A Matter of Blood (30 page)

‘I’ll text him your number and tell him to call you. That okay?’

‘Yes. Yes, thanks.’

Claire cut off his stammered thanks. He was a strange kid, that one. It was up to Cass if he wanted to call him back. Josh was probably just running an errand for Dr Farmer, but Cass was technically on compassionate leave so they couldn’t have it both ways. She typed a quick text to Cass, attached the number and pressed send.

‘Who was that?’ Mat blocked the doorway.

‘Just the ME’s assistant. Wants to talk to Cass about something.’ His glare faltered slightly and she knocked his arm hard - only partly accidentally - as she pushed passed him and headed back into the fray.

 

 

 

L
ooking at Father Michael’s face was like looking at a crumpled photograph. Cass could see he’d aged in the five years since the funerals, even though he didn’t remember much about that day. He’d turned up for the service, and left with both his heart and his conscience heavy. The Father Michael he saw behind his eyes was the one from his childhood, somewhere between the young man in the picture he’d seen this morning and the old one standing beside him now.

Father Michael had taken him out to the bench in the small graveyard to make the most of the sudden spring sunshine. ‘Will you bring Christian and his family to rest here?’ he asked.

The soft words were like a punch in the heart. Cass hadn’t even thought about the funerals yet. ‘The police haven’t released the bodies yet.’ He looked away.

‘Bear it in mind. I think he would have chosen to come home.’ Father Michael patted his arm gently. ‘To be near your parents.’

‘I didn’t realise how long you’d known my dad until I saw some old photos Christian had dug out.’ Cass wanted to steer the conversation away from the personal. He was still buzzing from his discoveries, and Claire had texted to say the burger man had been found and he was wanted back at work. It hadn’t come as any surprise, but it had made him smile. She’d sent him Josh Eagleton’s number, but it just rang out and he didn’t bother leaving a message. If the ME had found anything good, he’d have called himself. He needed to head back to the grimy city he loved - but first, he wanted to try and make sense of this stuff, whatever had been winding his brother up so much.

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ Father Michael smiled. ‘It’s the nature of young people: they can’t imagine a world that existed before they came into it. Just like they can’t imagine that they could cease to exist and the world would still continue.’ He waved an insect away from his face. ‘In a way your father and I were adventurers together. We met when I was spreading the word of our good Lord in some war-torn part of the world.’

‘The Lebanon?’

‘Yes, it might have been. Your father was relishing in the journalistic opportunities of war with as much enthusiasm as I was trying to stop the conflict. But we both drank and smoked, and we both loved the danger of wandering off the beaten path.’ He shook his head wryly. ‘We garnered ourselves something of a reputation, travelling together as we did. I think he got the stories and I got the converts simply out of the people’s curiosity.’

It felt like the old man next to him was talking about a stranger. His dad had always been so placid. It had been a major cause of friction between them.

‘Doesn’t exactly sound like the dad I remember.’

‘He was different then, and people change. Back then he had no faith, and I’d given up trying to persuade him. He was quite wild, you know.’ His smile faltered a little. ‘But he was always a little odd. I sometimes thought he might be indulging in LSD, though I never saw any evidence of it.’

‘What made you think that?’ Cass almost laughed aloud. His dad on acid: now there was a sight he wouldn’t mind seeing.

‘Oh, the things he used to say when we’d been drinking . . . how different he was to other people . . .’ Father Michael’s face clouded. ‘I’d forgotten all about it until Christian turned up talking about the same things.’

Cass’s stomach roiled. On the other side of the graveyard Christian had appeared, his back to them. Cass could see the crumpled blue shirt tails hanging down. He bowed his head in front of their parents’ graves.

Cass tried to blink him away. It didn’t work.

‘I was there when your parents met,’ Father Michael said. ‘Alan and I were in South Africa - there was plenty of work for both of us there.’ He shook his head. ‘Some things don’t change. Anyway, we were at a party, and your mother, Evie, was there with her boss, a man called Castor Bright. She was his personal assistant.’

The ghost was forgotten as the words cut through:
his mother
had worked for Castor Bright?

Beside him, the priest hadn’t noticed Cass’s start at the words. He was lost in the memories of the past. ‘Mr Bright was quite a man. Very charismatic. He didn’t have much time for me. I always felt as if he was laughing at me and my beliefs in some way. Or perhaps that was just my own inexperience, my youth. He was a powerful man and looking back I doubt he even noticed me much. Evie was fond of him though.’ His brow furrowed. ‘He was an elusive man. Even now I don’t really know what to make of him. He owned a mining company there, as well as several other businesses - and it turned out he had a share in the newspaper your dad worked for. Coincidences, eh?’ The priest chuckled.

Cass smiled with him, but the expression was tight.
Coincidences?
He wasn’t so sure.

‘David and Evie clicked straight away. In fact, they more than clicked; I’d say it was love at first sight. I think she bought into his funny ideas too.’ He laughed again. ‘Perhaps they’d both spent too long in the sun!’

‘Funny ideas? About what?’

Father Michael sighed. ‘Your father believed that he could see - well, a sort of halo on some people. It’s what made me think maybe he was on something. When he was drunk he’d bang on about how some people were different, that something came out of their eyes. He called it
the Glow
. Apparently Evie could see it too. He said no one had it as strong as him and Evie - apart from Castor Bright.’ For the first time the priest looked searchingly at Cass. He said nothing. He was here to get information, not give it, and he doubted Father Michael needed anyone else spouting strange shit at him.
The boys see the Glow! Yay!
Despite his racing heart, he kept his face neutral.

‘Anyway, they got married, a lavish do that Mr Bright paid for - your dad was spending a lot of time with him by then - and I left soon after that. My own mother was dying and I’d decided it was time to settle down. After all the atrocities I’d seen, all that pain and suffering and sorrow, my soul was weary. I felt I’d challenged my faith enough and it was time I tried a nice quiet parish back at home, somewhere with smaller problems, where I might actually be able to help.’ He spread his fingers. ‘And here I’ve stayed.’

‘And my parents?’

‘I didn’t hear anything from them for a while, until they turned up here just after you were born. Your dad had changed. He was quieter. And he’d found religion.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘No, but I think it was something to do with this Bright fellow. When I left I had the sense that he was grooming your dad for something. He’d been trying to get him to work for him in a kind of public relations role. I don’t know what happened. Your dad wouldn’t talk about it, but he said he wanted to live in the shadow of a good church. And I think he trusted my faith.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I was flattered, but I’d rather have had my friend back without the haunted look. We stayed up drinking for several long nights when he first arrived here, but we didn’t laugh like we had before. Instead, he asked me a lot of questions about fate and destiny. I couldn’t answer most of them.’ He stopped and looked down at his steepled fingers.

‘What happened after that?’ Cass didn’t remember anything particularly disturbed about his dad, so something must have straightened out his thinking.

‘After a couple of months, his mood lifted. One day I found him in the church, praying. He looked peaceful. He said he and Evie had talked about it and that even if the world wasn’t what we all thought it was, he knew there was a God. His exact words:
he knew it for a fact
. And he intended to use his own free will.’ Father Michael peered into the distance, right through Christian’s ghost. ‘He didn’t talk about it again, but he came to church a lot.’ He smiled. ‘And there were the names he chose for you and your brother. Cassius and Christian.’

Cass looked confused.

‘Cassius was the surname of one of the oldest families in Rome. They were ambitious, vain and ruthless. Gaius Cassius plotted to assassinate Julius Caesar. Your dad loved history, particularly the history of Rome. We explored no end of ruins in the Middle East, and he drank up the stories, so when he turned up with a son called Cassius, I wasn’t surprised.’

Cass was genuinely surprised - he had always hated his name, that’s why he’d shortened it. Most people didn’t even know it was short for something. ‘He always told me I was named after Cassius Clay,’ he said, shaken.

‘That was a white lie, I fear. By the time you were growing up, he probably wished it was true. His love of the cruelty of imperialism had gone by then. Hence Christian’s name.’

‘And what did Christian talk to you about?’ In the distance, his brother wandered through the long grass and disappeared through the trees. He didn’t look back.

‘He was talking about the Glow, the one your father said he and Evie could see.’ He looked at Cass. ‘He was agitated and curious, but I didn’t think he was depressed. If I’d known—’

‘I didn’t see it coming either,’ Cass broke in. ‘You’re not in any way to blame. At least you spoke to him. He’d been trying to reach me, but I was too busy.’ It was the closest he’d come to admitting his own guilt, and Father Michael nodded.

‘No one ever really knows the secrets of another man’s soul.’ He leaned back on the bench. ‘I wasn’t concerned when he started asking questions about your parents. It’s natural to want to know all about those we’ve lost. But when he started to talk about this Glow thing, I was surprised. He said that he could see it too, had seen it ever since he was a child.’ He looked at Cass. ‘He said you could see it too, but you closed it off. You
refused to see it
, that was how he put it.’

Cass shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘He said Jess could see it too. And he knew your parents had been able to, though I don’t know how.’

Cass did: that photograph. Or maybe it was more than that - maybe Christian had talked about this while their parents were still alive.

Father Michael was still talking. ‘I told him that perhaps it was genetic. People are capable of strange things, after all, but he laughed at that. He said it might be genetic, but not in any traditional way. He seemed a little paranoid. He said that he was starting to believe that his life was being manipulated, and that perhaps it always had been and he hadn’t seen things clearly until recently.’ He paused, as if searching for the exact words. ‘Until they’d started to show themselves.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Cass shook his head.

‘I know. Hearing myself now, I should have picked up the warning signs. But these things came in tiny snippets, in what were otherwise perfectly ordinary conversations. Most of the time he sounded happy just listening to me talking about the old times with your dad, and then he’d tell me how his family was doing, and we’d just shoot the breeze, as the Americans would say.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘A couple of weeks ago, after Luke’s last set of tests. I was saying how lucky it was that The Bank gave him private healthcare. He said they gave him more than that, but he didn’t look happy about it. He wouldn’t be drawn, but I got the feeling that he was worried about Luke, and not because of this lethargy he was suffering. It was something else. All he would say was that Luke had never seen the Glow.’

Cass pulled out his cigarettes and offered one to the priest who took it. Cass noticed the other man’s hand was shaking slightly.

‘The old ladies of the parish would kill me if they saw this.’ He took in a long lungful. ‘That’s better. It’s just that . . . thinking about those conversations with Christian: they were like the talks with your father all over again. Uncanny.’

Cass knew what he meant. He’d come looking for answers, and all he’d found were more questions. Who
was
this Mr Bright? And why was this
Glow
so important? Cass dealt in hard evidence, in life and death. You just got on with it. He had no time for the crap that your mind could produce to fuck you up. He gazed over at the far headstones as they sat in silence, smoking.

Finally, he asked quietly, ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Father ?’

‘Depends on the kind you mean. Why?’

‘I’ve been seeing Christian.’

The priest said nothing.

‘I’ve tried ignoring him, but he won’t go away.’ He paused. ‘I think he’s trying to tell me something.’

He turned to look at the old man, all he had left to connect him with his family, and found kind eyes looking wisely back.

‘Then maybe you ought to listen, son.’

‘Trust me, I’m trying.’

‘Then eventually you’ll figure it out.’

Cass smiled. ‘I hope so.’

‘How’s Kate?’

The question threw him and he laughed, more from surprise than humour. ‘Well, put it this way: I’m heading back to London tonight and I’ll be checking into a hotel rather than going home.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ The priest sounded genuinely surprised.

‘Shit happens.’

‘Yes it does.’ Father Michael threw his butt down and ground it out, then bent to pick it up. ‘You’ll have to come back again, Cass. It’s been good to see you. It’s a shame it’s such a short visit, but I imagine you’re at your best when you’re working.’