Ragdoll

by Daniel Cole

  ‘You’ve gotta take back control!’ Ford said again, but this time Wolf understood his meaning.

  ‘If you do this … If you die, he wins!’ yelled Finlay. Crouched on the sloping roof, he clung desperately to the windowsill as more debris showered down over the street.

  ‘No. If I do this, I win.’

  Ford released his grip on the chimneystack and tentatively raised his trembling arms to balance himself. The traffic on the main road had come to a standstill as people abandoned their vehicles to watch this worldwide news unfold first-hand. The crowd below was quiet, except for the whispered bulletins from distracted reporters. The fire engine could only have been a few streets away.

  Finlay had shuffled halfway between the safety of the window and the chimney stack. There were shouts of horror from the spectators when Ford almost lost his balance. He closed his eyes with his arms outstretched and swayed unsteadily above the edge.

  ‘Things happen,’ he said, so quietly that only Finlay could hear.

  Then he let himself fall forward.

  Finlay scrambled across the space between them, but Ford had already dropped out of reach. Wolf could only watch helplessly, with the other two hundred people out on the road, as he plummeted silently past the windows and then dropped out of sight into the basement service area with a dull thud.

  For a moment, all was still – and then the army of reporters surged forward, overpowering the handful of police officers in their desperation to broadcast the first gruesome images of the aftermath. Wolf ran to the black metal fire escape and jumped the last six steps in his haste to reach Ford. As he approached the body, which had twisted unnaturally on impact, he realised he was standing in the copious amounts of blood that had leaked freely from the back of the man’s skull.

  Before he had even checked for a pulse, the sun had been chased off the fresh corpse by the shadows of the people above. Too traumatised to care that he was undoubtedly posing for yet another iconic photograph, Wolf sat back against the wall, surrounded by the growing puddle of blood, and waited for help.

  Three minutes later the service area was heaving with police officers and paramedics. Wolf got to his feet to climb back above ground, where he would be able to watch the fire service rescue Finlay from the rooftop, who was now clinging to the chimney stack for dear life. A trail of red footprints followed Wolf over to the metal stairs where he had to wait for an obese coroner to finish his protracted descent.

  Wolf put his hands in his pockets and frowned in confusion. He removed an unfamiliar piece of paper and cautiously unfolded it to reveal a single bloody fingerprint soiling the centre of the crumpled page. A hint of dark lettering was showing through from the other side. He turned it over to find a short message scrawled in the killer’s distinctive handwriting:

  Welcome back.

  He stared at it in utter bewilderment, wondering how long he had been carrying it around with him and how the killer had ever managed to—

  The wolf mask!

  ‘Get out the way!’ yelled Wolf as he shoved past the hefty man on the stairs.

  He surfaced out onto the chaotic road, searching frantically through the crowds for any of the protesters. Weaving between the people packing up equipment or leaving the scene now that the show was over, he reached the spot where the confiscated boards and banners had been thrown into a pile.

  ‘Move!’ he shouted at the dawdling pedestrians as he climbed on top of a bench for a better viewpoint.

  He spotted something on the floor in the centre of the road and pushed his way through to find the plastic wolf mask cracked and dirty from where it had been trampled into the concrete.

  Wolf stooped down to pick it up, knowing that the killer would still be there, watching him, laughing at him, revelling in the undeniable power that he had held over Ford, that he continued to hold over the media and, as much as Wolf hated to admit it, that he held over him …

  ST ANN’S HOSPITAL

  Wednesday 6 October 2010

  10.08 a.m.

  Wolf stared out at the sun-dappled gardens that surrounded the grand old building. The few patches of light that had managed to fight their way through the dying foliage above danced across the neat lawn to the choreography of a gentle breeze.

  Even the concentration required to enjoy the tranquil scene was taking its toll upon his fatigued mind. The medication that he was force-fed twice a day had left him in a perpetual half-waking state, not the warm uncoordination of an alcohol-provoked daze – more distant, apathetic, defeated.

  He understood the need for it. The common areas were populated with people suffering the entire spectrum of mental health disorders: those who had attempted suicide sharing tables with those who had killed, those spiralling into depression through feelings of worthlessness talking to others with delusions of grandeur. It was a recipe for disaster diluted through medication, although, Wolf could not help but feel, born out of a need to control rather than actually cure.

  He was losing track of the days and weeks, existing as he did in the surreal routined confines of the hospital, where he and his fellow detainees would roam the halls aimlessly in their pyjama-style scrubs, were told when to eat, when to wash, when to sleep.

  Wolf could not be positive how much of his current condition was attributed to the drugs and how much to the insomnia-induced exhaustion. Even in this semi-catatonic state he feared nightfall, the hush before the storm as the bruise-eyed night-shift workers escorted the patients back to their rooms and the confinement that brought out the true psychosis contained within the walls of the handsome old hospital. Every night he would wonder why these people struggled on, petrified of being left alone with themselves, their pathetic crying in the dark.

  ‘Open up,’ instructed the impatient nurse standing over him.

  Wolf opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to prove that he had swallowed the handful of brightly coloured pills.

  ‘You understand why we had to transfer you onto the secure ward, don’t you?’ she asked him, as if speaking to a child.

  Wolf did not answer.

  ‘If I can tell Dr Sym you’ve been better about taking your meds, I’m sure she’ll move you back.’

  When Wolf turned his attention back to the window she huffed and went off to annoy someone else.

  He was sitting in a quiet corner of the Rec Room, an almost perfect recreation of his sixth-form common room, complete with stackable bright orange school chairs. Table Tennis Man was growing increasingly irate, as he did every day at this time, somehow managing to lose his one-player match. The Two Pink Ladies, as Wolf knew them, due to the colour of their scrubs, were making simple models out of plasticine, and a group were occupying the tatty sofas surrounding the large television; he was vaguely aware of his name being mentioned, before a member of staff rushed over to replace the Mayor of London with SpongeBob SquarePants.

  Wolf shook his head in disbelief as he regarded the nursery-school scene before him, after what had been a particularly disruptive and violent night in the residential wing. One of the Pink Ladies cheerfully kneaded blood into her plasticine flower. Wolf winced as she continued, oblivious to the pain in her destroyed fingernails, presumably sustained while clawing frantically at an immovable door.

  He wondered whether he shared this trait with these people: the capacity for such extremes. He knew, deep down, that he would have killed Khalid in front of all those people, no matter what the consequences, any sense of self-preservation lost.

  He would have ripped him apart.

  Perhaps ‘normal’ people had more control over their emotions. Perhaps what he considered normal, in fact, wasn’t.

  His thoughts were interrupted when a tall black man in his mid-twenties got up from in front of the television and approached his table beside the window. Bar the few occasions when it had been absolutely inescapable, Wolf had avoided all contact with anybody since his incarceration. This had even extended to Andrea, who had given up on her attempts t
o call the hospital and had wasted a journey down there, only for him to refuse to leave his room.

  Wolf had seen the man around. He always wore bright red scrubs with bare feet. He had struck Wolf as being, in the main, reserved and thoughtful, which was why it came as such a surprise when he gestured to one of the plastic chairs and waited patiently for a reply.

  Wolf nodded.

  The man carefully lifted the chair back from the table and sat down. A faint smell of infection surrounded him as he held both hands out to Wolf, linked by the metal handcuffs that the staff equipped him with whenever he entered the communal areas.

  ‘Joel,’ the man said through a thick south London accent.

  Wolf used his strapped-up wrist as an excuse not to take his hand. Despite the man’s calm demeanour, he appeared unable to sit still, and Wolf could hear a foot tapping nervously against the floor beneath the table.

  ‘I thought I knew you,’ grinned Joel, pointing at Wolf with both hands. ‘Moment you stepped through that door, I said: “I know him”.’

  Wolf waited patiently.

  ‘When I saw what you did, I thought to myself: “This guy, he don’t just think that the Cremation Killer; he know.” Right? That be the freak who killed them girls. Right? And they just let him go.’

  Wolf nodded.

  Joel swore and shook his head.

  ‘You tried. You did the right thing going for him like you did.’

  ‘You know,’ started Wolf, speaking for the first time in weeks. His voice sounded different to how he remembered. ‘I appreciate the sentiment, but it would probably mean more had I not watched you whispering into a bowl of cereal all morning.’

  Joel looked mildly insulted.

  ‘A man with a god would know the difference between whispering and praying,’ said Joel accusingly.

  ‘And a man with his sanity would know the difference between a bowl of Coco Pops and his deity,’ quipped Wolf with an unconscious smirk. He suddenly realised how much he missed trading insults with his colleagues.

  ‘OK, OK. Be that way,’ said Joel as he got back up. ‘I’ll see you around, Detective.’

  Joel went to leave but paused and turned back to Wolf.

  ‘My grandpa used to say: “A man without enemies is a man without principals.”’

  ‘Wise words,’ nodded Wolf. He felt exhausted by their fleeting exchange. ‘But I’m guessing advice like that is also the reason you’re in here.’

  ‘Nah. I choose to be in here, don’t I?’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘As long as I’m in here, I’m alive.’

  ‘“A man without enemies …”’ Wolf recited thoughtfully.

  ‘Ain’t got no enemies left, Detective …’ said Joel, turning his back to Wolf and walking away, ‘… that’s the problem.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Wednesday 9 July 2014

  2.59 a.m.

  Edmunds’ watch beeped 3 a.m. He was sitting in the centre of a puddle of light spilling from a buzzing lamp that dangled down from the high ceiling of the Central Storage Warehouse. This was his fourth visit to the archives and he realised that he had started looking forward to these solitary nights.

  He found the perpetual darkness peaceful and the temperature-controlled climate pleasant: warm enough to remove his jacket yet cool enough to keep him awake and alert. As he took in another dusty breath, watching the particles spinning in the air around him, he felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of history buried there.

  It was like a game without an end. Inside each of the tens of thousands of identical cardboard boxes lay a puzzle waiting to be verified, or perhaps even solved for the very first time. It was easier to focus upon the challenge that they posed to him rather than the distressing realisation that each and every one of the uniform boxes represented a life lost, lives ruined, all lined up in a tidy row and enjoying the respectful silence like graves in a catacomb.

  The day’s events had confirmed his suspicions beyond any doubt. Yet again, the killer had known where to find his supposedly hidden target.

  Baxter was being naive.

  It was true that somebody at the embassy could have leaked Andrew Ford’s location; only, this had not been an isolated incident. This was now the fourth occasion on which they had been betrayed and, worse still, nobody but him could see it.

  He had lied to Tia again, telling her that he had drawn the short straw and been roped into a stakeout, thus buying himself another precious night with which to hunt the killer into the past. He was in there, somewhere in that enormous warehouse, Edmunds was sure of it, the first tentative steps of the monster that was now running towards them at full pelt.

  On Monday night he had stumbled upon an unresolved case from 2008 in which a home-grown Islamic fundamentalist had died inside a secure cell. No one had signed in or out of the building during the estimated time of death and the CCTV footage had corroborated this. The body of the otherwise healthy twenty-three-year-old had displayed signs of suffocation; however, there had been no other evidence to support this, and the death had eventually been accredited to natural causes.

  His Internet searches had also turned up the suspicious death of a marine on a military base. After Joe’s promising identification of the boot print, Edmunds had made a formal written request to the military police, asking them to disclose the entire case file, but was yet to hear anything back.

  He had spent the last hour sorting through the evidence of a murder that had happened back in 2009. The heir to a multinational electronics corporation had mysteriously vanished from a hotel suite despite two bodyguards sitting less than twenty feet away in the next room. Enough blood had been present at the scene to declare the young man dead, yet no body was ever discovered. There had been no useful fingerprints, DNA, or security footage for the police to even begin looking for a killer, which meant that there was nothing of use to Edmunds to link the case to the Ragdoll murders. He made a note of the date and packed the contents back inside the box.

  The cool air was keeping him going. He did not feel even remotely tired, but he had promised himself that he would leave by 3 a.m. at the very latest and get home for a couple of hours of sleep before work. He flicked back to his list of the five other cases that he had hoped to get through and sighed. He got to his feet, stacked the box back on the shelf and began the long walk down the shadowy aisle.

  As he neared the end of the high shelving units, he realised that the dates on the labels had reached December 2009, the month of the next murder on his list. He glanced down at his watch: 3.07 a.m.

  ‘One more,’ he told himself as he located the appropriate box and dragged it off the shelf.

  At 8.27 a.m. Wolf entered an uninviting block of flats on a run-down side road off Plumstead high street. He had given up on sleep again, mainly because he now had the unsettling image of the wolf mask to add to his list of reasons not to close his eyes for any length of time. The killer’s overconfidence had shaken him. It had been a risk to visit the embassy at all, reckless to join the protest that he had organised, and narcissistically self-destructive to have confronted Wolf as he had.

  Wolf recalled Edmunds promising them that the killer would not be able to resist coming in closer and closer as time went on, drawn by a burning desire to eventually get caught. He wondered whether the incident outside the embassy had been the killer’s plea for help, whether desperation, rather than arrogance, had driven his actions.

  He climbed the muddy stairs, trying to remember whether it had rained since the storms a week earlier. On the third floor, he pulled a peeling fire door open to access the yellowed corridor. There was no sign of the two police officers that should have been stationed outside Ashley Lochlan’s door.

  He approached Flat 16, which looked to have the only freshly painted front door in the building, and was about to knock when the two officers bumbled out into the corridor holding toasted sandwiches and cups of coffee. They were both startled to find the imposing detective sta
nding there.

  ‘Morning,’ said the female officer through a mouthful of bacon and toast.

  Wolf’s stomach grumbled.

  She offered him the other half of her breakfast, which he politely declined.

  ‘Know when you’ll be moving her?’ asked her youthful-looking colleague.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Wolf a little curtly.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,’ said the man quickly. ‘Quite the opposite actually – she’s an absolute delight. We’re going to miss her.’

  The female officer nodded in agreement. Wolf was surprised. The trusty set of stereotypes that had always served him so well had had him expecting a pyjamas-only, smoke-hazed, cat rescue on the other side of the door, yet the two officers were clearly in no hurry to leave.

  ‘She’s just jumped in the shower. I’ll show you in.’

  The female officer unlocked the front door and led him into the immaculate flat that smelled of fresh coffee and bacon. A warm breeze was blowing the net curtains across the colourful flowers on the living room table. The airy space had been tastefully decorated in pastel paints and real wood floors with matching work surfaces. Photographs covered an entire wall and baking apparatus had been left to dry beside the kitchen sink. He could hear water running in the next room.

  ‘Ashley!’ shouted the officer.

  The water stopped.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Fawkes is here to see you.’

  ‘Is he as handsome as he looks on the television?’ a soft Edinburgh accent called back.

  The officer looked awkward and then, to her horror, Ashley continued: ‘I agree he looks like he needs a good scrub before you could take him anywhere, but—’

  ‘He actually looks like he might fall asleep at any moment,’ the officer shouted over her.

  ‘Let him know there’s coffee in the kitchen when you show him in.’

  ‘Ashley …’

  ‘Yeah?’