‘It is so sad to see you like this: muzzled, kicked into submission. This …’ Masse gestured up at Wolf, ‘this isn’t the real William Fawkes, weighing up his options, making sensible decisions, actually showing some sense of self-preservation. The real William Fawkes is all fire and wrath, the man that they had to lock away, the man who came to me for vengeance, the man who tried to stamp a killer into this very floor. The real William Fawkes would choose to come down here to die.’
Wolf was unsettled. He did not understand what Masse was trying to achieve. Cautiously, he made his way to the exit.
‘Ronald Everett was quite a large man,’ said Masse conversationally as Wolf pushed against the door. ‘Thirteen pints of blood maybe? More? He accepted that he was going to die with gentlemanly dignity. I punctured a small hole in his femoral artery and he talked to me about his life as he bled out onto the floor.
‘It was nice … calm.
‘Approximately five minutes in, he began to show the first signs of hypovolaemic shock. I would hazard a guess at twenty to twenty-five per cent total blood loss. At nine and a half minutes he lost consciousness, and by eleven minutes his exsanguinated heart had stopped beating.’
Wolf paused when he heard Masse hauling something across the floor.
‘I only mention this,’ he called up to Wolf from somewhere below the gallery, ‘because she’s already been bleeding for eight.’
Wolf slowly turned back round. A smear of bright red blood painted their route across the courtroom floor as Masse dragged Baxter behind him, pulling her along by a fistful of her hair. He had gagged her with the silk summer scarf that she always kept in her bag and her own handcuffs bound her hands together.
She looked weak and startlingly pale.
‘I must admit, I’m improvising here,’ Masse called up to Wolf as he heaved her further into the room. ‘I had other plans for you. Who would ever have thought she would come looking for us alone? But she did, and I now see that this is the only way it could have ended.’
Masse dropped her to the floor and looked back up at Wolf, whose expression had turned dark, in anticipation. Any apprehensions that he had harboured regarding the faux demon or the weighty weapon that he wielded had dissipated.
‘Ah!’ said Masse, pointing the sword up at Wolf. ‘Finally! There you are.’
Wolf burst out through the doors and towards the stairs.
Masse knelt down over Baxter. Up close, the scar tissue pulled taut and wrinkled as he moved. She tried to fight him off as he took hold of her arm. She could smell his foul breath on the air and the concoction of medicines and ointments that he had slathered on to soothe his angry skin. He replaced her elbow just to the right of her groin and pressed down until the bleeding slowed.
‘Just like before. Keep the pressure on.’ He dribbled over her as he spoke. ‘We don’t want you running out too quickly.’
Masse stood back up and watched the doors:
‘And so our hero comes to die.’
CHAPTER 36
Monday 14 July 2014
12.06 p.m.
Wolf could hear voices in a distant part of the building: the firefighters being pulled out ahead of the Armed Response Unit’s search of the premises. He leapt down the final three stairs and ran across the magnificent hall, already feeling a tightness in his chest and the stab of a painful stitch in his side. He focused on the courtroom door, trying desperately to ignore the churchlike setting: a white-robed Moses looked down on him from his seat at the foot of Mount Sinai; carved cherubs were frozen in flight, scattered around stained-glass windows and the likenesses of archbishops, cardinals and rabbis preaching the word of God, corroborating Masse’s claims.
There is a God. There is a Devil. Demons walk among us.
Wolf stepped in the shallow crimson puddle seeping out from beneath the doors as he burst through into the courtroom. Baxter was still at the far end, below the dock, bleeding into wood already saturated with Khalid. He made a movement towards her but Masse stepped between them, sword raised.
‘That’s far enough,’ he said.
His distorted grin was repulsive.
Baxter felt lethargic. Her damp trousers were cold where they clung against her skin. She was struggling to keep pressure on the artery and felt as though she might fall asleep every time she blinked. She had cut deep scratches into her face while attempting to remove the gag that Masse had tied so tightly round her head and knew that she could not spare the blood to try again.
She could feel the gun pressing into the small of her back, just out of her handcuffed reach. Masse had missed it. She went for it once more but as she tentatively lifted her elbow away from her leg, the constant trickle of blood began to pump frighteningly in time to her racing heart.
She reached around to the right, but her left arm restricted her movement. Her fingertips brushed tantalisingly against the metal. She arched her back, willing her arm to dislocate, to break, anything to gain a few millimetres more.
The puddle that she was sitting in had grown to twice the size in just a few seconds. She cried out in frustration and then replaced her elbow to stem the bleeding, having just traded seven seconds of fruitless exertion for several minutes of life.
Masse had draped his long coat over one of the benches. Beneath it, he wore the same shirt, trouser and shoe set that Wolf had discovered in Goldhawk Road: his camouflage. Wolf was still breathing heavily as the two substantial men came face to face for the second time. What little advantage he gained in height and bulk, Masse more than made up for in muscle.
In their haste to evacuate, somebody had left an expensive-looking fountain pen on top of a stack of papers. Wolf shifted position, covertly picking up the makeshift metal weapon as Masse continued.
‘I knew you were there yesterday, in Piccadilly Circus.’
Wolf’s anger gave way to surprise.
‘I wanted to see whether you could do it,’ said Masse. ‘But you are weak, William. You were weak yesterday. You were weak the day you failed to finish Naguib Khalid, and you are weak now. I can see it in you.’
‘Believe me, if you hadn’t moved—’
‘I didn’t,’ interrupted Masse. ‘I watched you panic. I watched you run past me. I wonder, did you really fail to see me standing directly in front of you or do you think that perhaps you just didn’t want to?’
Wolf shook his head. He tried to remember the moment that he had lost sight of Masse in the crowds. He would have had the courage to finish him. Masse was manipulating him, making him doubt himself.
‘So, you must see the futility in this?’ Masse continued softly. He paused. ‘Because I like you – and sincerely, I do – I am going to offer you a choice that wasn’t made available to any of your counterparts: you can get on your knees, and you have my word I’ll make it clean. You won’t feel a thing. Or we can fight this out and things will inevitably turn … unpleasant.’
Wolf adopted the same hungry look that Masse wore so well.
‘Predictable as ever,’ sighed Masse, raising his sword.