Tuesday, 8 December 2015
8:53 P.M.
“Hello? Sorry I’m so late,” called Baxter from the hallway as she kicked off her boots and entered the living room. A variety of delicious smells drifted in on the cold breeze coming from the kitchen doorway, and the inoffensive sound of whichever singer-songwriter Starbucks had been promoting that week crooned out of the iPod speaker in the corner.
Four places had been set at the table, the flickering tea lights lending the room an orangey glow that emphasized Alex Edmunds’s flyaway ginger hair. Her gangly ex-colleague loitered awkwardly, empty beer bottle in hand.
Although tall herself, Baxter had to stand on tiptoes to embrace him.
“Where’s Tia?” she asked her friend.
“On the phone to the babysitter . . . again,” he replied.
“Em? That you?” called a well-spoken voice from the kitchen.
Baxter remained quiet. She was far too exhausted to get dragged into helping with dinner.
“I’ve got wine in here!” the voice added playfully.
That tempted her into the showroom-perfect kitchen, where several top-of-the-range pans were bubbling away under the muted light. A man wearing a smart shirt beneath a long apron presided over them, giving them an occasional stir or burst of heat. She walked over and planted a quick kiss on his lips.
“I missed you,” said Thomas.
“You mentioned something about wine?” she reminded him.
He laughed and poured her a glass from an open bottle.
“Thanks. I need this,” said Baxter.
“Don’t thank me. Courtesy of Alex and Tia.”
They both raised their glasses to Edmunds, standing in the doorway, and then Baxter jumped up onto the work surface to watch Thomas cook.
They had met at rush hour, eight months earlier, during one of London’s recurrent, but unfailingly crippling, Tube strikes. Thomas had intervened when an enraged Baxter had unreasonably attempted to arrest one of the workers picketing for better pay and safer working conditions. He had pointed out that by restraining the hi-vis-clad gentleman and following through on her threat to force him, against his will, to walk the six miles back to Wimbledon with her, she would technically be guilty of kidnap. At which point she had arrested Thomas instead.
Thomas was a gentle and honest man. He was handsome in a manner as generic as his taste in music and was over ten years her senior. He was secure. He knew who he was and what he wanted: a tidy, reassuringly quiet, comfortable life. He was also a lawyer. It made her smile to think of just how much Wolf would have hated him. She often wondered whether that was what had attracted her to him in the first place.
The smart town house serving as the venue for the dinner party belonged to Thomas. He had asked Baxter several times over the previous couple of months to move in with him. Although she had slowly started to keep some of her possessions there, and they had even redecorated the master bedroom together, she had point-blank refused to give up her flat over Wimbledon High Street and had kept her cat, Echo, there as a constant excuse to return home.
The four friends sat down to enjoy dinner together, exchanging stories that had grown less accurate but more amusing with age and expressing intense interest in the answers to the most mundane questions regarding work, the correct way to cook salmon, and parenthood. With Tia’s hand in his, Edmunds had spoken animatedly about his promotion at Fraud and reiterated several times how much more time he could now spend with his growing family. When asked about work, Baxter neglected to mention the visit from her overseas colleagues and the unenviable task that awaited her in the morning.
By 10:17 P.M. Tia had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Thomas had left Baxter and Edmunds to talk while he cleared up in the kitchen. Edmunds had swapped to wine and topped up their glasses as they chatted over the dying flickers of the tea lights.
“So how are things at Fraud?” she asked quietly, glancing back over to the sofa to ensure that Tia was definitely asleep.
“I told you . . . great,” said Edmunds.
Baxter waited patiently.
“What? Things are good,” he said, crossing his arms defensively.
Baxter remained silent.
“They’re OK. What do you want me to say?”
When she still refused to accept his answer, he finally smiled.
She knew him far too well.
“I am so bored. It’s not that . . . I don’t regret leaving Homicide.”
“It sounds like you do,” suggested Baxter. She attempted to talk him into coming back every time they saw one another.
“I get to have a life now. I actually get to see my daughter.”
“It’s a waste, that’s all,” said Baxter, and she meant it. Officially, she had been the one to bring in the notorious Ragdoll Killer. Unofficially, it had been Edmunds who had broken the case. He alone had been able to see through the cloud of lies and deception that had blinded her and the rest of their team.
“I’ll tell you what—you give me a nine-to-five detective job and I’ll sign the paperwork tonight.” Edmunds smiled, knowing that the conversation was over.
Baxter backed down and sipped her wine, while Thomas crashed about in the kitchen.
“I’ve got to visit Masse tomorrow,” she blurted, as if it were an everyday occurrence to go calling on serial killers.
“What?” Edmunds spluttered up a mouthful of his half-price Sauvignon Blanc. “Why?”
He had been the only person she had trusted with the truth of what had happened the day she captured Lethaniel Masse. Neither of them could be sure how much Masse remembered. He had been subjected to a vicious beating and close to death, but she had always feared how much he had been aware of, how easily he could ruin her should his psychotic brain so decide.
Baxter told him about her conversation with Vanita and the two “special” agents, explaining how she had been seconded to accompany them to attend the crime scene in New York.
Edmunds listened silently, his expression becoming increasingly uneasy as she continued.
“I thought this was over,” he said when she had finished.
“It is. This is just another copycat like the others.”
He didn’t look so sure.
“What?” asked Baxter.
“You said the victim had the word ‘Bait’ carved into his chest.”
“Yeah?”
“Bait for who? I wonder.”
“You think that was meant for me?” asked Baxter with a snort, reading Edmunds’s tone.
“The guy has Wolf’s name and now, lo and behold, you’re being dragged into it.”
Baxter smiled affectionately at her friend.
“It’s just another copycat. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I always do.”
“Coffee?” asked Thomas, surprising them both. He was standing in the doorway drying his hands on a tea towel.
“Black, please,” said Edmunds.
Baxter declined, and Thomas disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Have you got something for me?” she whispered.
Edmunds looked uncomfortable. Glancing toward the open kitchen doorway, he reluctantly produced a white envelope from the pocket of his jacket, draped over the chair behind him.
He kept it on his side of the table as he tried, for the umpteenth time, to convince her not to take it from him.
“You don’t need this.”
Baxter reached for it and he pulled it away from her.
She huffed.
“Thomas is a good man,” he said quietly. “You can trust him.”
“You’re the only person I trust.”
“You’re never going to have anything real with him if you carry on like this.”
They both glanced at the doorway as they heard the rattle of ceramic against ceramic from the kitchen. Baxter got to her feet, snatched the envelope out of his hand, and sat back down just as Thomas entered the room with the coffees.
Tia was unrelentingly apologetic when Edmunds gently shook her awake just after 11 P.M. On the doorstep, while Thomas wished Tia good night, Edmunds embraced Baxter.
“Do yourself a favor—don’t open it,” he whispered in her ear.
She gave him a squeeze but didn’t respond.
Once they had gone, Baxter finished off her wine and pulled on her coat.
“You’re not leaving?” asked Thomas. “We’ve hardly seen each other.”
“Echo’ll be hungry,” she said, sliding her boots back on.
“I can’t run you. I’ve had too much to drink.”
“I’ll get a taxi.”
“Stay.”
She leaned as far toward him as she could, keeping her damp boots planted firmly on the doormat. Thomas gave her a kiss and a disappointed smile.
“Good night.”
A little before midnight, Baxter opened the door to her flat. Not feeling the remotest bit tired, she slumped onto the sofa with a bottle of red. She switched on the television, flicked aimlessly through the planner when there was nothing on, and scrolled through the selection of Christmas movies she had been stockpiling.
She finally decided on Home Alone 2 as she didn’t really care if she fell asleep during it or not. The first movie was, secretly, one of her all-time favorites, but she found the second an uninspiring imitation, falling into the age-old trap of believing that by relocating the same story to New York City, they would create a bigger and better sequel.
She poured the remainder of the bottle into her glass as she half watched Macaulay Culkin perform his light-hearted acts of attempted murder. Remembering the envelope stuffed in her coat pocket, she removed the folded paper, Edmunds’s plea for her not to open it replaying in her head.
For eight months he had been jeopardizing his career by abusing his power at Fraud. Every week or so he had provided Baxter with a detailed report of Thomas’s finances, subjecting his assorted accounts to the standard checks for suspicious and fraudulent activity.
She knew that she was asking too much of him. She knew that he considered Thomas a friend and that he was betraying his trust. But she also knew why Edmunds did and would continue to do this for her: he wanted her to be happy. She had been so debilitatingly crippled by trust issues ever since she had allowed Wolf to walk out of her life that Edmunds knew she would abandon a settled future with Thomas if he did not constantly assess her new boyfriend’s trustworthiness.
She put the unopened envelope down on the coffee table beside her feet and tried to concentrate as one of the Wet Bandits had his head set ablaze by a blowtorch. She could smell the scorched flesh. She remembered how quickly the tissue could char and die, the screams of pain as the nerve endings burned away . . .
The man on the television removed his sore head from the toilet before carrying on as if nothing had happened.
It was all a lie; you really couldn’t trust anyone.
She finished off her glass in three large gulps and tore open the envelope.