The Soul Collector

by Paul Johnston

  Karen Oaten grunted. The tabloid papers would love that.

  Fifteen

  I couldn’t stay in my hotel room any longer. The thought that someone was being killed because of my failure to crack the clue drove me onto the streets of Bloomsbury. I brushed past a kid who asked for money, provoking justified abuse. I walked around the quiet streets and lost track of time. Eventually, in front of the British Museum, I looked up at the neo-classical facade and tried to get a grip. The shouts of some pissed students brought me back to reality. There were people laughing and enjoying themselves, but I had put myself beyond the boundaries of ordinary humanity. I had tried to take on a killer and someone else had paid for my arrogance.

  I found a public phone and called Karen’s cell phone.

  “Matt,” she said in a low voice, “where are you?”

  “Never mind. There’s been a murder, hasn’t there?”

  “How did you know that?” she demanded. “Where are you? I need you to come in.” Her tone was icy.

  “Who was it?” I asked, desperate to know whose name had been concealed in the clue.

  “When I see you, I’ll tell you,” she replied. “One thing you might like to know now, though—there was a message on the body. The Devil did it, in Latin, as in Mary Malone’s garden.”

  “Shit,” I said. Had Sara struck again so quickly?

  “That’s not all it said.”

  Something about her tone made me instantly apprehensive. The White Devil had tried to frame me several times.

  “Suddenly you’ve gone all quiet,” she said ironically. “The killer also wrote ‘Ask Matt Wells about this.’ So, I’m asking.”

  “You know I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “So why should I tell you who the victim was?” She had obviously had it with me.

  “Tell me who it was, Karen. Please.”

  “Screw you, Matt,” she hissed. “Who do you think you are? Why should I share information with you when all you do is disappear so you can run your personal campaign?”

  I took a deep breath. “Because I’m the only person who can catch Sara. When it comes to the crisis point, I’ll be the bait she can’t resist.”

  “And how many people have to die before you eventually play that heroic part?”

  My stomach somersaulted as I realized she would have seen the number I was calling from on her screen. If she’d got someone to find the phone booth’s location, a car full of cops could be on its way as we spoke.

  “I’m hanging up, Karen. Last chance to tell me the name. You know I can make good use of it.”

  “Do I?” she said, the anger in her voice replaced by what sounded like regret. “Maybe I did once. But you’re flailing about now, Matt. Come in, for God’s sake.”

  “The name, Karen.”

  There was a pause before she spoke again. “It’ll be on the news soon enough. Sandra Devonish.”

  I broke the connection and ran for my hotel. I stopped a couple of times to check that there was no one on my tail. Either I’d got away in time or Karen hadn’t traced the number. I wasn’t taking any chances about where I spent the rest of the night. I went up to my room, packed up the laptop and the rest of my gear and went out past the dozing night porter.

  Back on the street, I saw a cab and hailed it.

  “Where to, squire?” the driver asked.

  I told him to drive toward Victoria and thought about it. Getting out of London was tempting, but I needed to be close to the scenes of the crimes. Maybe I’d be able to prevent another. Christ, who was I kidding? I hadn’t been able to help Sandra Devonish. I’d met her a couple of times at crime-writing conferences in the States. She played the Southern belle, with the full set of long vowels and perfect manners, then would turn into a wisecracking, in-your-face lesbian. She could drink most men under the bar. I shook my head to dispel the vision of the stunning American. I needed to think about what to do now. I couldn’t handle this on my own any longer. It could be risky meeting up with Rog and Pete, but it had to be done. If we were going to catch Sara, we needed to go on the offensive and to do that effectively, we had to be together.

  I took out my laptop, booted up and asked the driver to pull in. My wireless card picked up a signal and I logged on to the Internet. I sent a message to Rog’s ghost site. I told him and Pete to meet me on the Embankment, under Hungerford Bridge. I sent Andy a text saying the same thing. Then I walked from Victoria to Embankment, checking there was no one on my tail. As I was going under the railway bridge, a low whistle came from my left.

  “Over here, Matt,” Pete said in a low voice.

  I joined him in a dim alcove. “God, it’s good to see a friendly face,” I said, grabbing his hand.

  “Steady on,” he said, trying to look at my face. “What’s up?”

  I told him about Sandra Devonish. I could see he was trying to make sense of the clue now that we knew the answer, but that wasn’t the priority right now.

  “Where do you think we should go, Boney?” I asked.

  He thought about it. “You’ve got a safe house for yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s outside the M25. I don’t think we should leave the Smoke.”

  He nodded. “How about my place? The bitch from hell won’t be able to get past my alarm system easily.”

  “No chance,” I replied. “Karen knows where you live. She’ll check it out.”

  “We can hide in the wine cellar.”

  “No, I can’t take the chance. If we get taken into custody, protective or not, we’ll never catch Sara.”

  Footsteps approached. Pete whistled again and Rog came across.

  “Good to see you,” I said, punching him lightly on the chest. Two of them had made it. Now there was only Andy.

  “We need to find a base in London,” I said to Rog. “Preferably not too far out of the center.”

  “No problem,” he said, fumbling in his pocket. “These are the keys to my cousin’s flat in Camden Town. He’s on holiday. I’m supposed to water the plants, but I haven’t managed that yet.”

  “Em, brilliant,” I said, taken aback by the quick solution to our most pressing problem.

  Andy arrived a few minutes later.

  “What did you do with the van?” I asked.

  “Left it outside the hire place. It’s no use to us now.”

  “But they’ve got your credit card.”

  “No, they haven’t.”

  I stared at him. “What did you do?”

  He shrugged. “I…em, I bought a fake card from a friend of a friend.”

  “Bloody hell, you took a chance,” I said.

  “It worked all right when they swiped it,” he said. “What’s the problem? I thought I was meant to use my initiative.”

  “You did well, big man,” I said, trying to placate him. “How was Mrs. Carlton-Jones?”

  “All right,” he said. “I didn’t get the impression that she’d been hiding her daughter.”

  “Do you think it was Sara on the motorbike?”

  “Could well have been.”

  He was right. And she could well have used the bike to get to and from the latest murder scene.

  Half an hour later we were all safely inside Rog’s cousin’s flat. It was a decent-size, two-bedroom place near the tube station. There were even two good-quality computers, which gave us more power in that department. Rog made a pot of coffee and we sat around the dining table.

  “So what happened with the clue?” Rog asked.

  “I knew the dead woman, Sandra Devonish,” I said.

  “I’ve heard of her,” Andy said. “I think I read one of her books. Set in Texas?”

  I nodded. “She was quite a woman.”

  “Sandra Devonish,” Rog said, taking a large notebook from his bag. “‘The sun set by the westernmost dunes of Alexander’s womankind.’ Oh, I get it. Alexander’s womankind—Sandra comes from Alexandra, the female version of Alexander.”

  “Fuck,” I sa
id, under my breath. I should have spotted that. But it wouldn’t necessarily have helped, as I couldn’t think of any other Sandras I knew and I wasn’t even aware that the dead woman was coming to London.

  “The sun set…” Pete said.

  “My mother spotted that ‘set’ might be the Egyptian god of that name—among other things, he was the god of disorder, so the words, syllables or letters in the clue would be jumbled up.”

  Rog looked up from his notebook. “Wasn’t the Egyptian god of the sun called Ra?”

  I groaned. “You’re right. And the dunes are made of sand. So that was another pointer to Sand-ra.” I slapped my forehead. I’d been duped twice. “And ‘by the westernmost dunes’ means next to the place with the most westerly beaches in this country, which is Devon rather than Cornwall.”

  Rog nodded. “And the ‘kind’ at the end of ‘womankind,’ if it’s taken to mean ‘kind of’—”

  “Comes out as ‘-ish,’” I completed. “Jesus! I should have got that.”

  The three of them demurred.

  “Come on, man,” Andy said, “I’d never have worked that out.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty cryptic,” Rog said. “Pete and I didn’t have a clue, either. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  “But a woman’s dead,” I said. “I should have guessed the next victim would be another crime writer.”

  “Why?” Pete asked. “The White Devil didn’t kill people in the same line of work, did he?”

  That was true. But I still blamed myself for not involving my mother sooner. She might well have got the answer in time. Then another thought struck me. Would Sara, or whoever was aping her and the White Devil, have kept her promise and spared Sandra if I had identified her?

  I tried to get some sleep on the bed next to Andy. I still felt responsible. Karen was right. I wasn’t up to fighting this war, even with my friends on my side. But it was too late to change tactics now. I had to make sure there were no more deaths, and in order to do that, we had to track Sara down.

  Sleep climbed all over me like a ravenous bear and I fell into the depths.

  Faik Jabar’s shoulder had been treated by the Kurdish doctor, whose name was Jemal Dawod, and it no longer hurt him so much. The doctor had a house near the Lea Bridge roundabout in Clapton. Faik heard the roar of traffic and wished he could go back to his parents’ house. It was only a mile or so away, but the area would be swarming with Shadows and Jemal wouldn’t let him out during the hours of daylight. Late in the evening, after Faik woke from a deep sleep, they had eaten a meal of spicy stewed lamb that the doctor had prepared.

  “That was good,” Faik said, emptying his glass of water. “Now I must go.”

  “It is very dangerous for you.”

  “And for you. The Shadows know where you live.”

  Jemal Dawod nodded. “But they have been told that I did not kill the Wolfman.”

  “What about the guard you took out?”

  “His memory will be jumbled up for some time.”

  “But you were seen trying to take me away.”

  “I already told them that I needed another doctor to look at you. Now I will say that you escaped from here.”

  “Will they come?”

  The doctor shook his head. “They only ever contact me by telephone. I think they are very busy trying to find the Wolfman’s killer.”

  “I cannot risk being caught again.”

  Jemal smiled. “In that case, you must stay off the streets.”

  “They will not see me.”

  The doctor smiled again. “You are forgetting something.”

  Faik stared at him. “What?”

  “The person who killed Izady—maybe that is the same person who wore the burqa this afternoon. He may also be looking for you.”

  “He?” Faik sat back. “You think a man was wearing the burqa?”

  Jemal Dawod raised his shoulders. “This is London, not the Middle East. People have different ideas about tradition.”

  “Who do you think this killer is?”

  “At first I assumed he was working for the Shadows. That explained why he killed Izady. I guessed he’d double-crossed them.”

  Faik got up from the low table and shook the tingling from his legs. “But it doesn’t explain why he only shot me in the hand and then knocked me out, rather than killing me.”

  The doctor lit a cigarette. “No, it doesn’t. I thought perhaps he left a witness to recount what had happened to the Kurds. But then the Wolfman caught you, so the Shadows couldn’t have hired the killer.”

  “So who’s this killer with the false beard working for?”

  Jemal Dawod blew out a cloud of smoke. “I have no idea. But I don’t think you should chance meeting him again.”

  Faik looked at his watch. It was well after midnight. “I must go, Doctor. Thank you for everything.”

  “Make sure those wounds in your legs don’t get infected. You have my cell phone number. Call me in a week and I will remove the stitches from your hand.” Jemal embraced the young man. “May Allah protect you.”

  “And you,” Faik said, turning toward the door.

  “You have forgotten something else,” the doctor said.

  Faik looked back. “I have?”

  “If you are escaping, you must leave your mark on me.”

  “No, Doctor,” the young man said, his mouth slack.

  “Otherwise the Shadows will not believe me and I will be killed.”

  Faik took a deep breath. Jemal Dawod was right. They couldn’t risk it. He went up to the doctor and made him stand in front of the sofa. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he drew back his undamaged hand and landed a powerful uppercut on the other man’s chin. He crashed back on the cushions, blood flowing from his lower lip, which had been punctured by his teeth. Faik made sure he was comfortable.

  Going to the front door, he let himself out. The night air was chill and he suddenly felt very weak. But it was too late to go back. If he kept to the back streets he should be home soon, as long as he didn’t meet any Shadows. He tried to establish a steady rhythm, but his injured thighs caught painfully on his jeans and the breath was ragged in his throat. Soon he was very thirsty. He stopped after about ten minutes, bending down behind a car. When he stood up, a figure in black biker leathers was standing on the other side of the bonnet, pointing a silenced pistol at his chest. The visor of the helmet had been raised and Faik saw wisps of beard on the upper cheeks.

  “Will you come with me?” the man asked, his voice hoarse. “I have so much to show you.”

  Faik Jabar felt a strange emotion, a kind of attraction to the armed figure. Although he didn’t have much choice, he moved around the car, walking willingly to meet his fate.

  Jeremy Andrewes was in the basement of the family house in Chelsea. When he had started working for the Daily Independent, his father had banished him to what had been the kitchen and servants’ quarters on the grounds that, since he was working for a “socialist rag,” he should experience life below the stairs. Over the years, Jeremy had done the place up and he still used it for work, even though his parents were long gone and his own family—a docile wife and three rampant boys—had the run of the whole house, as well as the Hampshire estate.

  He sat staring at his computer screen, trying to get an original angle on the murder of the American crime writer at Wilde’s. It was 5:00 a.m. and he was being pressured by his editor. He had a contact in Homicide Central, a disillusioned old-timer who regarded DCI Younger as a jumped-up schoolboy. The detective had told him about the message on the body that said “Ask Matt Wells about this.” He’d tried to do that, but the writer wasn’t answering any of his phones. He’d also pressed Karen Oaten and John Turner about potential leads, but he couldn’t give away the fact that he knew about the message. The chief inspector had made a brief statement without mentioning it. She wouldn’t confirm that the murder was linked to the Mary Malone case, either, but no one had much doubt about that. So,
what to do? Andrewes wasn’t a fan of tabloid-style journalism, but he badly needed to put one over his rivals on the other papers—he’d been beaten to several exclusives and his standing was at an all-time low. Since Matt Wells wasn’t answering his calls, he was the one to be thrown to the wolves.

  Before he did that, he called Josh Hinkley. Perhaps the other crime writer would have some startling insight.

  “What?” came a hoarse voice.

  “Josh, it’s Jeremy.”

  There was a pause. “Do you know what fuckin’ time it is?”

  “I do. I’m working.”

  “Well, have a cigar, public school boy. Normal people are in their beds.” Hinkley laughed coarsely. “And they aren’t on their own. Move over, darling.”

  Andrewes shook his head. He was wasting his time, but this was his only chance. “Another crime writer’s been murdered.” He told Hinkley about Sandra Devonish—the victim’s name had been confirmed after her British publisher had identified the body.

  “Christ!” Hinkley exclaimed. “It is a serial killer, then.”

  “Looks like it, though DCI Oaten hasn’t confirmed that and there’s been nothing said about the black magic stuff.” He paused. “You do realize that this killer is targeting crime novelists.”

  “I’d better make sure my alarm system’s working, then. Thanks for the tipoff, Jerry.”

  Andrewes nearly laid into Hinkley for addressing him that way, but he managed to control himself. “I didn’t call to warn you, Josh. Your friend Matt Wells is mixed up in this somehow.” He told him about the message on the body.

  “Oh, yus!” Hinkley exclaimed. “That’s very juicy! What do you think it means?”

  Jeremy Andrewes raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I was hoping you might be able to cast some light on that.”

  “Oh, yeah?” There was the sound of a cigarette lighter, followed by deep inhalation. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s that crazy woman he used to shag.”