Paul Johnston - The Soul Collector

I glanced away. “I don’t think so. Sara was playing with us. She’d have got away whatever, and sirens would just have given her more warning.”

Karen’s eyes flared. “We don’t always use sirens. Didn’t it occur to you that you might have been walking into a trap?”

“There were four of us,” I said, though I wasn’t going to tell her that Pete had been out the back with his sniper’s rifle and Rog had been waiting with his Glock for anyone who left by the front door.

“Coming through the pantry window meant you could have been picked off by a primary school bully,” she said, dropping her gaze again. “What were you armed with?”

I kept my mouth shut.

“The others took your weapon, didn’t they? Where are they?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said, and that was the truth. The plan we’d agreed on stipulated that we would split up if there was an attack on any of us.

It looked like she believed me, but I was sure there would be cars dispatched to their houses to check. They wouldn’t be there-we each had our own list of randomly selected hotels and bed-and-breakfast places that none of the others had seen.

There was a tap on the door. The potbellied form of Dr. Redrose approached. “Mr. Wells, I understand the deceased was a friend. My condolences.” He turned to Karen. “I’ve finished. Cause of death was obviously the four close-range shots to the head. CSIs have dug out what looks like a 9 mm bullet from the sofa. There were single shots to each knee and two shots to each thigh.”

His small eyes moved from Karen to me and then back again. “There’s no message in any obvious place. We’ll see what the postmortem shows. As for time of death, the body temperature suggests between two and three hours ago.” He waddled away.

Karen was studying me. “You got here at ten-fifty, you said. He was killed not long before that.”

I nodded. “I told you, she’s playing with us.”

“Why are you so sure it’s Sara?”

I shrugged. “I’ll bet you’ll find no traces of the killer. That smacks of Sara’s organizational skills. But it’s also obvious from the modus operandi, Karen. She shot Dave in the legs just before her brother was killed. He was finished in execution-style by shots to the head, as the SAS men did with the White Devil.”

“And as you described in your book that’s been read by millions of people.” She blinked at me. “Why no message?”

“There might still be one,” I said, swallowing a surge of vomit. “Inside him.”

She looked away.

There was another knock, and Taff Turner came in. Karen nodded to him to sit down. He’d already offered me his sympathy, but I knew he was unhappy about how I’d found the body.

“There isn’t much to go on, guv,” he said. “The techies are looking for prints, but they’ll need to take all the family’s to exclude them.” He looked down at the pair of black leather gloves in front of me. “I’d put money on the fact that the killer was wearing gloves.” He shook his head at me. That was the nearest I was going to get to an admission that he knew I wasn’t a formal suspect. “The driveway is asphalt, so we can forget getting any shoe imprints from there.”

“Anything you find in the garden will have to be compared with Matt’s miniature army’s boots,” Karen said. “The four of them were here.”

A weary sigh passed Taff’s lips. “Wonderful,” he said. “Anything else we need to know?” He gave me a questioning look.

“How the killer got in,” I said, still bothered by that. “The alarm was off and there’s no sign of a break-in.” I held Taff’s gaze. “Is there?”

“No,” he said.

“So Dave must have opened the door to her,” Karen said, glancing at her subordinate. “Assuming it’s Sara Robbins.”

“Yes,” I said, “but there are two heavy-duty chains on the door. Dave knew to check through the spy-hole. He must have taken the chains off.”

“Disguise?” the Welshman suggested.

Karen nodded. “Make sure the local detectives are aware of that possibility when they’re taking statements from the neighbors.”

“No one so far has reported hearing any shots,” Turner added. “The killer must have used a silencer.”

“Interesting,” Karen said. “That suggests it was a pro.”

“Sara was trained by the White Devil,” I said. “You don’t get much more professional than that. For all we know, she’s been honing her skills over the last two years.”

Turner got up and left. At the door, he looked around. “Are we going to take over this case?” he asked his boss.

Karen ran her tongue across her lips, an action that I would normally have found provocative in another context. “I’ll have to discuss that with the AC.” Her eyes were on me. “I think it’s time you checked your e-mail, Matt. Bring my laptop in from the car, will you, Taff?”

I wasn’t comfortable with Karen seeing any communication from Sara as I needed to have freedom of action, but there wasn’t much I could do. She had a wi-fi card and she also knew my two main e-mail addresses. I logged on to them with a display of reluctance that turned out to be irrelevant. There was no message from Sara, in any form or guise.

“What now?” I asked.

“Give me your cell phone,” she said. “Please, Mr. Wells.”

She wasn’t joking. I was an ordinary member of the public to her now. Again, I didn’t have much choice.

“What’s the password?” she asked. “And don’t even think of saying no, if you want to stay out of the cells.”

“2LZ7,” I said.

Karen hit the keys and scrolled up and down. “What are ‘GreenBoy’ and ‘Seven Emperor’?”

“Alarm codes-to my agent and editor.”

“They’ll have gone into hiding, will they? Along with Lucy and Fran, and your ex-wife?”

I nodded. Christian Fels, my agent, had been a target of the White Devil, and had sold The Death List to my editor, Jeanie Young-Burke. Given that the book didn’t exactly paint flattering portraits of Sara and her brother, I was pretty sure she would go after them if she could.

“You can’t do this, Matt,” Karen said, tossing the phone to me across the table. “You can’t take the law into your own hands.”

“I didn’t know going into hiding was illegal,” I countered, my voice weak. I felt terrible and I needed to get out of Dave’s house.

“It is if you’ve left the scene of a crime.”

“Christian and Jeanie haven’t done that.” I sat up. “Can I go now?”

She shook her head. “You’re staying with me. For a start, you need to be fingerprinted. Then I want a full statement.”

I shrugged. I was safer with her, but I wouldn’t be able to find Sara. Even if the VCCT started looking for her, I didn’t have any confidence they’d be able to track her down. I was the only person who could attract Dave’s murderer, my former lover. What she felt for me now was the polar opposite of love, not that I was surprised.

Then Taff Turner came in and said that Dave’s wife and kids had arrived. I’d spoken to Ginny on her cell phone and told her to come home as quickly as she could. Now I had to tell her what had happened to Dave. Karen would have done it, but it was up to me. That was what Dave would have wanted.

Contrary to the agreed procedure, the Cherokee and the Hornet rendezvoused at the burnt-out remains of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich. Andy Jackson got off his bike and got into the front seat of Pete’s vehicle, then looked over his shoulder. Roger van Zandt was bent double in the backseat of the Grand Cherokee, his head between his knees.

“Deep breaths, Dodger,” the American said. “Remember that try you scored against the Lambeth Lions? You went past four players and touched down under the posts. Remember what it felt to go over the line.” He glanced at the driver. “You remember that try, don’t you, Boney? Must have been the season before we retired.”