‘What can I do to help?’ asked Andrea, genuinely.
Baxter was suddenly struck with an idea; however, it was a huge risk discussing something of such importance with a woman who had already been arrested for distributing sensitive material across worldwide media. She had absolutely no intention of even contemplating Garland’s idiotic suggestion of faking his own death, but if she had an opportunity to use the press as an ally rather than a hindrance, for once, there might be another way to stack the odds in their favour.
Andrea appeared sincere and was clearly deeply concerned about Wolf. She was also Baxter’s best hope of successfully accomplishing her plan.
‘I need you to help me save Jarred Garland.’
‘You want me involved?’ Andrea asked.
‘And your cameraman.’
‘I see.’
Andrea read between the lines of Baxter’s outlandish request. She could picture Elijah’s triumphant face at exposing the Metropolitan Police’s troubling level of desperation. He would probably suggest that she play along for a while before breaking the story the evening before the murder.
It would be career suicide for a news reporter to deliberately mislead the public, no matter how honourable the intentions; how could they ever trust her again?
She remembered the smiling faces of her delighted colleagues in the conference room, grateful to Elizabeth Tate for dying so violently, as if she had stepped out in front of that bus for their benefit. She clenched her fists as she imagined them rejoicing over Wolf’s lifeless body, expecting her to ‘add some drama’ to what would already be the worst day of her life.
She could not be there for that. They all repulsed her.
‘I’ll do it.’
CHAPTER 16
Thursday 3 July 2014
8.25 a.m.
Wolf called in at the office en route to his 9 a.m. session with Dr Preston-Hall. He sat down at his desk and swore when he kicked over his overflowing wastepaper bin. A sly look around the room for an empty and unguarded replacement suggested that the cleaners’ workload had not increased proportionally with that of the department.
Following a token effort to tidy up after himself, Wolf was touched to discover that Finlay had gone to the trouble of completing the laborious monitoring form on his day off. A Post-it note attached to the front read: What a load of faecal matter! See you at meeting. Fin.
He removed the note, assuming that the doctor would not appreciate Finlay’s candour, and stared at Chambers’ empty desk for a moment, picturing Baxter’s uncharacteristic breakdown of the previous day. He hated to think of her so upset. He had only ever witnessed her that distraught once in all of the time that they had known each other, and it had affected him more than anything else on that traumatic and surreal day.
There had not been room inside the Old Bailey courtroom for Baxter, but she had stubbornly insisted on accompanying Wolf to hear the verdict of the Khalid trial. By that stage he had been suspended from work and everybody on the team was facing a formal investigation into the handling of the case. He had not wanted her to come. The rift between him and Andrea had come to a spectacular head during the week, which had ended in the police being called to their terraced cottage in Stoke Newington, adding fuel to the fabricated domestic abuse stories. Regardless, Baxter had pulled some strings and been permitted to wait outside in the palatial Great Hall for hours on end.
Wolf could still picture the foreman clearly (he looked just like Gandalf) and remembered the clerk asking for the verdict. Everything after that was a blur: shouts of panic, the smell of floor polish, a bloody hand pressed against a white dress.
The only thing that he vividly remembered was the intense pain as the dock security officer shattered his left wrist with a single vicious blow, metal displacing bone. That, and seeing Baxter standing amidst the chaos, tears streaming down her face, asking him repeatedly, ‘What have you done?’
As he stopped struggling and allowed the horde of police officers to restrain him, he watched her take the arm of the blood-spattered juror and lead her out to safety. When Baxter disappeared through the heavy double doors, he had believed that he would never see her again.
Wolf’s reverie was interrupted by an annoying beeping and the familiar assortment of whirrs and bangs that always emanated from the malfunctioning fax machine. He could see Baxter, deep in conversation with Simmons in his office. They had not had any contact since he walked out of the flat, and both women were gone by the time he had traipsed back home. He felt a little guilty, but had far too much on his mind to get stuck in the middle of their enduring feud. With no time to do anything useful, he picked up the monitoring form and left the office.
Wolf’s session with Dr Preston-Hall had not gone at all well and he was relieved to leave the fusty office behind and step back out into the reliable drizzle of a British summer. Although it was warm, he pulled his coat on over his white shirt. He still had the small trophy sitting on the corner of his desk that Finlay had presented to him after getting caught in a hailstorm wearing the same cheap garment: Miss Wet T-shirt 2013. He had been self-conscious about it ever since.
He thought about the meeting as he ambled back towards New Scotland Yard. Dr Preston-Hall had voiced her concerns regarding the amount of pressure that he was under and the effect of seeing another two people die in front of him just since their meeting on Monday. Fortunately no one had gotten around to informing her about Chambers’ death.
Although the sessions should have been based solely upon the information provided in Finlay’s reports and the doctor’s own confidential conversations with Wolf, it had been impossible to avoid the photograph that had dominated the news reports the previous day.
The doctor said that the photo was the most honest thing that he had ever given her to work with, albeit unintentionally, and that anyone could see that the man clutching the dead woman’s hand was breaking apart. She told him that she would be phoning Simmons to advise that Wolf ‘take a less prominent role in the investigation going forward’, whatever that meant, and then promptly dismissed him again until Monday morning.