Ragdoll

by Daniel Cole

  A team of super-recognisers, chosen for their unrivalled ability to pick out and identify individual facial structures in large crowds, had been working through the night alongside the facial recognition software in search of Wolf and Masse. Baxter knew that it was like looking for two needles in a haystack, but that did not soothe her frustration when they, unsurprisingly, failed to find either of them.

  She had chided a member of staff when he returned from his break two minutes late, holding a coffee. The supervisor had taken exception to this and made a show of dressing Baxter down in front of everyone before instructing her to leave. She stormed back to Homicide and Serious Crime Command and approached Edmunds, who was midway through composing a text to Tia.

  ‘Any progress in the camera room?’ he asked as he finished typing and put his phone away.

  ‘I got kicked out,’ said Baxter. It spoke volumes that Edmunds merely shrugged; he did not even bother to ask the reason why. ‘It’s a waste of time anyway. They don’t know where to look. They’re watching the area around Wolf’s flat, which he obviously isn’t going back to, and Masse’s flat, which I can’t see him going back to either.’

  ‘What about facial recognition?’

  ‘You’re joking right?’ laughed Baxter. ‘So far, it’s flagged Wolf up three times. One was an old Chinese woman, the second was a puddle, and the third was a poster of Justin Bieber!’

  Despite the immense pressure that they were under and the severe consequences of CFIT’s failure to locate either man, they both smirked at the preposterous list of matches.

  ‘I need to talk to you about something,’ said Edmunds.

  Baxter dropped her bag to the floor with a heavy thud and perched on the desk to listen.

  ‘DC Edmunds,’ Vanita called from the doorway of her office. She was holding a folded piece of paper in her hand. ‘A moment?’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Baxter teasingly as he got up and walked towards the office.

  Edmunds closed the door behind him and took a seat at the desk, where the letter he had typed at 4.30 a.m. that morning lay open.

  ‘I must say that I am surprised,’ she said. ‘Especially today, of all days.’

  ‘I feel that I have contributed everything that I possibly can to the case,’ he said, gesturing to the hefty file sitting beside the letter.

  ‘And what a contribution it has been.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You are sure about this?’

  ‘I am.’

  She sighed: ‘I really do see a bright future for you.’

  ‘So do I. Just not here, unfortunately.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll submit the transfer paperwork.’

  ‘Thank you, Commander.’

  Edmunds and Vanita shook hands and then he left the room. Baxter had been watching the brief exchange from where she had been loitering beside the photocopier, attempting to eavesdrop. Edmunds collected his jacket and wandered over to her.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ she asked.

  ‘Hospital. Tia was admitted overnight.’

  ‘Is she …? Is the baby …?’

  ‘I think they’re both OK, but I need to be there.’

  He could tell that Baxter was struggling to balance her compassion for him and his family with her disbelief that he would abandon the team, abandon her, at such a critical time.

  ‘You don’t need me here,’ he assured her.

  ‘Has she,’ Baxter nodded towards Vanita’s office, ‘signed off on this?’

  ‘To be quite honest, I don’t really care. I just handed in a transfer request to return to Fraud.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Marriage. Detective. Divorce,’ said Edmunds.

  ‘I didn’t mean … It’s not the case for everyone.’

  ‘I’ve got a baby on the way. I’m not going to make it.’

  Baxter smiled, remembering her ruthless reaction to the news of his pregnant fiancée.

  ‘Then why don’t you stop wasting my time and just go back to Fraud?’ she recited with a sad smile.

  To Edmunds’ surprise, she embraced him tightly.

  ‘Come on, I couldn’t stay if I wanted to,’ he told her. ‘Everyone in here hates me. You don’t turn on your own, even when they’re as guilty as sin, apparently. I’ll be on the phone if you need me for anything today,’ he said before reiterating sincerely: ‘Anything.’

  Baxter nodded and released him.

  ‘I’ll be back at work tomorrow,’ he laughed.

  ‘I know.’

  Edmunds smiled fondly at her, put on his jacket and left the office.

  Wolf binned the kitchen knife that he had stolen from the bed and breakfast as he turned off Ludgate Hill. He could barely make out the clock tower of St Paul’s Cathedral through the lashing rain, which eased as he walked along Old Bailey, the street that gave the Central Criminal Court its famous nickname, the tall buildings providing a little shelter from the storm.

  He was not sure why he had chosen the courtrooms when there were several other locations that held just as much significance to him: Annabelle Adams’ grave, the spot where they had found Naguib Khalid standing over her burning body, St Ann’s Hospital. For some reason the courts had felt right, the place where it had all started, a place where he had already come face to face with a demon and survived to tell the tale.

  Wolf had let his dark beard grow out over the week and had donned a pair of glasses. The unrelenting rain had flattened his thick hair, which only enhanced the simple but effective, disguise. He reached the visitors’ entrance to the old courtrooms and joined the back of the long, sodden queue of people. From what he could gather from the loud American tourist in front, there was a high-profile murder trial taking place in Court Two. As the queue slowly grew behind him, he overheard several conversations involving his name and excited predictions on how the Ragdoll murders would end.

  When the doors finally opened, the crowd shuffled obediently out of the rain and through the X-ray machines and security checks. A court official ushered the first group, which included Wolf, along the hushed hallways and deposited them outside the entrance to Court Two. Wolf had no option but to ask whether he could sit in on Court One instead. He had not wanted to draw attention to himself and was concerned for a moment that the official, surprised by the request, had recognised him, but she shrugged and escorted him to the appropriate door. She instructed him to stand with the other four people waiting outside the public viewing gallery. They all appeared to know each other and eyed him suspiciously.

  After a short wait the doors were opened and the familiar smells of polished wood and leather wafted out from the room that Wolf had not set foot in since being dragged out, wrist shattered, covered in blood. He followed the others inside and took a seat in the front row, looking down over the courtroom.

  The various staff, lawyers, witnesses and jurors filtered into the room beneath him. When the defendant was escorted into the dock, he heard movement behind him as his fellow spectators waved and gestured to the heavily tattooed man that Wolf could confidently predict was guilty of whatever he was being accused of just by looking at him. The room then got to its feet as the judge entered the court and took his lonely seat on the elevated bench.

  Vanita had released photographs of Masse to the press after confirming that Edmunds’ evidence was accurate. His unmistakable ruined face was now being paraded on every news channel in the world. Usually the PR team had to beg the television studios to broadcast even a three-second glance at their photofits, so Vanita had wasted no time in capitalising on the unprecedented level of exposure. She smiled at the cliché: the killer’s own lust for notoriety precipitating his downfall.

  Despite clear instructions to the public, the call takers had been inundated with hundreds of phone calls giving sightings of Masse dating back as far as 2007. Baxter had taken the job of checking through the updates every ten minutes and liaising with the CFIT officers. She was growing increasingly frustrated as time wore on
.

  ‘Don’t these people bloody listen!’ she yelled, scrunching the latest printout into a ball. ‘Why would I give a toss whether he was in Sainsbury’s five years ago or not? I need to know where he is now!’

  Finlay dared not say a word. An alert on Baxter’s computer went off.

  ‘Great, here comes another lot.’

  Slumping back into her chair, she opened the email from the call centre. She skimmed the list of irrelevant dates until she came across one from 11.05 a.m. that morning. She traced her finger across the screen to read the rest of the details. The call had been made by an investment banker, who immediately struck Baxter as being more reliable than the psychics and intoxicated homeless who constituted three quarters of the calls. The location: Ludgate Hill.

  Baxter leapt to her feet and sprinted past Finlay before he could even ask her what she had found. She tore down the stairs towards the CFIT control room.

  Wolf found it strange to witness such a relaxed and civilised affair in comparison to his experience on the Khalid trial. He gathered that the accused had pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not to murder. The trial was into its third day, not to determine the man’s guilt, only to decide just how guilty he was.

  Ninety minutes into the proceedings, two of the people behind Wolf in the gallery crept out, disturbing everybody in the subdued courtroom as the door closed heavily behind them. The defence lawyer had just settled back into his speech when the first fire alarm went off in a distant part of the building. Like dominoes, other alarms triggered one by one, the wailing sound approaching like a wave until it flooded the quiet courtroom.

  ‘No, no, no! Out!’ ordered the same supervisor who had already kicked Baxter out once that morning.

  ‘Ludgate Hill. 11.05 a.m.,’ she said, out of breath.

  The officer at the control board looked to his supervisor for instructions. When he reluctantly nodded, the man switched the screens to the current feed from the nearest CCTV cameras in order to access the recorded data.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Baxter. ‘Wait! What’s happening?’

  The screens were filled with crowds of people milling around aimlessly. Most were dressed in smart suits, and one woman was wearing a black gown and a wig. The officer typed hastily on another computer.

  ‘Fire alarm at the Central Criminal Court,’ he read seconds later.

  Baxter’s eyes lit up, and she ran back out of the room without another word. The officer at the computer looked back to his supervisor in confusion.

  ‘Am I still doing this or not?’ he asked politely.

  Baxter sprinted back up the stairs but slowed as she reached the door to the office. She walked calmly over to Finlay’s desk and knelt down to speak to him privately.

  ‘I know where Wolf is,’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s great!’ said Finlay, wondering why they were whispering about it.

  ‘He’s at the Old Bailey. They both are. It makes perfect sense.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should be telling someone more important than me?’

  ‘We both know what’s going to happen if I tell anyone Wolf and Masse are in the same building together. They’re gonna send every armed officer in London there.’

  ‘And so they should,’ said Finlay, already sensing where this was going.

  ‘Do you think Wolf’s gonna let anyone lock him back up?’

  Finlay sighed.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Baxter.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, we need to get in there first. We need to talk him down.’

  Finlay sighed even more heavily.

  ‘I’m sorry, lass. I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Emily, I … You know I don’t want anything to happen to Will, but he’s made his choices. I’ve got my retirement to think about … and Maggie. I cannae jeopardiase that. Not now. Not for him.’

  Baxter looked hurt.

  ‘And if you think I’m letting you go in there alone—’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I just need a few minutes with him and then I’ll call for backup. I swear.’

  Finlay considered it for a moment.

  ‘I’m going to call it in,’ he said.

  Baxter looked crushed.

  ‘… in fifteen minutes,’ he added.

  Baxter smiled. ‘I need thirty.’

  ‘I’ll give you twenty. Be careful.’

  Baxter gave him a kiss on the cheek and grabbed her bag off her desk. Finlay felt sick with worry as he started the timer on his watch. He watched her stroll past Vanita’s office before breaking into a run the moment she was clear of the doorway.

  Wolf remained seated as the people behind and below gathered their belongings and evacuated in an orderly fashion. The man in the dock looked tempted to make a break for it but he was too indecisive and two security officers hurried inside to usher him out. After a straggling lawyer ran back to collect his laptop, Wolf was left alone in the famous courtroom. Even over the alarms, he could hear doors slamming and people being directed to their nearest fire exit.

  Wolf wished that it was only a fire but suspected that it was something far more dangerous.

  CHAPTER 35

  Monday 14 July 2014

  11.57 a.m.

  After twenty solid minutes the alarms had ceased abruptly but survived as the ghosts of echoes reverberating endlessly around the Great Hall’s domed ceiling. As the ringing in Wolf’s ears slowly subsided, and the courtroom returned to an appropriate hush, a new sound grew out of the silence: a lone set of uneven footsteps approaching the courtroom doors. Wolf remained seated up in the gallery. He had to fight to keep his breathing steady, his knuckles blanching as he clenched his fists.

  A hazy memory had chosen an inopportune moment to return: the glaring overhead lights illuminating a long corridor, the deafening ring of a phone, somebody answering. A patient? A nurse? He vaguely remembered them holding the receiver up to their ear. He wanted to call out to them, to warn them, despite himself, surrendering to the irrational, even if only for a moment.

  It was the same fear that had taken him now.

  He found himself straining to listen as the unhurried footsteps grew louder and jumped when a thunderous bang rattled the old doors violently against their frames.

  There was a short pause in which Wolf did not dare breathe.

  A worn hinge creaked somewhere below him and then he felt the vibration of a door swinging closed. Wolf watched the empty room with wide eyes as the footsteps returned and an imposing figure, dressed all in black, materialised from beneath the gallery. The deep hood of its long coat was pulled over its head. In his impressionable state, Wolf’s imagination ran rife: it was as if the Recording Angel herself had torn free of the building’s grand entranceway, amidst a shower of rubble and dust, to pass judgement upon him.

  ‘I must say,’ began Masse. Each syllable sounded as though it had to be ripped out of him. Spittle glistened in the artificial light as he spat his mutated words across the room. It was as if he had forgotten how to speak. ‘I am very impressed that you stayed.’

  He passed between the benches, running his skeletal-white fingers along the polished surfaces and the assortment of items abandoned during the evacuation. Wolf found it deeply unsettling that Masse had not looked up at him, yet appeared to know precisely where he was. Wolf had chosen the courtrooms but began to worry that he was exactly where Masse wanted him.

  ‘“Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing”,’ recited Masse as he ascended the steps up to the judge’s bench.

  Wolf’s heart sank as the hooded man lifted the Sword of Justice off the wall. He wrapped his long fingers round the golden hilt and slowly unsheathed the weapon to the scrape of metal on metal. He paused to admire the long blade for a moment.

  ‘George Eliot said that,’ he continued thoughtfully as spots of reflecte
d light flickered in and out of existence across the dark wood panels. ‘I believe that she would have liked you.’

  Masse raised the priceless piece of history above his head and then swung it down into the desk in the centre. Although blunted, the weighty length of metal embedded itself deep into the wood, quivering gently as he took a seat.

  Wolf’s nerve was wavering the longer he spent in Masse’s presence. He knew that, beneath the hood, Masse was just a man: a proficient, ruthless and ingenious killer, no doubt, but a man all the same, yet it was impossible to ignore the fact that he was the terrifying truth at the heart of whispered urban legends, to ignore the universal enthralment that his latest work had demanded from a chronically apathetic world.

  Masse was no demon, but Wolf had no doubt that he was the closest thing to one he would ever encounter.

  ‘A real sword,’ Masse gestured to the weapon. ‘Hung above the judges’ heads in a room guaranteed to contain at least one suspected murderer at any given time.’ He raised a hand to his throat, suggesting that the monologue was taking its toll on him. ‘You have got to love the British. Even after what you yourself did within these very walls, they regard pomp and tradition far more highly than they do security and common sense.’

  Masse broke into a fit of painful rattling coughs.

  Wolf used the break in proceedings to unthread his shoelaces, hoping that he would never find himself within close enough proximity to Masse for them to come in useful. He was just coiling the loose laces around his hand when he froze; Masse was sliding the heavy hood away from his scarred scalp.

  He had seen photographs, read the medical reports, but none had fully captured the devastating extent of Masse’s injuries. Rivers of scars meandered over a deathly white surface, narrow tributaries flooding or drying up with his changes of expression. He finally looked up into the gallery.

  Wolf had learned from his own investigation that Masse had come from money – public school, family crest, sailing clubs. He had even been quite handsome once. There was still a hint of his upper-class diction mutilated somewhere within his graceless delivery, and yet it was nothing short of bizarre watching this scarred, merciless killer addressing him so eloquently and quoting Victorian novelists.