Ragdoll Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  St Ann’s Hospital

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  St Ann’s Hospital

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  St Ann’s Hospital

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Acknowledgements

  Author Q & A with Daniel Cole

  Copyright

  ‘So tell me, if you’re the Devil, what does that make me?’

  PROLOGUE

  Monday 24 May 2010

  Samantha Boyd ducked under the wobbly police barrier and glanced up at the statue of Lady Justice perched atop London’s infamous Old Bailey courtrooms. Intended as a symbol of strength and integrity, Samantha now saw her for what she really was: a disillusioned and despairing woman on the verge of pitching herself off the rooftop and into the pavement below. Appropriately, the blindfold carved into her likenesses the world over had been omitted; for ‘blind justice’ was a naive concept, especially when issues such as racism and police corruption become involved.

  The surrounding roads and Tube stations had all been closed again due to the swarm of journalists that had settled there, transforming a busy area of central London into an absurdly middle-class shanty town. Empty food packaging flaunted Marks & Spencer and Pret A Manger logos up from the litter-strewn floor. Designer sleeping bags were being folded away to the buzz of electric razors, while one man’s underwhelming travel iron failed to disguise the fact that he had slept in his only shirt and tie.

  Samantha felt self-conscious as she wove through the crowds. Running late, she had worked up a sweat during her six-minute march from Chancery Lane, and her platinum-blonde hair pulled where she had pinned it up in an unsuccessful attempt to alter her appearance. The press had identified those attached to the trial on day one. Now, by day forty-six, Samantha had probably featured in every major newspaper in the world. She had even been forced to call the police when one particularly persistent reporter followed her back home to Kensington and refused to leave. Determined to avoid any further unwelcome attention, she kept her head down and strode on.

  Two meandering lines stretched across the Newgate Street crossroads, originating from the insufficient set of Portaloos on one side and the pop-up Starbucks on the other. Caught in the current circling perpetually between the two, she broke away towards the police officers guarding the quieter side entrance to the courtrooms. When she accidentally stepped into shot of one of the dozens of recordings taking place, a small woman snapped at her angrily in Japanese.

  ‘Last day,’ Samantha reminded herself, leaving the incomprehensible torrent of abuse behind; just eight more hours until her life could return to normal.

  At the doors, an unfamiliar police officer scrutinised Samantha’s ID before leading her through the now very familiar routine: locking away personal possessions, explaining that she physically could not remove her engagement ring when the metal detectors went off, worrying about sweat marks while being frisked, and then making her way down the featureless corridors to join the other eleven jurors for a cup of lukewarm instant coffee.

  Due to the overwhelming worldwide media attention and the incident at Samantha’s house, the unprecedented decision had been made to sequester the jury, sparking public outrage as the hotel bill spiralled into the tens of thousands of taxpayers’ money. After almost two months, the morning’s small talk predominantly consisted of bad backs caused by the hotel beds, the monotony of the nightly menu and lamenting the things that people were missing most: wives, children, the Lost season finale.

  When the court usher finally came to collect the jury, the tense silence that the trivial chatter had been masking was liberated. The foreman, an elderly man named Stanley, who the others had appointed – seemingly for no better reason than that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Gandalf – slowly got to his feet and led them out of the room.

  Arguably one of the most famous courtrooms in the world, Court One was reserved only for the most serious criminal cases; the room where such macabre celebrities as Crippen, Sutcliffe and Dennis Nilsen took centre stage to answer for their considerable sins. Artificial light flooded in through a large frosted window overhead, illuminating the room’s dark wood panelling and green leather upholstery.

  As Samantha took her usual seat on the front row of the jury, closest to the dock, she was conscious that her white dress, one of her own designs, was perhaps a little short. She placed her jury bundle over her lap, much to the disappointment of the lecherous old man who had almost trampled someone on the first day in his haste to claim the seat beside her.

  Unlike the familiar courtrooms depicted in American movies, where the smartly dressed defendant would sit at a table alongside their lawyers, the accused at the Old Bailey faced the intimidating room alone. The small but prominent glass screens surrounding the raised dock only further adding to the notion that those inside were of considerable danger to the rest of the room.

  Guilty until proven innocent.

  Directly opposite the dock, to Samantha’s left, was the judge’s bench. A gold-hilted sword hung from the Royal Coat of Arms behind the chair in the centre, which had remained the only vacant seat throughout the entire trial. The court clerk, defence, and prosecution teams occupied the centre of the room, while the elevated public viewing gallery, against the far wall, was packed with the ardent and bleary-eyed spectators who had been camping out on the street to secure their place for the conclusion of this extraordinary trial. At the back of the room, on the forgotten benches below the gallery, sat an assortment of superfluous people vaguely involved in the proceedings: experts that the lawyers might wish to, but probably would not, call upon; various court officials; and, of course, the arresting officer at the centre of all of the controversy, the detective nicknamed Wolf: William Oliver Layton-Fawkes.

  Wolf had attended every one of the forty-six days of the trial. He spent the countless hours staring into the dock with a cold expression from his undistinguished seat beside the exit. Solidly built, with a weathered face and deep blue eyes, he looked to be in his early forties. Samantha thought he might have been quite attractive if he hadn’t looked as though he had been awake for months and had the weight of the world bearing down on him – although, to be fair, he did.

  ‘The Cremation Killer’, as the press had dubbed him, had become London’s most prolific serial killer in its history. Twenty-seven victims in twenty-seven days, each a female prostitute between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, attracting even more attention to the case by exposing the ill-informed masses to the harsh realities happening on their own street corners. The majority of the victims had been found still ablaze, heavily sedated and burned alive,
the inferno incinerating any potential evidence. And then the murders abruptly stopped, leaving the police floundering, with no significant suspects. The Metropolitan Police Service was criticised heavily throughout the investigation for failing to act while innocent young girls were dying, but then, eighteen days after the final murder, Wolf made his arrest.

  The man in the dock was Naguib Khalid, a British Sunni Muslim of Pakistani origin, working as a taxi driver in the capital. He lived alone and had a prior history of minor arson offences. When DNA evidence, linking three of the victims to the back of his taxi, was presented to the court alongside Wolf’s damning testimony, the case had appeared straightforward. And then it all started falling apart.

  Alibis came forward contradicting surveillance reports gathered by the detective and his team. Accusations of assault and intimidation while Khalid was being held in custody, emerged. Conflicting forensic evidence suggested that the charred DNA could not be considered reliable evidence and then, to the delight of the defence lawyers, the directorate of professional standards within the MPS came forward with a letter that had been brought to their attention. From an anonymous colleague and dated just days before the final murder, the letter expressed concerns over Wolf’s handling of the case and state of mind, suggesting that he had become ‘obsessed’, ‘desperate’ and went on to recommend his immediate reassignment.

  The biggest story in the world suddenly got bigger. The police were accused of using Khalid as a convenient scapegoat to disguise their own failings. Both the commissioner and the Specialist Crime and Operations assistant commissioner were pressured into resigning due to the blatant corruption occurring on their watch, while the tabloids were awash with scandalous stories about the disgraced detective: his alleged problems with alcohol, his possibly violent tendencies leading to the breakdown of his marriage. At one stage, Khalid’s smug defence lawyer had been reprimanded for suggesting that Wolf and her client swap seats. Throughout, Naguib Khalid watched the circus unfold before him in bewilderment, never showing so much as a glimpse of satisfaction at his transformation from demon to victim.

  The concluding day of the trial played out as expected. Both the defence and prosecution made their closing speeches before the judge gave his directions to the jury: a brief summing-up of the limited evidence still considered valid and advice regarding the intricacies of the law. The jury were then excused to consider their verdict and were led out behind the witness stand into a private room unimaginatively decorated in the familiar wood and green leather theme. For over four and a half hours, the twelve jurors sat round the large wooden table debating their verdict.

  Samantha had decided how she would vote weeks earlier and was surprised to find the rest of her peers so split. She would never have let public opinion influence her decision, she assured herself, although she was glad that her vote would not add any more fuel to the PR bonfire that her shop, her livelihood, and her happiness now sat upon. The same arguments were repeated time and time again. Someone would then bring up an aspect of the detective’s testimony and become irritable when told, for the umpteenth time, that it was inadmissible and to be ignored.

  Periodically Stanley would call for a vote, after which a note was passed, via the usher, to the judge advising that they still had not come to a unanimous verdict. With each vote another person would crack under the pressure of the growing majority until, minutes before the fifth hour, a majority of ten to two had been reached. Stanley grudgingly passed the usher a note to this effect and ten minutes later, the man returned to escort the jury back into the courtroom.

  Samantha could feel every set of eyes on her as she returned to her seat beside the dock. The room was silent and she felt irrationally embarrassed as every step in her high heels echoed around the room. Fortunately the awful creaks and scrapes that followed, as all twelve jurors simultaneously took their seats, rendered her minor disturbance reassuringly trivial in comparison.

  She could see people attempting to decipher her expression, too impatient to wait another minute for the official verdict, and she enjoyed it. This room of ‘learned’ people had been strutting about in their wigs and gowns, treating her and the other jurors with a condescending pleasantness; now however, they all found themselves at the mercy of the jury. Samantha had to fight a grin; she felt like a child with a secret she was not supposed to tell.

  ‘Will the defendant please stand?’ the clerk barked over the silence.

  In the dock, Naguib Khalid tentatively got to his feet.

  ‘Will the foreman please stand?’

  At the end of Samantha’s row, Stanley stood up.

  ‘Have you reached a verdict upon which you have all agreed?’

  ‘No.’ Stanley’s voice cracked, rendering his reply almost inaudible.

  Samantha rolled her eyes as he cleared his throat with three rattling coughs.

  ‘No,’ Stanley almost shouted.

  ‘Have you reached a verdict upon which a sufficient majority have agreed?’

  ‘We have,’ Stanley winced, having blown his line. ‘Sorry … Yes.’

  The clerk looked up at the judge, who nodded his acceptance of the majority vote.

  ‘Do you, the jury, find the defendant Naguib Khalid, guilty or not guilty of twenty-seven counts of murder?’

  Samantha found herself holding her breath despite already knowing the answer. Several chairs creaked in unison as eager ears leaned closer in anticipation …

  ‘Not guilty.’

  Samantha glanced up at Khalid, fascinated to see his reaction. He was trembling in relief, his face in his hands.

  But then the first shouts of panic started.

  Wolf had covered the short distance to the dock, dragging Khalid head first over the glass partition before any of the security officers even had time to react. Khalid landed badly, his winded cry muffled as the ruthless assault began. Ribs cracked beneath Wolf’s foot, the skin liberated from his own knuckles with the intensity of the attack.

  An alarm sounded somewhere.

  Wolf was struck across the face and could taste blood as he stumbled backwards into the jury, knocking the woman nearest to him off her feet. During the few seconds it took to steady himself, several officers had flooded the space between him and the broken body lying at the base of the dock.

  Wolf lashed out as he staggered forward, feeling strong hands grasping to restrain his failing body, forcing him onto his knees and then finally to the floor. He took an exhausted breath, laced with the scents of sweat and polish, watching one of the injured officers’ discarded batons roll with a hollow thud into the wood panelling beside Khalid.

  He looked dead, but Wolf needed to be sure.

  With a final surge of adrenaline, he kicked out and crawled towards the lifeless man decorated in dark brown stains where blood had already soaked into the fabric of his cheap navy suit. Wolf reached for the heavy weapon, wrapping his fingers round the cold metal. He had brought it up above his head when a devastating impact knocked him onto his back. Disorientated, he could only watch as the dock security officer swung again, crushing his wrist with a second vicious blow.

  Barely twenty seconds had passed since the ‘not guilty’ verdict, but when he heard metal clattering against wood, Wolf knew that it was over. He only prayed that he had done enough.

  People were screaming and rushing for the exits but a flood of police officers drove them back inside; Samantha just sat on the floor, dazed, staring into space despite the events taking place only metres away. Finally someone took her by the arm, pulled her to her feet, and rushed her out of the room. The person leading Samantha away was shouting something, but the words were not reaching her. A muted alarm barely registered at all. She slipped on the floor of the Great Hall and felt a knee connect with the side of her head. The pain failed to come, but she fell back onto the black-and-white Sicilian marble, staring up in confusion at the ornate dome, sixty-seven feet above, the statues, stained-glass windows, and murals.

 
Her rescuer pulled her back up once the crowd had passed and led her as far as the disused main entrance before running back in the direction of the courtroom. The immense wooden doors and black gates stood wide open, the overcast sky beyond beckoning her outside. Now alone, Samantha stumbled out onto the street.

  The photograph could not have been more perfect had she posed for it: the beautiful blood-spattered juror, dressed all in white, standing traumatised beneath the stone sculptures of Fortitude, Truth and the ominous Recording Angel, cloaked from head to toe in a heavy robe, imitating death, preparing to report an endless list of sins back to heaven.

  Samantha turned her back to the ravenous pack of journalists and their blinding lights. In the flicker of a thousand photographs, she noticed words carved into the stone high above, resting upon four separate stone pillars, as if to support their metaphorical weight:

  DEFEND THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR & PUNISH THE WRONGDOER.

  As she read the words, she was overcome with a sense that she had failed in some way; could she honestly say that she was as unequivocally certain of Khalid’s innocence as the detective had been of his guilt? When her gaze eventually fell back to the hooded angel, Samantha knew that she had made the list.

  She had just been judged.

  4 years later …

  CHAPTER 1

  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.