A Matter of Blood (35 page)

 

When they pulled up outside 54 Arbour Street, Cass looked up. Old habits. Tiles were missing on the roof and the whole façade could have used fresh paint and some pointing around the windows, just like the rest of the terrace. He could see why Solomon had come here. This was not the kind of area where you took the time to get to know your neighbours.

‘God, what a dump,’ Claire muttered as she followed the two men past the overflowing black bin shoved against the wall in the tiny front garden. There’d been no phone number with the address, but five minutes’ gruntwork from someone back at the station had got them the landlord’s home number, and he’d agreed to meet them at the property. He said he needed to make a visit anyway. A couple of the tenants had complained that something was stinking in the drains. He sounded disgruntled. Cass didn’t know what he was complaining about. He only lived five houses away. Perhaps it was just the prospect of having the police in his building that bothered him. Judging by the state of the place, the odd bit of ganga-smoking would be the very least of the sins taking place within those four walls.

Claire’s phone rang as they watched a scruffy man dangling a large bundle of keys make his way towards them. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was the landlord.

‘Sir?’ Claire shut the phone and spoke quietly as they nodded their hellos and followed the irritated man inside. ‘That pay-as-you-go number?’

‘Yeah?’

‘It was part of a batch.’ She paused for effect. ‘Bought by The Bank.’

He stared for a second, a ripple of excitement running through him. Everywhere he turned, something led him back to The Bank.

‘Apparently, twenty sims have been stolen from their stock - they didn’t even know until we called. They keep them in reserve for convenience.’

Of course they do
. ‘Make sure you find out who had access to them.’ He didn’t hold out much hope; no one bothered much about stationery cupboards - who really gave a shit if a bunch of envelopes and Post-it Notes went missing? And while you might count in and out laptops and data storage devices, who would bother with sim cards? Still, it was another small step forward, and one more link to The Bank, and he was not going to bitch about that. He followed the landlord through the door.

Inside, the walls had been painted nicotine-brown, maybe to save worrying about stains. And it was apparent no one ever had: by the payphone someone had thrown something like coffee, leaving rings of darker colour that had never been wiped away and were now there for ever.

‘His room is on the second floor.’ Mark Manning’s reedy voice irritated Cass almost as much as his poor décor choices did. ‘Dodgy, is he? He couldn’t give me a reference but he gave me six months’ rent in advance. Seemed a bit posh for here too. I thought he’d just fallen on hard times or been kicked out by the missus.’ He paused on the landing. ‘Don’t you need a warrant or something?’

‘I think it’s likely your tenant is no longer here.’ Cass was sure of it. After stealing the drugs Solomon wouldn’t have stayed at the same address. It would have been too risky. Thus far everything their killer had done had been planned meticulously. ‘And I’m sure you want us out of your way as soon as possible. Some of your other tenants might not like the idea of having Old Bill lingering for any longer than we have to.’

Manning’s face tightened. ‘I’ve never had any trouble. My tenants keep themselves to themselves.’

Cass figured the landlord and tenants had a happy blind-eye relationship. If Manning hadn’t checked on Solomon in all this time then he probably never came into the property unless it was to collect money. The state of the whole building told him the kind of person who’d be living here. Solomon could have been killing the women in the room and no one would have complained at the noise. The thought wasn’t pleasant. This would be no place to die.

‘I can’t believe he’s moved out and not asked for a refund.’ Manning sniffed. ‘Or at least bloody told me. I could have had a new tenant in here.’

Cass smiled grimly to himself. Sounded as if the room might be just as Solomon had left it, rather than having any trace of him wiped away by someone else’s life, as he’d feared. Not that he expected it to provide much, but you could never tell. They’d found Bradley through trace evidence and a police record. Maybe they’d come up with something here too.

The stairs, barely covered by a threadbare carpet, creaked as they climbed. The paint on the banisters might once have been white, but had faded to a dirty cream, flaking away to expose the wood; Cass tried not to touch it.

The first floor landing had three doors leading off. From behind one came the steady thud of some hip-hop reggae street blend. Behind another, someone was shouting at a crying child. On top of all that was a vague smell that turned his stomach.

Cass tried to keep the disgust off his face, but Claire was having less success. Ramsey followed behind, staying in the background. It wasn’t his case, and he knew better than to become involved. Once you were in, it was hard to get out, and Ramsey’s bosses over at Chelsea wouldn’t be happy with him putting think-time into Paddington’s cases.

On the second floor, Manning rummaged through his ring of keys until he found the right one and slid it in the lock. He threw open the door. ‘It’s all yours.’

It was the stench that hit him first. Sweet and nauseous, and all too familiar.

‘I think we’ve found the cause of the complaints.’ His head twisted away, seeking the stale air of the corridor that was fresh and cool in comparison to the damp warmth inside. Jesus. The small room contained a single bed along one wall, a tall cupboard made of some dark wood and a scratched pine chest of drawers. Almost next to the bed was a small breakfast bar of chipped Formica, with an old oven underneath. Behind that was a sink, with a precariously hung immersion heater above it. There was barely room to walk from the sink to the bed, and Cass wondered if it was even legal to rent it out like this - but he doubted Manning was aiming for clientele with prospects.

But none of that was what had made him catch his breath. His eyes dropped to the flies that covered every surface. They were scattered across the floor like mouse droppings and heaped on the furniture. There must have been hundreds of them. Thousands.
The Man of Flies.

‘God,’ Claire said behind him.

No, not God, Cass thought. Not God at all, just a fucked-up man.

‘What the hell is that smell?’ Manning said.

Cass didn’t answer as he stepped carefully into the room. He was aware that he was crushing evidence beneath his feet, but it was impossible not to. There were too many husks of dead flies for him to avoid them. How had Solomon kept them in here? Had they started as maggots or eggs, and he’d just left them behind? What on God’s good earth could they have fed on? The dead insects covered the windowsill and the kitchen area, too. He stared at the oven. It was set to fifty degrees. Low, but enough to fill the room with warmth if left for a few days. The oven was where the noise was coming from. A low buzzing. There were some flies in the room that were definitely still living. He stared at the greasy door. Something was rotting in there. He turned the oven off, but he left the door shut.
Save the best till last
. One thing was for certain - if the flies in the oven were alive and feeding on something, then it meant that Solomon had returned at some point recently to leave it there. For whom, Cass wondered briefly, before accepting the obvious answer: for them, of course.

He crouched down by the bed and, doing his best to ignore the dead flies, peered under it. ‘I’ve got something,’ he muttered, trying to hold his breath against the dusty stench that permeated the filthy fabric. He pulled out a pen and tried to jockey the notebook towards him until he was able to pull it out.

‘What’s that?’ Manning frowned.

‘Nothing of your concern.’ Cass smiled up at the irritating landlord as he took Ramsey’s proffered cotton handkerchief. He carefully flicked through a couple of pages. There wasn’t much in the book, just a series of numbers, account numbers, maybe, written neatly in blue ink, and then some pages of scribbles.

‘So, what else did you know about this Solomon?’ he asked, getting back to his feet. ‘Did he tell you anything that might give us an idea where he’d go?’

Manning twitched slightly. ‘I didn’t talk to him much, only when he moved in. I didn’t have to collect rent from him like I do with the others. All I know is that he said he used to work at The Bank.’

Bingo
. Cass looked over at Ramsey and smiled. ‘Maybe it’s time to take that laptop back.’

‘But first maybe you should see what’s cooking?’

As Cass did so the flies swarmed free, a great cloud that rushed past, myriad wings brushing his face, spreading the sweet rotten scent as they beat their way out into the corridor and away to freedom.

When Cass opened his eyes again the room was clear. At first he wasn’t sure what the dead thing in the oven had once been. He held his breath and leaned forward, peering into the darkness until he could make out some tufts of fur on the maggoty skin, and the remains of one ear flopped forward.

Mr Solomon had left them a puppy.

 

He despatched Manning to find Claire a cup of tea, which earned him a glare; there was no way she was going to be touching anything that grubby landlord had had his hands on. While the man was out of the way he quickly copied down the page of neatly printed numbers into his own notebook. There were twelve in all, and next to each was printed PASS or FAIL. He frowned as he wrote. Were these part of the tests Solomon had mentioned on the phone? There were only two passes in the twelve. Is that how their killer had judged people to ‘be found wanting’? He didn’t recognise the notes that filled some of the other pages. It looked like poetry. He wrapped the book up in Ramsey’s handkerchief and handed it to the sergeant.

‘Once the forensic team are here, get this to the lab boys. Find out what all this shit is he’s written in here. Looks like poetry. Get it to Hask too, this is probably his field. I want the report on my desk by the end of the day.’ He paused. ‘If Bowman’s back then let him see it, but make sure we keep it - he can have a photocopy for the file. I’ll be on the mobile.’

He felt a bit of a shit for leaving Claire behind, but he had no choice. She could handle Manning, odious little prick that he was. Apart from his recent trip back to leave the poor puppy, Solomon had been gone for months, but the SOC boys should be able to pick up some trace evidence from the room - maybe it would tell them something, maybe it wouldn’t, but they couldn’t look sloppy on this case. DCI Morgan might scream at the mounting costs, but once the hacks were on it even he had to accept that all the angles had to be thoroughly -
publicly -
investigated.

 

The atmosphere wasn’t exactly awkward without Claire in the car, but Cass could feel Ramsey studying him as he drove. He lit a cigarette and opened a window, glad to hear no disapproving noises.

‘So,’ Ramsey finally said, ‘I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but I’ve still got a case of my own to close, and a DCI on my back about it. What do you think happened with your brother? And don’t tell me you haven’t got a theory, because I’m not that stupid.’

‘I’ve got a couple.’ Cass stared at the road and thought carefully about how much to share. ‘I think maybe he uncovered something he shouldn’t have at work and someone shut him up for it.’

‘Like what?’ Ramsey shifted in his seat. ‘Some kind of embezzlement? Did you find something I should know about in that laptop?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out yet.’ It was an honest answer. Although Christian had obviously been digging around in The Bank’s records, and he had discussed personal concerns with Father Michael, Cass couldn’t believe that Bright and some mysterious sub-Bank organisation would have murdered Christian and his family in such an obvious way. It was too crass. And then there was what Solomon had said to him on the phone: that he was sorry about Christian’s death; that it wasn’t anything to do with him . . . Or
them
?

But neither could he believe that Christian had killed his own family. It just refused to ring true. He was missing something, and as much as Mr Bright and Solomon were entwined with his own family’s lives, this was about something different. He was sure of it.

‘Just about everyone is into The Bank in some way or another - personal or business account, loan, mortgage, insurance - you name it, they’ve got it.’

‘I tried the laptop,’ Ramsey said, ‘and couldn’t get into it. I take it you figured out his password?’

‘Yeah - but it all looked straightforward to me.’ Cass didn’t look at the other man. He wasn’t about to start trying to explain hidden files on his family, or photos with people in them that couldn’t be there. That was private business. That was an investigation for another time.

‘What about the evidence against you?’ There was nothing accusatory in his tone.

‘That’s more of a sticking point.’ Cass found that he didn’t mind opening up at least a little to Ramsey. He liked him, and he had to talk to someone. ‘The only reason someone would want to do that would be to get me off a case, and the only one I’m working that I could think of was Jackson and Miller.’

‘But isn’t that now solved?’

‘So they say.’

‘You think there’s more to it?’

Cass flicked the butt of his cigarette out into the street. ‘Let’s just say that I’m making further enquiries. But whichever way I look at it, some person or persons unknown wanted me off that case, and they used the deaths of my brother and his family to make that happen.’

Ramsey sighed deeply. ‘And there’s only one way fingerprint and bodily fluids could have come to be where they did.’

‘Exactly. Someone’s been paid to make me look dirty. And let’s face it, it could be any number of people.’