Wolf made sure to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the floor, so as not to provoke the situation.
‘Why?’ asked Rana.
‘Because there must be a link between those names on the list and the victims he has already … claimed,’ explained Finlay softly.
Wolf rolled his eyes.
‘OK,’ said Rana.
‘When did you last have contact with your brother?’
‘2004 … 2005?’ Rana answered uncertainly.
‘So that would mean you weren’t there for the trial?’
‘No. I was not.’
‘Why?’ asked Wolf, speaking for the first time in over five minutes.
Walker went to grab hold of Rana; however, the man made no attempt to move, nor to answer the question.
‘What sort of man doesn’t show up for a single day of his own brother’s trial?’ continued Wolf, ignoring glares from both Walker and Finlay. ‘I’ll tell you what sort: a man who already knows the truth, who already knows that his brother is guilty.’
Rana did not respond.
‘That’s why you changed your name all those years ago. You knew what he was going to do, and you wanted to distance yourself from it.’
‘I never knew he was going to—’
‘You knew,’ shouted Wolf, ‘and you did nothing. How old is your little girl?’
‘Fawkes!’ yelled Walker.
‘How old?’ Wolf screamed back.
‘Thirteen,’ mumbled Rana.
‘I genuinely wonder whether your brother would have burned your little girl alive by now if I hadn’t stopped him. She knew him, probably trusted him. How long do you think he’d have been able to resist such an easy target?’
‘Stop it!’ cried Rana, holding his hands over his ears like a child. ‘Please, stop it!’
‘You, Vijay Khalid, owe me!’ spat Wolf.
He hammered against the cell door, leaving Finlay and Walker to deal with their whimpering prisoner.
At 7.05 p.m. Wolf received a phone call advising that someone would be with them by 10.30 p.m. at the latest. Protected Persons were still in the process of arranging appropriately trained officers and a suitable safe house considering the immediacy of the threat against Rana’s life. Wolf relayed the news to Walker and his officers, who made no effort to disguise that he had already long outstayed his welcome.
Sick of their scathing looks, he decided to fetch some food for Finlay, himself and the prisoner (as a precaution, he had instructed Walker not to feed Rana anything on site). He generously offered to buy chips for everyone, not because he felt he owed them anything but because he could not be sure that they would let him back inside empty-handed.
Wolf pulled on his damp coat and one of the officers held the reinforced door open for him. Apparently the thick metal had dulled the sound of the storm outside. Wolf ran out onto the deserted high street, attempting to time his progress against the mini-tsunamis that flooded the pavement every time a car went through a deep puddle. He found the fish and chip shop and stepped inside onto the slippery, mud-stained floor. As he closed the door on the deafening rain, he realised that his phone was ringing.
‘Wolf,’ he answered.
‘Hello, Will. It’s Elizabeth Tate,’ said a croaky voice.
‘Liz, what can I do for you?’
Elizabeth Tate was a hard-nosed defence lawyer, who also acted as the duty solicitor for a number of central London police stations. She had been in the job for nearly thirty years, a first-line defence for the unprepared imprisoned (from drunks to murderers), a lone voice of support for the isolated and distraught. Although they had had their fair share of disagreements in their time, Wolf liked Elizabeth.
Where other lawyers would lie through their teeth, not for the sake of their undoubtedly guilty client but in defence of their own ego, Elizabeth would defend them as far as the law insisted but no further. On the few occasions that they had fallen out, it had been because she had sincerely believed in her client’s innocence, and under those circumstances she was able to fight as ruthlessly and passionately as the best of them.
‘I believe that you are, at this moment, guarding a Mr Vijay Rana,’ she said.
‘Battered sausage and chips twice please, love,’ someone ordered in the background.
Wolf covered the speaker as he decided upon a response.
‘I don’t know what you’re—’
‘Drop the act. His wife called me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I represented him last year.’
‘For tax dodging?’
‘No comment.’
‘For tax dodging.’
‘I have already spoken to Simmons, who has agreed to let me meet with my client this evening.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Are you going to make me start quoting the Police and Criminal Evidence Act down the phone at you? I just spent twenty minutes doing just that to your boss. Mr Rana is not only under your protection but under arrest for a crime. We both know that anything he says, to you or anybody else, over the next two days, could further incriminate him to the detriment of his case in court.’
‘No.’
‘I have agreed to be subjected to a full search of my person and belongings and will, of course, adhere to any other procedures that you have put in place.’
‘No.’
Elizabeth sighed.
‘Speak to Simmons then phone me back,’ she said before hanging up on him.
‘What time can you be here?’ Wolf mumbled down the phone to Elizabeth as he picked at the last of his soggy chips back at the station.
He and Simmons had argued for ten solid minutes, although it was unrealistic to think that their lawsuit-phobic commissioner would ever back down on such an issue – to deny a prisoner his right to legal advice for a crime that they still fully intended to prosecute him for. Simmons, expecting Wolf to undermine his orders, reminded him of their conversation on Saturday evening. He reiterated that he could have Wolf taken off the case at any given moment. He also made the point that to refuse Rana his lawyer could be grounds to dismiss the case against him; he would have saved a criminal’s life only to let him walk free.
Grudgingly, Wolf had called Elizabeth back.
‘I need to finish up here at Brentford, then stop off briefly at Ealing on the way over. I should be with you by ten.’
‘That’s cutting it pretty fine. He’s being moved at half past.’
‘I’ll be there.’
There was a sharp crack of thunder and then all of the lights in the custody suite went out. After a few moments, the eerie glow of the emergency lighting dimmed the darkness a little. A prisoner in one of the nearest holding cells started kicking rhythmically at his door. The dull thudding filled the claustrophobic hallway like a war drum while the muted storm raged beyond the walls. Wolf got to his feet and hung up on Elizabeth.
He realised that his hand was trembling and tried to ignore the reason why: that this was his nightmare, those countless sleepless nights spent on the secure ward, listening to the endless screams flooding the maze of corridors, the futile impacts of desperate bodies breaking against immovable doors. He took a moment to compose himself and then shoved his hand into his pocket.