The Death List (28 page)

“Shit,” Geronimo said, dropping his gaze. “Sorry, boss. Patton—Patton was the one who shot the towel-head.”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s right, Patton. Good soldier—nerves of steel and smart with it. Shame he left the regiment.”

“Shame he was pushed, you mean,” Rommel said bitterly.

“Yeah, well, he sometimes got a bit too clever for his own good,” said Geronimo. He kept his eyes off Wolfe. The boss had been instrumental in easing their old comrade Dave Cummings out because he had become a bit of a loose cannon. That didn’t mean that Geronimo and Rommel hadn’t kept in touch with Dave, though. He’d been a good mate of Jimmy Tanner’s, too.

“Motorbike approaching from rear,” Rommel said, lowering himself in his seat. “Reducing speed. Could be our man.”

Wolfe dropped lower, too, his eyes fixed on the road. “Okay, get ready. If he stops outside the house, we’ll take him as he gets off the bike.”

Rommel started the Orion’s engine. At the same moment the motorbike came level with them. The rider, kitted out in leathers and wearing a black helmet with an opaque visor, turned his head toward the car. Suddenly he revved the engine and moved off rapidly down the street, forcing a woman with a child to jump out of the way.

“Go!” Wolfe yelled. He was slammed back in his seat as Rommel hit the accelerator.

“Shit, the bastard spotted us straight off,” Geronimo said from the rear.

“Don’t worry.” Wolfe watched as the motorbike took a right turn, the rider’s knee close to the asphalt. “He can run, but he can’t hide from us.”

The next number I called was Karen Oaten’s. She was in a meeting, but she must have walked out—I heard the other voices fade and then disappear.

“Matt, I’m glad you got in touch. Listen, we think we know who the Devil is.”

I felt relief flood through me. “Who?”

“That’s the problem. He seems to have changed identity in the past four years. We’re trying to track down his new name.”

The anxiety came back with a vengeance. “So you haven’t got any way of stopping him.”

“I’m afraid not. At least, not yet.”

“Jesus. I think he might make another attempt today.”

“To kill?” Her voice was tense. “Why?”

“Because he failed with Christian Fels.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got people at his house.”

“I don’t think he’ll be dumb enough to try there again, Karen. I’ve taken steps to protect my family and my ex-editor. But there are plenty of others he could target.”

“Give me names and addresses,” she said quickly.

I admired her professionalism. I told her where Sara and Caroline were to be found. Then I reeled off several names at my former publishers, including the owner. I went through friends I had in the crime-writing world—authors, journalists, booksellers and dealers, collectors, anyone I could think of. I couldn’t remember all their addresses, but I knew the localities. I didn’t mention my friends, though. I needed them to remain unknown to the police.

“It’s going to need a lot of manpower,” I said.

“Yes, it is.” For a moment she sounded uncertain. “I’ll do what I can. I can’t promise we’ll be able to cover everyone.” She paused. “Matt. It’s important that you come in. You can help us.”

“Have you read the e-mails yet?”

“No, the warrant’s on its way as we speak.”

“When you’ve read them, you’ll understand why I’m doing this. Listen, I want to ask you a favor, Karen.”

She gave a wry laugh. “I hardly think you’re in a position to—”

“You know I am,” I interrupted. “At least until you can track me down—and that would be a waste of your precious manpower. Listen, I want you to promise not to put a trace on my mobile phone. The Devil might do something horrendous if he can’t get through to me. Will you do that?”

There was a long silence. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Still, it may be that in all the rush here your phone gets forgotten for an hour or two.”

“Thanks, Karen. I appreciate it.”

“Yes, well, you owe me now. I’ll be expecting payment very soon, Matt. In the meantime, have you ever met or do you have any knowledge of a man by the name of Terence—Terry—Smail?”

“No,” I said. “Never heard of him.”

“You’d better be telling the truth.”

The phone went dead. Who the hell was Terry Smail? I wondered as I turned on my old mobile and went back into the café. I got down to writing the latest chapter while Rog tried to hack into the British Airways system to find out where my mother had gone. I wasn’t happy about how she’d sounded on the phone. I was halfway through when my old mobile phone rang.

It was the Devil and he had company.

Caroline Zerb had walked out of the bank in Cornhill at precisely 1:00 p.m. She had just completed a meeting with her staff about an important section in the monthly
Far East Economic Review
, and she felt an even greater need than usual to get out of the office for lunch. Her ex-husband thought she stayed at her desk to eat her wholemeal sandwiches, but, as with so many other things, he was way off target. She was dedicated to her job, but she was also capable of taking time for herself. She’d found that she worked much better in the afternoon when she took an hour off.

As usual she crossed Southwark Bridge, looking toward the preposterous shape of Tower Bridge and feeling completely at ease with the world. She was at the hub of world business, her expertise giving her power and influence that very few people had. No wonder Matt hadn’t been able to understand her after she went into the City. What did he know about power and influence? He’d once claimed that he had the power of life and death over the characters in his novels, but Caroline knew that was nothing compared to daily meetings with international financiers who wanted to hear your point of view. Fiction was a waste of time. She only ever read books on economics and history.

And yet, she thought as she walked along the riverbank past Shakespeare’s Globe, there had always been something different about Matt. She had fallen head over heels in love with him at university. She could scarcely believe it when the hero of the rugby league team paid attention to a bluestocking virgin. And she’d continued to love him when Lucy, beautiful Lucy, was born and his books began to make him relatively well known.

Caroline watched as a balloon floated away high above the river. Their relationship had begun to change when Matt got himself so involved with that ridiculous Albanian series. Everyone he knew told him it would end in tears, but he wouldn’t listen. Her mother told her that you had to allow the people you loved to make their own mistakes, that was part of life. Maybe, but the problem was that, by then, she had begun to fall out of love with Matt. There was no other man. She had neither the time nor the inclination for that. All she felt was boredom with his ranting and his deluded self-importance—as if anyone really cared what a crime novelist thought about anything.

Ah, Matt, she thought, approaching a bench. There was a man in overalls and a baseball cap pulled low sitting at the far end. It was still good to see her former husband with Lucy every day, even though she found it hard to give him more than a few civil words. And he had appeared to be happier. The woman, Sara, seemed to be good for him, even if she did have a curious glint in her eyes—the typical grasping look of the newshound. But in the past few days he’d been strange, nervous, as if he was hiding something. He’d have to get a grip on himself if he didn’t want what remained of his writing career to disappear downstream like the empty soft drink cans in the Thames.

She moved into the center of the bench as another man came to sit down. He was wearing a puffer jacket that was surely far too hot for the day, the hood of a gray sweatshirt over his head. If it hadn’t been for the wispy mustache, she’d have taken him for a girl.

Caroline started to eat one of her organic cheddar sandwiches. She watched tourists laughing as they took photos of one another and found herself thinking about her life. How happy was she really? She had a job she loved, a child she adored, and yet, there was something missing. She’d been thinking about it a lot recently. Perhaps the neighbors’ dog disappearing and the effect that was having on Shami and Jack was the reason. She knew the absence of a man wasn’t the problem. She could bed any of the young lions in the company without doing more than winking at them, but the fact was, she didn’t miss sex. It had been good with Matt. Apart from Lucy, that was one of the main reasons she had stuck with him as long as she had. No, what she had realized was missing was adventure, the unexpected, a sudden break from the rhythms of everyday life.

She shook her head and told herself not to be so flighty. She had work to do and her lunch break was almost over. It was when she was crumpling up her sandwich bag that she saw the man on her right lean forward and look intensely at the other guy to her left.

It was almost as if he was giving the hooded man some kind of signal.

The White Devil took a step back from the blindfolded and gagged captive tied to the chair. He smiled at the masked figure behind, who gave him a blank look in return. He would have to be careful with his partner. He hadn’t expected such devotion to violence and the act of killing so suddenly. That could lead to a dangerous lack of caution.

The Devil glanced around the lock-up garage. It was in Deptford, in a lane that was overlooked by the high rear wall of a Victorian factory—that property was listed for demolition and no one except junkies and half-blind drunks had set foot in it for years. It was good for privacy, as was the fact that the people who used the other garages shared his studied lack of concern about what went on in the vicinity.

It had been easy enough to snatch their latest victim. No one had noticed the transfer to the battered white van that now took up half of the space—the garage was a double one, the wall having been knocked through. There was plenty of room for the upcoming fun and games.

The person on the chair let out a high-pitched moan. The Devil moved over quickly and delivered a hard slap to the left cheek.

“Be quiet, you piece of shit,” he said, bending closer. “Noise means pain, you understand?”

The trembling captive nodded slowly.

“That’s all it needs,” the Devil said to his partner. “Now you try.” He watched as the masked figure gave the prisoner a full-blooded punch that almost knocked the chair over. “Good,” he said, smiling. “Looks like you aren’t fond of this one.”

“No, I’m not.”

The Devil stepped back and started laying out his tools on the workbench. Maybe he’d made the right decision in locating his partner after all. Being confronted by the realities of murder had seemed initially to knock the stomach from the figure in the mask. He hoped that the procedure they were about to undertake—his most ambitious yet—would be the making of his Dr. Watson. It had better be. After all, he wasn’t in this purely for himself.

As he fingered the glinting steel instruments, he thought of what he’d achieved so far. The murder of that bastard Newton from the bank in Hackney had been a trial run. At that stage, he wasn’t sure himself that he could carry out what he wanted to. He hadn’t taken his partner on that excursion, nor on those of the priest or the old bitch who used to teach him. But when the Devil saw that all was going to plan, it had been safe to appear as a double act at the doctor’s and the fat critic’s.

He scowled and put the scalpel down carefully on the table. Everything had been fine until this morning, when the writer had started to fight back and the body parts had been found outside the Hereward. Could there be a connection? The Devil originally hadn’t been sure that Matt Wells had it in him, for all the macho posturing he showed at bookshop events and literary festivals. Most writers were nothing more than drunks who propped up the nearest bar they could find and boasted about their sales, always inflating them, and their film deals, which hardly ever made it to any screen. They were liars and hypocrites, every last one of them.

But Matt Wells had actually had the nerve to stand up to him. He’d sent that American muscleman to protect Christian Fels. The Devil had been so enraged about being deflected from his plan for the agent that he had taken it out on the innocent gardener. His partner hadn’t turned away at the sound of the neck cracking. It was the first time the Devil had killed in that way. Jimmy Tanner had trained him well. It was a pity the former SAS guy had become so unreliable from the booze. He lay in the foundations of a bridge outside Bromley, silenced forever after the insertion of a combat knife between his fifth and sixth ribs. That had been as good an end to the Devil’s apprenticeship as he could have thought of, as well as being an appropriate death for a man who had been a state-sponsored assassin. Was it possible that someone—Matt Wells?—had found out about his meetings with Tanner? Even if he had, the Devil and his partner would kill everyone on the expanded death list before he could locate them.

That bastard Wells. He had actually taken steps to protect the people he thought would be targets. The Devil grinned. That wouldn’t do the fool any good. It would be a long time before anyone caught up with them. And even if that happened, there would be a container-load of pain to endure.

“Right,” he said to the hooded figure. “It’s time we got started.” He watched as their captive tensed. Obviously the effect of the punch was wearing off. Good. The Devil wanted his victim to be aware of what was coming.

Pain was what it was all about, pain and horror. After this killing, the writer would understand that no one he’d ever met was safe. Then they would see how he reacted to real pressure.

The Devil selected a couple of instruments, nodded to his partner and walked over to the prisoner. He removed the blindfold and was gratified by the sight of two damp and terrified eyes. They implored him for mercy, but they also seemed to contain the knowledge that none would be forthcoming.

Then he had a thought. Why not up the pressure on Matt Wells right now? He handed the scalpel and probe to his partner and took his mobile from his pocket.