The Soul Collector Read online

  Acclaim for

  Paul Johnston’s

  Matt Wells novels…

  THE SOUL COLLECTOR

  “Johnston does an expert job in this extraordinary mixture of police procedural, head-banging vigilante lit, Agatha Christie (some splendidly cryptic crossword clues) and Dennis Wheatley…. Great stuff.”

  —The Guardian

  “Captivating.”

  —Daily Mirror

  “Clever in all the right ways. Its plotting is a little out of the box with its mixture of all things serial killers; a touch of Golden Age puzzle solving (Colin Dexter would approve); a large dose of machismo bravado, and the emotional exploration of fledgling love.”

  —Mike Stotter

  THE DEATH LIST

  “Very gripping, very frightening stuff…Johnston tells a story that, though a good bit darker, will remind readers of James Grippando or even Donald Westlake in his serious mode.”

  —Booklist

  “If you like your crime fiction cosy, comforting and safe, for God’s sake buy another book!”

  —Mark Billingham

  “The morbidly inventive death scenes are likely to test readers’ stomachs.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “His masterpiece novel…the plotting is paranoid, the action is authentic, the characters are convincing and the denouement is devastating. It’s an absolute ripper.”

  —Quintin Jardine

  “The book is impossible to put down and a fantastic read. Another author to add to the not-to-be-missed list.”

  —Crime Squad

  “A ferocious thriller…This is one of the best reads so far this year.”

  —The Observer

  PAUL JOHNSTON

  THE SOUL COLLECTOR

  In memoriam

  Stephanos Kassopoulos

  (1921–2007)

  And welcome to

  Alexander Johnston (9/1/2008)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Warmest thanks and hats off to:

  My New York editor Linda McFall, whose smart suggestions greatly improved this book.

  The MIRA team in the U.K., especially Catherine Burke; and the MIRA teams around the world.

  My brilliant agent Broo Doherty of Wade and Doherty, who had to work hard with this one—I really appreciate it, Broo.

  Margot Weale and Sophie Ransom (Midas PR) and Grainne Killeen (Killeen PR) for top-notch media work.

  Crime writer Michael Jecks for sterling input on weapons—any remaining oversights are my responsibility alone.

  My siblings Claire and Alan and their families—for love, hospitality and…guitar advice.

  Ali Karim, number ONE fan.

  And last, but most of all—love and only love to Roula and Maggie.

  I do haunt you still.

  —John Webster

  I cut my arm, and with my proper blood

  Assure my soul to be great Lucifer’s,

  Chief lord and regent of perpetual night.

  —Christopher Marlowe

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Prologue

  The black cat rubbed its flank against Mary Malone’s fleshy arm. They were on the window seat on the third floor of the house in Ifield Road, Fulham, West London.

  “Yes, Noir,” the writer said, looking down at the tombstones in Brompton Cemetery. “It’s a nasty night. But you don’t have to go out.”

  The cat gave her a supercilious glance, then jumped down and headed for the stairs.

  “Stubborn creature!” Mary turned back to the view from the high window. It had been a cold February with frost crimping the grass. In the last few days, the temperature had risen slightly and the evenings had been misty. It seemed to the writer that the patches of visible air above the graves were like exhalations of the restless sleepers in the frigid earth. Then again, she’d always had a vivid imagination.

  Mary went back to her desk. She had written half of her latest Doctor Kasabus mystery. The series was set in eighteenth-century Paris and her hero was a freethinking medical man who had a secret life as an investigator specializing in cases of a religious nature—priests who sanctioned murder, heiresses locked up in nunneries, bishops who abused boys. Rather to her surprise, she had gained a large readership on both sides of the Atlantic. Not that she ever met her fans. At five foot one, fifteen stone and with a face best suited to radio, she kept herself to herself. The memory of school—saliva-spattered girls’ faces eagerly poking fun at the class “hippo”—still made her weep on bad days.

  Mary Malone (real name, Shirley Higginbottom) leaned back in her specially constructed office chair and looked at the lines of script. She could feel one of her periodic bouts of melancholy coming on. What did she have to show for twenty years of slavery at the typewriter and computer? Twenty-five books, good sales, some decent reviews, every day a host of e-mails from her fans—most complimentary, but some from people who didn’t hide their desperation to know what she looked like. She had never allowed an author photo to be published and she never appeared at bookshop readings or crime-writing conventions. Her face and body were hers alone.

  “Piss and shit!” she said, trying to repel bitterness. So she couldn’t have what every other person had—a man, children, a normal family life, friends who made much of her at parties. Instead she spent her evenings looking at the Web sites of beautiful, blond, female and handsome, young male crime novelists. Her books did better than most of theirs, but she was in self-imposed exile, a fifty-one-year-old hermit, a repulsive gargoyle.

  Mary heaved herself to her feet and went down to her sitting room on the ground floor. Negotiating the stairs was her only exercise, not that it seemed to make any difference to her weight.

  “That’s enough self-pity,” she said, pouring herself a gin and tonic that was heavy on the former. She headed for the sofa, picking up a copy of the latest Clues on her way.

  The sudden, earsplitting yowl from the back of the house made her drop both glass and magazine.

  “Damn!” Mary took a few deep breaths, and then lumbered to the door with the cat-flap that led to her garden. “Noir!” she called. “What are you doing? Come in this minute, Noir!” She turned on the light.

  And felt her stomach somersault.

  Her beloved Noir’s head had come through the flap onto the carpet, but it was detached from the body.

  Mary Malone let out a long moan. “No,” she gasped. “No…” Despite her revulsion, she kept moving toward the cat’s bloody head. She was a few steps from the door when she realized that the handle was depressed. She stared into the darkness beyond the glass, her heart thundering. She didn’t think of turning and running—she knew she couldn’t move fast enough. She made out only a vague shape.

  Then the door was
pushed open violently and a figure dressed from head to toe in black entered. In the right hand was a knife streaked with blood and in the left was Noir’s body. It was tossed toward her.

  Mary couldn’t speak, couldn’t make any sound at all.

  The figure came up to her, holding the blade horizontal to her throat. Then a face appeared beneath a hood, but it wasn’t human. The mask was white, the eye-holes ringed with red. There was a goatee beard on the chin and the lips were turned up in a mocking smile. Worst of all, the surface was covered in discolored warts and lumps. Medieval depictions of people suffering from the Black Death flashed through Mary Malone’s mind.

  At last, she found her voice. “What is this?” she gasped. “Who are you?”

  The intruder nodded slowly. “I think you know, Mary.” The voice was steady. There was a pause. “You’re face-to-face with the devil.”

  There was a loud thud as the fainting novelist hit the floor.

  One

  I was putting the finishing touches to my weekly column in the Daily Independent—“Matt Wells on Crime”—when I heard the key turn in the lock.

  “Hi,” I called. “It’s a filthy night, Detective Chief Inspector.”

  Karen Oaten hung up her coat and sat on a chair to pull off her knee-high black boots.

  “Oh, no,” I said, as I went to greet her. “I was looking forward to you dominating me in those.”

  She raised her blond head and gave me an intimidating look. “Don’t push your luck, Matt. I have not had a good day.”

  I leaned over and kissed her, feeling cold cheeks and only slightly warmer lips. “What’s up? You been pounding the streets?”

  She got up and pushed me away gently. “No, I couldn’t find a bloody parking space anywhere near these poxy rich people’s flats.”

  “Oh, shit.” I’d moved into the Chelsea Harbour block about a year back, after my book The Death List had been a global success. Although I was a novelist at heart, the book was nonfiction and detailed my battle with the vicious killer who called himself the White Devil and had put all my other efforts in the shade. The fact that Karen featured in it, but didn’t get a penny of royalties, needled her when she was feeling down. Not that her career prospects had exactly been damaged.

  She went over to the drinks table, her long legs striking even without footwear.

  I caught up with her. “What would you like, darling?”

  She looked at me curiously. After years of living on her own, she was still surprised when I did things for her when she came to my place three or four times a week. She hadn’t given up her own house. We’d been together a couple of years, but she still needed her independence.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Her stern features relaxed. “A gin and tonic would be great.” She went to the nearest of the four black leather sofas I’d bought to fill the enormous living area. “What have you been up to today, Matt?”

  “My column,” I replied, handing her a glass and sitting down beside her. I picked up the stereo remote and got Peter Bruntnell’s latest CD playing.

  She took a long sip of her drink. “I thought you were meant to be starting the novel.”

  I gave a wry smile. “I did. Pages of deathless prose, done and dusted.”

  She jammed her elbow into my ribs. “Smart-ass. What’s it about?”

  I put my arm around her and took a slug of malt whisky. “The usual stuff—killers, stunningly beautiful cops, violent death…”

  She didn’t push me off. If she’d wanted, she could have floored me in under a second. She’d been a seriously good athlete as a student and she’d recently got her judo black belt. Then again, so had I.

  “Oh, nothing much,” she said with a yawn. “The usual run-of-the-mill Violent Crimes Coordination Team fare. A drugs gang killing in East London, an unidentified torso in the river and the assistant commissioner all over me for the quarterly report.”

  “Lucky him,” I said, and got another, harder nudge for my pains. “Can I have the inside story on the gangland killing for next week’s column?” Since we’d met during the White Devil case and subsequently started dating, Karen had used me as an unofficial conduit between the Metropolitan Police and the public. Several times I’d been given information that had elicited information from readers, leading to arrests.

  “Depends,” she said, emptying her glass.

  “On what?”

  “On how nice you are to me.”

  “How about a steak, a good claret, crème brûlée and a massage?”

  “You’re on.”

  I went to the kitchen at the far end of the living area. “You can talk to me while I slave over the stove.”

  Karen sat at the bar that separated the kitchen from the eating area. She shook her head. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “That’s what you always say. Come on, Karen. Your boss knows you talk to me about cases.”

  “About cases that he approves. He hasn’t cleared the latest killing.”

  I laid the steaks on a board and started to pound them. “He will.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. But how many of the Daily Independent’s readers are going to send you e-mails identifying a gangland hit man?”

  “Several members of the opposition gangs?” I suggested.

  “Oh, yeah, like that will stand up in court.”

  I turned to the stove. “All right, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve got plenty of other contacts in the Met.”

  Karen laughed. “Plenty of other contacts who want to take you down the cells and kick the shit out of you.”

  It was true that my diligence in publicizing Karen’s cases had made me some enemies at New Scotland Yard. I laughed. “I seem to remember you wanted to arrest me once.”

  She screwed up her face at me. “No, I didn’t. That was Taff.”

  “How is that Welsh sheep abuser?”

  “I’ll let him know you called him that.”

  Karen’s sidekick, Detective Inspector John Turner, wasn’t my biggest fan. Then again, he didn’t like anyone except his wife and kids—and Karen.

  I tossed a green salad and served the steaks. We both liked them rare.

  “Let’s not talk about work right now,” Karen said.

  “Okay,” I said, pouring her a glass of seriously expensive wine. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Mmm, this is good. I don’t know…is everyone all right?”

  “I thought we weren’t discussing work.” I sniffed the wine’s bouquet and took a sip. “God, it’s actually worth what I paid for it.”

  “Just checking,” she said, eyes on her plate.

  What she wanted to know was whether my family and friends were in one piece. The White Devil’s partner, my former lover Sara Robbins, had escaped and threatened revenge in the most chilling fashion, although I hadn’t heard anything from her for over two years. I was still scared shitless of Sara. She’d pretended to be a normal person when we were together, while she’d been busy graduating to stone killer level. That included pounding one victim’s head open with a hammer, biting off another’s nipples and gassing several others, including children, fortunately not fatally. She’d also put several bullets into my best friend. Who could blame me for setting up a daily reporting system with my ex-wife, my mother and those of my friends who’d been involved in the hunt for the White Devil?

  “Everyone’s okay,” I reassured her.

  “Including Caroline and Lucy?”

  My ex-wife had custody of my eleven-year-old daughter. They’d moved to Wimbledon. I saw Lucy every weekend, but I still missed having her nearby.

  “Including Lucy and her mother.”

  Karen stretched out a hand. “I know how difficult it is for you, Matt.”

  I squeezed her hand. “It isn’t long till the Easter holidays.”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do in your week?”

  “Lucy wants to go to Euro Disney. I’m trying to get Caroline to do that.”

>   “Good luck.” Karen and my ex-wife couldn’t be left alone unsupervised. “What are you going to fob Lucy off with?”

  “I thought we could walk in the Peak District.”

  Karen laughed. “Yeah, that ought to do it.”

  “At least it’ll get her away from the big city,” I said defensively. “My little angel has become worryingly street-wise.”

  Thinking of Lucy always made me anxious. The divorce hadn’t been easy for her. I regretted that, but back then I couldn’t handle Caroline’s scorn for my lack of success as a writer any longer. I managed to cheer up by the end of the meal, mainly because I’d succeeded in not torching the dessert to a blackened crisp like the last time.

  “Well, Chief Inspector,” I said, as I put the last of the cutlery in the dishwasher. “I believe I owe you a massage.”

  Karen gave me a foxy look. “Neck or full body?”

  “Whatever Madame desires,” I said, in a ridiculous French accent.

  “Madame desires the latter,” she said, opening the buttons of her blouse.

  “Très bien,” I said, feeling my blood quicken as I wiped the table and then followed her to the master bedroom. There was a trail of discarded clothing on the parquet floor.

  Karen was lying naked and facedown on my bed, her head turned to the side but her features obscured by the blond hair she had loosened from its chignon. I managed to get my clothes off before I reached the bed. I straddled her and put my hands on her shoulders. She giggled and squirmed when she felt me between her buttocks. I started to work my fingers across her impressively muscular upper body, all the time moving my lower torso up and down. Things were getting very interesting.