The Shadow of the Soul: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Two Page 8

  Music drifted down the path of the church grounds: the soft notes of a violin. Cass didn’t know the tune, but it was something bluesy, born in the deep southern states, untrained music beaten out on the stoops of dusty shacks by rough hands.

  Cass followed it along the flagstones and past the church door, round to the small graveyard at the side. A figure perched on the back of an old bench, his feet on the seat. With his mind still on his brother, Cass half-expected to see Christian’s shiny black brogues there, but no, this wasn’t Christian’s ghost. The old man’s face crinkled into a smile and he drew out one more long note before letting the violin fall silent. He leaned forward. Even in the dark Cass could see the man’s hands were dirty, his fingernails almost black with the muck underneath them.

  ‘Evening,’ he said. The voice was gruff and London, and cultivated from years of living in cardboard boxes and doorways. The man’s trousers came halfway up his shins; when he stood up, they’d be a good two or three inches too short for his legs.

  ‘I’m not sure you should be here,’ Cass answered.

  ‘As you don’t know me, how do you know where I should be?’ There was no aggression in the response, only a hint of humour.

  Cass took a step forward. Was the tramp drunk? They were only a couple of feet apart now, and given the grime that coated the old man, he should stink. But Cass got nothing; no whiff of stale sweat, no alcohol, nothing at all.

  ‘It’s a little late at night for an outdoor concert,’ he said.

  The man laughed a little. ‘I ain’t disturbing the residents, son.’

  It was a fair comment.

  ‘Where did you learn to play?’

  ‘Can’t really remember.’ There was a tooth missing from his upper set; the gap showed when he smiled. ‘A long time ago. Prob’ly before you were born, and you don’t look like a spring chicken from here.’ He laughed again, and this time Cass couldn’t help but smile with him.

  ‘Well, take care of that.’ Cass gestured at the polished wood of the violin. It looked old and well cared for, but he couldn’t see a case anywhere. ‘Looks like it’s worth a few quid.’

  ‘It’s worth what it’s worth. More to some than others. Like most things.’ He leaned forward and looked hard at Cass. ‘It’s all perspective.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Cass ground out his cigarette and started to walk away. The old man was harmless; he could play his music in the graveyard if he wanted. ‘You take care.’ He didn’t turn round. He had too much on his mind for an old tramp and his riddles.

  ‘You take care too, Cassius Jones.’ Cass was almost at the gate when the voice followed him. ‘Watch your back.’

  Cass’s blood chilled and he turned. ‘How do you know my—?’

  —name. The question went unfinished. The bench was empty. The old man had gone.

  He stared into the gloom for a long time before heading home. There was vodka there. He needed it.

  The air should have been getting crisper, but at 8.15 the next morning it was warm and muggy, and nothing like early October at all. The heat drained any freshness from his earlier shower, and his hangover throbbed. He’d needed a cool morning with some bite in it after a night of thinking and drinking and then passing out on the sofa, but today the weather wasn’t his friend. The Met Office had for once been right: London was heading for an Indian summer.

  In the car he scrolled through the numbers in his phone until he found Artie Mullins. He quickly typed out one short sentence – ‘Can I come by and get something off you later? C’ – and hit the send button before he could change his mind. Mullins would be awake, no doubt – that old fucker never slept more than two or three hours – but if Cass’s sometime friend was going to turn him down, then he could do without the awkward conversation. Things were strained between them, though Cass couldn’t blame Artie, either for his irritation with Cass, or his wanting to keep some distance between them for now.

  The old London gangster knew Cass hadn’t damaged his operation on purpose; it was just a by-product of his investigations into Christian’s death and the drive-by shooting of two schoolboys, but that didn’t change the outcome: all the illegal ‘bonuses’ that had been passing between the London firms and the police had been suspended indefinitely as soon as the arrests started. Sure, it was DI Bowman’s fault for having used them to set up a crime syndicate of his own, but it was Cass who had uncovered the plot. Now no one wanted to be seen taking any kind of bribe, at least until all this shit was cleared up, so if they weren’t able to make money on the side, then every detective in London had to pay his mortgage the legal way, and that meant performance-related pay. All bets were off, and it was open season on the criminal fraternity once again.

  No one was thanking Cass on either side of the fence.

  On top of that, every copper in London was scrabbling to cover up just how far the hand-holding between the Met and London’s criminal element had gone. It wouldn’t have helped Artie that he was Cass’s contact – shit sticks, and all that. Lucky for Artie Mullins that he ran so much of London, otherwise he’d probably have been in danger of landing in the Thames attached to a pair of sink-don’t-swim concrete boots.

  Still, troubles or not, Cass trusted Artie and his discretion more than any other dealers. Artie would either sell him the coke or he wouldn’t, but he sure as fuck wouldn’t grass Cass up, not to the media or his new DCI. And in the long term, Cass reckoned he’d probably done Artie Mullins a favour: his big rival Sam Macintyre was gone, and the Irish were struggling to find a solid replacement. Mullins was probably cleaning up.

  The message sent, Cass turned on the engine and set the air-con running to cool himself down. Some things never changed. Here he was, still stuck on the fence, not belonging to one side or the other – not that either side would be happy to own him. He wondered if he should feel relieved about that. Sometimes the only side a man could be on was his own. He sent another quick text message, this time to Perry Jordan, asking him to call later. Fuck the court cases; it was time to put the private investigator to better use, tracking down his brother’s child. He’d let the young man do the groundwork, then he’d take over himself. He wasn’t going to risk anyone else getting hurt in whatever game the Network was playing.

  ‘We need to go straight upstairs.’ DS Armstrong was waiting outside Cass’s office. ‘Heddings wants to see us.’

  ‘What, now?’ Cass had hoped to spend the morning waiting for his hangover to give up and die, and then the afternoon trying to avoid thinking about the teenage suicides before talking to Perry Jordan about upping the search for his nephew Luke.

  Armstrong shrugged.

  ‘Well, I’m grabbing a coffee first. He can wait five minutes.’

  The DCI was standing behind his desk when Cass knocked and let himself and his sergeant into his office. As soon as the door was shut Heddings threw down the newspaper he was holding. ‘I take it you’ve seen this?’

  Cass didn’t answer, but bent and picked up the tabloid. The headline was printed large across the front page: Sinister links between teenage suicides. Katie Dodds’ face smiled out in black and white, alongside Cory Denter’s and James Busby’s.

  ‘No. I haven’t.’ He scanned the accompanying article. The hack, Oliver McMahon, who’d written it seemed to have a lot of information at his fingertips, especially about Cass himself and his role in ‘uncovering the corruption at the heart of the London Met’. The piece claimed the deaths were linked by the single phrase, Chaos in the darkness, although it didn’t go into detail about how each suicide had used the phrase.

  Once he’d finished, he passed it sideways to Armstrong. Keeping his eyes focused on Heddings, he said, ‘It doesn’t surprise me, though. The two girls we met yesterday at Angie Lane’s flat already knew about the others.’

  ‘We really don’t need any more bloody fiascos.’ Heddings cheeks were flushed.

  ‘With all due respect, sir, don’t take it out on me. I haven’t said a word.’ I
t was only a small lie; mentioning the deaths to Hask and Ramsey didn’t count, and it wasn’t as if they’d even discussed the full potential of the case.

  ‘They make you sound like the saviour of the Met.’

  ‘Is that what’s bothering you?’

  ‘No.’ Heddings flashed him a glare. ‘Despite what you think, I’m not that petty. I just don’t like having my hand forced.’

  ‘I’m not with you, sir.’

  ‘Really? If it’s in this rag today, then it’ll be in all the others by tomorrow. We’ll look like a right bunch of callous bastards if we do nothing about it.’

  Cass bit back his smile. ‘So have I got the case, sir?’

  ‘You bloody know you have.’

  Cass didn’t let the grin stretch across his face until the door closed behind them and he was heading back to his office.

  When Armstrong knocked on his door forty-five minutes later, Cass had a copy of the paper on his desk and was staring at the computer. He’d typed in the phrase ‘Chaos in the darkness’. Even after hearing what the students had said the day before, he was surprised to see how many forums and message boards had picked up on it. He’d been going through them for nearly an hour and had yet to scratch the surface.

  ‘We should be ready to dig up the bodies this afternoon. I’ve called Eagleton and he’s getting prepped. I’m just waiting for the official go-ahead and then we can get a team in.’

  Armstrong put the fresh coffee down. ‘The Dodds and Busby families need informing, but her parents are in Guildford, and Busby’s are somewhere in Buckinghamshire. Do you want me to get the locals on it?’

  ‘No, you go with a WPC. I want to know about these kids’ lives. I’ll do their colleges.’ He sighed. ‘This shit is all over the Internet and it’s spreading like wildfire. We’re watching a new urban myth in the making.’

  ‘I know, I did a search last night. What are you looking for?’

  ‘Something referencing the phrase prior to these deaths.’

  ‘Once you’ve briefed the team, get a couple of plods working on it.’ Armstrong’s face twitched into a smile. ‘No offence, but they’re probably more Internet-savvy than you.’

  ‘I’m still in my bloody thirties, you know.’ Cass couldn’t help feeling slightly rankled. ‘Maybe only just, but I’m not a dinosaur.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘You seem a little more enthusiastic about working with me today.’

  ‘It’s good to have a proper case.’

  ‘I know that feeling.’ Cass looked down at the newspaper. ‘What was your degree in before you joined the force?’

  ‘Politics and journalism. Why?’

  Cass had half-expected the young man to lie, but he’d hoped he wouldn’t. At least it showed he didn’t take Cass for an idiot.

  ‘This article has a lot of valid information. It surprised me to see Cory Denter’s story in there. Even his parents weren’t aware that he’d scribbled “Chaos in the darkness” in his work file. Didn’t that stand out to you? I’ve just got off the phone to them. It probably would have been better for them to hear from us that there may be something dodgy about their son’s death before reading it in the papers.’

  ‘They knew. You were there yesterday. They might not have known, but the fact that you turned up? They’d have realised something wasn’t quite right.’

  Cass looked at the paper again. He wasn’t letting his enthusiastic young sergeant get off that lightly. ‘It’s a clever piece. There’s enough there to make it interesting, but not so much that it causes us any major problems in any investigation. It also says some overly kind things about me.’ Cass watched his sergeant thoughtfully. ‘You got friends at that paper?’

  Armstrong met Cass’s eyes. ‘It was a case that needed investigating, sir. And now we’re investigating it.’

  ‘So the ends justify the means?’

  ‘I couldn’t comment on the means.’ Armstrong glanced at his watch. ‘I’d better get the team ready for briefing if I’m going to see both sets of parents today. Anything else, sir?’

  ‘No.’ Cass leaned back in his chair. ‘Just don’t ever go to the papers without my say-so again. You’ll end up getting fired for a stunt like that.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ Armstrong was on his way out the door. ‘Trust me.’

  The ambiguity of the answer wasn’t lost on Cass; there was obviously more to his new sergeant than he’d at first thought. He could live with that, he reflected, looking back at the screen filled with short messages mainly written in some Internet version of teenage textspeak. A little ruthlessness could take you a long way in the force. But he’d be keeping an eye on Armstrong from now on. The young man might think he was clever, but the stupidity of youth stopped them all realising they were never as clever as they thought.

  Chapter Nine

  As the car pulled in through the barricades and onto Leicester Square, Abigail was glad that David Fletcher was back at the ATD and not with them on this public outing. He unsettled her. He was too straightforward. Where Andrew Dunne and the Prime Minister had believed her change of heart about the fat man and accepted that she had just been mistaken, Fletcher had not. He’d seen her initial reaction, and no matter what she’d said in the interview afterwards, he hadn’t let go of that. She could read his face as well as he had read hers in that moment. They’d spent the afternoon locked in a wary battle, and however many times he had smiled at her politely, they both knew he knew.

  Still, knowing and being able to do something about it were two different things. Fletcher had his hands full, and he could run as many searches on her as he liked, they’d always come back as clean. She was clean.

  Through the tinted glass of the window she could see the memorial that was going up for all those who’d lost their lives, not only in 26/09, but in all the acts of terrorism that had taken place over the past decade. It was supposed to be modern art. Abigail wondered if anyone else thought the sculpted metal looked like the twisted wreck of a train carriage. She guessed not – or if they did, they weren’t saying.

  The surrounding roads had been temporarily closed off, but within the pedestrianised square a large group of grieving relatives were standing behind a smaller barrier about fifteen feet from the microphone. More onlookers gathered in crowds further away behind the Road Closed cordons. The Prime Minister had wanted this memorial up quickly, not just to draw a line under the events as much as she could, but also she wanted the public to be here to show the world that London was not afraid of terrorism, that Londoners were made of sterner stuff. Crowds had turned out, but nowhere near the numbers this part of the city should draw. Maybe Londoners weren’t so brave after all.

  The car slowed to a halt. Perhaps if the King had come, as he’d wanted to, the crowds would have been larger, but his health was failing, and McDonnell had persuaded him to allow the Prince of Wales to come in his stead at a separate time. The public would prefer that anyway; most people believed the old king should have passed his crown to his son, just like he’d wanted his own mother to do. The country needed a morale boost, and a young and dynamic king would raise spirits. Some leaders just didn’t know when to step down. Even empty power could be addictive.

  Cameras started flashing as soon as they got out of the limousine. The journalists had been kept behind the inner barrier. Special Branch officers would be moving among them, as well as the relatives and the main crowd of onlookers, further back, dressed in their civvies, monitoring the population for the slightest hint of any suspicious behaviour. Abigail didn’t know their faces, but she could always pick them out by their posture and concentrated expressions as their eyes flicked across the crowd. Body language was the biggest tell of them all.

  It was only ten a.m. but the day was already warm. For once her expensive dark glasses – so stereotypical, thanks to Hollywood, and yet vital for masking the target of her gaze – did not look so out of place. Behind her, Barker pulled the large wreath of flowers from the car and followed the Prime Minister
over to the steel and black structure. McDonnell took it from him and after placing it carefully on the ground, she turned to the crowd. Abigail moved so that she was slightly to one side of her boss, where she had a clear view of all the people in front of them, and the barriers beside. Her earpiece remained silent, but she scanned the buildings and windows, just in case the great Secret Service machine had missed anything. It hadn’t, of course. Today, there would be no chance of any attack; highly trained individuals had flooded the area to be sure of that.

  As the Prime Minister began to talk, Abigail remained focused. Her heartbeat stayed regular and even. She didn’t think about the strangeness of her job, the ability to leap in front of a bullet without hesitation. They could dress it up with whatever title they wanted, but that was the essence of her position. Her sole responsibility was to ensure that should any attack on the Prime Minister happen, the other woman would have every chance of survival, which meant severely limiting the chance of her own. She’d been trained to move and calculate angles in order to take a bullet with the least likely outcome of death if she had to, but everyone knew that, really, it was just a matter of luck. The training was just something to help you sleep at night.

  Abigail knew her colleagues viewed her strangely. They couldn’t understand why a young, attractive woman would apply for that job, especially when so many world leaders were coming under attack. She didn’t fit the image. She certainly hadn’t throughout the interview process either, but she’d come top in all the tests, both physical and mental, and the psyche evaluation had proven her the most suitable for the position, and so here she was: death’s body double.