Saturday 28 June 2014
5.58 p.m.
Wolf sat alone in Simmons’ office. He felt as though he was being intrusive for noticing the numerous fresh dents that had been kicked into the ancient filing cabinet and for treading the broken plaster further into the carpet: the first debris of the mourning process. He waited, feeling self-conscious, fiddling absent-mindedly with the damp bandage covering his left arm.
After Simmons had been removed from the interview room, Baxter had gone back to find Wolf slumped beside the mayor’s lifeless body as the indoor monsoon raged on. She had never before seen him looking so lost and vulnerable, staring into space, apparently oblivious that she was even there. Gently, she pulled him up onto his feet and led him out into the dry corridor, where a roomful of troubled faces watched their every move with hounding attentiveness.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ huffed Baxter.
She was supporting most of Wolf’s weight as they stumbled across the office and through the door into the ladies’ toilets. She struggled to get him up onto the countertop between the two sinks. Carefully, she unbuttoned his soiled shirt and slid it slowly off him, taking meticulous care while peeling the melted material out of the weeping and blistered wound that encircled his lower arm. The smell of cheap deodorant, sweat and burnt skin filled the air, and Baxter found herself feeling irrationally on edge, anxious that somebody could walk in at any moment and catch her doing absolutely nothing wrong.
‘Sit tight,’ she told him, once she had removed as much as she could. She rushed back out into the office and returned a few minutes later with a first aid kit and a towel, which she draped over Wolf’s soaked hair. Inexpertly, she ripped open and applied the slimy burns dressing before wrapping sufficient bandage to mummify him around the injured arm.
Moments later, there was a knock at the door. Edmunds came in and unenthusiastically gave up his shirt, having unwittingly admitted to having a t-shirt on underneath. Although tall, Edmunds had the physique of a scrawny schoolboy and the insufficient material barely covered Wolf’s bulk, but Baxter supposed that it was better than nothing. With the majority of the buttons done up, she jumped up onto the counter and sat quietly beside him, waiting for as long as it took for him to recover.
Wolf had spent the remainder of the afternoon in a quiet corner writing a detailed report on what had occurred inside the locked room. He had ignored the numerous unsolicited words of advice suggesting that he go home via A & E. At 5.50 p.m. he had been summoned into Simmons’ office, where he apprehensively awaited the arrival of his chief inspector, whom he had not seen since his violent eruption hours earlier.
As he waited, Wolf vaguely recalled Baxter and the bathroom, but it all seemed hazy, surreal. He felt a little embarrassed, having neglected his press-ups that morning (and for the preceding four years) and pictured, with a shudder, her seeing his unkempt and slightly tubby body.
He heard Simmons enter the room behind him and close the door. His chief dropped into the chair opposite and removed a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey, a bag of ice and a tube of plastic Transformers picnic cups from a Tesco bag. His eyes were still puffy from breaking the news to Mayor Turnble’s wife before the press conference. He scooped a handful of ice into two of the cups, topped them up generously and then slid one across to Wolf without a word. They each took a sip in silence.
‘Your favourite, I seem to remember,’ said Simmons at last.
‘Good memory.’
‘How’s the head?’ Simmons asked, as though he were in no way to blame for Wolf’s mild concussion.
‘Better than the arm,’ replied Wolf cheerily, genuinely unsure what the doctors would be able to salvage if Baxter’s bandaging was indicative of the treatment underneath.
‘Can I be frank?’ Simmons did not wait for an answer. ‘We both know that you’d be sitting in this chair instead of me if you hadn’t screwed up so massively. You were always the better detective.’
Wolf maintained a courteously impassive expression.
‘Perhaps,’ Simmons continued, ‘you would have made better decisions than I did. Perhaps Ray would still be alive if …’
Simmons trailed off and took another swig of his drink.
‘There was no way of knowing,’ said Wolf.
‘That the inhaler was laced with an incendiary? That the piles of flowers we’ve had sat in here for a week were caked in ragweed pollen?’
Wolf had noticed the heap of plastic evidence bags on his way into the office.
‘In what?’
‘Apparently, it’s an asthmatic’s kryptonite. And I brought him here.’
Forgetting that he was only holding a picnic cup, Simmons threw his empty glass against the wall, furious with himself. It bounced across the desk anticlimactically and, after a moment, he topped it back up.
‘So, let’s get this out the way before the commander gets back,’ said Simmons. ‘What are we going to do about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Well, this is the meeting where I tell you you’re too close to the case and advise you that it’s in everybody’s best interests to take you off …’
Wolf went to protest but Simmons continued:
‘… then you tell me to piss off. Then I remind you what happened with Khalid. Then you tell me to piss off again, and I reluctantly agree to let you stay on but warn you that the first flicker of concern from your colleagues, your psychiatrist, or from me, and you’ll be reassigned. Good chat.’
Wolf nodded. He was aware that Simmons was putting his neck on the line for him.
‘Seven dead bodies and, so far, the only murder weapons are an inhaler, flowers and a fish.’ Simmons shook his head incredulously. ‘Remember the good old days when people had the decency to just walk up to someone and shoot the bastard?’
‘Better days,’ said Wolf, raising his Optimus Prime cup.
‘Better days!’ echoed Simmons as they toasted their glasses.
Wolf felt his mobile phone vibrate in his pocket. He took it out and glanced down at the short message from Andrea:
Wolf was suddenly unsettled. He knew that Andrea was apologising for more than the inappropriate penis drawing that she had, presumably, intended as a heart. He was about to reply when Baxter came storming into the room and switched on the small television on the wall. Simmons was too drained to even react.
‘Your bitch of an ex is running with the story,’ said Baxter.
Andrea appeared mid-report. She looked incredible. Seeing her objectively like this, Wolf realised that he had taken her beauty for granted – those long red curls pinned up in the style that she usually reserved for weddings and parties, the sparkling green eyes that barely looked real. The reason behind her betrayal was immediately apparent. She was not standing outside by the main road or speaking down a distorted line while an old photograph of her idly loitered on screen like a poor ventriloquist act; she was reporting from the studio, presenting the programme, just as she had always wanted.
‘… that Mayor Turnble’s death this afternoon was, in fact, an act of premeditated murder linked to the six bodies discovered in Kentish Town early this morning,’ said Andrea, showing none of the nerves that Wolf knew must have been flitting beneath the surface. ‘Some viewers may find the following images—’
‘Speak to your wife, Fawkes. Now!’ bellowed Simmons.
‘Ex,’ corrected Baxter as all three of them frantically punched numbers into their phones:
‘Yes, I need the number for the newsroom at …’
‘Two units to 110 Bishopsgate …’
‘The person you are trying to reach is not available …’
Andrea’s report continued in the background:
‘… have confirmed that the head is that of Naguib Khalid, the Cremation Killer. It is unknown at this time how Khalid, who was serving …’
‘I’m gonna try security at the building,’ said Wolf after leaving a curt three-word voicemail for Andrea: ‘Call me now!’
‘… apparently dismembered before being stitched back together to form one complete body,’ said Andrea, on screen, as the horrific photographs appeared one after another, ‘which the police are referring to as “The Ragdoll”.’
‘Bollocks we are,’ snapped Simmons, who was still on the phone to the control room.
They each stopped to listen as Andrea continued:
‘… five further names and the precise dates on which they will die. All will be revealed in exactly five minutes. I’m Andrea Hall. Stay tuned.’
‘She wouldn’t?’ Simmons asked Wolf in disbelief, his hand over the receiver.
When Wolf did not respond, they all resumed their fraught conversations.
Five minutes later Wolf, Simmons and Baxter all sat watching the lights fade up on the news studio, which gave the impression that Andrea had been filling the time by sitting alone in the dark. Behind them, their colleagues were crowding round a television that somebody had carried out from the meeting room.
They were too late.
Andrea had, unsurprisingly, failed to reply to Wolf’s message. Building security had been barricaded out of the newsroom offices, and the police officers that Simmons had sent were yet to even arrive on scene. Simmons got through to the editor-in-chief whose name he knew all too well. He had informed the insufferable man that he was sabotaging a homicide investigation, for which he could face a prison sentence. When that had no effect, Simmons attempted to appeal to his humanity by admitting that they had not yet even informed the people on the list of the threat against them.
‘We’re saving you a job then,’ Elijah had replied. ‘And you say I don’t do anything for you.’
He had refused to let them speak to Andrea and promptly hung up. All they could do now was watch with the rest of the world. Simmons poured three fresh glasses of whiskey. Baxter, who was sitting on the desk, sniffed at hers uncertainly but then knocked it back all the same. She was about to ask to see the confidential list, as it would be public knowledge in a matter of minutes anyway, when the programme restarted.
Andrea missed her first cue and Wolf could see that she was anxious, hesitant, having second thoughts. He knew that behind the minimalist desk, her knees would be bobbing up and down as they always did when she was nervous. She looked into the camera, searching the millions of invisible eyes staring back at her, and Wolf sensed that she was looking for him, that she was looking for a way out of the hole that she had dug for herself.
‘Andrea, we’re on,’ a fretted voice hissed in her ear. ‘Andrea!’
‘Good evening. I’m Andrea Hall. Welcome back …’
She spent over five minutes recapping the story so far and recycling the gruesome photographs for the countless viewers who had just switched over. She began to stumble over her words as she explained that a handwritten list had been included with the pictures, and her hands were visibly shaking by the time it came to reading the six death sentences out loud:
‘Mayor Raymond Edgar Turnble – Saturday 28 June
‘Vijay Rana – Wednesday 2 July
‘Jarred Andrew Garland – Saturday 5 July
‘Andrew Arthur Ford – Wednesday 9 July
‘Ashley Danielle Lochlan – Saturday 12 July
‘And on Monday 14 July …’
Andrea paused, not for dramatic effect (she had rushed through the list with no sense of showmanship, just desperate for it to be over), but because she had to wipe a mascara-stained tear out of her eye. She cleared her throat and shuffled the papers in front of her, unconvincingly insinuating that a typo or missing sheet had interrupted her flow. Suddenly she put her hands over her face, her shoulders shuddering as the full weight of what she had done dawned on her.
‘Andrea? Andrea?’ someone whispered from behind the camera.
Andrea looked back up at her record-breaking audience, her big moment, with unbecoming black marks smudged across her face and sleeves.
‘I’m OK.’
A pause.
‘And on Monday 14 July, Metropolitan Police officer and lead investigator on the Ragdoll murders … Detective Sergeant William Oliver Layton-Fawkes.’
