Monday 7 July 2014

11.29 a.m.

The moment the ‘On Air’ light went out, Andrea pulled off her microphone, hurried out of the studio, and back into the newsroom. Elijah had scheduled their meeting for 11.35 a.m., and as she climbed the stairs up to his office, she still had no idea what she would say should he offer her what she had always wanted.

When she had agreed to help Baxter she had had every intention of leaving the cut-throat profession behind; however, her misguided attempt at redemption had backfired horribly, while catapulting her fame and journalistic influence to dizzying new heights. Somehow, in her fight to free herself from the dirt, she had only succeeded in digging herself further in.

Elijah spotted her coming and, for the first time ever, opened the door for her before she even had time to knock, robbing her of a few additional seconds that she so desperately needed in order to make up her mind. He smelled faintly of sweat, and dark patches were beginning to form under his arms. He was wearing a fitted sky-blue shirt that looked as though it would split should he tense anything, and tight black trousers that emphasised his absurdly disproportioned profile.

He offered her one of his revolting espressos, which she declined, and then droned on about how he was seldom surprised but had to admit that she had shown a killer instinct he had not believed her capable of. He clicked a button to bring a graph up on the projector behind him and began reeling off numbers without even glancing at it. Andrea had to stifle a laugh because half of the lopsided chart he was referring to had disappeared out of the office window, which he would have realised had he not been too conceited to even turn his head.

She zoned out as he congratulated her for her sterling work on Garland’s murder, as though it had been a live television event that she had meticulously choreographed, which, in a nauseating way, it had been. While flashbacks of Garland thrashing around occupied her thoughts, Elijah finally reached his point.

‘… our newest prime-time newsreader!’

He deflated when Andrea failed to respond.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I heard,’ said Andrea quietly.

Elijah relaxed back in his chair, popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth and nodded knowingly. As he continued, he unconsciously pointed a condescending finger at her.

Andrea was tempted to rip it off.

‘I get what this is,’ he said, chewing with his mouth open. ‘This is about Wolf. You’re thinking: he can’t seriously expect me to sit there in front of a camera and report my own ex-husband’s death to the world, can he?’

She hated it when he put words in her mouth; although, on this occasion he was spot on. She nodded.

‘Well, tough shit, precious,’ he snapped. ‘That’s what’s gonna make it so compelling. Who’ll be watching the dreary BBC when they could be watching the love of Wolf’s life only learning of his passing as she reads it out on air. Un … missable!’

Andrea laughed bitterly and got up to leave.

‘You’re unbelievable.’

‘I’m a realist. You’re gonna go through it anyway. Why not do it on camera and make yourself a star in the process? Oh! You could convince him to do an interview the night before. How heartbreaking would that be? We could actually broadcast you saying your goodbyes.’

Andrea stormed out of the office and slammed the door behind her.

‘Think about it!’ he yelled after her. ‘I’ll expect your answer, one way or another, by the weekend!’

Andrea was due back in front of the camera in twenty minutes. She calmly walked into the women’s toilets, checked that no one was in any of the cubicles, locked the door and burst into tears.

Edmunds yawned loudly as he waited for Joe in the empty forensics lab. He had elected to stand in a cramped corner between a clinical waste bin and a fridge. Coincidentally, it just so happened to also be the furthest point away from the large cadaver freezer, which he glanced up at every few seconds between scribbling in his notebook.

He had stayed up well past 3 a.m., sifting through the case files that he had stashed on top of his kitchen units. Although Tia had no hope of finding them up there, her new pet, using the curtains as a climbing aid, did. And had subsequently thrown up all over a very important witness statement. He felt worryingly tired considering that it was not even lunchtime. At least his exhaustion was worthwhile; he had come across one case that certainly warranted further investigation.

‘Wow! What the hell happened to you?’ asked Joe as he entered the lab.

‘It’s nothing,’ replied Edmunds, stepping out from his corner and touching his broken nose self-consciously.

‘Well, it’s definitely him,’ announced Joe. ‘All three photographs were taken by the same camera.’

‘Please say you found something from the blood.’

‘I could, but I’d be lying. He’s not in our database.’

‘Which means we’ve never arrested him,’ said Edmunds, more for his own benefit. He could now confidently rule out a large percentage of the archived case files.

‘Blood type: O-positive.’

‘The rare one?’ asked Edmunds hopefully.

‘Common as muck,’ said Joe. ‘No sign of mutation or illness, no alcohol or drugs. Eye colour: grey or blue. You know, for the most twisted serial killer in recent memory, his blood is deplorably dull.’

‘So you’ve got nothing?’

‘I didn’t say that. The boot prints are size eleven, and the cast of the tread pattern is a combat boot, so maybe military?’

Edmunds got his notebook back out.

‘The crime scene forensics guys found traces of asbestos, tar and a lacquer in the imprints along with considerably higher levels of copper, nickel and lead than the surrounding soil. A warehouse maybe?’

‘I’ll look into it. Thank you,’ said Edmunds, closing his book.

‘Hey, I heard they identified our torso. Did you ever work out what that tattoo was?’ asked Joe.

‘It was a canary escaping a cage.’

Joe looked puzzled: ‘Funny thing to get removed.’

Edmunds shrugged.

‘I suppose she realised that some canaries belong in cages after all.’

The Embassy of Ireland was an imposing five-storey building that overlooked the grounds of Buckingham Palace from its large corner plot position in Belgravia. On this breezeless and sunny day, Wolf entered the grand portico under the shadow of the wilted flags that protruded out over the busy pavement. The grand entranceway doubled as a bridge over the litter-hoarding service area that provided a fire escape to the basement level below.

Wolf had been in a number of embassies in his time, none by choice, and had always been left with the same impression: the high ceilings, old paintings, ornate mirrors and comfortable-looking sofas that appeared as though no one had worked up the courage to sit on them yet; it was like visiting a well-off relative who simultaneously wanted to appear welcoming and for you to leave before you could break anything. This one was no exception.

Once Wolf had passed through security in the public areas, he was confronted with a grand staircase framed by intricately embellished duck-egg-blue walls. He was stopped on three separate occasions on his way up, which was encouraging, and reached the top floor to be greeted by the familiar sound of Andrew Ford’s raised voice filling the civilised hallway.

Wolf looked out at the palace in the distance for a tranquil moment before going to face the pugnacious man again. He smiled at the armed officer on the door, who did not return the gesture, and entered the opulent room to find Finlay calmly watching television while Ford writhed about on the floor like a badly behaved toddler.

The room clearly functioned as an office under normal circumstances. The computers, desks and filing cabinets had either been removed entirely or stacked against the far wall to accommodate their ungracious guest. Someone had even gone to the trouble of equipping the room with a camp bed, kettle, sofas and the television at very short notice.

A creature of habit, Ford had evidently slept in front of the TV on the pristine leather sofa, because the same smelly, stained duvet from his bedsit now lay draped across it. It was a peculiar sight, this dirty train wreck of a man living in such decadent surroundings, and Wolf could not believe that, of all his possessions, he had chosen this rancid piece of bedding to drag across the country and back again.

‘Wolf!’ shouted Ford, as though they were old friends. He howled excitedly.

Finlay waved cheerfully from the other, duvet-free, sofa.

‘What noise does he make when he sees you?’ Wolf asked Finlay.

‘Afraid I cannae repeat it. Wasn’t very friendly though.’

Ford got up off the floor and Wolf saw that his hands were trembling constantly. The Irishman then rushed over to the window to peer out over the street below.

‘He’s coming Wolf. He’s coming to kill me!’ said Ford.

‘The killer? Well … yeah,’ said Wolf in confusion. ‘But he’s not going to.’

‘He is. He is. He is. He knows things, doesn’t he? He knew where I was before. He’ll know where I am now.’

‘He will if you don’t move away from that window. Sit down.’

Finlay watched in resentment as the childlike man, who had made the last seventeen hours of his life a living hell, obeyed without argument. Wolf took a seat next to his friend.

‘Good night?’ he asked cheerily.

‘I’m gonna kill him myself if he carries on like he has been,’ Finlay muttered.

‘When was his last drink?’

‘Early hours,’ said Finlay.

Wolf knew from experience the toll that the withdrawal symptoms could take on a long-term alcoholic. Ford’s heightened anxiety and the onset of delirium tremens was not a promising sign.

‘He needs a drink,’ said Wolf.

‘Believe me, I asked. The ambassador said no.’

‘Why don’t you take a break?’ Wolf told Finlay. ‘You must be dying for a cigarette.’

‘I’m the one who’s going to die here!’ yelled Ford in the background.

They both ignored him.

‘And while you’re out, pick us up a couple of bottles of … lemonade,’ suggested Wolf with a significant look.

Simmons walked past Vanita’s door carrying a coffee.

‘Chaachaa chod,’ she murmured, using her favourite Hindi insult.

Because of him, she had spent the entire morning wading through the backlog of paperwork and post that he had left unactioned. She opened up the next email: another update, sent out to everyone involved in the Ragdoll investigation. She noticed Chambers’ name included in the list of recipients and sighed. Simmons had cancelled his pass card to the building immediately after learning of his death, as per the protocols, but the endless task of removing the veteran officer from their databases and collecting in his equipment sat somewhere near the bottom of her to-do list.

Supposing that it was bad form to circulate a dead colleague’s name on each and every one of the incessant updates, she quickly typed out a request to have him deleted and moved on to the next job on her list.

Simmons and Edmunds had been working silently for over an hour, despite sitting only eighteen inches apart. Edmunds felt surprisingly relaxed around his irritable senior officer. Perhaps three months of Baxter had toughened him up, but the quietness felt comfortable, just two professionals absorbed in their work, efficient, intellectual souls, sharing a mutual respe—

Simmons turned to Edmunds, interrupting his train of thought.

‘Remind me to order you a desk later, will you?’

‘Of course, sir.’

The silence felt considerably less comfortable after that.

Simmons was still working on the labour-intensive task of contacting each and every one of the remaining eighty-seven names on the list. On his first pass, he had only managed to cross off twenty-four. He had turned the page back over and started again from the top, positive that once they had identified this final victim, the entire puzzle would make sense.

Edmunds, whose idea it had been to compile the list in the first place, was not sure how or when Simmons had claimed ownership over his part of the investigation but was not about to question it. He had his hands full anyway, searching for all possible links between the Ragdoll victims and Naguib Khalid.

Although he had not found a connection between Chambers or Jarred Garland, he figured that police officers and journalists both tended to accrue long lists of enemies over the years. He had, instead, decided to focus his attention on Michael Gable-Collins, Mayor Turnble and the waitress, Ashley Lochlan.

He felt frustrated. Something connected this assorted group of people but even knowing that Khalid was the key, they were somehow failing to see the entire picture.

Baxter was at the scene of a serious sexual assault in an alleyway just two streets down from Wolf’s apartment. It really was a shitty area. She had annoyed Blake by refusing to climb into a skip to help him search for evidence and was supposed to be asking for witnesses instead but had distracted herself by thinking about Wolf and Finlay in the Irish embassy, with just a day and a half to go until the attempt on Andrew Ford’s life. She missed Edmunds too. She had got so used to him following her around like a puppy that she had actually barked an order into thin air earlier that morning.

She was bored. It was a terrible thing to admit while in the midst of investigating the most horrific ordeal of a young woman’s life, but she was. She thought back to the feeling of hopelessness she had experienced as Garland thrashed around just metres away from her. She remembered holding his hand, willing him to survive and the nurse coming in to break the news of his death.

She missed the adrenaline. It had been one of the worst days of her entire life and yet, given the opportunity to do it all over again, she would. Was there something wrong with her? Were haunting memories better than none at all? Feeling fear and peril preferable to feeling nothing? And were these the sort of questions that the killer asked himself to justify his own atrocities?

Scaring herself, she decided to go and do some work.

Wolf and Finlay were watching a rerun of Top Gear at almost inaudible volume while Ford snored loudly from beneath the duvet on the other sofa. He had passed out after approximately one and a half bottles of ‘lemonade’ and given the two detectives a blissful hour of quiet.

‘Thomas Page,’ rasped Finlay as quietly as he could.

‘What?’ asked Wolf.

‘Thomas Page.’

‘Bastard. He knocked out t—’

‘Two of your teeth at a crime scene when you were in training. I know.’

‘He always had a temper.’

‘And you were always a smart-arse,’ replied Finlay with a shrug.

‘Why are you bringing him up any—’

‘Hugh Cotrill,’ interrupted Finlay.

‘Tosser,’ spat Wolf, almost waking Ford. ‘My first arrest for theft and he was the system-playing prick that got him off.’

‘He was doing his job,’ said Finlay with a smile. He was clearly antagonising Wolf intentionally.

‘He got his watch nicked by his own client, the prick. What’s your point?’

‘My point is: you are a lot of things Will but forgiving is not one of them. You hold grudges. You probably hate me for something I said or did to you once upon a time.’

‘Said,’ clarified Wolf with a smirk.

‘That mess over there isn’t particularly likeable on a good day, but you must really hate him. He broke your wrist in three …?’

Wolf nodded.

‘… places and probably saved Khalid’s life.’

‘Again,’ said Wolf, ‘what’s your point?’

‘Nothing in particular. It’s just funny how things work out, isn’t it? You in charge of protecting a man that I don’t believe for a second you give a damn about saving.’

‘You’re right about one thing,’ whispered Wolf after they were both distracted by the television for a moment. ‘It is funny how things work out. Somehow I’ve ended up in a position where I want to save this piece of shi—’

Wolf stopped himself from swearing, and Finlay nodded in approval of his self-restraint.

‘… this man’s life more than anything else I have ever done, because if we can save him then maybe, just maybe, we can save me.’

Finlay nodded in understanding and gave Wolf a painfully sincere slap on the back before returning to his show.

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