The Death List mw-1

by Paul Johnson

  Oaten shrugged. “We haven’t got that far yet. The blows to the head that killed him interest me. The previous killings were carried out with what you described in your reports as ‘controlled brutality.’ So was this one, apart from the head. Why was it smashed up the way it was?”

  “Maybe he was struggling with his assailant,” Turner suggested.

  “No, the victim was restrained,” said the pathologist, pointing to rope burns on the stumps of the arms.

  “So it was in cold blood,” the chief inspector said. She moved over to the lead SOCO. “Anything interesting?”

  “Two people, like at the doctor’s. Looks like they changed their clothes on the landing after the murder. There are no traces, at least not so far, on the staircase or around the rear window where they gained access by cutting out a pane.”

  “No sign of a plastic bag with a message?”

  The man raised his shoulders and looked around the room. “Not yet. Then again, there are a lot of books in here.” The shelves that covered three of the walls rose to the ceiling and were all full.

  Karen Oaten swung her gaze across the thousands of volumes. The SOCO team leader was smart. Even though there was no message in the body, it was possible, given the victim’s profession, that one had been left in a book. “Get one of your lot to run an eye over the books in here,” she said to the technician. “I’m particularly interested in anything by John Webster or Matt Stone.”

  The SOCO nodded.

  Oaten’s mobile rang. Her heart sank when she heard the commissioner’s less-than-dulcet tones. She brought him up to speed with the investigation.

  “D.C.I. Oaten, I’ve been talking to the A.C.,” he said. “We feel you’re underresourced. D.C.I. Hardy’s team will be joining yours. You’ll retain operational command, but I don’t want any pissing about. Share what you know and cooperate with each other. This lunatic is making us look like incompetents. If there are more murders, it’ll be very hard to keep you in place.” The connection was cut.

  The chief inspector stood staring at her phone. She had mixed feelings. Hardy’s people helping out would be useful, but she didn’t want that nicotine-stained tosser breathing down her neck. As for the threat of being kicked off the case, that only made her more determined to find the killers. Anyone who thought she was going to allow her career to be stalled by a pair of bloodthirsty savages-no doubt male-would find out how wrong they were. She was a woman in the Met. What she’d gone through to get where she was made catching these lunatics look like a pissing contest-and she’d won the last of those she’d undertaken by using a hand-operated pump to hit the ceiling during her leaving party from her previous job. There was something nagging her about her time in East London. Something-

  “Guv?” John Turner was standing at the far end of the room. “The SOCOs are all snowed under. I’ll have a look for that wanker Wells’s, I mean, Stone’s, books myself.”

  Oaten went over. “What have you got against him?” She’d found the novelist rather alluring, not that she’d let it show.

  “I told you in the car,” he said, staring up at the rows of books. “There’s something wrong about him. He’s hiding things.”

  The chief inspector laughed. “Everyone hides things from us, Taff. We’re coppers, remember?”

  Turner wasn’t listening. “They’re in alphabetical order,” he said triumphantly. “This shouldn’t take long.” He went to the left-hand wall by the window. “Over here,” he said, beckoning to the photographer. “One of the books is sticking out.”

  Oaten joined him and waited for the photos to be taken, blinking as the flash discharged. “The Italian Tragedy. That was his first book, as I remember.” She removed the hardback volume carefully and opened it. There was a press release inside proclaiming “the debut of an immense new talent in crimewriting.” She ran the pages past her latex-covered thumb. A flicker of red caught her eye. She went back to the page, her heart suddenly racing.

  “Spot on, Taff,” she said in a low voice. “There’s a bit underlined in red. ‘Of all deaths, the violent death is best,’” she read. Then she took in the preceding passage. “Our friend Wells has his investigator Sir Tertius talking to an actor, who quotes that line from a Webster play.” She looked up at her subordinate. “Guess which one. The White Devil.”

  Turner had his mobile phone in his hand. “I’ll have him picked up.”

  Oaten shook her head. “You’re forgetting something.” She turned to the pathologist. “What were your parameters for the time of death again, Doctor?”

  “Between 10:00 and 12:00, I’d hazard.”

  The chief inspector turned back to the Welshman. “Remember where we were between half ten and half eleven?”

  “Shit,” he said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “He could have an accomplice.”

  “You mean two.” Oaten nodded. “Yes, he could. But hauling him in and questioning him is hardly likely to get him to own up-not if he’s the kind of calculating bastard behind murders like this one and the others.”

  “But we can keep an eye on him,” Turner said.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied. “We can certainly do that. In fact, some of Hardy’s people can take that job off our hands. The teams are amalgamating.” She saw the dismay on his face. “Don’t worry, I’m still in charge. For the time being, at least.” She moved away. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “Our lot here know what they’re doing. We’ve got the people who knew the previous victims to check out.”

  “We’ll soon have a list of people who knew this guy, too.”

  Oaten nodded. “The problem is, I have a feeling that Alexander Drys doesn’t have anything to do with the others.”

  Turner gave her a long-suffering look. “Which leaves us where?”

  “Stuffed, if we don’t get a shift on.”

  They stripped off their coveralls in the hall. Before they left, a female detective sergeant told them that the Portuguese maid had given a statement via an interpreter. She hadn’t seen who’d grabbed her from behind and tied her up in the cloakroom. If she hadn’t happened to keep a penknife in her pocket on her mother’s strict instructions-you could never trust British men-she’d probably still have been in there and the alarm wouldn’t have been raised. As it was, it had taken her more than an hour to saw through the ropes with the blunt blade.

  Oaten and Turner left the house with their eyes down. Four murders and still they hadn’t had a single decent break. They’d been doing everything by the book. Surely something had to give soon.

  I went round to Sara’s after I’d finished supervising Lucy. Caroline gave me the usual cold stare when I said goodbye. Part of me wanted to say that it would be better for our daughter if we could be friends, but another, more damaged part told me that would have been a complete waste of time. Caroline had no time for me, especially now that I wasn’t earning from my writing. She’d always taken a dim view of people who didn’t contribute to the wealth of nations. If she’d known the danger I’d put Lucy and her in, she’d have taken the carving knife to me.

  Sara wasn’t there when I got to her flat. I called her on her mobile and she said she was on the train. She sounded lively. When she came in, there was a strange smile on her lips. I went to greet her, putting my arm round her shoulders and trying to kiss her. She moved her face and I hit cheek.

  “What happened, babe?” I asked, going to the fridge to get a bottle of wine. “Did you get promoted or something?”

  She didn’t reply, heading into the bedroom to change out of her work clothes.

  She returned a few minutes later in tracksuit bottoms and a red T-shirt with Che Guevara’s head on it.

  “No, Matt,” she said, giving me a curious look. “Nothing like that.”

  “Want to tell me about it?” I asked, sitting down on the sofa beside her and handing her a glass.

  “It’s no big deal. The excitements of a national newspaper. Not.” She ran her hand across her hair and laughe
d. “I’m seriously considering a change of career.”

  I was surprised by that. Ever since I’d known her-it was about a year since we’d literally bumped into each other at a publisher’s party, her glass of red drenching my shirt-Sara had seemed as committed to her job as anyone I’d known. She lived for news stories, happily inhaling the high-octane fuel that drove newspapers and thriving on it. Which reminded me.

  “You’re not on the Drys murder, are you?”

  The glass stopped on its way to her lips. I saw her eyelashes quiver for a couple of moments. “The Drys murder?” she repeated. “Oh, the literary critic. No, Jeremy’s doing that.” She turned to me, her expression suddenly serious. “Did you know him?”

  “Not in person. Don’t you remember? I moaned about him once or twice. As an example of the kind of journalist who hides away from the real world-he never went to any crime-fiction events-and writes hurtful things about people at long range.”

  Sara looked at me thoughtfully. “Oh, yes, now I remember. You said he gave you some stinking reviews.”

  “Me and plenty of other crime novelists.”

  “Just as well,” she said, emptying her glass. “At least you won’t be the police’s number-one suspect.”

  “No,” I said. Then I remembered that I’d given the detectives her contact numbers. For some reason I held back from asking her if they’d been in touch. I reckoned she’d tell me if they had and I didn’t want to ruin her evening if they hadn’t yet.

  As it turned out, the evening was a nonevent, anyway. Sara said her stomach was giving her grief and retired to bed early. It wasn’t the first time she’d been distant with me recently. No doubt I hadn’t been paying her enough attention since the Devil appeared.

  After watching the news, which told me less than I already knew about Drys’s murder, I checked on her. She was asleep, but she clearly wasn’t at rest. Her lips were twitching and her legs moving. Maybe journalist’s burnout was getting to her earlier than it did with most hacks. I left quietly and drove home.

  It was while I was between Clapham and Herne Hill that I came to the decision. To hell with the White Devil and all his works. I wasn’t going to take any more of his shit. It was time I stood up to him like a man, not like a crime writer.

  I spent the next two hours thinking, refining the plan I’d come up with the previous night and covering as many bases as I could. Then I fell into a sleep haunted by the ghosts of mutilated victims and the screams of abused children. They gradually faded and I found myself dreaming about revenge. There was a lot of blood.

  When I woke the next morning, I knew I’d made the right choice. I would fight the Devil with his own weapons, and my revenge would be greater than his. It was the only way.

  Otherwise he would take me down to the underworld with him.

  19

  The White Devil stood in front of the bank of screens in his penthouse by the Thames. The water was leaden-gray with a hint of fecal brown, seagulls scavenging over it like white-feathered demons. It was a river of the underworld, the dark walled buildings on the other side the houses of the living dead; a scene Hieronymus Bosch could have conjured up, a triumph of death as good as Pieter Bruegel’s. He let out a sigh. Life couldn’t get any better.

  The Devil looked down at the leather-bound volume that lay on the Georgian table he’d bought for the dining area. Earlier, he’d pasted in the pages Matt had written. But he was looking at the page at the front. The Death List was the book’s title and a register of names prefaced the narrative, in two columns. On the left were people’s names, among them Billy Dunn, Richard Brady, Father Patrick O’Connell, Evelyn Merton, Gilbert Merton, Bernard Keane, Alexander Drys-these, the ones he’d already killed, had a red cross against them. There were others as yet untouched by the human blood he’d used as ink-Christian Fels, Jeanie Young-Burke, Lucy Emilia Wells, Caroline Zerb, Fran Wells, and more. Including, of course, Matt Wells.

  As the city came slowly to life that morning, the Devil considered the man he had picked out to work for him. He could easily have written his own story; he didn’t need the fool Matt Wells. But he did need a fall guy. A crime writer-a drone who made his living from trying and failing to imagine other people’s pain-was the perfect choice. Crime novelists. What did they know? How many of them had committed a crime worse than scoring a small amount of dope or speeding? How many of them had felt another human being’s life drain away, their eyes flutter as the last darkness came down, their limbs shake in the dance of death? Hypocrites, frauds, White Devils. They were worse than he was. At least he had reasons for what he was doing.

  The Devil went back to the bank of screens on the rear wall. There had been an unusually determined look on Matt’s face when he came back from his girlfriend’s earlier on. That was interesting. Could he be stiffening the sinew, summoning up the blood? Could he be going to offer a challenge? That would be a bonus. Not that it would do the writer any good. He would soon be screaming for mercy.

  As the literary critic had done. Drys had been a pitiful victim, begging for sympathy while he still had his tongue, offering money, works of art, everything he had. Maybe that was why the Devil’s partner hadn’t been able to hold back with the hammer. For God’s sake, man, he’d thought as he watched the blows. At least die with some dignity. Underlining the Webster quotation in Matt Wells’s first novel had been a nice touch. He wondered if the police had found it yet.

  His partner had performed well during the head-smashing-this time there had been no choking back the vomit. The Devil had hoped that the experience of participating in the doctor’s death would bring familiarity, and he’d been right.

  He ran his eye down the list. If he was going to slaughter them all, he needed to stick to the plan he’d worked out in such detail and memorized. He didn’t need a print version, but he’d sent one as a hidden attachment to one of the e-mails received by Matt Wells from the various Internet cafes he used-when the police found that, the crime writer would have nowhere to hide. Then he’d destroyed all his hard copies and diskettes. He no longer needed them.

  He sat back and looked at the book’s contents page again. The column on the right listed his nameless victims, those he’d learned his trade on-the homeless, the junkies and the whores. He’d referred to them by where he found them-Charing Cross Road, Embankment, Beak Street…Nine of them. They had been his basic training after his father and the bully. No one had even noticed that they’d gone-into the canals and building sites, the car scrapyards and the foundations of the new roads that continuously appeared around London. Here today, gone to hell tomorrow, and nobody cared. The city was a graveyard, a realm of the dead, while people pretended they didn’t know. That was changing. There was hysteria in the air now, after the four murders he’d let them find out about.

  The White Devil pointed the TV handset and selected one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. He didn’t hear anything further about the Drys murder. Then an item came on that made him flinch for the first time since he was a kid.

  “…outside the Hereward public house in Greenwich, where the horrific discovery was made. A passerby returning from a late-night party saw stray dogs trying to get into three packing cases that had been left at the pub’s door. He saw the severed limbs and head, as well as the torso, of a male. Even more shocking was the fact that he knew the man. The Metropolitan Police has not confirmed the victim’s identity yet, but we understand that next of kin have been informed and that his name is Terence Smail, aged thirty, a regular of the Hereward. No witnesses have come forward and detectives suspect there may be a gangland connection…”

  The White Devil got hold of himself, using the breathing techniques that Jimmy Tanner had taught him. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Terence Smail. Terry-he remembered the pathetic specimen who’d hung around the pub. Had he heard anything of what had passed between the Devil, Corky and Tanner? Could he have passed that on to the people who’d killed him? Obviously someone had made an exam
ple of him, but who was the example for? It could be, as the reporter said, that he’d fallen foul of one of the numerous criminal operations that used the pub. But what if Jimmy Tanner had mentioned that he was instructing someone to an ex-comrade in the SAS? What if someone had found out Jimmy was missing and was looking for him? Those guys were lethal; they didn’t take prisoners-even the wasted sot Jimmy had been dangerous enough. It could be that he and Corky were in the deepest shit.

  The Devil realized he would have to speed up the plan and get away sooner than he’d expected. He glanced at the names. The next victim caught his eye, a person whose life was measured in hours and minutes. Looking up, he caught sight of himself in the ornate Victorian mirror he’d hung beyond the table and laughed.

  “‘If the devil Did ever take good shape,’” he declaimed, “‘Behold his picture.’”

  John Webster’s play, act 3, scene 2. The long-dead Jacobean was an outstanding dramatist. What would he have made of the way his lines were being used in modern London? Would he have approved of the appropriate punishment of offences? Of course he would.

  The White Devil walked to his dressing room to prepare for his next entry.

  I got up early the next morning and, assuming that the Devil was watching, made a pretense of being half asleep, stumbling about like a pisshead. I deliberately didn’t boot up my laptop. No doubt there was another load of notes from him to write up. They could wait. I had more pressing things to do. I dug out my lamentably unwashed running kit and set off for Brockwell Park in the early dawn light. My knee gave me gip, but I could bear it. At last I had a purpose in life.

  I got to the southern end of the park, my lungs heaving, and spotted the phone box I remembered from walks with Lucy in her buggy. I hoped it was still in working order. Opening the door, I was blasted by the reek of stale urine. I looked around and saw no one except a couple of other middle-aged men bringing forward their heart attacks by jogging far too fast. I had to take the chance that the Devil and his people weren’t on my tail. Or D.C.I. Oaten’s mob.