The Soul Collector

We both turned our heads. The motorbike rider had sat down two steps above us. She had raised her visor only a few centimeters, so I couldn’t make out her face. She pulled off one glove and unzipped her jacket, then slipped her hand inside. When it came back out, she was holding an object that I couldn’t immediately identify. She leaned forward and gripped Jeremy Andrewes’s shoulder with her other hand and pulled him back, so that the hand holding the object was near his neck.

“This is a spring-loaded stiletto,” the woman said. “I can have it in his jugular before you move, Matt.”

“What?” Andrewes said, his voice rising several tones. “Who are you?”

It was a good question. The voice had a similar timbre to Sara’s, but there was a lot of East London in it. Then again, Sara was quite capable of picking up accents. She used to do a very convincing Margaret Thatcher.

“I’m your death,” the figure in leathers said. Then she gave a laugh that was as depraved as the White Devil’s. “Don’t move, Jeremy, and don’t even think about calling out.”

Thinking about it, I realized there was a lot of similarity between the two voices. Sara had obviously been turning herself into a female version of her brother.

“Let him go,” I said, looking into my own eyes, reflected in the visor. “It’s me you really want, Sara.”

The laugh was repeated and I felt revulsion, but something else, as well-a strange mixture of fear and fascination. I didn’t know where Andy was and I was looking my nemesis in the face. But there was something more….

“I don’t want you, Matt,” the figure in leathers said. “At least, not yet. Andrewes is the one I’m after today.” She leaned closer, the knife with its invisible blade only centimeters from the journalist’s jugular. In the courtyard below, people were chattering and children yelling. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to the three of us.

My mind was in freefall, thoughts and ideas flying around like bullets on the ricochet. Why was Andrewes the one she was after? What had he done to deserve death?

“Sara?” I said. “Why do you want to kill an innocent man?”

The laugh that came from the helmeted figure in leather was grotesque. “Innocent?” she said. “How many journalists are innocent?” I’d been about to shove Andrewes aside, but suddenly there was a blur of movement behind the motorbike rider and she was driven into the journalist, who toppled forward. The woman sprawled over him, and then slid rapidly down the steps before her helmet made contact with a paving-stone. The person who had piled into her went down the steps on hands and knees and sat on her back, then twisted her arm behind her.

I got up and joined them. “Jesus, Rog, you took your time. I didn’t see you when I got here.”

“I was just inside the main doors. That way no one saw me, including this specimen.” He bounced on the woman’s back to stop her struggling. “Sara Robbins, I presume?”

Two security guards were pushing their way through the crowd of kids and tourists.

“Yes, I think…” Before I finished the sentence, the biker managed to throw Rog off her back with a heave to the side. She launched herself at Jeremy Andrewes, who was sitting rubbing his head. I raced up the steps and hit her in the belly with a tackle that Dave would have been proud of. But I wasn’t quick enough. The stiletto had already caught the journalist in the throat. He started to gasp, blood pumping out between his fingers. The woman had got back on her feet and was now moving quickly toward me, clutching the knife. There was no time to think. I dropped the upper half of my body, let her torso crash onto my back, and then powered my shoulders up as fast as I could. I felt the weight fly off me and looked around to see her hit the bottom step headfirst. A loud crack rang out.

…images flashing…columns turning, blurred faces, stone steps. Then darkness. I can’t see, I can’t move, can’t speak. I’m going…NO! No, I can’t die. I’ve got everything…money, the power of the Lord Beneath the Earth, Mephistopheles…why aren’t they helping me? I can’t die. I’m a predator, not prey. The flat in Hackney… the enemy was inside, and the grenade I tossed should have taught them a lesson. They never caught me, they never caught on I was a woman. The beard was a good one, though I let the beautiful Kurdish boy see past it. I was never in love before…sex meant my so-called father sticking it in me when his bitch wife was drunk. I never wanted that again. Until I saw Faik. Instead of submitting to the urge to kill, I just shot him in the hand. And rescued him. I’m sure they thought it was a man disguised as a woman. No one could imagine it was a woman disguised as a man disguised as a woman…not even Sara would have thought of that. They never caught on I was a woman. She must have been impressed, she must have…

Followed my gorgeous Faik but…but I couldn’t express my desires…only my violence. I thought Faik would respond to that, but he was a strange kind of gang member, he didn’t want to hurt the Albanian, he looked at me with horror…My face, my ruined face…and Sara so beautiful, with her good surgeon…and me far too ugly to fix. Though I was sorry as soon as I’d done him, I wrote her that. Violence. She knew that I need it as she does. She encouraged me to start killing…the animals, making sure I threw what was left of the cats and dogs into the canal. But Sara was impatient…she said I couldn’t just kill anyone, the victims had to be strong, dangerous, otherwise there was no point. Hard men, beasts of the street, I decided. Stabbing the fat Kurd was my first. Nervous before, but in the end it was easy. Power exploded inside me like Sara said. Killing for myself, killing for Sara, killing for Mephistopheles and the Lord Beneath the Earth. Where did one begin and the other end? It was all the same to me. Mephistopheles wanted funds for the order so I took drugs from the Shadows and set up the sale to the Albanians. I would have ransomed their man if Faik hadn’t run away in disgust.

Oh, Faik, where are you now?

If only you could see how beautiful I am inside, so perfect…my ability to destroy…dedicating that to the Lord Beneath the Earth seemed to make sense. But now I think…Sara, Sara, my…NO! I can’t be dying, I can’t, oh, Faik, why did you reject me?

Jeremy Andrewes was sprawled on his back across the steps, his legs jerking out of control. His clothes were soaked in blood and his eyelids were fluttering. I kneeled down beside him and put pressure on the wound. I knew it was far too little, far too late.

“Matt,” he croaked.

I leaned closer.

He was panting for breath, his windpipe partially severed.

“Coke…deal,” he said, tongue loose over gray lips. “Sh…Shkrelli family and Earl…Earl Sternwood. That… bastard did…this…”

The journalist’s body tensed, then his eyes rolled and he slumped back on the stone steps.

Before I could take in what he’d said, a security guard got me in a neck-lock. “VCCT,” I gasped. The pressure was relaxed. He must have thought I was a member of the elite squad. I gave him Karen’s cell phone number.

“This will get you Detective Chief Inspector Karen Oaten,” I said, rubbing my throat. “Tell her Matt Wells has made a citizen’s arrest and that there’s been a murder here.” The guard looked at me dubiously and then did as he was told.

“Good tackle, Matt,” Pete Satterthwaite said, coming down the steps and grinning. “You all right?”

“All the better for seeing you, Boney. I wasn’t sure you guys had made it.”

“I was covering the far side of the yard.”

Rog looked up at us and shook his head. Jesus, had I killed Sara? I ran down the steps and looked at the figure in leather. She wasn’t moving.

Her left hand was flung out in front of her, but the right was hidden beneath her body.

I dropped to my knees beside the motionless figure. I wasn’t going to wait for Karen before I confirmed who the woman was. Rog and I rolled her over gently. I could hear sirens approaching. I put my hand under the bottom of the helmet and eased it off, pushing my hand under the head of the woman I’d once loved to stop it banging on to the paving-stone. It was as loose as a flower with a broken stalk. I took a deep breath and looked at the face that was revealed.

It made me wince. Disfigured and split, the skin was discolored and with an unnatural sheen, crisscrossed by scars. As for the upper lip, its halves had parted like the stumps of an octopus’s tentacles.

“She’s Lauren May Cuthbertson,” Pete said. “Rog and I reckon she killed the guy in Oxford. He was her surgeon.”

I rocked back on my heels, as uniformed police shouldered their way through the crowd. The fact that the dead woman wasn’t Sara had been a shock, but Pete and Rog seemed to have made sense of who she was. The problem was, my adversary was still at liberty. I’d just killed one of her sidekicks, admittedly by accident, and I