Paul Johnston - The Soul Collector

I thanked Mrs. Carlton-Jones.

As she closed the door, she said, “I hope we won’t meet again.”

I walked away, feeling like a leper. Then I saw Andy appear from behind the garage. His expression was grim and he was carrying what looked very much like a human skull.

Faik Jabar had found a heap of old clothes outside a charity shop in Stoke Newington. They didn’t smell too good, but neither did he. In a dank alleyway, he stripped off his trousers, gasping as the fabric came away from the wounds on his legs. The trousers were an old man’s, the bottoms flapping above his trainers, and the ancient tan duffel coat was tight across his shoulders. At least the pistol he’d taken from his tormentor fitted into one of the inside pockets. Head down, Faik walked out on to the pavement and headed west. He had no money, so he couldn’t use public transport. Walking was the only option. It took him three hours to get to Soho.

The strip joints and massage parlors were open, but there wasn’t much activity. At the first one he tried, a thick-set muscle-man told him to go fuck himself, there were no Albanians there. But he struck lucky at the next one. He went upstairs, following the signs to! Sexy Susie’s Sauna EtSEXera! When he asked for Safet Shkrelli, the bottle blonde, who must have been older than his mother, told him to wait.

A thin man with a pencil mustache, wearing a grubby suit, came out to meet him. “What does a piece of crap like you want with Mr. Shkrelli?” he demanded, eyeing the young man and wrinkling his nose. “What are you? A Turk?”

“Kurd,” replied Faik. “Tell him I know where his missing numbers man is.”

The man raised an eyebrow, then took out his cell phone. He spoke rapidly in a language like no other Faik had ever heard. When he’d finished, he smiled insincerely. “Mr. Shkrelli would like to see you. Come downstairs when I call.” He headed for the street.

A few minutes later, Faik heard his voice again. When he reached the main door, he saw a black Mercedes at the curb, its engine idling and the nearside rear door open. His weapon was taken by a gorilla. Faik thought of what had happened the last time he’d got into a gang member’s car, but he didn’t hesitate. Someone had to stop the bitch with the devil’s face who had set the gangs at each others’ throats, and Safet Shkrelli was the best bet, probably the only bet.

Neither the man from the sauna nor the heavily-built driver spoke to him. They went north, but after King’s Cross he was told to put his head between his knees. He felt the point of a knife in his side, so he obeyed. He preferred not to know where Shkrelli lived.

After what Faik thought was about twenty minutes, the car drove over gravel and stopped. He was told to stay as he was, then a door opened and a black hood was pulled over his head. He was led inside, tripping on steps. It seemed they walked for a long time before he was pushed into a seat and the hood tugged off.

Faik blinked and took in a large, young-looking man with close-cropped black hair. He was sitting behind an enormous desk.

“I’m Safet Shkrelli,” the man said, picking up a silver revolver with pearl handles. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

“You know why,” Faik replied. His voice was steady; he had nothing to lose. “I can take you to your numbers man.”

“Where is he?”

Faik shook his head slowly. “I take you there,” he repeated. “Then you protect me.”

Shkrelli thought about that. “Is he alive?” he asked.

“He was when I last saw him-just.”

“What happened to him?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

The muzzle of the weapon was suddenly pointing at Faik’s face. “Are you setting me up, boy?” the Albanian asked. “Are your people planning on ambushing me? I use dum-dum bullets. Do you know how much damage one of them can do? Your own mother won’t recognize you.”

Faik held his gaze. “This is no setup, Mr. Shkrelli. There is no ambush. All I want is for you to protect me until you find the…the person who took your man.”

Safet Shkrelli drank from a bottle of water. “So take me, boy. Tell me the district.”

“Stoke Newington.”

The hood came back down over Faik’s head. He was taken through the process in reverse and heard someone else join the driver in the front of the car. After they had driven for about a quarter of an hour, the hood was removed. Faik looked around, recognizing the streets around Finsbury Park station. Ahead, he could see two more black Mercedes and behind was a black Land Cruiser. All the vehicles were full.

“Tell us the address,” the driver said.

Faik did so and the driver relayed it via his hands-free device. The column drove down Green Lanes. People stared and some of them raised cell phones to their ears. The local gangs-the Shadows, the King’s men-wouldn’t be slow to gather. Faik’s armpits were drenched in sweat, but his breathing was regular. The lead car turned into the street and stopped, blocking the road. Men got out, their hands in their jackets. The man with the thin mustache got out and beckoned to Faik to follow. He did so, then headed for the door he had come out of that morning-it seemed like days had passed.

When he pushed the door open, not particularly surprised that it hadn’t been shut by the last person to leave, he turned his head and saw Safet Shkrelli get out of the second Mercedes. Bodyguards quickly gathered around him and walked him to the house. Suddenly it struck Faik that if his captor had managed to remove the body, Shkrelli would dispose of him in seconds. He went up the stair quickly, nervous for the first time.

He needn’t have been. The Albanian numbers man was still in the second-floor flat. His body was on the living room floor, as it was when Faik had escaped. But his head was on top of the television, his hands in the bathroom and his feet in the bedroom.

After looking around, the man with the mustache threw up on Safet Shkrelli’s shoes.

I walked toward Andy, signaling to him to stay where he was to avoid scaring the neighbors. I joined him at the rear of the garage.

“It was in a trunk in the garage,” he said. “I forced the door at the back because I got curious.”

I pulled on latex gloves like the ones he was wearing and took the skull from him. I had no idea how old it was, but it was very clean and so white that I wondered if it was plastic. But the feel of it was definitely bone. The question was, who did it belong to? And also, where was the rest of the body?

There was the rasping roar of a motorbike engine.

“Shit!” Andy said, running past me to the front of the garage.

I followed him, trying to shield the skull under my jacket. I was in time to see a figure in black leathers and helmet crouching over a powerful bike, as Doris Carlton-Jones climbed on behind. Jesus, was it Sara?

Before I could put the skull down and draw my weapon, the metallic red motorbike rocketed down the street. Not long afterward I heard a less deafening engine noise to my left.

“Get in, Matt!” Andy said from the driver’s seat of Mrs. Carlton-Jones’s hatchback.

Somehow I managed to do that without dropping the skull. Andy reversed at speed, spun the wheel and set off down the street.

“Hot-wired,” I said. “Nice one, Slash.”

“Being in a teen gang had its uses,” he said, swerving out of the driveway and accelerating after the motorbike. “So the old woman was in on it all along. I’ve seen that machine before.”

I grabbed my door handle as he braked hard and then turned out of the crescent. The motorbike was still in sight, but there were several cars between it and us.

“Looks like Sara and she have had a family reunion,” I said. “Bloody hell, what are you doing?”