Baxter had point-blank refused to even speak to Edmunds, let alone sit in a car with him for a two-hour round trip. She pictured him back at the office, barely able to conceal the stupid grin on his face as he trespassed into Wolf’s affairs, collating his evidence to use against him.
Apparently, Wolf had not been at home when the Armed Response Unit arrived at his building and kicked down the door to his unimpressive apartment. As they sat there in the queue that Finlay had found for them, a team of their colleagues were ransacking the tiny flat, finally unpacking the piles of boxes that Wolf had left collecting dust since moving in.
The bare bones of the situation had been explained to Ashley. She said she had no idea about Wolf’s current whereabouts and had not known anything about the suspension. As the last person to have seen Wolf, Baxter had had no choice but to elaborate on their parting conversation; however, she decided to omit the punch in the face, knowing that the irrelevant detail would only provoke further questions that she was in no mood to answer.
They had collected Ashley at 12.15 p.m. and were due to rendezvous with Simmons at 1.30 p.m. in the car park of Wembley Stadium. She had already called to warn him that they were running late. Neither of the women had spoken a single word to one another and even Finlay had struggled to maintain his trademark buoyancy and prevent the car from sinking into a lasting silence.
Baxter felt very exposed. They had been sitting on the same road for almost ten minutes, while pedestrians weaved in and out of the stationary traffic, some passing mere inches away from their endangered passenger. When three cars (two legally and one BMW) made it through the lights, Baxter realised exactly where they were.
‘What the hell are we doing in Soho?’ she asked.
‘You asked me to drive.’
‘Yes, but I thought “in the right direction” was implied.’
‘Which way would you have gone then?’
‘Shoreditch, Pentonville, Regent’s Park.’
‘There are roadworks all around King’s Cross.’
‘Good thing we didn’t get stuck in any of those.’
There was the ping of an incoming text message and Ashley slyly looked at her phone.
‘What the hell?’ said Baxter. ‘They were supposed to take that off you.’
She held out her hand impatiently while Ashley typed a hurried reply.
‘Now!’ snapped Baxter.
Ashley switched the phone off and handed it over. Baxter pulled out the battery and the sim card before dropping it into the glove compartment.
‘Tell me, why are we all risking our arses trying to keep you hidden when you’re sat there pissing around on your phone?’
‘She gets the message,’ said Finlay.
‘Perhaps you could Facebook a nice selfie outside the safe house when you get there.’
‘She gets it, Emily!’ snapped Finlay.
The car behind honked its horn and Finlay looked back up to find that the two cars in front were gone. He pulled up to the red light, where the imposing Palace Theatre dominated the crossroads.
‘Is that Shaftesbury Avenue?’ asked Baxter, appalled. ‘On what planet was this ever going to be the quickest—’
The car door slammed.
Baxter and Finlay both whipped round to stare at the empty back seat. Baxter threw the passenger door open and climbed out. She spotted Ashley pushing her way through a group of tourists in matching backpacks before disappearing around the corner onto Shaftesbury Avenue. Baxter took off after her on foot. Finlay jumped the red light, only to narrowly avoid a head-on collision with a car coming from the other direction. He swore for the first time in years and was forced to reverse back.
Ashley took the first road on the left. By the time Baxter reached the corner, she had swung right and passed beneath the ornate Paifang archway that marked the entrance to Chinatown. Baxter arrived at the gateway. Red and dirty-gold pillars held a decorative green roof high above the street below. She had lost sight of Ashley, who had slowed her pace to a brisk walk, knowing that she would blend seamlessly into the endless crowds filtering through the narrow corridor of shops and restaurants.
‘Police!’ Baxter shouted, holding her ID out in front of her.
She started fighting through the continual flow of distracted tourists passing beneath the strings of red lanterns that criss-crossed into the distance. Shop owners laughed and shouted to one another incomprehensibly, music clashed discordantly as it escaped the open windows of the street-side eateries, and unfamiliar smells infused the polluted London air as she snaked between the street vendors. If she did not get a visual on Ashley in the next few seconds, she knew she would lose her altogether.
She spotted a bright red bin beside a matching lamp post, painted to complement the colourful archways. She pulled herself up onto it, gaining strange looks from the more attentive of the crowd, and looked out over the sea of heads. Ashley was over twenty metres ahead of her, sticking close to the shopfronts as she approached another Paifang archway and the O’Neill’s pub that denoted a stark return to reality.
Baxter jumped down and started running for the exit, shoving people aside as Ashley came back into view. She was only five metres behind when Ashley passed beneath the archway and an unfamiliar car came skidding to a halt in front of her. Ashley ran into the road and climbed into the passenger seat. The driver saw Baxter coming and wheelspun as he accelerated fiercely. Baxter had one hand against the driver’s window as the car swerved violently away from her and then sped out onto Shaftesbury Avenue.
‘Wolf!’ she called desperately after him.
He had looked right at her.
She repeated the number plate again and again to ensure that she had it memorised. She was breathing heavily as she took out her phone and dialled Finlay’s number.
Edmunds heard Vanita’s undignified reaction to Ashley Lochlan’s voluntary kidnapping from his seat out in the main office before she dragged him and Simmons back into the meeting room to inform them of this latest development. Edmunds had been busy working through the archived boxes one at a time and Simmons was in the middle of sifting through Wolf’s phone records for the previous two years.
‘She is positive that it was Wolf?’ Edmunds asked in confusion.
‘Positive,’ said Vanita. ‘We’ve flagged up the number plate as a top priority.’
‘We need to keep this to ourselves,’ said Simmons.
‘Agreed,’ said Vanita.
‘But the public could help us find them. We have absolutely no idea where he’s taking her,’ said Edmunds. ‘She’s in danger.’
‘We don’t know that for certain,’ said Vanita.
‘No,’ corrected Edmunds. ‘We haven’t built an airtight case against him yet, but we know he’s behind it.’
‘You need to wake up, Edmunds,’ snapped Simmons. ‘Can you imagine the fallout from announcing to the world that our lead detective masterminded the entire thing? And then we let him drive away with his next target to boot!’
Vanita nodded along thoughtfully.