Paul Johnson - The Death List

“I will. But not yet.” I touched my nose with my forefinger. “I’ve got my reasons.”

Dave shrugged. “All right. I’ll stick it under the floorboards.”

“One more thing,” I said, grabbing his arm. “I don’t want the other guys to see it. Can you stuff it down your shirt?”

“What?” He looked at the bulky bag. “There isn’t room for my belly in this shirt.”

Fortunately he had kept on his loose parka. After a lot of fiddling, we managed to secrete the money and the backup diskettes down his back and front. Then I stuffed my own pockets with all the toilet paper I could find so that my jacket kept its former shape.

“Are you all right?” Dave said, rubbing his chin.

“I’ll explain everything later.”

When we got back to the table, the other two looked up at us.

“I don’t think buggery’s permitted in the head here,” Andy said with a wide grin.

“Sod off,” Dave said, provoking a gale of laughter.

It was only as I was buying the next round that I realized what I’d done. I’d brought my best mates into the Devil’s field of fire.

That betrayal made me feel lower on the evolutionary scale than an earthworm.

John Turner stood in his white coveralls and bootees, trying to get his breathing under control. The body had been found by a doctor on the floor below who’d come up to borrow a journal. That man had had a lucky escape.

The inspector opened the gauze curtains and looked down at Harley Street. Ordinary people were going about their ordinary lives, black cabs passing and foreign teenagers shouting at one another. Why did he have to put up with scenes of horror like this on a more or less daily basis? He knew the answer well enough. His father had been a copper, ending up as a desk sergeant in central Cardiff, and his grandfather had walked the beat, too. It was in his blood. He froze, conscious again of the torn body to his right. It was bad enough, but what lay on the floor beyond had gone beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Even the most degenerate horror film scriptwriter would have struggled to come up with anything as horrendous as that.

Karen Oaten looked up at him from where she was squatting by the severed head. “Come on, Taff. It’s got to be done.” She turned to the pathologist, Redrose, who was at her side. “Well?”

“It’s Bernard Keane, all right,” the potbellied medic said, shaking his head. “I knew him from one of our charity committees. This is appalling.” He returned her gaze. “Jesus, someone will have to tell his wife.”

“She’s on her way,” Oaten said. “Don’t worry, I can handle that. You’re sure it’s him, though? I don’t want to put her through identifying him formally until the undertakers have been to work on him.” She shook her head. “They’ll have their work cut out.”

“I’m sure it’s him, Chief Inspector.” The pathologist got to his feet unsteadily.

Oaten gave him a few moments. “What about the cause of death?”

“Take your pick. Shock or loss of blood.” Redrose moved over to the chair where the victim’s body lay sprawled. “Judging by the lack of blood spray, I’d say that the head was removed postmortem. Conversely, these wounds, or at least many of them, were inflicted while Bernard…Dr. Keane was still breathing. My initial examination indicates that the stomach has been cut out.” He looked at Oaten and then at Turner. “There’s a clear plastic packet inside the abdominal cavity.”

Turner’s hand moved to his mouth before he could stop it.

“Take it out,” the chief inspector instructed the pathologist.

“I should really wait for the postmor-” Redrose broke off when he saw her expression. “Very well.” He picked up a pair of tweezers from his bag and, pulling up his mask and bending over the opened midriff, carefully removed a flat, square object.

“There’s a piece of paper in it,” Turner said, catching his superior’s eye. “It’s him again.”

She nodded solemnly. “I think we’d all already come to that conclusion, Taff.” She called over the senior SOCO. “Get the contents out and check the bag for prints.”

“That really ought to be done in the lab,” the technician said.

Oaten gave him a severe look. “Just do what I say, will you? Inspector Turner will be your witness if anyone questions procedure.” She turned back to Redrose. “Time of death?”

He glanced at his notes. “A rough calculation from the temperature readings would be between six and eight hours ago.”

“So between two and four this afternoon,” Turner said. “I’ll go and check the receptionist’s computer.”

“Here you are, ma’am,” the SOCO said, handing her a larger plastic evidence bag with an unfolded piece of A4 paper in it. “I mean, guv.”

Karen Oaten read aloud the cutout fragments of newsprint that had been stuck on the sheet. “‘Like the wild Irish, I’ll ne’er think thee dead Till I can play at football with thy head.’”

“Good God,” the pathologist said. “The monster’s making jokes about it.”

“I think I can guess where this came from,” Oaten said. “In fact, I’ve got a copy of the text in my bag outside.”

Turner came back into the consulting room. “Guv, it’s him all right. I couldn’t get past the receptionist’s password, but she kept a handwritten register, as well. Two-thirty, last patient-Mr. John Webster.”

The chief inspector held up the quotation to him. “This killer thinks he’s funny,” she said, glaring at everyone in the room. “Well, I’m not bloody laughing.”

She and Turner spent another hour there, and then the doctor’s remains were removed to the morgue. They took off their coveralls outside and looked around the reception area. It was expensively furnished, a couple of good modernist paintings on the walls.

Morry Simmons appeared at the door. “Guv? We’ve got him.”

“What?” Oaten turned to him, her eyes wide.

“Well, there’s two of them, actually.” Simmons looked at both of them, the usual slack smile on his lips. “I mean, we’ve got them on the CCTV.”

“You tosser,” Turner said.

“Oh, you thought I meant we’d caught…sorry.” Simmons was suddenly unable to look either of them in the eye.

“All right, Morry,” the chief inspector said wearily. “Show us.”

He led them down to the building supervisor’s office in the basement. The man hadn’t been on duty at the time of the murder-he only worked until one o’clock on Saturdays-but the closed-circuit system ran continuously. He’d rewound the tape to 2:29 and found a single man in a suit entering the building. At nine minutes past three another figure, this one dressed in overalls, went to the lift. At 3:17, the two emerged from the lift together and exited by the main door.

“Can you print these images off?” Oaten asked.

The supervisor shook his head.

“Okay, we’ll be taking the tape, anyway.” She waved him away. “You can wait outside.”

The three detectives gazed up at the screen that was fixed to the wall above the desk.

“Run it again, Morry,” the chief inspector ordered.

After fiddling with the controls, Simmons managed that. They watched as two men of medium height appeared in the corridor.

“Freeze it there,” Oaten said. She craned up at the screen. “Both of them are carrying bags-one of them presumably containing the tools they used to cut the victim up. I’m assuming the other contains his stomach.”

Morry Simmons, who hadn’t seen the body, shivered.

“The guy on the left’s in disguise, surely,” Turner said. “That long hair and mustache are about thirty years out of date.”