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

by Sarah Pinborough

  The caller had used Cass’s private mobile number, and that irked him. Some front desk idiot must have given it out, no doubt. He wished that all police thought like policemen, but like every profession the force had its fair share of dunces and slackers, the type who preferred to sit on the desk and file paperwork rather than actually engage their brains. It wouldn’t take much of a story to get a mobile number from some of them.

  He looked at his watch. 6.40 a.m. His first instinct was to call Claire, but professionalism took over and he tried Bowman first. The man riled him, but it was his case. His phone rang out, but there was no answer.

  So he’d done the right thing. Now he could ring Claire.

  She answered within three rings.

  ‘Yeah?’ Her voice was thick with sleep. A man muttered something in the background. Blackmore was there, or she was at his, one or the other. He wasn’t surprised. He had an altruistic moment when he wondered if Blackmore would be good enough for her. He wasn’t convinced.

  ‘I’ve tried Bowman but can’t get an answer.’ He paused.

  ‘I think I’ve just had a phone call from our serial.’

  ‘What?’ She was alert now. He thought he could hear sheets rustling as she sat up. He definitely heard a muttered conversation taking place, and Blackmore’s voice getting excited too.

  ‘What happened?’ Claire was back on.

  He talked her through the call, not needing to glance at his jotted notes once. The whole surreal conversation felt like it had been recorded in his head. When he’d finished, he gave her the caller’s number.

  ‘It’s a mobile, so I’ll guess it’s a pay-as-you-go, but see if someone can track where it came from, and what shop sold it. It’s a long shot, but you never know; it might give us something.’

  ‘We’re on it.’

  ‘Sorry I’ve messed up your weekend off.’

  ‘Not a problem. Mat’s working anyway, and I’m finding I just can’t switch off these cases, even when I’m not supposed to be working.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’ Claire May might still believe that good would triumph over evil, but she was a career copper through and through. Cass wondered if that was part of why he’d been drawn to her.

  ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘At the end of the call, he said he’d be in touch.’

  ‘You think he’s going to call you again?’

  ‘Or just leave us another body.’

  ‘Always the optimist.’ She paused. ‘Any idea where he was calling from?’ In the background Blackmore was asking questions and Cass couldn’t help feeling pleased when Claire ssshhed him.

  ‘Outside somewhere. I heard birds, I think. There was some buzzing on the line at times, so he might have been in a bad reception area. He wasn’t on long enough to have got a location even if we had been able to trace it. My guess is that he was in the city somewhere. I didn’t hear much traffic but it was pretty early and a Sunday morning so I don’t supposed there’d have been much about.’

  ‘And you think he knows Bright?’

  ‘Yeah, I know he does. We need to talk this through with Hask, see what he makes of it. He’s getting paid enough.’

  And Cass trusted the psychologist’s judgement, not least because he had backed Cass himself.

  At the other end there was a pause, then Claire lowered her voice slightly. ‘Mat’s in the bathroom. Didn’t want to say this with him here, because he wouldn’t understand and I don’t need a row right now. I sent a couple of guys out to find your burger man last night. It was on their own time. Nice to know you still have some fans in the office - other than me, obviously.’ She laughed a little. ‘Anyway, I should hear back from them later. Let’s hope for the best.’

  Cass smiled. He didn’t deserve a friend like Claire, not after everything. He wanted to tell her about the things that had drawn him home: the photos, the possible links between Bright and his own family, and the fact that something had really been bothering Christian and he’d wanted to talk to Cass about it. Shit, part of him wanted to tell her that he kept seeing his brother’s ghost, but all of that was a conversation for another time. And until he’d spoken to Father Michael, he didn’t have much of a clear picture to offer anyway. He needed Claire to be concentrating on things she could actually do something about.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Better than I expected to be.’

  ‘Have you heard from Kate?’

  ‘No.’ His defensiveness kicked in and he changed the subject. ‘Look, I’ve got some bits and pieces to do here, then I’ll probably head back to London tonight. Tell Bowman I’ll be in the office as a civilian witness first thing tomorrow morning. He’ll love that.’

  ‘Once he hears this he’ll probably want you in ASAP.’

  ‘He can wait. There’s nothing more I can tell him than I’ve told you.’

  ‘Oh, one more thing.’ She was rushing her words and Cass assumed that Blackmore had finished his shower. ‘I put some feelers out on Bright yesterday afternoon. We’ll see what comes back.’

  ‘Good work, Claire.’ He paused. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem, guv.’

  He smiled as they said their goodbyes. It felt good to have Claire at his back. The minute he’d ended the call, his phone started to ring. It was Bowman. Sod him, Cass thought. What’s good for the goose . . .

  He left the phone ringing on the breakfast bar and went upstairs to shower.

  He left the coffee brewing as he dressed, then filled a mug and lit a cigarette before taking the notebook and pen into the sitting room. It was time to get to grips with the three cases jumbled in his head. He pulled the coffee table close and made three headings across the top of one sheet:

  MAN OF FLIES CHRISTIAN JACKSON&MILLER and underneath, he jotted: Link between all three - Mr Bright. Sent tape to me, sent Christian the letter and Man of Flies knows him. May have family link to Jones. He paused, then added: He needs to be found.

  It felt good to be using his brain. From the corner of his vision he saw a pair of black shiny lace-up shoes and the hem of dark trousers by the armchair over to his left. He ignored them.

  He did look at the CHRISTIAN heading, though. Underneath it, he jotted: Someone setting me up. Why? The answer was obvious. To get me out of the way. That raised another immediate why, but he left it for a moment to think about the how. Had someone killed Christian and his family and planted the evidence at the time of the crime, or did Christian shoot his family and himself and someone then took advantage of the situation, with the evidence being planted afterwards? Whichever way round it was, it was planned. Someone had been through his rubbish and dug out a condom. Maybe that was lucky. He figured with his record a fingerprint on a gun would have been enough to get him a few days off at the very least.

  Still, the idea that the evidence had been planted after the event was the most unpleasant, and not because it would mean that Christian had done this terrible thing, but because whoever placed the fingerprint and bodily fluids there would have to be either one of the SOC team, a police officer, or an attendant at the morgue. It wasn’t a pretty thought, but times were hard and most people were open to offers if the price was right. He knew as well as anybody how easily evidence - and even bodies - could be left unattended at a critical moment. What had been done was tricky, but far from impossible. He looked over at Christian’s shoes for an answer and followed the trouser-clad legs up until his own dark eyes found his brother’s blue ones.

  ‘Did you do it, Christian?’ His words sounded strange, spoken to an empty room. Christian didn’t answer. He didn’t even raise his hand in that strange telephone gesture that he had become so fond of. Cass almost smiled. Maybe even his own figment of imagination realised Cass didn’t need any distraction right now.

  He looked back down at the scribbled Why? and added several frustrated question marks. It couldn’t be the Man of Flies case. The caller had hinted that he wanted Cass on that case, and as it was, Bowman had dragged hi
mself into work even if he still looked sick as a pig, so there was no need for outside interference. It was Bowman’s case and he’d taken it back. Cass was off it. That just left the Jackson and Miller shootings. The failed Macintyre hit.

  He had put his data stick into Christian’s laptop bag and now he grabbed it and turned the machine on. He was missing something - he had to be. Even on Christian’s pin-sharp screen, the film was still grainy. He watched it twice, his level of frustration rising. What wasn’t he seeing? He pressed play for the third time. Once again the waitress served someone on the other side of the glass. Once again a man’s sleeved arm raised his coffee cup, his cufflink causing a glitter of light on glass. The fat woman still stared longingly at the cake. Macintyre arrived, his hair still hidden by the black hat, and lit a cigarette at the same time as the man on the screen did. Cass couldn’t help but compare him with the old-school gangsters like Brian Freeman and Artie Mullins. Macintyre had none of their class. Cass narrowed his eyes as the car pulled up in the street and the two laughing schoolboys drew almost level with Sam Macintyre. They didn’t even see the gun emerge from the window. However many times he watched it, Cass wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to stop that lurch of his stomach when the first bullets hit Justin Jackson. Macintyre had rolled away, behind or under the nearest car.

  Cass grimaced. No, Macintyre was nothing like Freeman or Mullins: they would have pulled one boy down to safety with them at the very least.

  The film ended and the screen froze and Cass pressed play again. He didn’t want to think of Brian Freeman. His dream was still with him, like a sour aftertaste in his mouth. A lot of years had passed since he’d been under Brian Freeman’s wing. A lot of years since he’d learned to look up.

  ‘Don’t just look at the obvious, mate. Look around it.’ Freeman’s words echoed in his head. He pushed them away and tried to concentrate on the film playing out yet again on the laptop.

  Another voice replaced Freeman’s in his head: Artie Mullins, a far more recent memory. Just two nights ago, after Cass’s world had got turned upside down, he’d called Cass ‘son’, and told him, ‘Sometimes it’s not the obvious things you need to look at, and sometimes you can’t see the obvious when it’s staring you right in your ugly mug.’

  Cold trickled across his skin. For a moment he sat completely still. Outside, a burst of sunlight flooded through the bay window, its brightness making the screen invisible. Cass watched as goosebumps rose on his forearm. He remembered Isaac Jackson’s voice on the phone yesterday, the edginess, and the stiffness in the men’s backs as they stood behind their crying wives. Cold erupted through his pores, and he felt clarity washing over him, through him. His heart thumped. The obvious: it was right there in front of him, and he hadn’t seen it. He tilted the screen forward, out of the glare, and pressed play again.

  Maybe Macintyre just happened to be there as he had always claimed or maybe not, but these were professionals. If they weren’t, they’d have sprayed the whole street with bullets trying to hit Sam Macintyre, and it would have been a massacre. He watched as Justin Jackson’s body danced in the gunfire before falling to the ground. For a brief second, John Miller stood alone, and then he was down too, thrown back into the door of the café, silently smashing it, under the power of the bullets. Cass looked at his scuffed school shoes, sticking out on the pavement. The two boys were dead, and no one else on the relatively busy street was so much as injured. The car had disappeared.

  His mouth hanging half-open, he sat back against the sofa. In the armchair, Christian mirrored his actions. Cass barely noticed. The obvious was horrific, but it had been staring him in the face for two weeks and he just hadn’t seen it. What if the hitmen had made a clean kill? What if they’d got exactly whom they’d been paid to kill? What if the Jackson and Miller boys had actually been the targets?

  His hand was shaking as he lit a cigarette. Adrenalin buzzed through him. He hadn’t bothered to do any checks on the Jackson and Miller families, because they had all been so focused on the boys as tragic victims in the wrong place at the wrong time. He cursed himself.

  He picked up the phone, but paused before dialling. His first instinct was to call Claire and bring her up to speed, but he stopped himself. He’d given her quite enough to do that hadn’t been approved by the DCI or Bowman, and the last thing he wanted was to get her into trouble. And there was the darker consideration that someone, somewhere, had set him up over this case. Right now it was safer to keep any developments out of the office. He didn’t feel guilty - they’d bloody suspended him, after all.

  He scrolled through, looking for the right number. Perry Jordan owed Cass a favour. He’d been a bright PC with a promising career ahead of him - until one of his mates was brought in for a urine sample. Jordan, young, stupid and thinking himself the man, did the sample himself. He got caught. End of career.

  Cass had liked the boy - he had that edge that you only got being London born and bred, and his mistake had been misplaced loyalty, not personal gain. He’d have made a good copper, given time, but there was another use for his talents. Cass knew a PI who was looking for someone, smoothed the way. Six years on, Perry Jordan was pretty much running the business, and doing well. It was the force’s loss.

  The phone was answered with a grunt.

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘Jones?’ A muffled yawn.

  ‘It’s gone nine. Wakey wakey, rise and shine.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. I’ve been doorstepping a dodgy house in Bermondsey all fucking night.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Ha! I wish. Rich bloke with a cheating bird who likes a bit of rough on the side.’

  Cass gave him a second to wake up fully. ‘I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you think your missus is cheating . . .’

  A small knife turned in Cass’s gut. Who knew what Kate was doing? Definitely not him. ‘No, it’s nothing like that.

  I need you to do some digging around on two families for me. I want their financial details - mortgage payments, bank loans, personal histories, you know the drill.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure to use my brain for a change. Names and addresses?’

  Cass told him.

  There was silence for a heartbeat as the penny dropped at the other end. ‘The boys that got shot. You want a full file.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He tried to keep his tone light.

  ‘Can I ask why you’ve come to me?’ Jordan asked after a moment. ‘Surely you could get this done in-house - not with my flair and brilliance obviously, but you’ve got more manpower, and it’ll be free.’

  ‘I want to keep this under the wire until I know what I’m looking at,’ Cass said. He paused. ‘And if you could keep it under your hat I’d be grateful.’

  ‘Don’t need saying, mate.’ The PI sounded fully awake now and Cass knew he’d got the subtext clearly enough. ‘But even with my genius I’m going to need a day or two.’

  ‘Understood. Thanks.’ He knew Jordan would prioritise it; he doubted he’d get the work done quicker in-house, or as thoroughly. As he ended the call, Cass was buzzing. Maybe at last he was getting somewhere. He realised Christian had vanished at some point during his conversation with Jordan, and he wondered if he should be concerned about how laissez-faire he’d become about the random presence of his dead brother. He decided that with everything else going on, the ghostly visitations came pretty low on the list of things to be worried about - and he couldn’t help but admit to himself that seeing Christian’s face every now and then was easing the pain of his loss.

  He made some toast and drank more coffee before tidying the house so he didn’t need to mess around after seeing Father Michael, he could just pick up his stuff and head back to London. The idea of staying in some grotty hotel wasn’t very appealing, but everything he needed to do - finding Mr Bright, stopping this self-proclaimed Man of Flies, working out who’d framed him - was back in the cit
y. And if things had worked out as planned, Mr Ali Khan would have been found by now and Cass would be back at work by tomorrow latest.

  As he made the bed, he thought that even after just one night it didn’t feel so strange being home. Maybe Christian had felt the same, and that’s why he’d never got round to selling the place. He closed up the suitcase of photographs in Christian’s room, but left it where it was. When all this was done he intended to come back and take a proper look at them. Maybe the photos would help lay some ghosts, maybe not, but Cass was surprised to find his curiosity about his family had been piqued.

  Downstairs, he put the envelope of photos on top of the laptop and put his suitcase in the hallway. That laptop was still bugging him; he needed to find the password for the Redemption file before he gave it back, and he had only a few hours. There was no getting out of that either, the tone of Ramsey’s voice had made that clear. Cass could respect that. He’d removed evidence from the scene - that alone could get him the sack, especially with his chequered past.

  Across the village, church bells pealed out. To Cass, they felt like a summons to his past.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was only midday and already it felt to Claire like it had been a morning of two halves. Her enquiries about the elusive Mr Bright had resulted in a big fat zilch; as far as she could ascertain, he didn’t exist, which struck her as odd, given how common the name was. Ms Middleton, the police liaison officer at The Bank, was a stern woman in her fifties who had made it clear that it would take some considerable time to search The Bank’s employee database for anyone with that name, and if they wanted to include The Bank’s subsidiary companies, then they would have an even longer wait. Claire wasn’t sure if the woman was being obstructive just for the fun of it, or if she had had her orders from higher up - after all, how long could it really take for a name search on a computer database belonging to the most efficient and highly resourced company in the civilised world? - but her over-the-top reaction immediately made Claire want to push deeper.