The Soul Collector

Nineteen

The Soul Collector stood in the small structure next to her cottage at the edge of Oldbury village in southern Berkshire. Although it was only twenty miles from Heathrow Airport, she felt as if she was in a safe and isolated place. She looked at the earth floor. She had raked and then brushed it, so there was no obvious sign that it had been disturbed recently. It had been good exercise, digging the meter-deep hole for the three coffins. Now her hostages lay bound and gagged in their last homes. When the effect of the gas she had used to knock them out wore off, they would wake up in the darkness and they would be terrified. The Soul Collector smiled.

Her plan had gone perfectly. First she had picked up Geronimo’s wife, Alison. That had been very easy. A knock at the door, having checked there was no one in the vicinity, a blast of the same gas she had used when she had been working with her brother, and into the van. Then she had driven to the school a few miles away. From her surveillance she knew that Rommel’s son, Josh, walked the short distance home with the Slovenian au pair Maria. She picked him and the girl up, saying that she was a friend and the mother had been taken to hospital. She sprayed them both on the country road and dumped the au pair in a ditch. Given the disguise she was wearing and the van’s false plates, she’d never be traced. Then she’d driven as fast as she could to Wolfe’s house in Warwickshire. There was no time for subtlety now-Rommel’s wife could be in touch any moment. She knocked out Wolfe’s wife with a truncheon blow when she answered the door, cracked the son’s head when he came out of the kitchen and gassed Amanda Mary. Then she had disappeared into the twilight.

Back in the cottage, having closed the three padlocks on the shed, the Soul Collector assumed the lotus position. As ever, she thought of her brother. He had called himself the White Devil, but to her he would always be Leslie, the name he’d been given by his adoptive mother. Although she’d since discovered that their birth mother had dubbed him Oliver in the days before she handed them over, that name seemed as unreal as Angela, the one she’d been given. Leslie had made her life. Before he had accosted her outside the Daily Independent offices, she had been a typical soulless journalist, with her eyes only on the next story. She didn’t even have a steady boyfriend, just a string of drunken one-night stands that hadn’t even provided good sex. Leslie had given her that. She’d been able to abandon herself to him precisely because he was her brother-breaking the taboo of incest had been incredibly exhilarating. When he’d told her they were twins, she hadn’t believed him. There was little facial resemblance between them, though once they were in contact she was able to commune with him in the strange way many twins experience. That had made working with him in his great revenge plot so much easier.

Leslie had made only one mistake. His desire for his name to go down in history had driven him to involve the writer Matt Wells. The worm who thought he had turned, the useless fuck who was now crying for his friend Dave. Although he hadn’t brought about her brother’s death-the SAS men who had executed Leslie would soon be paying for that-Matt’s resistance had meant that not all the people her brother had planned to kill became victims. She would harvest their souls soon. Her plan had been two years in the making and Leslie would have applauded its subtlety.

Vengeance is mine, the woman thought. Was there anything purer and more life-enhancing than revenge? The Jacobean tragedians knew its worth, despite the fact that ultimately they had to kill their revengers to end their works in ways acceptable to the establishment of the time. John Webster, in particular, had more than passing sympathy for his tragic characters, not least the incestuous siblings Vittoria and Flaminio in The White Devil. Although the revengers were punished, their lives and deeds were portrayed as tragic, and therefore noble, while the supposedly virtuous characters were no less corrupt and hypocritical, but much less interesting.

Her brother had shown her that revenge was meaningless without killing. The deceived wives who put laxatives in their husbands’ coffee or poured sugar into the petrol tanks of their expensive cars weren’t serious revenge-takers. To earn the title of revenger, it was necessary that the people who had injured you died, preferably in as much agony as possible. When Leslie had first given her the opportunity to kill, she had flinched, but only for a few seconds. After that, she’d never had any problem.

The Soul Collector opened her eyes. It was time to make contact with Wolfe and his men. They were her first targets, even though Matt and his friends were trying to trace her. No doubt the computer expert Roger van Zandt had been responsible for transferring the money out of her accounts. She didn’t care about that. She had her own hacker who would respond, but the money didn’t matter. All she cared about was taking her revenge, slowly and with exquisite pain. She would deal with the fool Matt and his friends when she was ready.

She laughed. So far Matt had reacted exactly as she had expected. He had gone into hiding, and sent his mother, ex-wife and daughter to a secret location. By doing that, he thought he was minimizing the risk to them. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

There was no answer from Alistair Bing’s landline, but I got through on his cell phone.

“Hey,” I said, “it’s Matt Wells.” I’d met Bing at a couple of crime-writing festivals, before he became a bestseller. He’d struck me as a seriously dull person. He wasn’t one of those authors who allowed themselves to be addressed both by their real name and their pseudonym, as I did. He seemed to prefer the latter. Maybe he got a kick out of hiding behind an invented identity.

There was a pause. “Hello, Matt. I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Thanks. Listen, this might sound strange, but you’re in a lot of danger.”

“Am I?” Suddenly there was tension in his voice.

“I think the person who killed Mary Malone and Sandra Devonish is planning to murder you.”

“What? Oh my God!”

“Calm down and listen carefully. It’s essential you don’t give away to the killer that you know. The deadline is midnight.”

“Deadline?” he asked, his apprehension replaced by curiosity. “What do you mean? I assumed that stuff in the papers about you being in touch with the murderer was speculation.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Can you help me, then?”

“Cool it, Alistair. Where are you?”

“In Harley Street, near my house.”

“All right, I’m sending a couple of my friends around to look after you. Do what they say and you’ll be all right.”

“Okay.” There was another pause. “Hold on, Matt. Maybe the killer’s watching me. If your friends show up, he might get even more pissed off.”

He wasn’t stupid. It was possible that Sara or some sidekick had him under surveillance. “What do you propose, Alistair?”

“Let me think,” he said, sounding strangely confident. He was probably having an adrenaline overdose. Being targeted by a serial killer was what every crime writer secretly wanted. I’d felt more alive than ever before when the White Devil was toying with me. “I’ll go home, stay in for a couple of hours, then casually walk out and disappear into the West End. I’ll go and stay-”

“Don’t tell me!” I yelled. “Don’t tell anyone.” It struck me that I had no idea whether Alistair Bing was married, or what his sexual orientation was. Josh Hinkley would no doubt have told me if he was either gay or a serial shagger. “Does anyone else live with you?”

“Only my mother.”

So the author of the ultra-hard Jim Cooler books, who must have been in his early forties like I was, lived with his mum. His publishers didn’t put that in their press releases. “Is she mobile?”

“What do you mean?” Bing sounded like I’d insulted his family honor. “She can walk. She’s only seventy.”

“Calm down, Alistair. It’s important that she doesn’t panic.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Panic? My mother? She’s hard as nails.”

I wondered if he’d based Jim Cooler on her. “Fair enough. Get her out of London, if you can. Yourself, as well. But don’t go together. Otherwise you might put her in danger.”

“Mother can look after herself,” Bing said, almost fatalistically. “I’m not sure if I’m up to all that.”

“Of course you are, Alistair. Just keep a clear head. Don’t tell anyone about this and drop out of circulation.”

“How long for?”

“A few days, I suppose.”

“Should I call you, then? At this number?”

Shit. I’d forgotten to block the caller ID function. “No,” I said firmly. “I’ll send a text to your cell phone, okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated. “What about the police? Why aren’t you talking to that woman in Scotland Yard? The one you’re involved with…What’s her name again?”

“Karen Oaten.” I sighed, tired of the accusatory tone accompanying the mention of Karen. “Look, Alistair, I know Josh has been stirring things up in the Crime Writers’ Society. I don’t give a fuck about that. I’ve got my reasons for staying out of touch with the police. If you want to talk to Karen, I can’t stop you. But the cops have their ways of doing things and they might antagonize the killer, putting you-and your mother-in even greater danger.”

He thought about that. “All right, Matt. I’ll do as you say. Make sure you text me, though. I can’t spend too many days out of the link. People from Hollywood call me all the time, you know.”

Tosser, I thought. “Look, buy a new cell phone, but use it as sparingly as possible. Have you read my book, The Death List?”

“I can’t say I have. Why?”

I wasn’t sure I believed him. Every crime writer I knew had read the book out of curiosity. “In it I describe the sophisticated surveillance the White Devil used. Don’t log on to your e-mail provider. Set up a new account with a false name at an Internet cafe.”

“All right.” He gave a weak laugh. “You’re not having me on, are you, Matt?”

Jesus. “You know what happened to Mary Malone and Sandra Devonish, Alistair? They had something in common with you.”

“What’s that?”

“They were both international bestsellers. It may be that they were killed by a jealous crime novelist.”

He wasn’t laughing now. “You mean it isn’t her?” he asked. “The White Devil’s sister?”

So much for him not having read my book. “I don’t know,” I said, then realized how feeble that sounded. “It could be. Now, get yourself organized.”

“Right. ’Bye, Matt. And thanks.” The connection was broken.

I told the others that Brooks was going to duck out of sight.

“So what now?” Andy asked.

I looked at him and Pete. “If you’re up for it, you two can check the house in Oxford that Sara bought.”

“Oh, great,” Pete said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “You want to put us in the firing line again. Besides, that city is full of smart-arse students.”

“Fifty percent of them being female,” I said to Andy.

“I rest my case,” Pete said.

“What’s your problem, Boney?” I asked. “What do you think the other fifty percent are?”

“Toffee-nosed gits,” he said.

Half an hour later, Pete and Andy left. I looked at my watch. It was coming up to eight-thirty. Three and a half hours to go before I sent the correct answer. How would the killer react?