Friday 4 July 2014

6.10 p.m.

Wolf awoke to discover that he was back in London. He and Finlay had driven the entire breadth of the country and back in order to surrender Andrew Ford to the Protected Persons team. Neither of them knew Ford’s final destination, although, they could be reasonably confident that it was a remote location in South Wales, having rendezvoused with the officers in the car park of the Pontsticill Reservoir, somewhere in the Brecon Beacons.

Ford had been tiresome company during the four-hour drive, especially after news of Garland’s premature demise had reached the mainstream radio stations. When they pulled into a service station, Wolf had attempted to phone Baxter but only got her voicemail. Finlay resigned himself to buying their passenger a bottle of vodka for the remainder of the journey, in the hope that it might shut him up for a little while.

‘Here you go, Andrew,’ said Finlay when he returned to the car. Ford ignored him and Finlay sighed heavily. ‘Fine. Here you go, Saint Andrew, assistant child killer.’

Ford had regaled Finlay with his story about the time he saved the Cremation Killer’s life from a ferocious but honourable wolf, and had since refused to respond to anything but his full title. He had already severely disrupted their day by declining to leave his squalid Peckham flat that morning, which meant that they were late to the handover and were now returning to the capital at rush hour.

At least the reservoir itself had been an unexpected surprise. They had climbed out of the car to the roar of rushing water. The scene would have been impressive enough, with the sun blazing over the miles of forest-framed blue water, but a thin steel walkway reached out from the shore towards what appeared to be the uppermost chamber of a sunken tower. Arched windows dissected the light stone walls, and an iron weathervane stood atop the blue copper spire, as if retreating from the rising water that had already claimed the rest of the imagined castle.

Beneath the precarious walkway, a huge void had opened up in the water, sucking the reservoir endlessly into the blackness below, as if an enormous plug had been ripped from the Earth, threatening to drag the final piece of the tower into the abyss. They had watched it for a while before beginning the return journey.

Wolf yawned loudly and sat up straight to ascertain where they were.

‘Late night?’ asked Finlay, who was struggling not to break his no swearing rule as an Audi arrogantly pushed ahead of him at a set of traffic lights.

‘I don’t sleep that well any night, to be honest.’

Finlay looked over at his friend.

‘What are you still doing here, lad?’ he asked. ‘Just go. Get on a plane and go.’

‘Where? My stupid face is plastered across every newspaper on the planet.’

‘I dunno – the Amazon rainforest, the Australian outback? You could wait it out.’

‘I can’t live like that, looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.’

‘Which might be a damn sight longer.’

‘If we catch him, it’s over.’

‘And if we don’t?’

Wolf shrugged. He did not have an answer for him. The lights changed to green and Finlay pulled away.

Andrea was met with a standing ovation when she returned to the newsroom. People were patting her on the back and muttering congratulations as she wove through them towards her desk. She was conscious that she still had the dead man’s fake blood splattered across her blouse, despite scrubbing at it in the hospital toilets.

She was worried sick about Rory, who had to stay in hospital for periodic irrigation of his wounds to counteract the acid, which was still eating away at his flesh almost eight hours after the incident. The consultant had warned her that he would most likely lose the thumb on his right hand and, should any further nerves be lost, the use of his index finger.

As the spontaneous applause dissipated in an uncoordinatedly awkward fashion, Andrea sat down. The footage of Garland burning alive was playing in slow motion on the ceiling screens as the channel broadcast it for the hundredth time that day. Rory’s discarded television camera had captured everything, the crack in the lens framing the shot beautifully. She looked away in revulsion and found the note that Elijah had left her:

Apologies. Had to go. Actual footage of the murder: genius! Meeting Monday AM to discuss future – you’ve earned it. Elijah.

The vague message could only mean that he was planning to offer her a permanent anchor position, the job of her dreams and yet, far from feeling elated, she felt empty. She absent-mindedly picked up the brown envelope in her post tray and ripped it open. Something dropped out of it and onto the desk. Andrea inspected the small coil of metal before removing a photograph of her and Rory exiting the ME London.

She took out her phone and texted Baxter. Although this second communiqué from the killer was huge news and only further confirmed her claim over the story, she placed the contents back inside the envelope and locked it away in her drawer.

She was not playing this game any more.

The unstable cluster of candles in the centre of the wooden Ikea table looked equal parts romantic and fire hazard. Tia had been left to close up the salon, meaning that Edmunds had arrived home before her and immediately set to work on dinner. She had been delighted to come home to find him making such an effort and put the meal for one that she had picked up in the freezer. They enjoyed an evening together, fuelled by white wine and Waitrose dessert, the way they used to before Edmunds’ transfer.

Before leaving work, Edmunds had printed out a stack of old case files, which he planned to sort through once Tia had gone to bed. He had stashed them on top of the high kitchen cupboards, where five-foot Tia would never find them, but completely forgot that they were even there as the hours ticked by until the conversation turned to the baiting subject of his job.

‘Were you there?’ Tia asked, unconsciously rubbing the bump in her belly. ‘When that poor man …’

‘No.’

‘But your boss was? I heard the Indian commander lady mention her name.’

‘Baxter? She’s not really my boss. She’s … I suppose she might as well be.’

‘So what were you working on while all that was happening?’

Tia was obviously trying to show an interest in his work. Although it was confidential, he did not feel as though he could shoot her down. He decided to share the least important aspect of the investigation with her, which would serve the dual purpose of putting her mind at ease regarding the mundane nature of his role within the team.

‘You saw the pictures of the Ragdoll on the news? Well, the right arm belonged to a woman.’

‘Who?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. She was wearing two kinds of nail varnish, which we believe is a clue to her identity.’

‘Two types on one hand?’

‘The thumb and three of the fingers were painted in Crushed Candy, but the last one is something slightly different.’

‘You really think a nail varnish can tell you who this lady is?’

‘It’s all we’ve got to go on,’ shrugged Edmunds.

‘It’d have to be a pretty special one, wouldn’t it?’ said Tia. ‘To be of any help, I mean.’

‘Special?’

‘Yeah, like there’s this one stuck-up old bag who comes into the salon once a week to get her nails done, and Sheri has to order the stuff in specially because it’s got real gold flakes in it or some rubbish.’

Edmunds was listening to Tia attentively.

‘They don’t sell it in most shops because it’s way too easy to nick and costs about a hundred pounds a bottle.’

Edmunds grabbed Tia’s hand excitedly.

‘T, you’re a genius!’

After just half an hour of searching for limited-run and ludicrously expensive nail polishes on the Internet, Edmunds thought he had found his elusive missing shade: Chanel Limited Edition Feu De Russie 347.

‘This stuff was being sold at the 2007 Moscow Fashion Week for ten thousand dollars a bottle!’ read Tia as Edmunds topped up their glasses.

‘For nail polish?’

‘It was probably a charity thing,’ she shrugged. ‘Even so, I bet there aren’t too many people out there walking around with a bottle of this in their bag.’

The next morning, Baxter received a text from Edmunds asking her to meet him at the Chanel Boutique on Sloane Street at 10 a.m. When she reminded him that she was being taken off the case come Monday, he had simply reminded her that it was still only Saturday.

She was running late after sleeping through her alarm and had been stuck behind a wheelchair for almost two minutes. Following Garland’s horrific death, she had wanted nothing more than to vegetate and feel safe, so had curled up on the sofa watching Friday-night television. She had also managed to finish off two whole bottles of wine by herself.

When the wheelchair got stuck on a drain cover, she seized the opportunity to overtake and found Edmunds waiting for her a little further down the road. She had been thinking a lot about his theory that one of the team was leaking information. The more she thought about it, the more preposterous it seemed. Wolf, obviously, was not involved and she trusted Finlay implicitly. Simmons was facing disciplinary action for fighting her corner, and, although she would never tell him to his face, she trusted Edmunds as much as any of them.

Edmunds handed her a lukewarm takeaway coffee and told her all about Tia’s discovery. She appreciated that he had reverted to addressing her like his bad-tempered superior. There was no trace of the pity or reassurance that she had so desperately needed the day before, and his faith in her gave her confidence in herself again.

A manager had come across to meet them from the Oxford Street store. The woman, who was refreshingly efficient, spent over an hour making phone calls and checking accounts on their behalf. Eventually she produced a list of eighteen transactions, seven of which had names and delivery details attached.

‘There were others,’ the well-spoken woman told them, ‘that were sent out for auctions, prizes, charity events. The people that we hold contact details for are naturally our best clients …’

The woman trailed off as she read through the printout.

‘Problem?’ asked Baxter.

‘Mr Markusson. He is one of our regulars at Oxford Street.’

Baxter took the list off the woman and read the contact details.

‘Says here he lives in Stockholm,’ said Baxter.

‘He divides his time between Stockholm and London. He and his family own property in Mayfair. I’m absolutely positive I have a delivery address. If you’ll excuse me a moment …’

The woman dialled the number for their main branch again.

‘What are the odds Mr Markusson is nuding it up in some sauna in Sweden right now?’ Baxter mumbled to Edmunds.

‘Oh, he’s not dear,’ said the woman, holding the phone theatrically far away from her. ‘He came in yesterday.’

Simmons had made a point of sitting at Chambers’ desk again. Several people had approached him with trivial problems, shift swaps and holiday requests but he had refused to deal with all but the most pressing issues in order to concentrate on the task at hand.

His wife had not taken the news of his potential demotion well, and he had spent the majority of the night reassuring her that they would still be able to afford the mortgage and could still go on their summer holiday. They would get by. They always did.

He was in the middle of the mind-numbing task of checking Edmunds’ list of names from the Khalid trial against the Missing Persons database one at a time. He was not as convinced as Edmunds that the murders were all centred around Khalid; however, he had nothing more promising to be working on.

His concentration was beginning to waver when, on the fifty-seventh name, he finally got a match. He double-clicked the report to bring up the complete details. It was dated Sunday 29 June, the day after the Ragdoll’s discovery, and had been generated by the Metropolitan Police. It had to be one of their three unidentified victims.

‘Son of a bitch,’ murmured Simmons.

Baxter and Edmunds climbed the steep steps up to the front door of the four-storey town house, located on a leafy but busy side street in Mayfair. They had to knock twice before they heard the sound of footsteps clicking down the hallway towards them. A sinewy man answered the door, a coffee in one hand, his phone clamped between his ear and his shoulder. He had bright blond hair, which he wore in a long but tidy style, was clearly very muscular and was wearing an expensive shirt over blue jeans. A strong aroma of aftershave wafted over them as he looked at them impatiently.

‘Yes?’

‘Mr Stefan Markusson?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Police. We need to ask you a few questions.’

In contrast to the first impression that he had given, Markusson had been amiable and welcoming. He led them through his incredible home, which could only be described as Georgian sci-fi, and into the living room where an entire glass wall had been folded back to open it up on to the decked garden. Baxter was sure that Rory would have loved it and was determined to take some pictures for him if their host left them alone at any point.

Markusson sent his adorable daughter back upstairs when she came down to see who had come to visit, and Edmunds wondered whether they were wasting their time when his beautiful two-armed wife went off to prepare them some iced tea. Baxter’s experience, however, had taught her that men seldom bought such extravagant gifts for their wives and that they were far more likely to get honest answers with her out of the room.

‘So, how can I help you?’ asked Markusson, his accent more noticeable now.

‘We believe you were in Moscow in April 2007,’ said Baxter.

‘April 2007?’ Markusson stared into space. ‘Yes, fashion week. My wife, she drags us to all of these shows.’

‘We need to ask you about something you bought while you were out there …’ Baxter paused, expecting the man to remember his ten-thousand-dollar purchase. Apparently, he did not. ‘A bottle of Chanel nail polish?’

At that moment Mrs Markusson returned with their drinks, and Baxter noticed the uncomfortable look on her husband’s face.

‘Why don’t you go keep Livia company?’ Markusson told his wife, squeezing her affectionately from his chair. ‘We’ll head out soon.’

Baxter rolled her eyes as the beautiful blonde scuttled obediently from the room and Edmunds noticed a dramatic shift in her mood.

‘The ten grand polish then?’ she asked, just as the door clicked shut.

‘It was for a woman who I met when I was here in London. I was travelling a lot back then, and it gets very lonely when—’

‘I honestly don’t give a toss,’ interrupted Baxter. ‘What is this woman’s name?’

‘Michelle.’

‘Surname?’

‘Gailey, I think. We’d have dinner when I was in town. She loved all of this fashion stuff, so I bought her a gift.’

‘And you met how, exactly?’ asked Baxter.

Markusson cleared his throat. ‘Dating website.’

‘Rich-shits.com?’

Markusson took the insult on the chin, apparently considering it deserved.

‘Michelle wasn’t from money; my reason for getting her the present,’ explained Markusson. ‘To avoid complications, it seemed wise to date someone of a different social standing.’

‘I bet it did.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’ asked Edmunds, scribbling, as usual, in his notebook. Distractedly, he took a sip of his iced tea and started spluttering. Baxter ignored him.

‘I called it off when my daughter was born back in 2010.’

‘That’s mighty fine of you.’

‘I haven’t seen her since. It’s funny …’

‘What is?’ asked Baxter.

‘I’ve been thinking about her a lot in the last week, probably because of all these things in the news.’

Baxter and Edmunds shared a glance.

‘Which things?’ they asked in unison.

‘The Cremation Killer turning up dead. Naguib Khalid, is that his name? It’s just that Michelle and I spoke a great deal about him the last time I saw her. It was a big step for her.’

‘What was?’ they both chimed together again.

‘Her being assigned to him,’ said Markusson thoughtfully. ‘She was his probation officer.’

Отправить