Ragdoll

by Daniel Cole

  ‘Approved!’ smiled Finlay.

  He closed up the briefcase and slid it back over to Elizabeth, who drank her tepid tea in a few gulps.

  ‘So, where is my client?’

  ‘I’ll take you down to him,’ said Wolf.

  ‘We shall need some privacy.’

  ‘There’ll be someone on the door.’

  ‘It is a confidential conversation darling.’

  ‘Then you’d better talk quietly,’ shrugged Wolf.

  That made Elizabeth smile.

  ‘Same old smart-arse, aren’t we, Will?’

  They had just reached the door to Rana’s cell when Wolf’s mobile phone went off. The officer on guard let Elizabeth inside and then relocked the door. Wolf was satisfied and walked back down the corridor before answering. It was Simmons calling with two pieces of news. He had just been informed that Protected Persons were mobile, at last, and would be with them within half an hour. He then moved on to the rather more controversial second point: Wolf and Finlay would not be permitted to accompany Rana.

  ‘I’m going with them,’ said Wolf firmly.

  ‘They have strict protocols to follow,’ argued Simmons.

  ‘I don’t give a— We can’t just hand him over and let them drive him off to god knows where.’

  ‘We can and we will.’

  ‘You’ve agreed to this?’ Wolf was clearly disappointed in his chief.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Let me speak to them.’

  ‘Not happening.’

  ‘I’ll be polite, I promise. Just let me explain the situation. What’s the number?’

  Wolf’s cheap digital watch beeped midnight while he argued with the man leading the team currently en route to them. He was growing increasingly irate with the pig-headed man, who mindlessly refused to break protocol under any circumstances. Feeling he might have more joy face to face, Wolf called him a ‘tosser’ and hung up.

  ‘It’s a wonder you’ve got any friends at all,’ said Finlay. He was watching a tiny weather forecast with Walker and another officer.

  ‘Winds of up to ninety miles per hour,’ a distorted voice warned them.

  ‘They’re well trained, those lads,’ continued Finlay. ‘You need to stop being such a control freak.’

  Wolf was about to say something to jeopardise one of his few remaining friendships when he heard the officer unlocking Rana’s cell. Elizabeth stepped back out into the corridor. She was still saying her curt farewells to her client as the door was closed and locked behind her. Her bare feet slapped against the beige floor (Walker had confiscated her ludicrously high heels) as she made her way up the corridor. She strode past Wolf without saying a word and collected her possessions from the desk.

  ‘Liz?’ he said, confused by her drastic change in mood. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied as she wrapped her coat around her. As she fumbled with the buttons, her hands started to tremble. Then, to Wolf’s astonishment, she wiped her tearful eyes. ‘I’d like to go please.’

  She walked over to the door.

  ‘Did he say something to upset you?’ Wolf asked. He could feel himself getting angry. He felt protective over this woman who had to deal with the very worst of humanity on a daily basis. He knew that it would have taken an undeservedly vicious jibe to get under Elizabeth’s thick skin.

  ‘I’m a big girl, William,’ she snapped. ‘The door – now, please.’

  Wolf walked over and slid the heavy bar across. Another blast of wind and rain accompanied the distant rumble of thunder as Elizabeth stepped outside.

  ‘Your briefcase!’ said Wolf, realising that she must have left it in with Rana.

  Elizabeth looked terrified.

  ‘I can get it for you. You don’t have to see him again,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll pick it up in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Jesus, Will, just leave it!’ she shouted and then she tottered away down the steps.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Finlay without taking his eyes off the tiny screen.

  Wolf watched Elizabeth turn the corner onto the high street. Slowly, an unsettled feeling began to tighten in his chest. He looked down at his watch: 12.07 a.m.

  ‘Open the door!’ he screamed as he sprinted back down the corridor.

  The alarmed officer dropped the keys, allowing Walker time to catch up. The lock clunked firmly, and Wolf shoved the weighty door open to reveal Rana sitting upright on the mattress. He heard Walker exhale in relief behind him …

  … and then gasp as he looked again at the seated prisoner.

  Rana’s head was slumped forward, his face painted the bruised blues and purples of the dead, his bloodshot eyes protruding unnaturally from their sockets. What looked to be piano wire had been coiled several times around his neck, cutting deep lines into the dark skin. More wire sprouted from the inner edge of the open briefcase, obvious now that it was no longer hidden in plain sight.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ Wolf yelled as he tore back along the corridor and out into the night.

  He leapt down the slippery steps, splashed through the flooded car park and rounded the corner onto the high street as the torrential rain lashed across his face. Less than thirty seconds had elapsed, yet Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen along the deserted pavement. He ran past dark shop windows, aware that he was disadvantaged by the noise of the storm. Every car that passed sounded more like an aircraft taking off as the spray of surface water built and subsided as they sped by. The millions of raindrops were being amplified as they collided with the metal roofs of parked cars.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ he shouted, but the sound was carried away in the wind.

  He sprinted past an alleyway between two shops and paused. Retracing his steps, he stood in the dark mouth of the thin passageway, squinting into the blackness. He edged a little further in, listening to the rain strike the glass bottles, discarded packaging and whatever other litter carpeted the invisible alley floor.

  ‘Elizabeth?’ he called softly. He edged further in. He could feel the floor cracking beneath his feet. ‘Elizabeth?’

  He heard a sudden movement and then felt himself being shoved against the cold brick wall. He reached out and almost grabbed a handful of clothing as Elizabeth ran back out onto the street.

  Wolf was only a few seconds behind as he emerged into the grainy glow of an orange streetlight. Elizabeth panicked and recklessly darted into the road. An estate car skidded to a stop just inches from her and added the furious blare of its horn to the already deafening night. Elizabeth was now several metres ahead of him. Bizarrely, she took out her mobile phone as her pace began to slow and held it to her ear. Wolf was catching up quickly and could see the blood and dirt covering the soles of her feet from where she had run barefoot through the oily puddles and muddy verges. Finally within earshot, he could hear her panting into the phone:

  ‘It’s done! It’s done!’

  He reached out to grab hold of her, when she suddenly veered back into the road. Instinctively, he followed, unsure whether there was a break in the traffic or not. Elizabeth stumbled across the pedestrian island in the middle of the wide road and tripped onto the tarmac. She climbed back onto her hands and knees to find that Wolf had paused in the centre of the road. She saw the look of horror on his face and turned to follow his gaze just as the double-decker bus bore down on her.

  She never screamed.

  Wolf moved slowly towards the crumpled shape, which was lying against a kerb over ten metres back down the street. He heard more cars skidding to a halt behind him, throwing headlight beams over the broken body. He could feel tears welling up, too traumatised and exhausted to even attempt to fathom why his friend had done this.

  The dazed bus driver staggered over to him while his handful of passengers gawped out at the scene from the comfort of their seats. He wore an expression of hope on his face, hope that the woman might still get up, hope that perhaps she had not
even been injured, hope that his life had not just changed forever. Wolf had no inclination to console or even acknowledge the man. He could not be blamed for failing to spot a woman lying in the road in such treacherous conditions, but he had been the one to end Elizabeth’s life and Wolf did not trust his temper at that moment.

  As another car joined the growing queue of traffic, a fresh section of the dark road was illuminated, and Wolf noticed Elizabeth’s cracked phone sitting in the exact spot where the bus had hit her. He slowly crawled over to it and flipped it over to discover that the call was still connected. Holding it tightly to his ear, he could make out rustling and quiet breathing on the other end of the line.

  ‘Who is this?’ Wolf’s voice cracked as he asked the question.

  There was no answer, only the steady breathing of somebody listening in and the sound of industrial machinery operating somewhere in the background.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Fawkes with the Metropolitan Police. Who is this?’ he asked again; although, he had a feeling that he already knew the answer.

  Blue lights were approaching in the distance, but Wolf sat motionless, listening to the killer listening to him. Wolf wanted to threaten him, to scare him, to somehow provoke a reaction out of him but knew that he would never be able to articulate the pure anger and hatred that he was experiencing. Instead, he continued to listen, ignoring the buzz of activity that surrounded him. He did not know why he slowed his breathing to match the killer’s, but shortly after there was a loud crackle from the other end of the phone and the line abruptly went dead.

  CHAPTER 13

  Wednesday 2 July 2014

  5.43 a.m.

  Karen Holmes waited anxiously for the next traffic report. She never slept particularly well before these early mornings and had been woken several times during the night by the raging storm. She had left her Gloucester bungalow in the dark to find her wheelie bin lying in the middle of the road and one of her fence panels resting against next door’s car. She propped the heavy wooden panel back up as quietly as she could and prayed that her unpleasant neighbour would fail to notice the additional scratches to his bonnet.

  Karen dreaded her monthly visit to the firm’s main offices in the capital. Her colleagues all claimed hotels and dinners on expenses; but she had nobody that she could reasonably ask to look after her dogs on such a regular basis, and their well-being was her priority.

  The traffic on the motorway was already beginning to build, and a seemingly endless average speed check had slowed her progress in order to protect mile upon mile of plastic cones, teasing that somebody might possibly commence some work, somewhere, at some point in the near future.

  Karen looked down to fiddle with her radio, paranoid that she had missed a report. As she glimpsed back up at the road, she noticed a large black bag lying between the steel barriers of the central reservation. Something about the size and shape of it struck her as unusual. Just as she drew level with it, at forty-nine miles per hour, she could have sworn that she saw it move. When she glanced in the rear-view mirror, all she could see was the Audi saloon that had inexplicably decided to accelerate right up to her bumper before overtaking at ninety miles per hour, either too rich or too stupid to be concerned with speed cameras.

  She continued along the motorway, noting that there was a junction in another two miles. She did not have time to stop, even if she had been sure that she had seen something, which she was not. The bag had probably been blown there in the high winds and her car had disturbed it as she passed, yet Karen was unable to shake the feeling that there was something inside, something about the way that it had moved.

  Both of her Staffordshire bull terriers had been rescue dogs, found together and left for dead in a skip. The thought always made her feel physically sick. As she came out of the roadworks, a BMW flew past at over a hundred miles per hour, and Karen was confident that anything alive inside would not be for much longer.

  She turned the wheel suddenly and her ancient Fiesta vibrated violently as she drove across the rumble strips and pulled onto the slip road. She would only delay her journey by fifteen minutes by going back to check. She looped around the roundabout and rejoined the motorway in the opposite direction.

  It was difficult to remember exactly how far down the monotonous road the bag had been, so Karen slowed down when she thought she was getting close. She spotted it ahead, switched on her hazard lights and pulled onto the hard shoulder, stopping level with it. She watched the black bag for over a minute, feeling foolish and angry with herself, as it sat perfectly still until being blown about by the next speeding vehicle. She indicated right and was about to pull back into the inside lane when the bag suddenly lurched forward.

  Karen’s heart was racing as she waited for a gap in the traffic, got out of the car and ran across three lanes to climb over the central reservation. She could feel the force of the cars passing only a few metres away, spraying her with dirt and oily water. She knelt down and hesitated.

  ‘Don’t be snakes. Please don’t be snakes,’ she whispered to herself.

  As she spoke, something in the bag made another deliberate movement towards her, and she thought that she could hear whimpering. Cautiously, she took hold of the papery material and tore a small hole in one end. Slowly, Karen ripped the gap wider and wider, worried that whatever was inside might run straight out into the oncoming traffic. In her heightened state, she accidentally tore halfway down the material and fell back in horror as a head of dirty blonde hair spilled out over the tarmac and the bound and gagged woman feverishly took in her surroundings. She looked up at Karen with huge pleading eyes and lost consciousness.

  Edmunds had a spring in his step as he passed through security at New Scotland Yard. He had made it home in time to take Tia out for dinner as an apology for the previous night. They had both made an effort to get dressed up and, for a couple of hours, were happy to pretend that such extravagances came naturally to them. They enjoyed three courses and Edmunds had even ordered a steak. The illusion had only been ruined by the irascible waitress, who had yelled to her supervisor across the restaurant that she had no idea how to put Tesco Clubcard vouchers through the till.

  Edmunds’ mood had also been lifted by finally finding a match to the nail polish. He was not yet sure how this information would be of help, only that it was an important step towards identifying the Ragdoll’s female right arm. He entered the office and saw that Baxter was already at her desk. Even from the opposite side of the room, he could tell that she was in a foul mood.

  ‘Morning,’ tried Edmunds cheerfully.

  ‘What the hell are you grinning at?’ she snapped.

  ‘Nice night,’ said Edmunds with a shrug.

  ‘Not for Vijay Rana it wasn’t.’

  Edmunds sat down to listen. ‘Is he …?’

  ‘Not for a woman I’ve known for years called Elizabeth Tate. And not for Wolf.’

  ‘Is Wolf all right? What happened?’

  Baxter briefed Edmunds on the events of the previous night and the discovery of the young woman earlier that morning.

  ‘The bag’s with forensics, but when the ambulance crew got there they found this hanging off her foot.’

  Baxter handed Edmunds a small plastic evidence bag containing a morgue toe-tag.

  ‘“Care of: Detective Sergeant William Fawkes”,’ read Edmunds. ‘Does he know yet?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Wolf and Finlay were up all night. They’ve been stood down for the rest of the day.’

  An hour later, a female officer escorted the petrified woman through the busy office. She had been brought in directly from the hospital and was still caked in grime. Her face and arms were decorated in cuts and bruises and her matted hair covered every shade between bleached blonde and black. She reacted in alarm to every sudden noise and new voice.

  News had already reached the department that she had been identified as Georgina Tate, Elizabeth’s daughter. She had apparently been absent from w
ork for two days and her mother had phoned in on her behalf citing personal issues. No missing persons report had been filed. Even from these snippets of information, it was not difficult to piece together what had transpired, and Baxter felt unsettled by how easy it had been to coerce a woman that she knew to be strong, resourceful and unwaveringly moral into murder.

  ‘She doesn’t know yet,’ said Baxter solemnly as Georgina Tate was shown into the renovated interview room.

  ‘About her mother?’ asked Edmunds.

  ‘Doesn’t look in any fit state to hear it, does she?’

  Baxter started packing up her things.

  ‘Are we going somewhere?’

  ‘We’re not,’ said Baxter. ‘I am. With no Wolf or Finlay, guess which mug’s been left to sort all their shit out on top of my own. Who’s number four on the list?’

  ‘Andrew Ford, the security guard,’ said Edmunds, a little surprised that Baxter needed to ask.

  ‘Complete arsehole. Big drinker. Managed to knock out a female officer’s tooth last night when she tried to stop him trashing the place.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘I can handle it. Then I’ve got a meeting with Jarred Garland, the journalist, who’s due to die in …’ Baxter counted it out on her fingers, ‘three days. He’s decided to spend his final week reporting how useless he thinks we all are and how it feels to be on a serial killer’s hit list. I’ve been asked to “pacify” and “reassure” him.’

  ‘You?’ asked Edmunds incredulously. Fortunately Baxter took his disbelief as a compliment. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find out if Georgina Tate remembers anything useful. Chase up about the ring; we need to know who it was made for. See if the medical examiners have anything new for us, and get hold of Elizabeth Tate’s mobile phone the second it’s released by forensics.’

  Baxter left the office, and Edmunds realised that he had not even told her about the nail varnish. He placed the small bottle on the desk, feeling foolish for getting so excited about his trivial investigation while Wolf was out there chasing reluctant killers around Southall, having kidnapped women delivered to the office and holding phone conversations with criminal royalty. It was all horrible, of course, but he had to admit he was a little jealous.