The Death List (15 page)

Turner caught up with her. “Careful, guv,” he said in a low voice. “You sound like you’re turning into one of those people in the play. A revenger.”

Karen Oaten kept her eyes off him. “Revenge is a powerful motive, Taff. That’s what’s driving our killer, I’m sure of it. If we want to catch him before he slaughters everyone who ever wronged him, we have to get inside his head. I’ll see you later.”

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

“I had an appointment with an expert in Jacobean tragedy yesterday, remember?” she said over her shoulder. “Had to postpone because of what happened in Chelmsford. But now, after the second quotation, it’s even more pressing.”

The chief inspector strode toward her car, trying to blink away the sight of the schoolteacher’s mutilated body. The man—she was sure it was a male—who killed her had left his calling card in the poor woman’s most private place. She’d sworn an oath back there in the morgue to catch him, and she felt the power of her words burning in her veins.

If she had to go to hell to catch this devil, she would gladly do so.

I finished the rewrite of my tormentor’s latest chapter and sent it off to him at four in the morning. That meant, at least in theory, that he might be delivering the next payment any time. I tried to sit up and watch the road below from a gap between the curtains, but it wasn’t long before I fell into a blood-dripping, demon-filled dream. When I awoke with a start, I saw it was daylight. Shit. I ran downstairs. There was no package on the mat. Panting with relief, I went slowly back upstairs to my flat.

I wanted to get the newspapers to find out the latest on the Chelmsford murder, but I couldn’t leave the house in case he showed up. I thought about it. Even if I did catch him, what did I think I was going to be able to do? Take on the man who had killed at least four people? With what? My Swiss Army knife? I realized I was trembling. I remembered the Devil’s taunts. I was a crime writer who was now deeply involved in real-life crime. He was right. I couldn’t cope. Then I thought of Lucy. I had to protect her. What would my life be worth if something happened to my beautiful little girl? And Sara? Could I live with her being hurt?

It was Saturday. By nine o’clock it was warm, the birds in the gardens between the houses making a colossal amount of noise. The usual arrangement was that Caroline had Lucy on Saturdays and I had her on Sundays. That suited me. I could wait for the Devil’s delivery. I logged on to my e-mail program. There was no message from him. What did that mean? Was he on his way here or was he tearing some other poor soul to pieces?

I dressed quickly, not taking a shower or shaving so that I could keep an eye on the road. The usual laid-back activities of a Saturday morning were going on—men wandering off to get the papers, with small children running around them; couples walking their dogs; families loading up people carriers for expeditions to the country. No one or nothing out of the ordinary. The postman came along the street with his buggy. I knew him. He dropped a couple of bills through the flap and continued on his way. Nothing else happened.

I unplugged my laptop and brought it over to the window, keeping the Internet connection attached. If I couldn’t go out to get the papers, I could at least check their Web sites. I wished I hadn’t. The details about the old woman’s murder, especially in the tabloids, were horrific. I went to the
Daily Independent
and found Sara’s story. She was co-credited with a colleague. Apparently there had been a late-night press conference at which Detective Chief Inspector Karen Oaten (“tight-lipped and barely controlling her outrage”) had described the modus operandi. But there had been no mention of the quotation from
The White Devil.
Either the bastard had lied about that, or the police were keeping it quiet. If the latter was the case, they might as well not have bothered. The tabloids were already linking the murders and splashing the words “serial” and “killer” about their copy liberally. At least no one had spotted the similarities to the murders in my novels. There hadn’t even been any e-mails to me from fans. So much for my presence in the public imagination.

I was stuffing a piece of stale bread into my mouth when my mobile rang.

“Mmm?” I answered.

“What kind of telephone manner is that, Matt?” It was the Devil. “Eating breakfast on the hoof is bad for your digestion.”

I got the mouthful down. “What do you want?”

“A bit of politeness would be nice,” he said, his voice hardening.

“You didn’t send me any notes this morning. I thought this was my day off.”

There was a hollow laugh. “Very likely. You’re busy looking out for me.”

How did he know that? He must have some kind of bug or camera in my place.

“Aren’t you?”

“Um, yeah, I am,” I said weakly. “Well, you did tell me you’d be bringing the money.”

“Yes, I did, didn’t I? But I didn’t tell you exactly when I’d be doing that, did I? Could be today, could be tomorrow. Who knows?” His tone got sharper. “If I were you, Matt, I’d keep a closer eye on your daughter than on the street. Who knows what dangers your ex-wife might inadvertently expose her to?”

The line went dead.

A wave of panic crashed over me. I grabbed my mobile, wallet and keys, pulled on my leather jacket and ran out of the house. Getting into the Volvo, I drove at speed down to Dulwich Village. I knew Caroline’s routine. She always took Lucy to the local café for breakfast. Then they went for a walk in the park before Lucy’s ballet class at midday. If I was lucky, they’d still be eating. I parked round the corner and walked toward the café.

Before I got there, I realized two things. The first was that the Devil had very successfully got me out of the house so he could make his delivery unnoticed. The second was that I was about to be engulfed in a firestorm. Caroline was very jealous of the time she spent with Lucy. She’d made it clear on numerous occasions that my presence, even accidental, was not to be tolerated. I stopped outside the newsagent’s and decided to keep my distance. I bought a copy of one of the broadsheets that I hadn’t checked on the Internet and opened it, loitering behind a lamppost twenty meters from the café.

Ten minutes later, Caroline and Lucy came out. My daughter was dressed in a pink anorak and skirt with white tights, while my ex-wife was wearing the torn jeans and baggy sweater that she affected at weekends—trying to look as unlike a City highflier as she could, as I’d pointed out before the divorce at the cost of a serious ear-bashing. They set off toward College Road. I followed them at what I thought was a discreet distance, the newspaper flapping in front of me like a sail buffeted by the breeze. When they turned into the park, I gave them a minute and then went in. I watched as Lucy ran ahead. She loved the boating lake and its birds. Caroline didn’t make any effort to keep up with her. She knew that Lucy was careful. But she didn’t know about the White Devil. I felt a pang of guilt. I should have found a way to tell her. Then I remembered how dangerous the bastard was.

Caroline sat down on a bench near the water and studied her paper. I moved along the line of bushes behind her with my eyes on Lucy. She was crouching down and throwing bread to the birds. The park was quite busy with couples, children, dogs, buggies. It didn’t seem like a place where the Devil could get to Lucy.

I looked to my left and watched a skinny man in his thirties limping past. His clothes were ragged and dirty, his hair unkempt. Probably a junkie who’d spent the night in the undergrowth. Turning back, I couldn’t see Lucy. Shit. Caroline was still reading her paper on the bench. I ran behind her, resisting the urge to shout my daughter’s name. The ducks and seagulls that had gathered around the bread she’d scattered made noises of outrage and flapped their wings as I went through them. Where was she?

I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“Lucy!” I yelled. “Lucy, where are you?” I looked around frantically. Caroline had got up, alarm on her face. “Lucy, come to Daddy! Lucy!” I ran to the trees that were set back from the lake. A young couple with a Labrador were walking there. “Have you seen a little girl, pink anorak and skirt?” I demanded.

They stepped back at the fervor of my tone, and then looked at each other.

“Yes,” the woman said, raising an arm. “Over there.”

“Thanks,” I gasped.

“She was with a man, yeah?” the guy said.

“What?” I started to run in the direction the woman had indicated. “What did he look like?” I shouted over my shoulder. They both shrugged.

The last tree in the row was an ancient oak, its trunk thick and gnarled.

“Lucy!” I shouted desperately. “Lucy!”

“Matt!” Caroline screamed, about fifty yards to my rear. “Where is she?”

And then Lucy stepped out from behind the oak. I almost pissed myself as the tension left me. She was walking toward me, a baseball cap I’d never seen before on her head and a small leather bag in her right hand.

“Lucy!” So close to her, my voice was too loud. It scared her, tears springing up in her eyes. “Are you all right, darling?”

“Yes, Daddy, of course I’m all right,” she said in the painstaking tone she took when she thought she’d been unjustly accused.

“Where did you get that hat?” I asked, clutching her to me. It was red, with a cartoon character on the front. Jesus. It was the Tasmanian Devil, the cartoon one with the oversize jaws that arrived in a miniature whirlwind. The crazy bastard.

“This is for you, Daddy,” she said, wriggling out of my arms and handing me the black leather man’s handbag.

“What’s going on?” Caroline said, trying to catch her breath. “What are you doing here, Matt?”

I gave her a glare to shut her up. “Where did you get the hat and the bag, sweetie?”

“Mr. White gave them to me,” she said, no trace of fear in her voice or face.

“Mr. White?” my ex-wife said, staring at Lucy. “We don’t know any Mr. White.”

“Daddy does.” My daughter pointed to the bag. “Mr. White said I was to give Daddy the bag and I could keep the cap.”

I tried to get my pounding heart under control.

“Who is this Mr.—”

I held my hand up at Caroline. “What did Mr. White look like, Lucy?”

She laughed. “Silly daddy. Mr. White’s your friend. He said so. You must know what he looks like.”

I glanced at Caroline. Her face was suffused with crimson, a sure sign that anger was about to erupt. “Just tell me what he looked like,” I said, kneeling down in front of Lucy. “So I’m sure it’s the right person.”

My daughter gave me a curious look and then laughed again. “All right, silly daddy. Mr. White’s got long black hair.” She pouted. “And a mouse.”

“What?” Caroline and I said in unison.

“I said, he’s got a mouse.” Lucy burst out in peals of laughter. “Don’t you remember the story we used to read? About the boy who wouldn’t say ‘mustache’? So he said his daddy had a mouse under his nose.”

I stood up again, ignoring the tirade that Caroline had started. Long black hair and a mustache—it sounded like the kind of disguise you could buy in any joke shop. Still, I’d get Lucy to do a drawing of him tomorrow.

“Are you even listening to me, Matt?” my ex-wife said, pushing me in the chest. “What the hell’s going on? What’s in that bag?”

I looked down at the object in my hands. The money. It had to be the money. I couldn’t open it in front of Caroline and Lucy.

“Oh, it’s…it’s some CDs I lent the guy. I…I met him in the pub and we got talking. We both like Americana.” I felt my cheeks redden. I could tell that Caroline didn’t believe me, but she wasn’t prepared to make even more of a scene in front of Lucy.

“Yeah,” she said under her breath. “Like you have a friend called Mr. White. I suppose he’s a fan of that awful movie
Reservoir Dogs
like you.” She squatted down. “Lucy, you know you shouldn’t talk to people you don’t know, or take things from them.”

My daughter got tearful again. “But he knows Daddy,” she said, giving me a heartbreaking look. “He said so. And Daddy knows him.”

“It’s all right, sweetie,” I said, patting her head.

“What the hell are you doing down here, anyway, Matt?” Caroline said as she stood up. “You know the rules. Saturday is my day with Lucy.” Her eyes widened. “Were you following us?”

“No, of course not,” I said, glancing away. The couple I’d spoken to were watching us anxiously. I waved to show that things were okay, but they didn’t look convinced.

“You better not have been,” my ex-wife said, taking Lucy’s hand. “You don’t want that piece of rubbish, darling,” she added, flicking the cap onto the grass.

Lucy raised her head and put on the haughty look that she’d inherited from Caroline. I could tell that she wanted the Tasmanian Devil cap. I picked it up and watched them leave. I wasn’t planning on giving it back to her, though. I was planning on jamming it down the madman’s throat. I couldn’t believe he’d taken the risk of talking to Lucy. He must have seen how close I was.

If he’d wanted to ram home the message that I was totally powerless to resist him, he couldn’t have chosen a better way.

The three men were standing around Terry Smail. He was hanging upside down from a joist in an abandoned warehouse. His captors had all taken off their caps and sunglasses, revealing close-cropped hair and scarred faces.

“I don’t know,” jabbered their naked victim. “Aah! I didn’t know Jimmy well. I…I don’t know who he drank with.”

The man in charge shook his head. His lips were only a couple of inches from Terry’s inverted ear. “You know that isn’t true. Do you want us to take you down again?”

Smail squealed and jerked his head forward. The sight of the red patch that was his groin made him shake violently, but his wrists were behind his back and the movements did nothing but give him more pain from the chain round his ankles.

“What we did to you the last time was only the start,” Wolfe said, grabbing him by the shoulders. “After all, your wedding tackle’s still intact.”

Rommel and Geronimo laughed harshly.

“So far,” continued Wolfe. “Next time we won’t just be removing your pubes with this high-tech instrument.” He held up the rusty and blood-spattered painter’s scraper. “Sorry we couldn’t find anything cleaner.” His glance cut off the others’ guffaws. “It’s very simple, Terry.” His eyes, dark as coal, the pupils unnaturally black, met the hanging man’s. “Either you spill your guts or we spill them.” He paused, watching Smail’s mouth open and close. “Tell me who Jimmy Tanner drank with.”