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

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘Is his face recognisable?’ Cass said. ‘If so, then just open the bloody drawer.’

  The ME tilted his head in an almost nod. Claire could see he thought Cass was crazy, and now that they were here, so did she. Why would he want to cause himself that extra pain? Surely it would be better to remember his brother whole? It was almost as if he wanted to add to his own suffering.

  After the drawer opened there was a moment of silence. Claire glanced only briefly inside. She’d seen this kind of death before, car crash victims and suicides. Despite Dr Farmer’s best efforts to pull Christian’s face back into place, it didn’t quite sit right on what was left of the bones of his skull. The shotgun had destroyed the top of his head, and no doubt taken the back out completely. Someone, either the ME or his assistant, had folded a sheet and placed it beneath the destroyed head, attempting to make it lie at least close to where it should. There was very little left for Christian’s skin to cling to, and even with whatever tricks of his trade Dr Farmer had used, it was clear that this was just a mockery of how the man had looked in life.

  Inspector Ramsey turned away, and Claire knew it wasn’t from the sight of the body. It was from the man standing beside it. Did Cass even realise how terrible the expression on his face was? Claire had expected to see pain; but what she was looking at was something else, a whole whirlwind of feelings trapped in brown eyes and clenched fists. He looked haunted. As if there were too many demons fighting to control him.

  ‘That’s Christian.’

  As soon as he’d spoken, Cass turned and walked from the room. Inspector Ramsey went to follow him, but Claire grabbed his arm. ‘Let him go, sir.’

  The DI stared at her and almost pulled his arm away, but then he stopped. He must have read the look on Cass’s face too. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘I know him. He just needs some time on his own.’

  They walked down the corridor side by side, but quietly. Neither was interested in small talk. Cass’s pace had been fast and angry and he was long gone by the time she walked out into the evening air. Her heart suddenly felt heavy. Despite what she’d just said to Inspector Ramsey, she really wasn’t very sure she knew Cass well at all.

  It was raining when Cass paid the cab driver and stepped out onto the pavement a street away from where Christian lived in the chic end of Notting Hill. It was gone midnight, and other than the rhythmic onslaught of the falling water the roads were quiet. He’d gone to the pub and then home briefly, relieved to find Kate sleeping, her passion spent. Arguing and sex, the two went hand in hand down the aisle of their marriage. They were now in the lull before the next fight, a period when they moved around each other like strangers, both wondering what it was about the other that could inspire such negative passion. It wasn’t a good place to be, but at least she’d stopped crying. She’d done enough of that for both of them.

  Rain beat at his face as he turned away from the main road and down towards the house where Christian and Jessica had lived for the last decade. Even as a much younger man, Christian had always been so reliable. He’d worked hard all his life, crunching numbers for people who were too busy being out there actually living, spending the money they’d made, to do it for themselves.

  When The Bank was formed back in 2010, the one company that had a chance of bringing the world back from the brink of disaster, Christian had been head-hunted, and almost as soon as he’d arrived he’d thrived, with promotion following bonus following promotion. He must have earned three times Cass’s salary, maybe more, but he and Jessica had never wanted to move. They’d had Luke there. It was their home.

  It didn’t look much like a home now. It was dark and cold, and the thick yellow ribbon wrapped around it declared it out of bounds. The bodies were out and most of the plastic-suited plod had gone. One van further along the road had its engine running, and Cass presumed some poor sod - either freelance or the new boy - had been left there to see if anything else developed over the course of the night. Looked like most of the press thought they’d got all they could from the scene of this crime; they’d already started the hatchet job on the monster who’d so brutally murdered his wife and son. Between the ongoing story of Jackson and Miller, the murder of yet another young woman and this, even in a city where violent death was becoming more and more frequent, the editors of the red tops would doubtless be rubbing their filthy hands in glee.

  A uniformed officer stood in front of the crime scene tape, his reflective yellow jacket shining clearly, even through the rain. There would be another at the back, and perhaps two more in a nearby car. The team had had nearly twenty-four hours inside so the scene had pretty much been processed by now, but there was no shortage of ghouls and freaks who would love to get inside the house before the blood had dried. The police guard would be present until the cleaning team had been in and returned the walls and carpets to some semblance of normality.

  Cass crossed the street at the corner and kept in the shadows. Lights shone from several of the houses around him. City crime didn’t normally touch these people. The recession might have forced their children out of the private schools and chichi nurseries that once littered these middle-class streets, but the residents here were not yet touched by the social effects of the global slide. They might know neighbours, friends, even, who had had to move away, selling up cheap if they could, having their houses repossessed if they’d acted too late. Cass wondered if any of this had shocked the good burghers of Notting Hill, if any of them had been quietly peering out from behind their curtains as a bailiff’s van removed someone’s last goods and chattels and wondering what on earth could have happened to cause this tragedy, and how they didn’t spot the signs.

  As he pulled his badge out from his back pocket, Cass thought how little he knew about his brother’s life - not just the day-to-day minutiae, but who his friends were, what his dreams were, his ambitions . . . These were just empty spaces in Cass’s memory. He bit back his guilt, but it raked at his insides. It shouldn’t have surprised him; he’d made this situation. He just hadn’t expected Christian to change it. Not like this.

  The constable couldn’t look Cass in the eye, and he wondered if maybe they’d met before in the canteen, or perhaps over paperwork processing. It was possible. They walked in silence from the gate to the path, and when they reached the front door, Cass ducked under the tape.

  ‘Thanks for this.’

  The constable nodded. He looked very young. ‘There are gloves in a box just inside the door. If you could put some on . . .’

  Cass nodded.

  ‘The SOCOs are done here now. The case being, well—’ His voice stumbled. ‘I don’t think they’re looking for anyone else. But it’s best to be careful.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’ He pushed open the broken door and stepped inside.

  It was cold - that was the first thing he noticed, and the air inside already smelled damp. When the team arrived on the scene they would have turned off the central heating as a matter of course. For most of the day the front door would have been left open as people trudged in and out, bagging and photographing and scraping. It hadn’t taken long for the March weather to chase out any hint of human scent and replace it with this chill emptiness.

  He flicked the light on. At the bottom of the stairs a pair of scruffy trainers sat beside some polished brogues, black lace-ups, looking as if they’d been kicked off in haste. They were all small: Luke’s shoes. A knife ran its serrated edge through his heart and he forced his feet forward. He needed to see. The stairwell rose upwards into blackness. Cass didn’t turn the hall light on. Christian wouldn’t have done. The light might have woken Jessica or Luke, and that would have made things messy. As he climbed, Cass imagined the weight of the gun in his hand, primed and ready to fire. Did Christian have spare shells tucked into a pocket, just in case he didn’t kill his family cleanly? His mouth dried as the darkness of the landing reached out for him. Had his brother’s mouth felt the same? Had the weapon slid a
bout in sweaty hands?

  Luke’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor. He’d go there first, just as Christian had. The floorboards creaked as he walked. Ahead, the door was wide open and the lights were off. Cass saw it differently. The door would have been a little ajar, revealing the small glow of a plug-in night-light. That was probably enough for Christian to aim properly. He wondered if Christian had made sure Luke had left it on last night so that he would make no mistakes. When had Christian learned to shoot?

  Cass reached the doorway and took two steps inside. Even in the dark, the black stain across the bed shone out, as if the child’s unreleased scream had been trapped in his warm blood and soaked into the shredded soft flesh of the mattress. He tried to imagine Christian standing over the sleeping form of his sick eight-year-old son and blasting a hole into him. His breathing quickened. He couldn’t look at the football posters on the wall and the school books scattered over the small desk that would never be written in again. Luke was dead. Killed by his father. It was true.

  He turned and almost stumbled, gripping the door to keep his balance, half-expecting to feel Luke’s small bloody fingers pulling him back, squeezing in alongside those others that already tugged at him . . .

  There was nothing. In the hallway he took three long breaths. He wanted to run. He wanted to stay. The conflicting urges waged silent war as he leaned against the wall. Somewhere downstairs a clock ticked loudly and he concentrated on the sound until he’d regained his equilibrium before slowly taking the two extra stairs up to the next landing, where the master bedroom was.

  It was pitch-black away from the glow of light at the bottom of the house, but it wouldn’t have been by the time Christian reached it the previous night. Jessica had woken up at the sound of the first gunshot. She’d have turned on the bedside light straight away. Cass flicked the switch at his side, illuminating the short passageway, and stared into the open bedroom. He could almost see Jessica sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes widening as she realised that the sound hadn’t just been in her dream. Maybe maternal instinct had told her that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Perhaps she called out Christian’s name as she finally got her legs to move so she could run to check on her child.

  She’d died in the doorway. Her blood had soaked into the cream carpet, a foot or more on either side of the door. Christian must have shot her from the first step, otherwise the blast would have flung her backwards. What was running through her head in those last moments between seeing the gun and the shell hitting her chest? Did she see the madness in her husband’s eyes? Did she wonder, after all these years, if somehow he knew? Or would there have just been blind terror?

  His head filled with the half-forgotten scent of oatmeal shampoo, and he remembered how he’d wrapped his hands in that thick, blonde hair and buried his face in that clean smell. He remembered how she’d hated herself for it, and then hated him. Blood smeared the skirting boards, as if perhaps she’d tried to hold on to life by grabbing at them. He hoped she hadn’t died hating herself. She didn’t deserve any of it.

  He turned the light out and went downstairs. The large living/dining room was open plan, with an occasional step up or down to ring the changes. The reclaimed hardwood floorboards shone, and he could see the indentions in the two huge sofas where his brother’s family had sat in front of the plasma TV the previous evening. The TV Times was open on the coffee table, next to a small ring on the surface where a mug had recently sat and was now probably bagged and tagged and removed. Was that Christian’s last cup of coffee? Had he sat there and drunk it before heading upstairs?

  Cass moved up to the dining area. He swallowed hard as heat flushed through his system. One chair was turned out from the table, and behind it the wall was tie-dye-splattered with blood. There was more than blood there, even if his blurring eyes didn’t want to see it. There would be skull fragments and grey clumps of his brother’s brain clinging to the paint and plaster. The knife that had been toying with his heart made its final incision and cut deep, tearing the organ in two. His baby brother had died here. He’d killed his family, come downstairs and carefully tucked the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

  Water trickled over Cass’s own chin and as he wiped it away he was surprised to find it tasted salty. It wasn’t rainwater dripping down from his hair but tears. He gritted his teeth, trying to contain his grief, because he needed to see. There was more blood around the chair itself, but it had none of the angry energy of the spray on the wall. This blood had dripped slowly, like his tears, ticking away the minutes until the neighbours had called the police and outside life had invaded the house. He couldn’t picture his baby brother here. Why hadn’t he shot himself upstairs, where he could lie with Jessica or Luke? What could possibly have made him want to do this - and this way? Look, we really need to talk, Cass. I mean it. Cass remembered his own impatient reaction to Christian’s words and the way he’d shaken him off like an irritating puppy. His baby brother had needed him, and once again, Cass hadn’t been there. Emotion pressed into his chest like a rock, suffocating him.

  The chair fell out of focus and as grief, anger and guilt raged through him Cass let his head hang and the tears come. Heaving sobs racked his body; his shoulders shook and, oblivious to the blood, he sank to his knees as if he were praying. For a while the world around him was lost.

  When Cass finally came to, his legs were numb and he felt cried out. He was about to pull himself to his feet when the clear sound of footsteps on the wooden floor cut through his pain and dragged him back to the here and now. The footsteps stopped behind him. He sniffed hard and wiped his eyes, dragging the back of his hand across his face like a child. This was all he needed: to be found curled up on the floor sobbing his eyes out by some constable barely out of Hendon. It would be all round the nick by the morning. He hated that it mattered to him, but it did. Reputation was everything. He’d learned that the hard way.

  ‘I said I’d be out in a minute.’

  The figure behind him stayed silent. Cass frowned and lifted his head. His eyes widened. Below the seat in front of him, the pulled-out seat on which Christian had died, was a shiny pair of black lace-ups under dark trouser hems. Fresh blood dripped beside them. He watched a solid crimson drop tumble and break against the wood. A tiny particle landed on the highly polished expensive leather of the left shoe. Christian’s shoes.

  His breath trapped in his chest, Cass scuttled backwards and blinked. The feet were gone. He spun onto his knees to face the intruder behind him, but the room was empty. Trying not to panic, he forced himself upwards, his joints stiff, complaining, and started turning this way and that, looking for whichever bastard was stupid enough to play games with him, here, at this time.

  His body trembled. The house was empty. There was no dying brother in the dining room chair. He let out a laugh that was almost a cough and a sob. Of course there wasn’t. Christian was on a slab in the morgue; dead and gone. His lace-up shoes and black suit trousers would be in an evidence locker somewhere until the case was formally closed, when they’d be burned in the incinerator. It was just his mind playing tricks. That was all. Too much cocaine and too little sleep and too much death, all catching up with him.

  His legs felt unsteady and he reached clumsily for the chair at Christian’s desk. It had been built neatly into the alcove under the stairs so he could be part of the family while he worked. The family that he’d one day murder as they slept.

  Cass slumped into the chair and let out a low moan. Fucking drugs. He hadn’t taken any that night, despite the almost overwhelming temptation, but whatever was still in his system from the night before had obviously kicked in again, taking him on a little bonus trip. His eyes felt like they were burning in the corners. He ran one hand through his thick dark hair, then rubbed his face. He was cold.

  His heart thudded back to something resembling a normal pace and he finally turned back to the dining room chair. It was empty. Of course it was. What h
e’d seen had just been a figment of his imagination. It had been a moment of madness, that was all. It wasn’t real. For one thing, why would Christian still be wearing his office clothes at midnight? He came home and got changed, just like every other nine-to-fiver in the city. Two uniforms: suited and booted for work, smartly creased chinos and Lauren polo shirts for play.

  He looked at the desk and frowned again. Christian was nothing if not anal; it was part of what made him so good with numbers. So what was his laptop bag doing sitting on the desk with the tiny, top-of-the-range computer sitting on top of it, unopened? He tilted his head. It looked like Christian had been about to start work, or was putting it away, and neither scenario made sense. He wouldn’t have got it out for a suicide note; those were virtually always handwritten.

  He lifted the machine carefully and peered into the bag. The lead was still inside, tucked into one of the holders. The strange vision temporarily forgotten, he looked back at the mug ring on the table and the discarded magazine. Those didn’t make sense either. Christian would have tidied up. It was his nature. Even if doing something as terrible as this, he would have made sure everything was in its place first. He would need to feel ordered. Cass chewed his bottom lip. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in the pulse of his blood. Working entirely on instinct, he slid the laptop carefully into its case and tucked the slim bag into his jacket. He folded his arms across his chest, holding it in place. It was dark outside and the constable was young. If he hunched over and looked upset enough, he might just get away with it.

  Luckily, the rain was coming down heavier than ever and the duty policeman had to squint in the downpour to see him as he nodded his thanks. As he headed towards the main road and the hope of a taxi, Cass guessed that was the last time that copper would come out on night duty without an umbrella. That was the thing with policing; the only way you really learned anything was the hard way.