Paul Johnson - The Soul collector

"Is that a safe?" Rog asked, pointing to the LCD display.

"Correct. Look away, Dodger."

Pete punched in numbers and there was a dull click. "Thought you might need some spending money," he said, handing over a wedge of fifty-pound notes.

"Bloody hell, Boney," Rog said, counting the notes. "There's five grand here."

"Yeah, well, I'll be expecting you to account for it."

"Sure."

"Pillock. Of course I won't. Just be careful you don't run short."

"I'm all right. I've got accounts at different banks and there are funds in each one."

"I don't need to know that, Rog," Pete said. "But remember-Sara might be monitoring our finances. She has the funds to obtain that information. So keep bank card use to a minimum."

Soon afterward, Pete was on his own. At least Rog seemed gradually to be coping better, he thought. The poor sod had grown up in a soft, bourgeois family and had never done anything he didn't want to. Whereas Pete had dragged himself up from a broken home in a drug-ridden estate in Lancashire. He'd been mocked because he was smart, beaten up because he was gay and spat on when he'd started to make money. His mother had died from bad heroin and he hadn't been back home since he was eighteen, already halfway to setting up his computer maintenance company. That turned into a full-blown computer manufacturing operation by the time he was twenty-three and it had floated on the Stock Exchange on his twenty-eighth birthday. Selling his shares when he was thirty-five netted him a hundred and twenty million pounds, most of which was now invested in blue-chip companies and funds all over the world. The five grand he'd given Rog meant nothing to him.

But getting even with whoever had killed Dave did. Pete wasn't convinced that Matt's ex-squeeze had done the murder herself. The woman could easily have bought herself a hit man with the White Devil's millions. There were forty-two of those the last time Pete had done an informed estimate, the bitch having obviously obtained good investment advice. Now it was time to see if some of his contacts could screw with Sara Robbins's wealth. Not that she went by that name anymore. She had numerous identities, only some of which he and Rog knew.

He left the Grand Cherokee in a leafy street in Bromley, having emptied the safe. With any luck, the Jeep would still be there when he came to pick it up, after Sara Robbins had been dealt with. If she came out on top, Pete would have no need of his car or his fortune-he'd have gone to the same place as Dave.

He hoisted the bag containing the sniper's rifle and the rest of his gear over his shoulder and set off toward the station. No one saw him in the rain that had turned into a heavy downpour. That was just as well. When Peter Sat- terthwaite was determined to achieve something, his face took on the look of a particularly savage avenging angel.

After I'd had my fingerprints taken and dictated a statement, I was told that one of Karen's team had driven my Saab to the car park beneath New Scotland Yard.

"You don't have to leave, Matt," Karen said quietly. "If it was Sara Robbins who killed Dave, you'll be in real danger."

We were in her office, the door ajar. She went over and closed it.

I was slumped in a chair, my head down, trying to get the sight of Dave from my mind. But when I succeeded, all I saw was Ginny. She had slapped my face and told me I should never have written my book-all it had done was drive the White Devil's sister even more crazy. And I saw Tom, trying manfully not to cry because his dad wouldn't have liked that, and Annie, who looked at me as if I was a war criminal. Which, in a way, I was.

"I wonder where she'll strike next." She shook me lightly. "Rog, Pete and Andy aren't at home and they aren't answering their phones. They need to give us statements about this morning to corroborate your story." She brought her face down to the level of mine. "Where are they, Matt? They're in danger."

"I don't know," I said. I could see she didn't believe that. "Honestly. They…they have things to do."

"You've got a plan, haven't you? For God's sake, Matt, you have to let me in on it. I can't protect you otherwise."

I shrugged. "I told you, I don't know where they are." She stood up and walked behind her desk. "Bullshit. You must have ways of contacting them." I wasn't answering that. I got to my feet. "Can I go now?" Karen blinked, her expression softening. "Please, Matt. I.I love you. Why can't you accept my help?" I raised as much of a smile as I could. "I love you, too, but you have to let me protect my people." "Like you protected Dave?" she said sharply, her hand flying to her mouth. "I'm sorry, Matt." I turned and headed for the door. I'd always suspected that Sara would come between Karen and me when she returned, but I hadn't thought it would happen so quickly. Eight Josh Hinkley, wearing a thousand-pound leather jacket and shoes with real silver buckles, was slouched in an armchair in a coffee shop on Charlotte Street, discarded newspapers all around him. He looked up when another double espresso was placed in front of him.

"Oh, there you are, mate." He looked at his gold Rolex. "Just twenty-seven minutes late."

"Hello, Josh, good to see you, too." Jeremy Andrewes shoved a heap of books off the armchair next to him and sat down.

"Oy, those are review copies."

The other man shrugged. "Which you cast an idle eye over and then flog to the shops on Charing Cross Road, even though you don't need the money."

"Bloody journalists," Hinkley said. "Think you know it all."

Andrewes ignored that and ate a piece of chocolate cake.

Josh Hinkley threw the espresso back in one. "Ah-ha! That hit the spot." He winked. "But not like the marching powder I just snorted in the bog."

Andrewes concentrated on his cake. Josh Hinkley liked to play at being "the bad boy of British crime writing," a moniker many reckoned he'd come up with himself. He certainly cultivated the image assiduously. He'd been arrested a couple of times for possession of cannabis, before the Met's user-friendly policy came in. That didn't impress Jeremy Andrewes, the crime correspondent of the Daily Independent. He had little time for crime novel- ists-apart from now.

"So what's this meet in aid of?" Hinkley said, running a hand through his gray hair. His face was pocked by old acne scars and his belly hung over his designer jeans. Strangely, his appearance didn't put off the surprisingly young female fans of his books. Then again, he was rolling in money.

"Another double es, darling!" the novelist shouted to the dark-skinned girl at the counter. "Slag," he muttered, when she gave him a haughty look. "Not long out of the jungle."

"Steady on, Josh," the journalist said, catching the other man's eye. "Civilized people don't talk like that anymore." Andrewes was an old Etonian, whose great-grandfather had made a fortune exploiting workers all over the world. That should have made the journo uncomfortable, particularly as he worked for a left-wing paper, but it didn't.

"Excuse me for breathing," Hinkley said defiantly.

Andrewes finished his cake. It was a good one, almost as good as the cook produced at the family house in Hampshire. He wasn't looking forward to asking a favor of Hinkley, but he knew it would be worth it. The novelist was a serious gossip-hound. What the man didn't know about his fellow crime writers could be written on the back of one of his lurid novels.

"I have a problem." Andrewes took a sip of his latte and tried to formulate a request that didn't make him sound too much like a supplicant before an oracle. "Well, as a matter of fact, two." He smiled, hoping the insincerity wasn't too obvious. "I need some background on a couple of crime writers. And you're the man in the know."

Hinkley didn't look impressed. He may have written novels with minimal literary merit, but he was smart. Most bestselling authors were, in the journalist's limited experience.