A Matter of Blood (19 page)

 

 

 

M
oneypenny’s was primarily a girly club, but from time to time Artie Mullins used it as a venue for a floating poker game. Time stopped, there in the basement, away from the busy streets. The booze flowed and the cards turned and there was no sense of the hours outside passing.

Artie never cared who won. He always got his percentage of the pot, and his fee for security and venue, and though it was strictly pin money, the games were a nice little earner every now and then. Artie Mullins was one of a rare breed: an old-school player who’d learned to move with the times. He still ran a fair share of London from his various business outlets, but as he’d said to Cass, a good businessman knows not to turn his back on easy money, however small the amount. You may need it one day.

There was a late afternoon game going on when Cass came down the stairs. The money had been safely deposited in Blackmore’s hands and now he had business to attend to. The nation’s no-smoking law was one of many that didn’t appear to apply to Artie Mullins and his guests and the bar was heavy with smoke, even though the air-conditioning unit on the wall was rattling away. Cass ignored the game around the corner of the L-shaped room. He had other fish to fry; the gamblers could keep their anonymity tonight.

Artie sat on his stool at the end of the bar, from where he could see the whole of the club. As soon as Cass appeared he stood up.

‘If you’ll excuse me, gents, I’m going to retire to my office,’ he called to the players, speaking around the cigar clamped firmly between his teeth. ‘Can I remind you there’s just over one hour of play left before I need my pussy parlour back.’ He grinned as murmurs of assent rumbled back at him.

He picked up a bottle and grabbed a couple of tumblers, then gestured at one of the thickset gentlemen sitting against the long wall. ‘You’re up, Brownie. I’ll be in back.’

The big man rose and silently took Artie’s place at the end of the bar. His suit jacket was stretched tight across his shoulders, and Cass wondered just how many hours in the gym and pills popped it took to get that big. Everyone knew about the new-generation steroids out there, but he didn’t think even they could create that kind of muscle mass. He looked closer; the man’s eyes were sharp, too, and it looked like he was carefully studying every move at the out-of-sight table. If he’d been on the ’roids, he wouldn’t be functioning so well. Cass had seen far too many domestic murder scenes brought on by ’roid rage. Artie had chosen well; Cass wouldn’t want to go up against someone like him, that was for sure. Just looking at the man’s muscles made him feel like a scrawny kid all over again.

‘Big fella, isn’t he?’ Artie smiled. ‘In all departments, I’m assured.’ He tilted his head towards the office. ‘The birds love him.’

‘If I was a woman I think he’d scare the crap out of me.’ Cass lifted the wooden flap that cut off the small reception and coat-check area and followed Artie into his office.

‘That’s the thing with birds, though. They’re not like us. Don’t even try to understand them.’

Cass thought of Kate crying at home. ‘Yeah, I’m with you on that.’

Artie sat on his leather desk chair and with the bottle and glasses down on the desk finally took the chewed cigar out of his mouth. It had gone out and he dumped it in the ashtray.

‘From what you said on the phone, I think you’re a man in need of a drink.’

Cass nodded, and Artie poured them two large measures of a very nice single malt.

‘Didn’t sound good.’ Artie said, leaning back as the chair swayed slightly.

‘Trust me, it isn’t.’ Cass clinked glasses and lowered himself onto the leather sofa. He leaned forward. ‘They’ve suspended me - although they’re calling it some compassionate shit. Some fucker’s setting me up and I just don’t know why.’

“That business with your brother and his family was on the radio. Sorry to hear it.’

Cass wrapped his defences hard around his heart. Now wasn’t the time. ‘Thanks - although I just can’t see Christian doing that, whatever they say. And now they’ve found this crazy evidence that I was there when I fucking wasn’t. This whole thing is badly screwed.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

That was what Cass loved about Artie. There was none of this bullshit feelings crap, just out with it and on with the action. If you believed something, then you went with it, even if the rest of the world was against you.

‘Well, tonight I intend to get completely shit-faced, and then tomorrow I’m going to clean up and start figuring out what the fuck is going on, and who’s out to get me.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Artie grinned and stretched out his palms. ‘
Mi casa es su casa
, or whatever that Spanish shit is.’

Cass drained his glass and let Artie refill it before lighting a cigarette and then rummaging in his pocket for the small wrap he’d vowed he’d throw away. He tossed it on the table. Artie pulled out his wallet and used a platinum credit card to chop out two chunky lines. He rolled a twenty and handed it to Cass. With one nostril held closed, Cass breathed in hard through the other. The powder raced through his nose and down the back of his throat, the initial burn immediately replaced with pleasant numbness. He ran one finger over the grainy remnants and rubbed them into his teeth. His heart thumped and his head tingled. Tiredness ebbed away. He washed the drugs into his system with a large mouthful of burning liquor. Artie did the same.

He felt comfortable with Artie, who reminded him of Brian Freeman in so many ways. There was some relief to be had in a place away from the constraints of the law, in a world where men made their own rules, most of them unwritten. It made him wonder at the part of him that had worked so hard to stay in the force, and wanted so much to be good, to make up for everything - to find some redemption. That word again. It echoed in his head, spoken in Christian’s dead voice down the phone. Even from behind the wall of his rising buzz, his heart ached. What kind of redemption could Christian have been looking for?

He squeezed his dead brother’s memory to one side and felt it instantly replaced by the cold fingers of the murdered dead that quietly pulled at him. It felt like they’d torn a way through his skin as easily as digging up through the soft earth of a grave. Coke was a fucker like that. When it woke you up, it woke
all
of you up.

He looked over at Artie. ‘Have you ever heard of someone called Mr Bright?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘The name came up with a witness today. Whoever he is, he’s playing games with me, I think. He sent me something.’

Artie’s eyes slid away and Cass saw his mouth twitch hesitantly.

‘You
have
heard of him.’ Cass put his drink down, his plan to get rat-arsed momentarily forgotten. His heart thumped, a relentless rave beat, and it was only partly the drugs.

‘You know London.’ Artie shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of faces in this city.’

‘You’re saying he’s with a firm?’

Artie smiled and shook his head. He didn’t speak for a moment while he relit his cigar. Finally, he asked, ‘What do you know about The Bank?’

‘What, apart from it’s supposed to save us all from financial Armageddon?’

‘Yeah.’ The older man’s face wrinkled up as he smiled. ‘Apart from that shit.’

‘I don’t know too much. Christian would have known more. He worked at their London headquarters.’ He sniffed, feeling pleasantly numb. ‘When was it formed? 2010?’ Cass continued to scour his fading memory for details. Sometimes it felt like The Bank had always been there.

Okay, he’d found those errant details. ‘America and the UK billionaire poster boys Gates and Branson own it in partnership with the élite from Japan, the new Chinese super-rich and Russia. And that means they now own most of the Western world’s property and bank accounts, in one form or another. How am I doing?’

‘Not bad, though you’re missing out one thing: The Bank runs the whole fucking world, mate. It’s virtually the government now.’ Artie shook his head. ‘The so-called
elected
government asks The Bank’s permission to wipe its own arse. All that shit in Russia and Chechnya? The Bank’s behind that. And the African oil business. Those hundreds who died? Who the fuck do you think shut them up?’

Cass stayed silent, listening and learning, just like he’d done with Freeman all those years ago, when he’d been Charlie Sutton most of the time. ‘Hard to equate some of those personalities with that kind of shit, though,’ Cass said eventually. ‘Or maybe I’m being naïve.’

‘The thing with powerful men’ - Artie leaned forward, his voice was slow as he ruminated - ‘and I mean in all walks of life, the thing with
really
powerful men is that you never really know who they are. They’re never the names of the figureheads. Me? I know my place in things. I may seem like the top dog in town, but if I really was’ - he wiggled a finger at Cass and winked - ‘my name wouldn’t be on any of your files. I’d be invisible.’

Cass frowned. ‘Are you saying this Mr Bright works for The Bank?’

‘Everybody works for The Bank, son, in one way or another. But maybe not your Mr Bright.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Maybe The Bank works for him.’

‘I’m still not following. You’re saying he’s one of the founders of The Bank?’ Cass was aware he sounded incredulous.

Artie shrugged. ‘I’m just saying that I’ve heard stories. Most of them third-hand, like Chinese whispers, the kind of stories told in shadowy places about shadowy people. Like those urban legends they make into crappy films, where birds run around half-naked until some fucker finally shuts them up with an axe, or whatever his weapon of choice is.’ He laughed, but his eyes were cold, and deadly serious. ‘The thing is - I’ve heard that name, and I’ve heard it in a lot of places both legit and otherwise. Fuck, I’m not even sure it’s his real name, but I know I’ve never heard it spoken without a hint of fear and a heavy measure of respect.’ He puffed on the cigar, sending out a cloud of pungent smoke to hover in the air between them.

‘Everything has layers, you know that, Cass. There are layers in your world and in mine, and sometimes they even overlap.’ He nodded. ‘You’ve been there. You’re one of those who live on the overlap. They’re everywhere: the government, The Bank, the world . . . and the layers normally just stick to their own, you know what I mean?’ Artie didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Your Mr Bright, though, he seems to have been heard of in all of them.’ He leaned back. ‘If he’s fucking with you, then there is some serious shit going on. That’s all I’m saying. Who he is, what he does? I don’t know. And more to the point, I don’t want to know.’

The smoke between them had cleared, but Cass’s thinking was still fogged up. He wasn’t sure he understood Artie at all. So who the hell was this Mr Bright? It felt like Artie had said a whole lot, without telling him much at all. His brain ran over the information, but it was shooting in too many different directions for the rest of him to follow. Maybe he should have left off the coke until after they’d had this conversation. He realised he was grinding his teeth again and he dry-swallowed as the remainder of the drug trickled down the back of his throat and into his system. He needed to stick to the detail. The bigger picture could wait for tomorrow.

‘Do you think he could be a killer?’

‘Fuck me, Cass, we’re all killers.’

‘I mean, a serial killer. The psycho fuck-up kind.’ It perhaps wasn’t the clinical description Hask would have given, but Cass figured it would do.

‘Ah, the dead birds. So you think the same bloke’s doing them?’

Cass nodded, and forced the image of Carla Rae’s pathetic corpse back into a corner of his mind. Her cold fingers were harder to shake. ‘Can’t give you details, but I figure they’ll be in the papers soon enough.’

‘Well, I’m no expert, and I’ve never actually met the man - and have no wish to do so - but I wouldn’t put money on it being him.’ His eyes darkened. ‘I don’t think he cares enough about people to kill them like that.’

‘Well, I just don’t get it then.’ Cass ran over all the information that was scattered like jigsaw pieces in his mind. None of the edges matched up. ‘I just don’t fucking get it. He’s either taunting me or trying to tell me something, but either way it’s not working.’

Artie nodded. ‘We all get fucked with, Cass. It’s part of the game.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘Just remember, son, sometimes it’s not the obvious things you need to look at, and sometimes you can’t see the obvious when it’s staring you right in your ugly mug.’

Cass watched the other man carefully. ‘Are you trying to tell me something, Artie? Because if you are, I could really use it told to me straight right now. I’m pretty fucked off with subtlety.’ His patience was fried, and although the coke was waking him up, his nerves felt like electric cables dancing on water. Mr Bright wanted to tell him something by sending the film. The killer, Bright or otherwise, was trying to tell him something with the fly eggs and the scrawled message.
Nothing is Sacred
. Someone had sent a pretty strong message in the planted evidence. And he even had the distinct feeling his dead brother was trying to tell him something. The last thing he needed was for Artie Mullins to start talking in riddles.

‘I’m just sharing an old bastard’s wisdom, Cass. You don’t get to survive as long as I have without picking up a few worthwhile gems along the way.’ He winked. ‘I should sell them to some Chinese fortune cookie company.’ His quiet laugh was a throaty rattle, and Cass figured he’d earned that like everything else he had: the hard way.

‘I’ll take it on board.’

‘You do that,’ Artie said. Inside the club the card game was wrapping up and men’s voices filtered through from the reception area where no doubt the vast bulk of Brownie was handing back expensive overcoats and ensuring everyone left as politely as they’d arrived.