by Daniel Cole
Green’s change of mood was verification that the Tube station was indeed the intended target.
“She means nothing to me.” Green shrugged quite convincingly.
“Really?” asked Saunders. “You know, I was the one who interviewed her the day we realized it was you.”
“One of you interviewed me,” said Green, speaking over him, meeting Baxter’s eye. “At the prison. That’s right. An agent . . . Curtis, wasn’t it? How’s she doing these days?”
Baxter’s back straightened. She clenched her fists.
Saunders swiftly continued: “I was the one who had to tell her what an evil piece of shit her brother really was. She didn’t believe it at first. She defended you passionately. It was . . . pathetic watching her belief in you crumble like that.”
The comment landed.
Green glanced at him before returning his gaze to Baxter: “You must have left her,” he said, watching her closely. “If you’re sitting here, to save yourself, you must have abandoned her in there.”
Baxter’s eyes narrowed. Her breathing quickened.
Saunders was also watching her. Should she lash out at Green, the interview would be over, and he’d be protected by the Met’s self-imposed red tape and army of crusading bureaucrats.
It had become a race to see who broke first.
“I know you’re not like the rest of them,” said Saunders. “You don’t believe in any of this. You’re doing this for a payday, aren’t you?”
Their handsome suspect gave them nothing:
“From what little I know of knife wounds,” Green spoke over him, “they very seldom kill instantly.”
Baxter’s hands were trembling with anger, her jaw set.
“So what was it?” Saunders shouted. “Money or their silence? Hang on. You’re not some sort of pedo or something, are you?”
“I don’t think she could have been dead when you left her. She wasn’t, was she?” smirked Green, taunting Baxter.
She got to her feet.
Realizing that his current angle wasn’t working, Saunders changed tack:
“Who’s Abby?” he asked. “Sorry. I should have said, who was Abby?”
For no more than a split second, Green’s eyes filled with emotion. He turned to address Baxter once more, but it was too late—Saunders had found his “in” and was going for the jugular:
“Yeah, your sister mentioned her. She died, right? What would she think about all this? I wonder. Think Annie would be proud of you? Think Annie would—”
“Abby!” Green yelled at him. “Her name is Abby!”
Saunders laughed:
“Honestly, mate, I couldn’t give a toss. Oh, wait . . . Unless you killed her?” He leaned forward in interest. “In which case, I’m all ears.”
“How fucking dare you,” spat Green, now a red-faced version of his former self, deep frown lines betraying his age. “Fuck you . . . both of you. I am doing all of this for her.”
Baxter and Saunders shared the briefest of glances, knowing how significant that aggravated admission could be, but Saunders wasn’t done yet:
“That’s all well and good—doing this as some form of fucked-up tribute to Amy . . .”
“Abby!” Green screamed again, spraying the table in spittle as he fought against his restraints.
“. . . but do you really think anyone’s gonna give a second thought to you or your dead bitch of a girlfriend after the bombs start going off?” Saunders laughed bitterly in Green’s face. “You’re nothing, no more than a distraction, a warm-up act for the main event.”
Both Baxter and Saunders held their breath, aware that he had just played his hand.
Slowly, Green leaned as close to Saunders as his handcuffs would permit. When he finally spoke, it was in a whisper tainted with rage and hate:
“Come see me on Tuesday, you smug piece of shit, ’cause I promise you—you are going to remember her name: A-B-B-Y.” He counted the four letters out on his fingers before sitting back in his chair.
Baxter and Saunders turned to one another. Without a word, they got up and hurried out of the room.
They had what they needed.
“I’d like to see MI5 try to tell us there’s no threat of another attack now,” scoffed Baxter as they marched across the office collecting up the team en route to the meeting room. “And find out where we are on the deceased girlfriend.”
“We’ve got a serious problem,” announced a detective the moment Baxter stepped through the door.
“Oh, but things were just going so well!” She could never remember the manly young woman’s name: Nichols? Nixon? Knuckles? She decided to play it safe: “Go ahead, Detective.”
“We’ve finished eliminating suspects in custody versus the self-deleting phone messages . . .”
“Suicide texts!” Techie Steve’s voice called from under a desk somewhere.
“Thirteen of Green’s Puppets remain unaccounted for.”
“Thirteen?” Baxter winced.
“And . . .” the woman continued guiltily, “of the Puppets processed so far, at least five of them have no prior history of mental illness and no record of ever visiting any psychiatrist, let alone one of our psychiatrists. It confirms that, as in New York, this thing is much bigger than just Green and his patients. We’ve only been focusing on a very small piece of the puzzle . . . Just thought you should know.”
Baxter made a sound: the combination of exhaustion, disappointment, and concern manifesting itself as a concise, but pathetic, squeak.
The woman smiled apologetically and took a seat.
“Hey,” whispered Saunders. “What did Knuckles want?”
It bloody was Knuckles!
“Just to piss on our fireworks,” sighed Baxter as she walked to the front of the room and brought the team up to speed.
Blake raised his hand.
“For Christ’s sake, Blake,” she shouted. “You’re a grown-up. Speak!”
“Would Green really have confirmed how many bombs they’re planning?”
“Makes sense—same as New York. Plus, Saunders got it out of him.”
“Oh.” Blake nodded, requiring no further explanation.
Chase looked blankly between them.
“He was provoked,” Blake explained.
“How’s facial recognition going?” Baxter asked the room.
“The City Oasis has sent their footage to us,” said one of the FBI tech team. “We’re comparing video between both hotels to ensure we haven’t missed anyone.”
“And the three people onstage with Green?” she asked.
“One was shot and killed while trying to escape.”
Baxter huffed.
“She pulled a knife on me!” one of Chase’s agents said defensively.
“Dr. Amber Ives,” the man continued. “Another psychiatrist and bereavement counselor. Numerous occasions for her to run into Green—seminars, mutual colleagues.” He checked his notes. “A second, who was with Ives, did manage to escape.”
Everyone looked accusingly at the FBI agent:
“There were a lot of people!”
“And the third?” asked Baxter, losing patience.
“Is being transferred here right now. Says he wants to make a deal.”
“Well, that’s progress,” said Baxter. “But continue working on the assumption he’s gonna give us shit all in the meantime.” She turned to Saunders. “Really great work in there,” she complimented him, before addressing Chase: “We’re done with Green. You can fight with MI5 over him now.”
Baxter hesitated on the threshold of Rouche’s private room in St. Mary’s Hospital as the snow fell heavily outside the window. For a split second, she was back inside the dark church watching the thin line appear across Curtis’s throat, her memories lured back there by Green’s taunts . . .
Rouche looked dead as he slept, his head hanging forward over his chest, where the weeping wounds bled through the bandages. His arms were positioned unnaturally, each
linked to a drip bag on a pole, the trailing tubes snaking up and off the bed like wires holding him in place.
His eyes flickered open and he smiled wearily at her.
She shook the image and walked toward the bed, tossing him the family bag of Crunchie Rocks she’d picked up from the newsagent’s in the foyer, a touching gesture, ruined only by the restricted movement in Rouche’s medicine-fed arms and his resultant shriek as the projectile landed dead center of his bloody bandages.
“Bollocks!” she gasped, rushing over to place them on the wheelie bedside-cupboard thing instead.
She picked up the remote control to turn down the Christmas movie, which she secretly recognized as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the similarities between their situations dawning on her as Albus Dumbledore imparted a grave warning to his students that their enemy’s greatest weapon was them themselves.
She hit the “mute” button and sat beside Rouche.
“So when are they letting you out?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” he told her. “They’ve got to pump me full of antibiotics until then so that I—and I quote—‘don’t die.’ At least I can breathe again now.”
Baxter looked at him quizzically.
“I had a rib poking into my lung,” he explained. “Since the prison.”
“Ah.” Baxter stared guiltily at the bandages wrapped around him.
“I’m gonna get some funny looks down at the pool now,” joked Rouche.
“Maybe they can do something,” said Baxter. “Skin grafts or something?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they can.”
He wasn’t very convincing.
“There are those people who transform tattoos into other things,” she suggested hopefully. “Get rid of exes’ names and stuff.”
“Yeah.” Rouche nodded. “They could make it say . . . Buppet?” He pulled a face.
“Puppies!” Baxter suggested, straight-faced, before they both burst out laughing at the absurd suggestion.
Rouche held his painful chest: “So what did you get out of Green?”
Baxter filled him in on their interview with the pseudo-leader and what they had gleaned from the captured doctor, Yannis Hoffman, who had provided them with complete details of his patients, three of whom were among the thirteen Puppets still at large. A medical doctor specializing in cancer and palliative care, he had been recruited by Alexei Green directly, whom he had believed to be the sole architect of the murders. Vitally, however, and earning himself the reduced prison sentence he’d been seeking, the doctor had confirmed an exact time for the attack: 5 P.M. Rush hour.
“And get this,” she added. “Green’s girlfriend was killed in the Norway terror attacks.”
If that revelation upset Rouche, he didn’t show it: “Motive?”
“Vulnerability,” Baxter corrected him.
“None of this was ever about the Ragdoll case?”
“Only to ensure that the entire world was watching,” said Baxter. “Just a very clever distraction, using some very vulnerable people, to set off some very big bombs. They used the worst parts of us against us, made possible by our own craving for bloodlust. And people haven’t been this excited since the Ragdoll murders.”
She’d clearly been thinking a lot since her interview with Green.
“It’s genius,” she continued. “I mean, who’s watching their back for someone sneaking up on them when they’re consumed with fighting one another? They made us kill ourselves.”
Chapter 33
Sunday, 20 December 2015
6:03 P.M.
The snowflakes glittered as they fell through the headlight beams of Baxter’s Audi. The car had picked up a fresh grating noise and been pulling to the right ever since taking a chunk out of the Oxford Street Superdrug earlier that afternoon. The first niggling doubts had set in regarding the likelihood of it passing its upcoming MOT.
Baxter switched off the engine. A sharp hiss of air escaped from under the hood, suggesting yet another fault to fix/cover up. Either that or the car was literally sighing in relief at completing this latest journey unscathed.
On spotting the group of sportswear-clad youths loitering at the entrance to the park (the morbidly obese one apparently wearing it ironically), she unplugged her satnav and tucked it under the seat. Gloves on. Hat on. She grabbed a bag from the passenger seat and crunched along the path to Edmunds’s maisonette.
She rang the doorbell. As she waited, she noticed a set of dead Christmas lights trailing down the brickwork that looked to have been severed in half. Down the street, a bottle smashed and laughter rang out over the quiet houses. She heard the sound of Leila crying before the hallway light came on and Tia struggled to unlock the front door one-handed.
“Merry Christmas!” Baxter smiled, making a real effort. She held up the bag of presents that she had collected from her flat on the way over. “Merry Christmas, Leila,” she cooed, reaching out to stroke the baby, much as she would Echo, while using the same silly voice she adopted to call him for his dinner.
Tia tutted and then disappeared back down the hallway, leaving Baxter stood on the doorstep like an idiot.
“Alex!” she heard Tia call, the sound coming from around the side of the property. Leila was still crying. “Alex!”
“Yeah?”
“Your girlfriend’s at the door. I’ll be upstairs,” she told him as Leila’s cries faded away.
A few moments later, Edmunds came rushing down the hallway, brushing snowflakes out of his hair.
Baxter was almost positive that the socially acceptable way to handle situations such as this was to pretend that she had heard nothing and then to drop in passive-aggressive comments about Tia whenever the conversation permitted.
“Baxter!” Edmunds smiled. “Why are you still out there? Come in.”
“What the hell’s her problem?” she blurted, unable to help herself.
He waved it off. “Oh, she thinks you’re a bad influence on me . . . and I missed a one-year-old’s birthday party or something this morning . . . and there was something else too,” he said cryptically as he closed the front door behind her and walked through to the kitchen, where the open back door invited the night inside.
She handed him the bag of gifts, only to receive an even larger one in return.
“Drink?” he offered.
“No . . . I shouldn’t stay,” she said, looking pointedly up at the ceiling, deciding to go down the passive-aggressive route anyway. “I just came round to . . . I just had to . . . I . . .”
Edmunds recognized the telltale awkwardness that preceded Baxter bestowing a compliment or praise.
“. . . I just wanted to say . . . thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You were looking out for me . . . like usual . . .”
There was more? Edmunds was astounded.
“. . . and you were brilliant today . . . like usual.”
“Actually,” said Edmunds, “I think it’s me who needs to thank you. Today . . . this last fortnight really has made me realize just how much I miss this. God, I miss it: the danger, the excitement, the . . . importance of it all. Tia’s pissed off with me, well, with us, because I kinda handed in my notice this afternoon.”
Baxter’s face lit up: “You’re coming back!”
“I can’t.”
She deflated.
“I need to have a life. I need to think about my family. But at the same time, I can’t waste away behind a desk in Fraud any longer either.”
“So . . . ?”
“I want to show you something.”
Confused, Baxter followed him outside and across the wedge of snow illuminated by the kitchen light to the rickety shed.
“Da-naaaa!” sang Edmunds proudly, gesturing to the in-no-way “da-naaaa”-worthy eyesore.
His enthusiasm dissipated with Baxter’s underwhelming reaction.
“Bollocks,” he said, realizing why the unveiling had n
ot earned the anticipated response. He stooped down to pick up the homemade sign. “Stupid bloody thing won’t stay up,” he explained, hooking it back on to the wood. “Da-naaaa!”
ALEX EDMUNDS—PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
He opened the flimsy door, which almost dropped off its hinges, to reveal the office he’d set up within. Lit by the cozy glow of a desk lamp, his laptop sat atop the work surface beside a printer and a cordless phone. An oil heater in the corner warmed the tiny space. There was a coffee machine, a kettle, a hose hooked over a bucket to form a makeshift sink, and even a “client seating area” (second stool).
“So what do you think?”
Baxter didn’t answer right away, taking another long look around the shed.
“It’s just temporary, of course,” Edmunds insisted when she failed to respond. “Just while I get myself set up and . . . Are you crying?”
“No!” replied Baxter, her voice cracking. “I just think . . . I think it’s perfect.”
“Oh my God! You are crying!” said Edmunds, embracing her.
“I’m just so happy for you . . . and it’s been such a hard couple of weeks.” She laughed, before bursting into tears.
Edmunds continued to hold her as she sobbed against his shoulder.
“Christ!” she said, her mascara smudged across her cheeks, laughing as she composed herself. “I’ve snotted on you. I’m so sorry! I’m gross.”
“You’re not gross,” Edmunds assured her.
It was a bit gross.
“Leila already dribbled food all over this top anyway,” he told her, pointing to it. In actual fact, he suspected that stain had also come from Baxter.
“‘Means something more to him,’” she said, wiping her eyes, reading one of the half-formed ideas scrawled onto the sheets of paper that littered the wooden wall behind him.
“Yeah,” said Edmunds, ripping the sheet down to decipher his own handwriting. “Puppet . . . Bait. Why carve those particular words into themselves and their victims?”
“A sign of loyalty?” suggested Baxter, still sniffing. “A test?”
“I’m sure his disciples see it that way—a brand of unity, of being a part of something, but I can’t help feeling that it means something else entirely to our . . . Azazel.” He used the name reluctantly. “Something personal.”