Sunday 13 July 2014

6.20 a.m.

Vanita and Simmons had stayed on until 7.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. respectively while Edmunds and Finlay settled in for a long night at the office. Baxter had joined them a little before 1 a.m. after sending the Lochlan family home at midnight with a police escort.

Edmunds had been expecting a series of fuming texts and phone calls from Tia for having turned their modest home into a bed and breakfast for complete strangers, however, the mum-to-be had spent the entire day playing with nine-year-old Ashley and had been fast asleep when Baxter left their maisonette.

When Baxter arrived at the office, Finlay had taken over the gargantuan task of working through the list of discharged servicemen. Edmunds, meanwhile, had emptied the archived evidence across the meeting room floor and been busy meticulously sorting through the mess.

She always found it a strange atmosphere in the office at night-time. Even though New Scotland Yard was still teeming with caffeine-fuelled employees, the night workers seemed to carry out their duties in a hushed murmur. The oppressive lighting felt a little warmer as it diffused into vacant rooms and dark corridors, and the phones that had to fight so hard to make themselves heard during the day were set to a polite hum.

At 6.20 a.m. Finlay was asleep in his chair, snoring gently beside Baxter, who had now inherited his laborious task. Based on Edmunds’ profile and the overwhelming number of people that could be eliminated due to the severity of their physical injuries, they had, so far, compiled a list of just twenty-six names from the first thousand people they had assessed.

Someone cleared their throat.

Baxter looked up to find a scruffy man in a cap standing over her.

‘Got some files for Alex Edmunds,’ he said, gesturing to the flatbed trolley behind him, where seven more archived boxes were neatly stacked.

‘Yeah, he’s actually just in—’

Baxter saw Edmunds throw a box of evidence across the meeting room in a temper.

‘Know what? Why don’t you leave these with me?’ she smiled.

A file of paperwork showered down over her head as she closed the glass door behind her.

‘I can’t see whatever the hell it was he saw!’ shouted Edmunds in frustration. ‘What did he find?’

He scrunched up a fistful of documents off the floor and thrust them at Baxter.

‘No prints, no witnesses, no connection between the victims – nothing!’

‘OK, calm down. We don’t even know if what Wolf found is still here,’ said Baxter.

‘And we have no way of verifying that, because he outsourced the forensic testing and it’s bloody Sunday so no one’s at work.’ Edmunds slumped down onto the floor. He looked drained and his black eyes were showing worse than ever. He smacked himself on the side of the head. ‘We don’t have time for me to be dim-witted.’

Baxter started to realise that her colleague’s, already, impressive contribution to the case had not been driven by egocentric one-upmanship or proving himself to the team, but by the unreasonable amount of pressure that he placed upon himself, a borderline obsessiveness and dogged refusal to relinquish control to anybody else. Under the circumstances, she supposed that it would be an inopportune moment to tell him just how much he reminded her of Wolf.

‘Some boxes arrived for you,’ said Baxter.

Edmunds looked up at her in confusion.

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ he said, getting back to his feet before rushing out of the room.

The light drizzle had gradually soaked through Wolf’s clothing during the hour that he had been standing at the bus stop on Coventry Street. He had not taken his eyes off the door to the scruffy Internet café that, like the countless souvenir shops selling London-branded tat, somehow managed to survive nestled among the world’s biggest brands along one of the capital’s busiest and most expensive thoroughfares.

He had followed the man here, keeping his distance as he boarded the train, weaved through the crowds amassing around the street performers in Covent Garden and then entered the grotty café just a few hundred metres down from Piccadilly Circus.

The temperature had dropped with the break in the weather and his quarry had camouflaged himself in standard London attire: a long black coat, immaculately polished shoes and freshly pressed shirt and trousers, all capped off with the regulation black umbrella.

He had struggled to keep pace at times as the imposing man marched briskly through the meandering crowds. Wolf had watched a number of people coming into contact with him, pushing past from the other direction, begging him for spare change, attempting to hand him glossy fliers, not one of them aware of the monster walking among them: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Shortly after leaving Covent Garden the man had taken a shortcut. Wolf followed him down the quiet side street and quickened his pace, seizing a rare moment of solitude in the ever-watchful city. His hurried walk turned into a jog as he chased down his unsuspecting target, but when a taxi turned the corner and pulled up a little further down the road, Wolf reluctantly slowed his pace and followed his prey back out onto the busy high street.

As the drizzle built into rain, Wolf pulled the collar of his own long black coat up around his neck and hunched over to keep warm. He watched the colourful numbers on the neon clock in the café window steadily distort in the wet glass, a reminder that this was his last day, his last chance.

He was wasting time.

Isobel Platt was being given a crash course in studio broadcasting. It apparently took five eager members of the technical team to explain to the intimidatingly attractive reporter which camera to look at and when. She had dressed in her most conservative outfit for this unexpected development in her fledgling career, much to the displeasure of Elijah, who had relayed down the message for her to ‘lose the top three buttons’.

While the format of her maiden studio appearance was relatively simple: a one-on-one interview with only two VTs interrupting proceedings, it was expected that tens of millions of people would be tuning in to watch the half-hour show from all over the planet. Isobel thought she might be sick again.

She had never wanted this. She had never even really wanted the reporter job in the first place and had been as surprised as everyone else when it had been offered to her despite a total lack of experience or qualifications. She and her boyfriend had argued about her applying for other jobs, but she hated working there and was determined to get out.

Everybody at the newsroom either thought that she was thick, a tart or a thick tart. She was not deaf to the whispering behind her back. Isobel would be the first to admit that she was no genius, but where other averagely educated people were forgiven for their mispronunciations and naivety, she was ridiculed endlessly.

She smiled along with the awkward men and laughed at their obvious jokes. She pretended to be excited about the honour that had been bestowed upon her, but in reality she just wished that Andrea was in her place, negotiating the complicated camera movements and intricate timings of the programme.

‘I think I could get used to this,’ she laughed as one of the men wheeled her and her chair into position.

‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ called Andrea as she crossed the studio en route to make-up, admirably early for her first official day in her new job. ‘You’re only here because I can’t really interview myself, can I?’

‘I’ve got something!’ yelled Edmunds from the meeting room.

Finlay, Vanita, and Simmons were already inside by the time Baxter crunched across the floor of discarded paperwork and closed the door behind her. Simmons looked torn, clearly deciding whether or not to reprimand Edmunds for making such a mess.

Edmunds reached into an archive box and handed out the documents.

‘Right,’ he started breathlessly. ‘You’ll have to bear with me. It’s a bit muddled up. Wait, not those.’

He snatched the papers out of Simmons’ hand and tossed them onto the floor behind him.

‘You’ll have to share,’ smiled Edmunds. ‘This was one of the cases Wolf booked out of the archives – Stephen Shearman, fifty-nine, CEO of a failing electronics manufacturer. His son was a director of the company and committed suicide after a merger went bad or something … It’s not important.’

‘And this is relevant how?’ asked Vanita.

‘That’s what I thought as well,’ Edmunds enthused. ‘But guess who was responsible for that merger falling apart – Gabriel Poole Junior.’

‘Who?’ asked Baxter, speaking for the group.

‘He was the heir to the electronics corporation who disappeared from his hotel suite – puddle of blood, no body.’

‘Oh,’ said Baxter in feigned interest.

They all had far more important things to be doing.

‘This one,’ said Edmunds, unpacking another cardboard box. ‘His daughter was killed by a bomb …’ He pointed to another box. ‘… planted by this man, who managed to suffocate inside a locked cell.’

Everybody looked blank.

‘Don’t you see?’ asked Edmunds. ‘They’re Faustian murders!’

Everybody looked blanker.

‘It’s an urban myth,’ groaned Finlay.

‘They’re all connected,’ said Edmunds. ‘All of them! Revenge murders followed by a sacrifice. We never understood how Wolf fitted into a list of his enemies. Now it all makes sense.’

‘This is absurd,’ said Simmons.

‘It is one hell of a leap,’ said Vanita.

Edmunds rummaged through another box and removed a report.

‘Joel Shepard,’ he said. ‘Died six months ago, questionable suicide. Convicted of three revenge murders, convinced that the Devil was coming to collect his soul. He was in a mental hospital.’

‘Well, there’s your answer,’ smirked Simmons.

‘St Ann’s Hospital,’ explained Edmunds. ‘He was a patient there at the same time as Wolf. Wolf requested this box ten days ago and now a piece of evidence is missing.’

‘What evidence?’ asked Vanita.

‘“One bloodstained page of the Bible”,’ Edmunds read straight from the report. ‘I think Wolf found something.’

‘So, what you’re saying is that the Ragdoll Killer is significantly more prolific than we originally gave him credit for?’ asked Vanita.

‘What I’m saying is that the Faustian Killer isn’t just a myth. I’m saying that the Ragdoll murders are Faustian murders. I’m saying that I believe Wolf has discovered the killer’s identity and is out there, somewhere, hunting an individual who unequivocally believes he is, at the very least, a demon.’

The door to the café opened and a figure stepped out into the flow of people being drawn towards the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus. Wolf took a few steps to his right for a better view, but the face was obscured by the crowds and by the umbrella that he had just opened up. He started to walk away.

Wolf needed to make a decision: stay or go?

It was him – Wolf was almost positive. He jogged across the road, shielding his face as he passed in front of a stationary police car, before following his target along the busy street. The human traffic was building with every step they took, and Wolf was fighting to keep the man in sight. As the rain intensified, everyone that had been braving the light shower either rushed for cover or searched frantically for their own umbrellas. Within seconds at least another dozen identical black canopies had filled the pavement in front of him.

In his desperation not to lose the man, Wolf stepped out into the traffic and sprinted ten metres down the road before dropping back in behind the imposing figure. As they passed the next shop window, he struggled to make out the man’s face in the reflection. He had to be sure that it was him before he acted.

His erratic behaviour had sparked the interest of several people around him and it was clear that some of them had recognised this drenched version of the man from the news. He shoved his way forward to get away from them and was now only two people behind his mark as they passed the Trocadero. He grasped the handle of the six-inch hunting knife concealed inside his coat and moved in front of another person.

He could not miss.

He could not risk the killer surviving.

He had been waiting for the perfect opportunity: a quiet park, a deserted alleyway, but realised that this was so much better. He was hidden in plain view, a face in the heaving crowds, just another person retreating from the dead body lying in the middle of the road.

Wolf glimpsed the side of the man’s face as they paused at the traffic lights. It was undoubtedly him. He moved into position, directly behind his target, close enough to feel the rain striking his face as it bounced off the black umbrella. He focused on the exposed skin at the base of the man’s skull into which he would sink the knife. He pulled out the blade, keeping it close to his chest, and took a deep breath to steady his hands. He only needed to push forwards …

Something across the road distracted him: both his and Andrea’s names were scrolling across the curved glass wall that separated the statues of the Horses of Helios below, from his three golden daughters, diving gracefully from the rooftop, above. It took him a moment to work out that the inverted letters were a reflection of the LG billboard above his head. He glanced up to read the news ticker that was running across the bottom of the advertisement:

… in world exclusive interview – 13:00 BST – Andrea Hall/Fawkes to tell all in world exclusive interview – 13:00 BST – Andrea Hall/Fawkes …

Wolf was ejected from his thoughts as the herd of people behind began shoving past him to cross the road. The traffic had stopped, and he had lost sight of the killer in the crowds. Pulling the knife up into his sleeve, he barged forward, searching desperately for a face in a sea of black umbrellas. Suddenly the heavens opened. The shrieks of ill-prepared tourists and the hollow thud of water pelting fabric filled the crowded street.

Just as Wolf reached the famous intersection, another wave of people crashed around him. As he stood in the glow of the infamous screens, burning bright under the dark sky overhead, he realised just how exposed he was. He was being shoved from every direction by the faceless crowd, one of whom was not what they seemed.

He started to panic.

He began fighting back through the crowds, knocking people to the ground in his desperation to get out. He lost his knife to the undulating floor of shoes and wheels, seeing hostile faces everywhere he looked. He broke into a run down the centre of the road, keeping pace with the slow-moving traffic, glancing back at the army still marching after him …

Death was coming for him.

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