Paul Johnson - The Death List

The line went dead. I hit 1471 but, as usual, the number was restricted. Shit. How did my tormentor know that I had a second laptop? I thought back to the phone conversation. How much had he given away? Very little. Perhaps he hadn’t been spying on me when I’d stashed the money and diskettes in my jacket. Perhaps he didn’t know about my meeting the lads. Suddenly I felt better. Then I remembered what he’d done to the doctor and felt the new vigor drain out of me. What chance did I have of beating him? He was always several steps ahead of me. And what did he mean about making how similar we were crystal clear to me? I had a bad feeling about that.

I went up to the loft and dug out the box with my old laptop in it. After I’d plugged it in and downloaded the updated mail system, I clicked on his message. It was as he’d said. The tabloids would have a field day if they found out these details. Then I thought about the motive. The Devil didn’t specifically say why he’d chosen the victim, but there were hints that he was responsible for the death of a loved one. It was pretty thin. If everyone who had a loved one let down by the National Health Service took lethal revenge, there wouldn’t be many doctors left alive.

I sat back and looked up at the cracks in the ceiling. He was taunting me, I knew it. He was giving me enough information to start tracking him down. There was the school, the church and now the doctor-the likelihood was that he’d once practiced in the East End. Of course, getting hold of the records wasn’t straightforward for an ordinary citizen. Files like that were confidential, and I suspected that the onslaught of journalists after the first two killings would have made the local education authority and the Catholic Church very reluctant to part with information, just as the health authority would be now.

Then it struck me. The Devil himself had given me the means to find out about his background. He’d given me ten thousand pounds. That would be enough to buy anything I needed from bureaucrats on the take. I swallowed the laugh in case he was watching. The irony was enjoyable-until I realized that he had deliberately provided me with funds. He wanted me to find him, if only to prove how alike we were. I wasn’t sure if I had the nerve to meet him head-on.

I spent the next four hours writing the chapter on the latest killing. I felt worryingly comfortable taking on the voice of the killer. I had to make some of it up, such as how the White Devil, Wayne Deakins, got in and out of the building unobserved. I presumed that Harley Street clinics had security cameras, so I resorted to a disguise. The first one that came to mind was the long black hair and droopy mustache that the Devil or his sidekick had used in the park with Lucy. After I’d edited the text, I replied to the Devil’s message and sent the chapter as an attachment. Then, after transferring them to diskette, I deleted the messages. I knew an expert would find them on the hard drive, but at least I was buying myself some time. I put the diskette in a sealed plastic bag and hid it in a packet of cornflakes. Again, a thorough search would reveal it, but I didn’t think the police would get on to me so quickly-as long as I did what the Devil asked.

I tried to get some sleep, but the birds had already started their predawn racket. Anyway, I had too much on my mind.

At last I was beginning to put together a plan to send the Devil back where he came from.

D.C.I. Karen Oaten stood in front of her team at the Yard, her eyes bulging.

“Right, you tossers!” she shouted. “Who was it? Who spoke to the journalist from this piece of shit?” She held up a garishly colored tabloid. “I’ve just had the commissioner himself on the phone.” She leaned toward the detectives and watched with satisfaction as they moved back as one. “I don’t like being told that I run a leaky ship, and I particularly don’t like being told that my job is on the line.” She tossed the newspaper away. “So here’s how it is. If my job’s on the line, then so are yours. Are you getting me? All your jobs.” She moved her eyes around them slowly. “We’re chasing what could be the worst serial killer in years. He’s running rings round us. That’s why we’re all in here on a Sunday. This isn’t the time to be protecting someone who’s taking tabloid money.” She turned to her office. “You know what you have to do. I want the squealer in my office by 6:00 p.m. today.” She started to walk. “Inspector Turner, in here.”

The gathering broke up.

“Yes, guv?” the Welshman said as he came in.

“Close the door,” the chief inspector said, waiting till he’d done so. “Sorry, Taff. Nothing personal. I had to put the boot in. Someone’s taking the piss big-time. How do you think the doctor’s family feels, having the fact that his head was cut off and his stomach removed rammed down their…well, you know what I mean.”

Turner nodded. “We’d have had to come out with it sooner or later.”

Oaten’s eyes flashed. “Yes, but not the morning after he was killed, for Christ’s sake.”

“I know who it was,” the inspector said, glancing over his shoulder. The blinds were closed.

“Tell me, Taff.”

“I’d rather wait to see if he…the person comes forward or if anyone else shops him,” he said, keeping his eyes off her. “That way your grip on the team will be stronger.”

Oaten frowned as she thought about it. “Yes, true enough. But if no one appears by six, you tell me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Right,” she said, sitting down behind her desk. “I’ve got a meeting with the A.C. in half an hour. Help me go through everything we’ve got. I can’t afford any more cock-ups.”

Turner sat down opposite her and pulled out his notebook. “The initial knocking on doors didn’t get us much-only one old woman who thought she’d seen a man in a suit and a hat walk into the victim’s building around the time we have from the camera. As if we needed confirmation of that.”

“And she didn’t see if he arrived on foot or whatever?”

“Nope. We’ll be checking again, but people will be away for the weekend and it may be we don’t get anything more till they come back.”

The chief inspector sighed. “Despite nationwide television and radio requests for witnesses to come forward.”

Turner shrugged. “We’ve got the pair of them on film, anyway. Not that the hard copies we’ve printed off are much use, considering the men are obviously in disguise.”

Oaten looked at the file on her desk. “The other guy’s about the same size as the one in the suit. Maybe they’re brothers.”

“In arms?”

“Ha-ha. The question is, which one’s the killer? Or do they both get involved?” She grimaced as she swallowed coffee from a plastic cup. “The overalls worn by the bearded one could belong to any workman in the city.” Oaten turned a page. “The postmortem confirmed what the doc told us at the scene. And the SOCOs didn’t come up with much.”

“The two men must have had a change of clothes in their bags. They’d have been spattered with blood. The trail stops in the reception area. They obviously changed there.”

Karen Oaten was shaking her head. “No fingerprints, no suggestive fibers or other physical evidence. Just like the other scenes.” She glanced across at him. “They’re certainly careful.”

“And they’re working to a plan,” Turner added.

“We’re taking the motive as revenge since the lines from the play push us in that direction. But we’ve got three long lists of names to collate and investigate-from the church records, the school rolls and, now, from Dr. Keane’s patient register when he was in Bethnal Green.”