‘Shall we go and get some chips?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got an hour till the next lecture, and it’s always pretty empty about now.’
Would chips be giving him the wrong impression she wondered. Probably not – it was only food, and she was pretty hungry. She looked over towards the refectory, and then her eyes snagged on something in the car park beyond. She frowned. That was odd. It was quite a distance but she was sure that that was …
‘What do you think?’
‘What?’ She looked up at James and then back at the car park. They’d gone. She was sure they’d been arguing. What could they have to argue about?
‘I was just saying we could maybe go to the cinema this weekend if you wanted. Nothing in it or anything, just a film.’
‘One thing at a time, James,’ she said. ‘First let’s get some chips.’ She glanced back at the car park. It was probably nothing, she decided.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Who called you?’ Mr Bright sat behind his office desk, enjoying the smell of rich leather that always filled this space. It had been a while since he’d been in this room for any prolonged period. The phone call was somewhat dampening his pleasure, though.
‘Is he panicking?’ He tapped out a beat on the blotting pad with his perfect nails and then stopped himself when he recognised the tune. ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. Everything was coming to a head at once, but then, it had always been thus. He listened to the man at the other end. They were always so predictable.
‘Call him back and tell him he has nothing to worry about. It’s all under control. In fact, tell him to stay where he is, say you’ll call round and reassure him this afternoon.’ He paused. ‘No, of course you won’t be going to see him. I’ll take care of it.’
He hung up the phone. It was irritating, having to be fighting someone who should be on his side, as if there wasn’t enough of that already in his world. Still, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. He smiled. Perhaps it was time to move things along a bit. He pressed a button on his desk and then went out into the main lounge area.
From upstairs, a tall, dark-haired figure emerged and made his way down the spiral stairs. Sometimes even Mr Bright found it hard to recognise this confident, dedicated young man as the junkie he’d dragged out of a gutter only a few months previously. It was quite amazing what they could achieve when they had a touch of the Glow in their blood.
‘Ah, Mr Bradley. I have a task for you.’
The young man smiled, and Mr Bright could see the adoration in his hard, cold eyes. For a moment he almost felt sad, but the pity was a self-indulgence. So many were ultimately expendable, and in every game there were pieces the master strategist needed to sacrifice in order to win.
‘I need you to tie up some loose ends for me, and help me teach your old friend Detective Inspector Jones a lesson while you’re at it. At some point he’s really going to have to learn to do as he’s told.’ Mr Bright smiled. ‘But only when it suits me.’
‘I don’t understand why you take such an interest in him,’ Bradley said. There was something close to jealousy in the sneering downturn of his mouth. So predictable – but at the same time there was something amusing in that much loyalty.
‘You don’t have to understand. Understanding my motives is certainly not in your job description.’
‘What do you need me to do?’
‘You’re going to enjoy this, I think. But you’re going to have to work fast.’
Cass was about to ring Perry Jordan to get him a number for Nigel Powell when Eagleton called.
‘What can I do for you, Doc?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ the young man said. ‘It’s Angie Lane’s brain. It’s bugging me. The thing is—’
‘Don’t tell me on the phone, I’m driving and I can’t concentrate with all this fucking traffic. I’ll come by the morgue.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m out and about anyway. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.’
He hung up and smiled. He wouldn’t bother to call Jordan; Nigel Powell had a Chelsea address and Eagleton’s lab wasn’t too far from there. He could go straight to the former hospital administrator’s house without drawing too much attention to the fact that he wasn’t either in the office, or out and about with Armstrong. He wanted to see Powell today; the closer he got to finding out what had happened to his brother’s child on the night of his birth, the more Cass felt as if the trail might get tugged away from him. He turned the car around and headed to the west of the city.
A little over half an hour later he was staring up at several images of brains taken from various angles and pretending very hard to have some kind of idea of what he was looking at.
‘Don’t go into acting, whatever you do, Jones.’ Eagleton grinned. ‘You’re shit at it.’
‘Cheeky fucker. Have you got any idea what caused the brain damage yet?’
‘No. That’s why I recognised your blank expression. Neither me or the boss can figure it out. It’s not been caused by any disease that we can identify; it’s almost as if the brain has torn itself slightly in several places at once. Like some kind of intense pressure burst. But each of the areas has been damaged really neatly – there’s not even much inner bleed. Dr Marsden says he’s never seen anything like it, and I’ve hunted through all the textbooks and they’re not giving us anything either. The boss’ – Eagleton looked down from the scans and over to Cass – ‘who is a really interesting bloke under that serious exterior, did some research and found some Swiss research article that says severe psychological trauma can cause some physical damage to brain matter in the moment of experience, often so tiny that it’s not picked up by doctors, but the article claims it could be what causes personality changes in sufferers of extreme post-traumatic stress.’
‘Do you believe it?’
‘Hell, no, and nor does Dr Marsden – it’s a crackpot theory with no clinical evidence. But if it were true, then these kids would have had to have been through some completely fucked-up shit to get this kind of damage.’
‘So what’s bothering you about Angie Lane?’ Cass dragged him back on topic. He needed some hard facts, not more theories to tease his brain with.
‘It’s just that I’m not sure any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not sure she’s like the others. It’s been bugging me, ever since you arrested that guy over Lidster’s death.’ He pointed to a scan right in front of him. ‘She’s got a lot of damage, and a brain bleed from where she hit her head so it’s really difficult to see whether she has the same lesions as the others underneath it. At first I just presumed that was the case, but I can’t be sure.’
Cass looked along the line of backlit images, the scans identified by a printed surname underneath: LANE, BUSBY, DODDS, DENTER, GREEN. All those young lives so clinically reduced to a body part and a surname.
‘She also must have gone down hard to hurt herself this much. I mean, it is possible, but she really dented her skull.’ He chewed the inside of one corner of his mouth. ‘I’m just saying that whatever happened to her isn’t as clear-cut as the others.’
‘Are you saying she might not have been a suicide?’ Cass frowned. His heart thumped. Angie Lane hadn’t been to Temple tube on any Tuesday evening, as far as he could work out, and her fear of the dark wasn’t on any doctor’s records. It was just hearsay, and teenagers always exaggerated things. Shit, he’d even asked them outright if she was scared of anything. He’d fucking auto-suggested an answer.
‘No,’ Eagleton said, ‘I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that I was wrong to presume and I wanted you to know that I had doubts.’
‘As it happens, I think you might be on to something. There are other inconsistencies between her and the others.’
‘Really?’ Eagleton smiled. ‘Does that mean I get a share of the bonus when you catch her killer?’
‘Ha fucking ha.’ Cass raised an eyebrow. ‘If it leads to something you can have
the whole fucking bonus. I’m all bonused out.’
In the corridor outside the lab he called Armstrong. The last thing he needed his nosy sergeant to hear was background traffic; that would only prompt his ‘Where the fuck are you?’ question, either outright, or in the subtext.
‘We haven’t got anything yet,’ Armstrong started. ‘A couple of people think they might recognise one or other of them, but there’s nothing concrete yet.’
‘Forget about that for now. Leave the others on it and get back to the office.’
‘How come?’
‘I’m at the morgue with Eagleton. He thinks that Angie Lane might be different to the others. Don’t ask me for details, because I’m fucked if I understand any of that medical shit, but I want you to check on a couple of things. First, look at her Oyster card records. We presumed she must have just walked to Temple, but what if she wasn’t there at all? See if she went anywhere else during the six weeks that she should have been going there if she was following the pattern of the others. That would rule her out of doing whatever they were. Also, get back onto the phone records people. If she wasn’t part of this suicide pact shit, then someone killed her and made it look that way. I want the names of the people she called the most. And not just calls, check who she texted, too. You got that?’
‘Yeah. You think she’s a murder like Joe Lidster?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t want us to end up looking like arseholes because we didn’t check thoroughly enough that all of these kids really were linked.’
‘True.’
‘Students had that Chaos in the darkness stuff all over the Internet before we even knew about it, even that the kids involved had slit their wrists. If Neil Newton thought he could use it to get away with murder, then why not someone else?’ The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. So what the hell had happened to Angie Lane?
‘I’ll head back now. Will I see you there?’
‘No,’ Cass said. Armstrong was starting to sound like a nagging wife. ‘I want to go over a few more things with Eagleton first. Put the request in for the phone records and then head home. I’ll check the Oyster card stuff when I get back. You’ve worked hard enough for one day.’ Although it meant he’d just added to his own workload, it was better than thinking of Armstrong back at the office clockwatching and waiting for Cass. As it was, the trip to Powell’s house shouldn’t add more than half an hour or so to his journey. How long could it take for the man to give him one name?
‘If you’re sure.’
‘There’s nothing we can do until we get her phone records, and those bastards finish dot on five. Fucking admin.’
‘Although there’s something to be said for not working for bonuses,’ Armstrong added.
‘You’re telling me.’ Cass kept his tone light. He’d thought Armstrong would have known better than to raise such a sensitive subject with him. Was the sergeant trying to get a reaction? If so, he was shit out of luck. ‘We could all go home at the end of our shifts and still get paid,’ Cass said. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’
Nigel Powell lived in the lower half of a large Georgian terrace in a side street not far from the Fulham Road. The residential nature gave the area the feel of a leafy suburb. Cass parked in a residents’ parking bay a few doors up and let himself in through the low front gate. A short path led through what passed for a front garden to the main door. Beautiful as the house and street were, you didn’t get much bang for your buck in this part of town, that much was for sure.
He rang the doorbell and waited. When no one answered, he tried again, and this time he heard a short cry. Cass froze for a second before slapping the palm of his hand hard against the wood.
‘Mr Powell?’ he shouted.
He crouched and peered through the letterbox. He could just make out two pairs of legs, woven so closely together that if one had been female, Cass might have wondered if they were dancing. Something crashed to the ground out of sight and someone grunted as the pair twisted out of view in their struggle.
Shit.
Cass yanked off his jacket and wrapped it round his arm before turning his face away and punching his elbow through one of the square glass panes of the closest window, thanking God it was an old-fashioned sash – no UPVC replacements round here. He reached through and grabbed at the catch, unlocking it with one hand and giving the wood a hard shove upwards with the other.
Somewhere further back in the house furniture crashed to the ground, followed by a heavy, softer thud. With his heart racing, Cass clambered inside. Why the fuck wasn’t he licensed? Why the fuck didn’t he have a gun? He followed the noise through the elegant dining room and into the hallway.
‘Mr Powell?’ he called.
Someone groaned and a sudden gust of cool air accompanied the blood that oozed from the doorway on Cass’s left onto the black-and-white chequered tiles beneath his feet.
A middle-aged man was lying on the kitchen floor beside an upturned wooden chair that he must have grabbed at as he fell. Beyond him, the back door was open. Shit. Cass leapt over the injured man and out into the garden, screaming, ‘Hey! Hey you! Stop!’
A thin man with shoulder-length dark hair swung one leg over the high wall with athletic ease. In the brief second before he disappeared over the other side he flashed Cass a smile, his face half-hidden by a veil of black hair. Something in Cass’s memory jarred. That face was familiar. Where the fuck did he know it from?
He grabbed at the rough brick and hauled himself up in time to see the young man already sprinting off into the distance. This wasn’t the movies, and Cass didn’t have a hope in hell of catching him. Instead, he dropped back to the grass and headed inside. He’d come here for a name, and he intended to get it.
Nigel Powell wasn’t looking good. The large stab wound in his stomach had turned his white shirt crimson, and his face had turned a sickly grey as his life bled away into a warm pool around him. Cass crouched beside him.
‘Ambulance,’ Powell muttered, his mouth working hard to force the one word out.
‘What was the name of the doctor who worked that night? And don’t pretend you don’t know. Someone’s just given you a very nasty stab wound over it.’ He looked around at the top-of-the-range fittings lining the vast kitchen. ‘Did what happened that night pay for all this?’ He leaned in. ‘Was it worth it?’
‘Ambulance.’ A hand clutched at his arm. The fingers were cold and clammy.
‘Name.’ Cass tried to keep the urgency out of his voice. The wound in the man’s stomach did not look good at all, either the location, or the amount of his blood that was pumping out of it. He didn’t have a hope in hell of surviving.
‘Dr Shearman,’ Powell whispered. ‘Richard Shearman. It wasn’t anything to do with me. I didn’t organise it. I just … I just facilitated it.’ His breathing was a wet rattle. ‘Now call an ambulance, please.’
Cass stood up and shifted backwards slightly, keeping his feet out of the sticky red mess. Powell’s eyes followed him. They were full of panic. Cass stared at him. I just facilitated it. What the hell kind of word was facilitated? He’d been part of a conspiracy to steal a baby, a conspiracy that had killed the Grays, who’d just happened to be unfortunate enough to be due to give birth to a baby boy at the same time as Christian and Jessica Jones. A couple who thought they’d been lucky enough to get private care. A couple whose ‘luck’ had always been someone else’s choices. Thanks in part to this man, that couple were now dead and two little boys had exchanged fates, one to be blown away by a shotgun while he slept. The other was out there somewhere. Faciliated. Cass felt bile rise within his chest.
‘You don’t understand.’ The man on the ground tried to raise a limp arm, but it flopped back down. ‘I know who you are. You don’t understand.’ Powell flinched slightly, his mouth tugging downwards at the sides. His face had moved beyond grey to a deathly white. ‘Ambulance. Please.’
‘There’s no time for that, don’t you think?’ Cass’
s anger burned cold. ‘You’ve spent enough time in hospitals to know that, surely?’
Powell’s mouth moved again, but this time he couldn’t get the words out. He stared at Cass with whatever small glimmer of life he had left pleading silently to the policeman to do something. Cass matched his gaze until the light finally went out of the dying man’s eyes. It didn’t fade. It just clicked off. Death came like that to everyone.
It took a moment before Cass realised his hands were shaking. A chill rippled from deep within his gut. Why did he feel as if he’d plunged the knife into Powell himself? Because part of him was glad the man had died? Because, just for a moment, the dying man had represented everyone who’d ever fucked with his family? Who had killed him anyway, Mr Bright and the Network – because Cass was looking for Luke? If they’d paid him off all those years ago and he’d never said anything, why were they suddenly afraid he might talk now? It didn’t make sense.
He went to the sink and splashed water on his face before turning and leaning against the counter. Whatever the reasons behind it, this was a murder, and he needed to call it in, if one of the neighbours hadn’t already. How he was going to explain his own presence without killing his already half-dead career he didn’t know, but he’d hopefully have something figured out by the time the squad car turned up.
He let his head drop and took a deep breath to slow his heart down. He needed to get his shit together. At least he had the name of the doctor who must have swapped the babies that night. He’d find that fucker, and then there would be hell to pay.
Halfway through the exhale, he frowned. There was a knife under the kitchen table. He stared at it for a long second before crouching to take a closer look. The silver blade was slick with blood, but the handle was relatively clean. Instead of a straight handle, on this one the wood curved slightly at the end where the little finger would be if you gripped it. Small steel pieces in the shape of diamonds ran up the centre. It was exactly like the ones he had at home. He looked round to the far work surface and the full knife block there. Silver handles shone brightly. They didn’t curve.