blood come from?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Rog inclined his head to the buckets. “It wasn’t hers.”
I rocked back on my heels. “What did the bastards do? Pour someone else’s blood over her?”
“We need to get her to a hospital,” Rog said.
He was right. But how were we going to do that and avoid the police, let alone the Devil and his accomplice?
“The bastards must have been waiting for us.”
I nodded. “But why? Did they know they were being watched?”
Rog raised his shoulders. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t see me.”
“The Devil’s working to a plan,” I said. “He and his sidekick could easily have surprised us, but they preferred to escape.” I looked at Fran. “All right, I’m going to call the police.” I rang Karen Oaten’s mobile. It no longer mattered if she was able to trace me. I wasn’t planning on sticking around for long.
“Matt!” she said, sounding surprised. “I’ve got news for you. There’s no record of your mother having got on any flight from Heathrow.”
“I know,” I said, holding Fran’s hand. I told Karen what we’d found.
“Where are you? She needs an ambulance.”
“Yes, but I don’t need you taking me in.” I looked at my mother desperately. I didn’t want to leave her, but I had no choice. She seemed to be stable and there were other lives at risk, in particular Sara’s. I wasn’t going to tell Oaten what had happened to her. The Devil was playing a game that was between him and me, and I couldn’t risk bringing the cops any closer. “I’ll give you the address when we…when I’m clear.”
“You’re only making things worse for yourself, Matt.”
“Bye, Karen.”
“Wait!” she shouted. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
The tone of her voice, a mixture of anger and regret, made my stomach flip. “What is it?” I demanded.
“Your ex-wife. She’s…she’s disappeared.”
“What?”
“Unfortunately our people lost her between her office and Blackfriars Station. She hasn’t shown up at home.”
“Have you called her mobile?”
“It’s switched off. I’m sorry, Matt.”
“Bloody hell, Karen. Now do you see why I can’t trust you?” I cut the connection.
“What is it?” Rog said, as I checked my mother for the last time. She seemed to be reasonably stable. I hoped she wasn’t aware of what had been done to her.
“Caroline’s gone.”
“Fuck. Do you think-”
“It’s the Devil? I’m sure of it.” I led him downstairs.
“We can’t just leave her on her own,” Rog protested.
“I’ll let the police know the location when we’re away from here,” I said, not feeling at all proud of myself. “You continue checking the places on your list, okay? I’ll be in touch.”
We climbed out of the window we’d come in.
“Matt? Don’t you think we should stay together?”
“In a perfect world, yes,” I said, squeezing his arm. “But this isn’t one of those. This is the Devil’s world and we can only catch him by risking everything.”
He nodded and gave me a determined smile. “Got you, Matt.”
We split up at the gate, Rog turning right. I headed back to the main road. The nearest property on my list was in Moorgate. It was only as I passed under a streetlight that I saw the blood on my hands. I spat on to them and wiped them with my handkerchief. If it wasn’t my mother’s, then whose was it?
That thought made me quiver with apprehension. It was likely that the Devil had both Sara and Caroline. Was either of them still alive?
I called Oaten from a public phone and gave her the address, then got into the BMW.
If I didn’t find my tormentor soon, there wasn’t going to be anybody left for me to protect. Then a thought struck me. The Devil could easily have killed my mother, even though he’d made an unplanned exit from the house in East Finchley. Christ, he could probably have done for Roger and me.
Why hadn’t he?
30
Karen Oaten watched the paramedics lift Matt Wells’s mother onto a stretcher and take her out of the bedroom. Their preliminary examination had found only suppurating grazes on her wrists and ankles, suggesting that she’d been tied up for several days. She was suffering from extreme dehydration and a saline drip had been inserted in her arm.
“What’s the story, Taff?” she asked.
The Welshman was standing over the SOCO team leader, who looked up from the buckets and twitched his nose. “I don’t think it’s human blood,” the technician said. “You’ll have to wait for the analysis, but my guess is that it came from a pig.”
“Jesus,” the inspector said, shaking his head. “I haven’t got the faintest idea what happened here, guv.”
“We’re getting several sets of prints,” the SOCO added.
“Wells was here, wasn’t he?” Turner said to Oaten, his voice low.
She nodded. “He admitted as much.”
“And then he disappeared, leaving his own mother behind?” The Welshman’s tone was scathing.
The chief inspector shrugged. “He ascertained that she was okay, and then told me where to find her. What’s your point, Taff?”
“He’s playing you like a big juicy trout,” her subordinate said, glaring at her. “There’s nobody else involved, just him and his mates. Some of them are tall and some of them are short, but all of them are missing. You can’t just let him mess us about like this.”
Oaten returned his gaze coolly. “Have you got a better idea? None of this adds up, but it will do soon. I’m telling you, Matt Wells is one of the good ones.”
Turner’s expression was grim. “You’d better hope so. The word back at the Yard is that you’ve run out of lives with the A.C.”
“Is that right, Taff?” she said, stepping closer to him. “In that case, you’ve got a decision to make. Are you going to stay as my number two or do you want out?”
The inspector’s eyes dropped after a few seconds. “No, I’m tied to you whatever happens. It’s too late to do anything about that.”
Oaten laughed dryly. “Thanks for the rousing support.”
“What now?” he asked, opening his notebook. “The constable outside Sara Robbins’s place has reported that she’s not shown up there this evening. And she’s not answering her phones.”
The chief inspector’s forehead was furrowed. “So Matt’s girlfriend may have been taken, as well. I’m not looking forward to telling him that.”
“He already knows,” Turner said acidly, “since he was the one who took her. Simmons has tracked down the owner of the flat with the flayed bodies and disemboweled animals in it. It’s a guy by the name of Lawrence Montgomery.”
Karen Oaten ran her fingers slowly down her cheek. “So it looks like Leslie Dunn became Lawrence Montgomery. He’s a wealthy man. Get Morry to find out if he owns any other properties. No, on second thought, get Paul to do it.”
The Welshman looked at his watch. “The council offices are all closed, guv.”
“Well, tell him to squeeze their nuts. The stuff’s all in databases. It won’t need many people to work overtime.”
