Some would accuse him of being bigoted or classist, but they had not spent half of their working lives in identical buildings to this all over the city. He felt that he had earned the right to hate them.
As he approached the main entrance, he could hear shouting from round the back of the building. He walked along the side of the tower block and was surprised to find a grubby-looking man, wearing only a vest and underpants, hanging off a balcony above him. Two police officers were trying in vain to pull him back over, and several neighbours had ventured out onto their own balconies, camera phones at the ready in case they were fortunate enough to capture him fall. Wolf watched the bizarre scene in amusement until one pyjama-clad neighbour eventually recognised him.
‘Ain’t you that detective off of the telly?’ she shouted down at him in a husky voice.
Wolf ignored the nosy woman. The man hanging off the balcony suddenly stopped yelling and peered down at him casually sipping his coffee.
‘Andrew Ford, I presume?’ said Wolf.
‘Detective Fawkes?’ asked Ford with an Irish twang.
‘Yep.’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘All right.’
‘Not here. Come up.’
‘All right.’
Wolf shrugged indifferently and headed for the main entrance while Ford inelegantly clambered back over the railings. When he got upstairs, he met an attractive Asian police officer at the door.
‘Are we glad to see you,’ she told him.
When she spoke, Wolf noticed the large gap in her smile and could feel himself getting angry.
‘Did he do that to you?’ he asked, gesturing to his own mouth.
‘Not intentionally. He was thrashing about and I should have left him to it. My own stupid fault.’
‘Bit unstable to be a security guard, isn’t he?’
‘He’s been signed off work for the past year. He basically just drinks and rants now.’
‘Where did he work?’
‘Debenhams, I think.’
‘What does he want with me?’
‘He says he knows you.’
Wolf looked surprised: ‘Probably arrested him.’
‘Probably.’
The officer showed Wolf into the cluttered flat. DVDs and magazines littered the hallway, while the bedroom appeared to be no more than a dumping ground. They entered the poky lounge, where bottles of cheap vodka and boxes of extra-strength lager covered every surface. The only sofa was hidden beneath a cigarette-burned duvet, and the whole place had a faint odour of sweat, vomit, ash and overflowing rubbish.
Andrew Ford was almost ten years his junior, yet looked far older than Wolf. His unkempt hair grew in sporadic patches around his balding head. He was ill-proportioned – gaunt, with a small but defined beer belly, and he had a yellow tinge of jaundice to his skin. Wolf waved in greeting. He had no intention of touching the filthy man.
‘Metropolitan police officer and lead investigator on the Ragdoll murders … Detective Sergeant William Oliver Layton-Fawkes,’ Ford recited excitedly, giving him a short applause. ‘But it’s Wolf, right? Cool name. Just a wolf amongst sheep, aren’t you?’
‘Or pigs,’ Wolf said indelicately as he looked around the revolting room.
Ford looked as though he was about to attack him but then burst into laughter instead.
‘Coz you’re a cop. I get your meaning,’ he said, in no way getting Wolf’s meaning.
‘You wanted to talk?’ asked Wolf, hoping that Baxter might want to take the lead on this one as well.
‘Not with all these …’ he screamed the next words, ‘pigs around!’
Wolf nodded to the two officers and they left the room.
‘We’re sort of brothers in arms, aren’t we?’ said Ford. ‘Just two upstanding gentlemen of the law.’
Wolf felt it a bit of a leap, the man from Debenhams describing himself as a ‘gentleman of the law’, but he let it slide. He was, however, getting impatient.
‘What did you want to talk about?’ he asked.
‘I want to help you Wolf.’ Ford tilted his head back and howled loudly.
‘Well, you’re not.’
‘You’ve missed something,’ said Ford smugly. ‘Something important.’
Wolf waited for him to continue.
‘I know something you don’t know,’ Ford sang childishly, enjoying this unfamiliar position of power.
‘That pretty officer whose tooth you knocked out …’
‘The Indian?’ Ford made a dismissive gesture.
‘… She said you knew me.’
‘Oh, I know you Wolf, but you don’t remember me at all, do you?’
‘So give me a clue.’
‘We spent forty-six days in the same room, but we never spoke.’
‘OK,’ said Wolf uncertainly, hoping that the two officers had not wandered too far.
‘I didn’t always work at a department store. I used to be somebody.’
Wolf looked blank.
‘And I can see that you’re still wearing something that I gave you.’
Wolf looked down at his shirt and trousers in confusion. He patted his pockets and glanced at his watch.
‘Warmer!’
Wolf rolled up his sleeve, exposing the substantial burns to his left arm and his digital wristwatch. It was only a cheap model that his mother had bought him last Christmas.
‘Hot, hot, hot!’
Wolf removed the watch to reveal the rest of the thin white scar that ran across his wrist.
‘The dock security officer?’ asked Wolf through gritted teeth.
Ford did not answer straight away. He rubbed his face agitatedly and walked over to the kitchen to collect a bottle of vodka.
‘You’re selling me short,’ he finally replied in mock offence. ‘I am Andrew Ford: the man who saved the Cremation Killer’s life!’
He took an angry swig from the bottle, which dribbled down his chin.
‘If I hadn’t been so heroic dragging you off him, he wouldn’t have survived to murder that last little girl. Saint Andrew! That’s what I want on my gravestone. Saint Andrew: assistant child killer.’
Ford began to cry. He slumped down onto the sofa and pulled his disgusting duvet over him, knocking a precariously balanced ashtray over the floor.
‘There, that’s all. Send those pigs away. I don’t want saving. I just wanted to tell you … to help you.’
Wolf stared at the wretched creature as it took another swig from the bottle and switched on the television. The theme tune to a children’s programme blared at full volume as Wolf showed himself out.
Andrea watched in stunned silence as her cameraman, Rory, dressed as a spaceship captain, beheaded an alien being (that looked suspiciously like his friend Sam) with a Pulse-Bō (foil-covered stick). Green slime exploded liberally from the resultant stump as the rest of the overacting body eventually ceased to move.
Rory hit the pause button.
‘So, what d’ya think?’
Rory was in his mid-thirties but was dressed like a scruffy teenager. He was a little overweight, had a thick ginger beard and a friendly face.
‘The blood was green,’ said Andrea, still a little dazed by the gory video. It had been low-budget but effective.
‘He was a Kruutar … an alien.’