The Soul Collector Read online

  “True enough,” the superintendent said. “What I meant was that it would have been easy to establish his routine. He parked his car in a conveniently quiet alley.”

  “It was one of your lot, wasn’t it?” DI Neville said to DI Ozal. “The Turks hate the Kurds. They told me that when I was on my holidays there.”

  Paskin put a heavy hand on Ozal’s arm. “You’re oversimplifying, Inspector,” he said, his eyes cold. “Mustafa here has his ear to the ground. He’d have heard if this was a gang killing.”

  “You’re saying it wasn’t?” Neville asked. “What about the other bodies you’ve got? They’re all gang-related.”

  “Thank you, DI Neville,” Oaten said. “Go on, guv.”

  Paskin took a deep breath. “Right, Karen. To finish on Nedim Zinar, the presence of ammunition in his vehicle suggests he was carrying a weapon, probably a pistol. It wasn’t found at the scene. The CSIs weren’t able to identify any prints from the time of the murder. And, surprise, surprise, there were no witnesses.”

  “The killer gets a handgun,” Neville said. “And, guess what? Two people are shot dead.”

  Ozal glared across the table at the Homicide West man. “There’s no proof that the weapon taken from Zinar was used in the killings of Aro Izady and the Wolfman.”

  “All right, calm down,” Oaten said. “Guv?”

  The superintendent gave her a long-suffering look. “The body of Aro Izady, a cousin of the King and one of his numbers men, was found in a basement used by the Turkish Shadow gang. He’d been shot in the head at close range.”

  “We think two other men were present,” Inspector Ozal said, taking up the story. “One was Faik Jabar, also linked to the King—a witness saw him getting into Izady’s car. The other, we haven’t been able to identify beyond the fact that he had a beard.”

  “There was blood from another person at the scene,” the pathologist put in. “It seems this Jabar was also shot, though not fatally.”

  Ozal nodded. “Quite so, Doctor. There were bloodstains in the room and on the stairs outside, as well as two 9 mm cartridges. Faik Jabar has not been seen since. One of our informers said that he had been picked up by the Shadows and was being, as he put it, cross-examined.”

  “You mean tortured,” Neville said.

  “Well done, Inspector,” Paskin said, without audible irony. “We have a witness who saw a young man with a bandage on his hand and blood on his legs come out of a house in Stoke Newington with a mustachioed man. Tests on blood found there show the same group as that found in the Shadow store, and the DNA will confirm that, I’m sure. As they were getting into a green Opel Astra, the well-known Shadow enforcer known as the Wolfman—we don’t know his real name—came running down the street to stop them. A woman—or possibly not—in a burqa shot him three times. No one realized straightaway what had happened, which means a silencer was used. By the time people had got to the Wolfman he was dead—three shots to the chest—and his killer had vanished. I’m guessing she—or he—had a car around the corner. The young man and the other man with the mustache drove off in the Astra.”

  “What do you think about the use of the burqa by the killer, DI Ozal?” Karen Oaten asked.

  “It’s a first, at least in this country,” the inspector replied. “As to the shooter’s gender, you wouldn’t find many Muslim men who would willingly put it on.”

  “How about non-Muslims?” Younger asked. “Could one of the other gangs be involved? White villains or Yardies?”

  “It’s possible,” Paskin said, “but there’s no evidence for it.”

  “Seems a dead cert to me,” Luke Neville said. “The Wolfman—crazy name—kills the Kurd Nedim Zinar. Next up, he puts on a false beard and coerces Izady into driving up Green Lanes, collecting the young guy on the way. There’s obviously something said in the basement and the young guy kills the older guy. Then the Wolfman shoots him dead and the other young guy in the hand, and takes him prisoner. Then the King’s men get on Wolfie’s tail and set up the burqa hit.” He looked around. “Bingo. Cases closed.”

  Ozal laughed. “Very clever. The problem is, we haven’t heard a whisper from any of our snouts to back that up.”

  Neville grinned. “Well, maybe you need to check out the quality of your snouts.”

  Oaten looked at Paskin, who shook his head once. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “Let’s move on to what is hopefully the last murder. DCI Younger?”

  “Sandra Devonish, bestselling American crime novelist, found dead in her suite at Wilde’s hotel yesterday evening.”

  “Single stab wound to the heart,” said Redrose, “suggesting a fair degree of skill.”

  Younger looked at him. “Or luck.”

  The pathologist gave a snort of disdain.

  “We’ve got conflicting witness statements,” DCI Younger continued, unperturbed. “Unfortunately the ground-floor bar was very busy with a group of advertising executives. One woman said she saw a tall man in a gray suit walk toward the stairs. The receptionist saw a woman in a red coat walk into the lobby and then out again a few minutes later. And a man who was drinking at the bar said that a bearded man in motorbike leathers went past, holding his helmet under his arm.”

  “That sounds suggestive,” Amelia Browning said.

  “Yes, it does,” agreed Younger. “Unfortunately, no one has corroborated the sighting and no one saw a motorbike rider leave the hotel. We’re still checking the CCTV recordings.”

  “We’ve already mentioned the modus and the scene,” Oaten said. “What else?”

  The pathologist raised a pudgy hand. “Nails had been recently cut from both toes and fingers, as well as hairs from the back of the head and the pubic area.”

  “As per Mary Malone,” DI Neville put in.

  Karen Oaten nodded. “What else?”

  Younger looked at her. “I’d say the killer took a hell of a risk. He—or she—went into a crowded hotel and managed to stab the victim, arrange the body and set the music playing a couple of minutes before the room-service waiter went to the suite. We’re looking at a very assured and cold-blooded killer.”

  John Turner frowned. “You mentioned luck before. That doesn’t sit with your picture of a well-organized killer.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Younger admitted.

  “The fact is,” the Welshman continued, “if the room-service guy had knocked earlier, when he—or she—was inside, the killer could have put on an American accent and asked him to leave the order outside.”

  “You’re meant to sign for it,” Neville said, tugging his lower lip.

  Turner fixed him with a steely eye. “Do you think they insist in a place like Wilde’s?”

  “There’s something else,” Amelia Browning said. “How did the killer find out that Sandra Devonish was staying at Wilde’s?”

  There was silence.

  “I mean, hotels like that don’t give out that sort of information. Who knew that the writer was going to be in London?”

  Younger was nodding. “That’s a good point, Sergeant. We’ve spoken to her publishers. They told us that they always put their important authors in Wilde’s.”

  “So who would know that?” Browning persisted. “People in the publishers.”

  “We’ve established alibis,” Younger said.

  “In the hotel?”

  “As you said, they don’t give guest information out. They fired a receptionist last week for inadvertently confirming a footballer’s presence to a tabloid, so I think we can be pretty sure that the staff were on their toes.”

  “Where does that leave us?” Redrose said, glancing pointedly at his watch.

  Amelia Browning stared over at him. “With a killer who knows the world of crime writing, Doctor.”

  “How about a crime writer, then?” Luke Neville said. “Such as Matt Wells.”

  Karen Oaten didn’t raise her head from her notes. “Tell him, Taff.”

  “Matt Wells has a solid alibi for the Mary
Malone murder.”

  “And the other one?” Neville asked.

  Turner glared at him, then shook his head.

  Neville looked around the table. “DCI Oaten said at the beginning that she wanted to establish a common thread in these killings. At the very least, she needs to find Matt Wells. His friend was shot, two fellow crime writers have been killed, one wearing leathers like the biker seen near Dave Cummings’s place. And…” His voice trailed away.

  “And what?” Turner demanded. “He dressed up in a burqa to kill a Turkish hard man?”

  Neville looked down. “He could have,” he said, though even he didn’t sound convinced.

  “What about ballistics?” Oaten asked.

  “We’ve got a match between a bullet found in the wall of the Shadow basement and the three in the Wolfman’s body,” Ron Paskin said.

  “But no match with the bullets taken from Dave Cummings,” added John Turner.

  “So,” Oaten said, looking around the table. “Two different shooters, or just the one using different weapons?”

  There was no reply.

  “And what about the person who’s murdering crime writers? He or she isn’t using firearms at all. Does that mean we’ve got three different killers loose in London?”

  Again, there was silence. The meeting broke up shortly afterward.

  The earl was in his London club. He didn’t like to be away from his country estate—there had been so much going on there recently—but he couldn’t avoid this trip. And the business had been concluded satisfactorily. Not that he’d had much to do with that. He had no knowledge of the illicit drugs trade, despite having had a healthy appetite for cocaine in his student days. Fortunately his companion had been able to extract a reasonable price. Then it had been straight to his bank to make the deposit that would have calmed his account manager down substantially. If they went on like this, the family would soon regain much of its lost standing; because money was all that counted, for aristocrats even more than for the common hordes. Inheriting property was the norm for his class. Keeping the banks happy was much less common.

  He sipped the distinctly average tawny port and nodded at the old idiot across the table. Inbreeding had done the aristocracy no favors. At least the earl didn’t have to worry on that score. He had inherited his family’s devotion to the black arts, as well as the considerable talents required to treat with the order’s acolytes.

  He got up and went to the room he always took. It was on the top floor, in what would originally have been the servants’ quarters, but he liked it because it reminded him of his house at school. When he had been a student, the head prefect had demanded the use of his mouth and backside. He had prayed for salvation—not to the feeble god the school worshipped in chapel every morning, but to the Lord Beneath the Earth. His father had given him the order’s archives to study before he went to senior school. His prayers, or rather the replies to them, had worked. The prefect slipped outside his room and fell down the stairs, breaking his neck. The fact that the earl had rubbed soap on the floorboards was not noticed, the police being admitted to the school only on sufferance.

  That had been his first death dedicated to the Lord Beneath. There had been countless others since, and it wouldn’t be long until the next one.

  The earl picked up his cell phone and made a call to one of the order’s most devoted supplicants.

  Twenty-One

  “Bugger,” Rog said, his fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard.

  I went over. “What is it?”

  “Hang on.” His eyes were locked on the screen, as he scrolled down rows of numbers and letters. “That was close. You almost lost everything in your new account.”

  “What?”

  “Sara’s hired someone red-hot. I got there in time, but only because I’d programed an alert code. All the money I transferred from Sara’s accounts was about to go out again.”

  I slapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, Dodger. Sara knows we’re on to her.”

  He nodded. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? But are Pete and Andy safe at her place in Oxford?”

  “I’ll send a text warning them to be even more careful.” After I’d done that, I looked back at Rog. “So is that account secure now?”

  “I’ve built a massive firewall and I’ve also alerted the bank’s security department—anonymously, of course. I don’t think Sara’s hacker will get in again.”

  “She’s not going to be happy that I’ve got her money,” I said, wondering what that might drive her to.

  “Matt?” Rog said. “Why did you warn that Alistair Bing guy? You solved the clue. When you send the answer at midnight, he should be off the hook.”

  “You’re right,” I replied. “He should be—if you’re prepared to trust a murderer who sends puzzles.”

  “Got you,” he said, looking around at me. “That tosser Hinkley’s got to you, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Jeremy Andrewes, too. When this is finished, I’m going to have a serious conversation with that pair.”

  “What about Karen?”

  I stepped away, unwilling to discuss that—not because I wanted to keep Rog out of the loop, but because I wasn’t sure how to handle her. If I contacted her by phone or e-mail, she’d have to respond officially, which would get me nowhere. But trying to see her would be risky, as well as putting her in a difficult position. She’d probably try to arrest me for my own protection.

  “All right, don’t tell me,” Rog said. “I only thought you might want my help since I’m such a stellar performer with women.”

  I laughed. Rog wasn’t unattractive, but he’d never been able to hold a woman’s attention, never mind affections, for more than a few weeks—that was, if he managed to pull in the first place. He and Andy were at opposite ends of that spectrum.

  “How are we going to nail Sara, Matt?” he asked, his tone serious. “Pete and Andy aren’t going to find her in Oxford. If she’s there, who’s doing the murders in London?”

  “It’s only an hour by car or train.”

  “Or motorbike,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Remember the biker that Andy saw outside her mother’s place?”

  “Shit,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. How could I have forgotten Doris Carlton-Jones?

  “He said the biker was trying to give the old woman something.”

  “That’s right. I wonder what it was.”

  “Do you think she’s been in contact with Sara? Or vice versa?”

  I considered that. Sara could have found out who her birth mother was. She had that right, though she’d have had to find a way into the adoption agency’s database rather than present herself in person—that would have been dangerous, given her status as a wanted woman. If she’d hired a geek who could empty bank accounts, the same specimen could easily have traced her birth mother. The question was, had Doris Carlton-Jones met her daughter? I’d mentioned that Sara and the White Devil had been adopted in The Death List, and found out the identity of her mother by the judicious application of sweet talk and bribery. But I hadn’t told the woman who her daughter was.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said, looking at my watch. It was coming up to ten. “But it’s too late for a visit tonight. The deadline’s coming up.”

  “It’s probably a long shot, anyway. Do you think the cops know about her?”

  He had me there. I hadn’t told Karen the woman’s name, but she might have followed the trail from the newspapers without telling me. Given that the motorbike rider had shot out Andy’s windscreen, I didn’t think there were any police personnel watching the house in Sydenham—they’d have shown themselves. Maybe Mrs. Carlton-Jones had been in touch with the real police about the shooting. It was possible that Andy and I had made her suspicious.

  “And the answer is?” Rog said, cupping his hand around his ear.

  “Sorry, mate, I was just thinking it through. Frankly, I don’t know. We’ll go an
d talk to her tomorrow.”

  I sat down in front of my laptop and tried to think of all the possible consequences of sending the name Adrian Brooks at midnight.

  Faik Jabar looked at the man on the floor. His head was a bloody pulp and his bare chest was covered in long knife cuts. He was still breathing, but there was a rattle in his throat and he was mumbling incoherently.

  “Do it,” the bearded man said, pointing the silenced pistol at Faik’s groin. He smiled crookedly.

  Faik looked at the knife he was holding. It was dripping blood. The Albanian had gabbled information about his family’s business after the bearded man set up a camcorder on a tripod. Then he had been beaten with a hammer and slashed with a combat knife. Faik’s captor had taken off his chains. His wounded thighs were in agony because of the wounds and the urine that had soaked into his trousers. Now his captor had given him the knife and told him to cut off the Albanian’s nose. When Faik objected, saying he thought the man was to be ransomed, the bearded man gave a sharp laugh and pointed to the camera. Then he turned it off.

  “I will send them the disk and they will prepare payment. He will be alive when I set him free, but that doesn’t mean he has to be a complete man.”

  Faik swallowed. He felt like a small boy who had strayed into adult business. The muzzle of the gun was pointed at his crotch and it didn’t waver.

  “I’ll shoot you there and leave you to die,” the bearded man said. “You know I’m capable of it. Think how much nicer things will be when you’ve done what I want. I can make things very…enjoyable for you.”

  The sexual tone turned Faik’s stomach. He’d been forced to watch his captor maim the victim. The idea of performing sexual acts with him was horrible. Faik knew he had to fight back. He took a deep breath and looked past the gun.

  “All right,” he said, blinking hard as he got to his feet and stepped closer to the Albanian. He had the knife in his right hand and he knew he would only get one chance. He had calculated the distance. The man with the beard was about two meters away—too far to charge him. He’d considered throwing the knife—he’d been taught how by one of the King’s bodyguards—but he knew he’d be shot before he even let the blade go. He had only one option. Bending over the gasping Albanian, he brought the knife close to his face. Then, with a sharp cry, he fell to the floor like a stone, narrowly missing the blood-drenched body.