The Shadow of the Soul (14 page)

‘Just keeping an eye out for you, mate – nothing more, nothing less.’ He grinned, and his eyes twinkled. Cass didn’t like that something in that expression reminded him of Mr Bright. The same eyes sunk into a much older face.

‘Who are you?’

‘Just a friend, my friend.’

Cass was sure he winked. He bit down on his tongue, the coke and his own irritation joining forces. This weird shit was something he didn’t need. And how the fuck had he not noticed this man following him?

‘I don’t trust that word,’ Cass growled. ‘But you can trust me that I don’t need you keeping an eye out for me.’

‘But I will anyway. You can trust
me
on that.’ Still smiling, he turned his back and started to stroll up the street as he played.

‘If I see you around here again, I’ll fucking arrest you.’ Something about the old man made his blood boil and he wasn’t sure why.

‘Get some sleep, Cassius Jones.’ The man’s voice was full of light-hearted humour. He didn’t look back as he spoke, just called the words up into the air. ‘You’ve got some long days ahead.’

Cass watched until the old man and his music turned the
corner at the bottom of the street. There was no surprise disappearance this time, and Cass flicked his cigarette butt down to the pavement and shut the window hard. He was just a crazy old man who’d fixated on him. There didn’t have to be anything sinister about it at all – his name had been in the papers plenty of times in recent months – it was unlikely he’d get away with no weirdos coming after him. It didn’t stop one word filling his head as he sat back down in front of his work.
They
. It always came back to
They
.

A
bigail wrapped the sheet round her like a towel to let Fletcher out. They kissed upstairs at her door, rather than at street level, and she watched him all the way down. At the bottom he opened the front door and then turned and half-smiled back up at her. She didn’t expect anything less. It had been good sex. She’d done everything he hadn’t expected from her and it had an effect. He’d been expecting animalistic, but she’d given him gentle.

There was still an awkwardness between them when they’d finished, but she’d seen that ‘thing’ in his eyes. Even a man as tough as he was couldn’t quite shift all the conditioning that made men think women were helpless and vulnerable underneath the surface. Men could never believe that women could be soft and warm in bed and yet still have a hard soul. It didn’t compute. They never learned. Ever since Eve, women have always been tougher.
There
was a woman who took what she wanted, and then dragged her man down with her to share the blame.

She smiled back, leaning in against the door frame in the knowledge that she made a sensuous picture. Fletcher probably thought she was keeping some secrets and that she knew something about the fat man that she was refusing to share, but from his hesitant look she could tell that he was perhaps already making excuses for her in his head. It was
what straightforward men did. She didn’t really care. She’d enjoyed the warmth of him, but it was done now. She waited until he’d closed the door behind him, before letting the smile slip and locking herself into her flat.

It could wait ten minutes. It would have to. She needed to be careful, and she needed to be sure that Fletcher really had gone back to work. She showered and wrapped herself in a robe and then filled the coffee machine, counting each minute off as it bubbled and steamed and filled the jug. There could be no room for error or haste. If she did this wrong, then she was quite sure that she would die. Her soul at least would crumble like a tin can in a vacuum. There wouldn’t be any second chances, she was certain of that.

Second chance at what, Abigail?
At first she didn’t recognise the inner voice, and then she realised it was her own, from a long time ago.
You don’t even know. Something’s changing in you and you’re not even afraid. What’s happened to you?

She shut herself up and poured the coffee. Her fingers drummed on the work surface until the black liquid was cool enough to drink, and then she finally went over to the computer in the corner of the clinical lounge. If Fletcher was coming back to catch her out at something, he’d have done it by now. She brought up the Hotmail screen that flashed for her login details. Maybe she should be in an Internet café doing this, but if ATD was watching her, then that would draw too much attention. Her younger sister had died; she should be at home crying.
Her younger sister had died
. It felt alien, as if that information belonged elsewhere. She wouldn’t dwell on it. She wouldn’t give that inner voice anything to shout about. She stared at the flashing screen and took a deep breath. The note had told her
she’d know when, and whoever had written it was right. She logged in.

Username:
[email protected]

Password: Salvation

For a moment there was nothing but overwhelming disappointment as she stared at the
No new messages
displayed on the home screen. What was left of her heart almost broke and then something different on the screen caught her eye. The small (1) next to the Drafts folder. Her breath held. With a trembling hand she sipped from her mug. As she swallowed the bitter liquid she clicked on the highlighted icon.

This was the point of no return. Every cell in her body knew that. Or perhaps there had never been any choice in it. Maybe this was just her destiny, and had been ever since she’d felt herself separating from the world. The message opened up.

Call this number tonight from a payphone.

She jotted the mobile number down on the inside of her arm before continuing with the short message:

When you leave your flat, you will not be returning. Take only what is essential.

You will learn all you need to know when we meet.

Delete this message now.

She stared at the screen for a few more seconds before hitting the delete key. The message disappeared as if it had never existed. She turned the computer off without bothering to wipe her Internet history. That would only slow Special Branch and Fletcher’s lot down by an hour or two,
and there wasn’t anything on her hard drive that could link her with anyone.

Over by the window she peered out between the wooden slats. A car was parked on the opposite side of the road, on a double yellow line. The two men inside weren’t even trying not to be noticed. Perhaps Fletcher did understand her better than she thought. Maybe he had a hard soul himself.

Ten minutes later and she was dressed in black leggings and a black sweater, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She took some change from her wallet and tucked it into her bra before looking around the apartment that had been her home for some years now. There was nothing in its bland interior that she wanted to take; no personal items or photographs. Those were stored in her parents’ attic in the Highgate house. The flat was simply somewhere she slept and bathed and ate, and now that she knew she was leaving it behind, it felt alien already. Had she been subconsciously preparing for this day since she moved here? Or before then, even?

She left the lights on and walked towards the front door. Thinking about it was irrelevant. She was here now, and ultimately
how
you got to a place rarely mattered once you’d arrived. Instead of heading down to the main entrance, she went up a floor and stopped in the landing by the small sash window. She pushed it up and peered out. The air had lost the deceptive heat of the day, and now an October chill owned the night. She shivered involuntarily as it wrapped itself round her.

There gap between the wall of her building and the one next to it was barely three feet wide, giving her a limited view of the street either side. How closely were they watching her? It was more likely that Fletcher had placed the car so obviously in order to warn her off going out, and was instead
monitoring her mobile and landline phones. Her sister had just died, after all, and despite his suspicions about what she had or hadn’t seen on the platform of the tube station, she was the one who had chased the fat man down while Special Branch had been bumbling around like something out of a silent black and white film.

Black and white
. That meant something. Hadn’t she seen only in black and white for a moment earlier in the day? It had felt good; she knew that. There had been something soothing in that fleeting absence of colour. Along the wall, perhaps a metre to her left, a drainpipe ran the length of the building. Although paint-chipped and tatty, the brackets holding it at regular intervals to the bricks looked firmly screwed in, the metal tight against the wall. She hoped she was right.

The window only opened halfway, but it was enough. Bending backwards, she managed to slide her slim torso out and then pulled upward against the glass, one hand hooked round the frame and her stomach muscles holding her in place. When she felt secure, she eased one long leg out and shuffled herself to the edge of the window. She stretched along the outside wall and reached for the pipe. It was greasy under her touch. She sighed and then took a deep breath, swung herself out and grabbed for the pipe. She didn’t look down – not because she was afraid of heights, but because there was no point. She knew what was down there: uneven, hard concrete. Evaluating a landing didn’t take much thought – if she fell, there would be broken bones, at the very least.

With the precision of a cat she pressed her free foot into a gap between the bricks, curling her toes up to get some form of hold on the filler and then, with every muscle in her body taut, she pulled her other leg out of the window
and instantly swung them both sideways. Just at the point her hand had to let go of the window, her feet found purchase on the pipe and she used the momentum to carry the rest of her torso over.

She shimmied quickly to the ground, and stood panting against the wall for a moment. Her top had ridden up and her stomach had grazed against the bricks. Her ribs ached. It had been a long time since she’d done something like that, and no amount of jogging and yoga could prepare your body for the completely unusual. She trotted to the back of the building, her muscles recovering as she went. She scanned the road. It was quiet, and there was no sign of any suspicious vehicle. With her head down, she stayed close to the shadows of the wall and walked in the other direction, away from her flat. When she reached the end of the street she peered backwards. As far as she could tell, no one was following her. The night was still.

Once clear of her own immediate vicinity, she broke into a steady jog, nothing fast enough to draw suspicion from any passing police car, but setting a good enough pace to draw out anyone who might have been tailing behind. Her footsteps were not matched, but echoed lonely in the darkness and soon she eased into her stride, running as much for pleasure as purpose.

After three miles she stopped at a phone booth. Her breathing was even and her muscles were loose. She felt good as she inserted some coins and then tapped the number from her arm into the pad. It rang twice before a voice, sounding smooth and exotic, answered.

‘Asher Red.’

‘Abigail Porter,’ she replied.

‘Good. I’ve been expecting your call. Now listen carefully …’

Abigail could hear the pleasure in the man’s voice as he spoke, and it warmed her.

The boy on the bed had finally stopped crying, although, to be fair, it hadn’t taken much to make him start. Mr Craven didn’t really mind. It could be more fun that way, if he was in the right mood. The bed was vast and the boy looked tiny in it. Mr Craven wasn’t sure how old he was; somewhere above six and below nine would be his experienced guess, and unlike the children he’d become used to, this one was pale and blond with a layer of puppy fat covering his small bones. It was a welcome change.

Mr Craven leaned back in the low regency chair in the corner of the large bedroom as he finished his thin Cartier cigarette, letting his silk dressing gown fall open. Although the boy’s tear-stained face was looking in his direction, he showed no sign of fear at Mr Craven’s naked body, even after all the damage it had inflicted on his own damaged flesh. This was nothing surprising. They all retreated into themselves at some point, as if what was happening to their body was elsewhere. Children, Mr Craven had discovered over the long years, had an interesting capacity for that. Perhaps it was because they had yet to doubt their own immortality and realise just how important this fresh new body was to them. They soon learned under Mr Craven’s, tutelage, though. He made very sure of that.

The boy’s skin was bright pink in patches, and as he looked at the small stain of blood on the Egyptian cotton sheet from where the child’s anus had torn, Mr Craven became aroused again. Recovery time was not something he’d ever needed. Perhaps he’d use a knife on this one. That would bring the life back into his piggy eyes. It was feasible. He was a nothing, this boy, a runaway in a care home,
ironically having run away from a situation like this. It could always be reported that he’d run away again. The manager of the care home wouldn’t mind. Any doubts she’dhadwere dispelled when he showed her everything he truly was – and on top of that, she’d been paid well. As he looked at the silent boy again, his thoughts fixated on the knife. Mutilation wasn’t something he indulged in too often – he wasn’t cruel – but he was feeling over-stressed, and in need of some release. Too much was changing, and it was starting to look like they had come here under a false promise. He smiled. He wanted to score the boy’s buttocks and hear him scream as he tried to wriggle away. He wanted to—

The doorbell echoed through the huge apartment and Mr Craven sighed, his delicious train of thought broken. He didn’t have to wonder who it was; no one came up here apart from the Network or their lackeys. It was two a.m. What could be so important now?

He tied his dressing gown around his waist and left the room, locking the door behind him. The boy looked broken, but you couldn’t be too careful. There were no staff working that night, at his own request. Of course they would turn a blind eye and do what they were told, but in recent times he’d preferred to keep his hobbies private.

A man in an expensively tailored suit stood on the other side of the heavy wooden door. Mr Craven glared at him.

‘Don’t tell me – another meeting? If it’s to tell me Monmir’s dead, then that’s hardly news.’

The besuited man didn’t speak and Mr Craven gritted his teeth and pressed his thin lips together so that they almost disappeared completely and fought the urge to beat him or tear him limb from limb. He still had the strength – he wasn’t weakening – but he also knew that Mr Bright wouldn’t take that kindly. This man in front of
him might not know exactly who he was working for, but he was still Mr Bright’s man. Not that Mr Craven really cared what Mr Bright thought, but for now he needed to play the game.

‘Let’s go then.’

There was the slightest flicker of surprise in the man’s eyes. ‘Aren’t you going to dress?’