Paul Johnson - The Death List

“As much of them as I had to,” Oaten replied with a grimace. “This is strictly confidential. The killer left a quotation from The White Devil in each victim.”

“In each victim?” I said, sounding horrified.

She nodded. “I’ll spare you the details. Why do you think he-or she-would do such a thing?”

I remembered that the Devil may have been watching and listening. “I…I really don’t know.”

“Come on, you can do better than that,” the Welshman said, glaring at me.

“Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was something to do with revenge. That’s one of the main features of Jacobean tragedy.”

“So I understand,” Oaten said. “I’ve been talking to Dr. Lizzie Everhead. You know her, I believe.”

I stifled a groan. Lizzie Everhead was the academic who had laid into me in public. She’d accused me of everything from historical inaccuracy to callous brutality.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “I’ve bumped into her at crime-writing conferences.”

“And,” continued the chief inspector, “since you knew none of the victims, you would have no motive for revenging yourself on them.”

“Certainly not,” I said, laying on the outrage with a trowel.

She ignored that. “Mr. Wells, I presume your fans communicate with you via your Web site, as I did. Have any of them shown…unusual tendencies?”

“A lot of them.” I tried to lighten the atmosphere by smiling. “Some want to be my best friend, or more than that. I always keep them at arm’s length. Some want me to write more books in my first series and some want me to help them get published. But, as far as I can tell, none of them is homicidal.” I imagined the Devil listening to the lie and laughing.

Karen Oaten looked at my laptop. “Would you mind if we checked your correspondence?”

I bit my lip, aware of how suspicious they were about to become. “I’m afraid I managed to pour coffee over my main computer. I’ve given it to a friend who’s an expert. I hope he can salvage the files. That one’s my old laptop. It’s been in the attic for the past three years so there’s nothing recent on it-apart from your e-mail.” I was going to ask them if they had a warrant, but managed to stop myself in time. I needed to be as cooperative as possible, without antagonizing the Devil.

“Never mind,” the chief inspector said, to my surprise. “We can always ask your Web site provider to give us access. I presume you have no objection.”

I tried to keep calm. “No.”

“We’ll need your girlfriend’s name and contact details,” the Welshman said.

I gave them to him, feeling bad about dumping Sara in the shit. On the other hand, she’d probably be happy to get a potential story angle. “She’s a journalist on the Daily Independent,” I added. That didn’t seem to impress them.

“You’ll be doing yourself a favor if you don’t tell her we’re coming,” Turner said, giving me a hard look.

Oaten got up again. “I think we’ve taken enough of your time for now, Mr. Wells. Thank you for being so-” She broke off as her mobile rang. She listened for over a minute, her expression getting more and more grave.

“Guv?” the inspector said when she’d finished.

Karen Oaten was paying no attention to him. Her eyes were locked on mine, her gaze unyielding. “Mr. Wells, do you know a man called Alexander Drys?”

A deep foreboding washed over me. “I don’t know him in person,” I said. “He’s a literary critic.” I didn’t add that he’d given me a string of vicious reviews and that I’d have happily ripped his balls off if he’d ever had the nerve to show up at a literary function.

“I see,” Oaten said, turning on her heel and heading for the door.

“What’s happened?” I asked desperately.

“Watch the news,” the chief inspector said over her shoulder. “We’ll be in touch.” That sounded more like a threat than anything else.

I heard the street door close behind them and then their car move away at speed. I had the distinct feeling that the Devil had upped the stakes once again.

“Just put the tray down and get out of here, girl,” Alexander Drys had said to the maid.

He was in the drawing room of his house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, preparing to take morning coffee. He’d always hated interruptions, especially when he was preparing to write his monthly roundup of reviews for the magazine. If he’d been honest with himself-a rare event-he would have admitted that his temper had always been quick. He’d been spoiled from the earliest age. His father, a London Greek shipping magnate, was generous though rarely in the house, while his mother, a former model, was always present during the holidays to look after his every need. Along with the staff, of course.

Drys looked at the meager selection of fancy cakes on the tray. He would have to do something about the girl. She was Portuguese and hardly knew a word of English. He should never have listened to his butler, who was probably screwing her. The situation was particularly bad on Mondays, when all the other servants had the day off.

He got up from the Louis XVI chaise longue and moved his twenty-stone body to the window. The river was sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, its normal sludgy tone transformed. The plebs were driving across Albert Bridge in their hundreds, off to their worthless jobs or to the shops. At least there were no kids to be seen. Thank God he’d remained single-not that there had ever been any chance of him getting married, despite his father’s insistence that the dynasty be continued. Alexander Drys had no interest in shipping and no desire to share the house with a wife, never mind mewling brats. Particularly not when he could ring up Madame Ostrovka any time he wanted and take advantage of her endless supply of blonds from the former Soviet Union. “Fuck ’em and chuck ’em,” that was the motto he’d been regaling his cronies at the club with for decades.

No, the only thing that interested him was dissecting crime novels. He blamed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He’d come across The Dancing Men in an anthology at school back in the fifties, and had been instantly hooked. After he’d finished reading English at Cambridge (an undistinguished third, but no one remembered that), he used his connections and family wealth to obtain reviewing positions on numerous publications. True, he was less in evidence now than in his heyday during the eighties-Thatcherite contempt for frivolous writing having been very much to his taste-but a notice from him could still make or, more often, break a novelist’s career. Not that he cared about that. If you wrote fiction, you deserved criticism. That was one reason why he’d never attempted it himself. Well, that and a lamentable lack of application. Anything longer than eight-hundred words was a real challenge.

Drys went back to the chaise longue and ate the five dainties quickly. After a cup of Earl Grey, he turned to the piles of books that he’d lined up on the Persian carpet. They were in four tiers. The one on the left consisted of books that he hadn’t even opened-either he knew the author wasn’t one who would interest him or he disliked the publisher. The next was made up of books of which he’d read ten pages and then given up. The third pile was of books he’d read through and decided to put the knife into-this was what his readers expected, indeed, desired. The fourth and smallest consisted of books that he would praise. Not excessively, and certainly not without caveats. The fact that the publishers of those novels had wined and dined him was neither here nor here.

Alexander Drys raised his head. He’d heard a noise at the rear of the house, a strange noise-something between a thud and a crack. What on earth was that stupid girl doing? He reached over to the art deco coffee table and rang the brass bell, a seventeenth-century piece from his ancestors’ island of Psara. When she didn’t appear, he hauled himself to his feet and went to the door.