A Matter Of Blood (The Dog-Faced Gods Trilogy)

by Sarah Pinborough

  Kate was still asleep when he got in, breathing in long, exhausted sighs as she twitched restlessly, the sheets snarled up around her legs. Cass watched her for a moment and then pulled the door quietly shut before going downstairs. After a moment of thought he squeezed the black case into the tiny gap behind the TV where it was fixed to the wall. It held steadily. That would do for now. He wasn’t really sure why he’d taken the laptop. He doubted it even belonged to his brother; it was probably the property of The Bank - but if it came down to it, so was pretty much everything else in the world. It just felt right to take it. If he hadn’t thought he’d seen those feet, he probably wouldn’t even have spotted it. Maybe his mind was trying to tell him something - or maybe, he thought as he headed to the kitchen, subconsciously he just wanted to have something personal of his brother’s. And he knew Christian well enough to know his laptop was probably the most personal item in the house.

  After grabbing a beer from the fridge he called the station, then the mobile number the duty sergeant gave him. It rang out several times before a sleepy voice answered, ‘Ramsey!’

  ‘It’s Jones.’

  There was a pause as the other DI came to slightly. Sheets rustled, then he said, ‘Do you know what time it is?’ He groaned and then answered his own question. ‘God, half-past two.’

  ‘Sorry. I just wanted to ask you a question about my brother.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What was he wearing when he was found?’

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’ Despite being obviously sleepy, Ramsey sounded curious.

  ‘I just need to know. For my head.’ It was the best he could come up with, and it was the truth, in its own way.

  Ramsey sighed. ‘Okay. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and black Armani suit trousers. His jacket wasn’t on and his tie was loosened.’

  ‘And his shoes?’ Cass gripped the phone and the beer bottle tight.

  ‘Brogues. Polished black lace-ups.’

  Cass couldn’t speak. The world shifted again.

  ‘Can I go back to sleep now?’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ Cass mumbled, already flipping his phone shut. ‘Thanks.’

  He sat still, staring at nothing for a long while, before draining his beer and going up to the spare room. He had to be up early in the morning and Kate deserved a lie-in. The crisp sheets smelled fresh, of soap powder, and felt comfortingly anonymous under him. There was something soothing in that. He let his tired eyes shut. From the other room he heard his wife let out an anxious whimper and he wondered what plagued her sleep. For his own part, when the cold fingers finally dragged him down to the darkness, he dreamed of shoes that left no bloody footprints.

  Chapter Six

  Claire rang him four times before he finally woke up, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he’d expected to be: his own bed, or curled up on the floor in his dead brother’s house. He swung his legs over the side and yawned. He looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock, and that took him by surprise. He’d expected her here by seven-fifteen. Trust her to take it on herself to give him a lie-in. He stretched. To be fair, it was probably a good thing. It might have been only a few hours’ sleep, but it had been deep, and for the first time in God knew how long he felt refreshed and alert, despite the hollow ache in every bone and fibre of his body.

  He wrapped the sheet around him and let Claire in, then showered and dressed while she made coffee and toast. He paused as he pulled on his trousers, staring at the darkness of the fabric, reminded of that strange moment in the gloom at Christian’s house. He felt vaguely unsettled by the experience, and in the bright light of the morning the idea that he’d seen or heard anything supernatural in the house was ridiculous. He regretted his call to Ramsey too; he’d just been overwrought.

  He reached for his jacket and headed back down the stairs. There was nothing more to it. Christian had done a terrible thing and now they were all dead. There was nothing he could do about it apart from add more guilt to the load his soul was already bearing. He should have spoken to his brother and he hadn’t. It was done. He had to live with it. He’d learned to live with worse.

  He sat on the second-bottom step to pull on his shoes - black lace-ups, although not expensive, highly polished hand-tooled brogues like Christian’s, just scuffed chain-store shoes. Space felt empty around him. They were all gone now, all his blood relatives: his parents, and now Christian and Luke. Maybe he’d always been the outsider, or maybe he’d just made himself that way, it was hard to tell, but his heart ached as he realised there was now no hope of ever going back, even if he knew how.

  Claire pushed a mug and a plate over to him as she finished a call on her mobile. He took the coffee, but ignored the toast. She looked at him, but didn’t ask the question aloud. They understood each other too well for that.

  ‘I had a call from the lab on my way in.’ Excitement warred with pity in her clear eyes.

  ‘And?’

  ‘They got an ID on that partial print. It belongs to an Adam Bradley. He’s a twenty-two-year-old known junkie with four petty theft convictions.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘And there’s more. You’re going to love this bit.’

  Cass watched her over his mug. Claire was many things, but over-excitable wasn’t one of them. His unease and grief slid sideways, not disappearing, but sinking into the corners of his mind where it could wait until a quiet moment to catch him again. Claire had something good to tell him. His heart thumped. ‘Get on with it then.’

  ‘They’ve rechecked it several times, just to make sure. Adam Bradley is also on the long list of people whose DNA was found in the squat where Carla Rae died.’

  ‘What?’ Coffee slopped over the side as Cass almost dropped the mug

  ‘One of the empty junkie syringes was his. Mat - Sergeant Blackmore - took a car to pick him up. His known address is that block two floors down from the murder scene.’ She held up her phone. ‘That was Mat. Bradley was fast asleep when they got there. No resistance. They’re taking him back to the station now.’

  Cass grinned. ‘We’d better make sure we’re there to meet him then.’

  Adam Bradley was twitchy. He picked at the scabs on his skinny white arms with nails bitten down to the quick. His face was gaunt, framed by black hair both thick with grease and full of dandruff that hung almost to his shoulders. Cass reckoned that as junkies went, Adam Bradley was pretty well on his way to being a veteran. His bloodshot blue eyes flickered nervously around the room, going everywhere but to Cass. He licked his lips frequently, but ignored the plastic cup of tea on the table in front of him. Tea wasn’t going to help Adam Bradley feel better.

  Cass slid a cigarette across and watched as Bradley’s trembling fingers took it. He sucked the smoke in gratefully; any high in a rock-bottom low. Cass lit one of his own. He could sympathise with that feeling, not that Adam Bradley would ever realise that. Through the glass he was pretty sure he could feel DCI Neil Morgan’s disapproval, but he ignored it. The one place in the country where people could smoke indoors was the interview room of a police station or a prison . . . but only if you were on the wrong side of the bars. Well, fuck that, Cass thought, if the little fucker in front of him got to smoke, then he couldn’t see why he had to go without.

  Tim Hask had arrived at the station just after them. He was watching the interview from the other side of the glass, but Cass figured he could go home, save himself the effort. It didn’t take an internationally renowned profiler to know that Adam Bradley didn’t kill those girls. He couldn’t keep his hands steady enough to plant those fly eggs for one thing. And for another, it was obvious from the state of him that the only person Adam Bradley was intent on killing was himself. It was the DVD Cass was interested in, and that case had nothing to do with Hask.

  ‘You need a shower,’ Cass said finally.

  Bradley snorted, a nervous laugh he hid behind the hand curled across his face. The cigarett
e was never more than an inch or two from his mouth. As he hunched over, the bones of his shoulders were clearly visible, poking through the grubby, out-of-shape T-shirt.

  ‘No, really. You stink.’

  The young man shrugged. ‘No hot water.’

  As he spoke Cass saw gaps where his side teeth were missing. He had a year, two at best, before the lab boys would be scraping him off the floor of some doss house or other. Cass didn’t feel any sympathy. Life was hard and everyone had to learn to live with the choices they made. Bradley made a choice every time he cooked up some H. He looked like he’d long ago accepted the lows with the highs.

  ‘Tell me about the envelope.’

  Bradley’s eyes narrowed with junkie meanness. ‘What envelope?’

  ‘Listen,’ Cass growled, leaning forward, ‘I don’t know how you think this is going to play out, but I will tell you right now, it won’t be with me sticking twenty quid in your pocket and sending you on your way with a “thanks for the information, come back soon” kiss.’

  He snorted again. Cass figured it was a nervous reaction. It looked like that was exactly how Adam Bradley saw the interview going. Addicts were invisible people, and there were plenty of them - and not just in the rougher parts of town, either. As the economy crumbled, so drug usage rose, dragging many traditional middle-class areas of town into squalor. From their street corners and squats, junkies saw and heard things, and many policemen would slip them a twenty out of their own pocket for anonymous information. A quick arrest and conviction would earn much more than that. Cass thought it was interesting that Bradley obviously had no idea how deep the shit was around him.

  ‘We have your fingerprint on an envelope that was delivered here for me last night. Do you know what was in that envelope?’

  Bradley replied with silence and an insolent stare, but Cass recognised a twitch of fear in it.

  ‘It was a DVD. A film of two boys getting gunned down in central London last week,’ Cass said, producing a couple of stills from his pocket and laying them on the table between them.

  Adam Bradley’s eyes widened. ‘That was nothing—’

  ‘And on top of that, we can link you to another murder scene.’

  This time the junkie’s swallow was audible. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,’ he whispered, his voice trembling. ‘I don’t know what’s going on’ - his eyes flickered over to Claire, looking for some support - ‘but this is some kind of crazy set-up. I don’t know nothing about no one dying.’

  ‘A woman was found murdered in a flat two floors above yours two days ago. We found a used syringe with your blood in it in the same flat. That was the same day the envelope arrived containing a film of two more murders. The envelope had your fingerprint on it.’ He paused. ‘Can you see how things might be looking very bad for you?’

  For the first time since they’d brought him in, Adam Bradley showed some energy. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. ‘I don’t know nothing about them things.’ His foot twitched under the table. ‘I don’t know nothing.’

  Cass watched his eyes watering up. In the bright light his tears shone pale yellow for a moment, and something about that disturbed him. He stared, but it was gone. Bradley was just crying, that was all, which didn’t come as any surprise. It didn’t take much to make a junkie cry. They spent most of the time thinking the world had done them wrong, so tears were never that far back.

  ‘Prove it.’ He ground his cigarette out in the tin ashtray and blew the last lungful of hot smoke into the sallow, pock-marked face in front of him. ‘It was you who brought the envelope here, yes?’

  ‘Yeah, but that was all I did. That was—’

  ‘Stop whining,’ Cass barked. ‘If it was nothing to do with you, then who gave it to you? And where?’ He slid the cigarettes across the table and his voice softened. ‘Take your time. Tell me everything. I want every detail. It would be easy for me to get a quick conviction on you with the DNA evidence we’ve got already. If you leave anything out, getting your next fix will be the least of your worries.’

  He meant it too. He needed every little detail. Witnesses never knew what was important and what wasn’t, and too many cases got fucked up because of a detail left out of a statement because the witness didn’t think it was relevant.

  ‘Where did you meet this person?’

  Bradley lit a fresh cigarette from the burning filter of the first. There was no tobacco wasted. ‘I saw him on Wednesday morning. I couldn’t sleep. I needed a hit. I’d waited till about seven-thirty before going out to see if I could score something on tick till I’d sorted some cash. There was this bloke - he was just wandering round the blocks.’ He sniffed, regaining what little composure he had. ‘I thought he was lost or something ’cos he was well out of place. I thought I might have a go at tapping his wallet. I used to be good at that shit when I was a kid.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  Bradley looked around the room, then focused on Cass again. ‘Old - I reckon he was about fifty, maybe even older - but old in a way like people are that have money. He had grey hair - well, more silver, you know what I mean? And a tan. He was wearing a dark suit and a long overcoat. Wool, maybe, but something expensive. And he had very white teeth. They was perfect.’

  Cass detected a touch of envy lurking in Bradley’s voice.

  He was surprised to find himself impressed - and a little sad. Hidden within that ruined exterior was the wreckage of a good mind, the ghost of a man who could have been something.

  Bradley went on, ‘And he was carrying a briefcase kind of thing, but soft. I thought maybe he worked for the council or something.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory for detail.’

  A soft smile brushed across the man’s lips. ‘Not really. He was one of those blokes you don’t forget in a hurry.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I stumbled, and bumped him, to get my hand in his coat. I was good too, given how shaky I felt. Anyone else and I think I’d have got away with it.’ He drew on the cigarette. ‘Most people like that, they sort of, you know, pull away if someone like me goes near them. Like they’re going to get the bug just by looking at us.’ The bug: the street name for Strain II, the new variant of AIDS that was proving impossible to treat. As with the original virus it preyed on the junkies first, finding an easy way into society through shared needles. The addicts had always been ostracised, but once the bug came along, no one would touch them.

  ‘In case you were wondering,’ Claire looked up from the file she’d opened, ‘you’re clean. You don’t have the bug.’

  The man’s eyes widened and he started to smile for the first time since they’d picked him up.

  ‘Well, that was on Wednesday,’ Cass added. ‘That’s two days ago. This is a whole new world.’

  Bradley shook his head. His eyes were gleaming. ‘I haven’t shared nothing since then.’

  ‘Hooray. You live to infect yourself another day.’ Cass leaned forward. ‘Back to Wednesday. You tried to rob this man, and then what?’

  ‘He grabbed my arm. He had gloves on, leather maybe - they were soft, but he had a real firm grip. I thought he might break my wrist.’ He flinched at the memory. ‘I think I shouted at him, called him a perv or something. I tried yanking myself free.’ He paused. ‘And then he smiled. And I don’t know why, but I just stopped struggling.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘He said he had a job for someone like me. Wouldn’t take long, and paid well. I thought he meant something’ - he looked up awkwardly at Claire, a little embarrassed - ‘you know, to do with sex, and I told him I didn’t do that. And I don’t. He just laughed at that.’

  Cass thought he could see the stranger’s point. Even without the bug, he figured Adam Bradley’s body was probably host to myriad other unpleasant infections.

  ‘I told him I needed to sort myself out and that I couldn’t think. He must have seen I meant it ’cos he let my arm go. I was
sweating bad, and the cramps were coming on. He asked me where I normally went to shoot up and I told him - well, I gave him the address of the squat two floors up.’ He looked at Cass. ‘Where you lot found that woman. A mate of mine was dealing out of it before he got nicked a couple of weeks back. He gave me the key, told me to keep an eye on it while he was away. Anyway, I told this bloke to meet me there in ten, fifteen minutes, to give me time to sort myself out.’

  ‘Did you ask him for money?’

  Bradley nodded. ‘Yeah, but he said not till after. He said I looked “resourceful enough” to get what I needed without his help.’ He shook his head. ‘I knew he was laughing at me, but I didn’t care. I could feel him watching me when I went off, all the way.’

  ‘Did you think about not meeting him at the flat?’

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘Not just ’cos he was offering me dough; there was something about him that freaked me out - still does, if I think on it. It was his smile, and the way he gripped my wrist so tightly, with his eyes shining and just smiling the whole time like I was his oldest mate in the world. I wouldn’t have wanted to not do what he wanted, even though he hadn’t threatened me or nothing. You ever meet anyone like that?’

  Cass tried not to glance at the two-way wall. ‘My boss has his moments. Go on.’

  Bradley smiled nervously, before refocusing on his memory. ‘So he was there waiting for me when I got back. He opened his bag - his briefcase - and took out some things. There was this big envelope. It had a typed label on it already: Detective Inspector Cass Jones - that’s you, I guess.’

  Cass nodded, and waited for the rest of the story.

  ‘I was sitting in the armchair, sorting out my shit, and he put it on the arm of the chair and then chucked a pair of gloves on my lap. Nice leather ones, expensive, I reckon. He said I was to deliver his envelope to Paddington nick, right after he’d gone, and to make sure I wore the gloves when I did it, and to bin them after. And not to give my name.’