‘Have you heard more?’ he asked. His voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Do we have to go and find him?’
She shook her head. Her hair had dulled to somewhere nearly brown, and a strand fell across her eyes. She tucked it behind one ear. ‘No, not yet. We wait for now.’
‘Does he talk to you often now that he’s awake? Can you hear him clearly?’
‘Yes,’ she said, softly. ‘Every day he sounds stronger. He’s so grateful that we heard him from so far away, that we made this long journey. When we are home we will be very well rewarded.’
‘To be home will be a good enough prize for me.’
‘True. For me too.’
His eyes were watering and she wiped his cheeks. ‘But what stories we will have to tell – we have seen it in a way no others ever will.’
‘He does think we will get home then?’ The old man’s tone was uncertain. She had never heard that in him before, not in all their years together. It was hard, this place – magical, but hard. She looked out of the window at the grey sky and the lights coming from the tall building around them in this heart of the city. In many ways it was glorious, breathtaking and brilliant, and there was so much more of it to see – so many wonders. She let out a small, sad sigh. No wonder he wanted to destroy it.
‘Yes. He knows why we can’t find the Walkways. We need to find someone.’
‘Who?’ He pushed himself up from the pillows slightly.
‘Jarrod Pretorius.’
There was a long pause. There had been a long pause in her own head after the First had spoken the name to her in the space between bodies and places. It was a name she hadn’t thought about in a long time. Her heart had ached in a way she’d almost forgotten.
‘Why him?’
‘He’s why we can’t get home.’ She was glad to hear her own voice was still light and musical.
‘Where is he?’ The old man looked thoughtful.
‘He doesn’t know. He just says that we need to find him.’
‘He doesn’t know?’
‘He’s been sleeping a long time.’
‘Not that long – he called out to us when he started sleeping, that’s what he said.’
She watched the old man carefully. She had never heard such suspicion in his voice.
‘Maybe he hadn’t kept track of Pretorius.’ Her voice softened slightly. ‘He was never really like them.’
‘He was never really like any of us.’
‘True.’
They sat quietly together. In the silence he was as lost in the memories as she was.
‘It was all a long time ago, wasn’t it?’ he asked after a while.
‘Yes, it was.’
‘They’ve done all this in that time. That’s quite something.’
The silence lingered as the day darkened outside.
‘One thing bothers me,’ the old man said eventually, his voice stronger than it had been.
‘Go on.’ She had a vague idea what was coming. The thought had occurred to her, and if she knew anyone at all after this very long existence, it was this old man – this old spirit.
‘The First must have known it would be you and me who came if he managed to call for us. Who else would be sent?’
‘That’s true.’
‘We were close,’ he said. ‘He put me in his legends here. It made me smile to see.’ He smiled at her. ‘He put you in too.’
‘He was still fond of us – even then, after everything – just as we are all still fond of him. He was the First. He is the First.’
‘So why didn’t he tell us before we came? Why didn’t he say he didn’t know how to get home?’
‘He used a lot of energy calling. It weakened him dangerously.’ She wasn’t answering the question, even if what she said was truthful. ‘He was desperate, perhaps.’
‘We would still have come.’ The old man smiled. ‘He would always have sent us, and we would have come willingly, you and I.’ A frown wrinkled between his eyes. ‘So why didn’t he tell us we might not be able to get back?’
The silence settled between them again, a more honest silence, perhaps, as they mulled over the nature of their place in the hierarchy. In the end, she sighed and smiled before shrugging a slim shoulder. ‘Like father, like son, my old friend. Like father, like son.’
Mr Craven was exhausted. What he’d done was stupid, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help becoming, not in that instant of rage, though it had cost him dearly. He could feel it in every inch of his thin body, in the racking pain in his watery lungs. He had stolen from his own time – how much? Days, months? Time had never mattered before. From where he was sitting against the wall he could see the bloody mess on the bed. Time didn’t matter for that boy any more. He let out a small, wet laugh. There was one person he had outlived.
He dragged himself to his feet and went through to the second room, ignoring the tangled sheets and the various plates that littered the floor. Housekeeping could take care of them when he was gone – although he doubted the untidiness would be the first thing that grabbed their attention. Hotel staff saw plenty of strange comings and goings in their most expensive suites over the years – that was the whole point of paying all that money, after all – but he defied any of them to have experienced anything like the gift he was leaving behind.
He glanced over his shoulder at the remains of the boy. He might well have overstepped the mark somewhat there. The understatement almost made him giggle again, and, not for the first time, he wondered idly if he was losing his mind. That probably didn’t matter either, he concluded, not with the way time was slipping away from him.
He sat down in the desk chair and pulled the thick hotel robe tighter around his body. The heating was on full, but the chill in his bones was unshakeable. He ignored it, and put the tiny earphones in before replaying the recording. It didn’t surprise him that Mr Dublin hadn’t thought to sweep for bugs after his visit; Mr Dublin would have considered such a thing too low, without the honour their kind had always had. That’s why Mr Dublin would never be as good a leader as Mr Bright. Mr Bright had always known that they were capable of low. He’d always recognised the similarities between their kind and them – that’s why they’d all left together, the rejects and the rebels, united.
When he’d heard the relevant parts, he switched the device off again, returning the room to silence. He stared out of the window at the dark sky. What was it? Four, five o’clock? Night already, and another day gone. He pushed the fear far down into his belly, though it didn’t feel far enough.
So, Mr Dublin was looking for Cassius Jones to try in the Experiment. He expected to feel more of a flurry of excitement about that, but each time he’d listened to the recording, all he could think was that even if they were successful, it would be too late for him. Would Mr Dublin even care? Even if they got home there would be scapegoats required, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he would probably be among them. Would he even be able to get home? Perhaps the sick – the dying – wouldn’t make it?
So many questions, and none of them had comforting answers. The only thing that he did know – that he was becoming increasingly unable to avoid knowing as the days passed – was that in all likelihood he would die in this godforsaken – literally – place, a shadow of his former self. And he would die sooner rather than later. The bitterness threatened to overwhelm him and he chewed hard on his thin bottom lip. His mouth tasted of metal. His gums were bleeding again.
Cassius Jones. The bloodline. He thought of the dribbling First. Would he rather that fate for himself than death? It surprised him to find the answer was yes: anything was better than death. That’s what the smug and untouched like Mr Dublin and Mr Bright would never understand, not until it came for them.
Cassius Jones, however, was a wild card – and more than that, he was a missing wild card, and Mr Dublin was right, he would no doubt want to come after the Network. Cassius Jones had a score to settle with Mr
Bright, and at some point, when he was recovered and ready, he would come out into the open. Mr Dublin would be waiting for him, as would Mr Bright, no doubt.
So perhaps it was time to bring ex-Detective Inspector Cassius Jones up to speed – finish what Mr Solomon had started, but be somewhat less ambiguous about it. He didn’t have the time available for the fun to be found in watching people trying to unlock riddles; he wasn’t sure Cass Jones did either.
He turned away from the window and sighed. This place was a dump; it was time to gather his belongings and move to another hotel. He wondered if he should shower first. Probably, given the blood that had dried on his skin after he’d become small again. It wouldn’t do to draw too much attention to himself. He walked through the bedroom and paused at the en-suite door to look back at the child on the bed. Without his skin, which was now tangled up somewhere in the mess of sheets on the floor, the boy looked even smaller. The bedside lamp was broken, he noticed, as was the mirror on the wall. He might have lost the ability to fuck, as he’d discovered moments before the mayhem ensued, but he certainly hadn’t lost his natural skills. It had felt good to be himself, to do what only he could do. He still had his sharpness, and he would savour the memory, if only the experience hadn’t cost him so much. Not quite as much as it had cost the boy, he reflected, but still too much.
The shower was hot on his aching shoulders. The thought that Mr Dublin might find the way home after he was gone was almost too much to bear. He would enlighten Cassius Jones. But before that, he thought, rubbing apple-scented shampoo into his thinning hair, he would spread his word and find a new hotel for the night.
Chapter Nineteen
Hask wasn’t entirely sure why he’d closed the office door before bringing up Adam Bradley’s interview file, but he had. He and Ramsey were entirely within their rights to look at any evidence that might lead them to Cass Jones – that was, after all what the Force was paying him for, at least partly, and finding Cass Jones was definitely Charles Ramsey’s primary case – but he couldn’t help but feel sneaky about it. Ramsey clearly felt the same – neither of them had mentioned to Armstrong that while he was briefing Heddings on what they’d learned from Hurke, they’d be going over old interview tapes. Probably because they both knew what the answer would be – what for?
And therein lay the crux of the matter: the overstretched officers of what was currently London’s most scrutinised police station had already decided that Cass Jones was guilty of murder, twice over. And they had also decided those murders had been as a result of his paranoid delusion that someone had stolen his nephew at birth, rather than the child going missing due to yet another fuck-up in the long history of NHS fuck-ups.
As far as Armstrong and the rest of the station were concerned, Cass had paid for Adam Bradley’s help, and then killed him when he was no longer useful. Three men were dead – two by Jones’ hand, allegedly, and one paid for by him. Cass Jones had run; on top of all the other evidence against him, only fools would think that the DI could be anything other than guilty after the way he’d fled into hiding. So that must make him and Ramsey both fools, because they couldn’t believe that even in the aftermath of so much personal loss, a man like Cassius Jones could turn psychotic himself. It might be the easiest thing to believe, but that didn’t make it the truth. In fact, in Hask’s long experience, the easiest thing to believe was often a far cry from the truth.
They’d started listening to the interview to try and get some sense of the interaction between Jones and Bradley, to see if there was any hint in Jones that he found the boy in any way interesting or remarkable. What they’d found was something completely different.
‘How could we have forgotten Mr Bright?’ Ramsey muttered.
‘I shouldn’t have forgotten. I was there at this interview.’ Hask leaned over the desk, his vast stomach resting slightly on the surface. ‘Play that middle bit again. And then see if we can get Cass’ report on the Solomon call. I can’t remember it exactly.’
‘Me neither.’ Ramsey dragged the mouse back along the timeline a minute. ‘Too many dead since then.’ He clicked play and Adam Bradley spoke once again from beyond the grave. Hask could almost hear him sweating through the clicks and swallows between his sentences.
‘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.’
There was a small pause, and in his mind’s eye Hask could see the boy looking to Jones for confirmation before continuing,
‘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.’
‘Did he give you his?’ Cass’ voice.
‘Yeah, he did, as it goes. He gave me the hundred quid, and I thought he was leaving so I shot meself up. But he didn’t go; he was peering out through the curtains and going on and on about how everything was planned and there were no coincidences. He kept saying everything happened for a reason, and asking if I believed that. I wasn’t really listening, I’d got the dosh and I just wanted him to go. He gave me the creeps. When the smack hit me I said something like, “Who are you, anyway?” He smiled that creepy smile again and said, “My name is Mr Bright.” It was a real smug smile, as if I’d done just what he’d expected.’
‘Mr Bright? No first name?’
‘I don’t think he’s the sort of bloke that uses one. I don’t remember much after that. I zoned out a bit, and when I came to he was gone. I went down to my mum’s place for a while and when I was a bit straighter I brought the envelope here.’
‘He was going on and on about how everything was planned and there were no coincidences,’ Hask said softly.
‘So,’ Ramsey leaned back in the chair, ‘junkie Adam Bradley meets Mr Bright, who tells him to bring Cass this video of the killings. They meet in a flat where later the Man of Flies, Solomon, kills Carla Rae. We’re pretty sure that Bright wanted Bradley to be identified, which can only mean that Mr Bright wanted Cass to know his name. Am I getting this right?’
‘You’re getting it exactly as well as Jones and I did at the time.’ Hask had pulled a piece of paper from the printer and was scribbling on a spider diagram with the words Mr Bright in the middle. He’d seen eyebrows raise at his schoolboy approach to thinking things through, but it worked for him. He’d so far jotted down the given description, as well as the phrase ‘no coincidences’. He added another word. Solomon?
Keys clicked fast and then Ramsey said, ‘Got it.’
‘Solomon mentioned Mr Bright to Cass when he called him,’ Hask said. ‘I know he did. I remember wondering if maybe Solomon and Bright were perhaps the same person, and then deciding against it.’
‘I remember. And then Cass told us that DCI Morgan had made it clear that the Bright line of enquiry was a no-go and not to give it any more manpower.’
Hask scanned the screen. ‘There.’ He pointed.
The words were there in black and white; he read, ‘“Cass Jones claimed he asked the caller if he was Mr Bright, and then Solomon answered, “He’d love that. He looks for me, I watch him.”’ Ramsey scrolled down further. ‘“Solomon went on to give his sympathy to Cass over Christian’s death and say that it was nothing to do with him.”’
‘Look.’ Hask pointed at the screen. ‘He refers to Cass and Christian as family.’ He added the word to the scribblings on his sheet of paper.
‘Yeah,’ Ramsey said, ‘and he also says “it wasn’t us”. When talking about Christian’s death. Not just him: us.’
‘How did we ignore this?’
‘We were told to – and there was a lot of shit going on.’
‘Well, we
might have done as we were told,’ Hask tapped his pen thoughtfully against the sheet of paper, ‘but I wonder if Cass Jones did.’
The door opened without warning.
‘I’ve got a team trying to find out as much as they can about Draper, but I doubt we’ll have much to go on before the morning.’ Armstrong closed the door behind him and came up to the desk. ‘You may as well go home, Dr Hask.’ He paused, and Hask realised too late that his jottings were far too large to go ignored by a policeman with as sharp an eye as the young sergeant had proved to have.
‘What’s this?’ Armstrong picked it up and frowned, and the profiler couldn’t help feeling like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
‘We were looking at the Bradley/Jones interview from the Man of Flies case,’ Ramsey said, looking up. If he was feeling caught out, he wasn’t showing it. ‘We thought it might bring up something – some kind of hint that Jones might revisit Bradley later.’
‘What it did bring up, however, is Mr Bright.’
‘Who?’
‘Before your time. His name came up in the Man of Flies investigation twice, and we were told to leave it alone.’
‘And?’
‘Read through the files for yourself. This Mr Bright character manipulated Adam Bradley and was instrumental in getting information to Jones about two separate murder cases. When Solomon rang Jones at his parents’ house, it was clear that he knew Mr Bright.’
‘You can’t count that transcript,’ Armstrong cut in sharply. ‘It’s all just Jones’ word. There’s no recording. He could have made it all up, for all we know.’
‘What?’ Hask snorted. ‘Why would he do that? Because he might go on a killing spree in six months’ time after his wife and sergeant are both killed – events that haven’t even happened yet? You’re saying Cass Jones fed in the name Mr Bright to the record of a conversation in the unlikely event that should he go on the run at any time in the future someone might decide to go through old records?’
The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three (DOG-FACED GODS TRILOGY) Page 13
