‘No, no, no!’ hissed Wolf.
He shoved the confrontational protester aside and started pushing his way through the crowd. Diplomatic protection officers appeared at sporadic windows alongside Ford and on the floor below.
‘Don’t do this, Andrew!’ shouted Finlay, who was now out on the window ledge with half of his body lying across the unstable roof.
Part of a tile broke away and seemed to fall forever before cracking the windscreen of a police car below.
‘Don’t move, Finlay!’ Wolf screamed up at him as he emerged from the sea of people. ‘Don’t you move!’
‘Wolf!’ shouted Ford.
Wolf skidded to a stop and stared up at the man whose scruffy hair was blowing about in a breeze that he could not even feel at street level. He could hear a fire engine blasting its bullhorn as it rushed across the city towards them.
‘You’ve gotta take back control!’ Ford said again, but this time Wolf understood his meaning.
‘If you do this … If you die, he wins!’ yelled Finlay. Crouched on the sloping roof, he clung desperately to the windowsill as more debris showered down over the street.
‘No. If I do this, I win.’
Ford released his grip on the chimneystack and tentatively raised his trembling arms to balance himself. The traffic on the main road had come to a standstill as people abandoned their vehicles to watch this worldwide news unfold first-hand. The crowd below was quiet, except for the whispered bulletins from distracted reporters. The fire engine could only have been a few streets away.
Finlay had shuffled halfway between the safety of the window and the chimney stack. There were shouts of horror from the spectators when Ford almost lost his balance. He closed his eyes with his arms outstretched and swayed unsteadily above the edge.
‘Things happen,’ he said, so quietly that only Finlay could hear.
Then he let himself fall forward.
Finlay scrambled across the space between them, but Ford had already dropped out of reach. Wolf could only watch helplessly, with the other two hundred people out on the road, as he plummeted silently past the windows and then dropped out of sight into the basement service area with a dull thud.
For a moment, all was still – and then the army of reporters surged forward, overpowering the handful of police officers in their desperation to broadcast the first gruesome images of the aftermath. Wolf ran to the black metal fire escape and jumped the last six steps in his haste to reach Ford. As he approached the body, which had twisted unnaturally on impact, he realised he was standing in the copious amounts of blood that had leaked freely from the back of the man’s skull.
Before he had even checked for a pulse, the sun had been chased off the fresh corpse by the shadows of the people above. Too traumatised to care that he was undoubtedly posing for yet another iconic photograph, Wolf sat back against the wall, surrounded by the growing puddle of blood, and waited for help.
Three minutes later the service area was heaving with police officers and paramedics. Wolf got to his feet to climb back above ground, where he would be able to watch the fire service rescue Finlay from the rooftop, who was now clinging to the chimney stack for dear life. A trail of red footprints followed Wolf over to the metal stairs where he had to wait for an obese coroner to finish his protracted descent.
Wolf put his hands in his pockets and frowned in confusion. He removed an unfamiliar piece of paper and cautiously unfolded it to reveal a single bloody fingerprint soiling the centre of the crumpled page. A hint of dark lettering was showing through from the other side. He turned it over to find a short message scrawled in the killer’s distinctive handwriting:
Welcome back.
He stared at it in utter bewilderment, wondering how long he had been carrying it around with him and how the killer had ever managed to—
The wolf mask!
‘Get out the way!’ yelled Wolf as he shoved past the hefty man on the stairs.
He surfaced out onto the chaotic road, searching frantically through the crowds for any of the protesters. Weaving between the people packing up equipment or leaving the scene now that the show was over, he reached the spot where the confiscated boards and banners had been thrown into a pile.
‘Move!’ he shouted at the dawdling pedestrians as he climbed on top of a bench for a better viewpoint.
He spotted something on the floor in the centre of the road and pushed his way through to find the plastic wolf mask cracked and dirty from where it had been trampled into the concrete.
Wolf stooped down to pick it up, knowing that the killer would still be there, watching him, laughing at him, revelling in the undeniable power that he had held over Ford, that he continued to hold over the media and, as much as Wolf hated to admit it, that he held over him …
ST ANN’S HOSPITAL
Wednesday 6 October 2010
10.08 a.m.
Wolf stared out at the sun-dappled gardens that surrounded the grand old building. The few patches of light that had managed to fight their way through the dying foliage above danced across the neat lawn to the choreography of a gentle breeze.
Even the concentration required to enjoy the tranquil scene was taking its toll upon his fatigued mind. The medication that he was force-fed twice a day had left him in a perpetual half-waking state, not the warm uncoordination of an alcohol-provoked daze – more distant, apathetic, defeated.
He understood the need for it. The common areas were populated with people suffering the entire spectrum of mental health disorders: those who had attempted suicide sharing tables with those who had killed, those spiralling into depression through feelings of worthlessness talking to others with delusions of grandeur. It was a recipe for disaster diluted through medication, although, Wolf could not help but feel, born out of a need to control rather than actually cure.
He was losing track of the days and weeks, existing as he did in the surreal routined confines of the hospital, where he and his fellow detainees would roam the halls aimlessly in their pyjama-style scrubs, were told when to eat, when to wash, when to sleep.
Wolf could not be positive how much of his current condition was attributed to the drugs and how much to the insomnia-induced exhaustion. Even in this semi-catatonic state he feared nightfall, the hush before the storm as the bruise-eyed night-shift workers escorted the patients back to their rooms and the confinement that brought out the true psychosis contained within the walls of the handsome old hospital. Every night he would wonder why these people struggled on, petrified of being left alone with themselves, their pathetic crying in the dark.
‘Open up,’ instructed the impatient nurse standing over him.
Wolf opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to prove that he had swallowed the handful of brightly coloured pills.
‘You understand why we had to transfer you onto the secure ward, don’t you?’ she asked him, as if speaking to a child.