‘He might.’
Wolf was distracted by the stack of paperwork that Finlay had brought in with him. The top page included a photograph of a middle-aged woman in what was presumably supposed to be provocative lingerie.
‘What the hell is that?’
Finlay chuckled.
‘Your groupies! The Wolf Pack, they call themselves. Now you’re a marked man, all the nutters have come out of the woodwork to proposition you.’
Wolf flicked through the first few sheets, shaking his head in disbelief, while Finlay sorted through the other thirty pages, disregarding the rejects onto the meeting room floor.
‘Nice touch!’ exclaimed Finlay. ‘This lass is wearing a genuine vintage “Uncage the Wolf” campaign t-shirt. I’ve still got mine. Don’t look like that in it, though,’ he muttered.
Wolf supposed that he should have anticipated this. In the past, he had been disgusted as the vile and dangerous creatures he had hunted were inundated with mail mere days into their lifelong incarcerations. In the same way that he could assume certain traits while profiling a killer, he could almost picture these desperate pen pals: lonely, socially inept women, often previous long-term sufferers of domestic abuse, consumed by the mistaken belief that no one is truly broken, that they alone can fix these misunderstood victims of the law.
Wolf was aware that this bewildering pastime was rife in the US where organisations actively encourage people to communicate with one of the 3,000 inmates on death row. What was the allure? he wondered. Revelling in the tragic, movie-esque finale to a relationship? Those with commitment issues empowered by the enforced timescale? Or simply wanting to be a part of something bigger and more interesting than their own mundane lives?
He knew better than to voice his opinions openly to the public, schooled to react indignantly to any controversial truth or observation for fear of falling victim to the wrath of political correctitude. However, they were shielded from the aftermath of these people’s crimes. It was Wolf who had to stare into the unremorseful eyes of these vicious predators. He wondered how many of these ill-informed people would still put pen to paper had they soaked their shoes in the crime scene bloodbath, had they consoled the tattered families left in their pen pals’ wake.
‘Oooh, look at this one!’ shouted Finlay, a little too excitedly, so that several heads in the main office turned round.
He held up a photograph of a beautiful blonde woman in her twenties wearing a fancy-dress policewoman outfit. Wolf paused, lost for words, as he gazed at the picture that would not have looked out of place on the front cover of a men’s magazine.
‘Bin it,’ he finally said, deciding that one narcissistic sociopath vying for his attention was probably enough.
‘But … Missy … from Brighton …’ Finlay was reading through the rest of the email.
‘Bin it!’ snapped Wolf. ‘How do I play this video?’
Finlay moodily threw the emails into the bin before taking a seat beside Wolf and pressing a button on the remote.
‘You’re gonna regret that if you’re dead in two weeks,’ he mumbled.
Wolf ignored the comment and focused on the large television screen. The grainy footage was from a camera high above the Complete Foods factory floor. A pair of double doors were propped open with a box, and in the background was the depressingly monotonous sight of the low-paid staff working robotically towards their next repetitive strain injury.
Suddenly a figure appeared at the doors. It was undoubtedly a man. Edmunds had estimated his height to be fractionally over six feet, having measured the doorway after reviewing the tape. The man was wearing a stained apron, gloves, hairnet and a face mask like the other employees, despite coming in from outside. He walked with confidence, hesitating only for a moment as he decided in which direction to head. Over the next two minutes, he disappeared in and out of shot behind the boxes packaged up for delivery. He then strolled back out through the double doors and into the night without anybody noticing.
‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ sighed Finlay.
Wolf asked him to rewind and they paused on the best shot of the killer that the pixelated footage would allow. They stared at the covered face. Even after the tech team cleaned it up, there would not be much to go on. He looked to be bald beneath the hairnet, close-shaven at least. The only truly discerning feature was the apron, already covered in what looked like dried blood.
Naguib Khalid should have been impossible to reach, which would suggest that his murder took the most planning. Wolf had assumed, apparently incorrectly, that the killer had murdered him first before pursuing easier targets. He wondered which of the other five victims had already been dismembered at this early stage and, more importantly, why?
CHAPTER 9
Monday 30 June 2014
6.15 p.m.
Edmunds held the two tiny bottles up to the light. One declared itself to be ‘Shattered Pink’; the other, ‘Sherwood’. Even after three minutes of intense scrutiny, the two nail varnishes looked unequivocally identical to one another.
He was standing in the labyrinthine make-up department that dominated the ground floor of Selfridges. The haphazardly positioned stands acted like an archipelago against an ocean, a first-line defence, taking the full force of the wave of customers flooding in off Oxford Street and filtering them out across the store. He had passed several of the same disorientated faces, people who had become separated from their companions and left to wander aimlessly between the counters of eyeliners, lipsticks and Uplight Face Luminiser Gels that they had no intention whatsoever of purchasing.
‘May I help you with anything?’ asked an immaculately painted blonde, dressed all in black, whose generous layers of foundation could not cover up the judgemental sneer she wore as she took in Edmunds’ flyaway hair and purple nails.
‘I’ll take these two,’ he said happily, smearing purple glitter across her arm as he handed them over.
The woman smiled sycophantically and tottered back round to the other side of her tiny empire to charge Edmunds an extortionate amount.
‘I love Sherwood,’ she told him, ‘but I adore Shattered Pink.’
Edmunds stared down at the two indistinguishable items sitting pathetically at the bottom of the cavernous paper bag that she had handed him. He made sure to put the receipt straight in the back of his wallet, in the hope that he would be able to claim it back on expenses; if not, he had just blown half of his grocery budget on sparkly nail polish.
‘Is there anything else I can help you with today?’ the woman asked, reverting back to her former frosty self now that the transaction had been completed.
‘Yes. How do I get out of here?’
Edmunds had lost sight of the exit over twenty-five minutes earlier.