‘Know what? Why don’t you leave these with me?’ she smiled.
A file of paperwork showered down over her head as she closed the glass door behind her.
‘I can’t see whatever the hell it was he saw!’ shouted Edmunds in frustration. ‘What did he find?’
He scrunched up a fistful of documents off the floor and thrust them at Baxter.
‘No prints, no witnesses, no connection between the victims – nothing!’
‘OK, calm down. We don’t even know if what Wolf found is still here,’ said Baxter.
‘And we have no way of verifying that, because he outsourced the forensic testing and it’s bloody Sunday so no one’s at work.’ Edmunds slumped down onto the floor. He looked drained and his black eyes were showing worse than ever. He smacked himself on the side of the head. ‘We don’t have time for me to be dim-witted.’
Baxter started to realise that her colleague’s, already, impressive contribution to the case had not been driven by egocentric one-upmanship or proving himself to the team, but by the unreasonable amount of pressure that he placed upon himself, a borderline obsessiveness and dogged refusal to relinquish control to anybody else. Under the circumstances, she supposed that it would be an inopportune moment to tell him just how much he reminded her of Wolf.
‘Some boxes arrived for you,’ said Baxter.
Edmunds looked up at her in confusion.
‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ he said, getting back to his feet before rushing out of the room.
The light drizzle had gradually soaked through Wolf’s clothing during the hour that he had been standing at the bus stop on Coventry Street. He had not taken his eyes off the door to the scruffy Internet café that, like the countless souvenir shops selling London-branded tat, somehow managed to survive nestled among the world’s biggest brands along one of the capital’s busiest and most expensive thoroughfares.
He had followed the man here, keeping his distance as he boarded the train, weaved through the crowds amassing around the street performers in Covent Garden and then entered the grotty café just a few hundred metres down from Piccadilly Circus.
The temperature had dropped with the break in the weather and his quarry had camouflaged himself in standard London attire: a long black coat, immaculately polished shoes and freshly pressed shirt and trousers, all capped off with the regulation black umbrella.
He had struggled to keep pace at times as the imposing man marched briskly through the meandering crowds. Wolf had watched a number of people coming into contact with him, pushing past from the other direction, begging him for spare change, attempting to hand him glossy fliers, not one of them aware of the monster walking among them: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Shortly after leaving Covent Garden the man had taken a shortcut. Wolf followed him down the quiet side street and quickened his pace, seizing a rare moment of solitude in the ever-watchful city. His hurried walk turned into a jog as he chased down his unsuspecting target, but when a taxi turned the corner and pulled up a little further down the road, Wolf reluctantly slowed his pace and followed his prey back out onto the busy high street.
As the drizzle built into rain, Wolf pulled the collar of his own long black coat up around his neck and hunched over to keep warm. He watched the colourful numbers on the neon clock in the café window steadily distort in the wet glass, a reminder that this was his last day, his last chance.
He was wasting time.
Isobel Platt was being given a crash course in studio broadcasting. It apparently took five eager members of the technical team to explain to the intimidatingly attractive reporter which camera to look at and when. She had dressed in her most conservative outfit for this unexpected development in her fledgling career, much to the displeasure of Elijah, who had relayed down the message for her to ‘lose the top three buttons’.
While the format of her maiden studio appearance was relatively simple: a one-on-one interview with only two VTs interrupting proceedings, it was expected that tens of millions of people would be tuning in to watch the half-hour show from all over the planet. Isobel thought she might be sick again.
She had never wanted this. She had never even really wanted the reporter job in the first place and had been as surprised as everyone else when it had been offered to her despite a total lack of experience or qualifications. She and her boyfriend had argued about her applying for other jobs, but she hated working there and was determined to get out.
Everybody at the newsroom either thought that she was thick, a tart or a thick tart. She was not deaf to the whispering behind her back. Isobel would be the first to admit that she was no genius, but where other averagely educated people were forgiven for their mispronunciations and naivety, she was ridiculed endlessly.
She smiled along with the awkward men and laughed at their obvious jokes. She pretended to be excited about the honour that had been bestowed upon her, but in reality she just wished that Andrea was in her place, negotiating the complicated camera movements and intricate timings of the programme.
‘I think I could get used to this,’ she laughed as one of the men wheeled her and her chair into position.
‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ called Andrea as she crossed the studio en route to make-up, admirably early for her first official day in her new job. ‘You’re only here because I can’t really interview myself, can I?’
‘I’ve got something!’ yelled Edmunds from the meeting room.
Finlay, Vanita, and Simmons were already inside by the time Baxter crunched across the floor of discarded paperwork and closed the door behind her. Simmons looked torn, clearly deciding whether or not to reprimand Edmunds for making such a mess.
Edmunds reached into an archive box and handed out the documents.
‘Right,’ he started breathlessly. ‘You’ll have to bear with me. It’s a bit muddled up. Wait, not those.’
He snatched the papers out of Simmons’ hand and tossed them onto the floor behind him.
‘You’ll have to share,’ smiled Edmunds. ‘This was one of the cases Wolf booked out of the archives – Stephen Shearman, fifty-nine, CEO of a failing electronics manufacturer. His son was a director of the company and committed suicide after a merger went bad or something … It’s not important.’
‘And this is relevant how?’ asked Vanita.
‘That’s what I thought as well,’ Edmunds enthused. ‘But guess who was responsible for that merger falling apart – Gabriel Poole Junior.’
‘Who?’ asked Baxter, speaking for the group.
‘He was the heir to the electronics corporation who disappeared from his hotel suite – puddle of blood, no body.’
‘Oh,’ said Baxter in feigned interest.
They all had far more important things to be doing.
‘This one,’ said Edmunds, unpacking another cardboard box. ‘His daughter was killed by a bomb …’ He pointed to another box. ‘… planted by this man, who managed to suffocate inside a locked cell.’