Paul Johnston - The Soul Collector

I got back to thinking about the cryptic clue I’d been sent. There were under six hours to go. I was suddenly plagued by doubts about Katya being the target. Why would Sara go for a woman I’d only met briefly? Also, she could hardly have come up with a more difficult target, given how seriously a gangster like Safet Shkrelli would take security. Then again, I told myself, it would be just like Sara to choose an unlikely victim, and just like her to take on almost impossible odds. I hoped Shkrelli had paid heed to my warning. I’d liked Katya. She hadn’t lost her human warmth, despite the horrors she’d been through. Maybe that was why the gangster had chosen her. But was it really her name in the puzzle?

I looked at it again. “The sun set by the westernmost dunes of Alexander’s womankind.” The sun. Apollo? Oddly enough, I didn’t know anyone of that name. Who else was associated with the sun? Louis XIVth of France had been known as the Sun King. Again, I didn’t know anyone called Louis, first or second name. I logged on to one of the search engines and came up with a list of sun-gods-Sol, Ra, Shamash, Inti, Surya Deva. I couldn’t link any of them to a recognizable person, unless I was expected to warn every person named Sol or Solomon of imminent death. Then there were all the newspapers with “sun” in their titles. I didn’t see how they might fit in to the rest of the clue. I thought about the dunes again. The westernmost dunes. In the U.K., that would mean Cornwall-there were plenty of beaches there, as well as a burgeoning surfing scene. Cornwall. I didn’t know anyone by that name. Shit, this was getting me nowhere.

Then I remembered the name and initials the sender had used to sign off. Flaminio. That was an obvious link to John Webster’s play The White Devil. I’d initially assumed that meant Sara had written the message. But Flaminio was a male name. She would surely have used the name of Vittoria, the main female “white devil” in the play. As for D.F., I couldn’t make any link between those letters and Webster’s play. I began to have the feeling that I was playing a game with rules I only vaguely knew. Then I ran D.F. through a search engine and came up with the protagonist of a play by another writer born in the 16th century-Christopher Marlowe’s vainglorious but ultimately tragic Doctor Faustus. Why would Sara-or anyone else-cast themselves as the man who made a pact with the devil and ended up in hell?

I had a bad feeling about this. It looked like Sara might not have written the message. Was I being pursued by a male who had, in some way, done a deal with the devil? Everyone made compromises, everyone did things they didn’t want to for some temporary gain. Then I remembered what Karen had said about the book I’d written: The Death List was in effect a pact with the devil and, by writing it, I’d lost part of my humanity. Maybe Sara, or someone else, was hinting at that.

I got up and smacked my hands together. It was just after eight. I had four hours to come up with a name. Katya was still a possibility, but I wasn’t convinced about her anymore, despite the connection with Alexander Drys.

I went back to the computer and started from scratch. The sun. Could the message be a series of opposites or pairs? “The moon rose far from the least eastern grains of-” Whose? Alexander the Great’s father Philip? His chief enemy Darius? His soul mate Hephaistion? I let that go. And mankind instead of womankind? So the target was a male? Going back to the beginning, I didn’t know anyone called Moon, apart from the long-dead drummer of the Who. “The moon rose…” Rose was a common enough name. I’d once done a radio program with a chicklit author called Rose Jones. I found her e-mail address on the Internet and sent her a message suggesting she keep a low profile. After I’d done that, I realized that she didn’t fulfil the new criterion of being male. If that was right…

And so I went on, driving myself up the wall with abstruse ideas and unlikely solutions, as the clock steadily ticked toward twelve midnight.

Karen Oaten stopped in front of the police barrier tape in the street in Hackney. The uniformed officer with a clipboard recognized her and lifted the cordon so she could drive in. The area that had been shut off was lit up by bright lights powered by a generator.

“Here we go again, Amelia,” the chief inspector said.

“Yes, guv.” Detective Sergeant Browning got out of the car quickly, enthusiasm all over her face.

Oaten smiled, remembering when she’d been like that. She accepted a bag of protective gear from a CSI and began to pull the contents on.

“This is getting ridiculous,” said Detective Superintendent Ron Paskin, still looking vast in his white coverall.

“Certainly is,” Karen replied. “What happened this time?”

“No one’s talking, at least not yet. This is Shadow territory. The man on the pavement over there is a Shadow, too.”

“Jesus. This is going to turn really nasty.”

Paskin nodded. “Hello, DS Browning,” he said. “Would you like a transfer to Homicide East?”

“No chance, Superintendent.”

“There’s plenty of action here.”

The sergeant smiled. “Even more at the VCCT.” She went over to the body.

“Only if you actually take these cases,” the policeman said to his former subordinate.

“Are you asking me to?” Oaten asked.

Ron Paskin shrugged. “Not yet. Though I reckon this killing is connected with the other ones in this area.”

“Any evidence of that?”

“The cartridge cases are similar to those found in the basement. Ballistics will prove that one way or the other.” He pointed toward an open door. “And there’s blood on a bed and on the floor upstairs. There are ropes up there, too-they’ve been cut. Someone who was tied down got cut loose.”

“So what happened?”

“Hard to tell. According to the pathologist, the victim was shot three times in the chest at close range, at between five and six o’clock this evening.”

Oaten looked around the houses. “And no one saw or heard anything?”

“Oh, they saw and heard, all right. They’re just not telling us. Don’t worry, we’ll find out. I’ve got Turkish-speaking officers. They’re going around now.”

A man in his thirties with rings around his eyes came up. “You’re not going to believe this, guv.”

“DCI Oaten, meet DI Ozal. He’s one of the Turkish-speakers I was telling you about.” Paskin looked at his subordinate. “Go on, then. It isn’t every day you get the chance to show how smart you are to the senior investigating officer of the VCCT.”

Ozal gave Karen a wary glance. “No, guv. Well, I managed to get a couple of the lads to talk. They won’t give formal statements, but I’ll work on them.”

“What happened, then?” Paskin asked impatiently.

“Like I say, guv, you’re not going to believe this. The guy on the ground’s the Wolfman.”

The superintendent whistled through his tobacco-stained teeth. “So that’s what he looks like.” He turned to Oaten. “You remember him?”

She nodded. “The Wolfman was in the frame for a string of killings and near-fatal assaults on behalf of the Shadows. We never managed to lay a finger on him when I was here.”

“That’s not all, guv,” Ozal said, his face flushed with excitement. “He was shot by someone wearing the burqa and chador. That means the Wolfman was killed by a woman-and she used a silenced weapon.”

Karen Oaten raised a hand. “Hold on, Inspector. How do you know it was a woman?”

Ozal looked like he’d been asked if the earth went around the sun. “No man would wear those garments, Chief Inspector.”

Oaten looked at him. “Maybe not in your community. But that wouldn’t stop a non-Muslim.”