‘I need to talk to you about something,’ said Edmunds.
Baxter dropped her bag to the floor with a heavy thud and perched on the desk to listen.
‘DC Edmunds,’ Vanita called from the doorway of her office. She was holding a folded piece of paper in her hand. ‘A moment?’
‘Uh-oh,’ said Baxter teasingly as he got up and walked towards the office.
Edmunds closed the door behind him and took a seat at the desk, where the letter he had typed at 4.30 a.m. that morning lay open.
‘I must say that I am surprised,’ she said. ‘Especially today, of all days.’
‘I feel that I have contributed everything that I possibly can to the case,’ he said, gesturing to the hefty file sitting beside the letter.
‘And what a contribution it has been.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You are sure about this?’
‘I am.’
She sighed: ‘I really do see a bright future for you.’
‘So do I. Just not here, unfortunately.’
‘Very well, I’ll submit the transfer paperwork.’
‘Thank you, Commander.’
Edmunds and Vanita shook hands and then he left the room. Baxter had been watching the brief exchange from where she had been loitering beside the photocopier, attempting to eavesdrop. Edmunds collected his jacket and wandered over to her.
‘Going somewhere?’ she asked.
‘Hospital. Tia was admitted overnight.’
‘Is she …? Is the baby …?’
‘I think they’re both OK, but I need to be there.’
He could tell that Baxter was struggling to balance her compassion for him and his family with her disbelief that he would abandon the team, abandon her, at such a critical time.
‘You don’t need me here,’ he assured her.
‘Has she,’ Baxter nodded towards Vanita’s office, ‘signed off on this?’
‘To be quite honest, I don’t really care. I just handed in a transfer request to return to Fraud.’
‘You did what?’
‘Marriage. Detective. Divorce,’ said Edmunds.
‘I didn’t mean … It’s not the case for everyone.’
‘I’ve got a baby on the way. I’m not going to make it.’
Baxter smiled, remembering her ruthless reaction to the news of his pregnant fiancée.
‘Then why don’t you stop wasting my time and just go back to Fraud?’ she recited with a sad smile.
To Edmunds’ surprise, she embraced him tightly.
‘Come on, I couldn’t stay if I wanted to,’ he told her. ‘Everyone in here hates me. You don’t turn on your own, even when they’re as guilty as sin, apparently. I’ll be on the phone if you need me for anything today,’ he said before reiterating sincerely: ‘Anything.’
Baxter nodded and released him.
‘I’ll be back at work tomorrow,’ he laughed.
‘I know.’
Edmunds smiled fondly at her, put on his jacket and left the office.
Wolf binned the kitchen knife that he had stolen from the bed and breakfast as he turned off Ludgate Hill. He could barely make out the clock tower of St Paul’s Cathedral through the lashing rain, which eased as he walked along Old Bailey, the street that gave the Central Criminal Court its famous nickname, the tall buildings providing a little shelter from the storm.
He was not sure why he had chosen the courtrooms when there were several other locations that held just as much significance to him: Annabelle Adams’ grave, the spot where they had found Naguib Khalid standing over her burning body, St Ann’s Hospital. For some reason the courts had felt right, the place where it had all started, a place where he had already come face to face with a demon and survived to tell the tale.
Wolf had let his dark beard grow out over the week and had donned a pair of glasses. The unrelenting rain had flattened his thick hair, which only enhanced the simple but effective, disguise. He reached the visitors’ entrance to the old courtrooms and joined the back of the long, sodden queue of people. From what he could gather from the loud American tourist in front, there was a high-profile murder trial taking place in Court Two. As the queue slowly grew behind him, he overheard several conversations involving his name and excited predictions on how the Ragdoll murders would end.
When the doors finally opened, the crowd shuffled obediently out of the rain and through the X-ray machines and security checks. A court official ushered the first group, which included Wolf, along the hushed hallways and deposited them outside the entrance to Court Two. Wolf had no option but to ask whether he could sit in on Court One instead. He had not wanted to draw attention to himself and was concerned for a moment that the official, surprised by the request, had recognised him, but she shrugged and escorted him to the appropriate door. She instructed him to stand with the other four people waiting outside the public viewing gallery. They all appeared to know each other and eyed him suspiciously.
After a short wait the doors were opened and the familiar smells of polished wood and leather wafted out from the room that Wolf had not set foot in since being dragged out, wrist shattered, covered in blood. He followed the others inside and took a seat in the front row, looking down over the courtroom.
The various staff, lawyers, witnesses and jurors filtered into the room beneath him. When the defendant was escorted into the dock, he heard movement behind him as his fellow spectators waved and gestured to the heavily tattooed man that Wolf could confidently predict was guilty of whatever he was being accused of just by looking at him. The room then got to its feet as the judge entered the court and took his lonely seat on the elevated bench.
Vanita had released photographs of Masse to the press after confirming that Edmunds’ evidence was accurate. His unmistakable ruined face was now being paraded on every news channel in the world. Usually the PR team had to beg the television studios to broadcast even a three-second glance at their photofits, so Vanita had wasted no time in capitalising on the unprecedented level of exposure. She smiled at the cliché: the killer’s own lust for notoriety precipitating his downfall.
Despite clear instructions to the public, the call takers had been inundated with hundreds of phone calls giving sightings of Masse dating back as far as 2007. Baxter had taken the job of checking through the updates every ten minutes and liaising with the CFIT officers. She was growing increasingly frustrated as time wore on.
‘Don’t these people bloody listen!’ she yelled, scrunching the latest printout into a ball. ‘Why would I give a toss whether he was in Sainsbury’s five years ago or not? I need to know where he is now!’
Finlay dared not say a word. An alert on Baxter’s computer went off.
‘Great, here comes another lot.’