Wednesday 9 July 2014

7.05 p.m.

Wolf hoped that his walk in the rain down Plumstead high street had watered down the potency of his new aftershave. After befouling himself with the well-intentioned gift, he had sprayed some along the walls of his flat in the hope that it might keep whatever was scratching behind the plasterboard at bay. He had spent a rare half-hour selecting the perfect outfit and combing his hair in nervous preparation for his first date in a decade, only to come out the other end looking exactly the same as he did every other day.

He stopped at an off-licence on the way and picked out the only two bottles of red and white that he recognised (Baxter’s favourites) before purchasing the last remaining bouquet from the garage next door. The limp flowers looked so pathetic that he was seriously questioning whether he had just paid good money for something that had grown naturally out of the old bucket from which he had plucked them.

He made his way up the spine of the run-down tower block and greeted the two police officers standing guard. Neither looked particularly happy to see him.

‘We’ve put in a complaint about you,’ the female officer challenged him.

‘You’ll feel bad about that if I’m dead in a week,’ said Wolf.

He smiled; she did not. He squeezed between them and knocked on Ashley’s door.

‘Try not to leave her crying this time – mate,’ said the male officer, who was obviously jealous of their dinner date.

Wolf ignored the comment but started to wish that he had responded with something just to fill the awkward silence when Ashley still had not answered the door twenty seconds later. When she did finally unbolt the new security features that had been added to her front door, she looked stunning. Wolf thought he heard the other man audibly gasp behind him. She was wearing a lacy pale pink dress and had pinned her hair up in loose curls. She looked ridiculously overdressed for a quiet meal at home.

‘You’re late,’ she said abruptly before striding back into the flat.

Wolf uncertainly followed her inside and slammed the door on the miserable gargoyles standing watch.

‘You look amazing,’ he said, wishing that he had worn/owned a tie.

He handed her the wine and the bouquet, which she politely placed in a vase of water in a token attempt to resuscitate them.

‘I know it’s a bit much, but I might not have another chance to get dressed up so I sort of went all out.’

Ashley opened the red for herself and the white for Wolf. They talked in the kitchen while she occasionally stirred the food. They covered all of the cliché first date topics: family, hobbies, aspirations, using the most tenuous of links to bridge the gap between the subject of the conversation and one of their funniest tried and tested stories. Wolf was suddenly reminded of his dad. And for the first time since this had all begun, they both felt normal, as if there was an indefinite future ahead of them, as if this first evening together could still blossom into something special.

The dinner that Ashley had cooked for them was delicious. She repeatedly apologised for the ‘burnt bits’ nonetheless, not that Wolf could find any. She poured the dregs of each bottle into their glasses as she served dessert, and the conversation became more melancholy but no less enthralling.

Ashley had warned him that the flat became unbearably hot after cooking. When he self-consciously rolled up his shirtsleeves, she had been intrigued rather than repulsed by the burn covering his left arm. She dragged her chair over to look at it more closely, gently running her fingers over the sensitive, scarred skin in fascination.

Wolf could smell the strawberry in her hair again and the sweet scent of wine on her breath as she turned to look up at him, inches from his face, sharing the air between them …

… The wolf mask.

Wolf flinched and Ashley pulled away. The image disintegrated instantly, but it was too late. He had completely ruined the moment and could see the rejection painted on her face. He desperately wanted to save what had already been one of the most enjoyable nights he could remember.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘Can we try that again? You know, your hand on my arm, you looking up at me, etcetera.’

‘Why did you pull away from me?’

‘I pulled away, but not from you. The last person who got that close to me was the man who’s trying to kill us … Yesterday.’

‘You saw him?’ Ashley’s eyes were wide.

‘He was wearing a mask.’

Wolf explained what had happened outside the embassy. Something about him facing down the masked man, the wolf, meeting its eye and refusing to look away, sparked something in Ashley, and she gradually came in closer once more. Her hand was back on his arm. He could smell the subtle hint of wine on her breath. She breathed in heavily and parted her lips …

Wolf’s phone went off.

‘Bollocks!’ He looked at the screen and almost hung up but then smiled apologetically and stood up to take the call. ‘Baxter? … Who? … No, don’t do that … Where? … I’ll be an hour.’

Ashley looked annoyed and started clearing the table.

‘You’re going then?’

Wolf was in love with that accent and very nearly changed his mind on hearing the disappointment in it.

‘A friend’s in trouble.’

‘Shouldn’t they call the police?’

‘Not that kind of trouble. Believe me, if it was anybody else I’d tell them where to go.’

‘They must be very special to you.’

‘Irritatingly … yes.’

Edmunds opened his eyes and had no idea where he was for a few seconds. He had drooled all over his own arm and was lying on a mattress of paperwork, staring up at the canyon of shelving units running in either direction. He had been so exhausted, and the combination of the darkness and quiet had been too much for him. Bracing himself, he looked down at his wrist: 9.20 p.m.

‘Bugger!’

He threw everything littered across the floor back into the evidence box, slid it onto a shelf and started running towards the exit.

Wolf barely had enough money on him to pay the extortionate taxi fare before climbing out in front of Hemmingway’s on Wimbledon high street. He fought his way through the alfresco drinkers and flashed his identification at the bar.

‘She’s passed out in the toilets,’ the girl pulling pints told him. ‘Someone’s with her. We were gonna call an ambulance, but she insisted we try you first. Wait, you’re that detective … Wolf. The Wolf!’

Wolf was already well on his way to the toilets by the time she reached for the camera phone in her pocket. He thanked and dismissed the waitress who had been good enough to sit with Baxter until he arrived. He knelt down beside her. She was still conscious but only responded if he pinched her or shouted her name.

‘Just like old times,’ he said.

He draped her jacket over her head to hide her face, predicting that the girl behind the bar would have told every one of the amateur photographers out there that the man from the news was in the ladies’ toilets then he scooped Baxter up in his arms and carried her out.

The doorman had cleared a path through the crowd for him. Wolf suspected it was more to get the intoxicated woman outside before she vomited again than out of concern for her welfare, but the assistance was appreciated all the same. He carried her along the street and almost dropped her down the narrow staircase up to her apartment. He somehow managed to unlock the front door and was met by the sound of the radio blaring. Stumbling through to the bedroom, he dropped her onto the bed.

He pulled her boots off and tied her hair back like he had countless times before, albeit not for a long time. Then, he went into the kitchen to fetch the washing-up bowl and switched off the music before feeding Echo. There were two empty wine bottles in the sink and he cursed himself for not asking the bar staff how much extra they had served her.

He filled two glasses with water, gulped his down, and went back through to the bedroom where he placed the bowl beside the bed and the glass of water on the bedside table, then he kicked off his shoes and climbed up next to her. Baxter was already snoring.

He turned off the lamp and stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to the first patters of rain against the window. He hoped that Baxter’s recent relapses had been solely due to the stress that they were all under, and that she still had some control over the vice that had never fully relinquished its grip on her. He had helped her hide it from everybody for so long, too long. As he settled in for another sleepless night, periodically checking that she was still breathing and cleaning up after her, he wondered whether he was really helping at all.

Edmunds was soaked through by the time he arrived home to find all of the lights out. He stumbled through the dark hallway as quietly as he could, presuming that Tia was already asleep; however, when he reached the open bedroom door, he saw that the bed was still made.

‘T?’ he called.

He went from room to room, switching on lights and noticing the things that were missing: Tia’s work bag, her favourite jeans, the walking trip-hazard of a cat. She had not left a note; there was no need. She was at her mother’s. He had let her down one time too many, not just during the Ragdoll case but ever since the transfer.

He slumped onto the sofa, which he had expected to be sleeping on that evening, and rubbed his tired eyes. He felt terrible for upsetting her so much, but they only had to struggle through another five days before it would all be over one way or another. Surely Tia could see that the end was in sight.

He considered calling her but knew that she would have turned her phone off. He looked at the time: 10.27 p.m. His soon-to-be mother-in-law must have come to collect her because she had left the car out on the road. Grabbing the keys off the hook he switched off the lights and, despite his exhaustion, stepped back out into the night.

He hit hardly any traffic and made excellent time across the city. He reversed into a parking space directly outside the building and hurried over to the security guard. The man recognised him immediately and they made small talk while Edmunds provided his identification and surrendered his personal possessions in order to sign back into the archives.

The wine had helped Wolf drop off to sleep, but less than an hour later he had been woken by the sound of Baxter retching into the en suite toilet. He lay in the darkness, the glow of the bathroom light seeping between the door frame, listening to the chain flush, cupboards opening and closing and then her gargling and spitting mouthwash into the sink.

He was about to get up to head home, satisfied that she was functioning effectively enough to make it through the night unaided, when Baxter wobbled back into the bedroom, rolled onto the bed and slapped a drunken arm across his chest.

‘How was your date?’ she asked him.

‘Short,’ replied Wolf, both annoyed with Finlay, who could not keep a secret to save his life, and suspecting that Baxter’s poorly timed indiscretion had, in fact, been timed very intentionally.

‘Shame. Thank you for coming to get me,’ she said, almost asleep again already.

‘I nearly didn’t.’

‘But you did,’ she whispered as she drifted off to sleep. ‘I knew you would.’

Edmunds’ hunch had paid off. He managed to locate the box that he had been working on earlier and had abandoned on completely the wrong shelf in his haste to get home. He had returned to the case from 2009: the heir to a powerful corporation that had vanished from a secure hotel suite, a puddle of blood, no body. He studied each of the crime scene photographs individually and had finally found one that confirmed his suspicions.

On the wall beside the pool of blood, a set of eight tiny spatter stains had been evidenced and dismissed, understandably, as ‘further blood’; however, the scene looked uncannily similar to the room that he had visited earlier that day. Armed with the knowledge that they now possessed, it was obvious that this apparently insignificant spatter pattern had actually been caused while the murderer was dismembering the deceased victim in order to remove the body from an otherwise inescapable situation.

It was their killer. Edmunds was sure.

He started packing the evidence back into the box excitedly. At last, he felt as though he had found something promising enough to share with the team. As he got up, a piece of paper dropped out of the lid and onto the floor. It was the standard form that accompanied every box in the warehouse: a list of names, dates signed in and out, and a brief description of the reason for removing it from the archives. Edmunds crouched down to tuck it back inside the lid but then spotted a familiar name at the bottom of the page, the last person to have reviewed the evidence:

Detective Sergeant William Fawkes – 05/02/2013: Blood spatter analysis
Detective Sergeant William Fawkes – 10/02/2013: Returned to store

Edmunds was confused. There had been no paperwork from Wolf and no forensics report since the original back in 2009. The most likely scenario was that Wolf had been led to this case while investigating another. Perhaps he had unintentionally stumbled across this previous victim of the Ragdoll Killer, unwittingly drawing his attention. That would explain the personal nature of the challenge and also the clear level of admiration: the one police officer that the killer deemed worthy.

It was all falling into place.

Edmunds was elated. He would ask Wolf about it in the morning, who might be able to point him towards other examples of their killer’s early work. Encouraged by his discovery, he switched aisles and started searching for the next case on his list.

At long last, they were hunting the hunter.

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