Paul Johnson - The Soul collector

"Again the hair and nails of an unbeliever burn to the greater glory of the Lord Beneath the Earth!"

The masked man in the cowl and robe lowered his arms. He looked around the cavern. The mandrill Beelzebub was squatting by the sluggish stream, splashing his paws in it. There were no fish in the shallow water. Perhaps he was trying to catch his reflection. One might have thought the fangs would scare him, but the beast was made of sterner stuff.

As was the naked supplicant at the altar. Mephistoph- eles had seen some wonderfully sinister devotees in the years he had directed the order, but there had never been one such as this. His faith in his Master had been restored, as, soon, would be the family fortunes.

Beelzebub screamed and came charging over the stone floor. When the supplicant turned, the mandrill stopped immediately and lowered his head. He had always respected the stronger, more vicious creature whose face was uglier than his own. Eleven Shit," I said, leaning back from my desk. Andy was quickly behind me. "Don't worry, it isn't another puzzle," I said. "It's Rog." The American read our friend's plea, then looked at me. "He's right, Matt. We're sticking together. So should Rog and Pete." I thought about it. My instinct for safety told me it was a bad idea, but there was no question that Dave would have wanted us to get in Sara's face. "All right," I said, leaning toward the keyboard. "I'll tell them to set up base at Pete's place. Even Sara will have a job getting past his alarm system." Andy nodded. "And maybe we'll catch her trying." I wasn't convinced by that, but it was worth a shot. Besides, Dave had taught us how to look after ourselves and each other. Not that it had done him any good. I also sent Rog the puzzle and asked him to run it through any deciphering programs he had access to. An hour later, Andy and I were going through the sheets I'd printed off. Rog wasn't convinced that the line about the sun setting on the westernmost dunes of Alexander's womankind was algorithmic or mathematical in form, but he'd tried anyway. He knew a lot about ciphers from the programs he wrote all the time. I'd also asked Pete to think about it. He had the kind of mind that picked up unusual information and noticed things that most people didn't. Again, I wasn't very hopeful. I had the feeling the line was more like a crossword clue. The problem was, I'd always been crap at cryptic crosswords.

Before I got down to serious consideration of the clue, I looked at the material Pete had sent to the Web site. He'd been talking to his friends in the City and was following up several of Rog's leads. Background material was attached, but there wasn't enough to act on yet.

"What now?" Andy asked, papers on the floor around him. He looked substantially out of his depth.

"We have to work out a strategy, Slash. I'm going to see if I can make any sense out of that bloody riddle. There's a deadline on it, literally."

"Ha," the American said. "What do you want me to do?"

I'd been thinking about that, and about the woman who was the owner of the four British properties bought with Sara's funds.

"Angela Oliver-Merilee," I said. "Mean anything to you?"

Andy ran a hand through his blond thatch. "Should it?"

"Oh, yes. What was the White Devil's real name?"

That made him think. "Shit, man, I can't remember. Lonnie something?"

"Close. Leslie Dunn. Except, he was adopted, remember? When I was writing The Death List, I got a copy of the adoption papers." I held up the file that I'd taken from my safe earlier on. "Spit it out, smart-ass," Andy said impatiently. "Well, his birth mother's name was Doris Merilee." He stared at me. "All right. But I still don't see where you're going with this." I opened the file and pointed to a section of the poor- quality copy. "He wasn't christened, but his birth mother had given him a name. She called him-" "Oliver," he completed. "Jeez. What does that mean?" I shrugged. "That depends. Sara's still hurting about her twin brother's death and she's been planning carefully. The first of those properties, the farmhouse in Kent, was bought six months ago. The last, the cottage in the Scottish borders, was bought only a month back. But that's not all." I pulled another sheet from the file. "Doris Merilee gave Sara a name, too." Andy's eyes widened. "Angela." I nodded. "On the button." "I still don't understand where this leads us." I wrote an address on a slip of paper and handed it to him. "47 Northumberland Crescent, Sydenham," he read. "That's where the birth mother lives." Andy stood up slowly. "Christ, she's still alive?" "According to the phone directory. She married three years after she gave the twins up for adoption. Her name's now Doris Carlton-Jones." "Okay. Shall I bring her in?" I laughed. "No, Slash. You aren't a cop, remember? I'm going to give you my camera. You need to hire a van. Park it near the house and use it for cover while you carry out surveillance. Take photos of her if she comes out." I gave him a serious look. "Take your gun with you. It's possible that Sara's reestablished contact with her and is down there. She might even turn up for a visit."

"Jeez, that would solve a lot of problems."

I raised my hand, aware that what I was about to say was a waste of breath. "Don't try to grab Sara if she shows. Call me and I'll get Karen involved."

He looked at me dubiously and then nodded. "Okay."

"Call in every hour on the hour, on the secure line." Rog had done what he could to make the landline I used only for my friends secure. There was still a risk, but it was small and I preferred to know that Andy was okay.

He nodded. "What about the other two properties Sara bought?"

"There's a house in Oxford and a flat in Hackney."

"Hackney, East London? That's a bit down-market for her, isn't it?"

I thought about that. "It isn't clear what she's doing with the properties. Maybe they're just investments. Or potential safe houses."

"Not anymore. We have to check them out."

"We do. But I have to solve this bloody clue first, remember?"

"Shouldn't I take a look at the places in and around London rather than watch on the mother?"

I shook my head. "When we go in, we go in together, okay?"

He was reluctant, but he accepted that.

"Stay sharp," I said, when he'd got himself ready.

He slapped me on the shoulder. "Ditto. Good hunting with that puzzle shit."

I undid the chains and replaced them when he'd gone out. Then I went back to my desk and concentrated on the puzzle. I'd done some research on cryptography for one of my novels set in the seventeenth century. People back then were keen on codes because of the political and religious turmoil. The problem was, there were a hell of a lot of different methods-substitution codes based on arithmetical figures, such as shifting every letter forward by three; transposition ciphers, where the order of letters is changed; anagrams, where rearranged letters make a different word; acrostics, where the first or last letters form different words-and that was just the start. I tried all those basic ideas with the "sun sets" line and got nowhere. The problem with both substitution and transposition is that, without the key, you can waste huge amounts of time crunching the numerous possibilities. That was where computer software came in, and Roger could use it-but time he spent on the clue was time not spent tracking down Sara. He was better employed doing the latter, not least because there was a good chance she was the one who had sent the message and he might kill two birds with one well-aimed stone.

I got up from my desk, its surface covered in crumpled pieces of paper, and walked up and down the living area. My mind was all over the place, and the fact that someone's life hung in the balance didn't do a lot for the state of my nerves. I thought about turning the message over to Karen. Would the sender ever find out? This was different from the White Devil case-then, my flat had been bugged and cameras had been secretly installed. Andy had been over my apartment with the locating device and got nothing except the alarm system. So was it safe to tell Karen? No chance. Even if she was prepared to keep quiet about the fact that Mary Malone's killer had contacted me, the nature of police work meant that someone would spot their involvement, even if they didn't use sirens or send in the Armed Response Unit. Besides, the VCCT had a history of leaking to the press. As I'd seen with Jeremy Andrewes's use of Josh Hinkley, those hounds were already on my trail. No, I had to keep Karen out of this loop, as well.