The Soul Collector mw-2

by Paul Johnston

  I sent Andy a text message-we’d agreed to keep calls to a minimum. He said he’d followed Doris Carlton-Jones to a bridge club in Beckenham. I told him to stay on her. It was just possible that Sara would have arranged to meet her birth mother. Then I had a thought. Maybe she was also keeping an eye on Doris Carlton-Jones. She knew what Andy looked like. I texted him again, telling him to keep out of sight as much as possible, and not to go back to my flat.

  On the bus into the center, I thought about what I was doing. Dropping out of sight would piss Karen off and it might anger Sara, too. There was no right way to act. I thought about leaving the country and making it clear to Sara that I’d done so. Would that stop whatever devious plan she was working to? I knew it wouldn’t. She was implacable and relentless, and I was sure she’d spent the last two years honing the skills that the White Devil had introduced her to.

  I hit several cash machines, using different accounts each time, and then went to a computer shop that I hadn’t used before on Tottenham Court Road. I emerged with a laptop and a wi-fi card. Then I headed for the first hotel on the list I’d memorized. It was a cheap place in Bloomsbury, with clanking water pipes and dingy rooms, but the clerk was happy to be paid in cash and didn’t ask for identification. I signed in as Mr. R. Thompson and gave an address in Leeds. Both were real, as I’d checked the local telephone directory-it wasn’t a good idea to make things up, given the heightened security situation in London.

  I locked the door and set up the laptop on a rickety table. I’d got the techies in the shop to initiate the system, so I was ready to roll. I logged on and checked my e-mails. There was nothing unexpected. I went to Rog’s ghost site to see how he and Pete were getting on. They were making progress, but it was slow.

  I got back to thinking about the cryptic clue I’d been sent. There were under six hours to go. I was suddenly plagued by doubts about Katya being the target. Why would Sara go for a woman I’d only met briefly? Also, she could hardly have come up with a more difficult target, given how seriously a gangster like Safet Shkrelli would take security. Then again, I told myself, it would be just like Sara to choose an unlikely victim, and just like her to take on almost impossible odds. I hoped Shkrelli had paid heed to my warning. I’d liked Katya. She hadn’t lost her human warmth, despite the horrors she’d been through. Maybe that was why the gangster had chosen her. But was it really her name in the puzzle?

  I looked at it again. “The sun set by the westernmost dunes of Alexander’s womankind.” The sun. Apollo? Oddly enough, I didn’t know anyone of that name. Who else was associated with the sun? Louis XIVth of France had been known as the Sun King. Again, I didn’t know anyone called Louis, first or second name. I logged on to one of the search engines and came up with a list of sun-gods-Sol, Ra, Shamash, Inti, Surya Deva. I couldn’t link any of them to a recognizable person, unless I was expected to warn every person named Sol or Solomon of imminent death. Then there were all the newspapers with “sun” in their titles. I didn’t see how they might fit in to the rest of the clue. I thought about the dunes again. The westernmost dunes. In the U.K., that would mean Cornwall-there were plenty of beaches there, as well as a burgeoning surfing scene. Cornwall. I didn’t know anyone by that name. Shit, this was getting me nowhere.

  Then I remembered the name and initials the sender had used to sign off. Flaminio. That was an obvious link to John Webster’s play The White Devil. I’d initially assumed that meant Sara had written the message. But Flaminio was a male name. She would surely have used the name of Vittoria, the main female “white devil” in the play. As for D.F., I couldn’t make any link between those letters and Webster’s play. I began to have the feeling that I was playing a game with rules I only vaguely knew. Then I ran D.F. through a search engine and came up with the protagonist of a play by another writer born in the 16th century-Christopher Marlowe’s vainglorious but ultimately tragic Doctor Faustus. Why would Sara-or anyone else-cast themselves as the man who made a pact with the devil and ended up in hell?

  I had a bad feeling about this. It looked like Sara might not have written the message. Was I being pursued by a male who had, in some way, done a deal with the devil? Everyone made compromises, everyone did things they didn’t want to for some temporary gain. Then I remembered what Karen had said about the book I’d written: The Death List was in effect a pact with the devil and, by writing it, I’d lost part of my humanity. Maybe Sara, or someone else, was hinting at that.

  I got up and smacked my hands together. It was just after eight. I had four hours to come up with a name. Katya was still a possibility, but I wasn’t convinced about her anymore, despite the connection with Alexander Drys.

  I went back to the computer and started from scratch. The sun. Could the message be a series of opposites or pairs? “The moon rose far from the least eastern grains of-” Whose? Alexander the Great’s father Philip? His chief enemy Darius? His soul mate Hephaistion? I let that go. And mankind instead of womankind? So the target was a male? Going back to the beginning, I didn’t know anyone called Moon, apart from the long-dead drummer of the Who. “The moon rose…” Rose was a common enough name. I’d once done a radio program with a chicklit author called Rose Jones. I found her e-mail address on the Internet and sent her a message suggesting she keep a low profile. After I’d done that, I realized that she didn’t fulfil the new criterion of being male. If that was right…

  And so I went on, driving myself up the wall with abstruse ideas and unlikely solutions, as the clock steadily ticked toward twelve midnight.

  Karen Oaten stopped in front of the police barrier tape in the street in Hackney. The uniformed officer with a clipboard recognized her and lifted the cordon so she could drive in. The area that had been shut off was lit up by bright lights powered by a generator.

  “Here we go again, Amelia,” the chief inspector said.

  “Yes, guv.” Detective Sergeant Browning got out of the car quickly, enthusiasm all over her face.

  Oaten smiled, remembering when she’d been like that. She accepted a bag of protective gear from a CSI and began to pull the contents on.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” said Detective Superintendent Ron Paskin, still looking vast in his white coverall.

  “Certainly is,” Karen replied. “What happened this time?”

  “No one’s talking, at least not yet. This is Shadow territory. The man on the pavement over there is a Shadow, too.”

  “Jesus. This is going to turn really nasty.”

  Paskin nodded. “Hello, DS Browning,” he said. “Would you like a transfer to Homicide East?”

  “No chance, Superintendent.”

  “There’s plenty of action here.”

  The sergeant smiled. “Even more at the VCCT.” She went over to the body.

  “Only if you actually take these cases,” the policeman said to his former subordinate.

  “Are you asking me to?” Oaten asked.

  Ron Paskin shrugged. “Not yet. Though I reckon this killing is connected with the other ones in this area.”

  “Any evidence of that?”

  “The cartridge cases are similar to those found in the basement. Ballistics will prove that one way or the other.” He pointed toward an open door. “And there’s blood on a bed and on the floor upstairs. There are ropes up there, too-they’ve been cut. Someone who was tied down got cut loose.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Hard to tell. According to the pathologist, the victim was shot three times in the chest at close range, at between five and six o’clock this evening.”

  Oaten looked around the houses. “And no one saw or heard anything?”

  “Oh, they saw and heard, all right. They’re just not telling us. Don’t worry, we’ll find out. I’ve got Turkish-speaking officers. They’re going around now.”

  A man in his thirties with rings around his eyes came up. “You’re not going to believe this, guv.”

  “DCI Oaten, meet DI Ozal. He’s one o
f the Turkish-speakers I was telling you about.” Paskin looked at his subordinate. “Go on, then. It isn’t every day you get the chance to show how smart you are to the senior investigating officer of the VCCT.”

  Ozal gave Karen a wary glance. “No, guv. Well, I managed to get a couple of the lads to talk. They won’t give formal statements, but I’ll work on them.”

  “What happened, then?” Paskin asked impatiently.

  “Like I say, guv, you’re not going to believe this. The guy on the ground’s the Wolfman.”

  The superintendent whistled through his tobacco-stained teeth. “So that’s what he looks like.” He turned to Oaten. “You remember him?”

  She nodded. “The Wolfman was in the frame for a string of killings and near-fatal assaults on behalf of the Shadows. We never managed to lay a finger on him when I was here.”

  “That’s not all, guv,” Ozal said, his face flushed with excitement. “He was shot by someone wearing the burqa and chador. That means the Wolfman was killed by a woman-and she used a silenced weapon.”

  Karen Oaten raised a hand. “Hold on, Inspector. How do you know it was a woman?”

  Ozal looked like he’d been asked if the earth went around the sun. “No man would wear those garments, Chief Inspector.”

  Oaten looked at him. “Maybe not in your community. But that wouldn’t stop a non-Muslim.”

  “Who said anything about non-Muslims?” Paskin put in. “The killer could have been a Kurdish woman with a relative who was a victim of the Wolfman. Anyway, what else did they see?”

  “A couple of men came out of that house.” Ozal pointed to the open door. “One of them, in his twenties, was only wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and there was blood all over his legs. He had a bandage on one hand, too. The other was older, with a mustache. He was supporting the first one. Neither appeared to be armed. The Wolfman came running along the road, shouting, after the younger guy got into a green car, probably an Astra. When he got close, the woman…the person in the burqa and chador passed close by. No shots were heard, but the Turk hit the deck. Then the man with the mustache got into the car and they drove off.”

  “Did anyone get the registration number?” the superintendent asked.

  Ozal shook his head.

  Oaten and Paskin exchanged looks.

  “The young man had a wounded hand,” the chief inspector said. “Maybe he was the survivor from the basement.”

  “A Kurd, then, like the dead man?” Paskin said. “Since he had blood on his legs, the Wolfman had probably been working on him.”

  Karen Oaten rubbed her forehead. “When you’ve got the paperwork done and the tests from the blood on the bed are in, let me know. If they match that found in the basement, I’ll talk to the AC. Obviously we’d have to take this murder and the previous one. I’ll see if you can keep handling the groundwork.”

  Her former boss nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “Let’s just hope there aren’t any more killings,” Oaten said.

  Paskin grunted. “That’ll be a squadron of pigs I can hear flying over.”

  DI Ozal, a devout Muslim, looked at him in disgust.

  Andy Jackson was getting seriously pissed off with hiding behind the seats in the van. He liked action, not skulking. More than once, he’d had to stop himself going over to the bridge club and dragging Doris Carlton-Jones out. He reminded himself that people in the U.K. found most Americans to be extremely polite. Most Americans hadn’t grown up in the back streets of New Jersey’s most underprivileged city.

  It got dark, and still Sara’s birth mother was playing cards. Andy wondered if money was involved. Maybe she’d be there all night trying to win back her stake. And now it was getting cold in the van. He considered turning on the engine so he could let the heating blast out. No, that would make it obvious that there was someone inside. He stuck his hands into his armpits to warm them up. It was either there or his groin.

  He wasn’t even able to look forward to a night in Matt’s well-heated luxury apartment, as the text message had told him to hit the first hotel on his personal list. Matt was obviously busy and Andy didn’t want to disturb him. He’d be working on that puzzle. Andy still wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. Sure, if Sara had owned up to sending it, they’d know to watch out. But why would she hide behind those other names? And why was she giving Matt a clue in the first place? That wasn’t her style, as she’d shown with Dave. The only heads-up they’d been given was the call to Matt. That didn’t give them any time to stop her. So why all this bullshit now?

  A triangle of orange light appeared on the grass in front of the bridge club. Andy leaned forward and watched as people came out. He caught sight of Doris Carlton-Jones. He pulled himself over the seat backs and got behind the wheel. The woman was walking toward her car, which was parked farther up the street. Andy started the van’s engine and checked his wing mirrors. He’d been doing that regularly since Matt’s warning that Sara-or some sidekick-might also have been watching Mrs. Carlton-Jones. Anything was possible, but he wasn’t convinced about that. Sara was too smart to hang around her mother.

  The elderly woman drove to the end of the road, turned right and headed back toward Sydenham. Andy kept a couple of cars behind her and had no difficulty keeping in touch, even when a heavy drizzle started. The streetlamps were blurred, but the Japanese car had bright red taillights. While they were waiting for the traffic lights to change, Andy checked his wing mirrors again. They were covered in raindrops and he had to open the window and wipe the one on the driver’s side with his sleeve. That was when the motorbike came past. At first he didn’t pay it much attention. The rider was in dark-colored leathers, bent low over the handlebars. Having passed the vehicles behind Doris Carlton-Jones’s car, the biker then stopped behind her. That got Andy’s attention. There were another three cars between her and the traffic lights, and the motorbike had plenty of space to get past and take pole position. But the rider spurned that opportunity and stayed behind the Japanese car.

  The lights changed and the line of vehicles began to move. The road ahead was single-lane and there was no chance of overtaking-unless you were on a bike. But the rider stayed behind Doris Carlton-Jones. Andy drove closer to the car in front, provoking violent hand movements from the driver. He hit the van’s brakes when he saw the Baby on Board sticker on the rear window.

  The line of traffic went past Crystal Palace, and still the bike sat on Mrs. Carlton-Jones’s tail, though not close enough to bother her. Andy considered texting Matt, or even calling him, but there wasn’t much he could do from wherever he was.

  Then it struck Andy. Maybe Sara’s birth mother was the target. He had no idea how that would fit the clue, but that didn’t matter now. He had to make sure nothing happened to the woman. She wasn’t responsible for how her daughter had turned out, let alone for the White Devil. But Sara could easily have resented the fact that the birth mother had given her and her twin brother away when they were still babies. Was that a reason to kill her? In Sara’s perverted world, it probably was.

  Doris Carlton-Jones turned off the main road and headed for her street. None of the other drivers hit their right indicator, not even the motorbike. Then, at the last moment, the rider accelerated and took a sharp right turn. The driver of the car behind hit his horn and gesticulated wildly. Andy took the corner and found himself close to the motorbike, seeing that it was metallic red. He reckoned it was a Transalp. The rider was bound to have spotted him. He dropped back, but kept his eyes on the bike. It stayed behind the Japanese car, despite the fact that it could easily have overtaken it on the quiet back street. That made Andy even more certain that something bad was about to happen.

  Mrs. Carlton-Jones indicated left and turned into Northumberland Crescent. A few seconds later she was maneuvering into her narrow driveway. Andy slowed before making the turn and turned off his headlights. The streetlamps were bright enough, so he could see but he could also be seen by the motorbike rider, who
had followed Mrs. Carlton-Jones as far as the pavement outside her house. Andy stopped the van a few yards into Northumberland Crescent, but kept the engine running. The drizzle was heavier now and he was having difficulty seeing. The rider had got off the bike and was walking toward the house. Doris Carlton-Jones was locking her car and seemed unaware of the rider’s presence. She moved away from the car and headed for her front door, then saw the figure in leather, helmet still on, and stopped. It looked to Andy like she was speaking to the rider-probably asking what he or she wanted. Then the person in leathers raised a hand.

  “Shit!” Andy yelled, stamping the accelerator pedal. The van lurched forward and he drove it at the bike. As he was closing, the rider turned quickly and dropped the object he or she was holding, taking something else from the pocket in the leather jacket.

  The windscreen was instantly covered in a web of cracks. Andy hit the brake and smashed his elbow through the glass, noticing a small hole in the middle just before he made contact. The glass gave way and rain dashed over him. The van had come to a halt a few meters in front of the bike. Andy felt a bullet whip past his left ear, but didn’t hear a shot. The slug ricocheted around the metal sides of the van’s cargo space. He saw the muzzle of a silenced pistol aiming straight at him and ducked as low as he could. Again, a bullet whistled past, this time over his head. Then there came the sound of the motorbike being started. Andy put his shoulder to the door and dropped to the road. There was a roar as the rider revved hard. Andy rolled forward, only to see and hear the bike rocket down the curved street. In a couple of seconds it had disappeared into the rainy night.

  “What on earth…” Doris Carlton-Jones stood stock-still, staring down the street. It was only when Andy got to his feet that she moved her head. “Are you all right?” She moved toward him.

  “Yes,” he said, trying to lose his American accent. “You?”