Baxter needed to stop the bleeding. She had not dared try while Masse had been watching. As things stood, she was at least able to control it. Had he realised her intentions, he would have ensured that there was no way to stem the blood loss.
Without moving her elbow out of position, she was able to unbuckle her belt with her shackled hands. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the material out from under her and wrapped it around her leg, just above the wound. She pulled it tighter and tighter, the pain excruciating, until the bleeding was no more than a trickle once more.
She was still losing blood, but now she had regained the use of her hands.
Masse took a step towards Wolf. Wolf stepped back. Another. Wolf unscrewed the surprisingly weighty lid from the fountain pen, placing his thumb just below the nib, holding it out in front of him as if wielding a knife.
Masse surged forward, swinging the lethal antique wildly. Wolf stumbled backwards as it struck the wall beside him and Masse swung again, the blade slicing through the air just inches from Wolf’s face, the force of his own swing knocking him off balance. Wolf risked a fleeting step forward and jabbed the pen in and out of Masse’s upper arm before retreating back to a safe distance.
Masse cried out and assessed the damage, calmly prodding the fresh puncture wound in fascination.
This moment of composure passed like the eye of a storm as, incensed, he swung again. Wolf backed into the corner, instinctively turning his body away from the attack; however, the glancing blow was agonising where it connected with his left shoulder. Throwing himself at Masse, he stabbed at him repeatedly, sinking the metal deeper and deeper into his sword arm until a weakened blow knocked him to the floor. He heard the pen drop and disappear out of sight.
Both men paused for a moment. Wolf was on the floor, holding his dropped shoulder in pain, while Masse watched in fascination as a stream of dark red blood trickled out from under the cuff of his shirt. He showed no sign of fear or pain, only surprise at the amount of damage that his unworthy opponent had managed to inflict. He attempted to lift the heavy weapon again but could barely raise it off the floor and was forced to seize it with his left hand instead.
‘Get on your knees, Lethaniel,’ said Wolf with a smirk as he struggled back to his feet. ‘You have my word I’ll make it clean.’
Wolf saw Masse’s expression twitch with the insult. He stole a glance towards Baxter, as did Masse.
‘I wonder, would you fight quite so hard to save her if you knew?’
Wolf ignored the baiting comment and took a step closer to her before Masse blocked his path again.
‘If you knew that her name was far more deserving of a place on our list than most,’ Masse continued.
Wolf was confused.
‘Detective Inspector Chambers was not a brave man. He begged. He whimpered. He pleaded as he proclaimed his innocence.’
When Masse shot Baxter a taunting smile, Wolf saw an opening and lunged at him. Masse blocked the attack but stumbled backwards into one of the benches.
Baxter watched as Masse’s long coat slid off the bench, spilling the contents of her workbag over the floor with it. Her eyes flicked from the bloodstained nail scissors, which Masse had used to incapacitate her, to her mobile phone and then to the small set of keys sitting beside the table leg.
‘It transpires that, for Emily’s sake,’ continued Masse, ‘in order to preserve your friendship, he had allowed you to think that he had sent the letter to Professional Standards …’
Wolf looked uneasy.
‘… the letter that brought down your entire case against Khalid.’ Masse watched with eager amusement as Wolf stared at Baxter in disbelief. ‘I’m afraid we killed the wrong person.’
Baxter could not meet his eye. But suddenly, she looked up and let out a muffled cry.
He saw Masse approaching too late. With no other option, Wolf charged towards him, blocking his wild swing, bringing them both down heavily onto the hard floor. The sword slid beneath one of the benches as Wolf mercilessly struck Masse time and time again, the damage that he was inflicting masked by the man’s already devastating injuries.
When Masse reached up in desperation and grasped Wolf’s shattered shoulder, feeling the broken bone grating beneath the skin, it only enraged him further, feeding the attack against him. Wolf cried out in hatred and fury, the roar deafening to the ears of his floundering enemy. He drove his head down into Masse’s ruined face with brutal force, shattering his nose and robbing his thrashing limbs of fight.
Masse stared up helplessly, incapacitated by the ferocity of the onslaught. His eyes were wide, pleading – afraid.
Baxter had crawled across the courtroom floor, staining the wood behind her. She reached for the scissors and cut the painful gag off her face. Weakening by the second, she clawed her way towards the keys.
Wolf reached into his pocket and removed the shoelaces. He doubled them up for extra strength, yanked his defeated opponent’s head up off the floor and wrapped them tightly around his throat. In a final flurry of adrenaline, Masse kicked out viciously and pulled his head away.
‘You’re only making this harder on yourself,’ Wolf told the writhing man.
He spotted the fountain pen beneath a table and got to his feet to collect it.
‘So tell me,’ said Wolf, spitting a mouthful of Masse’s blood onto the floor as he calmly returned with the bloodied weapon, ‘if you’re the Devil, what does that make me?’
Masse’s feeble attempts to drag himself away were thwarted when Wolf crouched over him and, without hesitation, drove the pen through his right leg, mirroring the wound that he had dared inflict on Baxter. He silenced Masse’s cries of pain by wrapping the laces back around his neck and pulling them as taut as his injured shoulder could endure.
Relishing the sound of the desperate splutters, he felt the pathetic attempts to fight him off grow weaker. He watched the blood vessels bursting in the whites of Masse’s eyes and pulled tighter still, until his arms were shaking with the effort.
‘Wolf!’ shouted Baxter, struggling with the keys as she lost the dexterity in her fingers. The room was spinning. ‘Wolf! Stop!’
He could not even hear her through his rage. He looked back down at Masse. The life was draining from his eyes. This was no longer self-defence – this was an execution.
‘That’s enough!’
There was a sharp click as Baxter raised the gun and pointed it at his chest. He stared at her in bewilderment and then looked down at the bloodied heap beneath him as if seeing it for the first time.
‘I said, that’s enough.’
CHAPTER 37
Monday 14 July 2014
12.12 p.m.