The Soul Collector mw-2 Page 8

  There was only one more thing to say-the catch-phrase that everyone who played for South London Bisons used when a game seemed to be lost.

  “No mercy, no surrender.”

  Pete arrived at my side. He repeated the words, and then turned me around, gently but insistently. In the hall, I took out my phone and called Karen.

  “Dave’s been murdered,” I said, the words singeing my mouth. I gave her the address. After I’d hung up, I turned to Pete. “You’d better get moving.”

  He pushed me back toward the kitchen. “Let him be now,” he said. “Don’t go back in there.”

  I nodded my agreement. I had no appetite to see Sara’s handiwork again. Besides, I wanted to check the rest of the house. It was possible she’d left a message somewhere else and I didn’t want the police to find it first. After about ten minutes I heard sirens. But by that time I’d only managed to ascertain one thing: there was no sign of a break-in.

  Had Dave willingly admitted his killer?

  “Where are we going, Mummy?” Lucy asked from the backseat.

  Caroline Zerb looked in the rearview mirror. “Never mind,” she said, her voice sharp. She had been watching for cars on her tail ever since they’d left the house in Wimbledon.

  “It’s a magical mystery tour,” Fran said, turning her head and smiling at her granddaughter. She had been a primary schoolteacher before her children’s books had taken off, and her skills with children were far superior to Caroline’s.

  Lucy raised an eyebrow skeptically. “How long are we going to go round and round the motorway?”

  “Until I decide otherwise,” her mother said, accelerating up the fast lane, then cutting inside and slowing down in front of a lorry. Matt had given her a book about surveillance techniques and she had practiced how to make life difficult for a tail. The initial shock she’d felt when her ex-husband sounded the alarm had worn off and now she was anxious about the meetings she’d been forced to cancel.

  Her phone rang and she pressed the button on her hands-free kit. “It’s me,” Matt said. “Listen carefully, I haven’t much time. This is a full alert.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Just listen! Are you on the M25?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get off at the next exit and find a pay phone. Your cell phone frequency may be being scanned. Follow instruction two, repeat, two. I’ll be in touch. Give…give my love to Lucy and Fran.”

  “Matt?” Caroline swallowed an expletive when the connection was broken.

  “Is he all right?” Fran asked, her face drawn.

  “I think so. He was in a hurry. He sent his love to you both.”

  The two women exchanged glances. They both knew that something bad had happened. There had been a number of false alarms, but they’d never yet had to use the suitcases they had permanently ready.

  Caroline indicated left and drove up the Sevenoaks exit. Matt would explode when he discovered they were in her car. The standing instruction if she picked up Fran was for them to take the older woman’s considerably less noticeable Renault Clio. Caroline couldn’t do without her Mazda RX-8, though. It was fast, it could outpace almost any tail. Because Matt’s emergency plans were so compartmentalized, it was quite possible that he’d never find out about the car. Everything worked on a need-to-know basis-and he didn’t need to know about the black Mazda.

  Eighteen months ago, she’d memorized the five instructions on the list that had then been destroyed. The second required her to call a number and ask if there were any messages for Zeppelin Delta. She’d be given the address of the safe house. Matt had told her that further instructions were taped beneath the top drawer of the chest in the largest bedroom. Although he’d bought the safe house with a small part of his ill-gotten gains from The Death List, he’d done so via a solicitor who’d been instructed never to give the owner details of the property or its address-the story was that the terms of the divorce settlement required that confidentiality. Caroline sometimes thought it was a ridiculous overreaction to the White Devil case; then she would remember her abduction at the hands of the madman and his sister, who was still on the loose and had threatened revenge on Matt and his circle. And she would remember that Fran and Lucy had also been taken by the bastards. She glanced in the mirror. Any inconvenience was immaterial as long as her daughter was kept safe.

  Fran turned to her granddaughter when Caroline got out at the service station. “This is exciting, isn’t it, dear?”

  Lucy shrugged. She was on the cusp of adolescence and nothing her elders said was satisfactory. “I don’t see why Mummy had to take my phone away.”

  “You have to trust her,” her grandmother said. She had turned her own cell phone off. That didn’t bother her, as she despised the things. She was more concerned at the disruption to her latest book. The Flight of the Bumbling Bee was at the crucial second draft stage. At least she’d remembered to bring a disk with the text on it. Presumably there would be a computer in the safe house. The standing instruction was that laptops were not to be brought, in case bugs had been fitted. Fran didn’t see how that could happen as she never took her laptop away from home, and Matt had made sure that her home was equipped with armored windows and doors, enough locks and chains to keep a prison governor happy and an alarm system that must have cost him a fortune. She hadn’t been happy when he told her that an expert could still get in and out, and leave no trace.

  “Gran?” Lucy said, her eyes fixed on the door of the service station. “Who’s Mummy talking to?”

  Fran’s stomach clenched when she saw that Caroline was deep in conversation with a woman whose back was turned to the car.

  Ignoring Matt’s strict instructions, Fran opened the door and swung her feet out. Lucy wasn’t staying on her own. She wrestled with the rear-opening door and clambered out after her grandmother.

  Seven

  Karen sat down next to me at the kitchen table after she’d taken a preliminary look. We were both in coveralls and overshoes. All my clothes had been taken away for examination.

  “This is awful, Matt,” she said, touching my arm. My hands were in clear plastic bags prior to fingerprints being taken. “Tell me what happened.”

  I had decided to come clean with her about the others’ presence-detectives knocking on doors would probably get descriptions of several men in black combats and woollen hats, and I didn’t want any potential sighting of the killer to be compromised. So I told her about Dave’s call using the alert code and the way we got in.

  She shook her head as I talked, her eyes lowered. When I’d finished, she looked me in the eye. “I understand you’ve just lost a close friend, but Christ, what were you thinking of, Matt? Why didn’t you call me as soon as you heard from Dave? We’d have arrived here quicker and that might have saved his life.”

  I glanced away. “I don’t think so. Sara was playing with us. She’d have got away whatever, and sirens would just have given her more warning.”

  Karen’s eyes flared. “We don’t always use sirens. Didn’t it occur to you that you might have been walking into a trap?”

  “There were four of us,” I said, though I wasn’t going to tell her that Pete had been out the back with his sniper’s rifle and Rog had been waiting with his Glock for anyone who left by the front door.

  “Coming through the pantry window meant you could have been picked off by a primary school bully,” she said, dropping her gaze again. “What were you armed with?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “The others took your weapon, didn’t they? Where are they?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said, and that was the truth. The plan we’d agreed on stipulated that we would split up if there was an attack on any of us.

  It looked like she believed me, but I was sure there would be cars dispatched to their houses to check. They wouldn’t be there-we each had our own list of randomly selected hotels and bed-and-breakfast places that none of the others had seen.

 
There was a tap on the door. The potbellied form of Dr. Redrose approached. “Mr. Wells, I understand the deceased was a friend. My condolences.” He turned to Karen. “I’ve finished. Cause of death was obviously the four close-range shots to the head. CSIs have dug out what looks like a 9 mm bullet from the sofa. There were single shots to each knee and two shots to each thigh.”

  His small eyes moved from Karen to me and then back again. “There’s no message in any obvious place. We’ll see what the postmortem shows. As for time of death, the body temperature suggests between two and three hours ago.” He waddled away.

  Karen was studying me. “You got here at ten-fifty, you said. He was killed not long before that.”

  I nodded. “I told you, she’s playing with us.”

  “Why are you so sure it’s Sara?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll bet you’ll find no traces of the killer. That smacks of Sara’s organizational skills. But it’s also obvious from the modus operandi, Karen. She shot Dave in the legs just before her brother was killed. He was finished in execution-style by shots to the head, as the SAS men did with the White Devil.”

  “And as you described in your book that’s been read by millions of people.” She blinked at me. “Why no message?”

  “There might still be one,” I said, swallowing a surge of vomit. “Inside him.”

  She looked away.

  There was another knock, and Taff Turner came in. Karen nodded to him to sit down. He’d already offered me his sympathy, but I knew he was unhappy about how I’d found the body.

  “There isn’t much to go on, guv,” he said. “The techies are looking for prints, but they’ll need to take all the family’s to exclude them.” He looked down at the pair of black leather gloves in front of me. “I’d put money on the fact that the killer was wearing gloves.” He shook his head at me. That was the nearest I was going to get to an admission that he knew I wasn’t a formal suspect. “The driveway is asphalt, so we can forget getting any shoe imprints from there.”

  “Anything you find in the garden will have to be compared with Matt’s miniature army’s boots,” Karen said. “The four of them were here.”

  A weary sigh passed Taff’s lips. “Wonderful,” he said. “Anything else we need to know?” He gave me a questioning look.

  “How the killer got in,” I said, still bothered by that. “The alarm was off and there’s no sign of a break-in.” I held Taff’s gaze. “Is there?”

  “No,” he said.

  “So Dave must have opened the door to her,” Karen said, glancing at her subordinate. “Assuming it’s Sara Robbins.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but there are two heavy-duty chains on the door. Dave knew to check through the spy-hole. He must have taken the chains off.”

  “Disguise?” the Welshman suggested.

  Karen nodded. “Make sure the local detectives are aware of that possibility when they’re taking statements from the neighbors.”

  “No one so far has reported hearing any shots,” Turner added. “The killer must have used a silencer.”

  “Interesting,” Karen said. “That suggests it was a pro.”

  “Sara was trained by the White Devil,” I said. “You don’t get much more professional than that. For all we know, she’s been honing her skills over the last two years.”

  Turner got up and left. At the door, he looked around. “Are we going to take over this case?” he asked his boss.

  Karen ran her tongue across her lips, an action that I would normally have found provocative in another context. “I’ll have to discuss that with the AC.” Her eyes were on me. “I think it’s time you checked your e-mail, Matt. Bring my laptop in from the car, will you, Taff?”

  I wasn’t comfortable with Karen seeing any communication from Sara as I needed to have freedom of action, but there wasn’t much I could do. She had a wi-fi card and she also knew my two main e-mail addresses. I logged on to them with a display of reluctance that turned out to be irrelevant. There was no message from Sara, in any form or guise.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Give me your cell phone,” she said. “Please, Mr. Wells.”

  She wasn’t joking. I was an ordinary member of the public to her now. Again, I didn’t have much choice.

  “What’s the password?” she asked. “And don’t even think of saying no, if you want to stay out of the cells.”

  “2LZ7,” I said.

  Karen hit the keys and scrolled up and down. “What are ‘GreenBoy’ and ‘Seven Emperor’?”

  “Alarm codes-to my agent and editor.”

  “They’ll have gone into hiding, will they? Along with Lucy and Fran, and your ex-wife?”

  I nodded. Christian Fels, my agent, had been a target of the White Devil, and had sold The Death List to my editor, Jeanie Young-Burke. Given that the book didn’t exactly paint flattering portraits of Sara and her brother, I was pretty sure she would go after them if she could.

  “You can’t do this, Matt,” Karen said, tossing the phone to me across the table. “You can’t take the law into your own hands.”

  “I didn’t know going into hiding was illegal,” I countered, my voice weak. I felt terrible and I needed to get out of Dave’s house.

  “It is if you’ve left the scene of a crime.”

  “Christian and Jeanie haven’t done that.” I sat up. “Can I go now?”

  She shook her head. “You’re staying with me. For a start, you need to be fingerprinted. Then I want a full statement.”

  I shrugged. I was safer with her, but I wouldn’t be able to find Sara. Even if the VCCT started looking for her, I didn’t have any confidence they’d be able to track her down. I was the only person who could attract Dave’s murderer, my former lover. What she felt for me now was the polar opposite of love, not that I was surprised.

  Then Taff Turner came in and said that Dave’s wife and kids had arrived. I’d spoken to Ginny on her cell phone and told her to come home as quickly as she could. Now I had to tell her what had happened to Dave. Karen would have done it, but it was up to me. That was what Dave would have wanted.

  Contrary to the agreed procedure, the Cherokee and the Hornet rendezvoused at the burnt-out remains of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich. Andy Jackson got off his bike and got into the front seat of Pete’s vehicle, then looked over his shoulder. Roger van Zandt was bent double in the backseat of the Grand Cherokee, his head between his knees.

  “Deep breaths, Dodger,” the American said. “Remember that try you scored against the Lambeth Lions? You went past four players and touched down under the posts. Remember what it felt to go over the line.” He glanced at the driver. “You remember that try, don’t you, Boney? Must have been the season before we retired.”

  “No. It was the year after I was voted off the committee.”

  “Jeez, I’m trying to distract him,” Andy said, in a loud whisper.

  Rog mumbled something.

  “What?” Andy said.

  “It was…it was Dave who passed the ball to me.”

  Pete groaned. “Look, Rog, we’re all shocked, but we’ve got to be strong now. We’re targets of that madwoman and we’ve got to get her before she picks us off.”

  “Yeah, that’s really gonna help, Boney,” the American said under his breath. He glanced at the dirty gray river. Sometimes he wondered why he’d settled in the U.K., not that the part of New Jersey he’d grown up in was any better. He had run with a street gang when he was a teenager and if he hadn’t had a dedicated football coach at high school, by now he’d either have been a low-level dope dealer or dead. His parents had kicked him out when he was fourteen, and they didn’t want to know what became of him, even when he almost made the NFL. His suspect knee had let him down, though it had been good enough for eleven seasons of amateur rugby league. His folks hadn’t believed human beings could change or that everyone had some innate goodness in them. They worked in a meat-packing plant, until they’d both got cancer and died within a few month
s of each other. Andy had left the States to find a new life, having finished basic training as a chef and able to work anywhere. The fact that he’d met a stunning English-woman in Central Park had made the move easy, even though she’d ditched him a month later.

  Andy scratched the light-colored stubble on his chin. His mom and dad had been wrong about people. The world wasn’t full of assholes. Matt and the others were stand-up guys-even Rog, whose curly hair and slim build made him look like a typical computer nerd, despite having put in some of the most bone-shuddering tackles Andy had ever seen. As for Dave, he’d been a hero and he had the medals to prove it, even if he wasn’t allowed to talk about his old SAS operations. But Sara Robbins-it didn’t matter if she’d killed him herself or paid some other fucker to pull the trigger, she was the exception that proved the rule. Poison ran in her veins like it had when she’d killed with her brother, and her mind was still a hive of hate and perversion.

  “All right,” Rog said. “I’ll do what I have to do.” He glared at Andy. “But after we’ve finished, I’m going to mourn Dave any way I like. Is that okay by you, Slash?”

  “Sure,” Andy said with a loose grin. “We’ll have a wake. Dave would have gone for that.” His expression hardened. “In the meantime, are you both clear about what you’ve got to do?”

  Rog and Pete nodded. They’d practiced the drill. No one told the others what they were up to in case they were caught. Everything each of them discovered about Sara or any other adversary would be uploaded daily to a special site that Rog had set up.

  Andy opened his rucksack. He unscrewed the silencers from his and Matt’s pistols, and ejected the magazines.

  “Okay, my men. I hope we see each other soon.” He punched Rog lightly on the shoulder, then squeezed Pete’s thigh. “Maybe some of us thought Matt was overdoing it on the planning side, but we all knew that Sara would be back eventually. Let’s get the bitch. For Dave.”

  “For Dave,” the others repeated.

  “Don’t forget to take the SIM cards from your cell phones and drop them down a storm drain,” Andy added. He got out and went over to his bike.