A Matter of Blood (20 page)

The old gangster grinned and his hooded eyes danced. ‘Now, let’s forget all this shit and have a fucking drink. What do you say?’

Cass raised his glass. ‘I say I’ll fucking drink to that.’

 

Cass sat at the corner table, his arms spread wide across the back of the padded leather seats. His brown eyes shone black, the colour of his irises eaten up by his expanded pupils. His blood raced through his veins, the ever-present throb of the cocaine high blurred by whisky, leaving his limbs feeling strangely heavy. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t in the mood for movement, or talk. He didn’t want any company, despite Artie’s thick fingers pointing out this girl or that one.

His body seemed perfectly still, but unlike Carla Rae’s, the quiet was only on the surface. Inside, the machine was working overtime. His skin was hot. His throat was dry and the burn at the back of his nose had grown steadily worse with each thick line of white powder he’d snorted. His gram was long gone. He was on Artie’s hospitality now. His lungs felt cold from too many cigarettes; he’d lost track of how many as the hours had ticked by. It didn’t matter. He’d probably smoke some more before the night was over.

He fought the urge to look at his watch. Time had flowed quick and slow, until he could only get a vague suggestion of how long he’d been there from the emptying of a fresh cigarette packet and by how many lines he’d had, and he’d lost track of both of those. He didn’t care. The hangover was going to be a killer in the morning, whatever time it was. All that mattered for now was that it was late, he was fucked, and for a little while at least the fingers of the dead had let him go. He let the music pump into his veins, buzzing through him as it went. He didn’t know the tune, but it didn’t matter. It sounded good, not too fast and not too slow. It was seductive, calling to the darker side of him. He almost smiled. Tonight the music wasn’t required to unchain the shadows in his soul. He’d already set them free to party.

The room swirled in a mass of heat and colour around him as his eyes darted from table to table, taking in the scene and sucking it back through the haze that separated him from the outside world. His frantically active mind tore at each image, unpicking it then sending the findings further inwards, to where the essence of Cass absorbed it.

At the table across from his, a beautiful blonde laughed at something the middle-aged man beside her said. They’d finished one bottle of champagne and were halfway through their second. To look at it, they were both well on their way to being drunk. The girl leaned in towards her companion and stroked his face with one hand. Cass watched as his eyes dropped to her cleavage, accentuated by the tight, low-cut dress and her body position, and for a flicker of a moment Cass thought he saw a yellow wash stream from her partner’s eyes. The woman laughed and tilted her head back, and while the man was absorbed in the view, her hand slipped the champagne glass beneath the table. Still smiling at the man beside her, she tipped more than half the contents onto the dark carpet before leaning in and kissing the mark on his nose, distracting him as she brought the glass back up, and then made a show of draining the dregs.

His eyes shifted. A plump girl at a table of four refilled their glasses and while the men’s attention was elsewhere, swiftly upturned the still half-full bottle into the bucket of ice. Her fingers clicked for the waitress as her smile suggested that another bottle should be ordered. It was.

Artie sat at the end of the bar, smiling. Everywhere around him, the girls were chasing the money. They hustled men to their seats, ordering over-priced food that wouldn’t be eaten, bottles of champagne that would never be finished, and all on a promising smile that never reached the eyes.

The drugs sent an involuntary shudder through Cass’s body. Nothing was as it seemed. Everything was an illusion. In the dim lighting, and dressed provocatively, each girl was a beauty, a land of promise that drunk men would pay hundreds to explore. How would they be in the morning? As ordinary as Carla Rae. As cold as Kate. As homely as Jessica. His heart ached.

After another line, his only measure of time, the whole world was dancing. The girls’ smiles stretched too wide. The men laughed too loudly, as they sweated and tried to keep the rhythm of their writhing, gyrating partners. Cass wondered if even the women were finally succumbing to the alcohol. Up on the stage a black girl in a thong wound herself sinuously around a pole. Her eyes were bored.

The room stank of warm champagne. From in his seat, Cass could feel his own hot sweat sticking his back to his shirt. He lit another cigarette, barely tasting the smoke in his numb mouth. He didn’t feel sorry for the men whose credit card and company expense accounts were feeding hundreds of pounds into Artie’s coffers. They weren’t stupid. They bought into the show, happy to play their parts in it, just as long as the fantasy was delivered: deception within deception. It was a false world.

Cass found himself almost laughing, and then he stopped, suddenly. His eyes were puzzled and his mind struggled to unpick the sight that caught his attention: a pair of shiny black lace-up brogues were at the centre of the dance floor, pointed accusingly in Cass’s direction. Around them bodies came together as the track shifted into something slow. The feet remained still. Cass stared.

Not now
. He blinked hard. The shoes were still there. Cass wondered if the lights came on, whether he would be able to see fresh blood on them. His pounding heart slowed. His eyes moved up from the shoes, following the neat line of the trousers. At the waistband, the pale blue shirt was half tucked in and half hanging out, the expensive material creased. A couple moved in front of the still figure in a clumsy parody of a waltz, leaving only glimpses of pale shirt and dark trousers as they passed. Cass’s eyes moved up, a sense of dread gripping the chill inside him. A flash of blond hair. A blue and golden eye, still behind the mass of dancing forms.

‘Another line, mate?’ Artie’s thick body suddenly blocked his view. ‘You look like you’re falling asleep there and we can’t have that.’

For a second Cass couldn’t speak. He slowly raised his gaze back to Artie, very much part of the here and now. ‘I think I’m fucked,’ he spat out eventually.

‘You and me both, mate.’

There are no ghosts, Cass thought and focused instead on his host. Artie looked a long way from fucked. The older man’s leathery skin must house a solid constitution. He wondered if he’d have a tolerance like that if he lived that long, or whether you had to take the whole way of life to earn it.

‘Always room for another,’ Artie continued. ‘Anyway, it’s only two-thirty. We’ve got another hour to kill before closing, so let’s finish this gram off.’

Time suddenly had its place in the night, and the sense of the surreal slipped away. The world was what it was, and so was he. Cass pulled himself to his feet and followed Mullins back to the office. The figure on the dance floor was gone. Of course it was. It’d never fucking been there; just an insubstantial ghost of the imagination, brought on by stress and grief and too much shit in his head. As he passed the bar Cass caught a glimpse of his reflection in the long mirror at the back and for a brief moment his eyes shone blue and gold, like Christian’s had. It was definitely time for another line.

 

He opened his eyes to a sea of nicotine-stained cream and for a moment his head was beautifully and perfectly clear. It lasted the full fifteen seconds before he looked away from Artie’s office ceiling and over at the man himself. A swift bout of nausea battled with the rush of the ache that set up camp at the base of his skull and sent advance parties out across his head. By the time Artie had poured two mugs of coffee Cass was feeling every bit as bad as he’d predicted. He hauled himself up into a sitting position, rubbed his face and then looked over at Artie.

‘You look disgustingly healthy. What time is it?’

Artie nodded up at the clock. ‘Just gone nine. I’ve been up two hours. Never manage more than a few hours’ sleep these days.’ He laughed. ‘Got too much to do. You know how it is.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Cass thought of the day ahead. At this point he couldn’t see much beyond getting his stuff from the house and checking into a hotel somewhere.

‘So,’ Artie slid the coffee across the desk, ‘you got all that out of your system?’

Cass nodded. ‘Oh yeah. My brain feels like it’s trying to escape through my ears.’

‘That’ll be the fags. You smoke too much.’

‘That must be it.’ The coffee was hot, and the back of his throat was still raw from the drugs. It tasted good, though. ‘I need some painkillers.’

‘I’ve got something better than that to pick you up.’

He slid a piece of paper over the desk and Cass took it. There was a name on it he didn’t recognise. Ali Khan.

‘Ali Khan? Who’s he when he’s at home?’

‘He, my son, runs a burger stall down the Elephant and Castle. Just round the corner from the Ministry. He makes a fortune from all the clubbers on their way home.’

‘And what’s he got to do with me?’

‘He’s your alibi.’

Cass frowned. His brain wasn’t awake enough to move this quickly. ‘My alibi for what?’

‘Well, you couldn’t have been at your brother’s house because you bought a burger from him at quarter past midnight that night. He remembers you because you complained that it wasn’t cooked properly and demanded a fresh one. He remembers your flash car too.’ Artie grinned. ‘“A moody dark-haired bastard in an Audi A8.” Can only be one of those in the city.’ He lit a cigar and the pungent smoke made Cass’s delicate stomach flip. The effort it took to swallow his bile back down made his headache punch a fresh hole through the soft tissue of his brain. Great.

‘What you need to do is give that pretty sergeant of yours a bell and tell her you’ve got a vague memory of stopping for food at the Elephant. She’ll track old Ali down soon enough. And Artie’s your uncle.’ He laughed into his coffee. ‘I’m good to you, boy.’

‘Cheers.’ Cass passed the paper back. ‘I’ll do it, but they’ll never believe it. Not Bowman, anyway. That bastard’s really got it in for me.’

‘Whether they believe it or not doesn’t matter. It’s all smoke and mirrors. We know that you weren’t there, and now we’ve created a fact to prove it.’ Artie shrugged. ‘A small lie to shake a bigger one down.’

Cass laughed, despite the flashes of pain that shot across his face. ‘I love your thinking, Artie.’

‘You’re welcome.’

They drank slowly, sipping as the hot liquid cooled. Finally, Artie said, ‘You going to be okay, Cass?’ His face softened. ‘You want any coke or anything? On me?’

‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Cass grinned. ‘It’s time I cleaned up for a while. I need my head straight while I try and get to the bottom of all this mess.’

Artie nodded. ‘You take care of yourself, son. And you know where I am if you need me.’

The old man’s mobile rang and he went out to take the call. Cass stayed where he was on the sofa, letting the coffee slowly bring him round. He wondered what business Artie was doing: arranging some deal or another, maybe organising some violence to teach someone a lesson - nothing would surprise Cass; the only thing that did surprise him was that the only person aside from Claire who appeared to believe a word he said was a man who lived on the other side of the law. The world was a funny place, that was for sure.

 

 

 

I
t was nine-thirty on Saturday morning when Claire May and Mat Blackmore got to the scene, which wasn’t bad going, given what they’d been in the middle of when the call came in. Not that the good mood had lasted. It was her weekend off and Mat had told her she should stay behind, but there was no way she was doing that. She didn’t see the point, for one thing. She’d only be thinking about the case at home if he was working, and they’d only end up talking about it when he got back. She hadn’t seen what his problem was until he’d called her ‘Jones’ little spy in the camp’. She’d just gritted her teeth and got in the car. She didn’t want that argument, partly because she was sure he’d said it out of some stupid male jealousy, and partly because it was true. She would keep Cass in the loop, every step of the way. The two cases had collided, and Cass deserved to know what was going on. There was no way in hell he’d been involved in the shooting of his own family.

She pulled the plastic shoes on over her own, happy to be in the midst of the hubbub. The car journey to Charing Cross Hospital had been a silent one. She could almost hear Mat’s jaw clenching tight as he drove. She knew he was jealous, of what she and Cass had done, but it had been brief and now it was over and there was nothing she could say to make it not have happened. And maybe he had a reason to be jealous: she liked Mat, sure, she liked him a lot. But was there magic? No. Cass Jones might not have felt it, but for her, he’d been thunder and lightning, and probably always would be. Maybe one day the slow burn she felt for Mat would grow, but deep down inside she had a horrible feeling that he was her rebound guy, and she just hadn’t realised it before.

The Strain II wing where the fifth woman had been found took up most of one floor of the hospital, and in spite of a low buzz of conversation from the plastic-shrouded police officers littering the corridor, there was a deathly hush. Claire shivered. She couldn’t help herself. Strain II was the new plague, and the nurses who worked here had her utmost respect.

She followed Mat past the two officers on the door to a small ward. A naked woman lay on the bed in the centre, the green curtain pulled completely back, exposing her dead body to whoever cared to see. Had the screen had been left like that by the killer, or had Dr Farmer opened it up?
NOTHING IS SACRED
was daubed in red across the top of the woman’s full breasts. Claire fought the urge to cover her up. DI Bowman leaned against the side wall, looking ill. At least he was in the right place if he took a turn for the worse. Beside him, Dr Hask gestured, acknowledging their arrival, and then returned to staring at the scene of the crime.