by Daniel Cole
“What’s the target?!” Rouche demanded.
Baxter could see the utter desperation on her colleague’s face, the realization that his one chance to redeem himself was slipping away from him:
“He can’t tell us if he’s dead, Rouche! Help me.”
Sat on the wet floor of the filthy Underground toilets, Green’s last remaining Puppet began to weep to the relentless hum of the helicopter circling overhead.
He had never felt so alone.
He could hear them above him, scurrying around the entrance as they repositioned themselves, their overladen footfalls like the padding feet of a hound whose quarry had gone to ground.
He cried out in frustration and pulled at the chunky vest that he had been entrusted with, the wires and components pressing uncomfortably into his back.
Despite all that Dr. Green had told him, had taught him, he had allowed himself to be herded into a deserted street and, like a timid animal, had taken the only refuge available to him . . . had taken their bait.
“Aiden Fallon!” an amplified voice boomed, all distortion and malice. “You are completely surrounded.”
Aiden put his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t block out the voice:
“Remove the vest and come out slowly or we will have no choice but to force detonation. You have thirty seconds.”
Aiden looked around the rancid room that would serve as his tomb, an appropriate memorial for someone who had failed as utterly as he. He only wished that he could see Dr. Green one last time, to tell him that he was the greatest friend he’d ever had and that he was so sorry for letting him down.
“Fifteen seconds!”
Aiden slowly got to his feet, wiping his hands on the fabric of his trousers.
“Ten seconds!”
He caught sight of himself in the dirty mirror. He really was the most pathetic excuse for a man. Maintaining eye contact with his reflected twin, a smile formed on his face as he tugged on the short cord dangling from his chest . . . and felt the fire engulf him.
“Rouche, help me here!” winced Baxter, shoving more of her jacket sleeve into the life-threatening wound.
There was an explosion somewhere in the distance.
Rouche staggered away from Baxter and their dying prisoner to stare out over the trees, the spotlight abandoning them as the helicopter was rerouted toward an orange glow in the sky. He wore an expression of confusion and disbelief, unable to comprehend that they had failed, that he’d never had any greater purpose . . . that there really was no plan.
All any of them could do was watch the sky fall and catch snowflakes.
“Rouche!” Baxter called as she struggled to stem the bleed beneath her hands. Her earpiece distorted with overlapping transmissions. “Rouche! We don’t know what’s happened yet.”
“What more could we have possibly done?” he asked, his back still to her.
She couldn’t be sure whether he was talking to her or to somebody else.
Anxiously, she watched him raise and lower the gun in his hand.
“Rouche,” said Baxter as calmly as she could over the confusion crackling in her ear, her sleeve sodden and cold with Keaton’s blood. “I need you to leave . . . for me . . . please.”
He turned back to her with tearful eyes.
“Just go, Rouche . . . Walk away,” she pleaded.
She glanced nervously at the weapon in his hand.
She couldn’t lose him, couldn’t lose another friend to the undeniable allure of a glorious and violent retribution.
“Are you going to kill me, Rouche?” Keaton wheezed weakly, having heard Baxter use his name.
“Keep quiet!” Baxter hissed. She needed to call in for an ambulance but couldn’t move her hands any more than she could interrupt the urgent radio traffic.
“Do you honestly think I care?” Keaton continued, slurring a little from the blood loss. “I’ve achieved what I needed to in this world. There is nothing left for me here.”
“I said, shut up!” Baxter snapped, but Rouche was already making his way back over to them.
“My family are with God, and wherever I’m heading, it can only be better than here,” Keaton told them. He looked up at Rouche expectantly as he kneeled down beside him.
Sensing the situation rapidly deteriorating, Baxter risked removing a hand from Keaton’s chest to push the transmit button on her radio:
“DCI Baxter requesting an emergency ambulance to St. James’s Park. Over.”
She looked across at Rouche with imploring eyes as she returned her hand to the wounded man’s chest.
“I wonder if He’s here . . .” Keaton spluttered on noticing the silver cross dangling around Rouche’s neck, “. . . right now . . . listening to us,” he said, watching the night sky for any sign. “I wonder if He’s finally paying some fucking attention!”
Rouche couldn’t help but recall the literal translation of Azazel’s name: Strength over God.
He forced it from his thoughts.
“A year and a half . . .” coughed Keaton, half laughing, half crying. He adjusted position in the snow to make himself more comfortable. “A year and a half I visited that hospital room to sit at my son’s side, much as you are now. A year and a half I quietly prayed for help . . . but it never came. You see, He doesn’t hear you when you whisper, but He can hear me now.”
Rouche watched the man beneath him dispassionately.
They were alone, the park silent bar the tinny buzzing of Baxter’s earpiece, Keaton’s labored breathing, and the wind.
“Rouche?” Baxter whispered, unable to decipher the look in his eyes.
Slowly, he reached around and unclipped the metal crucifix from around his neck, the silver cross spinning on its chain as he held it out.
“Rouche?” she repeated. “Rouche!”
He looked at her.
“We still don’t know what’s happened, but whatever it was, none of this is your fault. You do know that, don’t you?” she asked.
To her surprise, he smiled as if a crippling weight had been lifted from his shoulders:
“I know.”
He let the necklace slip through his fingers and fall into the discolored snow.
“Are we OK here?” she asked him, her eyes flicking back down to Keaton.
Rouche nodded.
“Call it in,” she told him with a relieved sigh, her friend proving, yet again, just how strong he really was.
Looking down at the man one final time, he removed his phone from his pocket and struggled to his feet.
As he began to walk away, snippets of MI5’s transmissions filled Baxter’s ears.
“Rouche, I think it’s OK!” she called after him excitedly, the bleed between her fingers slowing. “They’re saying they got him! They’re saying it was contained! . . . One fatality . . . the bomber!”
Unable to help herself, Baxter smiled down at Keaton triumphantly:
“Did you hear that, you fucker?” she whispered. “They got him. He’s dead.”
Keaton rested his head back and closed his eyes in defeat, habit prompting him to recite the words bestowed to him on too many occasions during his cursed time on this earth: “I guess God just needed another angel.”
Rouche froze midstride.
Baxter hadn’t even realized that she’d removed her bloody hands from his chest, her eyes blurring with tears—Curtis’s beautiful face all she could think of.
She never heard the crunch of snow underfoot.
She didn’t feel the warm blood spray across her face in time to the muffled gunshot, didn’t understand why the body should shake so violently . . . as three more bullets tore through it.
Rouche was standing over Keaton, tears streaming down his face.
She looked up at him blankly as he pulled the trigger again . . . and again . . . and again . . . until he’d reduced the corpse to no more than a fleshy mess in the dirty snow, into nonexistence, until the weapon clicked with empty rounds.
“T
here is no God,” he whispered.
Baxter just sat there, staring openmouthed at her friend, who took a few unsteady steps and then collapsed to the ground.
A sigh of relief escaped Rouche’s broken lungs.
He could hear Baxter calling his name as she scrambled over to him.
But he just smiled sadly, raised his head to the falling heavens . . .
. . . and stuck out his tongue.
Epilogue
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
9:56 A.M.
“. . . is . . . no . . . God.”
Agent Sinclair stormed past the mirrored window on his way out of the interview room.
“Nice job. Thank you for your cooperation, Detective Chief Inspector. Now, we’re done,” Atkins sighed, dabbing at his sweaty forehead while he collected up his things.
Baxter waved him off sarcastically as he hurried out after the enraged FBI agent, an hour of shameless arse-kissing no doubt ahead of him.
“Boss as diplomatic as ever,” scoffed Saunders, grinning back at Vanita and the man in the corner as an important-looking American saw himself out of the cramped viewing room.
Vanita groaned:
“Why can’t she just be civil? Just for twenty bloody minutes? Am I really asking that much?”
“Apparently so.” Saunders shrugged.
The man in the corner nodded in agreement.
“Don’t you start. You shouldn’t even be in here,” she told him, massaging the building headache in her forehead.
Baxter brusquely dismissed the consultant psychiatrist, assuring her that she was absolutely fine and had no interest in “talking anything through.”
Apparently forgetting that there might be, and indeed were, people still watching, she placed her head in her hands and slumped down onto the table.
“And where do you think you’re going?” Saunders asked the man in the corner, who was no longer in the corner but making his way out of the room.
“I want to see her,” he replied simply.
“I’m not sure you’re totally grasping this whole ‘under arrest’ thing,” said Saunders.
The man looked to Vanita, who appeared almost as tired and resigned as Baxter did.
“We had an agreement,” he reminded her.
“Fine,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s not like this mess could get any worse.”
The man smiled cheerfully, turned, and stepped out into the corridor.
“We’re all gettin’ fired for this,” said Saunders, watching him leave.
Vanita nodded: “Yes. Yes, we are.”
Baxter heard footsteps approaching, neither the regimented march of the American nor the lazy shuffle of Atkins.
She groaned into her hands.
A metal chair scraped across the floor, and then she felt the flimsy table rock as this latest annoyance took a seat opposite her. She let out an exasperated sigh and lifted her head, her breath escaping her as violently as if she had been kicked in the gut.
The imposing man smiled awkwardly at her, deliberately leaning back in his chair a little, just in case she decided to take a swing at him, his dark, wavy hair longer than she had ever seen it, but the bright blue eyes unchanged—able to look right through her, just as they had when he’d walked out of her life.
Baxter could only stare blankly at him, incapable of even processing another devastating assault on her emotions.
“So . . . hey!” he tried casually, as though they’d seen each other only the previous day. He placed his handcuffed hands on the table between them as he attempted to come up with something profound to say, something to render the year and a half of silence trivial, something to restore her faith in him.
In the end, Wolf settled on:
“Surprise!”
Acknowledgments
I’m still not entirely sure what I’m doing but I am lucky enough to have a long list of very nice and supportive people looking after me. They are . . .
My family—Ma, Ossie, Melo, B, Bob, KP, Sarah, and Belles.
From C+W—My wonderful agent Susan Armstrong, Emma, Jake, Alexander, Dorcas, Tracy, and the much missed Alexandra.
From Orion—My editor Sam Eades for putting up with me, the cloud of vapey smoke that is Ben Willis, the best copy editor in the business Laura Collins, Claire Keep, Katie Espiner, Sarah Benton, Laura Swainbank, Lauren Woosey, and the rest of the Hachette team in the UK and around the world.
Last but not least, a sincere thank-you to all the readers for keeping me in a job and for your endless enthusiasm for these characters and their messed-up lives that I take so much pleasure in destroying. I don’t really do social media and certainly don’t do reviews but apparently you’re out there, so thank you!
An Excerpt from Ragdoll
SATURDAY 28 JUNE 2014
3:50 A.M.
Wolf groped blindly for his mobile phone, which was edging further across the laminate floor with every vibration. Slowly the darkness began to disassemble itself into the unfamiliar shapes of his new apartment. The sweat-sodden sheet clung to his skin as he crawled off the mattress and over to the buzzing annoyance.
“Wolf,” he answered, relieved that he had at least got that right as he searched the wall for a light switch.
“It’s Simmons.”
Wolf flicked a switch and sighed heavily when the weak yellow light reminded him where he was; he was tempted to turn it off again. The tiny bedroom consisted of four walls, a worn double mattress on the floor and a solitary light bulb. The claustrophobic box was sweltering thanks to his landlord, who still had not chased the previous tenant up for a window key. Normally this would not have been such an issue in London; however, Wolf had managed to coincide his move with one of England’s uncharacteristic heatwaves, which had been dragging on for almost two weeks.
“Don’t sound so pleased,” said Simmons.
“What time is it?” yawned Wolf.
“Ten to four.”
“Aren’t I off this weekend?”
“Not any more. I need you to join me at a crime scene.”
“Next to your desk?” asked Wolf, only half-joking as he hadn’t seen his boss leave the office in years.
“Funny. They let me out for this one.”
“That bad, huh?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line before Simmons answered: “It’s pretty bad. Got a pen?”
Wolf rummaged through one of the stacked boxes in the doorway and found a biro to scribble on the back of his hand with.
“OK. Go ahead.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a light flickering across his kitchen cupboard.
“Flat 108 . . .” started Simmons.
As Wolf walked into his ill-equipped kitchenette, he was dazzled by blue flashing lights strobing through the small window.
“. . . Trinity Towers—”
“Hibbard Road, Kentish Town?” Wolf interrupted, peering down over dozens of police cars, reporters, and the evacuated residents of the apartment block opposite.
“How the hell did you know that?”
“I am a detective.”
“Well, you can also be our number one suspect then. Get down here.”
“Will do. I just need to . . .” Wolf trailed off, realising that Simmons had already hung up.
Between the intermittent flashes, he noticed the steady orange light coming from the washing machine and remembered that he had put his work clothes in before going to bed. He looked around at the dozens of identical cardboard boxes lining the walls:
“Bollocks.”
FIVE MINUTES LATER Wolf was pushing his way through the crowd of spectators that had congregated outside his building. He approached a police officer and flashed his warrant card, expecting to stroll straight through the cordon; however, the young constable snatched the card out of his hand and examined it closely, glancing up sceptically at the imposing figure dressed in swimming shorts and a faded “93 Bon Jovi: Keep the Faith tour T
-shirt.
“Officer Layton-Fawkes?” the constable asked doubtfully.
Wolf winced at the sound of his own pretentious name:
“Detective Sergeant Fawkes, yes.”
“As in—Courtroom-Massacre Fawkes?”
“It’s pronounced William . . . May I?” Wolf gestured toward the apartment building.
The young man handed Wolf’s warrant card back and held the tape up for him to pass under.
“Need me to show you up?” he asked.
Wolf glanced down at his floral shorts, bare knees and work shoes.
“You know what? I think I’m doing pretty well by myself.”
The officer grinned.
“Fourth floor,” he told Wolf. “And be careful heading up there alone; it’s a shitty neighbourhood.”
Wolf sighed heavily once more, entered through the bleach-fragranced hallway, and stepped into the lift. The buttons for the second and fifth floors were missing and a brown liquid had dried over the remainder of the control panel. Using all of his detective skills to ascertain that it was either poo, rust or Coca-Cola, he used the bottom of his T-shirt, Richie Sambora’s face, to push the button.
He had been in hundreds of identical lifts in his time: a seamless metal box, installed by councils all over the country. It had no floor covering, no mirrors and no protruding lights or fixtures. There was absolutely nothing for the underprivileged residents to destroy or steal from their own life-enriching piece of equipment, so they had settled for spray-painting obscenities all over the walls instead. Wolf only had time to learn that Johnny Ratcliff was both “ere” and “a gay” before the doors scraped open at the fourth floor.
Over a dozen people were scattered along the silent corridor. Most looked a little shaken and eyed Wolf’s outfit disapprovingly, except for one scruffy man wearing a forensics badge, who nodded in approval and gave him a thumbs up as he passed. A very faint but familiar smell intensified as Wolf approached the open doorway at the end of the hallway. It was the unmistakable smell of death. People who work around such things quickly become attuned to the unique mix of stale air, shit, piss, and putrefying flesh.