The Shadow of the Soul: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Two

by Sarah Pinborough

  Back on his feet, he grabbed a tea towel and used it as a glove to yank open kitchen drawers and cupboards, searching in vain for a second knife block. There wasn’t one. He slammed the last cupboard shut with a grunt of frustration before picking the knife up and washing it.

  It was his fucking knife. From his own fucking kitchen. Jesus Fuck. Someone had been to his house and taken it and then come here and killed Powell. What the fuck for? And who? His mind raced. He couldn’t call it in, not now. He’d been set up before, when his brother had died, and he’d managed to prove himself innocent; this time he had a feeling he was up against someone cleverer and better connected than Sam Macintyre and DI Gary bloody Bowman. He needed to get rid of all trace of himself and get out of there.

  He wrapped the knife in the tea towel and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket before hunting under the sink. With a J-cloth he carefully wiped the handles of the cupboards before retracing his steps back out into the hallway and cleaning every surface he could remember touching. He cleaned the sill and the catch on the dining room window and then checked the hallway for footprints. There were none. He glanced in each of the downstairs rooms, his eyes scanning for anything else that might belong to him that might have been planted to incriminate him further, but there was nothing.

  He was checking the upstairs rooms when his phone rang. Armstrong. Shit. He raced down and through the kitchen to the small garden outside and took a deep breath before answering. He couldn’t afford to miss this call; he needed someone to hear him sounding normal. Then he really needed to get the fuck out of here.

  ‘Yep.’ He was pleased to find his tone was steady.

  ‘I’ve checked her Oyster card.’

  ‘What?’ Cass scanned the houses on either side. There was no one at any of the windows; at least that was something in his favour. He needed the sounds of outside, but he didn’t like the chance of anyone seeing him there. He moved under the partial shade of a half-lowered table parasol. If anyone did spot him, then at least they might not see his face clearly.

  ‘Angie Lane’s Oyster card,’ Armstrong was saying. ‘Well, I didn’t do it, technically the computer did. I just figured out the dates she should have been going to Temple and punched them in. The laptop told me the rest.’

  ‘Which is?’ Cass felt like his brain was going to explode. The killer had run from here at least ten minutes before. If he’d called the police himself, intending to get Cass found there, the cars wouldn’t be far away now.

  ‘Two of the evenings she should have been in Temple, she wasn’t anywhere near the place. Once she was around Piccadilly Circus – she got the tube home from there at 9.30 p.m. anyway – and the following week she was out at Turnham Green. She stayed an hour and then got on the tube back. That was at eight in the evening. She’s looking increasingly separate from the rest.’

  ‘Isn’t she just?’ Cass said. Another murder. He was surrounded by the dead. The first drops of rain began to patter onto the canvas of the parasol. Perhaps the dead wanted to drown him.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Stuck in fucking traffic. Any news on her phone?’

  ‘They’ve promised us the numbers first thing. I wish I’d requested all that in the first place rather than just a cross-reference with the others’ calls.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t seem important at the time. And anyway, it can wait until the morning. Whoever’s at the bottom of it thinks they’ve got away with it. They’re not running.’ He looked at the wall. Running was exactly what he should be doing.

  ‘As you’ve done my job for me,’ he continued, ‘I might as well head straight home rather than fight my way to Paddington. You do the same. Good work today, Armstrong.’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  Andrew Gibbs waved goodbye to the woman at the Accident & Emergency reception desk and headed out towards the car park. She was pulling a full double; at least he’d only had to do an extra couple of hours before a relief had turned up. She was a pretty thing too, even with her face hardened from dealing with all the abuse from the drunks and the foolish and the just plain rude all day long. A few years ago, he might have tried to play there, but these days he was just too tired, and there was something grubby about the hospital and the sicknesses of the poor that rubbed off on everyone who worked there. She probably felt it too. Unlike most hospitals in the country, there were very few doctor-nurse relationships in this one. If you were going to sleep with someone, you wanted it to be someone cleaner; someone untouched by the grime of the A&E ward.

  Still, it wasn’t as if his social life was a whirl at the moment. For the first time, he’d started to feel middle age creeping up on him, and it wasn’t just a number any more. He was tired, not so much physically – although he was certainly feeling the aches and pains of being on his feet all day – but mentally and emotionally. A&E wards had always been the stage for what ailed society; these days there was so much more wrong with the country. The bug was on the increase, stretching its deadly fingers to grip even the middle classes and the happily married: those who’d believed themselves safe from the original strain of HIV. They’d forgotten the big message of the eighties – to wear a condom – believing love and fidelity went hand in hand. TB and hepatitis strolled casually behind in their more aggressive colleague’s wake. These days executive women worked as call girls to pay the mortgage on the houses they couldn’t sell, while their corporate menfolk turned to drink, and always there were the junkies and the pushers and the petty criminals. The A&E ward was full of those who should have gone to a doctor, but couldn’t afford the charges. Perhaps they’d hoped whatever was wrong would get better with time. It wouldn’t, though, Dr Gibbs thought sadly. It was life that was ailing them: this grim life and its inevitable end.

  It was raining, the drops falling in a steady, gentle rhythm, but he didn’t pick up his pace – it was refreshing, and he needed something to clean out the dark shadows in his mind. It wasn’t like him to be so bleak; his optimism was one of the reasons he’d chosen to work in this field. The policeman’s visit had bothered him: it had made him remember how calm things had been in the Flush5 ward during the few months he’d worked there. Maybe he should have stayed in the private sector – the past ten years would certainly have been different.

  His car was parked on the far side of the large lot, in the hospital employees’ section, away from the pay and display machines patients and visitors alike had to fill with pound coins if they wanted to get to the hospital without using public transport. It was all so self-defeating for a hospital that the government held up constantly as an example to prove that it still cared about society’s impoverished and weak and forgotten.

  The problem was that when everyone was struggling, those in extremis no longer counted. If ordinary bus driver Joe Bloggs had to pay for his medical treatment, then why the hell shouldn’t everyone else? That was the world’s view. Charity certainly did begin at home. It wouldn’t be long before the emergency services lost their NHS access too, although most of them had already bought into private plans for anything more than a trip to the GP. Dr Gibbs couldn’t blame them – he wouldn’t want NHS treatment himself; even with an accident he’d opt for a private A&E ward: have credit card, can travel.

  He rummaged in his pocket for his car keys. He got to help people who needed it though. He had to hang on to that. Most of the time it didn’t seem like so very much, but there were always those magic moments in medicine where you held someone’s life in your hands and then felt the scales tip in the right direction. Life could be worse, he concluded. Working on the NHS A&E ward certainly showed you that too.

  The tatty old Ford Focus blipped as he hit the unlock button and he finally picked up the pace a bit as the rain found its rhythm and tumbled heavier to the ground. He’d just reached for the door handle when a young man in a long dark overcoat got out of a car a row back.

  ‘Dr Gibbs! I don’t believe it!’ he said, grinning as he walked forward. ‘I
haven’t seen you in ages!’

  Gibbs frowned. He didn’t recognise the young man with the thick black hair at all – not that that meant much; he saw so many people. Had he been a patient? No, he was greeting him like a friend, so perhaps a medical student? That must be it. Even so, his eyes wandered up to the CCTV cameras that whirred on tall posts above their heads, quietly monitoring the activity in the car park.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t quite place you.’ His own smile was awkward, but it didn’t stop the confident stride of the other man, and before he knew it, he was wrapped in a tight embrace, his face pressed into the wool of the man’s shoulder. It smelled expensive. Savile Row. Not a medical student after all then.

  ‘Goodnight, Doctor,’ the young man whispered in his ear, and before he could pull back, the wind was knocked out by the sharp blow to his guts. He felt his eyes widen and his mouth drop. This wasn’t right – in fact, this was very wrong. The arm around him tightened and a searing pain ran through his insides as the out-of-sight arm jerked suddenly upwards. He felt the young man tense before stepping back. Blood splattered across the tarmac between them and dripped down the side of his car. Crimson stained the young man’s highly polished black shoes.

  ‘Why?’ The word wouldn’t come out. He slid down the side of the car and watched the man turn and walk, head down, out of the car park. Wasn’t his car. Just been waiting. Why? He stared at the ground as rain and blood mixed. His blood. His life. His death. The first wave of panic ran through his veins, veins that were so desperately trying to pump the blood that was so keen to leave him.

  He felt dizzy, and the black spots that appeared at the corners of his eyes were spreading. Someone would come … there were cameras … someone would see … This was too surreal. He couldn’t be dying. Not here. Not now. Not him.

  A few moments later his body proved him wrong.

  The weather isn’t as warm as it was in Paris, and it’s raining. The heavy drops patter on the small metal slide and climbing frame to her left as she swings open the damp gate and strolls into the gardens of Woburn Square. The path is made of yellow grit, and she thinks it’s pretty against the green of the central lawn. It makes her think of the walkways, and for a moment she is filled with a feeling she doesn’t recognise – an ache, something new amidst so many new things. A longing for home. She shakes it away and breathes in the air that smells of wetness and petrol and the sweat of millions.

  Water spills from the leaves of the trees that are spread out at regular intervals between the cast-iron fence and the path to afford some sense of peace and privacy in the midst of the bustling city, and she feels a splash of cool trickle down the back of her neck and slip under the collar of her baggy jumper. Perhaps she should have worn more, but she likes the feel of the soft jeans on her legs and the wool brushing her body. Still, goosebumps prickle the fine hairs on her arms. She’s not sure if she likes them or not.

  A bus horn blares and a bunch of schoolkids pass on the other side of the fence, cussing each other in the vilest terms. The language sounds rough. London, she is realising, lacks the romance of Paris, and yet, she thinks with a smile, it has something of its own. It is old and gritty and filled with harsh truths hidden in plain sight. It is clever and fast and full of life. Its gestures are cynical, but made with a cheeky grin. London is a city that winks at you as it steals your wallet. There is no mistaking that this is the Architect’s home. It stinks of him.

  She smiles at the figure waiting for her in the wooden hut at the far end of the square. It is a quaint structure, with its white, waist-high fence that is almost picket-like, and the pale blue benches that line it within. There’s a miniature pavilion, which on a sunny day is probably filled with students, or workers eating their lunches and chatting, or maybe lovers, curled up together watching the world go by. She likes it. It’s a simple thing that has been built purely for the quiet pleasure of others. A good person designed it, she is sure of this.

  ‘I like the look,’ she says.

  The tramp grins back, running a tongue over what are left of his teeth and highlighting the gaps as he plucks at the strings on his violin. ‘I thought you would.’ He puts the instrument carefully down on the bench beside him.

  ‘Don’t stop on my account,’ she says. For a moment everything in the world falls silent, and then her head fills once more with the sounds of the city.

  ‘There’s always music. You don’t need me to play it to hear it.’

  And this is the truth. She hears the tunes in everything. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘I thought you’d come soon.’ His eyes shine with his good mood. She’s glad he’s enjoying himself. ‘It’s all happening here,’ he continues.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ She looks around her. ‘Everything is happening all the time.’ For a moment she is overwhelmed. ‘This place is …’ She isn’t sure of the words she’s looking for. ‘This place is …’

  ‘… wonderful?’ He finishes her statement with a question, but she leaves it unanswered. Perhaps it is wonderful, but its wonders aren’t why either of them are here, and it would be best not to forget that.

  ‘How is he?’ she asks instead.

  The tramp lets out a throaty laugh. ‘Oh my, he is something else. Do you think we should help him?’

  The rain is coming down heavier now and she steps inside and sits beside him. ‘Not just yet. I think we’ll just watch a while longer.’

  She smiles up at him. It really is good to see him.

  ‘Play something lovely for me.’

  And so he does.

  Adam Bradley didn’t run but walked fast from the hospital car park and rejoined the main streets and the flow of pedestrians moving quickly, all eager to get out of the rain. No one followed him. He hadn’t expected anyone to. Someone was probably only just getting round to calling the police once they’d stopped trying to perform a miracle on Dr Gibbs’ body. They would be wasting their time. Not even God could resurrect that man.

  He slowed and turned down a side alley before pulling the mobile phone out of his pocket. He had one more job to do before he could head back. He smiled. So far the day had gone well. Mr Bright would be pleased with him.

  The phone, a disposable pay-as-you-go – and one of hundreds he had access to – had only one phone number stored in it and that was on speed-dial, the direct line number for Chelsea Police Station. Under the limited protection of a fire-escape doorway, he pressed call.

  ‘I’d like to speak to someone in the Murder Squad, please,’ he said. ‘I think I just saw someone kill a man.’

  The desk sergeant tried to take his name and details, and Bradley speeded his breathing up slightly, making his words panicked. ‘Look, if you don’t put me through, I’ll hang up. I probably shouldn’t have rung anyway. What if he saw me? What if—?’ He smiled as the voice at the other end did its best to soothe him before putting him on hold. After a moment a second voice came on.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Charles Ramsey. You have a crime to report?’

  ‘Yes, I think there’s been a murder. 36A Dayton Gardens.’

  ‘What makes you think a crime has been committed, sir?’ The man was American, every word spoken in a strong Yankee drawl.

  ‘One of the front windows is smashed. I looked through the letterbox and saw blood on the hallway tiles. I think someone’s dead in there. There was a man in there too. Tall and dark. I saw him come out of one room and cross into another. That’s when I ran.’

  ‘What did he look like, this man?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe six foot? Dark short hair. He was wearing a suit. Maybe late thirties. Craggy face.’

  ‘Sounds like you got a good look at him.’

  ‘I was scared, man. There was so much blood—’

  ‘I’m going to need to take your name—’

  Bradley hung up and then turned the phone off. The Detective Inspector could call that number back as much as he liked and he wouldn’t get an answer. Once he’d
found the body, of course, the anonymous caller will be like so many others: an ordinary citizen not wanting to put himself in the firing line of a court and the justice system, because they couldn’t afford the time off work, or had too many skeletons in their own closet to want to have their name on any police file. England was full of such people these days, all ordinary, all grubby. No one would spend much time looking for him. He took the phone apart and crunched the sim card under his well-polished shoe. On the main street he dropped the front of the phone in one rubbish bin and the back in a second.

  There was a spring in his step that came from the satisfaction of a job well done, and knowing that his boss would be pleased. He looked around at the bland faces of the populace as they passed him by, their pasty bodies covered in cheap anoraks and tracksuits and off-the-peg suits. Once they would have considered him worse than the dirt on their shoes, and looked at him with fearful disgust, if they’d looked at him at all. These days, those same people still gave him a slight berth as they passed, and still looked at him as if he was different, but now the looks were filled with fearful awe. They recognised, if only subconsciously, the presence of superiority. It was in the fine wool of his coat, and the sleek cut of his hair. It was in his eyes. He was better than them all: he knew it, and so did they.

  The black Mercedes pulled up along side him as he strolled down the pavement, and for a moment his smile fell. He hadn’t organised his driver. He’d planned to make his own way home from here. He stopped and frowned. The tinted window slid down and from inside he saw a flash of silver hair and a sharp smile.