The Death List mw-1

by Paul Johnson

  But later? Maybe I would try to contact the men who’d been interviewed. One of them ran a tool shop in Carlisle now, while the other had a fruit and vegetable stall on the Roman Road-Harry Winder was his name. Then I had a thought that made me sit up. Could he be the Devil? Or could Andrew Lough, the hardware man in the north? I examined their photographs. Winder was tall, thickset and balding, a family man with four children, while Lough was in a wheelchair suffering from early-onset multiple sclerosis. Neither of them were likely candidates, though I couldn’t rule them out. In any case, they would probably remember the names of other boys.

  My mobile phone rang. No number was displayed on the screen.

  “Hello, Matt.” It was the White Devil. “Enjoying the papers?”

  “Where are you?” I said, standing up and turning round 360 degrees. I could see no one speaking on a phone.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He chuckled, but there was no warmth in his voice. “So now you know about the good father’s dirty past. What are you going to do? Dash off down the Roman and talk to Harry Winder? Ring up Andy Lough? I didn’t know he had MS. Still, he always was a bit of a tosser.”

  Bastard. He was way ahead of me.

  “Matt? You’ve gone all quiet.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, just passing the time of day. Have you written up the bully episode?”

  “Yes. I’ll send it to you later.”

  “You are doing well. Another chapter and you’ll be in line for the next cash payment.”

  “I don’t want your filthy money.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.” The Devil’s tone hardened. “That’s our agreement, remember?” He gave a dry laugh. “Besides, you never know. You might catch me when I deliver it.”

  “What the fuck are you playing at?” I shouted, getting a sharp look from a woman with a small girl. I lowered my voice. “Are you trying to frame me? Did you have to kill the priest the way you did?”

  “That was a token of my admiration for your books,” he replied smoothly. “You shouldn’t go putting ideas in people’s heads, Matt. Yes, you’re right to be concerned. One anonymous call to Scotland Yard and you become suspect number one.”

  “Oh, bollocks,” I said, trying to play tough. “Who’s going to believe that a crime novelist would go around murdering people the way he does in his books? Not even the police are that thick.”

  “Don’t panic, Matt. Remember, you’ve got an alibi.” He paused. “Of course, you could have hired someone else to do your dirty work. That happens in your books, too.”

  “Screw you,” I said under my breath.

  “Careful,” the Devil replied, his tone sharp again. “Your alibi would disappear if I decided to make a move on Sara.”

  I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. “You-” I broke off when I realized the danger of provoking him further.

  “Now, go off like a good daddy and pick up Lucy, Matt. I’m looking forward to the piece you’ve written. I know you’re enjoying this project. It’s right up your street, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I suppose I have an interest in revenge, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I mean, all right, Matt. You’re no different from me. Oh, in case you were thinking of it, don’t bother checking up on my background in the East End.” He laughed. “Priests aren’t the only people who can get new identities. And priests aren’t the only people who die in agony for their sins.”

  He rang off.

  I shivered. The threat was clear. I was no nearer to him than when he’d first contacted me. But, as he’d just shown, he was very close to me and the ones I loved. Then an alternative meaning of his last words struck me. Jesus, was he lining up to murder someone else? Was he going to use another of the methods from my novels?

  I didn’t know what to do.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder when I was in the playground waiting for Lucy. I whipped my head round, my eyes wide.

  “Christ, Matt, what’s up?”

  “Sorry, mate.” I slapped my friend Dave Cummings on the arm. “Don’t go creeping up on people.” I nodded to Ginny, who was hanging back as if she didn’t want to intrude. Her face was pale, but her eyes were fixed on her husband with a mixture of boredom and dislike. I’d begun to wonder how their marriage survived.

  He eyed me dubiously. “Are you all right? You don’t look too good.”

  “Not enough sleep,” I said, yawning.

  Dave grinned. He was a Yorkshireman, of medium height but heavily built. His nose had been broken so many times that the surgeons could do nothing but shape it into a ragged slalom. He used to be a useful scrum-half with a turn of speed that brought us a lot of scores. “New book on the go?”

  “Yeah,” I replied listlessly.

  “Got a contract?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You should get a real job, mate.” He ran his hand over his thick brown hair.

  All the time I’d known him, he’d worn it short at the front and long at the back in the much-mocked mullet style-he said he’d missed his chance when he was young.

  “What, like yours?” Dave was an ex-paratrooper. He had a reputation for barely restrained ferocity on the field and his club nickname was Psycho. He was equally forceful in his business. He ran a demolition company and took great pleasure in operating the machines himself whenever he could.

  “What’s wrong with my line of work?” he said, squaring up to me with mock aggression. “At least I don’t sit around making things up all day.”

  I wished that was what I was engaged in at present. “What are you doing here, anyway? Have you knocked down every old building south of the river?”

  He gave me another manic grin. “No. I gave myself the afternoon off. I’m taking Tom go-karting.”

  “Don’t get behind the controls yourself, you lunatic.”

  He laughed and slapped his gut. He’d given up playing around the same time I had. “I wish I could.”

  The bell rang and the sound of children’s voices started to rise to a crescendo.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Matt?” Dave said, looking at me with concern.

  I nodded and concentrated on finding Lucy. “Of course I am.”

  “Here, Tom!” he shouted, waving to his crew-cut eight-year-old. He nudged me in the ribs. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said, smiling at Lucy. “I mean it.”

  I bent down to kiss my daughter. Over her head I watched Dave wait for Ginny and their daughter, Annie, with ill-concealed impatience. I felt my eyes sting. That was the problem. I couldn’t tell Psycho or anyone else about the bastard who was haunting me in case he turned on them and theirs.

  Lucy chattered away as we walked back to Ferndene Road, but I found it difficult to follow what she was saying. I was thinking about the Devil and how to get to him before he killed again. He’d made it clear that he’d changed his name. Of course, that could have been a lie to put me off his trail, but I didn’t think so. He’d shown how careful he was at planning and carrying out his crimes. It wasn’t hard to believe that he had covered himself by assuming another identity. How did you go about doing that? I wasn’t sure. The old crime-novel staple was obtaining a replacement birth certificate for someone of similar age who had died young. But I had the feeling that was less secure than it used to be now that records were computerized. In which case, it came down to the standard solution to all problems. Money. The Devil didn’t seem to work, or he could afford to hire sidekicks. Was he rich? If so, how had he got there from being a fatherless teenager in Bethnal Green? People who had wealth were often in the public eye, one way or another.

  “-and then I fainted.”

  “What, sweetie?”

  Lucy was smiling at me. “I said, and then I fainted.”

  “What?” I stopped walking and squatted down beside her. “When?”

  “Silly daddy,” she said,
squealing with laughter. “I got you, I got you. I could see you weren’t listening.”

  I grabbed her round the waist, feeling how delicate and vulnerable her body was. “Very funny. What do you want for tea?”

  She stared at me. “We already talked about that. You said I could have sausages.”

  I nodded, trying to hide my confusion. “Ha, got you back,” I said, tickling her.

  She pushed me off, giggling, and we completed the walk.

  Jesus. I was even starting to lose it in front of my daughter. There was going to be a reckoning for the bastard who was doing this to me.

  The Hereward in Greenwich was one of the roughest pubs in the area. Its regulars wanted it that way. They were never disturbed by tourists who’d been to the Cutty Sark or the Maritime Museum, by the rich kids who’d bought flats in the Georgian houses or even by slumming students from Goldsmith’s. The Hereward had a seriously bad reputation and the police hardly ever organized raids. It was frequented by the local lowlife, encouraged by an ex-con landlord who had his fingers in numerous illegal pies.

  The three men watching the pub knew all that. One of them had been inside a few times, dressed in raggedyarsed jeans and a porkpie hat. He’d been taken for a hardman and left alone with his drink. The regulars weren’t stupid. He was indeed as hard as they came.

  “Target has exited,” Rommel said from the corner opposite. Now he was dressed in a leather bomber jacket, a woolen cap over his short hair and dark glasses shading his eyes. He spoke into a hands-free microphone and watched as a thirty-year-old man with dirty shoulder-length dreadlocks stumbled down the steps.

  His two colleagues were in a pale blue Orion with a hundred-and-thirty-thousand miles on the clock. They’d picked it up from a dealer in Neasden, who asked no questions when they paid cash and gave what he was sure were a false name and address.

  “Okay,” said the man in the passenger seat. “We’ve got him.” He pulled on gloves and nodded to the driver. Both of them were wearing black woolen hats and sunglasses. “Let’s go, Geronimo.”

  The car moved forward smoothly, then ground to a halt five yards in front of the skinny man in dirty jeans and denim jacket. He was clearly the worse for several drinks, his gait unsteady.

  “Oy-” he gasped, as he was grabbed from behind by the Orion’s passenger. That was all he managed. A hand tightened over his mouth and he was thrown into the backseat.

  Meanwhile Rommel had crossed the road quickly. He went up to the double doors of the Hereward, taking from inside his jacket a half-meter steel bar which he slid through the handles in case anyone had seen what had happened. He smiled when he felt the door shudder. As they’d suspected, their man had friends who watched his back.

  He ran to the car and got in beside the driver, who pulled out in front of a bus and drove rapidly away.

  From the rear seat, Wolfe looked back for several minutes. “Okay, we’re clear. Take channel one.” They’d worked out several escape routes in case of pursuit, but it seemed his team had been too good for the opposition, as he’d suspected it would be. He turned to the quivering figure beside him. His hands had been cuffed behind his back and a strip of duct tape stuck over his mouth.

  “Easy as nicking ice cream from a kid,” said Rommel, grinning.

  “You’ll be wondering what’s going on, Terry,” Wolfe said, his voice low. “Here’s a clue. Jimmy Tanner.”

  The captive’s acne-scarred face turned even paler.

  “You’re going to tell us everything you know about him and all the people he spoke to in that shithole.” His tone was menacing now. “Or I’ll rip your balls off one by one and one and put them in a toad-in-the-hole.” He smiled. “Which you’ll eat for your tea.”

  Terence Smail, alcoholic, small-time drug dealer and pimp, looked like he was about to throw up. When he failed to do that, he fainted.

  Sara was working late at the paper, so I was on my own that evening. I sent the chapter I’d written to the Devil’s last e-mail address and waited for a reply. None came. Jesus, was he in the middle of slaughtering someone else who had done him harm? I went on to the Internet and did a search for “changing your identity.” There were dozens of sites offering new names and documents for fees ranging from paltry (for photocopied fake documents) to very expensive (supposedly for “the real thing”-these people had no sense of irony). I wondered if he’d used one of them. I doubted it. He’d have gone for a more secure way. He wouldn’t have been able to trust that his changed identity was safe on the Web. I was sure he’d have found another method. Maybe he had criminal connections. East End gangsters? I didn’t want to get involved with them, and, anyway, he’d find out soon enough if someone was snooping around. I couldn’t risk it.

  But what was the alternative? Wait for the next victim to appear on the news?

  I couldn’t come up with anything else, so I drank half a bottle of single malt and passed out in front of the television.

  10

  Karen Oaten stormed down the corridor to the VCCT office, her cheeks red and her heart pounding. She had just spent a very uncomfortable half hour with the assistant commissioner. He had set the team up as his personal fiefdom, dispensing with the normal chain of command. He wanted to know how it was that the newspapers had found out about Father Prendegast’s previous identity before the Met. It was a good question, one to which she would also like an answer.

  “Simmons!” she shouted as she banged open the door. “Pavlou! My office.” She glanced round at John Turner, who was trying to hide behind his computer. “You, too, Taff.”

  The chief inspector slammed the door when her three subordinates were inside. She didn’t bother dropping the blind. She wanted the rest of the team to see what was about to happen.

  “Right, you useless tossers,” she said, glaring at Simmons and Pavlou. “I’ve just had my arse chewed up and spat out by the AC. That means I’m now looking for arses for my own lunch.”

  “Excuse me, guv,” D.S. Paul Pavlou said politely. He was half-Cypriot, his face permanently covered by a thick layer of black stubble. “We-”

  “Shut it, you piece of shit!” Oaten yelled. “I’ll tell you when you can open your kebab-stinking mouth.” Her eyes moved on to Morry Simmons. He was pasty-faced and in his forties, a permanent detective sergeant who was only on the team because one of the other chief inspectors owed him a favor. “Try me, Simmons, just try me.”

  He showed no sign of wanting to speak.

  “Right,” Oaten said, glancing at Turner. “The last I heard, you two were investigating the victim’s past. You now have permission to explain to me why you screwed up.”

  Neither Simmons nor Pavlou was inclined to answer.

  “Open it!” Oaten shouted.

  Pavlou glanced at his colleague. “Well, guv, we got as far as the bishop who had responsibility for St Bartholomew’s. He told us about the monastery in Ireland. I called, but no one there knew anything about Father Prendegast.”

  The chief inspector was shaking her head. “It didn’t occur to you to ask me if you could go over there and ask in person?”

  Simmons’s eyes opened wide. “What, you would have signed off on that?”

  “This is the Violent Crime Coordination Team, not some local nick. Of course I’d have signed off on it.” She looked at each of them. “Or at least, I’d have sent someone with more than half a dozen brain cells over there.” She picked up one of the tabloids that was lying on her desk. “Now I don’t have to. The press has done your job for you. ‘In an astonishing twist,’” she read, “‘we can reveal that murder victim Father Norman Prendegast was a pederast given a new identity by the Catholic Church. Blah blah real name Father Patrick O’Connell, blah blah St. Peter’s, Bonner Street, Bethnal Green, blah blah former choirboys Harry Winder and Andrew Lough, blah blah subjected to repulsive sexual practices.’” Oaten glared at Simmons and Pavlou. “And how do you think the papers got hold of this?”

  “Oh, that’s obvious, gu
v,” Simmons said, a grin splitting his sallow face. “They chucked money at anyone they could find.”

  “Wrong!” the chief inspector shouted, crumpling the newspaper up and throwing it accurately at his chest. “They did what you wankers are supposed to do. They asked questions, and when people stonewalled them, they kept on asking.”

  “But they went to Ireland,” Pavlou said, pointing at a picture of the monastery where the dead man had been hidden away.

  Oaten groaned. “We’ve already been over that, you pillock. This isn’t about who goes where, it’s about so-called detectives who don’t know their arse from their armpit.” She shot a glance at Turner. “Help us out here, Taff. What do we do next?”

  “Um, interview Winder and Lough. Find out who else might have been abused by the victim. Talk to other people who attended St. Peter’s back in the late seventies and early eighties.”

  The chief inspector was nodding. “Thank God someone around here knows his job.”

  Pavlou stepped forward, his expression keen. “I’d be happy to go up to the northeast to interview Lough.”

  “I bet you would,” Karen Oaten replied mordantly. “The question is, am I happy to risk another cock-up by letting you go?” She rubbed her forehead. “All right, contact the locals and get them to bring Lough in for questioning. At least that should keep the press off him till you get there.” She turned to Simmons. “You get down to Bethnal Green and talk to this Harry Winder. Remind him that, even if he’s sold his story to some rag, he has to come clean with us. Think you can manage that?”

  The two sergeants nodded unhappily.

  “Get going then!” She raised a hand at Turner. “Not you, Taff.” She waited till the door closed behind the others. “Morons. So, what are you working on?”