The Soul Collector (7 page)

The woman wondered, not for the first time, why Esteban’s supporters had not taken the apparently simple step themselves. But she dismissed the thought, content to do her brother’s will, even if the Colombian was temporarily taking advantage of her. She unslung her pack and took out tattered peasant woman’s clothes. She caught Esteban’s eye as she was undoing her trousers. He turned away quickly when he saw the look on her face. After that, it was easy. She had to stand in line with the sweating, broken people, her head bent and her steps as unsteady as theirs. The long, black wig she was wearing, along with the dirt she had rubbed on to her face, arms and legs, made her inconspicuous. As she got closer to El Loco, she glanced left and right. Heavily armed men were leaning against the walls of what used to be the village school, their eyes bloodshot and vacant. They saw her, but they didn’t see what she was. That meant they’d enjoyed running their hands all over her in a fruitless search for weapons.

Now she was inside—more men with Kalashnikovs 62

Paul Johnston

and American weapons, the smell of fear and destitution more noisome. The man in front of her launched into a lengthy tribute to his master. After five minutes, Camargo, a tall, bearded man who had run to fat, nodded and the talkative man was hustled away by two GLF men. It was her turn.

She kept her head low as she stepped up to the metal chair that had been placed on the platform. She didn’t know much Spanish, but she understood that El Loco was asking what she wanted to say. It was then that she looked up and gave him a smile that suggested everything she might give him. El Loco beckoned to her and she stepped on to the platform, leaned close and, in the split second it took to pull the inch-long blade from the wooden cross around her neck, realized that her heart rate hadn’t increased at all. If anything, it had slowed. The training routines had become second nature. Camargo was grinning at her, his lips wet. Then his eyelids jerked wide apart as she buried the razor-sharp blade into his neck two centimeters above and to the left of his Adam’s apple. As she moved quickly behind the chair, she grabbed the greasy hair beneath the widepeaked officer’s cap, pulled his head back and ripped the blade to the right. As she ducked down, she saw a fine spray of crimson fill the air above the next man in the line. Immediately there was an explosion of automatic weapon fire and a welter of screaming. She stayed down, her arms over her head, but she had no fear. After a time, the firing moved outside and there was less noise from the people in the building. As she looked out from beneath Camargo’s chair, she saw why. The place was full of bodies, both of GLF men and of the innocent. The woman heard Esteban’s voice. He was telling her
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that it was over. She snaked an arm around El Loco’s body and removed a silver-plated semiautomatic pistol from his belt. She racked the slide and held the weapon in a twohanded grip as she slowly stood up. Esteban lowered his own pistol when he saw the way she was looking at him.

“Okay,” he said with a slack smile. “It is okay, devilwoman.”

She gave him a tight smile and then fired two shots into Pedro Camargo’s groin.

The few remaining villagers in the school cheered. As she walked out, they clapped their hands. The woman ignored them. The only approbation she needed was from the soul that had merged with her own.

…she blinked and was back in London, the damp in the streets much colder than those of Colombia. But she had never forgotten that big killing, when she had first felt the attraction of silver-colored weapons. She owned several now. It was also then that she had turned herself into the Soul Collector, on behalf of the precious soul inside her very being.

There were several to be gathered in England, and soon Matt Wells’s time on the earth would be over. But there was a world of pain for him to endure first. I woke up to the sound of the telephone. The display told me it was nine-thirty.

“Yeah?” I mumbled.

“Hello, dear. Late night?”

“Hello, Fran. What’s up?” Fran was my adoptive mother and had encouraged me to call her by her first name since I went to senior school. The White Devil and his sister had also been adopted, and that was one reason that he had chosen me as his fall guy. But he had forced 64

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his mother into a sexual relationship, while I had only the standard feelings of a dutiful son for Fran.

“Why does anything have to be up for me to call my son and heir?”

“Um, right. Full of the joys of spring, are we?” I swung my legs out of bed and reached for my robe. I had a flash of my ex-wife’s face and remembered her visit from the night before. That made me groan.

“What is it, dear?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. I could have told her about the fright Caroline had given me, but she would just have started on a rant about how she’d never been right for me and that I’d got married far too young. I usually pointed out that she wouldn’t have had a granddaughter if I’d stayed single, which invariably tested her saintlike patience.

“You aren’t very talkative this morning,” my mother observed.

“No,” I said, turning on the laptop and logging on to the e-mail program. I had a burning need to see if I’d received any messages from the woman who had threatened vengeance upon me after the White Devil’s death.

“I wanted to talk to you about Mary Malone.”

Having seen that there were no messages from unknown senders, I was checking my family’s and friends’

confirmations.

“Did you hear me, Matt?”

“Mm.” Everyone was okay. “Sorry, you were saying about Mary Malone.”

“Yes, dear,” Fran said with a long-suffering sigh. “You really can be infuriating sometimes. I suppose you’re checking that everyone’s all right.”

“Yup,” I said, irritated that she could read me so easily.
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“I presume they are,” she continued. “So, Mary Malone.”

“I never met her, Mother. None of us in the crime fiction world did. She was a loner. What’s
your
interest?”

“You’ve forgotten that I’m a member of the Crime Writers’ Society, too.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked testily.

“Well, if there’s going to be a rash of crime novelists being killed, I’d like to know in advance.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Who said anything about a rash?”

“Oh, you know how the papers like to gossip. Has Karen taken the case on?”

“Speaking of gossip,” I said.

“Don’t take that tone, Matt. I’m serious.”

“Mother, you wrote three thrillers for teenagers back in the seventies. I hardly think you’ll be on the top of the hit list. There may not even be a hit list. It’s
gossip.
And only one person has died. How’s that a
rash?
”

“Come on,” she scoffed. “That Rolling Stones song playing and the killer parading in a cape and top hat—

don’t tell me that isn’t suggestive of an organized individual with an agenda.”

“Well, I bow to your superior knowledge,” I said, heading for the kitchen and a liter of orange juice to rehydrate my failing system.

“Has it even occurred to you that I might be frightened?” she asked with a partially suppressed sob. That stopped me in my tracks. “Christ, I’m sorry, Mother. Do you want me to come over?”

“No, it’s all right, dear. I know you have Lucy today.”

Shit. I’d forgotten about my daughter. I changed direction and went toward the shower. 66

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“Surely it must have crossed your mind that…that Sara was behind the murder?”

“Em, yes, it did, Mother. But there hasn’t been any message or other form of contact, and everybody on my list has reported in on the last two mornings.”

“You still haven’t told me if Karen’s working the case.”

“Sorry. No, she isn’t. She was called in to take a look, but the local detectives are still in charge, as far as I know.”

“All right, dear. Let me know if you hear anything I should know.”

“Okay, will do. I’ve got to dash now. ’Bye.”

“’Bye,” she repeated, her voice weak.

I twitched my head and chucked the phone onto one of the sofas. Fran lived on her own and was a successful children’s author. I hadn’t heard her so concerned since the White Devil case. The bastard kidnapped her and kept her tied up for days. Mary Malone’s death must have stirred up bad memories for her. She wasn’t the only one. Remembering that Lucy, let alone her mother, expected me at ten, I rushed my shave, leaving cuts that stung like hell when I had a shower. As I came out, I heard the phone ring. This time it was the special line that I used only for my mates. I dripped water over the carpet as I ran to my desk.

“Hello,” I said, panting.

“Morning, lad.” It was Dave Cummings. I registered immediately that there was something odd about his voice.

“Nice weather if you’re a penguin.” The hairs rose on the back of my neck. We’d set up a series of code words in the event that Sara, or anyone else, put the squeeze on us. Between Dave and me, anything to do with nice weather meant that the speaker was in immediate physical danger.
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“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my tone even. “What’s—”

The call was terminated.

“Shit!” I yelled. After all this time, was the nightmare really starting again? I called Andy, Rog and Pete and told them what had happened. They knew what to do. Then I ran to the bedroom and changed clothes—black cargo pants with numerous pockets, a black denim jacket and boots. I called Caroline and told her something had come up. She understood from my tone that it was serious. I told her to follow plan C, which meant that she should take Lucy, drive up to my mother’s house in Muswell Hill, collect her and head for the M25; she was then to drive around the motorway in a clockwise direction until she heard from me again. Caroline knew the drill and she also knew that the line might be tapped. She still managed to make it sound like it was all my fault—which, in a way, of course, it was, but I didn’t have time to think about that now. I should have called Karen, too, but my friends and I needed a free hand at this stage. The police would only get in the way and maybe put Dave in worse jeopardy. I parted the hanging clothes in the walk-in wardrobe and pulled up the carpet. The floorboards looked normal, but by pressing the top right corner I released a catch that opened a foot-square panel. From the hole beneath, I removed a 9 mm Glock 19 and silencer, two nine-round clips, a set of knuckle-dusters and a sheathed Glock 78 field knife. I also removed my walkie-talkie and headset from the charger in the hole. Karen would have had a fit if she’d found my gear.

Dave Cummings had spent the last two years teaching me and the others how to behave like soldiers. Now I had to prove that I’d been a good pupil.

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* * *

“Hello, Karen.”

“Guv.” Oaten shook the hand extended by Detective Superintendent Ron Paskin of Homicide Division East. He was her ex-boss. They were both in white coveralls and overshoes. “I’m surprised to see you down here.”

“Mm.” Paskin was a grizzled bull of a man, who had a reputation for being hard but fair, both with criminals and his subordinates. “I’ll get merry hell from the wife. Normally we spend Saturday mornings at the supermarket.” He lifted the barrier tape and led her down the lane from the black minivan. A tent had been erected over it and the surrounding area. CSIs were coming and going, two of their vans on the pavement to the rear.

“As you know, there’s been some shit going down among the various Turkish gangs, particularly the Shadows,” the superintendent said, his voice low. “But this fellow is a Kurd, a pretty small-time member of the King’s family.”

Oaten chewed her lip, then remembered Inspector Neville’s habit of doing that and stopped. “Do you think the Turks and Kurds are building toward an all-out war?”

Paskin took a deep breath. “If they are, it’ll be the first we’ve heard of it,” he said, expelling the air from his barrel chest. “You know how it is on the streets. The small guys play tough, but the bosses are happy enough with the status quo. They all know that they can’t have everything and they prefer to get what they can with a reasonable degree of security.”

“How about the Albanians?” Oaten suggested. “They’ve been growing their operations recently.”

“Possible,” the superintendent admitted. “They’re the kind to gut a man, too. But we haven’t had a whisper from our snouts. You?”

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She shook her head. “Not about this area. They’ve really got a grip on Soho now, much to the disgust of the Chinese, and they’ve been making inroads into Bayswater and the knocking-shops around Paddington. But out here, no.”

“Still,” Paskin said, “it could be a splinter group from any number of nationalities. If anyone can wrest the heroin trade from the Turks and Kurds, they’ll own the city—the whole of southeast England, in fact.”

Oaten nodded. “So what happened here?” She saw John Turner, in a white coverall, come out of the tent. He didn’t look a well man.

“As I said, the victim was gutted with a long-bladed knife, which was taken from the scene, probably by the killer—though you never know what kids will pick up around here. His name’s Nedim Zinar. He was a big man, over six feet, and the doc thinks a smaller guy did for him. The wound suggests that the initial thrust was between the groin and the navel.”

“Delightful. Did you know him?”

The superintendent nodded. “He was a friendly type for an enforcer—had a gang of kids. Mind you, though he’d been in the game for at least fifteen years, he wasn’t much more than standard muscle. If you wanted to make an example, he wouldn’t be your man. Then again, he was an easy target. From what I’ve heard, he parked his car here every night and supervised the locking up of a shop down Lower Clapton Road.”

“Did he have a record?”

“Only minor stuff when he was younger—a bit of thieving. I seem to remember he broke a guy’s jaw outside one of the King’s clubs, but he got off on self-defense.”