Finlay took out the ancient pack of cards that he always carried around with him and dealt out three piles. His talk with Ford seemed to have calmed the unpredictable man down, but it had also affected Wolf as he took a seat on the sofa. He had always dwelled on the negative repercussions of that traumatic day; he had never even considered the positive.
He picked up his disappointing hand and watched Finlay closely. After years of playing with him, he knew that he was a dirty cheat. Ford burst into tears after looking through his cards, which was not much of a poker face.
‘Got any threes?’ asked Finlay.
‘Go fish.’
Blake had a weak bladder and an appreciation for Earl Grey tea. Edmunds had deduced this after watching his comings and goings for the past day. Edmunds waited for him to pass his and Simmons’ desk before getting to his feet and rushing over to see Baxter at the back of the room. He had two minutes.
‘Edmunds! What the hell are you doing?’ asked Baxter as he crouched down to avoid attracting attention.
‘Someone told the press and therefore the killer about the embassy,’ he whispered.
‘I’m not allowed to talk about the case with you.’
‘You are the only person I trust.’
Baxter warmed a little. Everyone had been treating her like a leper since the Garland fiasco. It was reassuring to know that one person, at least, still valued her opinion.
‘You can trust all of them. Anyone could have blabbed about the embassy: you’ve got DPG, the staff, whoever’s in that building opposite. You really need to drop this. Now get out of here before you get me in trouble.’
Edmunds hurried back to his desk. A few moments later, Blake walked by with a mug in his hand.
By early afternoon Simmons had eliminated forty-seven of the eighty-eight names on the list while Edmunds continued looking for connections between the victims. When the standard checks and protocols had turned up nothing, he had reverted to his fraud training and borrowed a colleague’s passwords to access his old department’s specialist software.
Within fifteen minutes he had found something and scared Simmons half to death by leaping out of his seat. They moved into the meeting room to talk in private.
‘Ashley Lochlan,’ said Edmunds triumphantly.
‘The next victim?’ said Simmons. ‘What about her?’
‘Back in 2010, she was married and going by the name of Ashley Hudson.’
‘We must have known that?’
‘We did, but the computers weren’t looking for a second bank account in a different name that was only open for ten months. On the fifth of April 2010, she paid two and a half thousand pounds cash into her Hudson account,’ said Edmunds, handing Simmons a printout.
‘That was around the start of Khalid’s trial.’
‘I looked into it. She was working in a pub for minimum wage at the time. She then paid in a second two thousand five hundred a fortnight later.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Suspicious,’ Edmunds corrected him. ‘So I looked through our other victim’s accounts for that period and found two matching withdrawals made by one Mr Vijay Rana.’
‘Why would Khalid’s brother be transferring five grand to a barmaid?’
‘That’s what I’m about to ask her.’
‘Do it. Excellent work Edmunds.’
At 4 p.m., Wolf heard the muffled sounds of the officers changing over through the door. They had switched the television off after that morning’s incident, although it was only a token gesture, seeing as they could quite clearly hear that the sea of spectators, police cars and reporters flooding the road beneath them were yet to get bored and move on.
With the exception of a couple of fleeting episodes, Ford had maintained his new-found calm and given Wolf and Finlay a rare insight into the man that he had once been. If anything, he seemed defiant, determined, spurred on by the bloodthirsty mob waiting expectantly outside.
‘I’ve already let one serial killer ruin my life. I’m not about to let another decide when to end it.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Finlay encouragingly.
‘I’m taking back control,’ said Ford. ‘And today seems as good a time as any.’
As a security precaution, they had closed all of the windows and dropped the blinds. Despite borrowing a fan from down the hall, the room was stifling. Wolf unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, exposing the healing burn that covered his left arm.
‘I never asked,’ said Ford, gesturing to Wolf’s injury. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s nothing,’ replied Wolf.
‘He was injured when Mayor Turnble …’ Finlay trailed off.
‘So, both of you are taking a huge risk just by being near me, aren’t you? For all you know, he could just fire a rocket launcher up here.’
The thought had clearly not crossed Finlay’s mind and he looked to Wolf in concern.
‘I’ve not got long anyway,’ said Wolf cheerfully as he peered through a gap in the blind.
‘I don’t want anyone getting hurt for me,’ said Ford.
Wolf had been watching a group of three people out on the street for over five minutes. They had caught his attention because they had settled away from the rest of their fellow spectators and looked to be waiting for something. Two of them had carried a large canvas bag to the spot and set it down in the middle of the closed road. Wolf watched as each of them pulled a different animal mask over their face. Soon, they were joined by six others.
‘Finlay!’ Wolf called from the window. ‘Can you get hold of the officers down on the street?’
‘Aye. What is it?’
‘Trouble.’
Two of the masked group, a cartoon monkey and an eagle, crouched down and pulled the bag open. They removed what they needed, barged their way through the crowd and ducked beneath the police tape.
‘Child killer!’ one of the slightly muffled voices called up to them.
‘The saviour of the Cremation Killer!’ yelled his female counterpart.
The police officers on crowd control were swift to remove the two people who had crossed the cordon, but the remaining seven, who had lingered behind, had now caught the attention of the media as they produced banners, boards and a megaphone from the large bag. A woman wearing a shark mask began ranting over the already raucous street.
‘Andrew Ford deserves what is coming to him!’ she thundered. ‘If he had not saved the Cremation Killer’s life, Annabelle Adams would still be alive today!’
Wolf looked back into the room to gauge Ford’s reaction, expecting it to set him off again. Surprisingly he had not moved. He just sat listening to the distorted assault upon him. Unsure what to say, Finlay switched the television back on, found a children’s programme and turned the volume right up in an attempt to drown out the commotion outside. Wolf thought that the gloomy, grand room resembled Ford’s impoverished bedsit all of a sudden.
‘Spare the Devil and God will strike thee down!’
The protesters had started chanting the same faux-religious slogan repeatedly. One of them was talking animatedly to a reporter while the ringleader suggested that Ford had been involved with Khalid since the beginning.
‘Has this ever happened before?’ Wolf asked Ford, without taking his eyes off the threat below.