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

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘It’s definitely possible.’ The profiler slapped Bowman cheerfully on the back. ‘Don’t panic. I think if he’d given you anything lethal then you’d be getting worse rather than better. What did they say you had in the end?’

  ‘Some gastric virus.’

  Some of Bowman’s natural cockiness had slid away and Cass fought the urge to warm to the killer.

  ‘Maybe you’d better get over to the hospital and get yourself checked out once we’re done here,’ Hask said. ‘That would be a wise precaution. I doubt the hospital would have checked for a full spectrum of poisons or toxins - although I’m sure whatever it is has done its worst already.’

  The sweat patches in Bowman’s armpits were growing. He didn’t seem too reassured.

  ‘But how would he have done it?’ Blackmore asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, but you policemen are creatures of routine. He just had to watch you for a while. Maybe he slipped something into your pint or wiped some toxin on your car door handle.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Bowman whispered.

  ‘He really did plan this to the letter, didn’t he?’ Claire said.

  ‘But as with every plan, you can’t factor in the unexpected actions of others. Cass took on the case, but after what happened with his brother’s family, Bowman had to come back.’

  Cass liked the way the profiler skimmed over the minor details of accusations, murder, suicide and the planting of evidence without even skipping a beat.

  ‘Why Jones?’ Bowman asked. ‘Why does he want him on the case?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe when we find him, we’ll find out.’ Hask moved the papers and peered closely at them in a way that suggested he should be wearing glasses, before looking back up. ‘This comment about Bright is interesting. “He looks for me, I watch him”. ’ The profiler seemed unaware of the tension that rose, at least in the part of the room that Cass and Claire occupied.

  ‘It could hint at a potential for multiple personalities, in that he and Bright are one and the same . . . but I’m not convinced.’ He tapped his fingers on the table. ‘I think we need to take it at face value. It would certainly explain why your body turned up in the same flat the video was sent from.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Blackmore said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you do, or don’t,’ Cass cut in. ‘The Bright line of enquiry is closed down.’

  ‘Really?’ Hask watched Cass carefully. ‘That’s interesting in itself.’

  ‘Not really. The DCI says it’s not relevant.’ Cass gritted his teeth to force the next sentence out. ‘Bowman’s apparently solved the Macintyre case—’

  ‘No apparently about it,’ Bowman snapped. ‘We’ve got two of Macintyre’s men coming in this afternoon to give their statements. They were paid by one of the Eastern European firms trying to get in on Macintyre’s turf to say exactly where he was going to be that afternoon.’

  Cass raised his hands. This was an argument for another time, after he’d heard back from Perry Jordan. ‘Maybe that came out wrong. What I meant was: as that’s looking closed, the need to find Mr Bright appears to those above to be a waste of resources.’

  ‘Even with the mention of him on the phone?’ Ramsey frowned.

  ‘Well, I actually mentioned him, not the caller.’ Cass shrugged. ‘But whatever the reason, he’s out of the immediate picture.’

  There was a moment’s silence. They were all clever people, even Bowman, for all his sharp suits and smug veneer. This wouldn’t sit right with any of them, but if the headshed had spoken, there was nothing they could do about it.

  ‘I have to say I find your bosses’ motivation strange, but if that’s what they want, let’s move on.’ Hask sighed. ‘He calls himself “the man of flies”. This obviously ties in with the leaving of the eggs on the bodies, but it’s also an interesting variation on the Lord of the Flies.’

  ‘Lord of the Flies?’ Bowman asked. ‘Isn’t that a book?’

  ‘Yes, by William Golding. It’s an allegorical story about how society created by man will always fail. It explores our duality: that we have an instinct to follow rules, but at the same time, we desire to force our own will on others. Some literary theorists feel that the novel sums up the history of our civilisation.’

  ‘You think he’s trying to make a point about civilisation?’ Bowman was incredulous. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘The phrase is also a more obvious variant of the Hebrew Ba’al Zebub, translated literally as the Lord of Things that Fly, or as we would put it, Lord of Flies.’

  ‘Ba’al Zebub?’ Claire repeated. She leaned forward. ‘Is that Beelzebub?”

  Hask laughed, a light sound that didn’t match his physical bulk. ‘Got it in one. Once the god of the Philistines, and now considered interchangeable with Satan himself.’

  ‘Our man thinks he’s the devil?’ Blackmore said. ‘Oh, that’s great.’

  ‘No,’ Cass said, ‘he called himself the Man of Flies, not the Lord. There’s an important distinction there.’

  The profiler folded his hands across his middle. ‘Perhaps he thinks he’s the devil’s chosen man on Earth. Someone to send his message out.’

  ‘It fits with him having some kind of religious connection, ’ Cass agreed. He frowned. ‘He just sounded so . . . sane.’

  ‘Some people would say that only the truly insane believe their own sanity.’

  ‘Enough,’ Bowman interrupted. ‘I want to get down to the hospital, so let’s leave the mind shit until later and keep to what you’ve got to tell us.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Hask smiled. ‘It’s just so interesting, I was curious about what he says about testing people and finding them wanting, how we are only ever interested in ourselves. This ties in with the concept of the duality of our natures, but perhaps it also ties in with his selection of victims.’

  ‘Maybe he’s tested the women somehow?’ Claire asked.

  ‘How could Hannah West be found wanting?’ Cass asked. ‘She worked with Strain II cases.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hask said, ‘but he’s been testing someone. He doesn’t say it’s the victims he was testing, but something’s happened to make him feel that nothing is sacred. He’s reached a personal conclusion about that. Oh, and I found something else out for you yesterday.’ He grinned at them all and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘The music that was playing at the Carla Rae scene? It was a 1990s heavy metal band. The Dog-Faced Gods. They weren’t overly famous, from what I gather. The CD was called Random Chaos Theory in Action.’ He let out a short laugh. ‘You’ve got to admit that our man has a very dry sense of humour along with his paranoia and superiority complex. One of the songs is called “God over All”. ’

  ‘You think he’s being funny?’ Blackmore asked.

  ‘Maybe not funny ha-ha, but I think he’s definitely making a point.’

  A quick rap on the door was followed by the appearance in the doorway of a uniformed constable, a tall, thin man in his twenties.

  ‘Sir—’ he started. His eyes darted around the room. He obviously wasn’t sure where he should aim his words. He settled on Bowman. Cass didn’t blame him. ‘We’ve got something. The pay-as-you-go phone was one of a batch that was ordered in bulk through the Carphone Orange Warehouse. They’re going through their records now to find where the order ended up.’

  ‘How long till we know?’ Cass asked. Carphone Orange Warehouse, with its irritating orange cow logo, was now the biggest mobile phone and web company in the country, having absorbed most of their weaker competitors over the previous year. He dreaded to think what their systems were like as they absorbed all the extra customer information.

  ‘They say this afternoon, but we’ll see. You know what phone companies are like.’ The constable came a little further into the room. ‘But that’s not all. We just had a call back from someone at the Limehouse Rescue Shelter. The big one? He said they reported a theft of pentabarbitone to their local station about three months ago. They never heard back.’


  Cass looked over at Bowman, who frowned. ‘If it was in the system, then why didn’t it flag up months ago?’

  ‘It’s not in the system, sir.’ The young officer shook his head. ‘Whoever took the call mustn’t have logged it. The manager over at Limehouse said they reported it when her partner vet found it was missing. It was called in around four in the morning.’

  ‘Fucking great.’ Cass sucked air in through his teeth. The constable didn’t need to say any more. Some bloody night sergeant took the call and decided they had no chance of catching the thief, so what was the point of adding to their unsolved figures? He’d have given out a dummy incident number and left it at that.

  ‘The manager said she thought the police hadn’t paid much attention because there was no sign of a break-in, so it was the shelter’s problem to solve. And they didn’t notice it was missing until a week after it had been stolen.’

  ‘Taken by someone in-house?’ Cass’s stomach fizzed as the thrill of the chase kicked in. He looked at Bowman. ‘Do you want me to deal with this while you get yourself checked over?’ He kept his tone light, but he didn’t have to worry. Bowman had started to crap himself the minute Hask had mentioned that maybe the killer had something to do with the DI’s illness.

  ‘I solved your case. I guess you can have a go at solving mine,’ Bowman said.

  God, he was a condescending bastard. Cass gestured to Claire. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Wait up.’ Ramsey followed them out into the corridor. ‘We take the laptop to The Bank on the way. My phone’s been buzzing in my pocket and I know who’s on the other end.’

  ‘What laptop?’ Claire asked.

  Both Cass and Ramsey ignored her. ‘Tell you what, we’ll take it with us,’ Cass said. ‘But going to The Bank is going to have to wait.’

  Cass grabbed his jacket and the laptop bag that was tucked under his desk. He held it up to Ramsey. ‘Funny the things you forget you have.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  ‘I can’t persuade you to stay behind?’

  ‘No chance.’

  Cass laughed. ‘Well, let’s go then.’ With Claire’s slim frame between them, they strode out in the sunshine towards the Audi. Traffic willing they’d be at Limehouse by midday.

  The director of the rescue centre was a middle-aged woman called Sheena Joyce. She walked with a slight hunch, and Cass wondered whether it was arthritis or another degenerative condition, or an accident. As she shut out the barking that had accompanied their walk past the rows of kennels that led to her offices, she leaned on the door for a moment and sighed.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I think the place was designed so that anyone visiting would have to see the animals, and hopefully take pity on one. Unfortunately I have no room for more at home, but I still have to pass them every time I need to use my office.’ She dropped into the chair behind her desk. ‘But to be honest, that isn’t often.’

  Cass didn’t envy her. However much you loved animals, that constant noise must drive you mad. It was a tatty old place. He’d noticed a lot of the dogs were two to a kennel, and he figured it would be the same with the cats. The director looked like she could use a make-over as much as the building. Now that they were in the well-lit office, he could see that she couldn’t be more than fifty, and she had the look of an ageing Brigitte Bardot, her thick grey hair piled into a loose chignon, though without the heavy make-up, not even a lick of mascara. He wondered if she’d look better after a decent night’s sleep; she was obviously running on fumes. Despite all that, she had what was probably a completely unintentional quirky bohemian look.

  ‘So, this is about the Pentobarbital theft, is it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Cass said. ‘We’re sorry that it got lost in the system.’

  ‘Why are you all interested now?’ Her eyes were tired, but they glittered with intelligence.

  ‘Why didn’t you chase up the report?’ Cass ignored her question. ‘Pento’s a controlled drug - and a lethal substance at that - and it’s not like whoever stole it wanted it for a good purpose, is it? I’d have thought you’d expected at least one visit from the police.’

  She watched him steadily for a moment and then leaned back in her chair. ‘I suppose I didn’t want to draw attention to malpractice within the shelter.’ She shrugged slightly. ‘A scandal could lose us funding and things are tough enough as it is. If I’d been here, the theft probably wouldn’t have been reported in the first place.’

  ‘Malpractice? What happened?’

  ‘The business of running a shelter has never been easy, even at the best of times. It’s almost impossible now. The first thing people dump when money’s tight is the family pet. First the cats, and then the dogs; our intake has more than tripled. The bigger problem is the sheer number of strays out there: they’re not getting neutered, so they go on reproducing. The feral animal population has increased massively, especially in these poorer areas. People used to say wherever you were in the city, you were never more than a few feet away from a rat. Now it’s cats. Keep your eyes open. You’ll see what I mean.’

  ‘At least the cats must be keeping the rats down,’ Cass said with a wry grin. ‘And how does this affect the theft?’

  The director ignored his poor attempt at humour. ‘I’m getting there. This could be the end of my career, so let me tell it in my own time.’ She paused as the door opened and a young girl in scrubs brought in a tray with four mugs of coffee and a jug of milk. Cass took one and sipped it gratefully.

  ‘You have better coffee than we do.’ He smiled. He liked this tired woman with her crisply efficient voice.

  ‘Better behaved inmates too, I should imagine.’ She added a little milk to her own cup. ‘Anyway, as our numbers have been increasing, so our funding has been decreasing. Battersea’s the high-profile London shelter, always has been, so we’re left with the scraps, even though we have twice as many abandoned animals to deal with, not to mention a much poorer local constituency. As well as having to run this place on very limited finances, I’m also chief veterinary officer. We can’t afford many full-time staff, so most of our helpers are volunteers, like young Stacey who brought the coffee in. She’s a student, comes down when she’s not at lectures, but we also have a lot of unemployed people who want to feel useful. To be honest, without them, we couldn’t keep going.’

  ‘And one of the volunteers took the drug?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’ She looked around the dilapidated office. ‘Pentobarbital is a controlled substance, for veterinary use only, and we keep it locked up.’ She paused. ‘Normally.’ She took a sip of her coffee and went on, ‘We have two vets onsite, but as I’ve been saying, times have changed, and we can no longer keep every animal that’s brought in to us. We certainly can’t care for all the newborns that get brought in - or are left dumped on our doorstep.’ For the first time her eyes slid away from Cass’s.

  ‘We vets, we train to save animals. But we’ve had no choice but to go back to the dark old days, when any unwanted animal is automatically put to sleep. And trust me, it’s not a job I’d wish on anyone. It’s soul-destroying.’ She looked back up. ‘It’ll be easier for you to understand if I show you. You’ll want to see where the drug went from anyway. Follow me.’

  She took them out through the kennels and into a separate block where the cats were kept. Cass was relieved to note the felines were far less interested in them than they were in sleeping.

  ‘Here you go.’ She typed in a code to a room at the back and opened the door. ‘There’s my afternoon’s work once you’ve gone.’

  A cacophony of tiny mewls and squeaks filled the room, escaping from the cardboard boxes that littered the floor. Cass crouched and opened one to reveal eight tiny black and white kittens stumbling over each other. He looked around him.

  ‘There must be ten boxes in here - twelve maybe,’ Claire said. ‘You have to put all these to sleep?’

  Ramsey stood in the doorway, saying nothing, but Cas
s could see her revulsion mirrored on his face. He closed the box. It was the innocence that did it. He could feel bile curdling at the back of his throat.

  ‘We had a new volunteer. He was only here a month. He wasn’t like the others.’ Sheena Joyce sat on the bench and looked mournfully at the boxes that awaited her. ‘I was working in here’ - she let out a small, sad laugh at the irony of her words - ‘and I must have not shut the door properly. Anyway, suddenly he was just standing there. I had the syringe in one hand, a kitten in the other, and I was crying.’ She stopped, and swallowed. ‘He had a presence about him. A stillness. He sat beside me and told me it was all right, and before I knew what had happened, he had the animal in his hands and he’d injected it. He told me I’d done enough, that he could take care of this.’ She took a deep breath to control the tears welling in her eyes. Her voice shook. ‘And God help me, I let him.’

  ‘That’s what this man did for you?’

  She nodded. ‘I shouldn’t have let him. None of us should. Even these days you still need a euthanasia licence to put animals to sleep. But I just couldn’t do it any more. I needed a break. Neither I nor Martin - the other vet - could reconcile ourselves to spending half the day trying to save animal lives and then the other half quietly taking them before they’d even begun.’ She chewed her bottom lip. ‘And he was so kind and calm. If I’d thought he was getting any kind of thrill out of it, obviously it would have stopped immediately.’ She lifted a hand and rubbed her lip. ‘It was just such a relief.’ She sighed. ‘But then one day he just didn’t show up. We tried to avoid all this’ - she waved her hand at the cardboard boxes - ‘and managed about a week, but there was no way we could feed them all, let alone look after them as they needed. Martin was working a night shift when he came back to start taking care of it. He noticed the 500ml of Pentobarb was missing.’

  ‘Not before?’

  ‘No, we keep separate supplies. There’s 400ml down in the hospital area, and more up here, obviously. He’d taken the largest bottle and a box of syringes.’

  ‘How many animals could he kill with that?’ Claire’s question was careful, and once again Cass was grateful he had such a clever sergeant. This poor woman had enough to deal with already; she didn’t need to know that her weakness might have helped get five women murdered. Not yet, at any rate.