Slumping back into her chair, she opened the email from the call centre. She skimmed the list of irrelevant dates until she came across one from 11.05 a.m. that morning. She traced her finger across the screen to read the rest of the details. The call had been made by an investment banker, who immediately struck Baxter as being more reliable than the psychics and intoxicated homeless who constituted three quarters of the calls. The location: Ludgate Hill.
Baxter leapt to her feet and sprinted past Finlay before he could even ask her what she had found. She tore down the stairs towards the CFIT control room.
Wolf found it strange to witness such a relaxed and civilised affair in comparison to his experience on the Khalid trial. He gathered that the accused had pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not to murder. The trial was into its third day, not to determine the man’s guilt, only to decide just how guilty he was.
Ninety minutes into the proceedings, two of the people behind Wolf in the gallery crept out, disturbing everybody in the subdued courtroom as the door closed heavily behind them. The defence lawyer had just settled back into his speech when the first fire alarm went off in a distant part of the building. Like dominoes, other alarms triggered one by one, the wailing sound approaching like a wave until it flooded the quiet courtroom.
‘No, no, no! Out!’ ordered the same supervisor who had already kicked Baxter out once that morning.
‘Ludgate Hill. 11.05 a.m.,’ she said, out of breath.
The officer at the control board looked to his supervisor for instructions. When he reluctantly nodded, the man switched the screens to the current feed from the nearest CCTV cameras in order to access the recorded data.
‘Wait!’ shouted Baxter. ‘Wait! What’s happening?’
The screens were filled with crowds of people milling around aimlessly. Most were dressed in smart suits, and one woman was wearing a black gown and a wig. The officer typed hastily on another computer.
‘Fire alarm at the Central Criminal Court,’ he read seconds later.
Baxter’s eyes lit up, and she ran back out of the room without another word. The officer at the computer looked back to his supervisor in confusion.
‘Am I still doing this or not?’ he asked politely.
Baxter sprinted back up the stairs but slowed as she reached the door to the office. She walked calmly over to Finlay’s desk and knelt down to speak to him privately.
‘I know where Wolf is,’ she whispered.
‘That’s great!’ said Finlay, wondering why they were whispering about it.
‘He’s at the Old Bailey. They both are. It makes perfect sense.’
‘Don’t you think you should be telling someone more important than me?’
‘We both know what’s going to happen if I tell anyone Wolf and Masse are in the same building together. They’re gonna send every armed officer in London there.’
‘And so they should,’ said Finlay, already sensing where this was going.
‘Do you think Wolf’s gonna let anyone lock him back up?’
Finlay sighed.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Baxter.
‘So?’
‘So, we need to get in there first. We need to talk him down.’
Finlay sighed even more heavily.
‘I’m sorry, lass. I’m not going to do that.’
‘What?’
‘Emily, I … You know I don’t want anything to happen to Will, but he’s made his choices. I’ve got my retirement to think about … and Maggie. I cannae jeopardiase that. Not now. Not for him.’
Baxter looked hurt.
‘And if you think I’m letting you go in there alone—’
‘I am.’
‘No.’
‘I just need a few minutes with him and then I’ll call for backup. I swear.’
Finlay considered it for a moment.
‘I’m going to call it in,’ he said.
Baxter looked crushed.
‘… in fifteen minutes,’ he added.
Baxter smiled. ‘I need thirty.’
‘I’ll give you twenty. Be careful.’
Baxter gave him a kiss on the cheek and grabbed her bag off her desk. Finlay felt sick with worry as he started the timer on his watch. He watched her stroll past Vanita’s office before breaking into a run the moment she was clear of the doorway.
Wolf remained seated as the people behind and below gathered their belongings and evacuated in an orderly fashion. The man in the dock looked tempted to make a break for it but he was too indecisive and two security officers hurried inside to usher him out. After a straggling lawyer ran back to collect his laptop, Wolf was left alone in the famous courtroom. Even over the alarms, he could hear doors slamming and people being directed to their nearest fire exit.
Wolf wished that it was only a fire but suspected that it was something far more dangerous.
CHAPTER 35
Monday 14 July 2014
11.57 a.m.
After twenty solid minutes the alarms had ceased abruptly but survived as the ghosts of echoes reverberating endlessly around the Great Hall’s domed ceiling. As the ringing in Wolf’s ears slowly subsided, and the courtroom returned to an appropriate hush, a new sound grew out of the silence: a lone set of uneven footsteps approaching the courtroom doors. Wolf remained seated up in the gallery. He had to fight to keep his breathing steady, his knuckles blanching as he clenched his fists.
A hazy memory had chosen an inopportune moment to return: the glaring overhead lights illuminating a long corridor, the deafening ring of a phone, somebody answering. A patient? A nurse? He vaguely remembered them holding the receiver up to their ear. He wanted to call out to them, to warn them, despite himself, surrendering to the irrational, even if only for a moment.
It was the same fear that had taken him now.
He found himself straining to listen as the unhurried footsteps grew louder and jumped when a thunderous bang rattled the old doors violently against their frames.
There was a short pause in which Wolf did not dare breathe.
A worn hinge creaked somewhere below him and then he felt the vibration of a door swinging closed. Wolf watched the empty room with wide eyes as the footsteps returned and an imposing figure, dressed all in black, materialised from beneath the gallery. The deep hood of its long coat was pulled over its head. In his impressionable state, Wolf’s imagination ran rife: it was as if the Recording Angel herself had torn free of the building’s grand entranceway, amidst a shower of rubble and dust, to pass judgement upon him.
‘I must say,’ began Masse. Each syllable sounded as though it had to be ripped out of him. Spittle glistened in the artificial light as he spat his mutated words across the room. It was as if he had forgotten how to speak. ‘I am very impressed that you stayed.’
He passed between the benches, running his skeletal-white fingers along the polished surfaces and the assortment of items abandoned during the evacuation. Wolf found it deeply unsettling that Masse had not looked up at him, yet appeared to know precisely where he was. Wolf had chosen the courtrooms but began to worry that he was exactly where Masse wanted him.
‘“Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing”,’ recited Masse as he ascended the steps up to the judge’s bench.