Ragdoll

by Daniel Cole

  ‘What have I missed?’ asked Wolf.

  ‘We sent officers to babysit Garland, Ford and Lochlan. We’re only concerned with the ones in London.’

  ‘Because why challenge me to stop him then kill someone on the other side of the country?’

  ‘Aye, something like that. Other forces are sitting on people with the same names, but they’re not our concern,’ said Finlay. ‘Your guess is as good as ours about where Vijay Rana is. He was an accountant living in Woolwich before vanishing off the radar five months ago when the taxman realised he’d been fiddling his numbers. He was on Fraud’s to-do list, but it doesn’t look like they made much headway. I’ve asked for the information to be sent over anyway.’

  Wolf checked his watch.

  ‘He’s got thirty-eight hours till Wednesday. Let’s hope, for his sake, we find him first. Who are the others?’

  ‘Garland’s a journalist, so no shortage of enemies there. We’ve got two Ashley Lochlans; one’s a waitress and the other’s nine years old.’

  ‘But we’re keeping officers with both of them, right?’ asked Wolf.

  ‘Of course. And Ford’s a security guard, I think, or he was until he went off on long-term sick.’

  ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘There isn’t one. Not yet. The priority’s just been finding them and securing their houses for the time being.’

  Wolf was lost in thought for a moment.

  ‘What you thinkin’, lad?’

  ‘Just wondering who Vijay Rana screwed over with his dodgy bookkeeping and thinking how it would be a very clever way of finding someone who had disappeared: getting us to find him for them.’

  Finlay nodded.

  ‘He might be better off if we leave him under whatever rock he’s crawled beneath.’

  ‘He might.’

  Wolf was distracted by the stack of paperwork that Finlay had brought in with him. The top page included a photograph of a middle-aged woman in what was presumably supposed to be provocative lingerie.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  Finlay chuckled.

  ‘Your groupies! The Wolf Pack, they call themselves. Now you’re a marked man, all the nutters have come out of the woodwork to proposition you.’

  Wolf flicked through the first few sheets, shaking his head in disbelief, while Finlay sorted through the other thirty pages, disregarding the rejects onto the meeting room floor.

  ‘Nice touch!’ exclaimed Finlay. ‘This lass is wearing a genuine vintage “Uncage the Wolf” campaign t-shirt. I’ve still got mine. Don’t look like that in it, though,’ he muttered.

  Wolf supposed that he should have anticipated this. In the past, he had been disgusted as the vile and dangerous creatures he had hunted were inundated with mail mere days into their lifelong incarcerations. In the same way that he could assume certain traits while profiling a killer, he could almost picture these desperate pen pals: lonely, socially inept women, often previous long-term sufferers of domestic abuse, consumed by the mistaken belief that no one is truly broken, that they alone can fix these misunderstood victims of the law.

  Wolf was aware that this bewildering pastime was rife in the US where organisations actively encourage people to communicate with one of the 3,000 inmates on death row. What was the allure? he wondered. Revelling in the tragic, movie-esque finale to a relationship? Those with commitment issues empowered by the enforced timescale? Or simply wanting to be a part of something bigger and more interesting than their own mundane lives?

  He knew better than to voice his opinions openly to the public, schooled to react indignantly to any controversial truth or observation for fear of falling victim to the wrath of political correctitude. However, they were shielded from the aftermath of these people’s crimes. It was Wolf who had to stare into the unremorseful eyes of these vicious predators. He wondered how many of these ill-informed people would still put pen to paper had they soaked their shoes in the crime scene bloodbath, had they consoled the tattered families left in their pen pals’ wake.

  ‘Oooh, look at this one!’ shouted Finlay, a little too excitedly, so that several heads in the main office turned round.

  He held up a photograph of a beautiful blonde woman in her twenties wearing a fancy-dress policewoman outfit. Wolf paused, lost for words, as he gazed at the picture that would not have looked out of place on the front cover of a men’s magazine.

  ‘Bin it,’ he finally said, deciding that one narcissistic sociopath vying for his attention was probably enough.

  ‘But … Missy … from Brighton …’ Finlay was reading through the rest of the email.

  ‘Bin it!’ snapped Wolf. ‘How do I play this video?’

  Finlay moodily threw the emails into the bin before taking a seat beside Wolf and pressing a button on the remote.

  ‘You’re gonna regret that if you’re dead in two weeks,’ he mumbled.

  Wolf ignored the comment and focused on the large television screen. The grainy footage was from a camera high above the Complete Foods factory floor. A pair of double doors were propped open with a box, and in the background was the depressingly monotonous sight of the low-paid staff working robotically towards their next repetitive strain injury.

  Suddenly a figure appeared at the doors. It was undoubtedly a man. Edmunds had estimated his height to be fractionally over six feet, having measured the doorway after reviewing the tape. The man was wearing a stained apron, gloves, hairnet and a face mask like the other employees, despite coming in from outside. He walked with confidence, hesitating only for a moment as he decided in which direction to head. Over the next two minutes, he disappeared in and out of shot behind the boxes packaged up for delivery. He then strolled back out through the double doors and into the night without anybody noticing.

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ sighed Finlay.

  Wolf asked him to rewind and they paused on the best shot of the killer that the pixelated footage would allow. They stared at the covered face. Even after the tech team cleaned it up, there would not be much to go on. He looked to be bald beneath the hairnet, close-shaven at least. The only truly discerning feature was the apron, already covered in what looked like dried blood.

  Naguib Khalid should have been impossible to reach, which would suggest that his murder took the most planning. Wolf had assumed, apparently incorrectly, that the killer had murdered him first before pursuing easier targets. He wondered which of the other five victims had already been dismembered at this early stage and, more importantly, why?

  CHAPTER 9

  Monday 30 June 2014

  6.15 p.m.

  Edmunds held the two tiny bottles up to the light. One declared itself to be ‘Shattered Pink’; the other, ‘Sherwood’. Even after three minutes of intense scrutiny, the two nail varnishes looked unequivocally identical to one another.

  He was standing in the labyrinthine make-up department that dominated the ground floor of Selfridges. The haphazardly positioned stands acted like an archipelago against an ocean, a first-line defence, taking the full force of the wave of customers flooding in off Oxford Street and filtering them out across the store. He had passed several of the same disorientated faces, people who had become separated from their companions and left to wander aimlessly between the counters of eyeliners, lipsticks and Uplight Face Luminiser Gels that they had no intention whatsoever of purchasing.

  ‘May I help you with anything?’ asked an immaculately painted blonde, dressed all in black, whose generous layers of foundation could not cover up the judgemental sneer she wore as she took in Edmunds’ flyaway hair and purple nails.

  ‘I’ll take these two,’ he said happily, smearing purple glitter across her arm as he handed them over.

  The woman smiled sycophantically and tottered back round to the other side of her tiny empire to charge Edmunds an extortionate amount.

  ‘I love Sherwood,’ she told him, ‘but I adore Shattered Pink.’

  Edmunds stared down at the tw
o indistinguishable items sitting pathetically at the bottom of the cavernous paper bag that she had handed him. He made sure to put the receipt straight in the back of his wallet, in the hope that he would be able to claim it back on expenses; if not, he had just blown half of his grocery budget on sparkly nail polish.

  ‘Is there anything else I can help you with today?’ the woman asked, reverting back to her former frosty self now that the transaction had been completed.

  ‘Yes. How do I get out of here?’

  Edmunds had lost sight of the exit over twenty-five minutes earlier.

  ‘Aim for the escalators and you’ll see the doors right in front of you.’

  Edmunds wove through to the escalator, only to find himself confronted with the equally daunting fragrance department. He nodded to a man that he had passed on three separate occasions back in make-up and then began his own futile attempt to escape the store.

  This unexpectedly lengthy detour on his way home had been due to a development in the case earlier that morning. Once the field team had completed their work at the crime scene, the Ragdoll had been transported back to Forensic Services in the early hours of Sunday morning. This had been a painstaking process due to the importance of preserving the exact posture and weight distribution on each of the various body parts during transport. Ceaseless testing, examination and sample-collecting had taken place throughout the night, but finally, at 11 a.m. Monday morning, Baxter and Edmunds had been permitted access to the body.

  Without the surreal haze of the nocturnal crime scene, the incoherent cadaver had been even more repugnant when lit by the unflattering fluorescent light of the crime lab: carelessly cut slabs of flesh rotting slowly in the chilly examination room. The thick stitches connecting them, which had seemed so otherworldly in the heightened atmosphere of the dimly lit apartment, were exposed as no more than violent mutilations.

  ‘How’s the case coming?’ Joe had asked. He was the forensic medical examiner, who Edmunds thought resembled a Buddhist monk with his all-in-one scrubs and shaved head.

  ‘Fantastic, just finishing up,’ replied Baxter sarcastically.

  ‘That well, huh?’ grinned the man, who was obviously accustomed to, and appeared to rather enjoy, Baxter’s waspish manner. ‘Perhaps this’ll help.’

  He handed her a chunky ring in a clear evidence bag.

  ‘My answer’s a resounding no,’ she said, making Joe laugh.

  ‘It’s from the male left hand. Partial print, not the victim’s own.’

  ‘Whose then?’ asked Baxter.

  ‘No idea. Might be something, might not.’

  Baxter’s excitement faded.

  ‘Anything you can tell us to get us started?’

  ‘He,’ Baxter’s eyebrows arched, ‘or she,’ then fell, ‘definitely had fingers.’

  Edmunds let out an involuntary snort which he tried to pass off as a cough when Baxter glared at him.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s more,’ said Joe.

  He pointed to the black male leg, which was decorated with a large operation scar. He held an X-ray up to the light. Two long bright-white bars glowed incongruously against the faded skeleton beneath.

  ‘Plates and screws supporting the tibia, fibula and femur,’ Joe explained. ‘This was a big operation. “Do we operate? Do we amputate?” kind of big. Someone’ll remember doing this.’

  ‘Don’t these things have serial numbers or something?’ asked Baxter.

  ‘I’ll certainly look; although, whether they’ll be traceable or not will depend on how long ago the op was done, and this looks like old scarring to me.’

  While Baxter studied the X-rays with Joe, Edmunds knelt down to examine the female right arm, which he had noted was pointing creepily towards their reflection in the glass window, more closely. Each of the five perfectly painted nails glittered in a dark purple varnish.

  ‘The index finger’s different!’ he blurted suddenly.

  ‘Ah, you noticed,’ said Joe happily. ‘I was just coming to that. It was impossible to tell in the dark apartment, but in here you can clearly see that a different nail polish has been used on that one finger.’

  ‘And that’s helpful how?’ asked Baxter.

  Joe collected an ultraviolet lamp from the trolley, switched it on, and ran it along the length of the graceful arm. Dark bruises appeared and then vanished again as the purple light passed over them, the greatest accumulation occurring on or around the wrist.

  ‘There was a struggle,’ he said. ‘Now look at these nails: not a single chip. These were painted on afterwards.’

  ‘After the struggle or after death?’ asked Baxter.

  ‘I’d say both. I couldn’t find any sign of an inflammatory response, which means she died shortly after the bruising was sustained.

  ‘… I think the killer is speaking to us.’

  Engineering works had closed a small but important section of the Northern line. Finding the prospect of an overcrowded bus less than tantalising, Wolf took the Piccadilly line to Caledonian Road and embarked on the twenty-five minute walk back to Kentish Town. It was not a particularly picturesque route once he had passed through the park and lost sight of the handsome clock tower, its detailing ripened in a charming green rust; however, the temperature had dropped to a tolerable level and the late-evening sunshine had brought a calming air over this part of the city.

  The unproductive day had been spent fruitlessly searching for Vijay Rana. Wolf and Finlay had travelled to Woolwich and found the family home in a predictably uninhabited state. The pitiful front garden looked considerably more impressive than it should have, as the long grass and opportunistic weeds encroached across the pathway that led up to the front door. A mountain of unopened post and takeaway leaflets was just visible through a small, lead-lined window.

  The information that Fraud had cobbled together had barely been worth the read, and Rana’s harassed partner at the accountancy firm had openly admitted that if he had known where his missing partner was hiding, he would have killed him himself. The only promising discovery had been the distinct absence of information on Rana before 1991. For some reason he had changed his name. They hoped if either the Royal Courts of Justice or The National Archives could provide them with a previous name, a multitude of past sins would direct them towards Rana’s current whereabouts.

  As Wolf approached his block of flats, he spotted a dark blue Bentley with a personalised number plate parked illegally outside the main entrance. Crossing the road in front of the car he registered the silver-haired man sitting in the driver’s seat. He reached the front door and was searching for his keys when his mobile went off. Andrea’s name flashed up. He promptly put it back in his pocket and then heard the thud of an expensively heavy car door slamming behind him.

  ‘You’re ignoring my calls,’ said Andrea.

  Wolf sighed and turned to face her. She looked immaculate again, having probably spent the majority of the day in front of a television camera. He noticed that she was wearing the necklace that he had given her for their first wedding anniversary but decided against mentioning it.

  ‘I spent most of Saturday night locked up,’ she continued.

  ‘That’s what happens when you break the law.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Will. You know as well as I do that if I hadn’t reported it, someone else would.’

  ‘You know that for certain?’

  ‘You’re damn right I do. Do you think if I hadn’t broadcast it the killer would just have gone: “Oh, she didn’t read it, that’s disappointing. I’d better forget this whole chopping people up death list thing”? Of course not. He’d have contacted another news channel and probably made room for me somewhere in his busy schedule.’

  ‘Is that your idea of an apology?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to apologise for. I want you to forgive me.’

  ‘You have to apologise first, in order for someone to forgive you. That’s how it works!’

  ‘Says who?’


  ‘I don’t know – the etiquette police?’

  ‘Because that’s a thing.’

  ‘I’m not getting into this with you,’ said Wolf, amazed at how effortlessly they could fall into old habits, even now. He looked past Andrea to the elegant car idling at the kerbside. ‘When did your dad get a Bentley?’

  ‘Oh, piss off!’ she snapped, taking him by surprise.

  Slowly it dawned on him why this had offended her.

  ‘Oh my God. That’s him, isn’t it? Your new squeeze,’ he said, wide-eyed as he strained to see through the tinted window.

  ‘That is Geoffrey, yes.’

  ‘Oh, Geoffrey is it? Well he certainly seems very … rich. What is he, like sixty?’

  ‘Stop looking at him.’

  ‘I can look at what I want.’

  ‘You are so immature.’

  ‘On second thoughts, you probably shouldn’t squeeze him too hard: you might break something.’

  Despite herself, the corners of Andrea’s mouth curled up.

  ‘Seriously though,’ said Wolf quietly, ‘is he really the reason you left me?’

  ‘You were the reason I left you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘We wanted to invite you out for dinner. We’ve been sitting out here for almost an hour and I’m starving.’

  Wolf made an unconvincing groan of disappointment.

  ‘I’d love to, but I’m actually just heading out.’

  ‘You have literally just got back.’

  ‘Look, I appreciate the gesture, but do you mind if I pass tonight? I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do and only one day left to find Rana and—’ Wolf realised his slip of the tongue as Andrea’s eyes widened in interest.

  ‘You don’t have him?’ she asked in astonishment.

  ‘Andie, I’m tired. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’ve gotta go.’

  Wolf left her on the doorstep and entered his building. Andrea climbed back into the passenger seat of the Bentley and closed the door.

  ‘Waste of time,’ said Geoffrey knowingly.

  ‘Far from it,’ replied Andrea.