Ragdoll

by Daniel Cole

  She spotted a bright red bin beside a matching lamp post, painted to complement the colourful archways. She pulled herself up onto it, gaining strange looks from the more attentive of the crowd, and looked out over the sea of heads. Ashley was over twenty metres ahead of her, sticking close to the shopfronts as she approached another Paifang archway and the O’Neill’s pub that denoted a stark return to reality.

  Baxter jumped down and started running for the exit, shoving people aside as Ashley came back into view. She was only five metres behind when Ashley passed beneath the archway and an unfamiliar car came skidding to a halt in front of her. Ashley ran into the road and climbed into the passenger seat. The driver saw Baxter coming and wheelspun as he accelerated fiercely. Baxter had one hand against the driver’s window as the car swerved violently away from her and then sped out onto Shaftesbury Avenue.

  ‘Wolf!’ she called desperately after him.

  He had looked right at her.

  She repeated the number plate again and again to ensure that she had it memorised. She was breathing heavily as she took out her phone and dialled Finlay’s number.

  Edmunds heard Vanita’s undignified reaction to Ashley Lochlan’s voluntary kidnapping from his seat out in the main office before she dragged him and Simmons back into the meeting room to inform them of this latest development. Edmunds had been busy working through the archived boxes one at a time and Simmons was in the middle of sifting through Wolf’s phone records for the previous two years.

  ‘She is positive that it was Wolf?’ Edmunds asked in confusion.

  ‘Positive,’ said Vanita. ‘We’ve flagged up the number plate as a top priority.’

  ‘We need to keep this to ourselves,’ said Simmons.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Vanita.

  ‘But the public could help us find them. We have absolutely no idea where he’s taking her,’ said Edmunds. ‘She’s in danger.’

  ‘We don’t know that for certain,’ said Vanita.

  ‘No,’ corrected Edmunds. ‘We haven’t built an airtight case against him yet, but we know he’s behind it.’

  ‘You need to wake up, Edmunds,’ snapped Simmons. ‘Can you imagine the fallout from announcing to the world that our lead detective masterminded the entire thing? And then we let him drive away with his next target to boot!’

  Vanita nodded along thoughtfully.

  ‘But—’ started Edmunds.

  ‘A touch of diplomacy goes a long way in situations such as this, and I for one have no intention of losing my job over it until we know, beyond any conceivable doubt, that Fawkes is guilty,’ Simmons told him. ‘Even then, there will be a time and a place to trickle out the details of what transpired.’

  Edmunds was disgusted. He stormed out of the meeting room and slammed the door behind him, extending the large crack in the glass wall created by his own head the previous morning.

  ‘Very nicely handled. It’s good to see that there’s still a manager in there somewhere,’ said Vanita. ‘Maybe when you get this cops and robbers phase out of your system, there will still be some hope for you.’

  Edmunds swung the door to the men’s toilets open and kicked the metal bin across the tiled floor in frustration. He felt like laughing and crying simultaneously; the irony of Wolf being protected by the very self-serving, red-taped, arse-covering bureaucracy that had landed them all in this situation had not been lost on him. If he stood any hope of making his superiors act, he needed to find irrefutable proof of Wolf’s guilt.

  He needed to get into Wolf’s head before he started covering his tracks, before he was thinking clearly. He needed him at his most vulnerable.

  Baxter and Finlay pulled into the South Mimms services on the outskirts of the city. Ashley’s reassembled phone revealed that she had been texting Wolf with their location at every step of the journey. The one incoming message from Wolf had simply read:

  WARDOUR ST. RUN.

  They had returned to Ashley’s flat to search for any clue as to where they were heading but had left empty-handed, then on their way back to New Scotland Yard, they received a phone call. The parking enforcement company that operated at the services had contacted the police when their automatic number plate recognition camera had issued a fine to the flagged-up car.

  The dilapidated Ford Escort had been left unlocked and virtually out of fuel, suggesting that Wolf had no intention of returning for it. The useless CCTV footage showed them abandoning the car before disappearing out of sight, presumably to change vehicle. Wolf now had a four-hour head start on them.

  ‘How does any of this fit Edmunds’ brilliant theory?’ asked Baxter as they walked back through the car park.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Finlay.

  ‘It doesn’t. She chose to run off with him of her own accord. She willingly changed cars with him here. He’s trying to save her, not kill her!’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out when we find him.’

  Baxter laughed as though Finlay was being naive.

  ‘Problem is, we’re not going to find him.’

  Edmunds reread the selection of NHS posters pinned haphazardly across the notice board as he waited opposite the small reception window in the entrance of St Ann’s Hospital. He looked up hopefully every time one of the casually dressed employees buzzed in or out through the secure main doors. He was beginning to doubt his own idea, unsure what he realistically expected to learn in exchange for the five-hour round trip.

  ‘Detective Edmunds?’ a careworn woman finally asked.

  She buzzed them in and led him through the maze of bleak corridors, only pausing to swipe her card whenever a door blocked their path.

  ‘I’m Dr Sym, one of the primary AMHPs here,’ she said, too quickly for Edmunds to even scribble down the meaningless jumble of letters. She flicked through the handful of paperwork in her hands and posted something into a colleague’s pigeonhole. ‘You had some questions about one of our—’

  The woman spotted someone she urgently needed to speak to: ‘Sorry.’

  Jogging off down the corridor, she left Edmunds standing outside the entrance to the Rec Room. Ever the gentleman, he opened the door for an elderly woman, who dawdled out without acknowledging him as he peered inside. The majority of the room’s occupants were sitting around the television, which was blaring at an uncomfortable volume. A man tossed a table tennis bat across the room in a temper and another was reading beside the windows.

  ‘Detective!’ the harried woman called from along the corridor.

  Edmunds let the door swing shut and caught up with the doctor.

  ‘Let’s stop by the residential wing on the way to my office,’ she said, ‘then I’ll dig Joel’s file out for you.’

  Edmunds stopped walking: ‘Joel?’

  ‘Joel Shepard,’ she said impatiently before realising that Edmunds had never actually stated which patient he had wanted to discuss with her.

  ‘Joel Shepard?’ Edmunds repeated for his own benefit. He recognised the name from one of the archived case files, one from Wolf’s list. He had dismissed it as unrelated to the investigation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the flustered woman, rubbing her tired eyes. ‘I just presumed you were here about his death.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Edmunds quickly. ‘I’m not being very clear, am I? Tell me about Joel Shepard.’

  The doctor was too drained to register Edmunds’ abrupt change of mind.

  ‘Joel was a very disturbed young man – sweet though, in the main.’

  Edmunds took his notebook back out.

  ‘He suffered with crippling paranoia, schizophrenic behaviours and vivid delusions,’ she explained as she unlocked the door to Joel’s old room. ‘But given his past history, none of that should come as too much of a surprise.’

  ‘Remind me, if you would,’ said Edmunds.

  The doctor sighed.

  ‘Joel’s sister died – was killed, brutally. He, in turn, butchered the men responsible. Evil breeds evil.’

&n
bsp; The room was unoccupied. The walls had been whitewashed, yet the eerie shadows of dark crosses bled through to stain the pristine canvas. Scripture scarred the floor beneath their feet and the inside of the door was decorated in deep scratches.

  ‘Sometimes you can’t just scrub away the things our more troubled patients leave behind,’ the doctor said sadly. ‘We’re at capacity, but have to leave this room empty because we obviously can’t put anybody else in here.’

  The room felt cold, the air stale and soiled. Edmunds did not want to spend a moment longer than he needed to on the wrong side of its door.

  ‘How did he die?’ asked Edmunds.

  ‘Suicide. Overdose. It shouldn’t have happened. As you can imagine, we monitor every single pill dispensed in here. We still don’t know how he managed to hoard enough to—’ She stopped herself, realising that she was thinking out loud.

  ‘How did he justify the murders?’ asked Edmunds, running his hand over the largest and most prominent cross.

  ‘He didn’t. Not directly. Joel was under the impression that a demon, perhaps even the Devil himself, had “claimed their souls” on his behalf.’

  ‘A demon?’

  ‘You asked,’ shrugged the doctor. ‘His delusion was all-consuming. He irrefutably believed that he had made a deal with the Devil and that it was only a matter of time before it came to collect what Joel had promised.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘His soul, Detective,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘Faustian or what?’

  ‘Faustian?’ asked Edmunds, trying to remember where else he had heard the term used.

  ‘As in the stories: Robert Johnson goes down to a dusty crossroads with nothing but the clothes on his back and a battered old guitar …’

  Edmunds nodded, now understanding the reference. He knew his mind was playing tricks on him, but several of the faded crosses now looked darker than when he had entered.

  ‘Would it be possible to see William Fawkes’ old room while I’m here?’ he asked casually, already heading for the door in his haste to leave.

  The doctor was clearly surprised by the request: ‘I don’t see how—’

  ‘It will only take a minute,’ Edmunds insisted.

  ‘Very well,’ she huffed irately, before leading him along the corridor and opening the door to another whitewashed room. Clothing and personal possessions were littered over the basic furniture. ‘As I said, we’re at capacity.’

  Edmunds paced across the room, his eyes scanning the featureless floor, before lying on his front to peer under the metal bed. He then walked over to the bare wall and began systematically running his hands over the fresh white paint.

  The doctor looked uneasy: ‘May I ask what you’re looking for?’

  ‘The things you can’t just scrub away,’ mumbled Edmunds. He climbed up onto the bed to inspect the back wall.

  ‘We conduct an extensive damage report whenever a room is vacated. If anything had been left behind, we would have known.’

  Edmunds dragged the bed noisily across the floor and crouched down to search the blank space behind for some invisible trace of Wolf. His fingers paused over a series of indents that had been obscured by the bed frame.

  ‘Pen?’ he called, refusing to look away for fear of losing them.

  The doctor hurried over and handed him the stubby pencil from her shirt pocket. Edmunds snatched it off her and started scribbling frantically over the area.

  ‘Excuse me Detective!’

  Dark shapes slowly appeared from nowhere: letters, words. Finally, he dropped the pencil, sat down on the edge of the bed and took out his phone.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the concerned woman.

  ‘You’re going to need to find somewhere else for this patient to go.’

  ‘As I already explained—’

  Edmunds spoke over her:

  ‘I’ll then need you to lock this door behind you and ensure that it isn’t opened for anyone, or anything, until the forensic team arrive. Is that clear?’

  Wolf and Ashley were into the final mile of their four-hundred-mile journey. They had only stopped once since swapping the Ford Escort for the inconspicuous van that Wolf had left there overnight. It had been a noisy and uncomfortable way to ascend the country, but for just three hundred pounds it had gotten them to where they needed to be with twenty minutes to spare. They pulled up in a ‘drop-off only’ bay outside the terminal and rushed in through the main entrance to Glasgow Airport.

  The radio had prattled incessantly in the background for seven hours straight. There had been a lot of discussion about Ashley’s imminent murder, and a high street betting shop had been forced to apologise after it had been revealed that they were distastefully taking bets on which hour her heart would stop.

  ‘Bastards,’ Ashley had laughed, surprising Wolf again with her plucky attitude.

  The same sound bite had been played repeatedly and Wolf winced every time he was forced to relive the moment that Andrew Ford made contact with the earth below. An exclusive interview with one of Ashley’s ‘closest friends’ had come as a surprise to her, mainly because she had no idea who the woman being interviewed was. Wolf was glad to hear the news programmes struggling to fill airtime. It meant that the police had not yet publicised the fact that he had absconded with their next victim.

  Gambling that his colleagues had not yet put out an All Ports Warning on them, he had spoken to the airport’s head of security just ten minutes earlier and, as requested, the man was awaiting their arrival when they entered the terminal at 8.20 p.m.

  He was a handsome black man in his mid-forties and was wearing a flattering suit with a security badge swinging from the pocket like a carefully chosen accessory. Wolf noted that he had sensibly posted two armed police officers close by following the unusual phone call.

  ‘Ah, Detective Fawkes, it actually is you. I wasn’t sure,’ said the man, shaking Wolf’s hand firmly. ‘Karlus DeCosta, head of security.’

  DeCosta turned to Ashley and held out his hand.

  ‘And Ms Lochlan, of course.’ He pulled a face intended to convey sympathy for her current predicament. ‘How may I be of service to you both?’

  ‘There’s a plane leaving for Dubai in seventeen minutes,’ said Wolf bluntly. ‘I need her to be on it.’

  If DeCosta was surprised by the request, he did not show it.

  ‘You have a passport?’ he asked Ashley.

  She took it out of her bag and handed it to him. Professionally, he carefully inspected it despite the time constraints.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  They passed through security and commandeered one of the electric shuttle carts to expedite their journey to the gate. A robotic female voice announced the final call for the flight over the public address system.

  DeCosta, who was apparently accustomed to such harried requests, swung suddenly to the right and drove the cart down an empty travelator. This struck Wolf as unnecessary because he had already radioed the gate and instructed them not to close it until he got there. He appeared to be enjoying himself though.

  ‘There’s a plane leaving for Melbourne two hours after you land in Dubai,’ Wolf told Ashley quietly.

  ‘Melbourne?’ she asked in shock. ‘That’s your plan? Go on holiday? No. I can’t. What about Jordan? And my mum? You wouldn’t let me phone them and they’ll be hearing all this stuff on the news and …’

  ‘You’ve got to keep moving.’

  Ashley looked distraught, but after a moment she nodded:

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell Karlus?’ she asked, gesturing to their escort, who was now leaning out of the vehicle like an action hero as they trundled along the carpeted floor.

  ‘No. I’ll make the call myself just before you land. I don’t want anyone but us knowing where you’re going,’ said Wolf. ‘By the time you step off the plane in Melbourne it’ll be 5.25 a.m. Sunday morning. You’ll be safe.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘When you get t
here, head straight to the Consulate-General and tell them who you are.’ Wolf took her delicate hand in his and scrawled a mobile phone number across the back of it. ‘Just let me know you made it.’

  They arrived at the gate a few minutes before take-off. DeCosta went to speak to the staff while Wolf and Ashley climbed off the back of the cart and looked at one another.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  Wolf shook his head: ‘I can’t.’

  Ashley had anticipated the answer. She took a step closer, pushing herself up against him, and closed her eyes.

  ‘Ms Lochlan,’ called DeCosta from the ticket desk. ‘We need to get you boarded, right now.’

  Ashley smiled coyly at Wolf and turned away.

  ‘Later, Fawkes,’ she called back casually.

  ‘Later, Lochlan.’

  DeCosta closed the gate once she was on board and requested that the control tower give the plane priority take-off. Wolf thanked him for his help and asked to remain behind. He would be able to negotiate customs himself. His own passport was sitting stiffly in his inside jacket pocket. He was not even sure why he had picked it up. It had only made it harder to refuse Ashley when she had inevitably asked him to run away with her, to escape the mess that awaited him back in London while he still could.

  He watched longingly as Ashley’s plane took its position on the runway, roared down the asphalt and then ascended into the colourful evening sky, away from danger, away from him.

  CHAPTER 30

  Saturday 12 July 2014

  2.40 a.m.

  Police Constable Dean Harris was sitting in his usual uncomfortable armchair beside the window in the grand but unwelcoming living room. He was reading by the light of an expensive-looking table lamp that he had balanced precariously on the windowsill and was ignoring the muted television altogether. He had only put it on to provide himself with a bit of company to help him through another lonely night in the unfamiliar house.

  The other constables in his unit had all been incredibly jealous to learn of his involvement in the Ragdoll case. They were still at a stage in their careers where they kept count of the number of dead bodies that they had seen, and ‘Welshie’ was their hero, being the only member of the group to have actually tasered someone.