Hangman (A Ragdoll Book), page 18
Baxter sighed heavily and finished off her wine:
‘I might head up. I need a shower after having all those people prodding at me.’
‘Need any help getting undressed?’ asked Curtis.
‘No. Thank you,’ frowned Baxter, as though she had just been propositioned. ‘I’ll manage.’
There was a knock at Curtis’s door.
‘I could use some help getting undressed,’ said Baxter, who was unable to see the grin on her colleague’s face because she was half in, half out of her shirt, which she’d managed to get stuck somewhere above her head.
‘Let me grab my key. I’ll come round,’ laugh-coughed Curtis, hurrying back into her room as voices filled the corridor.
‘What are you looking at?’ she heard Baxter snap at someone.
Curtis escorted her back to her room, where a British news station was quietly summarising the specifics of Parliament’s latest unpopular decision. After some manoeuvring, Curtis was finally able to free her. Embarrassed, Baxter covered herself with a towel.
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Bitch!’
Curtis looked stunned: ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Not you,’ Baxter clarified, her eyes on the television as she fumbled around for the remote control to turn up the volume.
Being the middle of the night back in England, the same pre-recorded pieces were playing on a loop. It was the turn of Andrea Hall’s final report of the evening, which caught Baxter’s attention when her own tired face appeared on the large screens behind the stylish newsreader. The reporter’s trendsetting red hair had developed a striking blonde streak, which would no doubt be replicated by women all over the country before lunchtime.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Andrea, getting choked up. ‘Of course, as many of you will know, Detective Chief Inspector Baxter and I are very close personal friends …’
‘Bitch!’ Baxter repeated, seething, while Curtis remained sensibly silent.
‘… I, along with the rest of the team here, wish her a very speedy recovery following this “altercation” with a suspect.’ Andrea took a deep breath and moved on with the stoic professionalism one would expect of someone who didn’t actually give a toss.
‘OK. Let’s speak to Commander Geena Vanita of the Metropolitan Police … Good evening, Commander.’
Baxter’s superior appeared on the screens in front of a generic backdrop of London:
‘Good evening, Ms Hall.’
All too aware of the ambitious journalist’s ability to make a bad situation worse, Vanita had clearly decided it safer to negotiate the minefield of an interview herself.
‘Would you say you’re a religious woman, Commander?’ blurted Andrea right out of the starting gate.
‘I …’ The look on Vanita’s face suggested the interview had already veered out of her comfort zone. ‘If we could just stick to the—’
‘I’m presuming from the lack of update that you still have no solid leads regarding these horrific murders – to all appearances, the work of a single twisted individual and yet carried out by people with no apparent connection to one another?’
‘Well … we’re still looking into—’
‘Azazel.’
‘I beg your—’
‘You’ve heard Pastor Jerry Pilsner Junior’s theory, I assume?’
‘Of course,’ replied Vanita, managing to complete her two-word sentence. It had been almost impossible to avoid the fanatical man as he popped up on every television show that would have him.
‘And?’
‘And …?’
‘He has a rather unconventional explanation for what’s occurring out there.’
‘He does.’
‘May I ask whether the police are giving any credence to his claims?’
Vanita smiled:
‘Absolutely not. That would be a disgraceful misuse of vital resources.’
Andrea laughed and Vanita visibly relaxed on screen.
‘Would it, though?’ asked Andrea, lost in exaggerated thought. ‘I mean, here, as in the US, religious institutions of all faiths have been seeing record attendance this past week.’
Vanita’s expression changed as she foresaw the trap that the journalist was manoeuvring her towards:
‘And the Metropolitan Police respect these people’s—’
‘Are they foolish to believe in something, Commander?’
‘Not at all, but—’
‘So you’re now saying that the “fallen angel” theory is a valid branch of the investigation?’
Poor Andrea seemed awfully confused.
‘No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying …’ Vanita was floundering.
‘I’m no detective,’ Andrea went on, ‘but isn’t there some possibility, at least, that these murders are inspired by the Bible and perhaps even the notion of one of God’s angels fallen from grace?’
Vanita froze while she calculated the path of least damage.
‘Commander?’
‘Yes … No. We—’
‘Well, which is it?’ Andrea threw her hands up in exasperation. ‘Surely the police would want to look into every—’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Vanita resolutely. ‘We are looking into that possibility.’
Suddenly, the camera pulled back, leaving the newsreader sat centre stage, the wall of monitors stretching out several metres in either direction.
‘Oh no,’ whispered Baxter, sensing a trademark Andrea Hall moment of sensationalist brilliance approaching.
The screens behind the news desk flickered and buzzed theatrically, obliterating Vanita’s image and replacing it with an enormous set of tattered black wings, framed to look as though they had sprouted out from the award-winning reporter as she continued:
‘There you have it,’ Andrea told her global audience, ‘the Metropolitan Police hunting fallen angels.’
‘What is she talking about?’ asked Curtis.
‘This is what she does,’ replied Baxter as she watched Andrea’s animated mantle shed black feathers.
‘But this is absurd!’
‘Doesn’t matter – not when she’s saying it … Here it comes,’ said Baxter, bracing herself.
‘… So join me, Andrea Hall, tomorrow morning from six a.m. as we discuss every bizarre and terrifying turn in what the police are now calling … “the Azazel murders”.’
‘No!’ Baxter groaned despondently. She switched off the television and shook her head.
‘Are … are you all right?’ Curtis asked softly.
‘I’m fine,’ replied Baxter, remembering that she was wearing a towel and pulling it up to hide a little more skin. ‘I’m just going to go to bed.’
There was an awkward pause as she waited for the woman to leave her in peace. Instead, Curtis took a seat at the desk in the corner of the room.
‘I was actually hoping for a chance to speak to you alone,’ she said.
Baxter hovered in the bathroom doorway, trying to hide how uncomfortable she was feeling. She would have felt self-conscious standing half dressed in front of Thomas, let alone attempting to hold a conversation with a woman she had only recently met.
Curtis continued obliviously: ‘It’s probably irrelevant anyway now that we know the counselling lead is solid, but I don’t feel comfortable keeping it from you. The forensic pathologist found some irregularities in Glenn Arnolds’s bloodwork.’
Baxter tried to look surprised at the news, despite being able to see the corner of the document in question poking out from the folder on the desk.
‘Basically, he wasn’t taking his antipsychotic medication. In their place, he’d been taking others that made his mental state worse. For reasons … this didn’t get shared with you, and I apologise for that.’
‘OK. Thanks for telling me,’ smiled Baxter. An emotional exchange while standing in her bra was too much for her. She just wanted it to be over. ‘Well, I think I might …’ she said, gesturing to the shower.
‘Of course.’ Curtis got up to leave.
Baxter was afraid that she might attempt to hug her on the way out and physically cringed when it inevitably happened.
‘We’re a team, right?’ smiled Curtis.
‘We certainly are,’ agreed Baxter, slamming the door in her face.
‘Was getting thrown through a table not enough of a hint to piss off back home?’ whispered Lennox as she and Curtis headed into the field-office meeting room. She had just spotted Baxter trudging in ahead of them.
A young agent entered the room with the stack of printouts she had requested:
‘Would you mind handing these out, Agent …?’
‘Rouche.’
‘Rooze?’
‘For Christ’s sake! Pick someone else,’ snapped Lennox.
Once everyone had taken their seats, she dived straight into the first item on the agenda, pointedly making no mention of Baxter’s numerous injuries.
At the front of the room, Rouche’s whiteboard of killers had grown an additional column:
‘Footprints from Brooklyn are identical to those taken at the Bantham house,’ Lennox told the room. ‘Ballistics came back a match. Plus this is the first instance of an MO being repeated. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t think the deaths of these two men were part of the plan. Dead Puppets. No Bait. This is somebody acting out of desperation, somebody tying up loose ends. Anything to add to that?’ she asked, looking to Rouche and Curtis.
‘Only that this “somebody” is no professional: Baxter gave him a good fight, and the three rounds he unloaded into East only did the job through blood loss, not because they hit any vital organs,’ said Rouche, ‘which certainly backs up the desperation theory.’
‘Can’t be a coincidence that as soon as we start showing an interest in these people, they wind up dead,’ said Curtis.
‘No. It can’t,’ agreed Lennox. ‘Speaking of which, our repeat killer: we’ve got an approximate height and weight, along with a vague description of “Caucasian male, brown eyes”.’
Baxter ignored the subtle jibe in the word ‘vague’.
‘Who did the apartment East was staying in belong to?’ someone asked.
Lennox flicked through her pages of paperwork:
‘A … Kieran Goldman. Apparently he and East were friends, and the property was sitting empty while he raised the funds to renovate it.’
‘So we’ve got nothing?’ asked the same officer. ‘Unless Forensics come back with a name, we’ve got nothing?’
‘Far from it,’ said Lennox. ‘Now we know the identity of the person masterminding this. Now we finally know who’s holding the strings.’
‘We do?’
A room of blank faces waited for her to continue.
‘I give you our Azazel …’ Thanks to Andrea Hall, the name was being adopted by more and more journalists every minute, to the point where even the FBI were now referring to the case as if it were the work of a body-swapping fallen angel.
Curtis’s heart sank when Lennox held up a photograph of their missing British psychiatrist. Not only had she killed an innocent man, now she had come face to face with the FBI’s most wanted, flirted with him like an idiot schoolgirl and let him be on his way.
‘Alexei Green,’ stated Lennox. ‘Green made five separate trips across the Atlantic to visit East and Bantham in the last year alone. As we already know, he was Dominic Burrell’s prison counsellor. What we didn’t know before was that the cleaning company our cop-killing arsonist, Patrick Peter Fergus, worked for had been contracted to service Green’s offices, giving Green plenty of opportunities to recruit, manipulate or persuade him through unofficial channels.’
‘Green’s motive being … what exactly?’ asked Baxter.
Lennox shot her daggers but answered professionally: ‘We’re still looking into that. But Green is the link between all of our Puppets. This is him, people. Apprehending Alexei Green has got to be our number-one priority.’
‘I’m not convinced,’ said Baxter. ‘Involved: definitely. Coordinating: why?’
‘I agree,’ Rouche backed her up.
‘Do you?’ asked Lennox impatiently. ‘Perhaps this will change your mind: after we interviewed him, East made a single phone call during the taxi ride back to Prospect Park. Anybody want to hazard a guess as to who he called?’
Nobody did, suspecting that it was safer to remain quiet.
‘You got it: Alexei Green. East had gone out of his way to keep himself and his family hidden. He had done a good job of it too, until he placed his trust in the wrong person. He phones Green for advice. Half an hour later, someone turns up on his doorstep to murder him.’
Rouche was confused:
‘If Green’s still using his phone, why can’t we find him?’
‘He isn’t. It was a burner, and the call was too brief to trace anyway.’
Rouche was even more confused:
‘So how do we know it even belonged to Green?’
‘We were listening in on the call,’ shrugged Lennox. ‘Do you really think we would let our most promising lead just walk out of here because he flashed a fancy lawyer at us?’
Rouche was impressed by the special agent in charge’s underhanded tactics. She had put on a convincing show at the time, but he now recalled Ritcher’s displeasure that he and East had been separated from their belongings.
‘The evidence is mounting: Alexei Green is holding all the strings, and we’re going to throw everything we’ve got into finding …’ Lennox trailed off on seeing the distracted faces of her audience. She followed their gaze out through the windows to the main office, where people were rushing about frantically.
She opened the meeting-room door and caught a young officer as he jogged by:
‘What’s happening?’
‘We’re not sure yet. Something about a body in a—’
Every phone in the office seemed to go off at once. Lennox hurried over to the nearest desk and answered, her eyes growing wide as she listened attentively:
‘Curtis!’ she shouted.
The special agent jumped to her feet, Baxter and Rouche following her out.
‘Times Square Church, off Broadway!’ Lennox barked without further explanation.
As they obediently hurried out, they could hear Lennox shouting orders across the room:
‘Can I have everybody’s attention? We have just been alerted to a major incident …’
CHAPTER 21
Tuesday 15 December 2015
10.03 a.m.
No one had spoken a word as they sped across the city with Curtis behind the wheel. The NYPD radios had not paused for breath as flustered transmissions cut over one another, and the dispatchers sent more and more resources to the scene every time a unit came clear from another call. What little information the officers at the church had been forced to pass over the open channel had been chilling:
‘… bodies everywhere …’
‘… strung up from the walls …’
‘… Everyone’s dead.’
Curtis had to mount the pavement to get through the gridlocked traffic as they drew nearer to West 51st Street. Two blocks out, a young officer waved them through the hastily organised road closure on Broadway. He dragged a flimsy plastic barricade across the icy sludge, opening up the deserted street for them. Curtis accelerated towards the crowd of police cars abandoned across the junction ahead, their flashing blue lights fanning out in all directions.
They skidded to a stop outside Paramount Plaza, as close as they could get to their destination, and ran the rest of the way on foot. Baxter was convinced they were heading in the wrong direction as she scanned the uniform buildings for anything resembling a church, exhaust-stained façades lining both sides of the street. She was even more confused when she followed Curtis and Rouche through the doors of a grand old theatre.
The ornate 1930s lobby was an uneasy fusion of decadence, messages assuring that all one really needs in life is God, and police officers wearing traumatised expressions, suggesting that perhaps God was having an off-day.
A set of doors stood open, allowing glimpses into the auditorium beyond. Baxter could see torchlights sweeping across a golden ceiling and the top of a blood-red curtain, drawn closed as if in anticipation of a show.
She followed her colleagues through the doorway.
Just three steps into the magnificent hall, they stopped.
‘Oh my God!’ whispered Curtis, while Rouche regarded his surroundings in utter disbelief.
Baxter pushed between them but immediately regretted doing so. The old picture-house-turned-theatre, reborn a church, had gone through a final metamorphosis, a depraved mutation: a living manifestation of hell on earth. She felt light-headed as her eyes drank in the scene before her. She had forgotten the feeling, the same plunging reaction that she had experienced on first laying eyes on the Ragdoll suspended in front of those large windows in that filthy Kentish Town apartment.
Countless wires crisscrossed overhead, running from stage to balcony, from ceiling to carpeted floor, ornate wall to ornate wall – a steel spiderweb hanging above the tiered rows of plush red theatre chairs. Bodies like trapped insects, twisted into unique and yet disturbingly familiar contortions, unnatural and deformed, naked and scarred.
In a daze, Baxter led her colleagues further into the auditorium … further into hell.
The exploring torches threw ominous shadows across the walls, distorted likenesses of disfigured subjects, and a hushed murmur emanated from the dozens of police officers already inside as they weaved between the horrors. Nobody was giving orders or pulling rank, presumably because, much like Baxter, no one had any idea what to do.
A roving torchlight passed over a body above them, the beam reflecting brightly off the dark skin. Confused, Baxter drew closer, an eerie creaking sound becoming louder as her eyes ran the lengths of the bent limbs, contorted more violently than the others, fractured in on themselves.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked a passing officer, adopting an appropriate stage whisper.
Pleased to have somebody to tell him what to do, he shone his light skywards …
