy apartment across the street.

At 8.10 p.m. he saw her black Audi almost take out a pedestrian on the corner before parking up the side road. He abandoned the rest of his now lukewarm beer and started making his way over. He was ten metres away when Baxter climbed out of the car laughing. Then the passenger door swung open and a man he did not recognise stepped out.

‘One of these places must sell snails, and I’m doing it,’ said the man.

‘I don’t think the idea’s to bring your last meal back up,’ said Baxter with a smirk.

‘I refuse to go without first putting a disgusting, slimy, dirty mollusc into my mouth.’

Baxter opened the boot, removed her bags and then locked the car. Wolf, sensing an awkward situation developing, panicked and crouched behind a postbox as they started to approach. Baxter and her acquaintance had actually walked past him before noticing the imposing man crawling on the pavement.

‘Wolf?’ asked Baxter in disbelief.

Wolf casually got back to his feet and smiled, as if this was how they normally greeted one another.

‘Hi,’ he said, before offering his hand to the sharply dressed man. ‘Wolf – or Will.’

‘Jarred,’ said Garland, shaking his hand.

Wolf looked surprised: ‘Oh you’re …’

He let the question disintegrate when he noticed Baxter’s impatient expression.

‘What the hell are you doing here? Why were you hiding?’

‘I was worried it might be awkward,’ mumbled Wolf, gesturing towards Garland.

‘And it’s not now?’ she asked, going red. ‘Could you give us a moment?’ she said to Garland, who wandered up towards the high street.

‘I was coming to see you to apologise for last night and this morning and, well, everything really,’ said Wolf. ‘I thought we might grab a bite to eat, but it looks like you’ve already got … plans.’

‘It’s not what it looks like.’

‘It doesn’t look like anything.’

‘Good, because it’s not.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘You are?’

The conversation was becoming excruciating with all that was not being said.

‘I’m gonna go,’ said Wolf.

‘You do that,’ replied Baxter.

He turned around and walked away in the opposite direction to the station, just to escape. Baxter swore under her breath, angry with herself, and then went to join Garland at the end of the road.

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