by Paul Johnson
I quickly put together a bowl of pasta with bacon and onion, and managed to spend the first half of the meal talking about other things. Then, after she’d sunk a couple of glasses of Sicilian red, I made my move.
“So, your murder case,” I said, filling her glass. “Want to talk about it?”
Sara gave me a suspicious look. “You want to incorporate it in your next book, do you?” She lit a cigarette. “Bloody scavenger.” She smiled wearily.
I shrugged. “It’s a job like any other.”
She laughed, blowing out smoke. “Not many jobs give you the luxury of taking your kid to school, then sitting around at home all day.”
“A perfect description of my life,” I said, handing her an ashtray. “Are you going to tell me or not? I can tell you’re dying to.”
“Wait for the TV news,” she said, playing hardball.
I moved into flattery mode. “You know much more than the BBC’s going to come out with.”
She looked away. “I wish I didn’t, Matt. I really wish I didn’t.”
I hadn’t ever seen her so reluctant to talk. Like most journalists, she was a great one for regaling people with her latest scoops.
“All right,” she said, reaching for her laptop and turning it on. “Evelyn Louise Merton, age seventy-five. At least, that’s the police’s assumption.” She looked at me ruefully. “They’re having to wait for her dental records to be sure of the ID as there’s no next of kin and her face is too battered for the neighbors to recognize. Lived at 35 Summerhill Drive, Chelmsford. Worked in East London schools from 1958 until 1990. Last place of work, St. Pius’s School, Roman Road, Bethnal-”
“She was a Catholic?”
Sara stared at me. “Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, I suppose she was if she taught at a place with that name.” She hit the keys for a few moments and nodded. “Good spot, Mr. Detective.”
I tried to smile, without much success.
“Lived on her own, with her cat, which-by the way-was also slaughtered by the murderer.” She shook her head.
I tried to pull her close, but she resisted, her eyes flaring.
“Leave me alone!” she shouted. “How can you write about this sort of thing for fun?”
I felt my cheeks redden. Sara occasionally lost her grip, but not like this. The murder of the old woman had obviously got to her. “Hey…” I said, reaching out my arms.
“Tell me,” she insisted, leaning away. “Tell me why you do it, Matt.”
“I suppose…I suppose crime novels are a way of coming to terms with the violence of the world, a way of mediating between the reader and the abyss.”
“Bullshit,” she said, gulping down wine. “They’re a way of making a quick buck by pandering to people’s worst instincts.”
“And what you do is any better?”
“At least it’s true,” she retorted.
I bit my tongue. Having a discussion with a journalist about the nature of truth wasn’t a particularly enticing prospect. Anyway, the last person I wanted to piss off right now was the woman I loved.
“What are the police saying?” I asked after a long silence.
“Not much. The crime hacks reckon there’s more evidence, but the Met is keeping quiet about it.”
“The Met? What are they doing out in Essex?”
“Apparently the Violent Crime Coordination Team was called in.” She caught my gaze. “Because of some similarities with that priest murder in West Kilburn.”
Jesus. Was the Devil getting careless, or was he playing games with the police as well as me?
“Here it is,” Sara said. She’d turned the TV back on and was increasing the volume.
We listened as a woman reporter of Asian descent ran through the story. She had less to say than Sara, but at the end of her piece there was an excerpt from the police statement. The tough but attractive face of D.C.I. Karen Oaten, whom I’d seen filmed outside St. Bartholomew’s, came up on the screen.
“…and anyone who can pass on any information about this truly awful crime should not hesitate to contact us or any police station,” she said.
Sara had picked up her phone. She rang her colleague who was on duty and asked if anything was breaking. She listened, her eyes wide, and I tried to pick up what was being said.
“What is it?” I asked when she finished.
“I can’t believe this,” Sara said, taking another pull of wine. “During the autopsy, they found a small plastic bag in the victim’s…in her vagina. There was a piece of paper in it, with some words printed. The police aren’t saying what they were.”
I slumped down on the sofa. I didn’t know what the message was, but I was pretty sure where it came from.
John Webster’s The White Devil, unless I was very much mistaken.
Sara left in a cab for the paper. Her editor wanted the story updated before it went to press. Although I’d have preferred that she stayed, now I had the chance to think through what had happened. It wasn’t just the way the Devil had screwed with me. It wasn’t even the horrific death suffered by the former schoolteacher. No, what was really getting to me was the modus operandi. The cunning bastard. He’d suckered me again. Now I was potentially in even deeper shit. Because in the third Sir Tertius novel, The Revenger’s Comedy, I had described how a character had his right arm severed before his throat was cut.
I hadn’t meant the book to be the last of the series-in fact, I still had faint hopes of resurrecting my “dashing, desperately attractive detective” (as a female critic on the Internet had described him)-but I’d gradually lost interest in him and the period. Perhaps it was because of the levels of violence in the 1620s, or at least in my 1620s. I’d never exactly been a shrinking violet in that field. After The Silence of the Lambs and Patricia Cornwell’s lurid tales, the bar for fictional excess was raised high and that didn’t bother me. But Sir Tertius’s last adventure was worse than the others. It had taken him to Oxford, where he’d got caught up in a grotesque game of “kill the yokel” between the students of two colleges. The lead villain ended up being killed by a butcher, whose son had been torn apart by a specially trained pack of hunting hounds. Not only had the evil huntmaster’s arm been removed, horn still clasped in the fingers, but his private parts had been hacked off and a page from the Old Testament inserted in the cavity. The verses about “an eye for an eye” were on the page. I’d subsequently been verbally abused by a female crime writer at a conference who thought, like Sara, that I was using violence without justification.
My mobile rang. There was no number on the screen.
“What do you want?” I said tersely.
“Matt, Matt,” said the White Devil. “I’m ringing to satisfy your curiosity.”
“What about?” I asked, trying to disguise my interest.
“Did the good Sara fill you in on the murder?”
“Yes.”
“And has she heard about the calling card I left?”
I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. “You’re fucking sick,” I shouted. “Why did you kill the old woman, for Christ’s sake? No one deserves to die like that.”
“Oh, yes, they do,” he said, his voice steely. “People who sin have to pay the price, not only in the next world.”
I grabbed my notepad. “Did you know her, then?”
He gave a hollow laugh. “Don’t go on a fishing trip, Matt. I’ll tell you what I want you to know. The rest is for you to find out.”
I swallowed hard. “All right, what line of Webster’s did you use this time?”
“Very smart,” he said ironically. “Act 5, scene 6, lines 73 to 75."
I fumbled through my copy. “You sick bastard,” I said when I found the lines. “‘Gentle madam, Seem to consent, only persuade him teach the way to death; let him die first.’” I dropped the book. “The victim was one of your teachers, wasn’t she?”
“Bingo.”
I looked at the lines again. “But what’s the bit about letting him die fir
st in aid of?”
“Didn’t you hear that the bitch had a brother?”
“No.”
“Well, she did. I discovered he’d been fucking her.” A cold, metallic laugh. “Not only that, he used to treat us kids like shit at the sports day every year. He paid for that. You see, her brother died in July 2003. He was electrocuted by a faulty plug when he switched on his lawn mower. Accidental death, according to the coroner.” He paused. “But it wasn’t an accident.”
“What?” I felt as if I’d just stepped off a cliff. “You mean…you mean you killed him?”
“I thank you, I thank you.” The humor left his voice. “Why are you surprised, Matt? You already know how seriously I take my work.”
“I can find you,” I said, forgetting the danger for a moment.
“Yes, you can go through the school registers and find out all the boys Miss One-Arm Merton taught. You can triangulate that list with the dates you work out from Father Bugger O’Connell, and you can start to track me down.” He gave what sounded like a hiss. “Go on, then, Matt. But you’d better hurry. The police are going to be after you soon, even if I don’t steer them toward your books.”
“I’m going to stop you.”
“Be my guest. But remember I can kill Lucy and Sara and your mother before you even get close. Have you got the balls?” He sniggered. “Good night, Mr. Fictional Crime Expert.”
He cut the connection.
I rammed the phone between the cushions of the sofa and let out a yell of frustration.
The blond-haired man was sitting in front of a bank of screens. Behind him, the lights from St. Katharine’s Dock across the river shone through the blinds he’d partially closed. He had a martini with a maraschino cherry floating in it on the desk beside him. Despite the air-conditioning, the smell of the Sobranie Black Russians that he’d been smoking since he came back from Chelmsford was strong. He sipped from the tall-stemmed glass, getting the familiar rush from the almost neat gin.
The White Devil touched the pad of the control panel and zoomed in on the scene in Matt Wells’s sitting room. Good. The writer was hammering away at the keyboard, no doubt writing up the chapter about the latest killing. Soon there would be a whole novel about his exploits, a veritable Book of Death. But Matt Wells wouldn’t get any profit from it.
He went over to the gold-plated stereo system and slotted in the CD he had shoplifted in the City after he’d got back from Chelmsford. The skills he’d acquired as a boy had never left him. Robert Johnson started singing “Me and the Devil Blues.” Humming along, he remembered what he’d done after he’d taken off the old bitch’s arm-the one that she’d used to slap him countless times, even though she wasn’t meant to. It was in his collection, along with the jar containing Father Bugger’s eyes.
The Devil laughed. He was death, he was hell, he was a demon far worse than any from the fervid imagination of Hieronymus Bosch. He was insuperable, Lucifer rising, the very breath of the Apocalypse-and Matt Wells was his minion.
12
Karen Oaten stood on the viewing ramp overlooking the autopsy room. Beside her, John Turner was visibly struggling to keep his breakfast down. The pathologist and his assistants were working on the incomplete body of Evelyn Merton for the second time, at Oaten’s request.
“Doesn’t get any better, does it, Taff?” the chief inspector said, her face only slightly less pale than his.
“I can’t…I can’t believe that someone could do this to an old lady.”
Oaten nodded. “That’s not the worst of it. According to Redrose, the perpetrator showed considerable skill in amputating the arm. Which means he must have had practice.”
“A butcher?” Turner suggested.
“Certainly a possibility, but we’re not exactly narrowing down the field. There must be thousands of them in Greater London.”
“A surgeon?”
“Plenty of them, too.” She looked at the scene below. The former teacher’s corpse was no longer covered in blood as it had been the day before in the house in Chelmsford, but it was still hard to take. “Anyway, we’ll never find the killer by going through the professions. He could be a butcher, a cook, an ex-soldier, a farmer…We need to work the evidence. That’s why we’re down here.”
The inspector glanced at her. “What is it you think they didn’t find the first time round?”
“I want to know if there was sexual activity.”
Turner swallowed hard. “Jesus.”
Oaten nudged him with her elbow. “Bring me up to speed.”
“Right, guv.” The sergeant opened his notebook. “I put the people you got from D.C.I. Hardy’s unit on the street in Chelmsford, working with the locals. So far they haven’t found anyone who saw a suspicious individual in the vicinity yesterday. We’ve also started looking at the victim’s background. Not much to go on. She was a retired primary schoolteacher. No close friends or relatives. The neighbor says she used to live with her brother. He died in a gardening accident two years ago.”
“She worked in the East End, didn’t she?”
Turner nodded. “Bethnal Green. At a Catholic school.”
“Not far from where Father Prendegast, aka Father O’Connell, messed around with little boys.”
“The second quotation from that play makes it clear enough that it’s the same killer.”
Karen Oaten’s brow was furrowed. “Someone who was taught by Miss Merton and went to church at St. Peter’s. How are those lists of boys coming?”
“We’re getting there. Lewis and Allen are already checking alibis. Simmons and Pavlou are going to help them.”
“They’re also going to find out what kind of person the victim was, whether she was popular or not, aren’t they?”
“That’s what I told them.”
Oaten jerked her head away as the pathologist inserted an instrument between Evelyn Merton’s legs. “Thanks for doing that, Taff. I think they take it better from you. I’m not exactly their idea of a caring, sharing boss.”
Turner shrugged. “No problem, guv. They’re okay really, just a bit old-fashioned.”
“A bit out of line, to be precise,” she said. “But I’ve learned that diplomacy is sometimes the best way to play things.” She blinked as a loud voice came through the speaker set into the ceiling.
“Chief Inspector?” The pathologist was looking through the glass at her, speaking into a hanging microphone. “It’s very hard to be sure, but there are contusions in the vagina that may well not have been made when the message was inserted.”
Oaten leaned forward to the microphone in front of her and switched it on. “No semen?”
“Not that I can identify at this stage.” The medic’s voice was dry and mechanical. “As you can imagine, there are several fluids. We’ve taken swabs for analysis.”
Turner looked at the chief inspector. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her hands were gripping the wooden shelf beneath the window. “Guv? Are you all right?”
She turned to him slowly, her eyes widening. “No, Taff, I’m not fucking all right. Some bastard cut an old woman’s arm off, cut her throat and then maybe molested her.” She started walking out of the mortuary. “I’m going to get the scum who did this if it’s the last thing I do.” She glanced back at him. “And if I have the chance, I’m going to make him hurt.”
Turner caught up with her. “Careful, guv,” he said in a low voice. “You sound like you’re turning into one of those people in the play. A revenger.”
Karen Oaten kept her eyes off him. “Revenge is a powerful motive, Taff. That’s what’s driving our killer, I’m sure of it. If we want to catch him before he slaughters everyone who ever wronged him, we have to get inside his head. I’ll see you later.”
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“I had an appointment with an expert in Jacobean tragedy yesterday, remember?” she said over her shoulder. “Had to postpone because of what happened in Chelmsford. But now, afte
r the second quotation, it’s even more pressing.”
The chief inspector strode toward her car, trying to blink away the sight of the schoolteacher’s mutilated body. The man-she was sure it was a male-who killed her had left his calling card in the poor woman’s most private place. She’d sworn an oath back there in the morgue to catch him, and she felt the power of her words burning in her veins.
If she had to go to hell to catch this devil, she would gladly do so.
I finished the rewrite of my tormentor’s latest chapter and sent it off to him at four in the morning. That meant, at least in theory, that he might be delivering the next payment any time. I tried to sit up and watch the road below from a gap between the curtains, but it wasn’t long before I fell into a blood-dripping, demon-filled dream. When I awoke with a start, I saw it was daylight. Shit. I ran downstairs. There was no package on the mat. Panting with relief, I went slowly back upstairs to my flat.
I wanted to get the newspapers to find out the latest on the Chelmsford murder, but I couldn’t leave the house in case he showed up. I thought about it. Even if I did catch him, what did I think I was going to be able to do? Take on the man who had killed at least four people? With what? My Swiss Army knife? I realized I was trembling. I remembered the Devil’s taunts. I was a crime writer who was now deeply involved in real-life crime. He was right. I couldn’t cope. Then I thought of Lucy. I had to protect her. What would my life be worth if something happened to my beautiful little girl? And Sara? Could I live with her being hurt?
It was Saturday. By nine o’clock it was warm, the birds in the gardens between the houses making a colossal amount of noise. The usual arrangement was that Caroline had Lucy on Saturdays and I had her on Sundays. That suited me. I could wait for the Devil’s delivery. I logged on to my e-mail program. There was no message from him. What did that mean? Was he on his way here or was he tearing some other poor soul to pieces?
I dressed quickly, not taking a shower or shaving so that I could keep an eye on the road. The usual laid-back activities of a Saturday morning were going on-men wandering off to get the papers, with small children running around them; couples walking their dogs; families loading up people carriers for expeditions to the country. No one or nothing out of the ordinary. The postman came along the street with his buggy. I knew him. He dropped a couple of bills through the flap and continued on his way. Nothing else happened.
