Monday 14 July 2014

12.06 p.m.

Wolf could hear voices in a distant part of the building: the firefighters being pulled out ahead of the Armed Response Unit’s search of the premises. He leapt down the final three stairs and ran across the magnificent hall, already feeling a tightness in his chest and the stab of a painful stitch in his side. He focused on the courtroom door, trying desperately to ignore the churchlike setting: a white-robed Moses looked down on him from his seat at the foot of Mount Sinai; carved cherubs were frozen in flight, scattered around stained-glass windows and the likenesses of archbishops, cardinals and rabbis preaching the word of God, corroborating Masse’s claims.

There is a God. There is a Devil. Demons walk among us.

Wolf stepped in the shallow crimson puddle seeping out from beneath the doors as he burst through into the courtroom. Baxter was still at the far end, below the dock, bleeding into wood already saturated with Khalid. He made a movement towards her but Masse stepped between them, sword raised.

‘That’s far enough,’ he said.

His distorted grin was repulsive.

Baxter felt lethargic. Her damp trousers were cold where they clung against her skin. She was struggling to keep pressure on the artery and felt as though she might fall asleep every time she blinked. She had cut deep scratches into her face while attempting to remove the gag that Masse had tied so tightly round her head and knew that she could not spare the blood to try again.

She could feel the gun pressing into the small of her back, just out of her handcuffed reach. Masse had missed it. She went for it once more but as she tentatively lifted her elbow away from her leg, the constant trickle of blood began to pump frighteningly in time to her racing heart.

She reached around to the right, but her left arm restricted her movement. Her fingertips brushed tantalisingly against the metal. She arched her back, willing her arm to dislocate, to break, anything to gain a few millimetres more.

The puddle that she was sitting in had grown to twice the size in just a few seconds. She cried out in frustration and then replaced her elbow to stem the bleeding, having just traded seven seconds of fruitless exertion for several minutes of life.

Masse had draped his long coat over one of the benches. Beneath it, he wore the same shirt, trouser and shoe set that Wolf had discovered in Goldhawk Road: his camouflage. Wolf was still breathing heavily as the two substantial men came face to face for the second time. What little advantage he gained in height and bulk, Masse more than made up for in muscle.

In their haste to evacuate, somebody had left an expensive-looking fountain pen on top of a stack of papers. Wolf shifted position, covertly picking up the makeshift metal weapon as Masse continued.

‘I knew you were there yesterday, in Piccadilly Circus.’

Wolf’s anger gave way to surprise.

‘I wanted to see whether you could do it,’ said Masse. ‘But you are weak, William. You were weak yesterday. You were weak the day you failed to finish Naguib Khalid, and you are weak now. I can see it in you.’

‘Believe me, if you hadn’t moved—’

‘I didn’t,’ interrupted Masse. ‘I watched you panic. I watched you run past me. I wonder, did you really fail to see me standing directly in front of you or do you think that perhaps you just didn’t want to?’

Wolf shook his head. He tried to remember the moment that he had lost sight of Masse in the crowds. He would have had the courage to finish him. Masse was manipulating him, making him doubt himself.

‘So, you must see the futility in this?’ Masse continued softly. He paused. ‘Because I like you – and sincerely, I do – I am going to offer you a choice that wasn’t made available to any of your counterparts: you can get on your knees, and you have my word I’ll make it clean. You won’t feel a thing. Or we can fight this out and things will inevitably turn … unpleasant.’

Wolf adopted the same hungry look that Masse wore so well.

‘Predictable as ever,’ sighed Masse, raising his sword.

Baxter needed to stop the bleeding. She had not dared try while Masse had been watching. As things stood, she was at least able to control it. Had he realised her intentions, he would have ensured that there was no way to stem the blood loss.

Without moving her elbow out of position, she was able to unbuckle her belt with her shackled hands. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the material out from under her and wrapped it around her leg, just above the wound. She pulled it tighter and tighter, the pain excruciating, until the bleeding was no more than a trickle once more.

She was still losing blood, but now she had regained the use of her hands.

Masse took a step towards Wolf. Wolf stepped back. Another. Wolf unscrewed the surprisingly weighty lid from the fountain pen, placing his thumb just below the nib, holding it out in front of him as if wielding a knife.

Masse surged forward, swinging the lethal antique wildly. Wolf stumbled backwards as it struck the wall beside him and Masse swung again, the blade slicing through the air just inches from Wolf’s face, the force of his own swing knocking him off balance. Wolf risked a fleeting step forward and jabbed the pen in and out of Masse’s upper arm before retreating back to a safe distance.

Masse cried out and assessed the damage, calmly prodding the fresh puncture wound in fascination.

This moment of composure passed like the eye of a storm as, incensed, he swung again. Wolf backed into the corner, instinctively turning his body away from the attack; however, the glancing blow was agonising where it connected with his left shoulder. Throwing himself at Masse, he stabbed at him repeatedly, sinking the metal deeper and deeper into his sword arm until a weakened blow knocked him to the floor. He heard the pen drop and disappear out of sight.

Both men paused for a moment. Wolf was on the floor, holding his dropped shoulder in pain, while Masse watched in fascination as a stream of dark red blood trickled out from under the cuff of his shirt. He showed no sign of fear or pain, only surprise at the amount of damage that his unworthy opponent had managed to inflict. He attempted to lift the heavy weapon again but could barely raise it off the floor and was forced to seize it with his left hand instead.

‘Get on your knees, Lethaniel,’ said Wolf with a smirk as he struggled back to his feet. ‘You have my word I’ll make it clean.’

Wolf saw Masse’s expression twitch with the insult. He stole a glance towards Baxter, as did Masse.

‘I wonder, would you fight quite so hard to save her if you knew?’

Wolf ignored the baiting comment and took a step closer to her before Masse blocked his path again.

‘If you knew that her name was far more deserving of a place on our list than most,’ Masse continued.

Wolf was confused.

‘Detective Inspector Chambers was not a brave man. He begged. He whimpered. He pleaded as he proclaimed his innocence.’

When Masse shot Baxter a taunting smile, Wolf saw an opening and lunged at him. Masse blocked the attack but stumbled backwards into one of the benches.

Baxter watched as Masse’s long coat slid off the bench, spilling the contents of her workbag over the floor with it. Her eyes flicked from the bloodstained nail scissors, which Masse had used to incapacitate her, to her mobile phone and then to the small set of keys sitting beside the table leg.

‘It transpires that, for Emily’s sake,’ continued Masse, ‘in order to preserve your friendship, he had allowed you to think that he had sent the letter to Professional Standards …’

Wolf looked uneasy.

‘… the letter that brought down your entire case against Khalid.’ Masse watched with eager amusement as Wolf stared at Baxter in disbelief. ‘I’m afraid we killed the wrong person.’

Baxter could not meet his eye. But suddenly, she looked up and let out a muffled cry.

He saw Masse approaching too late. With no other option, Wolf charged towards him, blocking his wild swing, bringing them both down heavily onto the hard floor. The sword slid beneath one of the benches as Wolf mercilessly struck Masse time and time again, the damage that he was inflicting masked by the man’s already devastating injuries.

When Masse reached up in desperation and grasped Wolf’s shattered shoulder, feeling the broken bone grating beneath the skin, it only enraged him further, feeding the attack against him. Wolf cried out in hatred and fury, the roar deafening to the ears of his floundering enemy. He drove his head down into Masse’s ruined face with brutal force, shattering his nose and robbing his thrashing limbs of fight.

Masse stared up helplessly, incapacitated by the ferocity of the onslaught. His eyes were wide, pleading – afraid.

Baxter had crawled across the courtroom floor, staining the wood behind her. She reached for the scissors and cut the painful gag off her face. Weakening by the second, she clawed her way towards the keys.

Wolf reached into his pocket and removed the shoelaces. He doubled them up for extra strength, yanked his defeated opponent’s head up off the floor and wrapped them tightly around his throat. In a final flurry of adrenaline, Masse kicked out viciously and pulled his head away.

‘You’re only making this harder on yourself,’ Wolf told the writhing man.

He spotted the fountain pen beneath a table and got to his feet to collect it.

‘So tell me,’ said Wolf, spitting a mouthful of Masse’s blood onto the floor as he calmly returned with the bloodied weapon, ‘if you’re the Devil, what does that make me?’

Masse’s feeble attempts to drag himself away were thwarted when Wolf crouched over him and, without hesitation, drove the pen through his right leg, mirroring the wound that he had dared inflict on Baxter. He silenced Masse’s cries of pain by wrapping the laces back around his neck and pulling them as taut as his injured shoulder could endure.

Relishing the sound of the desperate splutters, he felt the pathetic attempts to fight him off grow weaker. He watched the blood vessels bursting in the whites of Masse’s eyes and pulled tighter still, until his arms were shaking with the effort.

‘Wolf!’ shouted Baxter, struggling with the keys as she lost the dexterity in her fingers. The room was spinning. ‘Wolf! Stop!’

He could not even hear her through his rage. He looked back down at Masse. The life was draining from his eyes. This was no longer self-defence – this was an execution.

‘That’s enough!’

There was a sharp click as Baxter raised the gun and pointed it at his chest. He stared at her in bewilderment and then looked down at the bloodied heap beneath him as if seeing it for the first time.

‘I said, that’s enough.’

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