The Soul Collector

by Paul Johnston

  She certainly felt that someone was committed to ridiculing her in public. If she didn’t get a break soon, the AC would put her head on the revolving sign outside the Met.

  “Mummy!” Lucy screamed.

  Caroline came down the stairs in a tumble. “What is it?” she asked, eyes wide as she looked around the hall of the detached house.

  “You gave me the wrong password. That’s why we haven’t got e-mail. I’ve been trying other combinations and finally I got in.”

  Her mother glared at her. “You screamed as if you’d been…as if you’d seen a ghost because of that? I almost had a heart attack.” Something similar had happened when Lucy had run up shouting at the motorway services, when Caroline had been talking to a woman who had asked her about her shoes. The child had her father’s tendency to overreact.

  “It’s your fault,” Lucy said. “Daddy will be so worried, not hearing from us. I’m going to send him a message now.”

  “Don’t stay online any longer than you have to,” Caroline ordered. She was sure she’d typed in the right password. She’d been required to learn it by heart after being handed a sealed envelope by a solicitor over a year ago. He had then taken the envelope and its contents back, and run them through a shredder. She normally had an excellent memory for numerical and alphabetic codes, but she had so many to remember and today had been very tense. She would have killed for a gin and tonic, but whoever had stocked the cupboards had not included alcohol. Maybe Matt was behind that.

  “Daddy’s sent a reply,” Lucy called from the front room. “He’s angry that you took your car.”

  “You told him?” Caroline said in disbelief. “Get off that chair.” She pulled it from beneath her daughter and peered at the screen.

  …you might have compromised the operation and put all three of you in danger. Caroline, this is not a game. If you’ve watched the news, you’ll understand that. Please follow every other instruction to the letter. And do not stay online for more than a few minutes at a time. M.

  Caroline leaned forward and typed a reply.

  Time’s up. Logging off NOW. C.

  That would teach him to order them about, she thought triumphantly. But what did he mean about the news?

  “Lucy,” she said, “it’s well past your bedtime. Upstairs now, young lady.”

  “Oh, Mu—” The child broke off when she saw the look on her mother’s face. “’Night,” she said, kissing Caroline on the cheek. “’Night, Gran.”

  “What, dear?” Fran said, raising her eyes from the book she was reading. “Oh, good night. Sleep tight.” She watched as Caroline turned on the television and moved from channel to channel. Only BBC24 was showing a news bulletin. It was from there that they learned of Dave Cummings’s murder.

  “Oh my God,” Caroline said, her hand to her mouth. “Poor Dave. How awful for Ginny and the children.”

  Caroline and Fran looked at each other and clasped hands, something they’d never done before. It made them feel better, but not much.

  Ten

  I thought about calling Karen before I turned in, but decided against it—she needed distance from me if she was to do her job properly. As I lay on the big bed that we’d shared only two nights earlier, I thought about our relationship. I loved her and she said she loved me. But what sort of love was it when both people’s work was the most important thing in their lives? I also had Lucy, Fran and my mates, while Karen, whose parents had died when she was a student, was a loner, with no friends outside the police and, from what she’d said, not many inside—she certainly didn’t meet up with people after work. I was all right as my needs were fulfilled, but it was difficult to tell what she wanted from the relationship as she’d built a protective shield around herself. Sometimes I wondered if a steak, a decent red wine and a massage followed by energetic sex were all she required. When I caught a wistful look or she embraced me more passionately than usual, I realized that she really did love me. I was more open about what I felt for her, but I was also skeptical about the ultimate power of that emotion. The divorce from Caroline and Sara’s comprehensive betrayal had caused that, though I knew I was at fault for much that went wrong in my marriage. I also should have paid more attention to Sara. Every day I’ve blamed myself for failing to perceive her true character.

  I didn’t think I’d sleep, especially not with Andy stretched out on a row of cushions on the floor in my bedroom—he’d insisted on staying close—but I dropped fairly quickly into an exhausted slumber. Soon I was jolted awake by a vision of Dave. He was covered in blood and he started to speak. I heard the words, but couldn’t make sense of them—only that he was frightened, and kept looking over my shoulder. I turned to see Sara, her eyes red and her mouth twisted into a demonic smile…

  “Matt!”

  I came back to the real world, to find Andy shaking my arm.

  “You, too, huh?” he said, blinking. His hair was all over the place. “Dave…Christ, it was so real….”

  So we sat side by side on the bed and talked about our friend, recalling his exploits on the rugby field, his bravery at the climax of the White Devil case and many nights of epic mayhem in the pubs of South London. I don’t know if that made me feel any better, but it did send me eventually into a dreamless sleep. Dave’s ghost, it seemed, had receded. I hoped he had crossed the bar and passed into the fields of Elysium, avoiding rebirth into this hard and bitter world.

  Andy had also gone when I woke up, but it didn’t take long to find him. The smell of bacon from the kitchen was enticing.

  “Hungry?” he said. “I’ve got scrambled eggs with red and green peppers, deviled kidneys, French toast, sausages, mushrooms and black pudding.”

  “Bloody hell, Slash,” I said, taking in the array on plates. “There’s enough food for an army here.”

  “We weren’t up to eating yesterday, remember?”

  My stomach was making clear that it needed filling, but I had to check my e-mails first. People I hadn’t told about Dave’s death were asking what had happened. I kept my replies short and told everyone to leave home for a few days if they could. Caroline had sent a brief e-mail saying the three of them had passed the night without problems, and demanding to know why I hadn’t told her about Dave’s death. I didn’t reply. She’d never liked any of my friends and sharing my grief would have felt like disloyalty to Dave. I knew that was immature and that I’d get past it—but not yet. I opened the ghost Web site Rog had set up. Both he and Pete had checked in. They were okay and had started their separate searches for Sara via her financial dealings.

  By the time I got to the table, Andy had started eating, but he had scrupulously left half of the food on each platter.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, his mouth full.

  I nodded. “Apart from catching Sara.”

  “Eat!” he ordered. “It’ll set you up for battle.”

  I did as I was told. It was one of the best meals I’d ever had. I was putting the plates in the dishwasher when the phone rang. It was Karen.

  “Good, you’re at home,” she said after greeting me. She sounded all in.

  I glanced at Andy. “Em, yeah, but I’ll be going out soon.”

  “Do you want to see me or not?” she asked testily.

  “Of course I do,” I replied.

  “Said with a huge amount of sincerity. I’ll be around in a quarter of an hour. Don’t worry, I won’t be staying long.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said after she’d terminated the call. “Karen’s coming in fifteen, Slash. You’d better find somewhere to lie low. If she finds you here, she’ll take you back to the Yard and squeeze a statement out of you.”

  He got up from the table slowly. “She won’t look in the spare bedroom, will she?”

  “She’s a detective, big man. She might look anywhere. The walk-in wardrobe there is full of old coats and the like. You could lurk behind them.”

  Andy grinned. “I like a good lurk.” He continued clearing plates and stac
king them in the dishwasher.

  I went back to the computer. There were a few other people I needed to alert—crime writers who lived beyond the South East and who weren’t obvious targets, and a few distant relations in the North. I logged back on to my e-mail program. That turned out to be a very bad idea, though at least I didn’t lose any time. There were two new messages that caught my eye. The first was from Josh Hinkley. He said that he understood I was in shock and that he didn’t expect an apology for the way I’d spoken to him last night. Asshole squared. The other should have made me suspicious earlier than it did. The sender was who’s next? At first I thought it was to do with the Who—I subscribed to the band’s newsletter. I should have been so lucky. After I read the first couple of lines I bellowed out Andy’s name.

  Hail, Matt Wells, aka Matt Stone, purveyor of crime fiction and nonfiction to the world. Except there haven’t been too many novels lately, have there? Doesn’t matter. I can help you on the ideas front. Who am I? That’s for you to find out. I read your column in the Daily Independent and I know how well-endowed you are, so to speak, as regards knowledge of crime. That’s why I’ve chosen you. I’ve also read The Death List—what a great book! But would you have been able to corner the White Devil without the help of your friend Dave Cummings? Oh, by the way, my condolences on his death. Very sad, deeply distressing, tragically premature—all the meaningless bullshit people come out with when the “d” word gets uncomfortably close to their pathetic lives.

  “Who is this fucking shithead?” Andy shouted over my shoulder.

  “Cool it,” I said. “Let’s see where this goes.”

  Anyway, time moves ever onwards and, as you’ll see, time is very important. I’m delighted to be in a position to issue a challenge—in fact, a series of challenges. As the title of this message says, the question I’ll be asking you is “Who’s Next?” I know from the archive of concert reviews on your Web site that you’re a big fan of the Who. Sorry to disappoint you, but this has nothing to do with those aged rockers, or rather, Mods. No, this challenge concerns the other side of your writing life, crime fiction.

  First, let me tell you various things that haven’t come out in the media. I’m sure you know the details already since you spend so much time with the delectable DCI Oaten, but they’ll establish my credentials, so to speak. The murder of Mary Malone: I took hairs from her head and pubic area; I drew a pentagram in white chalk in the garden to the rear of her house—within it, I wrote the words FECIT DIABOLUS. Is that enough? I hope you liked the reference to the devil and that you approve of my choice of music. I know you love the Stones…

  “Jesus,” I said, my stomach now revolting against breakfast. “Unless someone in Karen’s team is playing a seriously bad joke, this is Mary Malone’s killer.”

  Andy was staring at the screen. “It gets worse, man.”

  I scrolled down and read on.

  So, da-daaah!—here’s the challenge. All you have to do is solve the puzzle I’ve set for you by midnight. I’ll contact you by e-mail (obviously not using this address or provider—I learned that from the White Devil…) and ask for your answer. The rules are simple and I promise I’ll observe them. If you e-mail me straight back with the correct answer, I won’t kill my next target. If you don’t, it’s “Good night, sweet lady” or “prince”—no, I’m not going to ask you to identify that; anyone who read English at university, as you did, will spot that I’m riffing on lines from Hamlet. How can you trust me? Well, you haven’t got much choice, have you? I already promised to play by the rules, Matt. That’s all I can say.

  Here it is—puzzle number one:

  The sun set by the westernmost dunes of Alexander’s womankind.

  By the way, Matt, this is for you to work out. I know you’ll ask your mother and your friends to help, there’s nothing I can do to stop that. But if I discover that you’ve told Karen Oaten or anyone else in authority about the challenge, I swear I’ll kill all the names on my list, including your family and everyone else you care for without giving you a second chance. Clear?

  Till 23:59 tonight—I’ll give you a minute to reply then. And remember, I’ve killed already. Not just Mary Malone, but her black cat, as well. Off with its head! That wasn’t reported, either, was it?

  You could call me Flaminio, but I prefer D.F.

  “What is this shit?” Andy said, glancing at me. “Have you got any idea what’s going on here, Matt?”

  I blinked and tried to concentrate. “I know that Flaminio is the chief villain and white devil—meaning liar and hypocrite—in Webster’s play of that name.”

  Andy’s brow furrowed as he tried to keep up. “The White Devil? So Sara’s behind this.”

  I raised my shoulders. “Maybe. But she’s been busy already, assuming she killed Dave, too.”

  “Doesn’t seem too likely that you’ve got another mad person on your ass.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out, Slash.”

  “What’s D.F.?”

  “Search me. Direction finder?”

  “Yeah, we could use one of those.”

  “Defender of the Faith? That means the queen, in case you were wondering. No, it’s probably not her.”

  Andy looked at me dubiously. “What about this half-assed challenge? You think whoever wrote this is really going to kill someone just because you can’t work out their identity?”

  I raised a hand. “Hold on. We have to assume the writer is serious. Jesus, that clue could lead to Lucy or one of our friends. But you’re messing up the motivation. The next target won’t be killed because of anything I do. The killer’s working to another plan—there’s mention of a list. We’ll have to work out who’s on it from the message—I mean both how it’s written and what it contains. And—if I blow it—by the modus operandi.”

  “Yeah, well I think I’ll leave solving the riddle to you,” the American said. “I haven’t done that kind of stuff since high school, and I screwed up in English literature big-time.”

  I was looking at the line in red. “The sun set by the westernmost—”

  Then I heard keys turn in the locks. I’d forgotten about Karen.

  “Into the wardrobe in the guest room,” I hissed to Andy as the door opened and the chains rattled. Fortunately he’d already stashed the bag containing his weapons and other gear. I clicked off my e-mail and went quickly to the door.

  Roger van Zandt opened the curtain of his room a couple of centimeters. The pavements in the back streets around Paddington Station were dotted with the rubbish left by representatives of the local subcultures—tarts, junkies, down-and-outs and the people who preyed on them. Rog didn’t view himself as a prude, but this area made him wish that some morally superior politician of the kind he never voted for would launch a cleanup campaign.

  He went back to the small desk that he’d been working at until sleep claimed him as dawn was breaking. His laptop sat there, a silver machine that had taken him all over the world from the grimy room. He had bought a cutting-edge processor, and the wireless card meant that he was completely mobile. Later he’d be slipping away from this dump and checking into another hotel. But before then he had to post what he’d found on the impregnable ghost site.

  Rog sat down on the rickety chair and started to work on the document. What he had done was follow the money trail from the White Devil’s accounts. He and Pete had originally found them two years back when they were on the trail of Matt’s persecutor. After the madman’s death, Matt had decided not to pursue the money. He didn’t know that Rog and Pete had kept tabs on Sara’s funds. Dave’s murder meant that they had to track Sara down fast via her money, and Rog was glad they had only a small number of transactions to catch up on. It had taken him no more than a few minutes to realize that someone who really knew what they were doing had done their utmost to obscure the trail. Sara had obviously hired a top-notch techie before she went after Dave.

  Not that Rog had been stymied. It had taken some time, but he now
had a list of bank accounts, ranging from Switzerland to Macau, via the Cayman Islands and Bolivia. He knew where Sara had invested part of the forty-two million dollars she’d acquired—in U.S. and German government stocks, but also in a range of public companies. Pete would be able to work on that side. Last, but definitely not least, Rog had discovered several properties that Sara had bought. Four of those were in the U.K., three in the southeast of England.

  The interesting thing about the U.K. properties was the name of the owner—Angela Oliver-Merilee. Rog had run identity checks and had found two women with that name. One was a ninety-two-year-old resident of a nursing home in Yorkshire, the other the seven-year-old daughter of a classics teacher living in Manchester. Rog was sure the name had been chosen for a reason. Matt would probably have some thoughts on that.

  Rog finished the text and sent it to the ghost site, then logged off and shut down his machine.

  A few minutes later he was in the shower, water spraying all over the yellowing tiles from a faulty head. Having devoted himself to nailing Sara for so many hours, now Rog couldn’t get Dave out of his mind. Tears ran down his face and were immediately washed down the drain by the jets of lukewarm water.

  He stumbled from the shower, dripping water over the floor. Pausing only to dry his hands, Rog logged on to the ghost site again and sent a message to his friends:

  I can’t do this on my own, guys. What are we doing hiding from the bitch? Dave would have wanted us to stand up and fight her in the open. Matt, at least let me and Pete work together. We’ll look after each other. Please. I’m fucking dying in this dump.

  Then Rog cut the connection to the Internet and buried his head in his hands.

  “Matt?” Karen called.

  “Coming,” I said, trying to remember what I’d done with my Glock. Had I left it anywhere obvious?