The Shadow of the Soul: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Two Page 9

  More cameras flashed as McDonnell’s speech continued. Abigail watched the crowd, her gaze moving from left to right through the group of relatives. There was nothing suspicious, as she’d expected. Her eyes moved again—

  —and froze. Her heart thumped into life. A figure stood at the back, a step or two away from the last of the relatives. He hadn’t been there seconds before. Her mouth dried as he smiled. At her. Even from the distance she could see the purple mottling on the skin that stretched across his fat face. He wore a dark suit. One hand undid the buttons of his jacket, his black eyes still fixed on hers. The earpiece was silent. Why the hell hadn’t anyone spotted him? The finger to the lips, the note under her door, all her secrets were lost as her training kicked in.

  Too much happened in too few seconds. The fat man held open his suit jacket. Something was strapped to his already oversized chest. Blocks of white. He smiled again, tilting his head to one side. He raised his left hand. He was holding something small in it. A triggering device? She looked at the white again. Plastique.

  Action took over and she pulled her gun free with one hand while pushing the PM and her press officer to the ground. She shouted, not lowering her head towards the discreet mike attached to her suit jacket, but loud enough to be heard across the square. The sombre moment cracked, and the memory of the lost dead was replaced with the screaming fear of a crowd’s sudden awareness of their own potential mortality. The barrier was shoved sideways as people fled. The officers who had hidden among them stood dumbfounded, looking this way and that for whatever the cause of the panic was. Why the hell hadn’t they seen him?

  On her feet, Abigail was running before she spotted the fat man again. He’d moved fast, already across the far barrier. Why had no one stopped him? What the hell was going on? Were they all half-asleep? Her feet pounded the tarmac and she pushed past the scattering people until she reached the metal, vaulting it in one smooth move. Someone was yelling in her earpiece but she couldn’t work out what they were saying. She ripped it free. They could wait.

  She spied the man at least one hundred yards away heading towards the empty Trocadero building. He’d paused and was looking backwards. What the fuck was he doing? Waiting for her? Yes, a still voice inside her whispered. Of course he’s waiting for you. He always has been. She didn’t listen. It was drowned out by the rush of her urgent breath. As she picked up her pace to a sprint, the suited man smiled. He ducked between a gaggle of pedestrians who’d frozen like rabbits in the headlights in the midst of the sudden commotion and she lost him again. Bastard. How did he move so fast? She hadn’t even seen him running. Her shirt clung to her back with sweat as she chased him. Somewhere behind her, other feet would be coming fast. She wanted to reach this man before they did. Why the hell hadn’t he detonated the bomb at the memorial? There was nothing she could have done about it if he had. No one else had seen him. Why was he taunting her?

  He waited for her at the entrance to Piccadilly Circus tube station. She was almost at him when he disappeared inside. She swore under her breath and headed down into the stinking heat of the humid Underground. She spied him again as he stepped onto the escalator towards the Bakerloo Line. He was facing the wrong way, looking upwards, smiling at her as his face disappeared, carried down into the earth. Abigail’s breathing was raw. Sweat itched her hairline. She pushed passed commuters and shoppers, their angry exclamations turning to sharp intakes of breath as they saw the weapon in her hand and fought with each other to get out of her way in the overcrowded station. Some were unsuccessful, finding themselves kicked and shoved aside as she tried in vain to keep her eyes on her target. She couldn’t.

  ‘Which way did the fat man go?’ she shouted into the crowd at the bottom of the escalator. Wide eyes stared dumbly back at her. Two paths to choose from. He could have taken either. Fuck it, she thought, and turned to her left. If she picked the wrong platform he was likely to be gone by the time she fought her way to the other, even with the reduced services, but in a game of chance all that mattered was that you chose – the outcome was all about luck. She chose left. Someone tumbled on the stairs as she rushed down them, her voice ringing out loudly to get out of the way to people who had nowhere to go to. From the corner of her eye she saw a man bend to pick up the shaken woman. Abigail didn’t give her another thought. The people around her were just hindrances: obstacles in the way of her target.

  As it was, though she hadn’t been able to get the commuter population to give her some space, the fat man had plenty. He stood just the other side of the ‘stand clear’ line with an arc of empty platform around him. The air was heavy with stale breath from the crowds jammed together in the surrounding area waiting for the next already overloaded train, but despite the numbers present, the platform was eerily quiet. Perhaps they all sensed something odd about this man too.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Abigail said, raising her gun. She walked slowly forward until they were only a few feet apart. His hand stayed clasped round whatever device he was holding, his pudgy thumb poised. From this close the mottled tone of his skin was more pronounced, the purple patches looking like bruised flesh. Although he wasn’t sweating, he was shiny, as if somehow he was slick with damp, just on the other side of his pores. His eyes were black, she’d swear on it: not dark brown, but black, through and through.

  ‘Put that on the floor and step backwards.’ Her voice shook. She should be revolted by this strange man, but instead she was drawn to him. She wanted to run her hands over that obese body – but there was nothing sexual in the feeling. It came from somewhere deeper and more primal, somewhere in her cells, in her very being. She fought it, keeping her gun levelled at his head.

  ‘I said put that down.’

  The fat man smiled. His gums were bleeding badly, and thin rivulets of pink spilled onto his lips. What the hell was wrong with him – radiation sickness? How could he be so obese and move so quickly, and yet be so ill?

  ‘How long have you been emptying, Abigail?’ He kept his hand up, his thumb poised. His voice was a melody carried on the wind. It caught her breath.

  ‘You can feel it, can’t you? Everything draining?’ His smile stretched wider and he tilted his head. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. Her own voice was gritty and rough and ugly. Earth to air. Her words tasted like shit in her mouth. His felt like honey in her ears. Behind her came more shouts. Police. Her side. They’d be here in moments. ‘I am family.’ The grin widened. More thin blood oozed from his gums.

  ‘Take it,’ he said, and held out his hand. She leaned in and closed her palm around the cool flesh. Everything stopped. Her head filled with darkness and flashes of colour, hundreds of shades of gold and light. Images she didn’t understand reached into the empty spaces that had been silently craving them.

  She gasped as he let go. For a moment her body forgot how to breathe as the cells started realigning, part one thing, part another, into something new. A sharp pain ran from the base of her neck and up through her skull, as if a skewer had been driven hard into her head. Her gun clattered to the ground.

  Feet pounded down the stairs. Male voices shouted, authoritative, threatening. Empty.

  ‘Interventionist,’ the fat man whispered, and the pain stopped. His beautiful word sounded wet, as if the blood that filled his mouth was now clogging his lungs. He winked at Abigail.

  Her hair lifted in the hot roar from the tunnel. A train was coming. He stepped backwards. She couldn’t speak. Hands grabbed at her arms, pulling her away to get closer to the target. Everything moved in a haze. Dark eyes on hers. The rush of the train. The smile, as the fat man elegantly stepped from the platform edge. She squeezed her eyes shut against the impact. Several women screamed. The train screeched in unison.

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’

  Abigail didn’t look at the sweaty Special Branch officer beside her. Neither did she look over the edge at the mess that wo
uld no doubt be splattered along the tracks and up the sides of the platform for a hundred yards or so. She trembled. She tried to remember the feeling she’d had when he touched her. Completeness. It was gone – not far, she thought, but like something lost somewhere just out of sight, and no matter how quickly you spun round, you never quite found it.

  ‘You okay?’ the officer asked her.

  She nodded. She unfolded her hand. She’d been gripping it so tightly the object had left an imprint of its familiar shape against her palm. A pen. An ordinary black ballpoint pen.

  More voices.

  ‘Get this place sealed off now!’

  ‘You people there, don’t move! You’re perfectly safe—’

  ‘—don’t move. That includes you, sir. No, you can’t leave—’

  ‘Who saw this man? Who saw what happened?’

  ‘You? You stand there, please.’

  An ordinary pen. She clicked the end, no fear of what might happen. The nib slid out at the bottom. She clicked again. It withdrew.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Hands took it from her. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘It’s just a pen,’ she said. She didn’t look up. She didn’t look anywhere. ‘No detonator. Just an ordinary pen.’

  Chapter Ten

  Cass made the call to Cory Denter’s father himself. The conversation was stilted, but this time there was no hint of aggression. The Denter family had perhaps decided overnight that any why would be better than living with the thought of their son killing himself for no reason they could fathom. The older man listened quietly. For Cass, they were words he’d used too many times to count: We’re going to have to run some tests on your son’s body. We will have to do a full post-mortem. We’ll be in touch when we can release him back to you. No, I can’t give you any further information at this time, but as soon as I can, I will. For some reason, the clinical nature of the phrases soothed. They took some responsibility for the grief out of the next-of-kin’s hands. Unfortunately, that grief had to go somewhere, and that meant it usually landed squarely on Cass’s shoulders.

  A short text came through from Artie Mullins: a time and a place to meet, and Cass left Armstrong to speak to the other families and supervise the exhumation arrangements, while he headed into Soho to meet his sometime friend. As his car sat in the London traffic that had become even more interminable since the bombings, he rang Perry Jordan.

  ‘I think it’s time we step up a gear looking for Luke. Is that okay?’

  ‘Not a problem this end. But how come? Thought you wanted to wait until the trials were done and dusted?’

  ‘You know me, I’m impatient.’ He wasn’t going to tell Jordan about the note Marlowe had delivered. ‘It’s still only you and me, though, not official. I just want to do some probing. All I need from you is the admin. I don’t have time for that.’ He really didn’t want Jordan involved any more than necessary. This was his shit to deal with. Family stuff. The Jones family and They.

  ‘Sure, I’ll be your secretary – but don’t expect me in heels.’ Jordan laughed. ‘So what do you need?’

  ‘I want a list of all the people working in the maternity ward that night, and their contact details. Same for security – in fact, get me as many staff names as you can. Especially anyone with any kind of authority. Also, I want the details of anyone else who had a baby at approximately the same time. Boys only.’ Christian had been at the bedside at Luke’s birth, and Jessica had definitely delivered a boy. There was a possibility he’d simply been swapped with another child – why they would do that, he didn’t know, but then, there was nothing about the Network he understood. And they’d have needed to get a new-born baby from somewhere; so either they brought one in, or swapped one from the ward.

  ‘I’ve got some of that already. You around later?’

  ‘No, I’m on a new case. It’s going to wipe out most of today.’

  ‘Let me guess – the weird teenage suicides in the paper?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

  ‘Whoever wrote that article loves you, don’t they? I didn’t recognise you from the description. Had to keep checking the name to be sure they weren’t writing about someone else.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a funny fucker.’ Cass kept his tone light. He still felt unnerved by Armstrong’s actions, although he wasn’t really sure why. The newspaper stunt was something he might have done if he’d had the connections – and trusted them. Maybe it was seeing his own ruthlessness reflected in one so young that unsettled him. He knew where it could lead.

  ‘Yeah, sadly that’s what all the girls say. I’ll get on the rest but I’ll stick what I’ve already found through your letterbox when I’m out later. As soon as I’ve got more I’ll let you know. And just call if you’ve got any questions.’

  ‘Cheers, Perry. That sounds fine.’

  There was the briefest moment of hesitation and Cass wondered if the other man had already hung up.

  ‘Take care, Cass.’ Perry Jordan didn’t sound so funny. He sounded almost grown-up. Serious.

  ‘I always do, Perry. I always do.’

  Artie was at a tucked-away table at the far end of the pub when Cass arrived. He was already sipping from a pint of lager, despite it being not yet eleven.

  ‘Fuck this weather,’ he said, nodding Cass to the chair opposite and the pint that waited for him. ‘Where the fuck is autumn? If I wanted year-round sunshine I’d go and live on the Costa del Crap.’ He smiled at Cass, but his eyes were slightly wary. Cass figured his own expression was much the same. They hadn’t seen each other in a while. Mullins looked exactly the same though; weather-beaten and indestructible.

  ‘I took the liberty of ordering for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Cass took a sip. There was nothing like cool lager on a hot day.

  ‘Stick your hand under the table, mate. Let’s get the formalities out of the way.’

  Cass did as he was told. Artie’s thick fingers met his and the small bag of powder was exchanged.

  ‘How much do you—?’ Cass started awkwardly.

  ‘Fuck off, Jones. You think I want your money?’

  ‘With things being as they are …’ Cass sighed. ‘I know I’m not your favourite person right now.’ He felt like he had during his first days as Charlie Sutton, awkward … stupid.

  Artie watched him for a long few seconds, then sniffed. He took a swallow of his beer. ‘This shit will pass. It always does. I was around long before the bonuses even existed, remember? Fuck, I’ve been around since before you had the dumb idea to sit the fucking police exam, or whatever it is you have to do to get in on your side of this fence.’ He leaned forward and smiled. ‘We always managed before. This ain’t the end of the world. Right now there might be no money changing hands, but you can be sure as fuck no one wants to make any enemies. We’re all just treading water, Jones, haven’t you noticed? No one’s really coming near us.’

  ‘I haven’t been getting much in the way of cases. Too much legal shit going on.’

  ‘There’s your fucking punishment, mate.’ Artie laughed, and Cass could almost taste the cigarettes that fed that throaty rattle. ‘When does that shit Bowman go to court? That fucker won’t last five minutes inside.’ He winked. ‘I can guarantee you that.’

  ‘No date’s set yet,’ Cass said, ‘but rumour has it they want him in the dock in the next couple of months. PR and all that shit. I just want it done. Then I can lay the whole thing to rest.’ He hoped so anyway. He still dreamed too much – of Kate, and Claire. And all of the rest. But mainly of those two women. He took a longer swallow of his beer. The light buzz felt good.

  ‘So, we okay then?’ he asked.

  Artie sniffed again. ‘We’re okay. You’re a fucking liability, Jones, but you didn’t bring this shit down on purpose. But we still need to keep any meetings we might have low-key. You’re not the only one getting hassle from lawyers, you know. We’re all claiming innocence, pushing the blame onto Macintyre and those fuck
ing Chechen cunts, but I can live without being seen with you. Same as, I guess?’

  ‘Yeah, same as. They need me squeaky clean for this case.’

  ‘Well, that’ll take more than Daz and a hot wash.’ Artie laughed at his own joke and Cass smiled along. The wariness was leaving him. He’d underestimated Artie Mullins and he shouldn’t have. Artie was something else; always had been.

  His phone vibrated and as he pulled it out of his pocket, he slipped the baggie in.

  ‘We’ve got another dead student,’ Armstrong said.

  Cass stood and turned his back to the table. ‘Where?’

  ‘Soho. The flat above a shop called “Loving It” on Old Compton Street.’

  ‘I’m five minutes away. I’ll meet you there.’

  The call ended and Cass found Artie watching him.

  ‘They letting you work something proper again?’ The gangster smiled.

  ‘Not through any choice of their own, trust me. Sorry about the drink.’

  ‘No problem,’ Artie said. ‘I’m a busy boy myself. You take care, Cass Jones. You know where I am.’

  As he headed back out into the sticky heat, Cass wondered why everyone was feeling the need to express their concern for his wellbeing today. If there was one thing he’d always been more than moderately good at, it was looking after Number One. That wasn’t going to change now.

  *

  The mystery of how a third-year student, most likely weighed down with debts, could afford a Soho address was answered within seconds of Cass passing the constable standing across the narrow doorway and heading up the tatty stairs to the flat. The sex shop ‘Loving It’ had looked sleazy enough, the grime on the unwashed windows visible even against the blackout on the other side of the glass, but the flat was basically a shit-hole. After twenty minutes inside, Cass felt ready for a shower, and he hadn’t even touched anything. Dust lay thick at the edges of the carpet, and in the kitchen there were thick rings of grime in the sink. The rubbish bin was over-filled and a take-away carton of some description sat, half-full and rotting, on the side. On the lino, the foodstains were hard to distinguish from the original pattern, if there in fact was one. Cass thought someone would have to pay him fucking good money to open the fridge.