Paul Johnston - The Soul Collector

“They’ve been taken to hospital, but I gather they were conscious, just drowsy. They’d been sprayed with some kind of knockout gas. Rings a bell, eh?”

“Yup. Thanks, Karen.”

“I take it you’ve turned back and are waiting for me at the castle.”

“Em, no. We’re going to pick up Lucy and Andy.”

There was silence for a while.

“All right, Matt. But I’ll be expecting you and your friends in my office at nine tomorrow.”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“I’d have thought you’d already have instructed one.” She hung up.

I’d completely forgotten about my impending manslaughter charge.

The night continued to be a busy one. We picked up Andy and Lucy in a deserted part of Kent and drove to the hospital in East Grinstead. Caroline was out of bed. She wasn’t talking to me, though she did behave in an appropriately maternal way to Lucy.

I sat next to my mother, who was still lying down, her face pale. “I’m sorry about all this,” I said. “How do you feel?”

“I’m all right, dear. It’s the gas. I still feel a bit dizzy.” She looked at me. “It was her, wasn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“And she hasn’t been caught?”

I shook my head. “They may still get her.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you, Matt?”

I shrugged. “Sara isn’t omnipotent. Andy could have caught her tonight, but he concentrated on getting Lucy out of her clutches.”

“Good for him,” she murmured, her eyelids fluttering as she dropped off again. I hadn’t managed to tell her that Slash rescued Lucy without knowing who she was. That made him even more of a hero in my eyes.

Lucy appeared on the other side of the bed, having been passed fit by the doctors. She bent over and gave her grandmother a kiss.

“Are you okay, then?” I asked.

“They want me to stay the night in case I have a reaction to the gas.” She looked at me apologetically. “Mum wants to talk to you now.”

On the way to the private room that my ex-wife had got for herself, I prepared for my hearing to be assaulted. Instead, Caroline was calm and collected.

“If you ever allow anything like that to happen to Lucy or me again,” she said, “I will personally detach your scrotum and its contents from your supposedly he-man body.”

There was more but, when Caroline showed no sign of stopping, I went to make sure that Andy was okay. He’d been given several stitches to his forehead, but his skull hadn’t been fractured.

“Bloody hell, Slash,” I said. “How did you manage to stay conscious, never mind open that miniknife and cut through the rope?”

“No sweat,” he said. “They breed us tough in New Jersey.”

Karen chose that moment to step through the cubicle curtains.

“Hi, doll,” Andy said with a grin. “How’s it hanging?”

I managed to swallow my laughter. The American really was a hero for talking to her like that. We left him and went outside.

“Any sign of Sara?” I asked.

Karen shook her head. “We’re still checking, but…” Her words trailed away and she ran her eyes over me. “Where are your weapons?”

I feigned innocence.

“And where are Rog and Pete?”

“I’m not sure.” That was partly true. Pete had gone off in a taxi to pick up his Cherokee, taking all our gear with him. He was somewhere between East Grinstead and Bromley. Rog, however, was out in the car park. I didn’t mention that.

She laughed. “Honestly, Matt, what do you take me for? Someone blasted their way into Sternwood Castle and several shots were fired in that awful cave. I suppose you’re going to tell me the earl and Alistair Bing did all that.”

I remembered the tape. “Em, no. But I promise we had no choice.”

“The AC will be the judge of that, and you’ll need to convince the local force, too.”

I raised my shoulders. “Piece of cake. Are you okay?”

She shook her head at me. “I’m at the end of my tether.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said, putting my arm around her.

“Isn’t that a song by Meat Loaf?” she asked, shaking free of me but managing to smile wanly.

“It is,” I said. “You always did have a worrying taste in music.”

She stopped and faced me.

“Don’t think you’re in the clear, Matt. There are things ordinary citizens can’t do.”

“Like murder and mutilate innocent crime writers, spray knockout gas into people’s faces, attach bombs to them and bury people alive?” I asked.

“And you believe that’s a valid justification for taking the law into your hands?”

“No,” I said, taking hold of both her hands. “But this is.” I kissed her on the lips, and eventually she responded. By raising her leg to my groin.

“Don’t take advantage of me when I’m on duty,” she said, her voice softer than her knee.

I stepped back and watched her walk away. It hadn’t been necessary that she came to meet me. The fact that she had suggested that we weren’t completely washed up.

I said good-night to Lucy before Rog and I went back to London.

For the rest of the night, Meat Loaf had no chance. There was only one song playing repeatedly in my head. It was by Bob Dylan and it bore the name of my former lover and perhaps future nemesis, Sara.

Andy, Pete and Rog showed up at New Scotland Yard the next morning to give statements, as did I. The VCCT threw the kitchen sink at us. We were questioned on our own by Taff Turner and a young sergeant called Amelia Browning. She was smart and almost got me to contradict myself several times. Then the assistant commissioner stepped in and interrogated me himself, but I still didn’t change my story. I was charged with the manslaughter of Lauren Cuthbertson, but my lawyer didn’t think it would go to trial. There were plenty of people who had seen the dead woman murder Jeremy Andrewes and attack me.

Doris Carlton-Jones refused to say a word, presumably forewarned by Sara. That left her at the mercy of the detectives and prosecutors, but I wasn’t complaining-she could have made life difficult for me and Andy if she’d accused us of impersonating police officers. Then again, she had a lot of explaining to do herself, not least about her husband’s skull. Then came the funerals. Karen warned me not to attend, but I felt it was my duty. She felt it was hers, too, so we went to four of them together. Two of the dead passed without ceremony. Lauren Cuthbertson had no family willing or able to arrange a service-so much for Sara and her birth mother’s feelings for her. Sandra Devonish’s mother and father collected her body from the morgue. Her funeral would take place in Texas. Karen said they seemed bewildered rather than grief-stricken. Not for long, I suspected. I decided to steer clear of Earl Sternwood’s service; according to one of the newspapers, it was “pagan in the extreme,” whatever that meant. And I left Alistair Bing/Adrian Brooks to his mother to bury-I hoped without any memorial stone.

The first funeral we attended was Mary Malone’s. It took place in a churchyard in Wiltshire, where her parents were buried. It was a cold, wet day and the rooks were screaming at each other from the tops of the bare trees. There was only a handful of people. In death, as in life, Alistair Bing’s first victim passed almost unnoticed. An elderly woman wept continuously throughout the service. I found out from the vicar that she was a devoted fan, who had traveled from the south of France. That made my eyes damp.

The second service was for Josh Hinkley. To my surprise, he’d asked for a humanist service before cremation. The readings were from his own books (which was less of a surprise), interspersed with songs by Ian Dury, The Kinks and The Jam. There was a booze-up in a pub in Soho afterward. I only stayed for one drink, but that was long enough for me to be cut dead by the chairman of the Crime Writers’ Society and by a tiny Chinese woman with a large chest. Apparently she was Chop Suzy, the tart the dead man had been expecting the night he was murdered. Karen told me that a woman with a posh voice had told Suzy to stay away from “her husband.” Female impersonation was obviously another of Alistair Bing’s skills, unless he’d got his mother to do it.