The Death List

75.”

I fumbled through my copy. “You sick bastard,” I said when I found the lines. “‘Gentle madam, Seem to consent, only persuade him teach the way to death; let him die first.’” I dropped the book. “The victim was one of your teachers, wasn’t she?”

“Bingo.”

I looked at the lines again. “But what’s the bit about letting him die first in aid of?”

“Didn’t you hear that the bitch had a brother?”

“No.”

“Well, she did. I discovered he’d been fucking her.” A cold, metallic laugh. “Not only that, he used to treat us kids like shit at the sports day every year. He paid for that. You see, her brother died in July 2003. He was electrocuted by a faulty plug when he switched on his lawn mower. Accidental death, according to the coroner.” He paused. “But it wasn’t an accident.”

“What?” I felt as if I’d just stepped off a cliff. “You mean…you mean you killed him?”

“I thank you, I thank you.” The humor left his voice. “Why are you surprised, Matt? You already know how seriously I take my work.”

“I can find you,” I said, forgetting the danger for a moment.

“Yes, you can go through the school registers and find out all the boys Miss One-Arm Merton taught. You can triangulate that list with the dates you work out from Father Bugger O’Connell, and you can start to track me down.” He gave what sounded like a hiss. “Go on, then, Matt. But you’d better hurry. The police are going to be after you soon, even if I don’t steer them toward your books.”

“I’m going to stop you.”

“Be my guest. But remember I can kill Lucy and Sara and your mother before you even get close. Have you got the balls?” He sniggered. “Good night, Mr. Fictional Crime Expert.”

He cut the connection.

I rammed the phone between the cushions of the sofa and let out a yell of frustration.

The blond-haired man was sitting in front of a bank of screens. Behind him, the lights from St. Katharine’s Dock across the river shone through the blinds he’d partially closed. He had a martini with a maraschino cherry floating in it on the desk beside him. Despite the air-conditioning, the smell of the Sobranie Black Russians that he’d been smoking since he came back from Chelmsford was strong. He sipped from the tall-stemmed glass, getting the familiar rush from the almost neat gin.

The White Devil touched the pad of the control panel and zoomed in on the scene in Matt Wells’s sitting room. Good. The writer was hammering away at the keyboard, no doubt writing up the chapter about the latest killing. Soon there would be a whole novel about his exploits, a veritable Book of Death. But Matt Wells wouldn’t get any profit from it.

He went over to the gold-plated stereo system and slotted in the CD he had shoplifted in the City after he’d got back from Chelmsford. The skills he’d acquired as a boy had never left him. Robert Johnson started singing “Me and the Devil Blues.” Humming along, he remembered what he’d done after he’d taken off the old bitch’s arm-the one that she’d used to slap him countless times, even though she wasn’t meant to. It was in his collection, along with the jar containing Father Bugger’s eyes.

The Devil laughed. He was death, he was hell, he was a demon far worse than any from the fervid imagination of Hieronymus Bosch. He was insuperable, Lucifer rising, the very breath of the Apocalypse-and Matt Wells was his minion.