Paul Johnson - The Soul collector

"Shall I take this heap back to the Carlton-Jones pad?"

I stared at him. "No chance. I don't want her to have a set of wheels."

"We could stake the place out."

I shook my head. "She probably won't be going back there in a hurry."

"You don't reckon she'll report her car stolen?"

I thought about that. "She might, I suppose. Give me a few minutes with this bloody clue."

Andy grunted. "Shit, we'd better cover that thing up, man."

I looked around. The skull was sitting on the backseat, its teeth set in an uneven smile. Whose body had it come from? Andy got out and took off his jacket. He put it over the skull and got back into the driver's seat.

"Let's go," he said.

"Okay. Park near my old flat in Herne Hill. We can get the train to the center from there."

As Andy drove, I ran my eyes back and forward over the lines, scribbling down ideas. "I have enslaved"-I have captured, I have taken prisoner, I have sold into slavery? Why Scotsmen? I didn't know many, though that probably wasn't significant. Scotsmen could be Celts. Therefore, Celtic Football Club supporters? Meaning Glaswegians? There were a couple of Glasgow crime writers who got completely pissed at festivals. Could one of them be the target? Scotsmen: Highlanders, Lowland- ers, islanders, Gaelic-speakers, Picts?

I moved on to the second line. "As well as bestial Ozzies." I didn't buy the Ozzie Osbourne connection. Who else were Ozzies? Was it a reference to Aussies, Australians? Or something to do with the Wizard of Oz? There were beasts in that. Flying monkeys, as far as I could remember. "Tiny Goethe polishes us." Goethe as the author of Faust, who made use of Helen as a character? I racked my brain. What else did Goethe write? He was a polymath, but my knowledge of German literature didn't go much further. I had a vague idea about a work called The Sorrows of Young Werther. Could that link up with the word "sadly"? But I definitely didn't know anyone called Werther. I'd have to do a search on the Internet for Goethe's life and works. Was he a "tiny" man? And why was he polishing? Was he into buffing things up? Buffing people up, as in "us"?

I shook my head. I was getting nowhere with that line, so I moved on. "Building cheaply for blind Cain." As far as I could remember from the Old Testament, Cain wasn't blind. He was a murderer, though, which was suggestive. The first of that kind, and his victim was his own brother, the Abel of the fifth line. But Sara didn't kill her brother, the White Devil. She worshipped him. Someone else's brother, then, but whose? And why was the German poet "building cheaply"? Was he a cowboy builder in his spare time? Could the target be one of those? No, that didn't work. There were thousands of such shoddy handymen in London alone. How could I find the right one? As for the last line, why was Abel not to be mentioned, even though his name was the clue's last word? Was that significant, mentioning something even though it was said not to be? Hell's teeth, my mind was about to experience meltdown.

We left Doris Carlton-Jones's car, taking the skull wrapped in Andy's jacket. She wouldn't find her wheels-unless Sara had put a bug on the hatchback.

Of course, as the latest impenetrable riddle showed, anything was possible.

Jeremy Andrewes had eaten a stodgy breakfast at an old-fashioned gentleman's club, but the indigestion he now felt was worth it. He had got his hands on a seriously juicy story. A gangland informer he sometimes used had rung him and told him that one of the journalist's lot- i.e. the aristocracy, or "nobs," as the snout called them- had moved into cocaine dealing. A photo of the said nob arrived on his phone. The man in question was standing behind a table. On it were clear bags filled with a white powder and piles of banknotes. Even better, Jeremy recognized the man's unmistakable face immediately-he was a longstanding friend of his father's. It was easy to arrange a supposedly social breakfast.

After they had exchanged gossip about who was marrying whom, who was two-timing whom and with whom, and who had the best chance of getting foxhunting made legal again, the journalist cut to the chase.

"Tell me," he said with a sly smile, "how's the Colombian marching powder trade?"

The earl blanched. "What?" he said in a faint voice, his unprepossessing features twitching.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to write a story about you," Andrewes lied. "I'm only interested in the people you do business with. I know you wouldn't be foolish enough to set yourself up against them." He was pretty sure he'd been provided with the information to ensure the earl's good behavior-whether Jeremy exposed him or just hinted that he might do so in the future, the effect would be the same.

"What were you doing?" the journalist continued. "Buying or selling?"

"Selling, of course," the earl said, glancing around the wood-paneled room. "I.I happened to, em.come across a quantity of the drug and I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible."

"For what would appear to be a substantial amount of money." Andrewes grinned. "That should help with the maintenance of the castle. As well as with your other pursuits."

The older man's expression was grim, but he didn't speak.

"All right, tell me who you sold to," the journalist said.

There was a long pause. "You promise you won't refer to me? These people were pretty…unpleasant."

You must have felt right at home, Andrewes thought. "My word is my bond. I'm working on a big expose of the drugs trade in London. This will only be a small piece in the jigsaw."

The earl dabbed a napkin to his damp lips. "Very well. It would be a good thing if the people I sold to were cleared out of this country."

The journalist made no comment, even though that was hardly the Daily Independent's line on immigration. "Let me guess," he said, trying to make things easier for the other man. "Kurds? Turks? There's been some messy stuff between them recently in East London."

"Has there?" the earl said indifferently. "No, no, these people were Albanians."

"Really?" Jeremy Andrewes was impressed by the older man's nerve. The Albanians were the up-and- coming force and they were even more ruthless than the Turkish Shadows. "I don't suppose you got any names?"

"Nobody introduced themselves, if that's what you mean."

The journalist tried to disguise his disappointment.

The earl gave a twisted smile. "But I'm not a complete idiot. I did do my homework. They're a family called Shkrelli." He struggled to pronounce the name and spittle flew from his mouth.

Andrewes felt like a runner who'd just broken the hundred meters world record. A member of the peerage selling coke to the most violent gang in the country-his editor would kiss his feet. He managed to end the conversation and get out of the club, without, he hoped, making the earl suspicious. He thought about going back to his flat to write the piece, but he wanted to be in the office when he submitted it.

He hailed a taxi, took out his BlackBerry and started on a first draft. He was so engrossed that he didn't notice the figure in black leathers to the rear, weaving through the traffic on a powerful motorbike. It was still there, fifty meters behind, when he got out and went into the Daily Indie building.

Pete was squinting at the computer screen as he scrolled down the plastic surgery clinic's records. Rog had got into them, but he needed a break from his laptop so Pete had taken over. There were drops of sweat on his bald head. The only problem with Rog's cousin's flat was that the central heating control was jammed at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Even though the window was open, the room was like an oven.

"Gotcha!" Pete said. "Get a load of this, Dodger." He pointed to the screen.