Paul Johnson - The Death List

My mobile rang. There was no number on the screen.

“What do you want?” I said tersely.

“Matt, Matt,” said the White Devil. “I’m ringing to satisfy your curiosity.”

“What about?” I asked, trying to disguise my interest.

“Did the good Sara fill you in on the murder?”

“Yes.”

“And has she heard about the calling card I left?”

I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. “You’re fucking sick,” I shouted. “Why did you kill the old woman, for Christ’s sake? No one deserves to die like that.”

“Oh, yes, they do,” he said, his voice steely. “People who sin have to pay the price, not only in the next world.”

I grabbed my notepad. “Did you know her, then?”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Don’t go on a fishing trip, Matt. I’ll tell you what I want you to know. The rest is for you to find out.”

I swallowed hard. “All right, what line of Webster’s did you use this time?”

“Very smart,” he said ironically. “Act 5, scene 6, lines 73 to 75."

I fumbled through my copy. “You sick bastard,” I said when I found the lines. “‘Gentle madam, Seem to consent, only persuade him teach the way to death; let him die first.’” I dropped the book. “The victim was one of your teachers, wasn’t she?”

“Bingo.”

I looked at the lines again. “But what’s the bit about letting him die first in aid of?”

“Didn’t you hear that the bitch had a brother?”

“No.”

“Well, she did. I discovered he’d been fucking her.” A cold, metallic laugh. “Not only that, he used to treat us kids like shit at the sports day every year. He paid for that. You see, her brother died in July 2003. He was electrocuted by a faulty plug when he switched on his lawn mower. Accidental death, according to the coroner.” He paused. “But it wasn’t an accident.”

“What?” I felt as if I’d just stepped off a cliff. “You mean…you mean you killed him?”

“I thank you, I thank you.” The humor left his voice. “Why are you surprised, Matt? You already know how seriously I take my work.”

“I can find you,” I said, forgetting the danger for a moment.

“Yes, you can go through the school registers and find out all the boys Miss One-Arm Merton taught. You can triangulate that list with the dates you work out from Father Bugger O’Connell, and you can start to track me down.” He gave what sounded like a hiss. “Go on, then, Matt. But you’d better hurry. The police are going to be after you soon, even if I don’t steer them toward your books.”

“I’m going to stop you.”

“Be my guest. But remember I can kill Lucy and Sara and your mother before you even get close. Have you got the balls?” He sniggered. “Good night, Mr. Fictional Crime Expert.”

He cut the connection.

I rammed the phone between the cushions of the sofa and let out a yell of frustration.

The blond-haired man was sitting in front of a bank of screens. Behind him, the lights from St. Katharine’s Dock across the river shone through the blinds he’d partially closed. He had a martini with a maraschino cherry floating in it on the desk beside him. Despite the air-conditioning, the smell of the Sobranie Black Russians that he’d been smoking since he came back from Chelmsford was strong. He sipped from the tall-stemmed glass, getting the familiar rush from the almost neat gin.

The White Devil touched the pad of the control panel and zoomed in on the scene in Matt Wells’s sitting room. Good. The writer was hammering away at the keyboard, no doubt writing up the chapter about the latest killing. Soon there would be a whole novel about his exploits, a veritable Book of Death. But Matt Wells wouldn’t get any profit from it.

He went over to the gold-plated stereo system and slotted in the CD he had shoplifted in the City after he’d got back from Chelmsford. The skills he’d acquired as a boy had never left him. Robert Johnson started singing “Me and the Devil Blues.” Humming along, he remembered what he’d done after he’d taken off the old bitch’s arm-the one that she’d used to slap him countless times, even though she wasn’t meant to. It was in his collection, along with the jar containing Father Bugger’s eyes.

The Devil laughed. He was death, he was hell, he was a demon far worse than any from the fervid imagination of Hieronymus Bosch. He was insuperable, Lucifer rising, the very breath of the Apocalypse-and Matt Wells was his minion.

Karen Oaten stood on the viewing ramp overlooking the autopsy room. Beside her, John Turner was visibly struggling to keep his breakfast down. The pathologist and his assistants were working on the incomplete body of Evelyn Merton for the second time, at Oaten’s request.

“Doesn’t get any better, does it, Taff?” the chief inspector said, her face only slightly less pale than his.

“I can’t…I can’t believe that someone could do this to an old lady.”

Oaten nodded. “That’s not the worst of it. According to Redrose, the perpetrator showed considerable skill in amputating the arm. Which means he must have had practice.”

“A butcher?” Turner suggested.

“Certainly a possibility, but we’re not exactly narrowing down the field. There must be thousands of them in Greater London.”

“A surgeon?”

“Plenty of them, too.” She looked at the scene below. The former teacher’s corpse was no longer covered in blood as it had been the day before in the house in Chelmsford, but it was still hard to take. “Anyway, we’ll never find the killer by going through the professions. He could be a butcher, a cook, an ex-soldier, a farmer…We need to work the evidence. That’s why we’re down here.”

The inspector glanced at her. “What is it you think they didn’t find the first time round?”

“I want to know if there was sexual activity.”

Turner swallowed hard. “Jesus.”

Oaten nudged him with her elbow. “Bring me up to speed.”

“Right, guv.” The sergeant opened his notebook. “I put the people you got from D.C.I. Hardy’s unit on the street in Chelmsford, working with the locals. So far they haven’t found anyone who saw a suspicious individual in the vicinity yesterday. We’ve also started looking at the victim’s background. Not much to go on. She was a retired primary schoolteacher. No close friends or relatives. The neighbor says she used to live with her brother. He died in a gardening accident two years ago.”

“She worked in the East End, didn’t she?”

Turner nodded. “Bethnal Green. At a Catholic school.”

“Not far from where Father Prendegast, aka Father O’Connell, messed around with little boys.”

“The second quotation from that play makes it clear enough that it’s the same killer.”

Karen Oaten’s brow was furrowed. “Someone who was taught by Miss Merton and went to church at St. Peter’s. How are those lists of boys coming?”

“We’re getting there. Lewis and Allen are already checking alibis. Simmons and Pavlou are going to help them.”

“They’re also going to find out what kind of person the victim was, whether she was popular or not, aren’t they?”

“That’s what I told them.”

Oaten jerked her head away as the pathologist inserted an instrument between Evelyn Merton’s legs. “Thanks for doing that, Taff. I think they take it better from you. I’m not exactly their idea of a caring, sharing boss.”

Turner shrugged. “No problem, guv. They’re okay really, just a bit old-fashioned.”

“A bit out of line, to be precise,” she said. “But I’ve learned that diplomacy is sometimes the best way to play things.” She blinked as a loud voice came through the speaker set into the ceiling.