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

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘We closed the cases. Both of them.’ He tried to sound normal. That was easy. Normal with them was always distant and awkward. ‘But something happened. There was an accident.’ His voice choked and tears sprang to life in the corners of his eyes. The emotion surprised him and he swallowed the tears down. He would not break now, not until this was done. ‘It’s Claire. She’s dead. She fell.’

  A small gasp. ‘I’m sorry.’

  A long pause. They never had been able to talk about the important stuff. Cass wondered where this was leading.

  ‘What do you want, Kate?’

  ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Us. Jessica. I want to understand.’

  Cass sighed. His heart ached, and bled afresh. Did she mean it? Or was she with Bowman now? Maybe he’d played her too, just used her to get to Cass. Maybe she didn’t know her lover had been intent on setting up her husband. He couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for that argument. Whoever had set him up had got his sperm from somewhere. He hadn’t been fucking anyone else, and Bowman was fucking the woman who could get it on tap for him. The thoughts were crude. He wanted it that way: this was all base - base, and human, and gritty, and that he could deal with.

  ‘You want to come here?’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She sniffed, loudly. Surely she couldn’t still be crying. ‘Not there.’

  ‘Then where?’ His veins fizzed, his blood pumped faster.

  ‘Christian’s house.’

  ‘What?’ His blood cooled. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘You fucked Jessica there.’ A hard edge. ‘It’s an honest place, Cass. We can’t tell lies there.’

  ‘It’s a crime scene, Kate.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Softness again. She was mercurial tonight, this wife of his. ‘I drove past this evening. The tape was gone from around the front. I couldn’t see anyone there. I think they’re done.’

  She’d done her homework, but she was probably right. The SOC team would have gone back at Ramsey’s request, but the cleaners would have finished and the house would be ready to go to probate, or whoever dealt with the possessions the dead no longer needed. As far as anyone else was concerned, it was a straightforward murder-suicide. There was no reason to keep someone on the door.

  ‘My brother and his family died in that house.’ He had no intention of making this easy for her, or Bowman, or both of them. ‘You want me to go back there?’ His voice rose slightly. The aggression and pain came easily. ‘Claire died today, Kate. I’ve been through things, seen things you just wouldn’t believe. And now you want me to go to Christian’s house in the middle of the night to fucking talk?’

  Another pause. He could almost see the sulky cast to her lips. ‘It’s tonight or never, Cass. If we can’t talk honestly tonight, after all this, then we never will.’ She sighed and sniffed, all rolled into one.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and he felt the chess pieces moving into place. ‘I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Thanks, Cass.’ The snot turned to tears in her voice and she hung up without saying any more. As if she might perhaps say something she would regret.

  He sat still for a few moments more, relishing the quiet darkness and the cool thump of his deadened heart. He would have his vengeance. He made a short call on his mobile, talking quietly and quickly. When it was done, he smiled. It was time to end this particular game. Wheels within wheels.

  Chapter Twenty

  She looked fragile standing in the shadow of the doorway, away from the beam of the street light. She had her arms wrapped round herself to help keep out the night chill. Strands of hair danced in the light breeze as she shuffled slightly from foot to foot. The night wasn’t that cold; what was it: nerves or impatience, or perhaps a bit of both? Shadows cut lines across her cheekbones, highlighting her angular beauty. Her eyes glinted and she stood still as he opened the low gate and walked up the path.

  She might look fragile, but Cass knew better. Kate was feline, and cats had nine lives. She might be damaged, but she was far from broken. He could see her eyes darting between him and the house. He smiled at her as his heart splintered all over again. They weren’t alone. Someone was waiting inside for him, and this beautiful stranger who had been a major part of his fucked-up life for so long had brought him here to face them.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for coming.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose before standing on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. Her lips were cool and cracked. A stranger’s lips. ‘Let’s get inside. It’s cold.’

  The gun pressed against his back as he reached up with the key. Was Bowman going to blow him away as soon as he opened the door? His heart raced. Probably not. Bowman wouldn’t risk hitting Kate, and if he shot both of them that would be fucking hard to explain. Whether Bowman loved her or not was probably debatable, but either way he couldn’t take the chance of making this messier than it already was.

  The door swung open and the dark hallway yawned wide, ready to swallow them up. Cass grabbed Kate’s arm and pulled her in front of him, ignoring her yelp of surprise.

  ‘What are you doing, Cass?’

  He didn’t answer but pushed her forward towards the lounge and dining room, following her, and she stepped into the large living space. The house felt empty, as if even the ghosts had left, but the sound of Kate’s heels clicking as she stumbled echoed like gunshots. Even in the grey light he could see that the wall had been scrubbed clean of Christian’s brains and blood and life. The floor would be clean too. His heart thumped.

  ‘Where are you, Bowman?’ he called.

  A dark shadow emerged from the kitchen at the far end, forming from the pitch-black. A cufflink glinted against a raised hand.

  Cass left his gun hidden as he pushed Kate forward again. ‘I think this belongs to you now.’

  In the no man’s land between the two men, Kate flashed him a glare. ‘You bastard.’

  Cass didn’t comment. It was the closest to real emotion he’d seen from her in a long time.

  Bowman flicked on a small table lamp, though the warm yellow light didn’t stretch far across the room. It wouldn’t draw any unwanted attention from the sleeping outside world.

  ‘Well, I guess that answers one of my questions,’ Bowman said. ‘You know about us.’

  Kate stayed where she was, sobbing and sniffing into her sleeve. Cass looked at her again, and in the light, he could see the changes. Her beauty had all but vanished: she had dark bags under her bloodshot eyes and here pupils were so huge he could scarcely make out the bright blue of her irises. Her nose was red and sore. Jesus: her whole body screamed her guilt. He knew that look, he’d worn it himself for long enough. She sniffed again and this time he laughed. Whatever was plaguing her conscience, if she thought that drugs would make it all go away, she had a hard lesson to learn ahead of her.

  ‘So, she’s not just a whore.’ His voice was cold. ‘Now she’s a coke whore.’ He looked over at the other man. ‘Nice work. Is that the only way you can get her to fuck you?’

  Kate pressed herself against the wall and Cass turned away from her, his attention on his fellow detective. Bowman’s hand was up, his weapon pointing firmly in Cass’s direction. At least he knew where he stood. And Bowman didn’t yet know he had a gun of his own tucked against the small of his back.

  ‘It didn’t take much, Jones. In fact, it took pathetically little,’ Bowman sneered. ‘Kate just wants a nice life with someone who can give her the things she wants, and a little respectability.’ He laughed. ‘Let’s face it: that was never going to be you.’

  ‘Oh, and I can see just how it could be you.’ Cass spoke softly, his hatred cold as ice. There was more going on here than Kate. He needed to remember that, keep the rage that tore at him cool, under control. ‘But she’s really not important. You’re welcome to her.’ She flinched. He kept his eyes away from her.

  ‘How long have you been in business with Macintyre?’

&nb
sp; ‘Did Claire tell you that? She told Mat she hadn’t told anyone. Funny, she never struck me as a liar.’

  ‘No.’ Cass blinked away the image of the broken body on the ground. ‘She wasn’t a liar. She didn’t tell me. Your bank accounts did.’

  Bowman shrugged slightly. ‘That would be your brother’s fault. He just wouldn’t leave it alone. So you’ve been digging around in his files.’

  Black lace-up brogues. Crimson stains. A knife-twist in the gut. What the fuck did Bowman know about Christian? His fingers itched for his gun.

  ‘Not that it matters,’ Bowman continued. ‘No one’s going to care once you’re gone.’

  The implication was clear. Cass felt his stomach tighten. At least Bowman had laid his cards on the table. No surprise, though: they’d killed Claire. They were hardly going to leave him alive.

  ‘Someone will.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Bowman laughed. ‘You think this is just me and Mat? You think we’d do all this if it was just us?’

  All this. How steeped in blood were they?

  ‘Are you saying you two have some other friends? How sweet. If surprising.’

  ‘Sarcasm? It always was the best you could manage, Cass.’ Bowman’s mouth twisted.

  From upstairs, Cass heard the tiniest whisper of a creak of the floorboards. His heart stilled. That was no ghost. Someone else was in the house with them. He didn’t react to the sound, and it was unlikely Bowman would have heard it from where he was standing, with Kate’s quiet snivelling between them. What Cass didn’t understand was why they hadn’t attacked him already. He knew he wanted information, but what did they want now? Whatever it was, he could use it to buy himself some time. He didn’t need much.

  ‘Is Morgan involved?’

  ‘No, it’s not really a brass thing. You could think of it as a kind of Paddington Green collective. Most of the DIs are in. Their sergeants. The DCs.’

  ‘All of them?’ Cass’s mouth dried. Fuck, he wanted a cigarette.

  ‘Most.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s the bonuses.’ Bowman grinned, proudly. ‘We’re all taking money from the firms anyway. We might as well make from it.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’ The bonuses were a necessary evil. You just took them and got on with your job the best you could. What the fuck had Bowman turned them into?

  ‘What’s the point of a couple of hundred quid here and there? That’s spent as soon as we have it. There isn’t one. So I spread the word to see if people would be interested in investing the money as a group - you know, buying some product, then shifting it.’ He was almost preening. ‘If I say so myself, it’s a genius operation. We take the bonuses from the firms on our manor, like Mullins, put the money together, buy the coke from Macintyre and then shift it out to the suburbs where there’s no one major to worry about pissing off. It’s amazing how quickly you can make some proper money like that. Everyone’s doing well out of it: everyone gets their percentage of profits back, then we reinvest and start again. It’s a rolling operation, been going for a year now.’ He grinned. ‘And you never even bloody noticed.’

  Cass stared at him. ‘You’re fucking drug dealers. This is a fucking police firm?’ As soon as Maya had given him the names on the accounts he’d known that drugs were involved, but in his wildest dreams he hadn’t expected the whole fucking nick to be in on it. Mullins was right: the world was made up of different layers, most of which you never saw. Wheels within wheels.

  Another soft creak shivered down the wall of the house. Whoever was upstairs was slowly coming closer.

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t I know about it?’ Cass asked.

  ‘You?’ Bowman snorted. ‘You’re such a fucking martyr, Cass. Would you have come in on it?’

  ‘No.’ He didn’t even have to think about it. ‘It’s too far over the fucking line, Bowman, and you know it.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard your views on fucking shades of grey, Cass. You think just because you blew some Rasta kid’s head off that you’re the fucking expert on right and fucking wrong?’ Bowman’s voice rose as he spat out the words. ‘You think there’s a fucking difference between taking the bonuses and what we’re doing? Well, there isn’t.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Light grey or dark grey, it’s all the same fucking colour. And why should we work like dogs for a fucking pittance?’ He smiled. ‘But you would never see that, Mr Cass-fucking-holier-than-thou-Jones. You’re far too busy trying to redeem your fucking self - and you know what? No one fucking cares!’

  Cass almost laughed aloud at the irony, and the bitterness in Bowman’s voice. ‘This has got nothing to do with me and everything to do with you,’ he said. ‘You were born dirty, Bowman. You can almost see it on your skin, oozing out of the pores under all those moisturisers and that nice tan. You’re scum. You haven’t got the bottle to pick your side and stand there, so you sit on the fence and play at both. You’re everything I have no respect for.’ Again there was a shuffle of noise out of sight. Was the final player in this scene making his way down the stairs?

  ‘Well, that just breaks my heart, Cass. If you must know, I’ve never been that fond of you either.’

  It was time to end this charade. ‘What happened to my brother ?’

  ‘That was unfortunate.’

  ‘Unfortunate?’ Cass’s blood thinned. His eyes burned. Against the wall, Kate grew still.

  ‘He knew about our bank accounts. How, I don’t know, but he did. He rang your house that night. You weren’t there, but he told Kate all about it. He told her you needed to know.’

  Cass stared at Kate, but she refused to look at him. What had she done? Guilt joined the anger churning up his gut. He should have spoken to Christian. He should have made it home in time for that call. He should have done too many things.

  ‘Kate said he’d been trying to get hold of you for a few days. He’d been talking about weird shit. She said he sounded like he was cracking up.’ Bowman sounded almost conversational now. ‘But this was different. She knew if he told you about this, you’d feel honour bound do something about it. He was kind enough to tell her he would be taking the proof home with him.’

  A cool shiver prickled along his hairline and down the back of his neck. Cass could see that night unfolding like a movie behind his eyes as Bowman talked.

  ‘Kate told him you’d come round, and he believed her.’ He shrugged. ‘She got off the phone and called me straight away. I called Macintyre. He said he’d go round himself, at the same time you were supposed to show. He said he’d try to make Christian see sense. Kate was to make sure you stayed at home.’

  The bottle of wine. The sex. There was nothing so dumb as a man with a hard-on. Cass looked over at his wife again. Whore. Stranger. Lover.

  ‘When Macintyre got here your sister-in-law and nephew were in bed.’ Bowman leaned back against the wall. He was still weak; Cass could see a feverish sheen on his forehead. The doctors might not have found anything, but Cass was pretty sure Solomon had done something to the DI.

  ‘Things got nasty and Christian refused to back down. He wasn’t prepared to pretend he knew nothing. Macintyre tied him to a chair; he was going to just rough him up a bit, make him see sense, when the wife woke up and called down the stairs.’

  So it wasn’t Luke who died first. He’d slept through it all. It was Jessica who had been disturbed.

  ‘Macintyre went upstairs and shot her. After that, he didn’t really have any choice.’ Bowman left the rest unsaid.

  Cass’s saliva tasted metallic. Warm blood. He could see Christian tied to the chair, something shoved in his mouth, unable to shout any sort of warning. Two gunshots ringing out, and then Macintyre reappearing, splattered in his family’s blood. Christian wouldn’t have fought after that. Cass would have bet his little brother had just tilted his head back, ready for the bullet, waiting for his brain to be as dead as his heart. He knew how Christian had felt.

  Tears stung his eyes. He wondered if they were silver. ‘Y
ou fucking cunt.’

  ‘It just got out of hand, Jones,’ Bowman said. His voice sounded a bit whiny.

  Cass stared at Kate. ‘And you’re a fucking piece of work.’ All that crying, and the brandy: it made sense now. ‘It’s going to take more than a few grams of Charlie to make that go away in your head,’ he laughed. ‘That’s with you for life, Kate. Good luck with it.’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ she hissed, spitting out the words as she moved towards him slightly. ‘I didn’t kill them! I didn’t! I wouldn’t—’

  Cass took two careful steps back so that he was slightly behind the doorway. The large mirror over the fireplace reflected the dark hallway and the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘But what did you do, Kate? You did something.’ He looked at Bowman. ‘Can I smoke?’

  ‘Sure. Probably better if you do. Make sure you use the ashtray.’

  It didn’t take a genius to work out what Bowman’s plan was, and Cass almost smiled as he lit a cigarette and inhaled hard. Suicide in the house where his brother killed himself and his family. Poor Cass Jones, he finally cracked after the tragic accidental death of his sergeant. He’d never been right since that business undercover, no doubt that’s what Kate would say, trying to hide her nose lined with a fresh cocaine habit and her nights drained of sleep. That’s if they managed to pull it off. As plans went, it was better than throwing someone over the banisters.

  He gritted his teeth and enjoyed the feel of metal against his back. Bowman hadn’t won yet.

  ‘Don’t blame her.’ Bowman pulled his own cigarettes out with his free hand and lit one. Cass smiled. Mr Bright was right: people were predictable. If you light a cigarette, then suddenly everyone wants one.

  ‘Mat Blackmore told me about the film coming in. He’d seen me in the shot.’ He held up the hand with the cigarette in and flashed a cufflink. ‘You should take it as a compliment that we were sure you’d spot it, given enough time. I needed you off the case.’