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

by Sarah Pinborough

  Rachel had always thought of Amanda as weak and fragile, but as she moved the sinews in her arms were clear. There was nothing fragile about her. Rachel had a weight advantage, but Amanda had a knife, and her own madness to drive her forward.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked softly.

  ‘They were in the kitchen when I came home. She was on the floor, all spaced out, bleeding from where she’d banged her head, but still whining at him about something. He was panicking and going on about how he hadn’t meant it and he’d just pushed her away to protect himself.’ She frowned slightly with the memory. ‘I could see in that moment exactly what had been going on – it was like the whole affair was mapped out there on the kitchen floor. I’d lived in the house with her all that time and she’d never even told me. She was supposed to be my friend. We talked. And she never told me.’

  ‘Did you tell her about all this?’ Rachel pointed down at the papers.

  ‘That’s different.’ The lips tightened again. ‘That’s completely different. This was girl stuff – housemate stuff – the sort of thing friends tell each other. She’d been laughing at me all that time and I hadn’t even known.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have been laughing at you. She wasn’t—’

  ‘Shut up. You don’t know anything.’ Two more steps closer.

  ‘What did you do, Amanda?’ Rachel had an awful feeling she could see where this was going – this was a girl who’d tortured a cat. Poor Angie – and even stupid Mr Cage for that matter – hadn’t stood a chance.

  ‘I took care of it. Angie was trying to get to her feet so I went over to her, grabbed her by the hair and rammed the back of her skull against the corner of the worktop,’ she said, sounding pleased with herself. ‘She wasn’t getting up after that. Cage just stood there, his eyes popping out of his head as if he’d never seen anything like it. I told him to pass me the knife from the side. I think I actually slit her wrists without even consciously realising what my plan was – it was obvious though; all those silly kids killing themselves, and here was little Angie with her stupid secret crush. Everyone was going to want to be my friend after that. Everyone wants to know about death. Everyone.’

  ‘I never realised you were so lonely.’

  ‘Oh, save your pity for yourself. Cage was blubbing by then. He kept asking what I was doing – even when it was completely bloody obvious! I could see he was relieved. She wouldn’t be taking the piss out of him any more either. I sent him home then. I didn’t want him getting blood all over himself and looking suspicious. I told him I’d write “Chaos in the darkness” in her locker and then when it had calmed down I’d be in touch.’ She smiled. ‘I didn’t even know what I wanted from him then – I still don’t think I do, but the power was quite something.’ She pushed the door closed, sealing any possible escape route off.

  ‘It was quiet in the house with just her and me. We didn’t have a clock ticking to count her last seconds down, but I think I heard them all the same. Or maybe it was just the slowing of her heartbeat. It wasn’t like Mum at all. It was so much quicker. I loved it,’ she said, ‘despite the mess. I think she looked right at me for a moment, and she was so confused. Imagine dying not knowing why. How terrible to die with a riddle in your head. At least you won’t have that.’

  ‘You’re insane,’ Rachel said, backing away slightly. ‘What’s the point of killing me if the police are already coming for you?’

  ‘What’s the point of not?’

  Amanda lunged forward.

  ‘Rachel?’ Cass banged hard on the front door. ‘Rachel, are you in there?’ He stood back and looked over the front of the ground-floor flat. Neither of the young women owned a car, so there was no way he could know if one or both were inside. ‘Amanda?’ He banged again. No one came to the door.

  ‘Shit.’ He redialled Rachel’s number, but didn’t hold the phone to his ear. The ringing from the handset somewhere on the other side of the door was clear. He may have learned that he didn’t know much about kids over the past couple of weeks, but he knew they never left the house without their mobiles.

  ‘Rachel?’ he shouted again. The answer came in the smashing of glass from somewhere inside. Fuck it. There was no time to wait for back-up. He kicked hard at the door, the effort sending shock waves vibrating up the rest of his body. The door didn’t budge. He kicked again. It was a shitty little house conversion in a grotty street set up for students and those who wanted to rent by the room. The door would give – it had to. He grabbed the metal rubbish bin from the small front garden and tipped out the black bags of rubbish before using it as a battering ram against the wood. Something cracked at last and he threw it down before launching himself shoulder first once again at the door. Finally he stumbled through into the hallway.

  ‘Rachel? Amanda?’

  No one answered, but he could hear sounds of a struggle coming from the second room along the small corridor. He ran inside, accompanied by the sound of sirens finally pulling up outside. The two girls were both on the mattress, Rachel trying valiantly to keep Amanda’s hand with the large bread knife away from her throat and body, while the other girl clawed at her with her free hand. One of Rachel’s arms was badly sliced and there was blood on her T-shirt that might have come from a second wound. Both girls were locked in battle and Cass didn’t bother calling their names again. Instead, with his teeth gritted, he took a precise short run-up and delivered a kick to the side of Amanda Kemble’s head, not too hard, but definitely not too soft. The girl let out a sharp yelp as she rolled away, her eyes wide and shocked. Rachel pulled herself away from the mattress as Cass grabbed the dropped knife. Behind him, the room suddenly filled with police.

  ‘That’s Amanda Kemble,’ he said. ‘Arrest the bitch. And where’s the ambulance?’

  He crouched by Rachel, both of them sweating and panting slightly, and looked at her arm. ‘You okay? Is this the only place she got you?’

  ‘I think she got my side too,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got a bit of padding there, so I think I’ll be okay.’ She was forcing a smile, despite the tears in her eyes, and Cass gave her a gentle hug. Something about her strength reminded him of Claire May – and just like Claire May, that internal strength and belief in right had led her into danger. But at least this young woman got out alive. Just.

  ‘You did good, Rachel.’

  As a dazed Amanda was hauled to her feet, safely cuffed, Rachel said, ‘She’s crazy, you know. Really crazy.’

  ‘There’s a lot of it about.’ He got to his feet as two paramedics arrived. ‘These two will take you to the hospital. I’ll get a WPC to go with you. Is that okay?’

  Rachel nodded. Her eyes were full of questions, and Cass wondered if that part of her nature was going to be a gift or a curse for the rest of her life. Maybe it would be both.

  In the packed hallway he checked his other message. Perry Jordan had sent a work address for Dr Shearman: he was the Director of Research at a facility in Milford Lane in the centre of town. Cass ground his teeth. If he was going to have any chance of getting some information about the night Luke was taken, then he needed to go now. Gibbs and Powell were both dead – what if someone was going after Dr Shearman next? More importantly, what if someone decided to come after him for Powell’s death, even after he’d cleaned the scene? His time on this trail was running out, one way or the other, and he needed to make the most of what he had left.

  He told the back-up to make sure Rachel Honey’s parents were contacted and she was looked after in hospital, and to sling Amanda in a cell until he got there. It wasn’t as if they needed a confession from her anyway. Cage had told them everything they needed to know, and now she’d been caught red-handed in an attempted murder. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  He got into his car, lit a cigarette and headed back to the city. It was time to find out some personal history.

  After crossing the river he had to go up to the Strand and along to get to Milford Lane to avoid the one-way system, and
he left his siren attached to the top of the Audi when slinging the car at the front of the discreetly plaqued entrance to Encore Facilities. The last thing he wanted was to get clamped.

  He was about to head through the rotating door to the brightly lit reception area beyond, when something about the sign made him pause. He read it again. Encore Facilities was engraved in large bold letters, but underneath the small print read The Flush5 Group. He looked up at the road he’d just driven along to get here. The Strand. His blood fizzed. The Strand was very, very close to Temple Underground Station.

  The smartly dressed young woman on the main reception told him he’d need the second floor for Dr Shearman, and once he’d filled in a visitor’s badge and signed his presence on their register, she sent him towards the lift with a smile. His skin tingled and his heart thumped. He’d thought he was coming here to find out about Luke and suddenly his head was filled with other possibilities. At the second floor he stepped out to find himself in a small and very quiet reception area, elegantly dressed with white armchairs and a low white-painted glass-topped coffee table. Two doors led off from it, and both required swipe cards to get in.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Doctor Shearman, please.’ He smiled at the middle-aged woman behind the desk.

  ‘I’m afraid Dr Shearman doesn’t come in until six this evening. Did you have an appointment?’

  ‘No.’ Cass pulled out his police ID and showed it to her. It had its usual effect, and her smile fell and was replaced with an expression of hardened disgust. He didn’t care, although it always darkly amused him that everyone wanted the police around when it suited them, as long as any trouble went to other people.

  ‘It’s really nothing to worry about,’ he lied pleasantly. ‘I wanted to speak to him about being an expert witness in a case. You do phobia research here, don’t you?’

  He watched the tension relax from the woman’s shoulders. Of course it would; he’d given her something that made sense far more than suggesting the good doctor could be involved in anything untoward – like the theft of a baby, or something that caused several young students to take their own lives.

  ‘Yes, it’s something the doctor is an expert on. You’d have to ask him how it all works – I’m admin staff, not medical – but I think he uses a mixture of hypnosis and aversion therapies. He thinks that it’s something to do with different people having different kinds of chemicals produced in their brains. We have a lot of brain scans around anyway. It’s all quite fascinating really, isn’t it? What makes us tick?’

  ‘How far are you from Temple Underground Station here?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, a two- or three-minute walk at the most. Why? Is that relevant?’

  Cass ignored her question. Phobias, Temple tube and the good doctor only works in the evenings. Cass didn’t believe in coincidences. Too much was adding up here. But could the man who had helped in the disappearance of his brother’s child really be involved in the suicides? Surely that was a coincidence? His blood froze. There are no such things as coincidences. A man with silver hair had told him that.

  ‘I need you to check some records for me. I want to know if any of the following students have been treated for their phobias here: James Busby is the first. Then Katie Dodds, Corey Denter and Jasmine Green.’

  ‘I thought you wanted Dr Shearman to be an expert witness.’ The disdain was back, made worse by the knowledge that she’d unwittingly given information away.

  ‘I do,’ Cass said. ‘A very expert witness.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t—’

  ‘Let me explain. You can either let me know if those students were treated here, or I can go and get a warrant and then there will be police all over this facility before there has to be. I am also sure that if I take a look through the visitors’ book downstairs I’ll probably find evidence that each of them signed in to see Dr Shearman at some point. You seem like a civilised and decent human being, so let’s keep this decent and civilised, shall we?’ He smiled again. ‘I’ll also want Shearman’s home address.’

  ‘What were those names again, please?’ she asked. Cass gave them to her.

  In silence she searched the computer. She frowned and then typed some more. Eventually, she looked up. ‘There seems to be some discrepancy in the system with regard to those test subjects.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘They were all treated here. I can print out the dates they signed in – that’s all data transferred from downstairs, and their names are still in the cat scan directory, but their actual files have been deleted from the system.’

  ‘You don’t have hard copies?’

  ‘Let me check.’

  Cass came round to the side of the desk so he could see what she was doing in the small office at the side of her workstation. He didn’t want her calling the doctor and giving him time to run. As it was, she was simply pulling open racks of files in a filing cabinet. Cass had a feeling this was a woman who had no intention of getting on the wrong side of the law, regardless of how much she might respect her boss.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, coming back to her desk. ‘It’s very odd. Flush5 are very strict on filing and record-keeping.’

  Cass said nothing to that. Flush5 wasn’t an organisation he felt any trust in. It had shadows at the edges – the dark fingers of The Bank and the Network were hooked right into it.

  ‘Print out what you’ve got for me. And can you ask the young woman downstairs to find those names in her visitors’ book please? I’ll be wanting to take that with me too.’

  The woman nodded, her eyes alive. She didn’t ask any more questions.

  Cass moved across the room and then rang Armstrong.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  It seemed his sergeant had lost a little deference in the time they’d known each other.

  ‘I’ve found where the students were going for their phobia treatments.’

  ‘You’ve what? But—’

  ‘Don’t ask me questions now, Armstrong, just do what I’m telling you. I need you to get over to the home of a man called Dr Shearman and bring him in. As soon as I’ve got the documents I need from here I’ll be back. Hold him there. I want to speak to him myself. You got that?’

  ‘Got it,’ Armstrong said. ‘What’s this bloke’s address?’

  Cass gave it to him. ‘I also need you to send someone over here – I’m at Encore Facilities in Milford Lane just off the Strand. I figure we might need the names and addresses of everyone working here if we’re going to get some idea of what was going on. We don’t want them wiping their systems while we’ve got Shearman in the nick.’

  ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘Let me know when someone’s picked up Shearman and I’ll head back,’ Cass said, avoiding the question. He was going to have to figure out a way to answer that one. Encore didn’t come up on any Internet searches when they’d tried finding suitable places in the area that the kids could have been too. It was clearly a deeply private listing. Still, as long as he had a result, Armstrong could ask as many questions as he liked; the DCI wouldn’t be looking for too many answers. The brass never did.

  It had been a long time since Mr Bright had studied the X accounts in such detail, and he’d forgotten what a web they were, linking forward and back to so many ‘legitimate’ accounts within The Bank. That he didn’t entirely understand the complete flow of their funds was of no concern to him. This wasn’t a nanny state, and had never been set up as one. They each managed their own affairs, and as long as the tithe was paid into X20, then all was well. There was always going to have to be an element of trust in these matters, and the truth was exactly what he’d pointed out to Asher Red – when people were this rich, they ceased to be greedy in terms of money; it was the power games that became interesting.

  He’d found himself sidetracked into examining the finer details of all the smaller, more personal businesses that several of the Cohort had made their own. There were so many, and he was
surprised at how much minutiae it took to keep this world of theirs turning, even now, when it was on its knees. Someone was moving money around somewhere. Whoever was planning to come against him had been preparing for fifteen years or more: they were playing the long game. And he knew better than most that the long game cost money – all the voided folders and the single current one in the Redemption files were proof of that. His opponent would be spending money too. He’d glanced once again at the women’s folders and then it had dawned on him that he was taking the long way round. He had been looking at the trees instead of the wood, and that wasn’t like him at all.

  He went straight for the conglomerates after that, the ones that the girls’ fathers had worked for, where they had ‘coincidentally’ risen rapidly through the ranks approximately fifteen years previously. Someone had wanted to make sure the teenagers had the best of opportunities. He tracked the ownership of each back further, through the web of accounts and worldwide investments, until he finally saw the trail.

  He sat back and smiled. So there it was – he had the name. Someone wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. They’d learn. He looked at his watch; time was moving along and he still had lots to get done. He made two swift phone calls, making it clear to each of the recipients that it was time to choose. He had the boy and he had the First – those facts wouldn’t escape them. They’d choose wisely. Plus people invariably preferred the status quo, and even in these times of fear and change, he was very much the safer option.

  The phone calls done, he returned to Mr Solomon’s office, where he discovered to his dismay that the stench had worsened rather than abated. Still, he didn’t intend to be in here long. He didn’t approach the man in the chair but softly shut the door and observed him in the quiet. Red’s eyes were wide and he was visibly trembling. His rapid breath was the only sound filling the opulent room in that moment. Castor Bright could almost see the fear rippling like heat from the man’s body. Therein lay the source of the smell. Thankfully, not for much longer.