The Soul Collector

Twenty-Seven

Andy Jackson’s face was drenched in sweat. He’d been heaving and twisting against his bonds and had finally got hold of the penknife. But opening it was proving a step too far. He had splintered his thumbnail against the narrow groove in the blade, and he couldn’t get it to move. The light from the rear doors had almost gone.

Then he heard footsteps. He relaxed, making sure his expression didn’t give him away. A key was inserted into the lock in the rear door, then it opened-at first by only a few centimeters, and then enough for a torch to be shone onto him. He tried to make out a face, but the light made him blink.

“There’s no escape, Inspector Jansen,” said a female voice. “Or should I say Andrew Jackson.” There was a bitter laugh. “Save your strength. You’re going to need it.” The light went out and the door was closed again.

Doris Carlton-Jones. When had Sara Robbins’s birth mother discovered his true identity? Surely not the first time he’d met her, when the biker shot out his windscreen. Perhaps she’d known all along, and Sara had just been toying with them.

The front door opened and someone-presumably Mrs. Carlton-Jones-got in. The engine was started and the van moved off. Andy expected the wheelchair to shift, but it had been well-secured.

He started fumbling with the knife again. His fingers had benefited from the short rest, and he felt the blade move under his thumb, then slip back into position.

Andy told himself to keep calm, taking deep breaths. He could take the old woman even with his hands tied. As soon as she released the wheelchair, he’d heave it into motion. Someone would see him, someone would call the cops…

Then he heard the roar of a high-powered motorbike behind the van. It hadn’t been the old woman who had poleaxed him. It must have been Sara Robbins.

That made him concentrate even harder on the knife.

Dave had taught us basic first aid. After I’d dressed the wounds on Faik’s thighs and checked there was no infection in his hand, I helped him get dressed. Rog had found some clothes.

I checked my e-mails again. Still nothing. No text messages, either. I sat by my computer, hitting Send and Receive every minute or so. While I did that, Faik ate his way through two pizzas Pete had heated up for him. In between bites, he told me about the treacherous Kurd who’d been shot, as well as the doctor who had rescued him from the Wolfman. There was no way of knowing the identity of the person wearing the burqa and chador who had shot the Turk, but I was pretty sure it was Lauren Cuthbertson. Faik was almost more appalled that a non-Muslim might have worn the garment than he was by the deaths he had witnessed.

The young man came from a London community that I knew nothing about, one based on violence and coercion, but also a strange kind of honor. They killed only to protect their business, which was bad enough-but why had Lauren Cuthbertson been murdering gang members? And why had she dismembered the body of the Albanian accountant? Because Sara had told her? There had to be more to it than that. At least killing the surgeon who had disfigured her made some kind of sense-she’d taken revenge, just as the White Devil had done with his first victims. She’d left no traces except that stained and almost illegible note of apology-could that have been for Sara? There had been very little evidence at the crime scenes in East London, too. That smacked of the extreme care that Sara learned from her brother. Had she trained the disfigured young woman from Stoke Newington?

Were there others like her on Sara’s payroll?

But I suddenly found myself thinking about Doris Carlton-Jones. Maybe she was the one behind the murders. Could the elderly woman be a cold-blooded killer like her daughter? She’d certainly kept very calm when I was searching her house. She must have called the motorbike rider, presumably Lauren, when I went upstairs. When Andy appeared with the skull (and whose was that?), she took the opportunity, while I was distracted, to dash to the road. The rider wore black leathers and helmet, as Lauren had. Maybe Karen was right when she suggested that Sara had nothing to do with the crime-writer and gangland murders. Maybe she had killed Dave and the former SAS guys, and left the rest to her mother and Lauren. But how would Doris Carlton-Jones have found a stone killer with a ruined face on her own? There wasn’t a section for those in the Yellow Pages.

There was a chime from my computer. I leaned forward and saw the name of the new message’s sender: dc-j/urgent. It looked like Sara’s mother was indeed calling the shots. I read what she’d written:

There’s been enough killing. And enough pretense. I don’t know what you did to poor Lauren, but at least she’s at peace now. I’m sorry for everything she did. I tried to stop her, but she was a different person after the operations. Mr. Wells, I have to tell you that my daughter Sara has contacted me. Apparently someone has been removing large sums of money from her bank accounts. She is sure you are behind that so I have arranged for your friend Andrew Jackson to be taken prisoner. Unless the money is returned to Sara’s accounts, I will have no option but to leave him where he is. It will be a cold, slow and thirsty death, with no chance of him ever being found. When you have returned the money, I will e-mail you from a different address and tell you where your friend is.

Doris Carlton-Jones

P.S. I was very glad to find my husband’s skull in Mr. Jackson’s pack. I obtained it at some expense from the undertaker before the cremation, but I grew tired of having it on my dressing-table. It was fitting that I put it in the garage. He spent hours in there every weekend, carving wooden animals for the local children.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. The woman was clearly demented. She seemed to be suggesting that Lauren was responsible for all the murders. Perhaps she didn’t know what Sara had done to Dave and the other SAS men. Multiple killers were still at work, including, I was sure, Earl Sternwood. Could Sara be manipulating everyone, including her birth mother? I wouldn’t have put it past her. But what was I to do about Andy?

I told Rog to start returning the money to Sara’s accounts. He wasn’t happy.

“Em, what is happening?” Faik asked from close behind me.

I tried to block the screen. “You don’t want to read that, my friend.”

He looked at me dubiously. “Are there more like her? Is the killing to go on?”

I shook my head. “It’s finished,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

The young Kurd nodded. “I don’t want anyone else to die like the Albanian did.” He headed for the door. “I will send you money for the clothes.”

“Forget it,” Rog said.

I gave him my card. “Call me if you need help, okay?”

He looked at me solemnly. “I’m finished with life on the streets. I’m going to study.”

“Good for you. What do you want to do?”

“Teach. I want to make sure kids don’t screw up like me.”

“Good luck,” I said, extending my hand.

He nodded solemnly.

I closed the door behind him. At least one person had come through the cycle of violence to the good. Then I thought of Andy. Was saving him going to be simply a matter of giving back Sara’s money? Every relevant synapse in my brain was pulsing, “No!”

The Soul Collector was driving the van skillfully, gripped by cold fury. Her motorbike was now in the back, beside the bound American. The woman next to her was silent. They had talked about the death of Lauren May Cuthbertson after her death was confirmed on the radio and decided who would pay for it.

As they approached the London orbital motorway, Doris Carlton-Jones looked at her daughter.

“Will he go there?” she asked. “Will he understand?”

Sara Robbins shook her head. “Matt Wells isn’t smart enough.”

“Is he smart enough to find Lauren’s people?”

“Probably.”

“That may be good for us.”

The Soul Collector glanced at her passenger. “What do you care? Your part in this is almost over.”

The older woman looked away. “You’re right,” she said casually. “I don’t care what happens to any of them. What about your money?”

“Do you seriously imagine that’s important to me? Even if I didn’t have plenty in places no one can find, I’m only interested in one thing-the complete destruction of Matt Wells and everyone he cares for. You’re the one who wants the money back.”

Doris Carlton-Jones pursed her lips, but didn’t reply.

Her surviving child drove on to the M25 and headed eastward as fast as the van’s engine would tolerate.

Woe betide the police officer who stopped her for speeding.

The more I thought about it, the less I was convinced by Doris Carlton-Jones’s message. It started off sounding reasonable and then talked about Sara as if she was a normal, if rich, person, rather than a calculating killer. And as for the bit about her husband’s skull-how many widows hit the undertakers with a request to remove the deceased’s head? The woman was demented. The question was, how much of her children’s propensity for murder had been inherited? I had an idea why the skull was so shiny. She would have boiled it for days. Bottom line-how much could I trust the woman? Answer-not at all. But that didn’t change the situation with Andy. Even though Sara was getting her money back, he was obviously in serious danger. You wouldn’t want someone like Doris Carlton-Jones to decide whether a friend lived or died.

Rog confirmed that two of the transfers had been reversed. I looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock. At least we hadn’t been given a deadline this time. I wondered about that. The implication was that Lauren Cuthbertson had written the puzzles containing the crime writers’ names before she killed them. Was she capable or educated enough to come up with such complex riddles? Since I had nothing better to do while Rog was at work, I noted down the details of the dead woman from the ghost site. I might as well see what else I could find out about her.

When I’d been researching The Death List, Rog had shown me how to access the databases of several government agencies. By good fortune, they covered East London, the area where the White Devil had grown up. I started snooping. I fully expected the security on the Web sites to have been improved over the past couple of years, but it seemed that the agencies hadn’t bothered. In less than five minutes, I was reading Lauren Cuthbertson’s school reports. She’d been to primary and secondary school in Stoke Newington. She had four O-Levels, all in maths and science, but she’d failed English and French. Her teachers said she was an average pupil, whose homework was often poor. There was no mention of her having been disruptive-perhaps she’d stored it all up. She left school at sixteen and was on benefits for two years. When she signed off, it was to work in a supermarket in Hackney. Not exactly master-criminal material.

I hacked into the G.P. surgery where she was registered. The computerized records only went back five years. She had been prescribed drugs for the swellings on her face, but there was no referral to the Harley Street clinic. Who had arranged and paid for that?

I sat back in my chair and looked out into the night. The streetlights were dulled by rain that was hitting the windows. I checked my e-mails. Nothing; and no texts from Andy. I went back to the dead woman’s past. The magistrates’ courts: maybe she had a criminal record. I followed the instructions and found myself in a well-maintained archive. Unlike the surgery, the paper records dating back twenty-five years had been scanned and classified. I typed Lauren Cuthbertson’s name in and found a single entry, referring to a shoplifting charge in 1986, her last year at school. I opened the case file. It seemed she had been caught leaving a Woolworths with three music cassettes, a book and a chocolate bar. Because she’d been stopped numerous times before, the store decided to make an example of her. I scrolled down the record. Lauren had been warned as to her future conduct by the magistrates and ordered to do a week’s community service during her next holidays. A fine was not considered appropriate because of her “troubled family situation.” That made me sit up. What family situation? I got into the local Social Services database and searched for her name. She’d been through six different sets of foster parents since she was six, as well as being in care several times. The root of the problem was that her father had murdered her mother when Lauren was in her first year in primary school. I scrolled down farther. Wrong. Her adoptive father had murdered her adoptive-Jesus, she’d been adopted.

I felt the blood rush through my veins. The White Devil and his twin, Sara, had also been given up for adoption. That Lauren had, too, was a hell of a coincidence. I got into the Adoption Register. That was tricky because there was a better firewall, but Rog had left me a program to get past it. I typed in Lauren’s full name and waited for the details of her birth parents to come up. It took nearly a minute, but I’d already guessed who her mother was. The archive showed her to be Doris Merilee, now known by her married name, Doris Carlton-Jones. Christ, Sara and the White Devil had a half sister. The records were incomplete, the mother having declared that she’d given birth in France and had lost the certificate. She’d also given a different man’s name as father. That had been enough for me to miss the fact that Sara’s mother had given birth to three rather than two children when I researched my book. All three children had turned out to be murderers. What did that make their mother?

I told Pete and Rog what I’d discovered.

“But where does that leave us, Matt?” Boney asked. “Lauren Cuthbertson’s dead. How do we find Sara?”

“How we find Andy is more urgent,” I said. “Though he and Sara might well be in the same place.”

“Where are you thinking?” Rog asked.

“Where’s that cottage you found again?”

“Oldbury, Berkshire.”

“Right, we’ll hit it first. If it’s no good, we’ll move on to Earl Sternwood’s castle.”

We started gathering up our weapons.

Andy Jackson couldn’t be sure how long the van had been moving, but he guessed it was about two hours when it stopped and the engine turned off. He’d spent the time persevering with the blade, but the movement of the vehicle and the fact that all the nails on his right hand were now broken meant that he hadn’t succeeded. He listened as the front doors were opened. The wind was blowing through trees and he could hear cars in the distance. The curtains didn’t permit any helpful visuals. After stopping and starting frequently in the first half hour of the journey-standard city driving he figured-the van had stopped and a helmeted figure in black leathers had maneuvered the motorbike up a plank into the cargo space. He tried to see where they were out the rear doors and was rewarded with a heavy punch to his jaw.

After that the van moved more quickly. He reckoned they’d been on a motorway. Then it was driven more slowly again. Now it was stationary, he wondered if he’d reached the end of his road. He struggled desperately, but still couldn’t get the knife open.

The rear doors opened and a torch was shone in his face. He tried to make out the person holding it, but saw only a helmet with the visor down. Was it Sara Robbins? Why was she still hiding her face? Was there some hope, if she didn’t want him to be able to identify her later? Then he saw she was carrying something, a motionless bundle wrapped in blankets. Jesus, was it a person? The face and head were covered, though loosely enough to suggest it would be possible to breathe. As he was sizing up the bundle, which had been laid on the floor on the other side of the bike, the torch was switched off. He’d seen enough to realize it wasn’t large enough to be an adult.

Andy Jackson was in the dark in the back of the van, but he wasn’t alone anymore. He had to see if the new arrival was alive. He slid his fingers back into his back pocket and started trying the knife again. The van’s engine was started again and it moved off. Soon it was being driven at speed, presumably back on a motorway. But where were they heading? Andy realized that Matt and the others could have no idea of his location. He had to save himself and the person who had been wrapped in the blankets, if that person was still breathing.

Fortunately Rog’s cousin had a half-decent set of wheels, a Suzuki 4x4, and Rog knew where the spare keys were.

“You drive, Dodger,” I said. “West for the M4.”

When we were under way, I took out my cell phone and called Karen.

“Where are you, Matt?” she demanded. “You do realize you’re looking at prison now?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Remember I told you about Sara’s birth mother?” She got the name right. “Yeah, that’s her. Can you notify the authorities at ports and airports, especially in the southeast?” I gave a description. “She might have altered her appearance.”

“What’s she done?” Karen asked.

“For a start, she’s Lauren Cuthbertson’s mother, too.”

There was a pause. “You mean Lauren Cuthbertson was Sara Robbins’s sister?” Karen said.

“Half sister. You’d better advise them that Sara might be trying to go through, as well.”

“They were issued with her details and description after the White Devil case.”

“Yeah, but she might well look different now and you can be sure they’ll both have different identities.”

“All right. Matt, please tell me where you are and what you’re doing.”

“I’m trying to save Andy’s life,” I said bluntly.

“I can send backup.”

“Uh-uh. I have to do this on my own.” I felt Pete’s eyes on me again. “I’m not losing another of my friends. I’ll be in touch.” I cut the connection.

“You have to do it on your own?” Boney said ironically.

I caught his gaze. “If this gets messy, which it could well if Sara’s around, you two are in the clear as far as the authorities are concerned.”

“If we don’t get wounded,” Rog pointed out.

“Or killed,” Pete added.

“Matt,” Rog said, turning his head. “Something’s been bothering me about the properties Sara bought. Why did she put them in her mother’s maiden name? Surely she’d know we might spot that.”

I thought about that. “I’m not sure she would. I didn’t mention her mother’s maiden name in The Death List. It’s true that the tabloids dug it up, but I think Sara was probably cocking a snook at everyone looking for her. You know, giving us a pretty obvious clue and seeing if we noticed it. Besides, the name on the deeds was Angela Oliver-Merilee, remember? She also used the names she and her brother had been given by Doris. Not many people are aware of them.”

“Why didn’t she use Lauren Cuthbertson’s original first name, as well?” Pete asked.

“There wasn’t one in the files,” I replied. “For some reason, Doris Carlton-Jones didn’t give her a name. Maybe Sara doesn’t know about her.”

“I doubt that,” Rog said.

“So do I.”

“Sara will know we went to the flat in Hackney,” Pete said. “Was Lauren staying there, do you think?”

“Probably,” I said. “There’s no current address for her in Stoke Newington. I doubt it was Sara. She’ll be staying in the Ritz or such like.”

“Bit of a risk,” Rog said with a grin.

“I’ve had enough wordplay, thanks. She’s changed her appearance, I’m sure of that,” I said.

“Maybe she used the surgeon who botched Lauren’s operation,” Pete said.

That struck me as unlikely. It would have been much safer for her to have surgery abroad. But she’d probably given her half sister the money to pay for the op.

“There is a chance she’s waiting for us to show up at the cottage,” Rog said, his face sallow in the headlights of the cars coming toward us.

I nodded. “We’ll just have to take that chance, won’t we? For Andy.”

“Yes, we will,” Pete said forcefully.

I kept my laptop on as we sped down the M4. The wi-fi signal was patchy, but as we passed Slough, it picked up and I saw there were no further messages from Doris Carlton-Jones or from Doctor Faustus.

When we approached Oldbury, I got Rog to pull in to a lay-by. There was a large house beyond and I picked up a signal. I found a mapping site and downloaded a plan of the village.

“That must be the cottage,” Rog said, checking the description of the property on his laptop. “There are about a hundred meters between it and the next house.”

“Let’s have a look at the cottage’s layout, Dodger,” I said.

It appeared on his screen.

“Single-story, but long-the two original cottages have been knocked together.”

“What’s that?” Pete asked, pointing to a rectangular shape on the end of the building away from the village.

“Shed or guesthouse, according to the spec,” Rog replied.

“How do we do this?” Boney asked.

I had been thinking about the training we’d got from Dave. “Pete, you’ve picked up some of Andy’s lock-picking skills, so you go for the front door. I’ll be right behind you. Dodger, you cover the rear in case someone makes a run for it.”

“What if you guys come under fire?” Rog asked.

“Blow the back door in with a grenade and take the shooter from behind,” I said.

“And if the place is booby-trapped?”

“Jesus, Dodger,” Pete said. “Improvise. Or run away.”

“Screw you, Boney. Dave told us to take every possibility into account.”

“You’re right,” I said, trying to calm them down. “But we haven’t much time. Who knows what kind of state Andy’s in by now?”

They nodded, and Rog drove on. He stopped on the verge about a quarter of a mile before the cottage and doused the headlights.

“Right, guys,” I said, “let’s get geared up. Keep the noise and lights down.” I opened my door carefully and got out.

Pete swung open the rear door, and he and Rog started rummaging in their bags. I was wearing jeans and a donkey jacket. I fitted on the headset of my walkie-talkie and pulled a balaclava over the strap. I slipped off my belt and slid through the straps of my combat knife’s sheath. I stuck my second Glock 19 into my belt above my backside. The pistol with the silencer would be staying in hand.

“Grenade?” Pete said in a low voice, holding out a bag.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I replied, taking three. I shone my torch on them. One was a smoke grenade and the other two were fragmentation. I hoped I didn’t have to pull the pins on any of them.

We moved apart and checked that our communication units were working. Then Rog set off across a field, heading for the back of the cottage. Pete and I found a gap in the hedge and went into the large field that went all the way to Sara’s place on the other side of the road. We had good cover and were able to get right in front of the buildings. Parting the branches, I saw the property clearly. There were no lights on in the cottage or shed. The nearest streetlight was about fifty meters down the road toward the village, so we would be well obscured from passing cars.

“Let’s go,” I whispered to Pete.

He nodded and moved ahead to the gate. When he’d crossed the road and was on the short path to the door, I followed. By the time I got there, he already had the lock-breaking rods out. He fiddled with them for several minutes, but didn’t make any progress.

“Looks like there are mortice locks near the top and bottom,” he said in a low voice. “Sara really doesn’t want uninvited guests.”

“Any sign of an alarm system?”

“Strangely, no.”

“Rog?” I said.

“Receiving. I’m in position. No lights or movement at the back.”

“I’m sending Pete around to try the locks there.”

“Okay.”

I nodded to Boney, and he set off around the house in a crouch. I felt exposed at the front door, so I headed away to the right, thinking I’d check the shed. But when I got there, I found three heavy-duty padlocks on the bolts. Short of blowing my way in with grenades, I was stuck. Unless there was a door at the back. I pushed my way through the vegetation at the side of the wooden structure. There wasn’t a door, but a window had been boarded over.

“Matt?” came Pete’s voice in my ear. “This door’s got mortices, too. We’ll have to cut the glass.”

“Okay. Run your deactivation unit around it first.”

“I was actually intending to do that,” Bonehead said snidely.

I smiled, then took out my combat knife and started to lever away the boards. When I’d got one off, I looked in. Complete darkness. I listened carefully. Nothing. I decided to risk my torch, briefly at first. It was soon clear that the building was empty. It didn’t look like Sara was hiding there, but I had my Glock at the ready when I’d made a space big enough to clamber through. I dropped onto the floor on my hands, feeling hard earth on my fingertips.

“We’re in,” Rog said through my earpiece. “No one around so far.”

I shone the torch again. There were tools hanging from a row of hooks on the wall, but apart from that there was a strange absence of the gear you’d expect to find in an outbuilding-no logs, lawn-mower, old boxes or other junk. I walked toward the front doors, then stopped. The earth beneath my boots was less firm. I looked down and made out an area several yards long and wide, with a slightly different texture. I hadn’t noticed the three low posts that came out of the floor until then. They each stood about fifteen centimeters from the surface. I went over to the nearest one and kneeled down by it. In the torchlight I could see that they were circular plastic pipes, about five centimeters across. I shone my light down, but could make nothing out. Then I heard a sound that made my flesh creep-a kind of muffled screech. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it came from a human being.

“Rog! Pete!” I said, forgetting to keep my voice low. “If there’s nothing in the cottage, get over to the shed. There’s a window I’ve cleared on the far side.”

“What have you got?” Pete asked.

“Someone who’s been buried alive. Out.”

I shone the torch on the wall and took down a couple of spades and a snow shovel. One of the former had traces of earth on the head. Going back to the tube through which the sound had come, I hacked away at the earth around it. The surface had been smoothed down, but when I broke through the crust, I found that the earth shifted easily. By the time Pete and Rog arrived, I had already piled a heap by the wall.

“I think there are three people down here,” I said, pointing at the pipes. “We’ll take one each.”

It was hard work, but when I got about a meter down, my spade hit wood with a resounding thud.

“Give me a hand here,” I said.

Soon we’d cleared the earth from a roughly made rectangular box. We all climbed out of the hole and I inserted the spade beneath the lid. There was a loud creaking as nails came away from the wood, then the cover shifted.

“Bloody hell!” Rog said, as we took in the diminutive figure.

It was a young girl, her hands bound and resting on her abdomen. Her eyes were wide in terror. There was another piece of rope around her ankles, and her knees were raw from the countless times she had banged them against the coffin lid.

I got hold of her shoulders and pulled her up as gently as I could, then handed her to Pete. When she was on the floor, Rog started cutting her bonds. That was difficult, because she was jerking around like a dying fish, croaking something that we couldn’t understand. Eventually I understood. She was desperate for water. Pete went back to the cottage to get some.

“What’s your name?” I said, taking her in my arms.

She continued to shudder violently, but she managed to speak again.

“Am…Ama…Amanda Ma…Mary.”

I smiled at her. “Hello, Amanda Mary. I’m Matt and this is Roger.”

She stared at us as if we were aliens. When Boney came back with water and some bread that he’d found, she drank desperately, spilling much of it over her pink blouse. I reckoned she was eleven or twelve. I also had a pretty good idea who she was. To have got the former SAS men to ignore their training and allow themselves to be taken out, Sara had used their family members as leverage. The only question was, whose daughter was she? I couldn’t face telling her what had happened to her father now. I kept her in a tight embrace while Rog and Pete dug down to the next coffin. This time it was a boy, who didn’t look more than six. He couldn’t speak at all-just drank and then stuffed bread into his mouth. Finally, Pete and I got a middle-aged woman out.

As I’d suspected from the moment I saw Amanda Mary, there was no trace at all of Andy.