A Matter of Blood (16 page)

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Authors: Sarah Pinborough

BOOK: A Matter of Blood
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Everything is brief, he thinks, as he watches the flowers that are contemplating an early bloom. He stands and stretches, the muscles across his back rippling, and he remembers his own strength from so very long ago. He had been glorious. Sometimes it’s hard to remember how things were, before. Beyond the small garden around him, the city laughs and cries. It is busy here; it practically screeches life. He sighs. He knows better. There is no life; there are only the various stages of dying. He knows this - since the first sign that things were changing among his kind, he’s felt it: the empty loneliness, the quiet fear in his stomach, the sink into humanity . . . the constant buzzing under his skin and in his head. A rustle as an old man turns the pages of his newspaper. Two boys’ faces stare out at him. It’s purely imagination, a flight of fancy, but it feels as if their eyes are accusing him, even from within the flat confines of the printed surface. He stares back. Their deaths aren’t his guilt. He merely provided the test. It was others who were found wanting.
A couple stand up from the bench opposite, where they’ve eaten sandwiches together. They are dressed smartly. They smile and are happy. They are lucky enough to have good jobs, and now they have found love. They think the world is their oyster, and that life will go on and on like this, as if living under some blissful rainbow.
He sighs as he watches them go, and the flowers tremble. There is not even a hint of the Glow about them. They are nothing. They are no one. The woman laughs as they pass through the gates and back into the mêlée of Covent Garden. He wonders at the irony of that joy, which will be so fleeting. She will be dead within three years from the tumour quietly growing inside her. She will delay seeking medical help for the pain she gets when she bends over because she isn’t eligible for the NHS - what’s left of it - and she hasn’t kept up to date with her health insurance. She’ll think it’s not worth paying for all those tedious tests; it’ll turn out to be fibroids, everyone knows that it generally is. They will be married by then, and he’ll stay with her out of duty, but within a month or two of her final diagnosis he will be sleeping with her best friend and telling himself it’s for comfort and not because he’s always wanted to fuck her. They stay together even after that heat of first lust is as dead as his first wife and when their second child has arrived he will spend hours looking at her and then at himself and wondering what happened to them.
He knows all this from the trace of their scent as they pass, and he knows that this is the nature of mankind’s love and always has been, from the very first. The couple are still laughing as they round the corner, completely intent on each other, and he gives them no more thought, other than adding their drop of futility to the growing ocean that resides inside him.
They are nothing, and he has a bigger game to think about before the rot within takes hold. The conspiracies never stop in their world that is built on lies.
He smiles, his mood lifting, and a solitary fly creeps out from beneath the collar of his sweater and tests the air for a moment before taking off. He thinks of Mr Bright and his need for order in chaos; forever the architect he once was, constantly planning and watching and preparing for the future. He wonders, as he walks towards the church door, if his own interference has been noticed yet. The others have underestimated him. His powers are drained, but not yet lost. He’d watched the architect. He’d seen the meeting and then followed the boy. He remembers the frailty of the young man’s wasted body under him as he stumbles across him in the train and carefully slid the key out of his pocket and into his own hand.
His smile stretches into a grin. Bright was looking for him, and now he’d made it so the precious policeman was looking for Bright. The architect believes that nothing is coincidence; he will have given the boy his pompous lecture. And now those words will have trapped him and the hunter becomes the hunted, at least for a while. Touché.
The inside of the church is quiet and he’s glad to be away from the hubbub of the outside world. He doesn’t care how the game will eventually play out. He won’t be there. He can feel his bones desiccating as he still breathes. Everything is dying. Nothing is sacred. Inside there is just machinery. And their souls are impure. He has tested people and found them wanting. There is no real love.
He sits in a pew and breathes in the heady scent of polish. It will have faded by the time the vicar starts the evening service, and by the concert the next lunchtime it will have disappeared as if it never existed. He thinks of the vicar of this actors’ church, and of a pretend religion whose house celebrates the art of pretence. He is a good man, and kind, but he is dying, just like all the rest.
Outside, the rush of lunchtime fades into the calm of the afternoon and he pulls off his baseball cap while he waits. This isn’t an act of respect, it is just that his scalp itches. He feels nothing for the beliefs this building holds. His hair is still thick and sandy-blond, in contrast with the lines that have started to dig into his skin. It is artlessly messy, a style so many models and actors strive to emulate. He is handsome. He always has been. He stares up at the decorated walls above the altar and wonders how it is that he can find a kind of peace here, among these misguided beliefs, but he does.
Time ticks silently by and he watches those that come and go. An old woman dressed in black prays in the pew two in front of him. She’s on her knees and her eyes are squeezed tightly shut. There is a faint glimmer around her. Her husband is long dead, but she has at least another ten years ahead before she joins him. She prays for fifteen minutes and then lights a candle before scurrying back out, eyes cast down in shame for her own continued existence.
A few moments later and heels click slowly down the central aisle. The scent of polish is forgotten. He knows these heels. They’re not high, and the walk is hesitant, the weight on the toe rather than the heel, an apologetic step. He doesn’t pretend to pray; he just sits as is he, staring at the altar.
She takes the pew alongside his, on the other side of the aisle. Like him, she simply stares at the altar. He doesn’t need to look at her to know that she’s the one he’s been waiting for. Hannah West. She comes twice a week, sometimes three, not when the concerts are on, but in the quiet times, when the rest of the world is too busy for the peaceful space of the church.
Her sigh is soft, but he hears it. Her head is tilted as she sits with her sensible overcoat undone and her nurse’s uniform visible. He’s watched her emotional exhaustion grow over the weeks, as her shoulders slump forward a fraction of an inch more with every visit. He wonders if she’s even noticed that her walk home from the hospital now takes her four minutes longer than it used to. Her pace has shortened, her steps slowed, even though she has a family waiting for her. He thinks perhaps that she’s finding it harder and harder to raise her own energy levels in order to pretend to share in their joy at each other and the world. She is lost. She can feel it, but she doesn’t know how to change it.
He watches the tiny signs as her body tenses, ready to get up, and he rises before her, moving towards the bank of candles. He is a few steps ahead and this is good. He doesn’t want her to feel as if she’s being followed. Her eyes follow him though, drawn by his golden hair and furrowed brow. He has tried hard to be invisible over the past months, to be just like one of them, but it’s difficult. Even though they can’t see the Glow, he knows they feel it. People are drawn to him, even those without a trace of the Glow in themselves - a genetic memory of the truth, perhaps. It’s been a long time since he’s walked freely among them without being bound by the shackles of the Network.
He feels her come alongside him, but it’s only when she speaks that he visibly registers her presence.
‘I’ve seen you here before.’ Her voice is gentle, and there is a hint of an accent. Somewhere north. Somewhere she once belonged, before the capital lured her.
‘I work here.’ He smiles a little. ‘Well, I’m a volunteer.’
‘No job?’
‘Is it that obvious?’ He feels her eyes take in his casual clothes. It’s been a while since he’s worn a suit. His soft olive corduroys and sweatshirt are all he needs now.
She shrugs. Her shoulders are strong. She’s not skinny like the last one. ‘It seems to be a safe bet these days.’
They are speaking softly, although the church is empty. The vicar is in his office at the back, preparing a sermon for the handful of people who will gather here on their way home after yet another long day of pointless work. He will try to give them hope, but he will fail. They’ll take his words anyway, and he’ll hope they’ll make a difference.
She rummages in her bag and pulls out her purse. It’s small. She has to be careful about how much she spends. Nurses don’t earn much, and her husband works in a small supermarket. Still she slips a few coins into the box at the front before taking a candle. She lights it from one behind and then places it in a holder. They both watch it flicker.
‘Who do you light it for?’ he asks at last.
Her eyes don’t waver from the flame. ‘Everyone.’ Her voice is like satin, and in the flickering light her skin looks almost beautiful.
He takes a coin from his pocket, avoiding the key that still sits there, and slides it into the box himself. It clinks briefly and then hits wood. Not many people are paying for their candles these days. Everyone is looking out for themselves. Everyone always does in the end.
‘Do you think things will get better? Do you think there is hope for us? The world?’ She pauses. ‘I work with Strain II cases. It’s hard . . .’ She glances back towards the altar. ‘It’s hard to keep my faith.’
He tilts the white wax stick, which starts to melt before the wick bursts alight. ‘Maybe things will get better, for a while. But I don’t have faith.’
She looks at him, trying to see into his soul. He wonders what she would say if she could.
‘So why light the candle?’
He smiles at her. ‘Because the Glow is beautiful.’
He is standing so close that her warm natural scent overpowers the acrid polish that clings to his own clothes. She is so alive. He wonders how it will feel when he switches her off.
Chapter Eight
 
 
 
‘
Y
ou’ve got to give us something.’ Ramsey was starting to sound as tired as Cass felt. ‘We’ve got your DNA, indicating you had sex with Jessica Jones in the hours prior to her death, and your fingerprints are on the shotgun. There must be something you can tell us.’
They’d been sitting in the over-warm interview room for almost two hours and they were just going round in circles. Cass wanted to bang his head against the solid table and scream. Instead, he lit another cigarette and gritted his teeth. There were only four left in the packet.
Your DNA and your fingerprints
. Even though the list of the evidence they’d found had been repeated over and over, it still sounded surreal.
‘I keep telling you, I don’t understand it. It’s got to be a mistake.’ He looked up at Ramsey and shrugged. ‘I don’t have any answers.’
‘Your brother’s dead wife had your sperm inside her.’ Bowman snorted derisively. He was seated next to Ramsey on the other side of the grey desk, and Cass was pleased to see him flinch slightly when he moved. His appendix might have turned out to be fine, but he was obviously still in pain from whatever was making him ill. ‘There’s one obvious answer that I can see. You were fucking her.’
Cass glared. And so the trip round the circle began again. ‘I’ve already told you that I haven’t seen my brother or his wife in months. I was not there that night.’
‘But you admit you were fucking her?’
Cass wanted to reach across and punch the smug bastard in the stomach, right through his stitches. He wanted to rip out his heart, just so Bowman could know what it felt like.
‘I was not sleeping with her, but - as I have already told you, eight times - we had a very brief affaire five years ago.’ The words were like razor blades, slashing his guilt into his flesh. He had wanted what Christian had, and so he had taken the only part of his life that he could. His throat tightened as his brother’s open, smiling face rose up, unwanted, in his memory. Christian had always been happy to see Cass. He’d never lost that puppy-dog adoration he’d had for his elder brother when they were kids. For a moment, Cass’s vision blurred and he sucked hard on the cigarette. Bowman would love to see him break down, but that wasn’t going to happen.
‘What is it with you? Do you have to fuck every woman you meet, Cass?’ Bowman shook his head. ‘You’re fucking unbelievable.’
‘Enough.’
Cass was too angry to pay any attention to Ramsey’s interjection. He glared at Bowman’s pale face. ‘I met your ex-wife, remember? But even I wouldn’t have touched that ugly bitch.’
‘I said
enough
!’ Ramsey snarled. ‘Leave your problems outside and let’s run this interview like the professionals we are supposed to be.’ He turned to look at Bowman. ‘And if you can’t manage that, then you can go and wait outside. This is my case. You’re just in here out of courtesy to your DCI . Do you understand that?’
Bowman reluctantly nodded and Ramsey turned back to Cass. ‘And I know this isn’t easy for you, but try not to make it any harder on us all.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘So when did the affaire end?’
‘Almost immediately it started. Neither of us liked ourselves for it. From start to finish it can’t have been more than three months. It finished when my parents died.’ Cass met Ramsey’s gaze. If it had just been Ramsey in the room and no tape recorder, then perhaps he would have opened up, told him the details. There was something about the man that he liked. He felt a connection with him. He figured that Ramsey might just understand without judging . . . but there was no way in hell he was going to reveal his sordid little secrets in front of Bowman, knowing that every dirty little fact would be clinically typed up and put in a file for anyone to read. Some things were supposed to live only in a man’s soul.

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