Paul Johnson - The Soul collector

After what Faik thought was about twenty minutes, the car drove over gravel and stopped. He was told to stay as he was, then a door opened and a black hood was pulled over his head. He was led inside, tripping on steps. It seemed they walked for a long time before he was pushed into a seat and the hood tugged off.

Faik blinked and took in a large, young-looking man with close-cropped black hair. He was sitting behind an enormous desk.

"I'm Safet Shkrelli," the man said, picking up a silver revolver with pearl handles. "Tell me why I shouldn't shoot you right now."

"You know why," Faik replied. His voice was steady; he had nothing to lose. "I can take you to your numbers man."

"Where is he?"

Faik shook his head slowly. "I take you there," he repeated. "Then you protect me."

Shkrelli thought about that. "Is he alive?" he asked.

"He was when I last saw him-just."

"What happened to him?"

"I'll tell you when we get there."

The muzzle of the weapon was suddenly pointing at Faik's face. "Are you setting me up, boy?" the Albanian asked. "Are your people planning on ambushing me? I use dum-dum bullets. Do you know how much damage one of them can do? Your own mother won't recognize you."

Faik held his gaze. "This is no setup, Mr. Shkrelli. There is no ambush. All I want is for you to protect me until you find the…the person who took your man."

Safet Shkrelli drank from a bottle of water. "So take me, boy. Tell me the district."

"Stoke Newington."

The hood came back down over Faik's head. He was taken through the process in reverse and heard someone else join the driver in the front of the car. After they had driven for about a quarter of an hour, the hood was removed. Faik looked around, recognizing the streets around Finsbury Park station. Ahead, he could see two more black Mercedes and behind was a black Land Cruiser. All the vehicles were full.

"Tell us the address," the driver said.

Faik did so and the driver relayed it via his hands-free device. The column drove down Green Lanes. People stared and some of them raised cell phones to their ears. The local gangs-the Shadows, the King's men-wouldn't be slow to gather. Faik's armpits were drenched in sweat, but his breathing was regular. The lead car turned into the street and stopped, blocking the road. Men got out, their hands in their jackets. The man with the thin mustache got out and beckoned to Faik to follow. He did so, then headed for the door he had come out of that morning-it seemed like days had passed.

When he pushed the door open, not particularly surprised that it hadn't been shut by the last person to leave, he turned his head and saw Safet Shkrelli get out of the second Mercedes. Bodyguards quickly gathered around him and walked him to the house. Suddenly it struck Faik that if his captor had managed to remove the body, Shkrelli would dispose of him in seconds. He went up the stair quickly, nervous for the first time.

He needn't have been. The Albanian numbers man was still in the second-floor flat. His body was on the living room floor, as it was when Faik had escaped. But his head was on top of the television, his hands in the bathroom and his feet in the bedroom.

After looking around, the man with the mustache threw up on Safet Shkrelli's shoes. Twenty-Four I walked toward Andy, signaling to him to stay where he was to avoid scaring the neighbors. I joined him at the rear of the garage.

"It was in a trunk in the garage," he said. "I forced the door at the back because I got curious."

I pulled on latex gloves like the ones he was wearing and took the skull from him. I had no idea how old it was, but it was very clean and so white that I wondered if it was plastic. But the feel of it was definitely bone. The question was, who did it belong to? And also, where was the rest of the body?

There was the rasping roar of a motorbike engine.

"Shit!" Andy said, running past me to the front of the garage.

I followed him, trying to shield the skull under my jacket. I was in time to see a figure in black leathers and helmet crouching over a powerful bike, as Doris Carlton- Jones climbed on behind. Jesus, was it Sara?

Before I could put the skull down and draw my weapon, the metallic red motorbike rocketed down the street. Not long afterward I heard a less deafening engine noise to my left.

"Get in, Matt!" Andy said from the driver's seat of Mrs. Carlton-Jones's hatchback.

Somehow I managed to do that without dropping the skull. Andy reversed at speed, spun the wheel and set off down the street.

"Hot-wired," I said. "Nice one, Slash."

"Being in a teen gang had its uses," he said, swerving out of the driveway and accelerating after the motorbike. "So the old woman was in on it all along. I've seen that machine before."

I grabbed my door handle as he braked hard and then turned out of the crescent. The motorbike was still in sight, but there were several cars between it and us.

"Looks like Sara and she have had a family reunion," I said. "Bloody hell, what are you doing?"

Andy had veered into the opposite lane, provoking loud horn blasts.

"That's an idea," he said, hitting his horn. In under a minute, we were only one car behind the bike. "It's a Transalp, a powerful beast. This piece of crap has got no chance of catching it on an open road."

"Cool it, big man," I said, my heart still pounding. "The rider's bound to have seen us."

"Good," the American said, slamming the gas pedal to the floor and overtaking the car ahead. "Maybe she'll make a mistake."

There was no sign of that. The motorbike had clear space in front of it and we struggled to stay in touch. The lights ahead were green, but by the time we approached, they were changing.

"Brace, brace!" Andy yelled, following the bike to the right and narrowly missing a pair of boys who had started to cross the road.

"Will you slow down, Slash?"

The bike had sped away again, toward Dulwich.

"Where do you think they're heading? Maybe they're going to murder someone else," he said, running another light, just as it was clear the motorbike was gone for good.

"Fuck!" Andy roared, slamming his hands on the wheel.

"Did you see which way it went?"

"No. That supermarket rig got in the way."

"Forget it," I said. "Pull in over there. I need to see if Doctor Faustus has sent another message."

I pulled out my laptop. It took a few minutes for the wi-fi card to latch on to a signal. I opened my e-mail program and watched the new messages stack up. Most were from family and friends, reporting in. Caroline said Fran and Lucy were fine, but I could tell she was going spare in the safe house. I assumed the last message was porn spam-the sender was mynameishelen-but I checked before deleting and saw I'd nearly screwed up in a big way. It was from the killer. I read it aloud: Well, Matt, here I am again. I bet the sender name's got you wondering. Call yourself an English graduate? Who did Faustus lust after? That's right, Helen of Troy. Why am I using her name? That's for you to work out. Hey, guess what. It's deadline time again. Since you identified Adrian Brooks correctly-even though I couldn't resist dealing with your treacherous friend Hinkley instead-I'm giving you even less time. Answer this by twelve midday, and I mean today, clever boy: I have enslaved Scotsmen As well as bestial Ozzies. Tiny Goethe polishes us sadly, Building cheaply for blind Cain. (Not to mention Abel.) See you in hell! Helen. (And Doctor Faustus, of course) "What's that all about?" Andy said with a groan. I was writing the clue down in my notebook. When I'd finished, I sent it to Caroline and my mother, then logged off and closed the laptop. "What does it mean?" I repeated. "We've got just over three hours to work that out." I looked at the title again. "Helen. Is that Sara finally hinting that she's been sending the messages and doing the murders?" "What, because she's used a woman's name?" I nodded, still examining the words. "Goethe wrote a version of Faust, so Helen fits with that, as well as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus." "Who's Goethe?" "Eighteenth-century German writer," I replied. "Bestial Ozzies? Is that a reference to the ex-Black Sabbath singer?" "What? Ozzie Osbourne?" The American grinned. "I saw him live when I was a kid. Sick, but a gas." "Yeah, bestial would go with him," I said, trying to concentrate. "Bestial means 'beastly' or 'brutish.'" "There was that story about Ozzie biting the head off a bat on stage. That was pretty brutish." Andy looked around. "Are we staying here?" "What? No."