The Soul Collector

by Paul Johnston

  Faik lay there, waiting for the bullet. It didn’t come. He had made sure that the knife clattered away out of his reach, reckoning that would put the killer off guard.

  “Get up!” the man with the gun screamed, his voice suddenly high. “Get up!”

  Faik heard rapid footsteps moving to the dresser, and then toward him. A cork was unplugged and a liquid drenched his head. The smell made him gag. It was some spirit, whisky or rum. Faik didn’t drink alcohol—his mother would have disowned him.

  A hand sheathed in latex grabbed the back of his collar and he was heaved around. Now he was facing the man. He rolled his eyes, showing the whites. That should convince the bastard that he was out. The problem was, Faik couldn’t see while his eyes were like that. He waited a few seconds, then felt the cold metal of the silencer on his forehead. It was time.

  Faik lashed sideways with his right arm, making contact with the gun. It flew out of the bearded man’s hand. Then he got hold of the bloodstained sports shirt and pulled the fucker down, jerking his body to the side. There was a squelching sound as the man’s face landed on the Albanian’s lacerated chest. Faik forced himself to his feet, ignoring the pain from his thighs. He swung one foot back and smashed it against the side of his opponent’s head. He was only wearing training shoes, but the blow was solid enough. The bearded man fell back onto the Albanian’s body farther down.

  “Fuck you!” Faik yelled, giving him another kick. Then he reached for the gun and pointed it at the man’s head.

  Slowly, the face turned toward him. The beard was drenched in blood. “You don’t want to shoot me,” the killer said, his voice soft and enticing. “We can be friends.”

  Faik felt a mixture of repulsion and excitement. He held the gun on him. “Take it off,” he said, breathing hard. “Take off the beard.”

  The man stared at him and then smiled. “All right,” he said, struggling to his feet and standing up. He gripped the hairs at the side of his face and gently pulled. The thick covering came away.

  “Ah-yeeh!” Faik said, stepping back. What he had seen when the beard had slipped before was only a hint of the full horror. The man’s upper lip was in two parts, revealing the pink of the gum beneath. There were livid, raised scars across the cheeks and the chin was irregular and swollen, the skin discolored as if it had been repeatedly punched. “What happened to you?”

  The man touched the flaps of his upper lip with his tongue. Faik could now see that there were small scabs on it, as if the skin had been punctured.

  “This?” He laughed softly, the sound incongruous. “Don’t you fancy me now?”

  Faik gagged on the bitter liquid that had rushed up his throat. “Is that…is that why you’re doing this?” he asked, inclining his head toward the Albanian. “To make him uglier than you?”

  The laugh was repeated. “You’re clever, as well as beautiful. Come on, we can have a wonderful time together.” The man raised his hands slowly and began to open the buttons of his shirt, then latched his fingers on to the collar of the T-shirt beneath and ripped it apart.

  Faik watched in astonishment as the material was parted. He saw a pair of dark nipples and soft, heavy breasts.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not a transsexual.” Without the beard, the woman’s smile was pitiful. “I’m yours.”

  Faik Jabar let out a cry of anguish and repulsion, then staggered to the door of the flat. In a few seconds he was on the pavement, breathing in the cold night air. He jammed the pistol into the waistband of his still damp trousers. Before he started to move forward, he looked up to the top floor. The curtain was half-open and the face of the monster looked down at him. Now there was no trace of a smile. He remembered something from school about hell, fury and a scorned woman.

  Pete and Andy took the train to Oxford and walked to the house. It was over a mile from the station, in what was obviously a well-heeled area. Apart from a pissed student lurching home, the place was deserted. The building was detached and about twenty meters back from the road. There was a thick and high privet hedge all around the front garden.

  “Good cover,” Andy said as they approached. “And no lights. Let’s hope that means no one’s at home.”

  The street was quiet, cars parked on both sides. A narrow path ran up the left side of the property to a tennis club.

  “Not even lunatic Oxford professors will be playing at this time of night in March,” Pete said. “How convenient. There’s a side door.”

  Andy pulled on latex gloves and took his lock-picking rods from his pocket.

  “How long do you give me, Boney?” he asked.

  Pete shone his torch around the door. “I can’t see an alarm. How about one minute, Slash?”

  Andy succeeded, just. They went in, closing the door behind them. There was cast-iron garden furniture on a wide wooden veranda. Pete was shining his torch around the rear door.

  “Yup, there it is,” he said, pointing to a small plastic box at the top of the black-painted door. “Circuit breaker.” He took out the electronic device with a pointed end that Rog had given him. “Let’s see if this thing works.” He held it toward the top of the door for five seconds. “Okay. See what you can do with the lock.”

  Andy worked his rods again and there was a click. “Dammit,” he said in a loud whisper. “There’s a mortice lock, as well.”

  Pete moved the electronic device around the window. “You’ll have to cut the glass.”

  “Sara or her sidekicks will know we’ve been here.”

  “Tough,” Pete said. “You heard Matt. Any pressure on the bitch is good news.”

  Andy took a glass-knife and two rubber suckers from his backpack. After he’d attached them, Pete held them while he did the cutting. The pane was soon removed and they climbed in.

  “Motion sensors,” Pete said, holding Andy back as he moved across the kitchen. He held up the device again. “Okay.”

  They moved forward and made it to the hall, opening the door carefully.

  “Jesus, did something die in here?” Andy said as a wave of rank air hit them.

  “Very likely,” Pete said, on his knees by the alarm box. Rog had given him another device that was supposed to scramble the unit’s brains for up to half an hour.

  “What is that stink?” Andy said, shining his torch around the spacious area.

  “Whatever it is, it isn’t far away,” Pete said, close behind him. They came around the bottom of the wide staircase.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Andy said, putting a hand over his nose and mouth.

  Pete shone his torch on the swollen figure that was lying facedown inside the front door. “I’m glad we came in the back,” he said, breathing only through his mouth.

  “Is it a guy?” Andy asked, peering at the head.

  “Those look like suit trousers. Pinstripe. Hold on.” Pete took out his digital camera and shot a series of photographs. “That’ll keep Matt happy.”

  Andy looked up at him. “We’re going to have to turn the poor bastard over.”

  They took hold of the bloated shoulders and managed to get the body on to its back. Pete stepped back and took more photos. The face would scarcely have been recognized by the corpse’s best friend.

  “Look at that,” Andy said, pointing. “Throat’s been cut.”

  Pete nodded. “Check his pockets. Maybe there’s some ID on him.”

  Andy blinked hard and then slid a hand into the trouser pocket nearest to him. He shook his head. “Zilch.”

  Pete tried the pocket on the other side. “Something in here.” He brought out a rectangular card. “James Maclehose,” he said, “and a load of letters after his name. Consultant plastic surgeon. There’s an address in Harley Street.”

  “He must have really got someone pissed,” Andy said, leaning over the dead man’s face. “His nose has been cut off. Christ. And his lips.”

  Pete had put the stained card in a plastic bag. “You know what, Slash?”

  “Tell me,” An
dy said, raising an eyebrow.

  “We’ll have to turn him over again.”

  “What, so the cops don’t realize he’s been moved?”

  “No. So we can check his back pockets.”

  They maneuvered the body again.

  “Nothing in here,” Pete said.

  “But I’ve got this.” Andy held up a piece of folded paper. “I think there’s some writing, but it’s run.” He held the paper up to Pete’s torch beam. “‘Sorry, but….’” He squinted in the torchlight. “Nope, can’t make it out. Why’s someone saying sorry? For killing him?”

  “Fuck knows. Let’s get out of here before I puke my guts up.”

  Pete walked to the kitchen.

  “Hey, Boney,” Andy said, “you need to reactivate the alarm system.”

  “No, I don’t. The place is going to be swarming with cops as soon as we’re clear of it.” He went through the window space.

  When they were back on the street, Pete took out his cell phone and started texting. By the time they reached the main road, he’d had a reply.

  “Good,” he said. “Matt agrees. I’ll call the cops from the city center.”

  As they walked between medieval college buildings, Andy nudged his friend.

  “What do you think about Oxford now, Boney?”

  Pete raised his arm and sniffed his jacket. “I still stink of that poor bastard.” He glanced at the American. “What do I think about Oxford?” He shivered. “I still bloody hate it.”

  Andy nodded. “Me, too. But you get a better class of corpse here.”

  Pete stared at him and shook his head. “Sometimes I despair of you, Slash.”

  “Me, too, man,” Andy replied, watching a blond young woman in a short skirt get off her bicycle. “But I can get over it.”

  “Aw right, mate,” said Josh Hinkley, his feet in their black pointed cowboy boots on the kitchen table. “But tell Spider he’s dead if he doesn’t show up for poker on Friday. See ya.” He dropped the phone onto the book he’d been reading—Offshore Investments Made Simple. His broker had told him it was worth its weight in platinum, which had made Josh laugh. He still thought the guy was a champion arse-licker.

  “Time for a drink, I reckon, Josh, old man,” he said aloud, getting up and heading for the fridge. He took out a bottle of Urquel lager and flipped the cap. “Oh, yes, my beauty,” he said after a series of gulps. Since his wife, Lou, had up and left, he’d taken to talking to himself. It wasn’t as if anyone could hear him. Or his music. From the stereo came the sound of The Kinks playing “All Day and All of the Night.” He’d always liked Ray Davies and his mates. A genuine London band with genuine London style.

  Not that he was a Londoner himself. According to his Web site, he’d been born within the sound of the Bow Bells, but it would have needed a clear day and a massive sound system to have carried the ding-dongs to the hospital in Harlow. Still, at least his ma had been a real Cockney, even though she wasn’t too clear about who his old man was. It was a toss-up between an Irish laborer and a Glaswegian layabout. Josh’s money was on the former—he had a hell of a work ethic. For the last ten years he’d spent as much time as he could reading the competition. He had transposed American characters to the U.K. and altered the dialogue appropriately. So far as plot was concerned, there was nothing new under the sun, as he liked to say at book signings. Some arsehole critics had clocked what he was up to, but his readers didn’t care. And then, out of the bleeding blue, along comes that little squit Alistair Bing with his Jim Cooler books and outsells him all over the world.

  The phone rang.

  “’Allo, darling,” Hinkley said with a wide grin. “Yeah, you’re bloody right I’m waiting for you. Get that pretty little Chinese ass of yours over here right now, you hear?” He dropped the phone and dug around in his pocket for the bag of coke he’d scored earlier. He chopped some lines on the antique farmhouse table that Lou had made such a fuss about polishing and got to work with a rolled-up fifty-pound note.

  “Yeehah!” he shouted, as he made his way unsteadily to his top-of-the-range Bang & Olufsen stereo system. A few seconds later, The Jam were crashing their way through his favorite track, “Private Hell”—another set of genuine London sons; well, Surrey sons. And with Chop Suzy on her way, what more could a man ask?

  Josh Hinkley slid slowly to the parquet floor. His head was spinning, but he still couldn’t get Matt Wells out of his mind. The fucker. He was knobbing that blond bint from the VCCT, so he got the heads-up on every big case in the city. She probably knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. The rozzers were letting Matt break as many laws as he liked. But he was going to get the tosser; he’d already set the wheels in motion. Mr. I Know More About Crime Than Any Other Novelist was going to become a very big cropper.

  The buzzer went. Hinkley went to the door and pressed the entry button. Suzy and her honey-pot would be on their way up in the lift. He spat on his fingers and smoothed them over his hair.

  “All right, darling,” he said, pulling open the door, “let’s be having you!”

  Before Josh Hinkley’s lights went out, he registered that something very bizarre had happened to his visitor’s face.

  Twenty-Two

  The half hour before midnight had passed more slowly than a penguin marathon. I looked at my watch so often that Rog asked if I’d discovered a new way of jerking off. I couldn’t make sense of what Pete and Andy had found in Sara’s Oxford house. The apologetic note on the dead man suggested that someone else may have dumped the body. I’d be thinking about that later, though there was no chance of checking the house again—Pete’s call to the cops would have turned the street into CSI Oxford. London cops would soon be swarming all over the clinic in Harley Street, too.

  At last the deadline was close. I logged on to my e-mail server. There was a message from a different address, answerplease3. I wrote, Your target is Adrian Brooks, the crime writer Alistair Bing. I expect you to keep your word about not killing him.

  At exactly midnight, I hit Send. The message moved to the Sent Items folder without any problems. I felt like a footballer who’d just won the Cup final. I’d taken on Sara, or whoever she’d hired to kill the crime writers, and I’d won. How would she like that?

  There was a chime as an instant reply came through. My heart dropped like a stone.

  Well done, Matt. Though I did say it was an easy one. The thing is, I made the rules and I can break them. You know where Josh Hinkley lives, don’t you? Maybe you should get around there. Then again, given how nasty he’s been about you in print recently, maybe you shouldn’t. The delightful Karen might put you in the frame as the killer.

  Doctor Faustus

  “Fuck!” I yelled.

  Rog pushed me aside and keyed out a string of abuse. I managed to stop him before he sent the reply.

  “Forget it,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do.” I turned away.

  “Maybe it’s just a bluff,” Rog said. “Why don’t you ring this Hinkley guy from a public phone?”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. There was a phone across the road. I pressed out the number, my heart thundering. It rang ten times before it was picked up.

  “Hello,” came a neutral male voice.

  “Is that Josh?” I asked, in a Cockney accent.

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  This time I recognized the voice. It was DI John Turner, his Welsh vowels not completely obscured.

  I broke the connection. If Taff Turner was there, something terminal had happened to Josh Hinkley. It would be on the TV and radio stations soon enough.

  “What now?” Rog asked.

  “I’ve got a visit to make. You should get some sleep.”

  “I won’t be sleeping much tonight. I want to get Sara even more now.”

  “Get back to nailing her funds,” I said, squeezing his arm. “I don’t care where you put them, but I want her running on empty. Then we’ll see how clever she is.”

  “She
probably has accounts we don’t know about.”

  “Find them, Dodger. I’m depending on you.”

  “Right,” he said. “Don’t worry, Matt. We’ll get her.”

  I got my gear together and left the flat. I had to do this on my own and I couldn’t tell the others where I was going. The chips were down now and anything might happen. I had to be sure I didn’t land my friends in even more danger. The death of Dave still haunted me like a witch’s curse.

  I looked at my watch, all traces of the naive optimism I’d felt before I sent the answer vanished. I resisted the temptation to make a surreptitious visit to the crime scene at Josh Hinkley’s house, and started walking southwest.

  “Who was that?” Karen Oaten asked.

  “Some wide boy,” John Turner replied. “He hung up rather than give a name.”

  The chief inspector glanced at him. They were wearing white coveralls, the hoods up. They had arrived at eleven-thirty, called to the scene by DCI Younger. The narrow street in Soho had been blocked at both ends by patrol cars, their roof lights flashing. Uniformed personnel, some of them armed, were present and a striped barrier tape had already been set up around the street door to keep curious local residents, passersby and journalists at bay. The CSI vans were parked haphazardly and personnel in blue coveralls were already heading into the building. The ground and first two floors were used as offices. Josh Hinkley occupied the top two.

  Younger brought them up to speed. “One of the neighbors called about the noise at ten forty-three,” he said. “Uniformed officers got here at ten fifty-seven. There was no answer to their buzzing and knocking. They got the phone number and tried it. Nothing. The music was seriously loud and—”