We clasped hands, then Rog took the grenades from Pete's pack.
"One left, one right, Dodger. Try to leave some visibility for me in the middle."
"Check." Rog pulled the pins and released the catches. Then he tossed the grenades where I wanted. They went off with more of a thump than a bang.
I sprinted forward, Glock in my right hand. I'd removed the silencer as I wanted to scare the shit out of the targets. As the smoke began to billow up, the pair in robes turned toward me. My stomach somersaulted when I saw their faces. Both were white-one with a sick smile and a devil's goatee and the other misshapen and pustular. Then I heard a crazed shrieking and some kind of ape came scurrying toward me, its red eyes crazed and its bared fangs yellow. I pointed the Glock at the roof and fired. The sound of the shot boomed around the cavern and the creature turned tail. I heard someone yelling the name Beelzebub.
I kept running, but the two figures had separated and disappeared into the smoke. Maybe the grenades hadn't been such a good idea.
Then I heard shots and yelling from the left. Pete was in action. I made it to the altar and peered at the motionless object that was burning on a heap of wood. It was a sheep. So where was Andy?
High-pitched screams to my right distracted me. Moving closer, I saw the ape on top of one of the masked people, its colored rump wriggling as it tried to bite. Then there was a spitting sound and the creature crashed down on its victim, its back feet quivering briefly before it expired. I ran close and held the muzzle of my Glock to the side of the robed figure's head.
"Let go of the gun and pull your hands out," I said. "Slowly!"
Rog appeared and dragged the animal off the man. I grabbed the pistol that was on the pseudo-monk's abdomen.
"Mission accomplished, Matt." I looked over my shoulder and saw Pete arriving with company. He'd looped the other monk's belt around his neck and was covering him with his Glock.
I pulled the person on the floor up. The pair of them stood with their heads hanging, like two masked kids on Halloween who'd been overzealous with the tricks. Except these two were killers, and one of them was Sara Robbins. Before I could confirm that, Pete's prisoner started shrieking and trying to pull away.
"You killed Beelzebub!" came a high-pitched voice. "You killed my mandrill, my familiar."
"Not us," Rog said, pointing at the other prisoner. "This asshole did."
Pete's prisoner tried to leap forward, hands clawing the air. Boney elbowed the figure with the devil mask in the ribs. That stopped the movement, but the abuse and threats to the other mask-wearer continued.
I nodded to Pete and he pulled off the mask.
"Earl Sternwood," I said, taking in the face disfigured by a prominent harelip.
I turned to the other prisoner and moved closer, my heart pounding and a worm of doubt wriggling hard. "Is it you, Sara? Did you really give up so easily?"
Manic laughter came from behind the disfigured mask. I wrenched it off and saw. someone who definitely wasn't my ex-lover, no matter how much plastic surgery she might have undergone. I knew who it was, though.
"Alistair Bing!" I said, failing to conceal my surprise.
The laughter continued. Tears were wetting the cheeks of the diminutive man.
"Aka crime writer Adrian Brooks," I said to Rog and Pete.
"Obviously you expected to see your former beloved," Bing said. His Yorkshire accent was strong. "It never occurred to you that someone else could be behind the murders." I stared at him. "You killed the crime writers? You sent me those puzzles?" He nodded beatifically, like the Pope acknowledging his worshippers-the Pope of Hell. "But why?" He laughed. "Always the rationalist, Matt. Didn't your experience of the White Devil teach you anything? Some people exist in a dimension incomprehensible to common humanity." "That'll be right," I said, not stinting on the irony. "Don't tell me. You needed the experience of killing to become a true crime writer." Alistair Bing looked like I'd slapped him in the face. "You're oh-so-clever now, aren't you, Matt? It's a pity you couldn't save Sandra Devonish. Or Josh Hinkley." "You broke your word with Josh, you piece of shit." He gave me an icy stare. "You have no idea who you've been up against. I am Doctor Faustus, I've made a deal with the devil and-" "Yeah, yeah, spare me the bullshit. Just tell me why you slaughtered defenseless novelists." "The great Matt Wells, global bestseller and crime columnist, clueless. How the mighty are fallen." The way he said the word "bestseller" gave me an insight into his sad mind. "That's what this is all about, isn't it?" I said. "You were jealous of us, weren't you?" His eyes narrowed. "The books at the top of the bestseller lists were no better than my early books." "Oh, yes they bloody were," I said. "Besides, you're a bestseller yourself now. What was the point of killing Mary, Sandra and Josh?"
He looked at me with arctic eyes. "I made my Faustian pact and killed three crime writers who sold better than I did in the past. You were to be next. The Death List knocked me off the top of the bestseller list in seven countries."
"But first you decided to make a fool of me with your smart-ass clues."
Alistair Bing nodded. "And I succeeded."
"Just like in an Agatha Christie novel, eh?" I said. "Haven't you noticed that real life is more like heavy-duty noir than Golden Age wordplay?" I turned to Earl Stern- wood. "What was your role in all this?"
The earl was still staring at the dead mandrill. "Mine?" he said weakly. "Alistair had the benefit of my teachings. I led him to understand that only by experiencing killing would he become a successful writer."
"And he believed that?" I said, glancing at the sniggering Yorkshireman.
"He did. The fact is, he did become a bestselling author after his first murders."
"His first murders?" I repeated. "Who were the victims?"
"Oh, just scum," the earl said carelessly. "Prostitutes, their customers, drunks-the detritus of humanity that disfigures London." He seemed unaware of the irony in his words.
"It was your idea to write 'The Devil did it' in Latin, was it?"
The earl nodded. "Latin was, of course, the main language of the Christian Church, and of its opponents."
I looked at Bing again. "Why the music playing at each murder scene?"
"To add to the feeling of devilry," he said, giving me a thin-lipped smile.
It was my turn to laugh. "What? Cliff Richard?"
"My mother loves Cliff," he replied, looking affronted.
I went up to him. "You sick fuck. You couldn't just kill them, could you? You had to get up close, and throttle them, cut them, stab them. And then cut their nails and hair." I remembered what he'd done to poor Mary Malone. "You abused a dead woman."
He shrugged. "Killing that way is like sex. In fact it's better than sex. There's no need for consent."
I turned away, shaking my head. "You must have fitted in well here," I said, glancing at the horrific artwork.
Bing sniggered and it was all I could do to stop myself flooring him.
"What about the gangland murders in East London?" I said to Sternwood. "We know that Lauren Cuthbertson was responsible for them. She was part of your pathetic cult, wasn't she?"
"How do you know that?" he demanded, confirming my suspicions.
"It was her face," I said. "You couldn't resist corrupting a disfigured person."
The earl looked past me to the mandrill he'd called Beelzebub. "Lauren was a great help to me. We knew her as Asmodeus." He touched his split upper lip with his tongue. "But there was no question of anyone corrupting her. She took to murder with pleasure and ease."
"You needed the money from the drugs she stole." Bing sneered. "You even got me to extort money from Josh Hinkley."
I stared at the earl. "The killings were all about money?"