‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that either we accept the possibility that the killer has all of us under surveillance and believed this morning to be his last chance before Garland disappeared …’
‘Seems unlikely.’
‘… or that somebody with in-depth knowledge of the case is leaking him information.’
Baxter laughed and shook her head.
‘Wow, you really know how to make friends, don’t you?’
‘I hope I’m wrong,’ said Edmunds.
‘You are. Who here would want Wolf dead?’
‘No idea.’
Baxter thought about it for a moment.
‘So what do we do?’ she asked.
‘We keep this between the two of us.’
‘Naturally.’
‘And then we set a trap.’
CHAPTER 20
Friday 4 July 2014
6.10 p.m.
Wolf awoke to discover that he was back in London. He and Finlay had driven the entire breadth of the country and back in order to surrender Andrew Ford to the Protected Persons team. Neither of them knew Ford’s final destination, although, they could be reasonably confident that it was a remote location in South Wales, having rendezvoused with the officers in the car park of the Pontsticill Reservoir, somewhere in the Brecon Beacons.
Ford had been tiresome company during the four-hour drive, especially after news of Garland’s premature demise had reached the mainstream radio stations. When they pulled into a service station, Wolf had attempted to phone Baxter but only got her voicemail. Finlay resigned himself to buying their passenger a bottle of vodka for the remainder of the journey, in the hope that it might shut him up for a little while.
‘Here you go, Andrew,’ said Finlay when he returned to the car. Ford ignored him and Finlay sighed heavily. ‘Fine. Here you go, Saint Andrew, assistant child killer.’
Ford had regaled Finlay with his story about the time he saved the Cremation Killer’s life from a ferocious but honourable wolf, and had since refused to respond to anything but his full title. He had already severely disrupted their day by declining to leave his squalid Peckham flat that morning, which meant that they were late to the handover and were now returning to the capital at rush hour.
At least the reservoir itself had been an unexpected surprise. They had climbed out of the car to the roar of rushing water. The scene would have been impressive enough, with the sun blazing over the miles of forest-framed blue water, but a thin steel walkway reached out from the shore towards what appeared to be the uppermost chamber of a sunken tower. Arched windows dissected the light stone walls, and an iron weathervane stood atop the blue copper spire, as if retreating from the rising water that had already claimed the rest of the imagined castle.
Beneath the precarious walkway, a huge void had opened up in the water, sucking the reservoir endlessly into the blackness below, as if an enormous plug had been ripped from the Earth, threatening to drag the final piece of the tower into the abyss. They had watched it for a while before beginning the return journey.
Wolf yawned loudly and sat up straight to ascertain where they were.
‘Late night?’ asked Finlay, who was struggling not to break his no swearing rule as an Audi arrogantly pushed ahead of him at a set of traffic lights.
‘I don’t sleep that well any night, to be honest.’
Finlay looked over at his friend.
‘What are you still doing here, lad?’ he asked. ‘Just go. Get on a plane and go.’
‘Where? My stupid face is plastered across every newspaper on the planet.’
‘I dunno – the Amazon rainforest, the Australian outback? You could wait it out.’
‘I can’t live like that, looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.’
‘Which might be a damn sight longer.’
‘If we catch him, it’s over.’
‘And if we don’t?’
Wolf shrugged. He did not have an answer for him. The lights changed to green and Finlay pulled away.
Andrea was met with a standing ovation when she returned to the newsroom. People were patting her on the back and muttering congratulations as she wove through them towards her desk. She was conscious that she still had the dead man’s fake blood splattered across her blouse, despite scrubbing at it in the hospital toilets.
She was worried sick about Rory, who had to stay in hospital for periodic irrigation of his wounds to counteract the acid, which was still eating away at his flesh almost eight hours after the incident. The consultant had warned her that he would most likely lose the thumb on his right hand and, should any further nerves be lost, the use of his index finger.
As the spontaneous applause dissipated in an uncoordinatedly awkward fashion, Andrea sat down. The footage of Garland burning alive was playing in slow motion on the ceiling screens as the channel broadcast it for the hundredth time that day. Rory’s discarded television camera had captured everything, the crack in the lens framing the shot beautifully. She looked away in revulsion and found the note that Elijah had left her:
Apologies. Had to go. Actual footage of the murder: genius! Meeting Monday AM to discuss future – you’ve earned it. Elijah.
The vague message could only mean that he was planning to offer her a permanent anchor position, the job of her dreams and yet, far from feeling elated, she felt empty. She absent-mindedly picked up the brown envelope in her post tray and ripped it open. Something dropped out of it and onto the desk. Andrea inspected the small coil of metal before removing a photograph of her and Rory exiting the ME London.
She took out her phone and texted Baxter. Although this second communiqué from the killer was huge news and only further confirmed her claim over the story, she placed the contents back inside the envelope and locked it away in her drawer.
She was not playing this game any more.
The unstable cluster of candles in the centre of the wooden Ikea table looked equal parts romantic and fire hazard. Tia had been left to close up the salon, meaning that Edmunds had arrived home before her and immediately set to work on dinner. She had been delighted to come home to find him making such an effort and put the meal for one that she had picked up in the freezer. They enjoyed an evening together, fuelled by white wine and Waitrose dessert, the way they used to before Edmunds’ transfer.
Before leaving work, Edmunds had printed out a stack of old case files, which he planned to sort through once Tia had gone to bed. He had stashed them on top of the high kitchen cupboards, where five-foot Tia would never find them, but completely forgot that they were even there as the hours ticked by until the conversation turned to the baiting subject of his job.
‘Were you there?’ Tia asked, unconsciously rubbing the bump in her belly. ‘When that poor man …’
‘No.’
‘But your boss was? I heard the Indian commander lady mention her name.’
‘Baxter? She’s not really my boss. She’s … I suppose she might as well be.’