On Monday night he had stumbled upon an unresolved case from 2008 in which a home-grown Islamic fundamentalist had died inside a secure cell. No one had signed in or out of the building during the estimated time of death and the CCTV footage had corroborated this. The body of the otherwise healthy twenty-three-year-old had displayed signs of suffocation; however, there had been no other evidence to support this, and the death had eventually been accredited to natural causes.
His Internet searches had also turned up the suspicious death of a marine on a military base. After Joe’s promising identification of the boot print, Edmunds had made a formal written request to the military police, asking them to disclose the entire case file, but was yet to hear anything back.
He had spent the last hour sorting through the evidence of a murder that had happened back in 2009. The heir to a multinational electronics corporation had mysteriously vanished from a hotel suite despite two bodyguards sitting less than twenty feet away in the next room. Enough blood had been present at the scene to declare the young man dead, yet no body was ever discovered. There had been no useful fingerprints, DNA, or security footage for the police to even begin looking for a killer, which meant that there was nothing of use to Edmunds to link the case to the Ragdoll murders. He made a note of the date and packed the contents back inside the box.
The cool air was keeping him going. He did not feel even remotely tired, but he had promised himself that he would leave by 3 a.m. at the very latest and get home for a couple of hours of sleep before work. He flicked back to his list of the five other cases that he had hoped to get through and sighed. He got to his feet, stacked the box back on the shelf and began the long walk down the shadowy aisle.
As he neared the end of the high shelving units, he realised that the dates on the labels had reached December 2009, the month of the next murder on his list. He glanced down at his watch: 3.07 a.m.
‘One more,’ he told himself as he located the appropriate box and dragged it off the shelf.
At 8.27 a.m. Wolf entered an uninviting block of flats on a run-down side road off Plumstead high street. He had given up on sleep again, mainly because he now had the unsettling image of the wolf mask to add to his list of reasons not to close his eyes for any length of time. The killer’s overconfidence had shaken him. It had been a risk to visit the embassy at all, reckless to join the protest that he had organised, and narcissistically self-destructive to have confronted Wolf as he had.
Wolf recalled Edmunds promising them that the killer would not be able to resist coming in closer and closer as time went on, drawn by a burning desire to eventually get caught. He wondered whether the incident outside the embassy had been the killer’s plea for help, whether desperation, rather than arrogance, had driven his actions.
He climbed the muddy stairs, trying to remember whether it had rained since the storms a week earlier. On the third floor, he pulled a peeling fire door open to access the yellowed corridor. There was no sign of the two police officers that should have been stationed outside Ashley Lochlan’s door.
He approached Flat 16, which looked to have the only freshly painted front door in the building, and was about to knock when the two officers bumbled out into the corridor holding toasted sandwiches and cups of coffee. They were both startled to find the imposing detective standing there.
‘Morning,’ said the female officer through a mouthful of bacon and toast.
Wolf’s stomach grumbled.
She offered him the other half of her breakfast, which he politely declined.
‘Know when you’ll be moving her?’ asked her youthful-looking colleague.
‘Not yet,’ said Wolf a little curtly.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,’ said the man quickly. ‘Quite the opposite actually – she’s an absolute delight. We’re going to miss her.’
The female officer nodded in agreement. Wolf was surprised. The trusty set of stereotypes that had always served him so well had had him expecting a pyjamas-only, smoke-hazed, cat rescue on the other side of the door, yet the two officers were clearly in no hurry to leave.
‘She’s just jumped in the shower. I’ll show you in.’
The female officer unlocked the front door and led him into the immaculate flat that smelled of fresh coffee and bacon. A warm breeze was blowing the net curtains across the colourful flowers on the living room table. The airy space had been tastefully decorated in pastel paints and real wood floors with matching work surfaces. Photographs covered an entire wall and baking apparatus had been left to dry beside the kitchen sink. He could hear water running in the next room.
‘Ashley!’ shouted the officer.
The water stopped.
‘Detective Sergeant Fawkes is here to see you.’
‘Is he as handsome as he looks on the television?’ a soft Edinburgh accent called back.
The officer looked awkward and then, to her horror, Ashley continued: ‘I agree he looks like he needs a good scrub before you could take him anywhere, but—’
‘He actually looks like he might fall asleep at any moment,’ the officer shouted over her.
‘Let him know there’s coffee in the kitchen when you show him in.’
‘Ashley …’
‘Yeah?’
‘He’s already in.’
‘Oh! Did he hear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Arse.’
The police officer could not leave the uncomfortable situation quickly enough and rushed outside to join her colleague. Wolf could hear things scraping, spraying, and shutting behind the thin partition wall and sniffed himself self-consciously as he stood in front of the wall of photos. They were simple, genuine: a recurring beautiful woman at the beach with friends, sitting in a park with an elderly man, at Legoland with what looked to be her young son. His heart sank as he stared at the two delighted faces on what had obviously been a perfect day.
‘That’s Jordan. He’s six now,’ said a voice behind him in the attractive accent that sounded a million miles away from Finlay’s rasping tones.
Wolf turned to find the same stunning woman from the photographs towel-drying her dark blonde hair in the bathroom doorway. She had clearly just thrown on a pair of tiny denim shorts and a light grey vest top. Wolf’s gaze lingered over her glistening long legs before returning to the photograph in embarrassment.
‘Don’t be creepy,’ he whispered to himself.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said: where is he?’
‘I’m pretty sure you said: “don’t be creepy”.’
‘Nope.’ Wolf shook his head innocently.
Ashley gave him a funny look.
‘I sent him off to my mum’s after … Well, after the deranged serial killer threatened to murder us all, to be quite frank.’
Wolf was making a valiant effort not to stare at her legs.
‘Ashley,’ she said, holding her hand out to him.
He was forced to walk over to her, to smell the strawberry shampoo that she had just washed out of her hair, to notice her bright hazel eyes and spot the dark patches on her top where her damp skin had soaked through the thin material.
‘Fawkes,’ he said, after almost crushing her delicate hand in his. He stepped back as quickly as he could.
‘Not William?’
‘Not William.’
‘Then you can call me Lochlan,’ she said with a smirk, before looking him up and down.
‘What?’