The Shadow of the Soul (26 page)

‘Take two or three PCs and get up to Fleet Street with blown-up pictures of our kids. Go in all the local shops, the usual routine. Someone might recognise them. While the plods are doing that, I want you in every business in that area that’s open in the evenings.
Someone
was paying these kids cash: what kind of job only lasts six weeks? Look for something unusual. Whatever it was, I doubt it was stuffing envelopes. These kids weren’t using their own bank accounts much right up until they died, so whatever money they were getting, it was enough to see them through four weeks or more.’

‘I’m on it. You coming?’

‘I’ve got to follow up something for this ATD shit, but I’ll have my phone on. I’m expecting a package to come from Fletcher. Tell someone on the desk to have it biked over to the ISISOR building in the City when it gets here.’

Armstrong nodded. He looked pissed off, but Cass let it wash over him. He was letting the young sergeant do most of the gruntwork on this case, but it wouldn’t do him any harm. He’d get over it.

The ISISOR building was one of the last high-rise structures to go up before the recession really hit, and its sleek glass walls were home to twenty or thirty companies. ISISOR itself had gone bust within weeks of moving in as stocks and shares collapsed around the world, but the name lived on as a highly prestigious address for the most successful
of those companies which had somehow survived the recession.

Cass found Hask on the eighteenth floor, in a boardroom that was bigger than the whole of Paddington Green nick’s Incident Room, and with a side-table full of cakes and sandwiches sitting next to a bubbling coffee machine. The pastries looked fresh, and Hask looked, as ever, larger than life.

‘So this is how the private sector live,’ he said.

‘You’d hate it, Cass. All this wealth and privilege.’ Hask got to his feet and picked up a miniature Danish from the plate. ‘Let them eat cake.’ He popped it whole into his mouth and wiped his fingers on a napkin.

‘They still got you assessing people after the bombings?’

‘God, it’s interminable.’ Hask rolled his eyes. ‘Most of these people are cold as sharks anyway. Whatever psychological problems they have don’t stem from whether or not they were stuck in London on 26 September.’

‘I presume you’ve told their employers that?’

Hask laughed cheerfully and poured two cups of coffee. ‘I will do. Eventually.’ He handed Cass a mug. ‘Drink that and weep.’

The coffee was strong and rich and a million miles away from the vaguely brown liquid dispensed from the nick’s vending machines, or the over-brewed gravy that came out of the coffeepot, if anyone even remembered to fill it in the mornings. ‘Yeah,’ Cass said over the fragrant steam, ‘life here must be hell.’

‘So, what is this about Abigail Porter? I thought you were working this teen suicide thing?’

‘I am. Porter’s sister is one of the dead students.’

‘And that got you access to her personal file?’ Hask’s eyebrow rose. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but since when did
an ordinary DI get access to such highly confidential information?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Cass said, ‘because I can’t tell you.’

‘Fair enough.’ The fat man grinned. ‘I do like a bit of cloak and dagger.’

‘I wish I could say the same.’ Cass took a sip of his coffee. ‘So how come your report’s missing?’

‘Probably because I didn’t pass her. If they gave her the job anyway it’s likely the panel chose to remove it and therefore hide any personal liability, should anything go wrong with her. I’m surprised they didn’t replace it with a different doctor’s evaluation. I should imagine that there are plenty of respected professionals out there who would have passed her.’

‘If they would, then how come you didn’t? Was it because she was young?’

‘God, no. Young people will die for any Tom, Dick or Harry. In her line of work, youth’s an advantage.’ Hask leaned against the large highly polished wooden table, and the solid frame creaked under his weight.

He looked up at Cass. ‘There was just something about her that didn’t ring true. She had all the right answers, and on paper she was the perfect candidate for the job, but I just couldn’t pass her.’

‘She was lying?’

‘No.’ Hask shook his head, and his chins wobbled. ‘No, I don’t think she was aware of what was missing. It was something else.’ He reached forward and picked up another small cake, this time breaking a small chunk off and chewing it thoughtfully.

‘She was too detached. I felt that she was faking her fear.’ He looked over at Cass. ‘Part of the evaluation consists of reaction and image tests. Her face and heart-rate showed
exactly the right result for every image or situation we gave her to look at.’

‘And this was a problem?’ Cass asked.

‘It was too exact – no one reacts perfectly to the model, especially not every time. That’s part of the test. We all have our quirks and secrets – things that excite us that shouldn’t; things that we’re afraid of. It was as if she had no personal responses of her own; as if she had learned the required reaction and duplicated it.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘Technically, yes. These tests are supposed to be confidential, and they get varied from year to year, but of course people get hold of them. The thing is’ – he swallowed the rest of the cake – ‘whether someone’s seen the test or not, they shouldn’t be able to fake their reactions, and certainly not to such a great extent that they’ll fool the testers. It’s a bit like a lie detector in that it picks out your involuntary responses: dilation of pupils, increase in heart-rate, that kind of thing. The verbal reactions are almost irrelevant. Cheating is pretty much impossible.’

‘But you think Abigail Porter did?’

‘She scored perfectly, and that’s not possible. It was enough for me to know that I couldn’t pass her. I’ve never done an evaluation like it.’

‘And yet they still gave her the job,’ Cass said.

‘There’s no accounting for people. Maybe she had friends in high places.’ Hask smiled, but Cass felt a chill ripple down his spine. Someone had wanted Abigail Porter to get that job and if it wasn’t Mr Bright, then it must have been someone else in the Network. Maybe the Jones family wasn’t the only one being toyed with by the hidden organisation and their endless funds in the X accounts.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts, and Cass
turned to see a young woman hovering nervously.

‘DI Jones?’

Cass nodded.

‘A package had come for you. Apparently, he’ – she stepped aside to allow a tall, dark-suited man through – ‘has to give it to you personally.’

The man didn’t smile, but stared hard at Hask and then Cass before approaching.

‘Can I see some ID?’ His voice was devoid of accent, and even when walking he moved with athletic ease.

Everything about him made Cass want a cigarette. ‘Keep your knickers on.’ Cass grinned as he showed his police ID. ‘I’m sure you know exactly who I am.’

The man scanned Cass’s badge, and then handed the package over. ‘It’s from Fletcher.’ Without another word, he turned and left, leaving the poor woman to scurry after him.

‘I’d have passed him,’ Hask said, ‘without a moment’s hesitation.’ He looked down at the thick envelope Cass held in his hands. ‘Fletcher, eh? You’re always involved in the serious stuff, Cass.’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Are you sure it’s not too soon?’

The question came out of the blue, and for a brief moment Cass didn’t know what he meant, and then the weight of it came flooding back. Kate, Claire, Bowman. The Man of Flies. That’s what Hask was talking about.

‘I’m fine.’ It was all he could think of to say.

‘You look tired, that’s all.’

‘I am, but I’m fine.’ Cass smiled.

The doctor smiled back. ‘Good. Well, when you’ve cleared your plate a bit, let’s go for a beer again, shall we?’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

*

Cass lit a cigarette before opening the envelope. It was the middle of the day and the brightly lit basement car park was empty. He tugged out the contents, on top of which was a handwritten note from Fletcher.
I presume you’re smart enough to get rid of all this when you’re done
. Cass stared at it. If he was presumed smart enough, then why the fuck had he felt the need to mention it? He threw the note onto the passenger seat and then flicked through the brief dossier the ATD man had included on the US and Russian women. Cass figured he was getting the watered-down version, but that was fine; he wasn’t sure what he was looking for himself.

Both women were young and attractive, and both had been promoted quickly in their adult lives – just like Abigail Porter – and both came from successful, wealthy families. He scanned through their family backgrounds. The Russian girl’s was scant, mostly a list of unpronounceable companies that her parents had worked for, but from the job titles Cass could see her father, like Abigail’s, had been promoted fast over the past fifteen years. The American woman’s father hadn’t started rising up the corporate ladder until he was fifty, normally the time that workers were getting thrown out with the waste in this new buyer’s market. How was it that he suddenly, like Abigail’s father, started making waves in the boardroom? Even if they were late starters, no one would be listening to them by then, however much business sense they were making. Fuck it. Those questions weren’t his to answer and they could wait.

He put the personal notes aside and turned his attention to the stack of glossy ten-by-eights. Each had a date at the top, and under each picture was the time the person had entered the Latham Hotel. Cass went for the day Abigail Porter disappeared first and flicked through. There were at
least thirty on that day alone. No wonder Fletcher had wanted to send them all over on a disk – and so much for the recession. He peered at the strangers’ faces, forcing his eyes to dwell on each one, rather than dismissing them quickly. He settled back in his seat and threw the cigarette butt out of the window. He was going to be there for a while.

The man who came into the hotel that day at 16.54 p.m. according to the time code didn’t need focused attention to jog Cass’s memory; he recognised him straight away. Despite his determination to stay on the periphery of the hunt for Abigail Porter, he couldn’t fight the buzz of excitement that fizzed in his gut. Mr Bright was going to love this. Or not. Cass did, though.

Without taking his eyes from the image, he dialled the number stored under ‘A’ in his phone. It rang three times before it was answered. Cass wondered if Mr Bright was really busy, or just creating the impression that he was in no overwhelming hurry for whatever information Cass might have discovered.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve got something for you.’ The words almost stuck in Cass’s throat. He didn’t like this bargain he’d made, and could only hope the end justified the means, and that Christian would forgive him – no, not Christian. Christian was
dead
. What mattered was whether he could forgive himself for one more betrayal of his little brother.

‘Which is?’

‘Firstly, I don’t know whether this will interest you but it appears two other women in similar positions to Abigail Porter have gone missing from their home towns, and each turned up on the Latham Hotel’s somewhat limited CCTV footage on the same day. One is Mary Keyes – she works for the Governor of New York – and the other is Irena Melanov,
apparently a member of the Moscow Security Service. Both families are successful and influential. You might want to check them out. I’m not doing any more of your dirty work than I have to, and we both know you can dig deeper than I ever could.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Oh no,’ Cass said, ‘none of the women have been seen since they went into the Latham over a period of two days. But guess who else I saw going into that same place, just a few hours earlier than Abigail Porter?’

He particularly enjoyed the long pause at the other end.

‘Go on.’

‘Someone who clearly thought no one who might recognise him would ever see the photographs. Someone just a little too smug for his own good.’

‘You might have to narrow it down,’ Mr Bright said, dryly.

‘Asher Red.’

Cass was quite sure that for a nano-second at least Mr Castor Bright had held his breath. Cass didn’t blame him. Asher Red, the smooth-talking face of The Bank during the Man of Flies investigation, and Cass’s brother’s boss, now looked as if he was perhaps not quite so loyal after all.

‘Now that is interesting,’ Mr Bright said eventually.

Cass hung up without saying another word. He checked his watch. Armstrong would be busy for a while yet, so there was no point heading back to the office. He probably had time for another visit first.

He had to show his badge at the desk of St Bede’s Hospital before the woman would even page Dr Gibbs for him, and even then she watched him warily from behind the toughened glass that separated her desk from the general public. He didn’t blame her. St Bede’s was one of the few hospitals
left in London that treated NHS patients, as well as those who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else, and he was sure many of those would be infected with the bug. It wasn’t worth the risk of getting spat in the face any more. The bug would find whatever way in it could.