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

by Sarah Pinborough

  He nodded at Maya. ‘Miss Healey, if you could clear these cups away, then you may continue your work.’

  She disappeared without even a murmured word of farewell. The three men rode the lift down to the ground floor without speaking.

  They waited in the cool lobby, no doubt under the scrutiny of those hidden within the black glass box, while Ramsey rang through to Chelsea to start the paperwork for the search warrant. When he’d finished he looked at Cass, the closest to a glare he’d yet come. ‘If you found anything on that laptop of your brother’s then you’d better use it wisely and carefully, and keep me in the loop.’

  Cass nodded, thinking of the numbers he’d stored in his phone. They were the only bits of information that he could imagine sharing with Ramsey, and he couldn’t do that yet. Ramsey would go through the proper procedures, and until Cass knew who’d set him up, everything outside of the serial case was going to be kept private.

  Asher Red appeared silently in the corridor. He scanned a printed-out sheet. ‘Yes, we did have a Mr Solomon working here: David Solomon. A single man, according to our files. He worked with us on the merging of Abacus Entertainment into the Virginity Division of our corporations. He left about three and a half months ago.’ He looked up. ‘It appears he just rang in one day and said he was leaving. Some people find the pressure that comes with working at The Bank too much to cope with.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps that was part of what prompted poor Christian’s actions.’

  ‘Can I see that?’ Cass asked. He had no wish to discuss his brother with this odious bastard. All he wanted to do was break his nose, and then maybe throw him into the murky Thames outside.

  ‘Certainly.’ He handed it over.

  Cass scanned the sheet. The information on it was minimal, and there was no mention of any Solomon and Bright Mining Corporation. There couldn’t be two families with this unusual surname linked to The Bank, which meant that what was printed here was probably unreliable.

  ‘This Canary Wharf address - this is where he lived?’

  ‘Yes, but the property belongs to the company.’ Mr Red shrugged gracefully. ‘I understand another employee was assigned the living space as soon as Mr Solomon moved out.’

  ‘That part of town isn’t cheap. I don’t recall Christian being offered a flash pad to move into.’

  ‘We expect a lot from our workforce, Detective Inspector, and we are very generous in return. Your brother was indeed offered company housing - and at a far more prestigious address than that one. He chose to stay in his own home. In return, we substantially reduced his mortgage payments each month.’

  ‘There’s a lot missing from here. Bank details, prior addresses. Not even his National Insurance number.’

  ‘I have released the information I can give you without first—’

  ‘—without first getting your superiors’ permission,’ Cass finished for him, and grimaced.

  Mr Red smiled again. ‘We understand each other.’

  ‘One more thing. A pay-as-you-go sim card that was one of a batch stolen from this company has been used to make calls we believe may relate to a crime. Where do you keep these items?’

  ‘Ah yes. I believe someone mentioned this earlier today.

  Each department has its own supply centre. The sim cards were taken from Mergers.’

  ‘The department that Mr Solomon worked for?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mr Red relinquished the word almost unwillingly. It was the first piece of solid information he’d actually provided.

  Cass stared at him. ‘Well, thank you so much for all your help.’ He looked over at Ramsey. ‘Although I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again, aren’t you, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘Oh, without a doubt. Just as soon as that warrant comes in.’

  They didn’t bother with formal goodbyes, instead ignoring Asher Red’s proffered hand and heading back to the car. Clouds had covered the sun and the breeze coming in from the river made Cass shiver. There was more to David Solomon than just some office exec who had burned out. Cass had seen the Redemption file. He’d seen the photos of Bright with his family. And Solomon had laughed at the mention of that name. This employment record was a fake; whoever Solomon was, he was far more intrinsically linked with The Bank than Asher Red was letting on. Cass thought about that smug bastard for a moment. Was it possible that he didn’t even know the record was a dummy? His brain itched for answers.

  He drove from under The Bank’s shadow, he and Ramsey both lost in their own frustrated thoughts. He needed to get back inside the building unsupervised to find more information on Solomon, and he needed to know more about these two accounts that Christian had pulled out. And he could think of only one way to do that. But first, they had to get back to the office.

  Bowman was still at the hospital. Either they were running some major tests on him, or even policemen with suspected poisoning and access to NHS couldn’t move to the front of the queue. Out in the Incident Room there was still a lot of activity, one person marking up all the new information on the board as others talked quietly or manned phones. The end of the room that had been dedicated to the Jackson and Miller case was silent; someone had already started dismantling the board. He ground his teeth together. How could anyone actually believe that Bowman had managed to get some kind of shitty gang war story out of Macintyre after one interview when Cass hadn’t after days of grilling the Irishman and his known associates?

  ‘Sir?’ Claire stood in the doorway. ‘So far no luck with people recognising our victims over in Covent Garden, but we’ve got a list of places that are open to the public that they might have all gone to.’

  Cass scanned down the sheet. There were several cafés and restaurants, a church, the rock venue, the Opera House itself, and a number of pubs. It wasn’t a short list and most of the locations were not the sort where you would notice a new face or an occasional visitor. Covent Garden was filled with strangers most days. They probably had more chance of catching Solomon before they figured out how he selected his victims.

  ‘Well, if we’ve got the manpower, then keep them on it. I’m not too hopeful, though.’ He paused. ‘Any news on Josh Eagleton?’

  ‘No change,’ Claire said. ‘I rang them about an hour ago.

  They say they’ll know better after this initial twenty-four-hour period if there’s likely to be any permanent brain damage.’

  The kid’s message played over in Cass’s head and he kicked himself for not taking the call. Something Eagleton had noticed had freaked him out, and he could only hope the kid recovered so he could share it. He made a mental note to find time, and a reason that didn’t look suspect, to talk to Farmer and get the breakdown of that day’s events. It wouldn’t be tonight, though. This evening would be all about getting back inside The Bank.

  ‘What about the notebook?’

  ‘They’ve got prints from it and are searching the database. So far, nothing. The words are from Paradise Lost. Hask has the notebook now and he is going through the individual quotes, as well as seeing what he can get from the handwriting. That guy really is the expert’s expert.’ She paused. ‘It’s strange that Solomon left it behind, though, when he was so careful to clear everything else out.’

  The same thought had occurred to Cass. ‘Maybe that’s what the puppy was for. To make sure if we didn’t get there of our own accord, someone in that building would smell it and report it. Hask says he’s clever. He’d paid up front and it wouldn’t have taken a genius to see that the landlord was a lazy bastard who was hardly going to be checking his tenants were happy every five minutes. Maybe we’ve found everything exactly when he wanted us to. He shrugged. ‘And on top of all that, who knows what makes this one do what he does? Sure as fuck, not me. Maybe he was testing us. He seems to like tests, this guy.’

  ‘I’ve got something else strange for you. I just had SOC on the phone. I asked them to look out for blond hairs - Sheena Joyce said he was blond, so I figured it would save some time.’

&
nbsp; ‘Good thinking. Well done.’

  ‘Well, the problem is’ - and Claire shook her head, bemused - ‘they haven’t found any.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Cass stared. Hair was normally the most abundant trace evidence found. The average person shed a hundred hairs a day, and in a dirty bedsit they should have been everywhere.

  ‘None that would fit the description. They’ve found dark hair, and some long blonde hairs with dark roots. None the right length to be our man’s.’

  ‘But that’s simply not possible!’

  ‘That’s what I said to SOC. If he’d cleaned the room of his own hair, then surely they wouldn’t have found any other hairs under the flies or in the bedding.’ She paused. ‘They said that was our problem.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Maybe he was wearing a wig,’ Claire suggested.

  It was a possibility, but Cass didn’t buy it. Sheena Joyce would have noticed. They didn’t make wigs that good, even for the movies.

  ‘And just to add to the confusion, apparently there are no pupal cases in the room. There are in the oven, but none outside of it.’

  ‘Pupil cases?’

  ‘Not pupil. Pupal. It’s what the flies hatch out of. If he’d had them there growing on something from eggs, the flies would have left these small dark shells behind.’

  Cass had a vague recollection of Farmer talking him through the life cycle of a fly when he’d first come onto the case, but it had been pushed aside by more important information. ‘And there weren’t any of these cases in the bedsit?’

  ‘No. It’s like the flies just appeared, and died. Or maybe he brought them in already dead and scattered them there.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re part of the message. He’s left eggs on the victims; maybe this and the notebook are a message to us. The dead flies are the opposite end of the cycle. Maybe he’s saying something different to us. Maybe the dead ones represent him finishing something. Get the SOC photos over to Hask. That’s his department.’

  He shut the door behind her and after a moment pulled out Christian’s business card from his top pocket. His brother’s name was typed in a small, elegant font and had no title underneath it. Having seen his office, that didn’t surprise Cass much. Christian was probably too high up in the company to have just one title. Underneath it was Maya’s name, and the title Personal Assistant, and under that was a number. He dialled it.

  ‘Maya Healey.’ It was a soft, sweet voice. The kind that oozed ‘Victim’.

  ‘It’s Cass Jones.’

  There was a pause that suggested that if she hadn’t been such a polite person she would have hung up. As it was, she just let out a breathy, sharp sigh. It took Cass less than five minutes to persuade her to meet him after work for a drink to talk about Christian. She didn’t want to, but he pulled at her heartstrings until she said yes, he could pick her up round the corner from work when she finished. She said she finished at six-thirty. Cass decided he’d be there at six, just in case she let her obvious anxiety get the better of her and decided to flee a little earlier.

  With the phone still in hand, he chewed his bottom lip. ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered, and dialled his home number. There was no one there. After a moment he tried Kate’s mobile. The phone rang out and just as he’d given up, she finally answered.

  ‘What do you want, Cass?’

  He could hear her sniffing loudly at the other end. Surely she couldn’t still be crying about Christian and Jessica?

  ‘I just wanted to—’

  A siren wailed loudly in his ear, cutting his sentence off. What did he want to do? Talk to her? Make everything right? Come home? Were either of them capable of that? Another siren joined the first and it was a long minute before it was quiet enough for them to speak.

  ‘I wanted to check you were okay.’ It sounded feeble. Shit, it was feeble.

  ‘This isn’t the right time, Cass. I can’t talk now.’ She sniffed again. ‘I don’t want to talk.’ Her breath hitched. ‘It’s all your fault. I can’t sleep and it’s all your fault. If you hadn’t . . .’ Her sentence tailed off.

  ‘If I hadn’t what?’ She sounded so angry, and it tugged at some place inside him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she sighed, the fight gone from her as quickly as it had flared. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  She didn’t even wait for him to say goodbye before hanging up. Cass stared at the receiver and thought for a second about calling her back before replacing it in the cradle. Even if he did, she wouldn’t answer. He needed to concentrate on the things he could actually do something about. Kate wasn’t one of them right now.

  He flicked on the computer and typed Paradise Lost into the search engine, then scrolled through the results to find an example of the text. His eyes moved over the words, but he took nothing from them. Fucking poetry. He’d hated it at school, and it still left him cold. He navigated away and browsed through the many sites that claimed to explain it as the story of Satan and his followers and how they fought God and were cast down from Heaven. He scrolled through, skim-reading for ten minutes or so. His dad wouldn’t have liked this. For at least part of the text Satan was portrayed as some kind of hero taking on a despotic God, before creating Pandemonium out of Chaos. The last word rang a bell and he thought of the music that had been playing when poor Carla Rae had been found. Hadn’t Hask said it was called something to do with chaos? Well, he didn’t need the profiler to tell him that David Solomon clearly had some issues with organised religion that he was addressing in his own dark, perverse way.

  The later sections of the poem focused on Adam and Eve and their eviction from Paradise, but it was all heavily worded and nothing leapt out at him. After scanning through the notes on the screen he shut the computer down. He’d seen enough. Analysing it in any detail was Hask’s job; he was an eminently better person to do it than Cass.

  He went into the station database and searched for the most recent Macintyre interview. He turned the volume down low before clicking play.

  ‘Interview commenced at 11.45 a.m. Those present: Samuel Macintyre, Detective Inspector Gary Bowman and Detective Sergeant Mat Blackmore.’ Blackmore’s voice was tinny through the small speakers on either side of the screen. Cass listened as Bowman took over, firing questions at the gangster, demanding answers. Papers shuffled and Blackmore announced that DI Bowman was showing the suspect a series of photos of the dead boys. It was all routine stuff, and it had all been done by Cass himself over the course of the previous two weeks. Then came the application of pressure, the threats that the police would be like a second skin on Macintyre’s arse until he had no businesses left if he didn’t tell them what the fuck had happened that afternoon.

  Bowman moved on to the subject of Artie Mullins, but not in the way Cass had expected. Instead of pushing the blame onto the rival crime lord, Bowman hinted that if Macintyre didn’t give them something to go on, then they’d make sure that Artie heard that Sam was implicating him in the attempted hit. It was a good tactic, Cass gave him that, but it wasn’t enough to make Macintyre suddenly give up the info that he might have been set up over a dispute with some Chechens - which was exactly what he did next. And then to suddenly drop the names of two villains who had admitted they’d been conned into revealing his plans for the day? None of it rang true. It was all too slick.

  For a start, if Macintyre thought some of his own men had been dumb enough to almost get him killed, they wouldn’t be walking around, let alone be able to come in and give statements. They’d be fucking lucky if they got away with just having their kneecaps smashed. It was far more likely that their bodies would be washing up on some Thames mudbank, bloated and rotting. People like Macintyre dealt with their own shit. They didn’t hand it on a plate to the police.

  He tapped his fingers against the desk in frustration. He could see why the DCI and his superiors were going along with it. Everyone was screaming for an end to this case, and Bowman had delivered it. Macintyre walked away, no doubt some poor Ch
echen fucker would turn up dead from some kind of ‘accident’, Bowman could close the case, and the whole thing would go away, with no one ending up in prison and everyone in pocket. It was shit. He played the interview again. Something else was bugging him, but even after listening through it twice more, he couldn’t place it.

  It was only when he got in his car to head back to The Bank to meet Maya Healey that he realised what was wrong. It was the timing. Blackmore gave the start time of the interview as 11.45 in the morning. It didn’t fit. When Claire had rung him, he’d been driving down to the house and it had only just gone eleven, and she’d said that Macintyre was already in the interview room. He pulled too fast out of the car park, almost colliding with a Panda coming the other way. Without even waving an apology, he steered into the road. The fuckers. They used that first forty-five minutes to set up with Macintyre how the recorded interview would proceed, and then started the official interview afterwards. Dusk was creeping over London, light and dark fighting for supremacy of the sky. He thought of the interview, and Bowman, and his own life. Maybe that grey area was all any of them could hope for, but if Perry Jordan came back with something on either Jackson or Miller, then Detective Inspector Bowman was going to regret trying to clean up too soon.

  He parked up in one of the side streets, fed the meter with a ridiculous amount of money and leaned against the corner wall, his tall frame swallowed up by the shadows of the encroaching night. Although the SIS Building was most dramatic when seen from across the river, Cass thought the rear view, with its sharp, angular lines, was equally impressive.

  His eyes moved upwards, taking in the sleek slash of steel against the black backdrop of the fallen night, juxtaposed with the shining glass windows, lit from within. He counted up the floors to the eleventh, where Christian’s office sat empty, waiting patiently for a new executive to fill it. His eyes drifted upwards again and then he frowned. He counted again from the floor to the top. The numbers were wrong. The lift had buttons for twenty floors. He was tallying more than that. He checked twice more. The count came back the same each time. Even if he took out a couple for the computer system base and archives, there would still be more than the twenty floors numbered in the lift. Why would they have floors that weren’t accessible? Was there a separate lift, or a staircase that he hadn’t seen? It didn’t make sense. He breathed quietly, his brain whirring.