The Soul Collector mw-2 Page 31

  “Are you all right?” Andrewes asked. I was pretty sure he was worried he might not get his exclusive rather than genuinely concerned.

  “Sure,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  “You’re saying the same person killed all those people?”

  I nodded. The temptation to look around was enormous, but I fixed my eyes on the short Japanese woman who was buying several cans of lemonade.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s Sara Robbins,” Andrewes said, determined to steal my thunder.

  Somehow I resisted the urge to tell him that she was creeping up on us with murder in her heart. Where the hell was Andy? I’d been hung out to dry. Unless-

  “Sara Robbins?” said a female voice behind us.

  We both turned our heads. The motorbike rider had sat down two steps above us. She had raised her visor only a few centimeters, so I couldn’t make out her face. She pulled off one glove and unzipped her jacket, then slipped her hand inside. When it came back out, she was holding an object that I couldn’t immediately identify. She leaned forward and gripped Jeremy Andrewes’s shoulder with her other hand and pulled him back, so that the hand holding the object was near his neck.

  “This is a spring-loaded stiletto,” the woman said. “I can have it in his jugular before you move, Matt.”

  “What?” Andrewes said, his voice rising several tones. “Who are you?”

  It was a good question. The voice had a similar timbre to Sara’s, but there was a lot of East London in it. Then again, Sara was quite capable of picking up accents. She used to do a very convincing Margaret Thatcher.

  “I’m your death,” the figure in leathers said. Then she gave a laugh that was as depraved as the White Devil’s. “Don’t move, Jeremy, and don’t even think about calling out.”

  Thinking about it, I realized there was a lot of similarity between the two voices. Sara had obviously been turning herself into a female version of her brother.

  “Let him go,” I said, looking into my own eyes, reflected in the visor. “It’s me you really want, Sara.”

  The laugh was repeated and I felt revulsion, but something else, as well-a strange mixture of fear and fascination. I didn’t know where Andy was and I was looking my nemesis in the face. But there was something more….

  “I don’t want you, Matt,” the figure in leathers said. “At least, not yet. Andrewes is the one I’m after today.” She leaned closer, the knife with its invisible blade only centimeters from the journalist’s jugular. In the courtyard below, people were chattering and children yelling. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to the three of us.

  My mind was in freefall, thoughts and ideas flying around like bullets on the ricochet. Why was Andrewes the one she was after? What had he done to deserve death?

  “Sara?” I said. “Why do you want to kill an innocent man?”

  The laugh that came from the helmeted figure in leather was grotesque. “Innocent?” she said. “How many journalists are innocent?” I’d been about to shove Andrewes aside, but suddenly there was a blur of movement behind the motorbike rider and she was driven into the journalist, who toppled forward. The woman sprawled over him, and then slid rapidly down the steps before her helmet made contact with a paving-stone. The person who had piled into her went down the steps on hands and knees and sat on her back, then twisted her arm behind her.

  I got up and joined them. “Jesus, Rog, you took your time. I didn’t see you when I got here.”

  “I was just inside the main doors. That way no one saw me, including this specimen.” He bounced on the woman’s back to stop her struggling. “Sara Robbins, I presume?”

  Two security guards were pushing their way through the crowd of kids and tourists.

  “Yes, I think…” Before I finished the sentence, the biker managed to throw Rog off her back with a heave to the side. She launched herself at Jeremy Andrewes, who was sitting rubbing his head. I raced up the steps and hit her in the belly with a tackle that Dave would have been proud of. But I wasn’t quick enough. The stiletto had already caught the journalist in the throat. He started to gasp, blood pumping out between his fingers. The woman had got back on her feet and was now moving quickly toward me, clutching the knife. There was no time to think. I dropped the upper half of my body, let her torso crash onto my back, and then powered my shoulders up as fast as I could. I felt the weight fly off me and looked around to see her hit the bottom step headfirst. A loud crack rang out.

  …images flashing…columns turning, blurred faces, stone steps. Then darkness. I can’t see, I can’t move, can’t speak. I’m going…NO! No, I can’t die. I’ve got everything…money, the power of the Lord Beneath the Earth, Mephistopheles…why aren’t they helping me? I can’t die. I’m a predator, not prey. The flat in Hackney…the enemy was inside, and the grenade I tossed should have taught them a lesson. They never caught me, they never caught on I was a woman. The beard was a good one, though I let the beautiful Kurdish boy see past it. I was never in love before…sex meant my so-called father sticking it in me when his bitch wife was drunk. I never wanted that again. Until I saw Faik. Instead of submitting to the urge to kill, I just shot him in the hand. And rescued him. I’m sure they thought it was a man disguised as a woman. No one could imagine it was a woman disguised as a man disguised as a woman…not even Sara would have thought of that. They never caught on I was a woman. She must have been impressed, she must have…

  Followed my gorgeous Faik but…but I couldn’t express my desires…only my violence. I thought Faik would respond to that, but he was a strange kind of gang member, he didn’t want to hurt the Albanian, he looked at me with horror…My face, my ruined face…and Sara so beautiful, with her good surgeon…and me far too ugly to fix. Though I was sorry as soon as I’d done him, I wrote her that. Violence. She knew that I need it as she does. She encouraged me to start killing…the animals, making sure I threw what was left of the cats and dogs into the canal. But Sara was impatient…she said I couldn’t just kill anyone, the victims had to be strong, dangerous, otherwise there was no point. Hard men, beasts of the street, I decided. Stabbing the fat Kurd was my first. Nervous before, but in the end it was easy. Power exploded inside me like Sara said. Killing for myself, killing for Sara, killing for Mephistopheles and the Lord Beneath the Earth. Where did one begin and the other end? It was all the same to me. Mephistopheles wanted funds for the order so I took drugs from the Shadows and set up the sale to the Albanians. I would have ransomed their man if Faik hadn’t run away in disgust.

  Oh, Faik, where are you now?

  If only you could see how beautiful I am inside, so perfect…my ability to destroy…dedicating that to the Lord Beneath the Earth seemed to make sense. But now I think…Sara, Sara, my…NO! I can’t be dying, I can’t, oh, Faik, why did you reject me?

  Jeremy Andrewes was sprawled on his back across the steps, his legs jerking out of control. His clothes were soaked in blood and his eyelids were fluttering. I kneeled down beside him and put pressure on the wound. I knew it was far too little, far too late.

  “Matt,” he croaked.

  I leaned closer.

  He was panting for breath, his windpipe partially severed.

  “Coke…deal,” he said, tongue loose over gray lips. “Sh…Shkrelli family and Earl…Earl Sternwood. That…bastard did…this…”

  The journalist’s body tensed, then his eyes rolled and he slumped back on the stone steps.

  Before I could take in what he’d said, a security guard got me in a neck-lock. “VCCT,” I gasped. The pressure was relaxed. He must have thought I was a member of the elite squad. I gave him Karen’s cell phone number.

  “This will get you Detective Chief Inspector Karen Oaten,” I said, rubbing my throat. “Tell her Matt Wells has made a citizen’s arrest and that there’s been a murder here.” The guard looked at me dubiously and then did as he was told.

  “Good tackle, Matt,” Pete Satterthwaite said, coming down the steps and grinn
ing. “You all right?”

  “All the better for seeing you, Boney. I wasn’t sure you guys had made it.”

  “I was covering the far side of the yard.”

  Rog looked up at us and shook his head. Jesus, had I killed Sara? I ran down the steps and looked at the figure in leather. She wasn’t moving.

  Her left hand was flung out in front of her, but the right was hidden beneath her body.

  I dropped to my knees beside the motionless figure. I wasn’t going to wait for Karen before I confirmed who the woman was. Rog and I rolled her over gently. I could hear sirens approaching. I put my hand under the bottom of the helmet and eased it off, pushing my hand under the head of the woman I’d once loved to stop it banging on to the paving-stone. It was as loose as a flower with a broken stalk. I took a deep breath and looked at the face that was revealed.

  It made me wince. Disfigured and split, the skin was discolored and with an unnatural sheen, crisscrossed by scars. As for the upper lip, its halves had parted like the stumps of an octopus’s tentacles.

  “She’s Lauren May Cuthbertson,” Pete said. “Rog and I reckon she killed the guy in Oxford. He was her surgeon.”

  I rocked back on my heels, as uniformed police shouldered their way through the crowd. The fact that the dead woman wasn’t Sara had been a shock, but Pete and Rog seemed to have made sense of who she was. The problem was, my adversary was still at liberty. I’d just killed one of her sidekicks, admittedly by accident, and I wondered what the cost of that would be. I doubted that Sara would see any mitigating circumstances.

  Then, as I stood up and looked around the crowd, the blood tingling in my legs, I had another unpleasant thought. I still didn’t have the faintest idea where Andy was.

  Twenty-Six

  “Pull in over there, please,” Andy Jackson said, as the taxi approached the British Museum.

  He’d been unlucky outside the newspaper offices. Just as Jeremy Andrewes had hailed a cab, a woman wearing stiletto heels stepped off the pavement and collapsed into the road as her ankle gave way with a horrible crack. Andy stepped in front of a white van, forcing it to brake hard. He then picked the woman up carefully and took her into the Daily Independent building, telling the receptionist to call an ambulance.

  By the time he got back outside, Andrewes was long gone. That wasn’t a problem in itself, as the American knew where Matt had sent him, but the point of him tailing the journalist was to see if anyone else was. He was so far behind that he didn’t see anyone suspicious on the short journey. That state of affairs changed when his taxi went along Great Russell Street. He saw a stationary red motorbike, a Transalp he’d seen before, on the same side of the road as the museum. Near it was the helmeted figure in black leathers he was sure had picked up Doris Carlton-Jones earlier. Not only that, but there was another identical motorbike parked about twenty yards farther on. Andy tried to make sense of the fact that there were two bikers, but couldn’t reach a conclusion. He knew that Rog and Pete were covering Matt’s back. It seemed to him that the best thing he could do was to keep an eye on the rider who was watching through the railings. He wanted to check that Matt was all right, but decided it would be better if he stayed in the taxi, ready to give pursuit.

  Ten minutes later, that decision paid off. The figure in black leather outside the railings suddenly turned away and mounted the nearer of the two bikes. It was started and moved off quickly, cutting in front of a minivan to join the left-hand lane, before heading west.

  “Follow that bike,” Andy said to the cabby.

  “You’re ’avin’ a laugh,” the middle-aged driver said, looking around.

  “There’s a twenty in it for you, on top of what the meter shows,” Andy said, watching the red metallic machine slow down behind a bus.

  “Fair enough,” the cabby said, pulling out. “Follow that bike…that’s a good one!”

  To Andy’s surprise, the rider made no attempt to overtake the bus until it pulled in at a stop near Tottenham Court Road station. Then the bike’s right indicator flashed and the rider headed north, toward Euston Road. The pattern of careful riding was maintained through Camden Town and Highgate, until the bike finally came to a halt in front of a block of flats in Hornsey. Andy told the driver to stop and waited till the rider had gone inside. He saw a key flash in the afternoon sun. Then he paid the cabbie off, bonus included, and got out.

  At the glass door, he examined the names on the panel of buttons. He didn’t recognize any of them, but that wasn’t a surprise. If this was Sara, she’d hardly have written S. Robbins on the entry phone. He considered using his lock-breaking rods, but decided against it. Sure enough, a young black woman came out and let him pass without a second glance. The entrance hall smelled of mildew and worse. There was nothing for it but to go up to each floor and snoop around. Maybe he could find a talkative old woman who knew everyone in the block. He tried texting Matt, but the signal was weak and he gave up, not wanting to lose his target. But if that had been her, who was the other rider? Andy scratched his head and then headed for the stairs.

  Opening the door, he looked up. The stink in the stairwell was much worse: piss, pot, stale beer-the calling cards of teenage boys. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. He set off up the stairs, hoping he didn’t have to go all the way to the top. The display panel above the lift went as high as fourteen. His knees weren’t what they used to be-too many games of gridiron and rugby league.

  He reached the first floor, his breathing hardly affected. He peered through the small safety-glass window in the door. There was no one visible. He put his shoulder to the door, wincing when it gave out a loud creak. After he’d gone through, he grabbed the handle to stop it slamming. Then he turned to the front and saw a red object swinging fast toward his head.

  Andy Jackson went down in a constellation of shooting stars.

  “Clear the way, please,” shouted a male voice over the sirens that were still blaring on Great Russell Street.

  I stood up, looking at Rog and Pete. I mouthed to them to go. They got the message and slipped away through the crowd, taking my bag with them. They headed toward the museum-there was an exit at the rear of the building. I had no choice but to face the music. Fortunately, Karen arrived not long afterward, the morose Welshman in tow. She favored me with a neutral stare, and then turned her attention to the bodies.

  “Is that Jeremy Andrewes of the Daily Indie?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “And the woman?”

  “Lauren May Cuthbertson,” I said, parroting the name that Pete had said. I watched as uniformed officers urged the crowd to disperse. CSIs were soon on the scene, and police tape sealed off half of the courtyard and steps. Taff Turner called for witnesses and got his subordinates taking preliminary statements.

  Karen came closer. “What happened here?”

  I told her, skating over my use of Jeremy Andrewes as target-man.

  “So you’re saying the woman stabbed Andrewes to death and then you killed her by accident?”

  “Yes.”

  She glared at me. “Were you on your own? Where are your friends?”

  I played dumb, but that didn’t get me anywhere.

  “Right, that’s it. I’m taking you in.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “The dead woman has some connection with Sara. We’ll only catch her if I can set a trap.”

  “You arrogant tosser,” she hissed. “You still think you know better than the professionals, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “I can do different things, that’s all.”

  “Put your hands out,” Karen ordered. She signaled to a CSI, who came over and put transparent evidence bags over my hands, attaching them with tape.

  I bit my lip. Being caught up in police procedure was the last thing I needed right now. The fact that I had an illegal and silenced handgun in my jacket made things even more critical.

  The potbellied pathologist arrived and cast a cold eye over the corpse, and
an even colder one over me. “I wondered if you’d turn up again,” he said as he put down a foam pad and kneeled on it.

  “Ditto, Doctor,” I said.

  He started examining the dead woman. I heard him say the words “severely damaged upper lip” and “recent surgery” to his assistant.

  Taff Turner came up to Karen, led her away and spoke to her at length. Their eyes were on me most of the time. Then Karen came back over.

  “It seems that your story is broadly corroborated by witnesses,” she said, pursing her lips. “I’m still livid with you, Matt. Why didn’t you call me before you came here?”

  I shrugged. “There wasn’t time.”

  Her eyes flared. “That’s pathetic. You thought it was Sara, didn’t you? You wanted all the glory of catching her for yourself.”

  I felt my cheeks redden. Maybe she was right. I wasn’t too clear about my motives anymore. I’d never killed anyone before. Even though Lauren May Cuthbertson was a murderess and even though it was an accident, I felt guilty and tainted. Finally I understood the difference between writing about death and causing it. The only good thing was that I obviously had nothing in common with Sara and her brother. They enjoyed dispensing death; I just felt sick. Then again, I’d lured Jeremy Andrewes to what seemed to be his predestined end.

  “Get me out of here, Karen,” I said. “I need to catch up with the guys. I don’t know where Andy is. He should have got here a few seconds after her.” I inclined my head toward the body.

  “You’re staying with me,” she said, stepping toward the pathologist.

  I looked over my shoulder as casually as I could. There were armed police on the museum steps, and more in the courtyard. Running for it wasn’t an option.

  Karen was holding up an evidence bag and examining the contents, a cell phone. I walked over to her quickly.