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

by Sarah Pinborough

  They were only a few feet apart. Solomon’s gaze tore right through him. Something in his eyes reminded Cass of the painting in Solomon’s office in The Bank, and there was a darkness in them that reminded him of his own eyes. He felt like time was standing still as they looked at each other. How far away were the back-up team? Had Ramsey given him his five minutes? He still needed answers, personal ones, not the delusions that had pushed Solomon to take these lives.

  ‘What is the Redemption file? Why is there an account in it with my family’s name?’

  ‘They think you’re so special.’ Solomon turned away from the altar and slumped into a pew. He pulled a baseball cap from his pocket and tugged it onto his head. He still held the full hypodermic. ‘They think that you or the other can somehow save all this - this chaos. This pandemonium.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Those who don’t think they can get back, anyway. Perhaps they’ve all gone slowly mad over so much time.’

  Whoever they were, they must be mad. Cass couldn’t even save his own marriage. His neck prickled.

  Solomon’s eyes lit up the gloom. ‘You can’t save them. No one can. But they will lie to you to make you try.’ For the first time, Cass heard an urgency in his voice. ‘And you must not trust them. Do you understand, Cassius? You must never trust them.’ He tilted his head. ‘But you must forgive yourself.’

  Cass was tired of riddles and puzzles. He was tired of death. And he didn’t want this sick fuck telling him how he should feel about himself. Maybe he could live with the mysteries of Bright and his father and the Glow. Maybe for now he wasn’t going to get a choice. He did the only thing he could and raised the gun. ‘David Solomon. You are under arrest for the murders of—’

  Heels clicked loudly against the tiled floor at the back of the church and he faltered. For a moment he wondered if it was Ramsey and the back-up arriving, but at the same time he knew the church door hadn’t opened since it had slammed behind him. Two things happened at once. The first was that he recognised the smartly dressed man who walked down the aisle, his hands tucked into the pockets of his expensive wool overcoat. It was Mr Bright. You’ll come and he’ll follow. Wheels within wheels.

  The second was that Solomon plunged the hypodermic deep into his bare arm. He sucked his teeth in and then smiled before getting to his feet and moving back to the altar. Cass stared. He’d seen the amount of liquid in that thing. Solomon should have been dead pretty much instantly. What the fuck was this man made of?

  His hand wavered, unsure quite where to point the gun. There was something fragile about the handsome man standing next to the dead vicar, and on top of that he had far too much barbiturate rushing through his bloodstream to survive. Mr Bright, however, was as calm and cool as the last time Cass had seen him, and somehow that terrified Cass more.

  ‘How the fuck did you get here? Have you been watching me?’

  ‘Always, Cassius. You should know that by now.’ Mr Bright never took his eyes from Solomon as he answered Cass’s question. He shook his head slightly at the blond man.

  ‘I never thought it would end like this, Solomon. Not for you and me.’

  Cass looked from one to the other. It was as if he wasn’t even there.

  Solomon smiled, and love shone from it. ‘We’ve been Bright and Solomon so long I think I’ve almost forgotten our original names, brother.’

  He leaned on the altar, the first sign of strength seeping from him. Cass stared. He should be dead. He should be dead, and he shouldn’t be able to produce maggots from under his fingernails, and there is no Glow. Thoughts burned under Cass’s skin as he watched the two men on either side of him. The Man of Flies. The Lord of the Flies. Who was this man?

  ‘All this has to end, Mr Bright.’ Solomon’s smile was almost charming, and Cass could see so clearly why those women would have gone with him, why the good Reverend trusted him. ‘We should never have started it in the first place. I can’t think like you any more. I can smell it corrupting. He’s dying and everything is rotting.’

  ‘And that’s what all this attention-grabbing is about?’ Mr Bright raised an eyebrow, as if the deaths of five women and this vicar were merely the actions of a small child throwing its toys out of the pram in a tantrum.

  ‘I just wanted to watch them die. To see how terrible it is.’ Solomon’s head rocked a little on his shoulders. ‘I think that perhaps death is not that terrible. We need to stop fighting it.’ For the first time he glanced at Cass.

  ‘He can’t save you. Neither of them can, and he needed to know how you have plotted and planned. Just like his brother found out.’ His breathing came in short bursts and he punched out sentences with the air. ‘And that’s why I led him to you. At the flat. With the dead girl.’ Despite the effort, he made the words sound victorious. Mr Bright, however, just laughed merrily.

  ‘I’m the Architect, Solomon.’ The silver-haired man’s smile sparkled with health. ‘I was already drawing him in. Your game was just an embellishment, and easy to take care of. You’ve been too busy with your own tests and toys to keep an eye on the bigger picture.’ The laughter trickled away. ‘And now you’ll die and it will all be for nothing.’

  ‘We’re all dying anyway. I can feel it. It hums in the air.’

  ‘You think so?’ Mr Bright said. ‘Look at me? Am I dying? It’s all in your head, Solomon. You and the others, you’ve made your fate. You convinced yourselves. Maybe it’s just time and age and ennui.’ His smile fell. ‘And now your self-prophecy will come true.’

  ‘What the fuck has all this got to do with me?’ Cass barked. His back-up would be here soon, and he was tired of being ignored - if he was that fucking important to whatever twisted plans they had, they should at least talk to him. ‘Why the fuck have you been watching me?’

  Solomon gripped the altar and hunched over it, gasping slightly for air.

  ‘Not watching you, Cassius,’ Mr Bright said, ‘protecting you. Why do you think you didn’t end up dead after that fiasco?’ He stepped a little closer. ‘You think Brian Freeman’s people never recognised you in the newspapers, just because Charlie Sutton’s body turned up dead in the river?’

  It felt like a punch in the face. His brain reeled.

  ‘How do you think you got away with murder, Cassius? And kept your job?’ Mr Bright reached out to touch his arm, but Cass shrugged him away. Mr Bright’s smile didn’t falter. ‘I’ve been looking out for you. We all have. It’s a matter of blood, you see.’

  ‘Who’s we all?’ Cass felt sick. He’d been so fucking stupid - so naïve. How much of his life had been negotiated behind his back - and more importantly, why? Should he have been that poor bastard dragged out of the river so long ago? Were there men who still wanted to do that to him, but who were held at bay by whatever power this strange man wielded? How much was truth and how much was lies? Christian had said the same thing to Father Michael, hadn’t he - that he felt his life was being manipulated. The world whirled around him and he just wanted it to stop.

  Behind him Solomon hunched further over the dead body. The drugs were winning that battle. ‘He’s talking about the Network.’ He could barely get the words out, but still he forced himself to his feet. ‘They’ve lied to you, Cassius—’

  ‘Shut up, Solomon. You don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘They’ve lied, and taken what doesn’t belong to them.’ His eyes were desperate. Something was starting to shine at the edges. There was nothing weak or watery about it, like the vague something he thought he had glimpsed in Ramsey’s eyes. ‘You must find him!’ he hissed. His breath hitched again and he pulled the baseball cap from his head. The tips of his blond hair glinted and glistened in the yellow candlelight. Liquid gold dripped in Solomon’s eyes and started to shine. A soft buzzing started quietly, growing as he twitched.

  ‘What the fuck is happening to him?’ Cass whispered.

  ‘He’s dying,’ Mr Bright said. ‘All that he is and ever was is showing itself.’

  Solomon gasped and
flung his head back. Gold radiated from his eyes and mouth, the brightness of it enough to make Cass squint. ‘What the fuck is that?’ He knew the answer before he’d asked the question. The Glow.

  ‘It’s what you’ve hidden from, Cassius, all your life.’ Mr Bright’s words were almost lost in the building buzz. ‘It’s your destiny.’

  Cass watched Solomon, dread growing in the pit of his stomach. The tall man’s arms stretched out at his sides, a mockery of the crucifixion, his whole body radiating light. For a second Cass thought he heard him moan before the buzzing became a rush of sound and movement that raised a foul wind sweeping down from the vaulted ceiling. Flies swarmed out from under the sleeves of Solomon’s cheap mackintosh, a flood of black so thick that it almost deadened the pure light that glowed from every visible inch of the man. Maggots dripped from his fingertips to the ground where they writhed, half-dead, bloated and blackened.

  Cass flinched as the dark cloud lost its focus, the thousands of tiny insects moving in all directions, humming madly as they crashed into each other and the walls, darting around both Bright and Cass before finding their way back to the dying whirlwind that surrounded Solomon. Still squinting, Cass looked at Mr Bright, who stood perfectly still, his hands tucked into his overcoat pockets. Gold shone at the corners of his eyes, but silver ran in his tears.

  A terrible silence filled the church, holding them all in it for the briefest of seconds before Cass’s breath was sucked out of his lungs, the sound like an underwater explosion in his head. He looked back at Solomon. The Glow, the flies, Cass’s breath; they hit the blond man, sending him flying back against the solid stone wall.

  Sucking at empty air, Cass fell to his knees. From the corner of his eye he could see Mr Bright’s polished brogues. There were no crimson spots on them. He hadn’t fallen. Cass’s eyes met Solomon’s. They stared long and hard at each other, and as Cass’s lungs threatened to explode he wondered if they’d both die here, together on the floor of a church whose beliefs meant nothing to either of them. His face burned in the silence of nothingness, and just when he was sure his head might explode, Solomon’s mouth twitched in something that was almost a smile and the last traces of light faded in his skin and eyes.

  The air filled with oxygen and Cass gasped in huge lungfuls. It tasted sweet as mountain water. He let his face cool against the tiles, lying there until his breathing grew less ragged. Slowly, he pulled himself up onto his feet. The muscles across his chest screamed as he straightened and walked over to the dead man. Solomon didn’t look so handsome now. His skin had sagged and his hair was more brown than blond. He looked old. He looked dead. The flies had disappeared. He was suddenly nothing special at all. Whatever had been there before was gone.

  He turned to find that so was Mr Bright. He looked around him. Mr Bright was gone, and so was the bottle of blood that Solomon had left on the altar. It didn’t surprise him much. Mr Bright was something else; something other. He’d seen a glimpse of something tonight that now echoed through his soul. He stood between the dead men and sighed. What the fuck had he seen? What had gone on here? It felt like the vanished flies were crawling in and under his skin. He trembled.

  As the far door burst open and Ramsey ran in, bringing all the noise and energy of the outside with him, Cass thought he might be sick. The world around him had shaken. He was back to being a little boy who could see things he didn’t want to. How real was anything? How real was his life? His job? His marriage? There were layers upon layers of reality in his memory. How many of them had been manipulated by Mr Bright, and why?

  ‘What happened?’ Ramsey panted.

  ‘He’s dead. Injection,’ Cass muttered as he slid the gun into the back of his trousers. His hair felt sticky with sweat and his lungs moved slowly, trying to convince him that there still wasn’t enough air in the church to breathe.

  The next hour or so passed in a slow dream. He called it in and within minutes bodies filled the church, all gloved and careful not to disturb anything. Cass talked on autopilot, delivering an amended version of the truth that could fit with this gritty reality and didn’t include flies, and Glow and Mr Bright. He was in the middle of a bubble of lies. He lied to his sergeant when Claire called briefly, and he lied to DCI Morgan when he turned up. There were congratulations, but Cass didn’t feel like celebrating. He waited until Dr Farmer had arrived and the processing of the scene had started before doing what he’d wanted to do from the moment Solomon had died. Morgan and Ramsey were standing at the back of the church by the door, and Cass paused on his way out.

  ‘I have to get out of here. I need to go home. A shower.’

  Morgan nodded. ‘Good idea. I can manage things from here. You’ve done your share.’ The DCI looked over at Ramsey. ‘And you’d better get back to your own nick.’

  ‘Sir,’ Ramsey answered. Cass could have hugged the other man when he saw there was no watery glow in his eyes. What the fuck did that glow mean? Why did it matter?

  ‘I’ll come back in and file my report later—’ He was already walking away as he was speaking; his feet were fighting the urge to run back out onto the gritty streets of the city he loved.

  When he finally flagged down a black cab, he wound the window down and breathed in the night air. He forced his heart to slow. The night was real. The streets were real. The glorious buildings that cut through the sky were as real as the men that had bled and died to build them. He drank in its scents and sounds. Maybe the Glow, whatever the fuck it was, was real too. Maybe he was going to have to accept that. But this earth, this city, and the grimy daily struggle of it; that was his religion. People, life and death, and staying mainly on the right side of the line. That was all that mattered.

  He tried not to think about the flies that had lived and died inside Solomon. He tried not to think about the line of eggs that appeared from the man’s fingertips, apparently squeezed out from the finger itself. There was nothing he could do about those things. He wanted to talk to Kate, to really talk to her . . . to see if she’d ever heard of a man called Mr Bright, and if she still loved him enough to let him make it better. He wanted to hold her and feel the heat of her body, and make love to her rather than just fuck her. And then when that was done, he just wanted to sleep for a week.

  Cass let himself into the house and stood in the gloomy hallway. There was a thin wash of light from the one strip that had been left on in the kitchen, but the rest of the rooms were dark. Kate wasn’t home. Her absence was palpable. He tried her mobile number, but it went straight to answer phone and he didn’t leave a message. The things he wanted to say had to be said face to face so she could see that he meant them.

  At his feet was a jumble of envelopes on the doormat and he stooped to pick them up, ignoring the aches that quivered through his body. If the post was still here then Kate hadn’t been home all day. Where would she have gone? The memory of their unmade bed when he came back last time tried to rear its ugly head, but he crushed it. It didn’t stop his heart sinking a little. Maybe the morning would be a better time to see her anyway, after he’d slept away at least some of the day’s horrors. Halfway to his feet he paused. Black lace-up shoes. Crimson stains. He groaned as he rose to face his dead brother. He had no energy left for this.

  ‘Oh just fuck off, Christian.’

  Christian smiled. At least his eyes weren’t bleeding this time. In fact, in the half-light they looked a perfect blue.

  Cass stared at him. He was tired of this shit. ‘Just what the fuck is it you want?’ He threw the post onto the side table. ‘What, Christian? What the fuck do you want from me?’

  His brother’s benign smile stayed fixed, but he turned his head slightly in the direction of the envelopes. He lifted his hand and mimicked a phone call, just as he’d done every time Cass had seen him since he died.

  ‘I don’t know what you—’ Cass stopped suddenly as a blue logo poking out from the post caught his eye. The phone bill had arrived. He looked back at Christian before
slowly reaching for it. Still smiling, Christian turned and walked away, his feet leading him steadily towards the kitchen. Cass knew that if he followed, his brother would be gone. Cass had finally got the message. He looked down at the envelope. He didn’t deal with the bills; that was Kate’s job. As long as they got paid, he didn’t care. What was in this one that Christian wanted him to see?

  He tore it open and dropped the summary page, letting it drift unwanted to his feet. His tiredness fled as one mobile number came up over and over again. The calls had been made with far more frequency in the past week or so. His chest tightened. He knew the number, and it wasn’t one he’d be calling from home. What business would Kate have calling it? He had a terrible sick cramp in the pit of his stomach as he checked the dates and times of the calls made on the night Christian and his family died. The mobile number was the last one dialled, and it must have been just before Cass had got home. The memory flashed bright behind his eyes: coming through the door, tossing the envelope from Mullins and his keys down. Kate, beautiful and cool, hanging up the phone. Hate and rage burned through the cracks in his broken heart. What the fuck had they done? And why?

  On the side table his phone buzzed and for an instant Cass thought a swarm of flies were coming for him. He answered it.

  ‘Detective Inspector? It’s Maya Healey.’ Soft, nervous, awkward. ‘I’ve got that information on those two accounts you asked for - the ones Christian was concerned about? Sorry it’s taken so long, but he must have taken the original printouts I gave him home, and so I supposed the police must still have them.’

  ‘Who do the accounts belong to?’ He had no time for pleasantries. His brain was burning and the voice he heard coming from his own mouth was alien. Inside, he wasn’t even sure he could form words.

  ‘There were two fronting accounts, but I’ve got the names of who owns them. It didn’t take long, they weren’t particularly well set up.’