‘What about the evidence against you?’ There was nothing accusatory in his tone.
‘That’s more of a sticking point.’ Cass found that he didn’t mind opening up at least a little to Ramsey. He liked him, and he had to talk to someone. ‘The only reason someone would want to do that would be to get me off a case, and the only one I’m working that I could think of was Jackson and Miller.’
‘But isn’t that now solved?’
‘So they say.’
‘You think there’s more to it?’
Cass flicked the butt of his cigarette out into the street. ‘Let’s just say that I’m making further enquiries. But whichever way I look at it, some person or persons unknown wanted me off that case, and they used the deaths of my brother and his family to make that happen.’
Ramsey sighed deeply. ‘And there’s only one way fingerprint and bodily fluids could have come to be where they did.’
‘Exactly. Someone’s been paid to make me look dirty. And let’s face it, it could be any number of people.’
‘Yep, it’s the same all over. You can always find someone to do something for money, and these days it’s even worse. In every nick I’d say half the coppers are bent double, rather than the little bit we all are.’ He paused. ‘Fuck. This whole thing is a mess.’
‘That’s policing,’ Cass said. He didn’t need Ramsey to elaborate; they’d be taking bonuses in Chelsea too. ‘How come you believe me?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Well, aside from your very convenient alibi,’ Ramsey said with a slight grin, ‘I just don’t think you’d be so stupid as to have fucked your brother’s wife without a condom, then gone back and shot them all and left a fingerprint on the gun while you were doing it.’
Cass almost laughed out loud. ‘I’m glad my intelligence gets your vote, even if my morals don’t.’
‘Think nothing of it.’ Ramsey smiled. ‘But seriously, it’s the fingerprint that’s saved you. Whoever did that was stupid. If they wanted you out of the way, for whatever reason, then the sex would have been enough. You could have denied it all you liked, but with your reputation, you’d have been suspended straight off. It wouldn’t have looked good in the press if it got out. But the minute they put your fingerprint on the gun, it was a set-up. Even Bowman, who really doesn’t like you, would have a hard time finding a reason for you to have done all that. Bang. You’re in the clear.’
He was right, it was a stupid mistake, and that normally meant that whoever had done it hadn’t had much time to think or plan, but had worked fast. He gritted his teeth. Whoever it was, he’d get the bastard. Jackson and Miller seniors? Was it them - and if so, why? He had a good reputation, but he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, and he hadn’t been anywhere close to finding answers in the shootings when Christian had died and he’d been set up.
He gritted his teeth and hoped Perry Jordan was working for him today. He wanted some fucking answers.
Chapter Sixteen
The Bank’s London headquarters were in central London, overlooking the Thames. The SIS Building had, until four years previously, been the home of MI6, until, with terrorism on a sharp increase, both at home and all across Europe, the government decided it would be better if the secret service went back to being a little more secret, which coincided with The Bank’s desire for a suitable site for its British and European headquarters. The Prime Minister and each of the ever-changing Chancellors had made a lot of noise about how good it would be for the world’s new economic champion to be calling London home, and suddenly The Bank was setting up home in the SIS Building.
With hindsight, Cass wondered if maybe MI6 were pushed, rather than leaving of their own free will. Money corrupted, and the men who had put together The Bank would know that better than most. The building had state-of-the-art security, and while the Service would have taken some of it with them, all the wiring and structural work was already in situ, ready for cameras and card-swiping systems and rooms that needed top security clearances to enter. He thought again of the files Christian had copied. Maybe it was the men behind the men who founded The Bank who had secured the eviction of MI6. That kind of available funding could definitely talk.
Four women sat behind a long, sleek desk. The front panels were brushed glass decorated with black and silver, the colours synonymous with The Bank wherever in the world you travelled. Behind them was what looked like a room made of black glass, keeping the security men and the camera monitors neatly and very stylishly out of the way of prying eyes. To their left, the way to the lifts was blocked by a series of card-swipe machines and high clear plastic barriers. Not only did they look far more modern than the usual silver turnstiles, the gates were too high for anyone to leap over. On the right, several black leather sofas and armchairs were positioned around brushed steel tables. No one was sitting on them. They must have come at a quiet time - or maybe The Bank was so efficient that no visitor had to wait for long.
Only three or four minutes had passed since one of the women behind the desk had spoken softly into the phone when a lift slid open and a smartly suited Asian man stepped out. His hair was combed straight back, accentuating the fine features of his angular face. Behind him was a rather dumpy young woman whose blue skirt pulled too tightly across her hips. Her low heels clattered on the marble as she tried to keep up with the smooth stride of the man in front. The man exuded cool sophistication, but she was a bundle of nerves. Maya Healey didn’t look like The Bank’s type of employee - how the hell had she got a job here?
When they were standing in front of Cass, he could see that under her make-up, the young woman’s eyes were red and puffy. He understood that look; he’d seen it on Clara Jackson and Eleanor Miller: these were eyes that had cried themselves out. Her foundation was flaking over the delicate sore skin, where she must have applied too much to cover it up. She kept her head down. The man smiled. His teeth were perfect.
‘I see you found our laptop.’ His accent was straight from Eton or Harrow, but Cass caught the edginess of the gutter in the hardness of his smiling eyes.
‘You must be Asher Red?’ Ramsey said as he handed the case over. Cass stood slightly behind him. Ramsey had stayed out of his way at Limehouse; it was his turn now, to start with at least. ‘And Maya Healey? As I said on the phone, we’d like to take a look at Mr Jones’ office.’
‘Of course.’ The grit in Mr Red’s eyes turned to stone.
‘And we’d also like to look in his computer.’
‘You can, of course, see inside the late Mr Jones’ office. But his computer may be more of a problem.’
Asher Red turned and with a flick of his wrist produced two clip-on Visitor badges from somewhere within his stylishly cut suit. He gave one to Ramsey and then one to Cass. They were bright red, as if even a visitor in the building could be perceived as some kind of danger. ‘Please place these where they will be visible. Your suit lapels would be best.’
‘Why might the computer be more of a problem?’ Ramsey asked.
Asher Red nodded to Maya, who swiped her card to open the barrier. It slid open soundlessly into the one next to it: barely noticeable precision engineering that came at a cost.
Cass smiled at Maya as he walked through and she gave him a brief flicker of a grateful smile back. Her nails were chewed down. Asher Red probably didn’t like that either.
‘It’s company policy to wipe an employee’s computer account when they are no longer with The Bank. The accounts Mr Jones was working on will still be in the system, of course, but I’m afraid all his personal files, including his email files, will have been deleted.’
‘You didn’t think to check with us first?’
‘Well, I didn’t think it was necessary.’ Asher Red maintained his smile as the lift doors closed around them. ‘You did, after all, have his laptop. I presumed that you would have found all the information you required on that.’
Cass cringed inside. Ramsey obviously hadn’t told them who had the laptop - that would have made
the whole investigation suspect, and open to accusations, should anything further come to light about Christian, Jess and Luke’s deaths. He’d done Cass a huge favour by not coming after him for it, and Cass was only just realising how big a favour that was.
But before Ramsey could respond, Mr Red said smoothly, ‘But of course, you wouldn’t have had the necessary passwords. ’ His smile was tight. ‘It will take our people some time to find them. Our laptops, especially those used by employees as highly valued as Mr Jones, have very sophisticated security systems. The passwords are user-specific, unlike the desktops, whose passwords are logged.’
Cass didn’t look at the man. He didn’t want the smug bastard to get even a hint that he had found a way into Christian’s laptop.
Asher Red’s fingernails were perfectly manicured, the white tips of each nail of identical length. He pressed a button for the eleventh floor. The buttons were in two banks of ten on the silver plate, with a gold oblong dividing them: an over-the-top design feature for a company that appeared to be all about understated elegance, Cass thought.
From the corner of his eye, Cass could see Ramsey’s foot tapping. It was the only external sign of the irritation he was feeling inside, and for a moment Cass felt a cramp of guilt, but it passed. The Bank would have deleted Christian’s account whether Cass had taken the laptop or not. That was just an excuse. And most of the information on the laptop was personal: Cass’s business, no one else’s.
‘Miss Healey, you were Christian Jones’ assistant, weren’t you?’ Ramsey asked. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
‘That’s right.’ She picked at the skin around her thumb with her forefinger.
‘Well then, perhaps we could look at your computer files instead,’ Ramsey said. ‘Most of Mr Jones’ emails would have been cc’d to you, I presume? And you were responsible for typing his letters? So most of what we are interested in seeing will be on your account too. It’s important that we get a feel for any work situations that might have been affecting him.’
Maya’s mouth moved silently and she looked at her boss. The lift doors opened onto the floor.
‘I’m afraid I would have to ask permission from my superiors for that to take place,’ Mr Red said as he waved them out and onto the thick black and silver carpet. ‘And I am afraid they are unavailable today.’
‘They are all unavailable?’ For the first time Cass could hear a hint of irritation creeping into Ramsey’s laid-back drawl.
Asher Red shrugged and led them past another reception desk and down the silent corridor. ‘It’s often the way. The higher one reaches in an organisation, the fewer superiors one has. Ergo it becomes harder to have someone readily available to approve an important company decision.’ He smiled again. His eyes stayed cold. ‘I am sure it must be the same in the police force.’
Cass figured that even if Asher Red had given a shit about what it was like in the police force, he certainly wouldn’t consider Ramsey high enough in its ranks for his point to apply. He was a smug, smarmy bastard and his flash suit made Cass think of Bowman, even though this bloke’s tailoring made Bowman’s Armani look like Matalan seconds.
‘I’ll have to get on the phone and organise a warrant then.’ Ramsey smiled. ‘That will take the responsibility of decision-making away from you and your elusive superiors.’
‘Yes.’ Asher Red didn’t miss a beat. ‘That would probably be for the best.’
Cass could have punched him. Red obviously knew it would take them twenty-four hours to get a warrant - at the earliest. This wasn’t a crime scene, there were no obvious murder suspects, and if a judge were to look at all the evidence, he would most likely still say it looked like a simple murder-suicide, and if warrants should be issued to look at anyone’s files it should be Cass’s. It was hard to reconcile this arrogant fucker with the emails sycophantically praising Christian’s work. He doubted handing out praise to anyone other than himself came easily to Mr Red or his type.
Email. The word lingered in his head as Asher Red opened a heavy, old-fashioned oak door. Cass clung on to the image and dug for its relevance in the mess of information tangled in his mind. There had been something in the emails he’d read on his brother’s laptop that had got his attention before he’d become distracted by the photographs and the Redemption files. Christian had wanted some details on two accounts. His heart thumped slightly. He’d written the numbers down in his phone. What was their relevance? He gritted his teeth. He’d find out some way, but this was probably not the time or place to raise it, not without risking far too many questions about how he’d come to find the information.
‘Come in. The office is exactly as Mr Jones left it.’
Cass bet it was: exactly as Christian had left it - but with all useful information removed. He was quite sure Asher Red had had his security goons deleting any scrap of useful information the moment news of Christian’s death had come through, and Ramsey obviously knew it too. He didn’t ask Red to leave, but he did smile and accept the offer of coffee from Maya.
At the nick coffee came from the vending machine either with sugar or without, but Maya gave them a list to choose from. Cass was tempted to ask if they had any instant, but that might be seen as childish. Not that Asher Red’s behaviour was anything other than sophisticated childishness. He was stopping them doing their job simply because he could, and they all knew it. The reputation of the police was tarnished in some circles, but when it came to serious crime, they still worked their arses off to bring the bad guys to justice. And if they were making this request of any other company in the country, they’d be getting exactly what they’d asked for. Asher Red was making a point about power.
Cass idly wondered how powerful the slim man would feel with his perfect nose spread across his face.
He looked round the vast room that had been his little brother’s office and couldn’t reconcile it in his head. The last time he’d been anywhere Christian worked it had been a tiny, understaffed office overloaded with piles of paper. People bought their suits from Burton’s, and dry-cleaned them twice a year, if they were lucky. This was a few years and a world away from that - shit, this was a world away from everywhere. His own cubbyhole of an office would fit into this and leave most of the room over. The size was emphasised by the lack of any excess furniture.
A large desk filled the far end. A sleek flatscreen monitor looked as if it were embedded into the wood, like it could be closed in much the same way as a laptop. A small pile of documents sat on the blotting pad in the centre. Ramsey pushed the large leather chair to one side and rifled through the papers. Cass scoured the floor for any sign of other furniture that might have been moved out, but the thick carpet showed no indents from a heavy filing cabinet or anything else. The Bank wasn’t a big supporter of the paper trail, it appeared.
Maya brought in the coffees. Cass took his and wandered over to study the huge canvas that covered one wall. Paint splatters flew in all directions, and for an instant he saw only the blood that had sprayed all over his baby brother’s dining room when his brains had been blown out. He flinched and turned away, half-expecting to see a pair of shiny black lace-ups daubed with crimson, but they were not there. He squeezed down a wave of grief, crushing it back into a small place deep inside.
Mr Red had taken a seat in one of the two wing-backed chairs. They reeked of expensive leather. He crossed his legs carefully before sipping his espresso. Maya lingered awkwardly in the doorway.
‘I’m very sorry about your brother, Detective Inspector,’ Asher Red said, ‘but I am surprised to see you here with Detective Inspector Ramsey. Surely you are not part of this investigation? Your presence here could be seen as something of an irregularity.’
Cass smiled, and walked behind the desk. So Mr Red knew who he was - but Cass had the upper hand. A pile of white business cards sat in a small box next to the computer screen. He picked one up. The card was richly textured, like the envelope Christian had left for him.
; ‘Oh, but I’m here on another matter entirely, Mr Red,’ he said as he slid the card into his top pocket. ‘I should have said.’ He grinned at the slight look of discomfort that flitted for a second across the man’s face. ‘I just thought I’d let Detective Inspector Ramsey get his work done first.’
Behind him, Ramsey yanked open a desk drawer with far more force than was required, as if to support Cass’s point.
‘And what would that business be?’ Asher Red studied him. ‘Perhaps I can help you?’
‘I want some information about an ex-employee of yours. A Mr Solomon.’
There was just the briefest tightening of fingers around the delicate china espresso cup. ‘Solomon? Do you have a first name?’
‘He stopped working for you approximately three months ago. And no. I don’t have a first name. But I’m sure your highly efficient computer system is capable of finding him.’
Asher Red tilted his head slightly in a reluctant nod. ‘And might I ask what this is regarding?’
‘No,’ Cass said. ‘You may not.’
Mr Red stared at him for a moment, his polite smile frozen on his face. ‘Just let me make a phone call and see what I can find out for you,’ he said eventually.
‘Thank you.’
Ramsey sighed. ‘If this office is exactly as Christian Jones left it, then I can’t see how he did any work.’ He stared at Mr Red, who had risen from the chair. ‘Your boys really did clear him out, didn’t you? There’s not even a photo of his family, just a bunch of stationery and an empty diary. Very efficient. ‘ He raised an eyebrow and turned to Christian’s assistant. ‘But please do expect that search warrant, Ms Healey.’
Asher Red didn’t even bother with a hint of an explanation or apology. ‘Let me take you downstairs then, if you’re quite finished, and I’ll search out that employment record.’
A Matter Of Blood (The Dog-Faced Gods Trilogy) Page 28