Chapter 7: The Words For Wolf
He hadn't moved from his chair in over six hours. It had been six hours since he let CID go for the night, but he had not moved a mere centimetre. Gene Hunt was deep in thought. Six hours spent thinking about how this could happen to her, blaming himself, wanting whiskey, but not wanting it at the same time. What could he do? How was he supposed to solve this case without his right hand man? Well, woman. Team Div was a major help, but it was Alex who had gotten the collars. She had used psychology, and solved the murders, even when Gene didn't want to listen to her.
Now she was dead. She couldn't help him any longer. Gene had spent the entire day wrapping his head around the fact that he would never see her walk through the doors of his CID again. Except... If he was going mad like he thought he was, then maybe he could see her. He could not bring himself to ask Chris or Ray if they had seen her walking through his office door earlier. He knew that they hadn't, and he knew the stares that he would get if he asked that question.
He was waiting for forensics. He needed the type of blood. Not that it mattered. They could hardly make a collar on blood type. Once again, the image of Alex in the alley flashed into his mind. He could not take it. Gene knew the only thing that had made the scene worse was that he knew the victim, but he felt weak. He had vomited three times on the scene and had to pull over once while driving. He had cried twice in the same day, a feat that had never happened before.
Now however, the sorrow had turned into anger. Gene had always transformed everything into anger, and taken it out while drinking. But he would not let himself touch his whiskey bottle. Gene did not want to get drunk, did not want to rest until this murderer was found.
Sighing, he finally stood, and looked at the clock. It was gone three. There was no point in going home now. The rest of the station was going to be here in only four and a half hours anyway. He moved through the dark CID to the front desk, where a pot of coffee was sitting. He knew he was going to be needing a lot of it until the killer was found. He was not going to get a restful night's sleep until Bolly's killer was behind bars with at least a life sentence on his hands. Gene did not want this man dead. He wanted him tortured, just like Alex was, just like the other three were before they died.
Gene walked back into CID, mug in hand, and sat on her desk, staring at the whiteboard, where the case was written out. This all pointed to the same man, but that man was avoiding police easily. It didn't make sense, all the DNA he was leaving at the scene. A stupid criminal.
Gene paused. Maybe he was leaving all the DNA because he had no previous? They had nothing to compare his DNA to? It would make sense. He stood, and wrote that underneath the column labelled Attacker.
He sat back down and stared at the board. "You're making connections. Good." His heart stopped. It couldn't be her. He turned, and she was sitting there, her feet up on her desk.
"Alex," he whispered.
"You can see me now?" Her face was incredibly saddened, her eyes slightly desperate.
"Yeah," he said, no louder, thoroughly convinced that he had gone mad. "How are you here? You're dead."
"Strangely enough, I noticed that."
"Then how are you here?!"
"I don't know how it all works, Guv. But what I do know is that I've stayed behind for a reason. And that's to help you solve this. Then I can move on."
"Move on?"
"Go back. To my daughter. To 2008."
"Still talking all that nonsense?" Good God, his mind hallucinated very well. He could get used to this.
She smiled softly at him, but her eyes did not light up with the smile, like they used to. Her eyes stayed that desperate, fearful way. "You're one step closer to solving this case Gene. You're on the right track."
"The right track? We haven't got any bloody leads!"
She nodded to the whiteboard. "You've got all that right. You've described the wolf well."
"The wo... What the bloody hell does the wolf have to do with this?! You know why you named him that Drake!"
God, he was using her surname now. Like he did when he was pissed off at her before she died. His mind really was an amazing organ.
"The Wolf, Gene. When Sarah appeared to me after she died, she kept on about it. I didn't understand, except that he was her attacker. It all makes perfect sense now."
"You know who your attacker was?"
"Yes, but I can't tell you." She held up her hand as he started to protest. "It's your case to solve, Gene, and you have to work out all the clues. Besides, what would happen if you arrested the man on the basis of what I said? I'm dead, I can't offer you any clues. Just Wolf."
"But what does it mean?" He was getting frustrated, but she seemed not to notice. She stood from the desk and walked to the whiteboard.
Wolf, she wrote. "You know, it's amazing how many different words there are for wolf?" she asked him. She started writing again.
"Lykos, that's that Grecian form of it. Then French, that'd be Loup. Hunt," she whispered. "That's Estonian."
"Okay Bolls, yes, but what does me having the same surname as the Estonian word for wolf have to do with anything?"
"Absolutely nothing. But what is important, is how many first names there are for wolf. Adolph, Ralph, Lowell, Randall, Rodolfo, Alf, Raul, Lyall."
Gene looked at the board, which was now covered in her handwriting, each word written under the column for the attacker. "I still do not see what this has to do with anything."
"That's all I can give you, Gene," she said sadly, eyes downcast. She sat back down at her desk.
"You said Sarah appeared to you before you died."
"In between her attack and...and mine, yes."
"So am I going insane?"
"Gene Hunt, you are as sane as you will ever be. Have you never believed in the existence of ghosts?"
"I can't really say I have, and I can't believe that you would either."
She smiled at him, but again, it didn't reach her desperate eyes. "I didn't. And then she appeared, that night at your flat. That was the first time I'd ever seen her, save for at the crime scene. She didn't understand what was going on. She argued with me over the fact that she wasn't dead. I finally got her to believe me, and had asked her her name when you asked who I was talking to."
Gene recalled this day with perfect clarity. He had woken extremely early to hear her talking in his room. He went into his room to see if she was just sleep talking, but to his surprise, she was wide awake, staring quite fixatedly at the wardrobe. He had called her name, and she blinked.
"What?" she had asked. He called her name again and asked her who she was talking to. It was then that she had given some crap lie about how she could sleep with her eyes open. He hadn't believed it, but he let her have her way.
Alex continued her story, snapping him back to attention. "Later that day, after her boyfriend came to identify her, she appeared to me again. She told me to watch out for the wolf, the one who was doing this. She only gave the clue about the wolf though. She wouldn't elaborate any further. I wonder if each person gets to elaborate more?"
"There's nothing more that's going to be elaborated then," Gene said determinedly. "We're not letting this happen again, Bolly."
"You have to. Otherwise, she'll appear. The one who is next in line."
"Do you know who it is?"
"I won't," she said sadly. "I only know the basest of his plans. I know for a fact, right now, there is no one that he is looking at."
"You mean he plans them?"
"Sarah told me that he had been circling for the entire two weeks between attacks. I don't know what he was doing. Possibly he was finding the opportune moment, figuring out my schedule."
"You were going home late though. How could he expect that?"
"I have no idea Gene," she responded. "I only know so much."
Gene rubbed the bridge of his nose. "This isn't right. This shouldn't have happened."
"The fact is, Gene," she said, tears in her eyes, "it did happen. There's nothing that dwelling on the fact that I'm dead is going to help. You've got to focus on catching this man."
"Catch this man, with no leads."
"There's always a lead, Guv. It's just a matter of finding it. And not manufacturing evidence to back up your instinct."
Gene looked down. "I didn't manufacture anything. You and that White bloke misinterpreted it."
"Again, Gene, that's all in the past. Right now, just... just live for the moment. Catch this man. Save countless women from ending up like me."
She stood, looking at the clock, then out the doors of CID. "They're coming in. I have to go."
"But, if you stay..."
"They won't be able to see me Gene. My soul can only appear to one. And it chose you. If I stay here, you'll look as mad as you currently think you are." She smiled sadly, and walked out of the office. He followed her, but when he turned the corner, she was gone. Gene retreated back to the office.
He stared at the board again, now covered in her handwriting, the various names and words for wolf. "Adolfo," he muttered. "Ralph, Lowell, Randall, Rodolfo, Alf, Raul, Lyall. Randall..."
Randall? Randall Wolfe? Could she have given him a clue that simple? That direct? If she was right, DC Wolfe's name literally meant wolf, wolf. Gene shook his head. It was never that simple. Besides, Wolfe was a copper. He had seemed completely honest, and Gene's gut instinct was not usually wrong. He had been right about Hollis, about Chas Cale, about nearly everything he could remember back to before Sam had entered his CID, before he had even become a DCI.
Exhaustion started to pull on him. He had been up for over twenty four hours already. It didn't matter. Gene had been awake for longer than this before. He'd just start hitting the coffee harder as the hours would wear on. Gene looked at the clock. It was just gone seven. People would be arriving soon. Or they better be, or he would personally ram his boot up their arse so far...
Gene shook his head. He shouldn't envision doing that to his team. Yes, he had imagined it on more than one occasion, especially when Chris couldn't catch on to a certain concept, but he knew he shouldn't. Alex would always...Alex had always gotten after him for it. Of course, he had once told Luigi that she should take a swan dive from the window. He hadn't meant it, but now he regretted everything he said like that to her, every time he had told her to shut her yap. He wasn't going to get to hear her voice in anymore, except in his madness. Although she had assured him several times during their conversation that he was not mad, he could not quite believe her. He had never had visions. Why would he start now?
Gene was distracted by the door opening. Ray walked in, followed by Chris and Shaz. They all had tired, early morning expressions on their faces, but there was no hint of complaint in their expression. Good. He didn't want to hear it.
"You been up all night, Guv?" Ray asked. Gene merely nodded, not taking his eyes off the board. He went into his office as the rest of CID filed in, all relatively quiet.
Gene had been sitting in his office for only a few moments before a dull murmur started in CID. It turned into an angry buzz, and soon there were the sounds of shouting. Gene exited, to see what was going on, but stopped in his tracks. Standing in the doorway with his black hair shaven off and a bandage on his cheek, stood DC Randall Wolfe.
TBC
