Paul Johnson - The Death List

“Is that right?” he said, doubt written all over his face. Then he looked at me inquisitively. “What is this trouble you’ve got yourself into?” I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist asking.

“Can we come in?” I asked. “It’s a bit chilly out here.”

Bonehead thought about it and then led us inside. We’d been to the place before for a club dinner, but since then he’d added even more outrageous furniture and over-the-top paintings. In the spacious hall, there was a yellow velvet-covered chair with a back high enough to accommodate a giraffe. On the wall above was what I took to be a Lucien Freud original. No one else could have done the drooping breasts and floppy genitalia with such gusto.

“You on your own?” I said, as we followed him into a room furnished only with multicolored leather poufs.

“What’s it to you?”

“Just asking.”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said, throwing us bottles of lager from a fridge concealed in a wooden cabinet. “So, dickheads, tell me why you’re here.”

I did that, not giving him all the details about the Devil, but enough to get him interested.

“Jesus, Wellsy,” he said when I’d finished. “Are you sure this isn’t the plot of your latest novel?”

“I’m sure, all right. Dave Cummings has taken my kid and his family into hiding. The police are doing their best to protect everyone else I know, but the bastard’s way ahead of them.”

“I hope you didn’t tell them about me,” Bonehead said, suddenly anxious.

I shook my head. Actually, I’d forgotten him-he’d never been a particularly close friend and, since the rupture at the Bison, we hadn’t seen much of each other. Now I remembered that he kept a large stock of illegal substances in the house.

“Good,” he said, emptying his beer and opening another. “What do you need?”

I glanced at Rog. “A high-powered computer?”

“No problem.”

“A couple of beds for the night?”

Bonehead laughed. “I could put you both in a double.”

“Piss off,” said Rog, glaring at him.

“Oh, you’d rather share with me, would you, Dodger?”

“Thanks, Pete,” I said, draining my beer. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to eat?”

There was a buzz from a box on the wall by the door.

“That’ll probably be Andy Jackson,” I said as he walked over to it.

“Looks like you’ll be three in the bed, then,” Bonehead said with a wicked smile. “Let him in,” he said to the gorilla at the gate.

“The computer?” Rog asked.

“Upstairs, second door on the right. The password’s Arse69.”

Rog departed, shaking his head.

“Right, Wellsy,” Bonehead said, grinning wickedly as he tossed me another beer. “How are we going to catch this Devil of yours?”

I wasn’t sure whether Peter Satterthwaite was up to nailing a multiple murderer, but he scared the hell out of me.

The White Devil was sitting in front of the bank of screens. There had been no sign of Matt Wells since the morning. He’d checked the tapes. The camera he’d planted above the street door showed a couple of men-obviously police-slumped in a Rover outside. What had the writer been saying to the authorities? Was he hatching some scheme with that hard-faced blond bitch?

The Devil laughed. They could try their worst. He wasn’t frightened of them.

After all, he and his partner had managed to dump a naked body in a rubbish bin in full view of people during the evening rush hour. It was all down to observation. Corky had watched the Borough Market at the end of many days’ trading and he knew exactly when the cleaners came on duty. The white van looked no different from hundreds that the traders and their customers used every day for deliveries. They’d abandoned it in Streatham, after changing into ordinary casual clothes in the back and taking their overalls with them in holdalls. They’d split up immediately and he’d gone a roundabout route by bus to return home. His partner had done the same.

Picking up the fool from the publishers had been easy enough. He’d discovered who worked for Matt Wells’s ex-editor by watching the building in the early evening. Jeanie Young-Burke often left work late, and in recent weeks she’d usually been accompanied by a tall young man with no chin. Matt Wells had obviously warned Young-Burke off as there had been no sign of her that night-the writer would pay dearly for that-but he hadn’t thought to do the same for her assistant and current sex slave. When young Reginald had gone off for lunch with an author and some women from the publishers, the Devil had got him into the van by calling him, having obtained his mobile number from the helpful young woman on the switchboard, and telling him that Jeanie had a surprise for him in the street behind the restaurant. He fell for that immediately.

How he’d begged when they went to work on him. He offered money-apparently his daddy was a merchant banker-he offered his mother’s jewelry, he even offered a cottage in Wales. The Devil had laughed then bitten off his nose. His partner joined in, tearing the nipples off with relish. The Devil finished the upper-class fool off by sinking his teeth into his neck. The dentist who’d been paid handsomely to sharpen his canines had done a good job; he’d also agreed to delete the relevant records from his filing system-for an additional fee, of course. Not that it mattered. He’d used a false name.

The Devil got up and went to the extensive drinks cabinet. He poured himself a glass of neat Bombay gin and carefully tipped a single drop of Martini into it. It was time to celebrate. This was turning into even more fun than he’d thought it would be. Matt Wells was fighting back. He’d deactivated his mobile phone, thus rendering himself untraceable. He wasn’t using his car with the bug the Devil had placed under the chassis. And he’d done what he thought was enough to protect his nearest and dearest. It would be fascinating to see what he did next. Would the writer have the nerve to come after him? If he did, it would bring things to an explosive climax.

One of his mobile phones rang.

“It’s me.” Corky was out of breath and sounded rattled, his motorbike engine also audible.

“What is it?”

“Trouble. Three guys in an Orion waiting in my street. They’re about fifty yards behind me, stuck in traffic.”

“Police?”

“Not sure. They looked harder than that.”

“Villains?”

“Could be. But they remind me more of Jimmy Tanner.” The engine revs rose. “Got to go.” The connection was cut.

The Devil got his breathing under control. The Hereward had turned out to be a bad choice. Someone had passed on information, no doubt the fool Smail who had been cut apart. Could Corky have let something slip to him? No, he wasn’t that stupid, even though he sometimes looked as if he’d been drinking again.

He dismissed the thought and laughed. Ever since he’d won the lottery he had felt invincible. That had been proof that the world was his-if someone like him could win nine and a half million quid of ordinary people’s money, anything was possible. No, whoever was on Corky’s tail wouldn’t get to the Devil in time.

His next victim had only a few hours to live.

I woke up in the ridiculously comfortable bed that Bonehead had directed me to. He’d proudly announced that he had nine spare bedrooms, so Andy, Rog and I didn’t have to share after all. That was a relief. I’d been on several rugby tours with those guys, and though they were my mates, I never wanted to spend another night in the same room as them. Rog snored like a walrus, while Andy suffered from nightmares that seemed to involve him taking on the Germans at Omaha Beach single-handed. One time when we’d had to share a double bed, he’d hit me so hard that I thought the bruise round my eye would never fade. It scared the shit out of the guy who was marking me on the pitch the next day, though.