The Death List mw-1

by Paul Johnson

  My phone vibrated in my pocket.

  “Matt, thank God I got you.”

  “What is it, Boney?” I asked, concerned by his fraught tone.

  “It’s Rog. Now he’s not answering his phone.”

  “Shit.” I lashed out at the base of the streetlamp with my foot and felt a sharp pain. “The mad bastard.” The net was closing around us. I tried to think clearly. How many accomplices did the Devil have? Had he set people on all of us, or did he have some kind of top-of-the-range tracking equipment? He was certainly wealthy enough.

  “Matt?”

  “Yeah, hang on, I’m thinking.” Peter Satterthwaite should have been outside my tormentor’s loop since he was a late arrival at our party. As for Dave, he had a new phone. Maybe the three of us were still undetected. But what about Ginny? Christ, that was the thought that had eluded me earlier. What if the bastard had put a bug on Dave’s four by four? “Boney, how many properties have we still to check? Leadenhall Street’s a no go.”

  There was a brief silence. “That leaves seven. There’s one on Dave’s list, one on mine and one on yours. The last I heard from Rog, he was outside a shop in Brondesbury Road. He didn’t think it was interesting, but he was going to hang on a bit to be sure. He had two more. And there were two more on Andy’s list.”

  “Seven? Bloody hell. Okay, I’ll do my last one, that converted brewery near Tower Bridge. You do yours, and then get over there to pick me up.”

  “What about Dave?”

  “I’ll get him to drive there, too. Assuming those three are all clear, we’ll check out the ones Andy and Rog didn’t manage.”

  I broke the connection and called Dave.

  “Matt, thank Christ. There’s something funny going on with Ginny. No one’s answering their phones-not her or either of my kids.”

  My stomach twisted like an oyster suddenly drenched in lemon juice. Lucy. She didn’t have a mobile. Had the bastard caught up with them?

  “Wellsy?” Dave said desperately. “We’ve got to tell the police. The children…”

  “Tell them what?” I countered. “You said they were in an out-of-the-way place. Did you always get a phone signal there?”

  “No,” he admitted with a rush of breath. “No, you’re right. But she should be on her way by now. There’s no answer on the landline and she should be back in the network.”

  “Let’s give it a bit more time,” I said, struggling to beat back the onrush of panic. I told him where to meet me when he’d done his last place.

  After I rang off, I drove to the Royal Brewery in Bermondsey. On my earlier abandoned visit, it had looked a much more impressive property than any of the others apart from the bank. Did that mean it was more likely to have been used as a base by the Devil?

  I tried not to envisage the horrors that might be waiting for me there.

  Karen Oaten stood outside a semidetached house in Neasden. A team of uniformed officers was searching the place, overseen by John Turner. The elderly residents were less than impressed. It wasn’t long before her subordinate reported to her.

  “This is a waste of time, guv,” he said, shaking his head. “They don’t have any idea what we’re on about and there’s no sign of any criminal activity. They rent the place through an estate agent and they’ve never met the owner.”

  “The place is on that list Pavlou got from the council’s database,” she said lamely. “We have to check all the places that Lawrence Montgomery owns.”

  “How many have you got on that list now?”

  The chief inspector ran an eye down the addresses. “Eight, including the one where we found Matt Wells’s mother.”

  The Welshman stared at his superior. “You realize that Matt Wells could be Lawrence Montgomery, don’t you?”

  “No,” Oaten said firmly. “Lawrence Montgomery is the guy who used to be Leslie Dunn.” She fixed him in her gaze. “The guy who won the lottery and who had motives for the first four murders, including the bank manager in Hackney.”

  Turner shrugged. “Wells could have killed him and taken over his identity, not to mention his money.”

  The chief inspector groaned. “Have you been reading far-fetched crime novels?”

  “Like the ones written by Matt Stone, aka Wells?”

  Oaten stepped toward the car. “Get D.C.I. Hardy’s lot on to these two addresses,” she said, pointing at the top ones on her list. “We’ll go to Brondesbury Road.”

  As she drove away with Taff speaking on the phone, she squeezed the steering wheel hard. Where was the data from south of the river? She was sure that there must be some properties down there. Did all the useless sods from the council offices in South London turn their phones off at night?

  And where was Matt Wells? Had she allowed her emotions to get the better of her? Maybe Taff Turner was right. But could it really be that she’d been taken in so completely?

  The idea made her tremble with rage.

  “Nothing yet,” Wolfe said, putting his phone back in his pocket. He stretched his legs in the Orion’s front passenger seat.

  “Are you sure your contact in the Met is on the level?” Geronimo asked from behind the wheel with a scowl. “We’ve been sitting here for hours.”

  “He’s all we’ve got. Never mind the guy on the motorbike now-he’s gone to ground. But they’re checking a list of properties he and his nasty friend might be at. There’s no point in us going charging around London until we know which one the bastards are at.”

  The man in the back took off his woolen cap and scratched his crew-cut head. “But when the cops find out where he is, they’ll be heading there, too.”

  Wolfe laughed emptily. “You think they’ll get there before us, Rommel? We don’t need long to find out what the scumbags know about Jimmy. And to take appropriate revenge.”

  The others shook their heads.

  The three men settled back, their eyes half closed. They’d been on so many operations that their bodies responded automatically. When they could grab rest, they did so. When they had to go into action, be it a helicopter raid on an enemy listening post or the assassination of an IRA killer, they set off with only enough adrenaline in their veins to ensure success. This would be no different.

  They were trained and experienced in death, and their list of victims was already long.

  31

  I came round the corner and looked up at the floodlit facade of the Royal Brewery. It really was a luxury block. I could tell that the flats were large from the patterns of light. Some had people at home, some not. It wasn’t far to the main road to the south, but the noise of traffic was muffled by the large buildings behind, more of which were being converted into seriously desirable-and expensive-properties.

  Alarms were dotted around the walls. I was pretty sure there would also be more sophisticated equipment to keep me out-cameras, motion sensors, who knew? There was a selection of high-performance cars in the enclosed parking area. I wondered if any of them belonged to the Devil.

  I approached the main door. It was steel and looked like it had been made from the side of a battleship. There was a camera in the top-left corner. I was going to have to act a part. I psyched myself up for a few seconds and then hit the bell to number 3. After a long silence, a male voice that was distorted electronically came through.

  “Lawrence?” I shouted in what I hoped sounded like a drunk’s voice.

  “Who is this?” the man demanded.

  I waved my arms around. “I want Lawrence…Lawrence Montgomery. He invited me round to celebrate.” After I said the words, I wondered how close to the truth that was.

  “Oh, all right,” the voice said wearily. “But tell Mr. Montgomery that the next time his friends ring my bell, I won’t let them in.”

  There was a buzz, the door opened and I moved inside quickly. The entrance hall was opulently decorated, with abstract bronze sculptures in recesses in the walls and a thick gray carpet. The lift had glass doors and was unusually large. There
was a sign telling visitors on which floor the various flats were to be found. I went in the lift to the third floor, the one below number 6, and then climbed the stairs as quietly as I could. Poking my head round the corner cautiously, I saw that there was only one door. Lawrence Montgomery’s penthouse must be huge.

  The door was a near replica of the one on the street, fashioned of metal that could have been used for armor plating. There was a camera fixed in the corner high above, well out of my reach. Whatever happened, my presence in the block and on the top floor was recorded for posterity. Too bad.

  Then, as I approached the door, I noticed something that stopped me in my tracks. There was a space of about two centimeters between it and the frame. The bastard had left it open. Was it a trap? Or had something happened to make him get out in a hurry? I stood where I was, running through my options. The best thing to do would be to wait for Dave and Pete. If I were a normal, law-abiding citizen, I would have called the police, but I was long past that. What if the Devil had left one or more of his victims inside, as he’d done with my mother? What if they were in pain, struggling to breathe through tight gags, bleeding their lives away? No, I had to go in.

  I took the screwdriver from my pocket and held it out like a weapon, steeled myself and nudged the door open gently with my shoulder. There was no light in the broad hallway inside, but a glow spread into it from the far end. The doors on both sides were open. That reduced the tension that had gripped me. I still approached each one carefully, shining the torch to check that it was empty. Apart from plenty of highly expensive furniture and fittings, all the rooms were unoccupied. That left the illuminated area at the end of the hall. I padded toward it, my heart pounding. It was inconceivable that the Devil would have let me into his lair without some surprises. Those had to be ahead of me.

  As I stuck my head round the door, I froze. There was a noise, a weird, regular creaking that I couldn’t place. I forced myself onward. The first thing that struck me was the enormity of the space. The room must have been fifty meters long, taking the whole of the north side of the building. The blinds were up and there was a view across the Thames to the renovated buildings on the north bank. Then I saw that the farthest blind on the left was down. In front of it was the source of the noise. Before I could stop myself, I threw up on the parquet floor.

  The body was hanging from a varnished ceiling beam, secured by a rope. It was naked, hands tied behind its back and, although it faced me, I couldn’t determine the gender. That was because the head was covered in a black hood, and because the chest and abdomen had been cut open. I blinked, trying to block out the awful vision, but it was impossible. The intestines dangling to the floor, the great explosion of blood all around indicating that the victim had been alive when the mutilation had been carried out, the angle of the lifeless feet pointing downward-all of the images would remain with me for the rest of my life. But who was it?

  I went toward the corpse, trying to get a grip on the thoughts that were flashing through my brain. Was it Sara? Caroline? One of my friends? At least it couldn’t be Lucy, and it wasn’t tall enough to be Andy. But could it be Rog? As far as I could tell, the upper body had good muscle tone. As I got closer, the stench from the ruptured internal organs washed over me. But the full horror didn’t hit me until I was standing next to the loosened coils of the entrails. I was going to have to cut the victim down and take off the hood to identify him or her. At close range, amid the blood, I could see that well-formed breasts had been hacked apart. The victim was a woman. My stomach heaved again, but this time only a single, bitter mouthful was ejected.

  I looked around for a chair and pulled one over from the dining table at the other end of the room. Positioning it to the rear of the body, I put my arms round it, feeling the movement of the innards in my gloved hands and swallowing back bile. The rope had been looped over a large steel hook in the beam, so by lifting I was able to slide it off. I took the full weight of the dead woman and lowered her slowly to the floor, stepping off the chair as her lower half splashed into the surrounding pool of blood. My shoes were drenched in it, my hands and arms soaked, but I didn’t care. I had to find out who she was. Sara? Caroline? Oh, Christ…

  I squatted down and fumbled with the hood. It had been tied tightly around the neck. Finally I got it off and was confronted with black hair. She couldn’t be Sara, who had brown. But Caroline? The matted strands seemed too long. I had to turn the body round. I managed to do that, wishing I’d been able to block my ears to the squelching sound as the flesh and organs moved in the blood. I leaned forward, my heart almost bursting from my chest, and then kicked backward involuntarily, falling into the pool of gore. Jesus, how much worse could this get?

  The woman had been beaten about the face. Her eyes and ears had been removed, and her nose crushed. I couldn’t recognize the damaged features. To round off his work, the Devil had left a plastic bag protruding from the split lips. The bastard. Now I knew why he’d left the door open. I scrabbled to open it, my gloves slick with blood. There was a folded piece of A4 paper inside. I opened it and read.

  Is that you, Matt? I do hope so. If not, maybe you’ll be passed this message soon enough. Did you really think you’d find me? We’ll meet where I want, when I decide. In the meantime, this is my gift to you. Did you think it was Sara? Caroline? You see, I can read your mind like a cheap paperback-like one of yours, in fact. We’re two of a kind. We could have been brothers separated in childhood. Did you think of that? Birth brothers adopted by different parents, one growing up to a life of true crime and the other becoming a leech, a parasite pandering to people’s baser instincts. Ha! I made it as hard as I could for you to identify the poor slut. Do you want to know who she is? Here’s a clue. You spoke to her in person not long ago. Still stumped? She’s, I mean, she was the receptionist at your publishers.

  I let out a sob as I remembered the enthusiastic girl who’d told me she liked my books. Mandy was her name. I had a flash of her attractive face, and then it was replaced by the horror in front of me. The heartless monster. Was no one safe from him? I forced myself to continue reading.

  Amanda Plimpton, she was called. The police obviously didn’t think she was a likely target, so she didn’t get protection. Did you include her in your list to the bitch Karen Oaten? No, I didn’t think so. Oh, by the way, Matt, did you notice the box on the beam, a meter from the hook?

  I looked up and saw a black metal object the size and shape of a shoebox. There was a wire leading from it to the hook.

  No, you didn’t, did you? It’s packed with Semtex. The detonator’s attached to a timer, which was activated when you took the body off the hook. It’s set for seven minutes. How long have you got left to get out?

  Run, Matt, run!

  I scrambled backward and got to my feet. I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d taken the poor woman down, but it must have been several minutes. As I headed for the door, I caught a glimpse of a couple of dioramas covered with tanks and soldiers, then a bank of screens on the rear wall. This must have been where my tormentor had been watching me from. Was he really going to blow up all his precious gear? I wasn’t going to wait and see.

  I ran down the stairs rather than risk being trapped in the lift if the explosion was as big as I suspected it would be. When I reached the front door, I opened it and pressed all the buttons to the other flats.

  “Get out!” I yelled. “Get out now! There’s going to be an-”

  There was a muffled crump from the top floor. I ran back across the parking area, then out into the street. I could see fire in the penthouse. Then there were more explosions, more smoke and flame. The Devil had obviously rigged a whole series of charges. People appeared at the door, screaming and ushering children out. I retreated and ducked down behind a van. The smoke was roiling up into the night, caught in the floodlights. All the windows in the block had shattered. I hoped that no one had been hurt-no one apart from the innocent young woman that the basta
rd had butchered. Now I had yet another reason to hunt him down and exact vengeance.

  I was sitting on the pavement, trying to stomach the fact that I really was turning into the Devil’s twin, when I heard a vehicle draw up. It was a large American pickup truck. I staggered over to it.

  “Dave,” I gasped. “You made it.”

  He eyed me up. “Christ, is that blood?” Then he looked up at the blaze. “Not much of a job,” he said. “I could have done a lot better.”

  Maybe he would soon get the chance to show how lethal he really was.

  D.C.I. Oaten was sitting in the Volvo outside the terraced house in Plender Road, Camden Town. They had just finished searching it and found nothing of significance. It was rented to a man who was an airline pilot. Although he was absent, there were several uniforms in a wardrobe.

  “Where to now?” John Turner asked.

  “Pavlou’s finally managed to get people to wake up south of the river. A place called the Royal Brewery near Tower Bridge is the nearest. Hardy’s people are on the last property we’ve got in the north. Some dump off Old Street. It doesn’t sound hopeful. Let’s get down to Bermondsey.” She drove off.

  A few minutes later her mobile rang.

  “Get that, will you, Taff?”

  The inspector reached across, picked the phone gingerly from between her legs and answered it. He listened, his expression growing somber.

  “Jesus Christ, Morry, didn’t anyone notice earlier? Yeah, all right, get over there and take their statements. Find out if there’s anywhere else she could be.”

  “What is it?” Oaten asked, with more anxiety in her voice than she wanted.