The young man came from a London community that I knew nothing about, one based on violence and coercion, but also a strange kind of honor. They killed only to protect their business, which was bad enough-but why had Lauren Cuthbertson been murdering gang members? And why had she dismembered the body of the Albanian accountant? Because Sara had told her? There had to be more to it than that. At least killing the surgeon who had disfigured her made some kind of sense-she'd taken revenge, just as the White Devil had done with his first victims. She'd left no traces except that stained and almost illegible note of apology-could that have been for Sara? There had been very little evidence at the crime scenes in East London, too. That smacked of the extreme care that Sara learned from her brother. Had she trained the disfigured young woman from Stoke Newington?
Were there others like her on Sara's payroll?
But I suddenly found myself thinking about Doris Carlton-Jones. Maybe she was the one behind the murders. Could the elderly woman be a cold-blooded killer like her daughter? She'd certainly kept very calm when I was searching her house. She must have called the motorbike rider, presumably Lauren, when I went upstairs. When Andy appeared with the skull (and whose was that?), she took the opportunity, while I was distracted, to dash to the road. The rider wore black leathers and helmet, as Lauren had. Maybe Karen was right when she suggested that Sara had nothing to do with the crime-writer and gangland murders. Maybe she had killed Dave and the former SAS guys, and left the rest to her mother and Lauren. But how would Doris Carlton-Jones have found a stone killer with a ruined face on her own? There wasn't a section for those in the Yellow Pages.
There was a chime from my computer. I leaned forward and saw the name of the new message's sender: dc-j/urgent. It looked like Sara's mother was indeed calling the shots. I read what she'd written: There's been enough killing. And enough pretense. I don't know what you did to poor Lauren, but at least she's at peace now. I'm sorry for everything she did. I tried to stop her, but she was a different person after the operations. Mr. Wells, I have to tell you that my daughter Sara has contacted me. Apparently someone has been removing large sums of money from her bank accounts. She is sure you are behind that so I have arranged for your friend Andrew Jackson to be taken prisoner. Unless the money is returned to Sara's accounts, I will have no option but to leave him where he is. It will be a cold, slow and thirsty death, with no chance of him ever being found. When you have returned the money, I will e-mail you from a different address and tell you where your friend is. Doris Carlton-Jones P.S. I was very glad to find my husband's skull in Mr. Jackson's pack. I obtained it at some expense from the undertaker before the cremation, but I grew tired of having it on my dressing-table. It was fitting that I put it in the garage. He spent hours in there every weekend, carving wooden animals for the local children.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. The woman was clearly demented. She seemed to be suggesting that Lauren was responsible for all the murders. Perhaps she didn't know what Sara had done to Dave and the other SAS men. Multiple killers were still at work, including, I was sure, Earl Sternwood. Could Sara be manipulating everyone, including her birth mother? I wouldn't have put it past her. But what was I to do about Andy?
I told Rog to start returning the money to Sara's accounts. He wasn't happy.
"Em, what is happening?" Faik asked from close behind me.
I tried to block the screen. "You don't want to read that, my friend."
He looked at me dubiously. "Are there more like her? Is the killing to go on?"
I shook my head. "It's finished," I said with more conviction than I felt.
The young Kurd nodded. "I don't want anyone else to die like the Albanian did." He headed for the door. "I will send you money for the clothes."
"Forget it," Rog said.
I gave him my card. "Call me if you need help, okay?"
He looked at me solemnly. "I'm finished with life on the streets. I'm going to study."
"Good for you. What do you want to do?"
"Teach. I want to make sure kids don't screw up like me."
"Good luck," I said, extending my hand.
He nodded solemnly.
I closed the door behind him. At least one person had come through the cycle of violence to the good. Then I thought of Andy. Was saving him going to be simply a matter of giving back Sara's money? Every relevant synapse in my brain was pulsing, "No!"
The Soul Collector was driving the van skillfully, gripped by cold fury. Her motorbike was now in the back, beside the bound American. The woman next to her was silent. They had talked about the death of Lauren May Cuthbertson after her death was confirmed on the radio and decided who would pay for it. As they approached the London orbital motorway, Doris Carlton-Jones looked at her daughter. "Will he go there?" she asked. "Will he understand?" Sara Robbins shook her head. "Matt Wells isn't smart enough." "Is he smart enough to find Lauren's people?" "Probably." "That may be good for us." The Soul Collector glanced at her passenger. "What do you care? Your part in this is almost over." The older woman looked away. "You're right," she said casually. "I don't care what happens to any of them. What about your money?" "Do you seriously imagine that's important to me? Even if I didn't have plenty in places no one can find, I'm only interested in one thing-the complete destruction of Matt Wells and everyone he cares for. You're the one who wants the money back." Doris Carlton-Jones pursed her lips, but didn't reply. Her surviving child drove on to the M25 and headed eastward as fast as the van's engine would tolerate. Woe betide the police officer who stopped her for speeding. The more I thought about it, the less I was convinced by Doris Carlton-Jones's message. It started off sounding reasonable and then talked about Sara as if she was a normal, if rich, person, rather than a calculating killer. And as for the bit about her husband's skull-how many widows hit the undertakers with a request to remove the deceased's head? The woman was demented. The question was, how much of her children's propensity for murder had been inherited? I had an idea why the skull was so shiny. She would have boiled it for days. Bottom line-how much could I trust the woman? Answer-not at all. But that didn't change the situation with Andy. Even though Sara was getting her money back, he was obviously in serious danger. You wouldn't want someone like Doris Carlton-Jones to decide whether a friend lived or died.
Rog confirmed that two of the transfers had been reversed. I looked at my watch. Eleven o'clock. At least we hadn't been given a deadline this time. I wondered about that. The implication was that Lauren Cuthbertson had written the puzzles containing the crime writers' names before she killed them. Was she capable or educated enough to come up with such complex riddles? Since I had nothing better to do while Rog was at work, I noted down the details of the dead woman from the ghost site. I might as well see what else I could find out about her.
When I'd been researching The Death List, Rog had shown me how to access the databases of several government agencies. By good fortune, they covered East London, the area where the White Devil had grown up. I started snooping. I fully expected the security on the Web sites to have been improved over the past couple of years, but it seemed that the agencies hadn't bothered. In less than five minutes, I was reading Lauren Cuthbertson's school reports. She'd been to primary and secondary school in Stoke Newington. She had four O-Levels, all in maths and science, but she'd failed English and French. Her teachers said she was an average pupil, whose homework was often poor. There was no mention of her having been disruptive-perhaps she'd stored it all up. She left school at sixteen and was on benefits for two years. When she signed off, it was to work in a supermarket in Hackney. Not exactly master-criminal material.