The Death List mw-1

by Paul Johnson

  “You certainly aren’t.”

  He nudged me hard in the ribs. “Don’t push your luck, Mr. Writer.”

  I returned his smile, then thought about the way he’d addressed me. I didn’t remember him having referred to me by my profession often. Someone else had, though. The Devil…

  “Right, this is it,” Peter Satterthwaite said, his eyes on his Rolex. “Five, four, three, two, one…go!”

  He started the engine and drove slowly round the edge of the former school. There was a low wooden building about fifty yards ahead. It was surrounded by a wire fence, but the gate was open. I made out three adjoining sheds, the central one larger than the others. Stacks of cut timber were dotted about the yard. It looked like a genuine business.

  “I’ll park outside,” Boney said.

  “Remember what Dave told you. Turn round so that we can make a quick getaway if we have to.”

  He did that. The Jeep made enough noise to alert the people inside, but I was pretty sure they were keeping a lookout anyway.

  “Stay here till I call you,” I said, opening my door. “And remember to pull that cap down low.”

  Bonehead reached across and touched my hand. “You can rely on me, Matt,” he said, giving me a vacant smile.

  I walked away from the vehicle. He must have been nervous, but he wasn’t showing it. Peter Satterthwaite had hidden depths. But now I had to concentrate on my own job. I could only hope that he and Dave would be able to carry out theirs. I felt tension in my shoulders, but nowhere else. I was as ready as I’d ever be.

  Slowing my pace as I approached the left-hand door, I glanced around. There was no sign of anyone. Then I heard the clang of a bolt being drawn and the door slowly swung outward.

  “Matt Wells,” came the Devil’s voice. It sounded reedier that it had on the phone. I narrowed my eyes and tried to see in the bright light that was flooding out. I made out a single figure. Could it be that he was on his own, after all? A surge of optimism ran through me.

  I went inside, and then heard a noise at the door behind me. The optimism vanished. A figure of medium height wearing gray overalls and a black balaclava was standing there, a wicked-looking, snub-nosed machine pistol pointing at me. I turned to face the Devil.

  “As you see, Matt, I am not alone.” He was wearing overalls, too, but his were white. I might have known. The face under an orange safety helmet was clean-shaven. The features were unexceptional, the brown eyes cold and the lips thin. I could see what looked like dyed blond hair above his ears. Then I saw his teeth. Jesus, the canines were pointed like a vampire’s. He, too, was carrying a machine pistol. “But you suspected that, didn’t you?” He glanced beyond me. “Get the other one in here.” He looked back at me. “I take it that’s Dave Cummings in the Jeep.”

  I shrugged.

  “Nice wheels,” he continued. “Where did you get them?”

  “I borrowed them from a friend.” I was relieved to hear that my voice held firm. I turned my head toward the open space at my right. My heart skipped several beats. There was an array of wooden worktables. Secured to them were motionless figures under white sheets. Christ, had he killed them already? I rapidly counted six.

  Three were small, clearly children. Lucy…

  “Don’t worry,” the Devil said. “They’re not dead.” He smiled slackly. “Yet.”

  I resisted the urge to run at him.

  “What have you done to them?” I demanded. “Is Lucy there? Sara? Caroline?”

  “All in good time, Matt,” he said. His voice was almost accentless, but I picked up a hint of Cockney. He was back in his old haunts now. “What have you got in your pockets, by the way?” He raised the gun to my upper chest. “Empty them.”

  “All right,” I said, dropping to the floor screwdrivers, a torch, the Luger and various other bits of junk Dave had given me. I was hoping he wasn’t going to subject me to a body search-I had one of Peter’s kitchen knives in my belt under my jacket. I needed to distract him, and quickly. “Ah, I get it. You want the story of your life so far to end where it began, don’t you? That’s why we’re back in Bethnal Green, Lawrence. Or should I say Leslie?”

  There was the sound of footsteps.

  The Devil was looking beyond me again. “Welcome to the party, Dave,” he said, his expression growing suspicious. “Take his hat off.”

  The figure in the balaclava flipped the baseball cap off Bonehead’s shaved skull.

  The Devil’s eyes knifed into mine. “Where’s Dave Cummings, Matt?” he demanded. He moved quickly to the first worktable and yanked the sheet from the figure on it. It was Ginny. Her face was a real mess. “I can kill his wife in a matter of seconds.” He slung the machine pistol over his shoulder and took a double-edged knife from his pocket. “Where is he?”

  I heard the shrill note of panic in my tormentor’s voice. Dave’s tactics were paying off.

  “He…he wouldn’t come,” I said, playing my part as best I could. “He was too scared.”

  The Devil laughed. It was a humorless, chilling sound. “Dave Cummings was a paratrooper, Matt. Did you think I didn’t know that?”

  “Did you also know he left the regiment after the first Gulf War?”

  “Yes, I did,” he countered.

  “And do you know why?”

  The Devil’s eyes were suddenly less certain. “Tell me,” he ordered.

  “He was serving in Iraq,” I said, relating the story I’d agreed upon with Dave. “He refused a direct order to go into action, so he was kicked out. They didn’t mention anything about cowardice because he had a good record up to then.”

  For a few moments I thought the Devil wasn’t going to buy it. That wouldn’t have surprised me. If he’d done his research, he’d have discovered that Dave had been mentioned in dispatches twice when he was in the Paras, though his SAS service was classified. The reality was that he’d been helicoptered into Iraq before Desert Storm and had single-handedly knocked out an Iraqi guardpost.

  “All right,” the Devil said. “I suspected there might be uninvited guests. Who have you brought to replace him? Kojak?”

  “Up yours, shithead!” Bonehead yelled. Immediately the guy in the overalls smashed the butt of the machine pistol into his belly and dropped him to the floor.

  “This is Peter Satterthwaite,” I said. “Another friend.”

  “I hope he wasn’t in the Paras.” The Devil laughed. “It doesn’t much look like he was.”

  I looked at the sheet-covered figures. “Can I see Lucy?”

  “Just wait, Matt,” the Devil said, raising the hand that wasn’t holding the knife.

  “First you’d better see who you’re up against.” He turned his head. “You can come out now, Number Two.” He gave a dry laugh. “Here’s my Dr. Watson.”

  I watched as another figure in gray overalls appeared on the far side of the tables. This one was also wearing a balaclava and carrying a machine pistol. My heart began to beat faster as the figure came nearer. There was something familiar about the gait, something very familiar…

  “All right,” the Devil said, a wide smile spreading across his thin lips. “Show him who you are.”

  The figure nodded and then raised a hand. It seemed to me that whoever it was deliberately moved slowly. Finally the top of the balaclava was grasped and pulled upward.

  I felt my breath freeze in my throat.

  The person in the overalls was Dave Cummings.

  33

  D.S. Paul Pavlou went to the corner of the ops room and called a number on his mobile. “I’ve got something,” he said in a low voice.

  “Shoot,” Wolfe said.

  “Wood supply depot in Bethnal Green. It’s under the name of our man’s mother.”

  “Give me the address.” Pavlou did so, hearing the team leader repeat it, and then the sound of an engine being gunned. “Are your lot on the way?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t reported the location.”

  “Hold off for a bit.
We won’t need long.”

  Pavlou swallowed nervously. “There better not be another dismembered corpse.”

  “We’ll do what we have to do. Your debt is paid.”

  Pavlou put his phone back in his pocket. He felt queasy, but also relieved. The weight of his uncle’s obligation to the old soldier Jimmy Tanner had been passed to him by his mother, his Cypriot father being kept unaware of it. At last a few seconds of heroism under Argentinian fire in the South Atlantic had been canceled out.

  But at what cost in blood?

  I was so shocked that I couldn’t move. Dave, one of the Devil’s sidekicks? It was impossible. What about his family? Ginny was lying unconscious. Who else was under the sheets?

  Not everyone was as stricken as I was. I turned when I heard a loud expulsion of breath. Pete had managed to extract a medium-size kitchen knife from his trouser pocket and bury it in the thigh of the other figure wearing a balaclava. Showing agility that I wouldn’t have credited, he wrested the machine pistol from his captor’s grip and drove the butt into the covered face. But before he could pull the balaclava off his victim, a volley of shots made both of us dive to the ground. I watched as the Devil ran behind a screen, Dave firing after him.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted, my ears ringing.

  “I improvised,” Dave said. “I came across one of his accomplices and relieved her of her gear.”

  “Her?” I said as a burst of fire was returned by the Devil. Forgetting the question, I ran to the tables and pulled the sheets off the smaller figures. Dave joined me. In a few seconds we’d freed Lucy and his kids, and pulled them under the worktops. They all had their eyes closed, but I could feel a pulse in Lucy’s neck. Thank God, she was breathing normally.

  Bonehead joined us, bullets kicking up dust behind him as he ran. “Jesus,” he gasped. “For more than a moment, I thought you were with him, Psycho.”

  “What about the one who hit you?” I asked.

  “Dead,” Peter replied. “Your Devil got him instead of me.”

  That reminded me. I turned to Dave. “You said ‘her.’ You mean the other person was a woman?”

  “Genius,” Dave grunted. “We’ve got to turn the tables into barricades now. You guys do it. I’ll cover you.”

  There followed a blur of activity as Boney and I struggled to turn the heavy wooden objects over, while Dave blasted away at the Devil. Finally, we managed to get them all down. Ginny was mumbling, apparently coming round. Caroline, Rog and the three kids were still out, but apparently unharmed. Andy was swearing loudly, a fresh wound in his forearm pumping out blood. We undid the leather straps and got them under cover. But where was Sara? Had the monster killed her already?

  Dave and I were crouching behind the worktops. Pete stood up and loosed off some bursts from the machine pistol, a wild look on his face. I signaled to them both to stop firing.

  “Lawrence!” I shouted. “Leslie! Give it up. The police will be on their way.”

  “They’ll never take me,” the Devil called back. “And neither will you.”

  “For Christ’s sake, it’s finished. Throw out your gun.”

  There was a pause. “Don’t you want to know why I chose you, Matt?”

  “Keep him talking,” Dave said, preparing to move to the right. “By the way, I disabled the detonators on three caches of high explosive that the bastard planted inside the warehouse. Okay…now!”

  “Yes,” I shouted to my tormentor as Dave ran out in a crouch. There was no firing from the Devil. “There’s plenty I want to know. Why me will do for a start.”

  I heard a bitter laugh.

  “Why not you?” the Devil said. “There’s no shortage of bloodsucking crime novelists I could have used. It just happened that I’d met you. Twice.”

  “What?” I said in amazement.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t remember. Your career was on the up then. You didn’t register the faces of the people who queued to have their copies of your books signed. Then again, the second time I met you, things weren’t looking quite so good. It was when Lizzie Everhead tore into you.”

  “You were there, at King’s?”

  “Yes. I knew you wouldn’t remember. You signed my copy of Red Sun Over Durres. Not that you bothered to make your signature legible.”

  I saw Dave scuttle unnoticed behind a partition wall.

  “You mean you got me into all this shit because you met me twice?”

  “Well, I felt sorry for you, Matt.” He sounded distracted. “Your books aren’t as bad as Dr. Everhead, rhymes with ‘dead,’ made out. I killed her for you. I hope you appreciate that.”

  I clenched my fists to restrain myself. The vicious, scheming bastard. “Why my family? What were you going to do with them?”

  “That was to depend on you, Matt. You did well to get as close to me as you have. I’d let you sacrifice yourself for them if I thought you had the guts.”

  “What about my mother?” I shouted. “Why did you spare her?”

  “When I saw your friend Roger outside the house, I decided to leave her alive. She was in a drug-induced stupor, with a knife to her throat, the times you called her. Killing her might have made you lose your grip and hand over the chase to the police. I hope you liked the pig’s blood. Good touch, wasn’t it? I slaughtered and drained the animal myself.”

  I kept my head behind the tabletop. What the hell was Dave doing? “But you did your best to frame me for the Drys murder and Lizzie Everhead’s, as well as my publisher’s employees.”

  “I wanted to keep you on your toes.” There was a long burst of gunfire from the vicinity of the Devil. “There you are,” he said. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”

  I looked at Bonehead. His expression was grim. “Dave?” I yelled.

  There was a pause.

  “Dave’s got his hands full,” said the Devil, his voice stronger. “Or rather, his legs-full of bullets. Now, here’s what we’re going to do. My partner and I are going to bring your friend Dave out. He’s still alive-just. Before we do that, I need you to throw the Uzi-the machine pistol-as far as you can to the front.”

  Boney and I exchanged desperate looks.

  “We have to defend the others,” I said to him.

  “What, and leave Dave to take his chances? No way.”

  I watched as Pete took a matte black automatic from his boot. It looked to be the identical twin of Dave’s. What the hell was going on?

  “He gave it to me earlier,” Bonehead explained. “Showed me how to use it, too. He reckoned I might find myself in a better position than you.”

  “Looks like he was wrong,” I said. “The only way to save the others now is to cooperate with the lunatic. Toss that thing out.”

  He did so, along with the machine pistol.

  “All right!” I shouted. “Don’t hurt Dave any more.”

  “Stand up so I can see you,” the Devil ordered.

  Boney and I glanced at each other, and then obeyed.

  After a pause, the Devil appeared. There was a twisted smile on his lips and he was pointing his machine pistol at us steadily. Dave, moaning, his trousers heavily bloodstained, was being dragged along the floor by his accomplice. As they came closer, I realized who the person wearing only a white T-shirt, knickers and socks was.

  “No,” I gasped.

  “Hello, Matt,” Sara said brightly, dropping Dave and aiming the Uzi she had picked up at me.

  “You never suspected?” the Devil asked sardonically.

  Suddenly, everything fell into place-Sara’s forcing herself on me at the party where we first met, the hard edge she had that I’d put down to her job, her strange moods recently. What a blind idiot I’d been.

  “No, you didn’t, did you?” she said. “How’s that for authorial imagination?”

  The Devil laughed. “Here’s another surprise for you, Matt. Sara’s my little sister. By twelve minutes.”

  I didn’t want to believe him, but the expression on her face con
firmed it.

  “It took me a long time to find her, but finally I tracked down the family who adopted her. They’d moved near to Inverness. I prevailed on them to tell me her whereabouts.”

  My stomach constricted as I remembered the unsolved double-murder of a retired couple in the Highlands of Scotland a few years ago. Jesus, was there no end to what the Devil had done? As for Sara, she’d obviously picked up some moves, too. She must have managed to sneak out of her flat without the police guard noticing.

  “So you set up the relationship with me,” I said to her, shaking my head.

  “It wasn’t difficult,” she said contemptuously. “I suppose you thought a common-as-muck journalist should have been grateful that an award-winning crime writer took an interest in her. I’ve been playing with you for months, Matt. Right up to tonight. Who do you think took care of Ginny and the children, in particular your precious Lucy? I located them by the tracker we put on the four-by-four and sprayed them with knock-out gas before they got far from the house in Kent.” She laughed harshly. “And you fell hook, line and very heavy sinker for my supposed abduction on the phone, you egotistical fool.”

  I stared at the Devil. “How long have you been planning this?”

  “A long, long time,” he replied. “I started writing my death list after my mother died. I knew from the start that wasn’t going to satisfy me.” He smiled. “Deep down, I’m a generous soul. I wanted to write a death list for somebody else, as well.”

  “You’re insane,” Pete said.

  “Clinically?” the Devil said. “I doubt it.” He frowned and glanced at Sara. “So, what are we to do with them?”

  She gave him a look that was full of lust. I realized that the Webster quotation left in the old schoolteacher’s body had more than one meaning-she had been in an incestuous relationship with her brother. Was Sara with the Devil in that way, too?

  “You haven’t told him the best bit yet, darling,” she said. “His father?”

  “Oh, yes, his father. Or rather, his adoptive father-Paul Wells.” He gave me a sick, malicious grin. “I was the one who ran him down on the street in Muswell Hill.”

  I felt what remained of my world crumble. Before I could control myself, I was climbing over the tabletop. I heard sirens in the distance, then realized that Bonehead was coming with me.