Paul Johnston - The Soul Collector

I turned to the other prisoner and moved closer, my heart pounding and a worm of doubt wriggling hard. “Is it you, Sara? Did you really give up so easily?”

Manic laughter came from behind the disfigured mask. I wrenched it off and saw…someone who definitely wasn’t my ex-lover, no matter how much plastic surgery she might have undergone. I knew who it was, though.

“Alistair Bing!” I said, failing to conceal my surprise.

The laughter continued. Tears were wetting the cheeks of the diminutive man.

“Aka crime writer Adrian Brooks,” I said to Rog and Pete.

“Obviously you expected to see your former beloved,” Bing said. His Yorkshire accent was strong. “It never occurred to you that someone else could be behind the murders.”

I stared at him. “You killed the crime writers? You sent me those puzzles?”

He nodded beatifically, like the Pope acknowledging his worshippers-the Pope of Hell.

“But why?”

He laughed. “Always the rationalist, Matt. Didn’t your experience of the White Devil teach you anything? Some people exist in a dimension incomprehensible to common humanity.”

“That’ll be right,” I said, not stinting on the irony. “Don’t tell me. You needed the experience of killing to become a true crime writer.”

Alistair Bing looked like I’d slapped him in the face. “You’re oh-so-clever now, aren’t you, Matt? It’s a pity you couldn’t save Sandra Devonish. Or Josh Hinkley.”

“You broke your word with Josh, you piece of shit.”

He gave me an icy stare. “You have no idea who you’ve been up against. I am Doctor Faustus, I’ve made a deal with the devil and-”

“Yeah, yeah, spare me the bullshit. Just tell me why you slaughtered defenseless novelists.”

“The great Matt Wells, global bestseller and crime columnist, clueless. How the mighty are fallen.”

The way he said the word “bestseller” gave me an insight into his sad mind.

“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” I said. “You were jealous of us, weren’t you?”

His eyes narrowed. “The books at the top of the bestseller lists were no better than my early books.”

“Oh, yes they bloody were,” I said. “Besides, you’re a bestseller yourself now. What was the point of killing Mary, Sandra and Josh?”

He looked at me with arctic eyes. “I made my Faustian pact and killed three crime writers who sold better than I did in the past. You were to be next. The Death List knocked me off the top of the bestseller list in seven countries.”

“But first you decided to make a fool of me with your smart-ass clues.”

Alistair Bing nodded. “And I succeeded.”

“Just like in an Agatha Christie novel, eh?” I said. “Haven’t you noticed that real life is more like heavy-duty noir than Golden Age wordplay?” I turned to Earl Sternwood. “What was your role in all this?”

The earl was still staring at the dead mandrill. “Mine?” he said weakly. “Alistair had the benefit of my teachings. I led him to understand that only by experiencing killing would he become a successful writer.”

“And he believed that?” I said, glancing at the sniggering Yorkshireman.

“He did. The fact is, he did become a bestselling author after his first murders.”

“His first murders?” I repeated. “Who were the victims?”

“Oh, just scum,” the earl said carelessly. “Prostitutes, their customers, drunks-the detritus of humanity that disfigures London.” He seemed unaware of the irony in his words.

“It was your idea to write ‘The Devil did it’ in Latin, was it?”

The earl nodded. “Latin was, of course, the main language of the Christian Church, and of its opponents.”

I looked at Bing again. “Why the music playing at each murder scene?”

“To add to the feeling of devilry,” he said, giving me a thin-lipped smile.

It was my turn to laugh. “What? Cliff Richard?”

“My mother loves Cliff,” he replied, looking affronted.

I went up to him. “You sick fuck. You couldn’t just kill them, could you? You had to get up close, and throttle them, cut them, stab them. And then cut their nails and hair.” I remembered what he’d done to poor Mary Malone. “You abused a dead woman.”

He shrugged. “Killing that way is like sex. In fact it’s better than sex. There’s no need for consent.”

I turned away, shaking my head. “You must have fitted in well here,” I said, glancing at the horrific artwork.

Bing sniggered and it was all I could do to stop myself flooring him.

“What about the gangland murders in East London?” I said to Sternwood. “We know that Lauren Cuthbertson was responsible for them. She was part of your pathetic cult, wasn’t she?”

“How do you know that?” he demanded, confirming my suspicions.

“It was her face,” I said. “You couldn’t resist corrupting a disfigured person.”

The earl looked past me to the mandrill he’d called Beelzebub. “Lauren was a great help to me. We knew her as Asmodeus.” He touched his split upper lip with his tongue. “But there was no question of anyone corrupting her. She took to murder with pleasure and ease.”

“You needed the money from the drugs she stole.” Bing sneered. “You even got me to extort money from Josh Hinkley.”

I stared at the earl. “The killings were all about money?”

“Not exactly,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “Lauren and Faustus here chose their victims. But she was happy to donate the funds she acquired to the Order of the Lord Beneath the Earth.” He glared at me. “Until you killed her today. The sheep was sacrificed to speed her soul on its journey to our master.”

Pete and Rog exchanged glances that showed exactly what they thought of the cult and its worshippers.

I looked at Sternwood and Bing. “Did you know that Lauren Cuthbertson was Sara Robbins’s and the White Devil’s half sister?”

They both looked taken aback in a big way. Apparently not.

“I assume Lauren was Helen in the last message,” I said to Alistair Bing, then turned to the earl. “You sent her after Jeremy Andrewes because he’d found out about your drug deal with the Albanians.”

“You can’t prove any of this,” His Lordship replied dully.

Alistair laughed. “Yes, he can. I hereby swear that I had nothing to do with the Andrewes murder. I only wrote the clue.”

“Which I cracked, asshole.” I looked at Sternwood. “That means you’ll be spending the rest of your life in jail.”

“What did you do with the nail clippings and hair from the bodies?” Pete asked.

The earl gave him a solemn look. “We burned them, to the greater glory of Satan.”

I stared at him, but he didn’t turn away. It seemed that the paragon of the aristocracy meant it.

“You killed Beelzebub, Faustus!” Sternwood screamed. He made a grab for Pete’s pistol and managed, after a brief struggle, to loose off a shot.

Alistair Bing, known to his mother as Adrian Brooks, international bestselling crime writer, collapsed backward, a crimson flower blossoming on his chest.

Pete pulled hard on the rope around the earl’s neck, while I tried to get his hand from the Glock. His eyes bulged and his face reddened. Then there was another shot and the struggle ceased immediately.

Earl Sternwood, last of his line, lay dead by his own hand, blood welling from his doubly disfigured mouth.

I looked around the painted cavern with its clawed demons and gaping maws. The sound of the underground river could be heard now, running away yet farther beneath the earth.

The killer of the crime writers and his spiritual adviser had departed this life, but still we had found no sign of Sara.