The Shadow of the Soul (30 page)

In the meantime he had one thing he could do. He sent Perry Jordan a text telling him to find out the whereabouts of a London doctor called Richard Shearman, and to email him the details. He was probably working privately somewhere, maybe within a Flush5 hospital.

The numbness that crept over his teeth and up his nose was pleasant, as was the confidence that came with it. He’d find out what the fuck was going on and he’d deal with it.

He grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge and turned the TV on, needing the background noise to help him refocus. There was nothing more he could do tonight. He thought about trying Mr Bright again, but decided against it. There were no answers to be had there, and whatever deal they’d done, Cass didn’t trust him. Did he have something to do with this set-up, or was it whoever was behind Abigail Porter’s disappearance? Either way, for now his communication with Mr Bright was done.

‘I believe that Alison McDonnell has served her country well in the past, but it is with some regret that I say that I no longer trust that she is competent for the great office she holds.’ On screen the Home Secretary was trying to make himself heard over the jostling journalists pressing cameras into his face and shouting questions. ‘Yes, I do intend to challenge her for the leadership of our party. I believe that I have the support of those on our benches, both the front and the back, who want the best for our government and,
more importantly, for the people of Great Britain.’

‘Do you have any comment on the alleged assassination attempt?’ a faceless voice asked from somewhere behind the thrusting microphone.

‘I can’t comment on that at the moment, but have called for an official inquiry into those events. I find it hard to believe that any politician would consider creating false terror in these already strained times in order to bolster their public opinion; however, there are several security issues that I will be raising with the inquiry.’

Cass swallowed his beer. Fuck, with friends like that, the PM really didn’t need enemies. By denying that McDonnell had been involved in whatever had led Abigail Porter down to Covent Garden Underground Station, he’d raised the question in the minds of those who maybe hadn’t thought it before.

The camera cut to the woman herself. She looked tired and beyond strained. ‘I have nothing to say at this time except that I’m confident that I will continue to have the support of my Cabinet colleagues and the rest of the party at this time.’

She didn’t look convinced, and neither did the tight bundle of people around her as they all disappeared back inside 10 Downing Street. One man turned, his eyes calmly scanning the small crowd of journalists who had been allowed up the famous road. He must have been Abigail Porter’s replacement, Cass figured. As the door closed, he could only imagine the collective slumping of shoulders on the other side. He sympathised with McDonnell – he knew only too well how it felt to have someone coming after you, and whatever had happened on that Underground platform, none of it had been the Prime Minister’s fault. It wasn’t she who had arranged it. It wasn’t about
her
at all.

By the open window he lit a cigarette and peered out. Where was the musical tramp when he needed him? He might have seen whoever had broken in and taken his knife. But it looked like the old man had taken a couple of nights off, just when he might have been useful. The night air was cool; Cass liked its freshness against his skin. It made him feel alive when he was surrounded by the impatience of the dead.

Despite finding a link between the kids, they were still technically no further in finding out what had caused them to kill themselves, and his stomach tightened as he remembered the hope in the eyes of Cory Denter’s mother. It reminded him of another pair of pleading dark eyes, much younger, and long dead. Cass had blown that kid’s face away.
He had no glow. Chaos in the darkness
. The thoughts drifted in the dark spaces of his mind, adrift from the normal.

He was heading towards letting Mrs Denter down, unless it began to look like Cory Denter might have been murdered too, but that was unlikely. Whatever had happened to Cory had been something less ordinary than murder. A breath of smoke drifted free for a brief moment before being ripped apart by the London breeze. Murder. Within a couple of days it was possible that someone might be coming after him for that if he wasn’t careful, and then the dead kids would be someone else’s problem. They could take hold of someone else’s soul. He wasn’t sure they’d leave quietly, though; the dead seemed to like his company.

Powell’s dying face refused to stray far from his mind, and as it rose up once again, Cass remembered the power he’d felt knowing the man was dying: that overwhelming sense of anger and vengeance. Even now, so many years and so much guilt later, he was still Charlie Sutton. He’d shot that kid, and he’d felt almost nothing watching Powell die.
That wasn’t natural. How much black was there in his soul?

His thoughts froze and he frowned as an image filled the screen. It was a photograph, a head-shot of a man laughing: Dr Andrew Gibbs. He sat down and turned the volume up.

…
stabbed to death by an unknown stranger in the hospital car park after finishing his shift in Accident and Emergency. His death is prompting calls for better security
… Two images came up, obviously taken from the cheap car park cameras that should have been replaced ten years ago. The first was of two men standing beside a car. The other showed a tall man with shoulder-length dark hair in a long overcoat as he walked away. His face wasn’t visible, but he looked nothing like Cass.

Mixed emotions thudded through his veins as the news moved swiftly on. The doctor’s death had had its allocated fifteen seconds. The relief that there would now be a suspect in the Powell case other than him was good, but it didn’t pierce the web of grey worry that clung to him: Gibbs was dead, as was Powell, so what was the purpose of their murders? Was it simply to implicate Cass, or was that just an added bonus while stopping the trail to Luke? Was someone else looking for the boy, too?
Why
were they so interested in his brother’s child anyway – what the fuck was it the Network found so special about the Jones family? And who was the woman who’d called him?
The boy is the key. Don’t let them keep the boy
. Her words echoed those his dead brother had spoken six months and a lifetime ago.
Redemption is the key
. There were too many keys to unlock too many secrets.

The answerable questions hung around him in the flat that felt much less like home since a stranger had been inside. The chair beneath him was an unfamiliar shape. The
colours in the room were a shade off-kilter. The world was shifting again, leaving the ground unsteady beneath his feet as something unseen nudged him into his place in the game. He felt entirely alone. It wasn’t the first time.

E
lroy Peterson finally stopped screaming as the machines around him powered down and one of the technicians slowly removed the various pieces of equipment from over his eyes and head, as well the monitors from his chest. There were no goosebumps on his bare torso, but Mr Bright wasn’t surprised – the Experiment rooms were kept hot. The students were able to travel further that way. Perhaps it was the contrast with the cold
out there
. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t need to understand why; it was enough for him to know that it helped. His remit had always been the bigger picture.

The boy’s eyes were wide and dark and there were flecks of blood lining the edges of his pupils. His whole body trembled and sweat dripped from his hairline. The doctors had been unanimous in agreeing that the procedure was causing the subjects brain damage, and Mr Bright wasn’t surprised. They never came back whole, and with each attempt it looked like they left a little more behind. In this, they were all united: this boy, the ones who had killed themselves, and those like Rasnic, whose
Glow
had been ripped from them, leaving them empty and mad and very, very human.

The young man sobbed quietly, and Mr Bright felt pity for his pain. Still, within an hour all memory of his time
here would be forgotten and he’d be free of the Experiment until his feet led him back to take part again. He’d been a good find, this one. He’d gone further than any of the rest as the equipment sent his consciousness up and out through the Hubble to the darkness beyond.

‘What did you see?’ he asked. He didn’t normally take much interest in the subjects themselves, but as he was here and this one was unusual, his curiosity got the better of him. Perhaps the events of the day had made him nostalgic.

‘It was beautiful,’ the boy breathed. ‘It was terrible.’ His forehead knotted as he searched for a word in his damaged mind. ‘Chaos,’ he said eventually.

‘Yes, that’s it.’ Mr Bright smiled.

‘So much darkness, and then chaos. Chaos in the darkness.’ He tilted his head. The technician continued to put the equipment away, paying no attention to the boy’s words.

Mr Bright leaned forward.

‘What else?’

‘They’re still screaming.’ Elroy Peterson gave no indication that he’d heard the silver-haired man’s words. ‘
I’m
still screaming. I can still hear it.’ He blinked rapidly. ‘It’s behind my eyes.’

‘Could you see the colours? Could you see beyond?’

‘Colours.’ The pupils widened again. ‘So many colours. New colours.’ His hands clutched at the sides of his head. ‘I remembered.’ Tears ran down his sweating cheeks. ‘I remembered.’

Mr Bright watched him impassively. In many ways they were dull and predictable, but somewhere in their circuitry these first flawed failures had the memory of all that had been. He felt a sudden wave of fondness for them, one that he hadn’t felt in very many years. Perhaps it was good for him to take time to remember.

‘You have to look for the lines.’ His voice was soft and filled with kindness. ‘Next time, you find the lines.’

‘I can’t,’ Peterson whispered, his voice thick with snot. ‘I can’t.’

Mr Bright stood, and stroked the boy’s hot head with his cool, dry palm. ‘Of course you can.’ If he couldn’t, then eventually one would surely come along who could. Despite his small wave of nostalgia, he himself had no desire to take the walkways, or even to see them again, but if anyone were to have the knowledge of where they were, then he wanted it to be him. He would protect that for the First in the ways he thought fit. He turned and left the disturbed young man to dress in peace, happy to get out of the stifling heat.

The walkways hadn’t crossed his mind in aeons, not until the Dying came and those among his own number had started clamouring for the Experiment to find their way home. Now he found that the very concept plagued him. The Network might not be able to find them, but that didn’t mean that there hadn’t been traffic from the other end. Who would know if there had been visitors among them, looking perhaps to see what they had achieved? He wouldn’t necessarily send an emissary, that wasn’t how he worked.

There were rumours, of course, but these days there were always rumours of something. But perhaps he should take a little more care – if suspicion of the boy’s existence got back, then who knew what the outcome would be? Perhaps he would care, perhaps not: it was always so difficult to tell with
him
. His moods had never been predictable. Mr Bright stopped a passing technician.

‘Tell the doctors to raise the intensity on this one when we start up again. Undo his hypnosis for now, just like the others; I don’t want them coming here for a couple of weeks. But keep track of him. We’ll need him again.’

His mobile phone rang and he smiled as he listened to the voice on the other end. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back shortly. Deal with the arrangements; I don’t want any mess. You can access his passport information and bank accounts if you follow the instructions I left.’ He paused. ‘Good. I don’t need the details. I’m sure you can make it believable.’

On his way back down to the earthy grit of London at street level he considered calling the other three and confronting them, but whoever was attempting to betray him and their age-old alliance would never be drawn into admitting it. They were all too strong, and in these times of slow decay and
ennui
, teeth were being bared within all the Cohorts. He would not show weakness. He was
not
weak, and someone was underestimating him quite badly if they thought he could be so easily overthrown. Still, he thought as he left the bright confines of Senate House behind, they would learn. He ignored a small group of laughing students who jostled past him, drunkenly hugging and winding round each other with all the joy and power and false glory of youth. They in turn ignored him as he stepped into the sleek black car and let it speed him away into what was shaping up to be a very long night.

Two hours later he was feeling mildly exasperated by the man tied securely to a chair in what he still thought of as Mr Solomon’s office. Blood was splattered across the crimson carpet, but the mess was of no concern. Solomon had ripped a man apart in this room and his blood had been cleaned up easily enough. Scotchguarding, it would appear, really did work. Red’s frenzied crying had finally diminished somewhat. He looked somewhat thinner and more pathetic without his crisp shirt and couture suit. There were burn marks on his chest and three of his teeth were missing. It
hadn’t been a pleasant process, Mr Bright was sure, but it had been necessary.

Mr Bright himself hadn’t watched. He’d been sipping camomile tea and reading the papers in the cool calm of the lounge while the two professionals had briskly gone to work. He trusted them to do what they did best, and at the end of the day, he wasn’t a monster. He’d lived too long and seen too much to relish watching a man being broken in order to speak the truth. As it turned out, Asher Red had taken very little breaking.

A vague sense of disgust washed over him as he waited for the man in the chair to collect himself. The windows were closed, as was the door, and an unpleasant tang hung in the room. The old saying was true: fear really did stink. Asher Red had always been so smooth and calm and contained, with an air of arrogance and superiority that few of his peers had ever dared challenge. Perhaps it was the contrast of that image with the pathetic husk of a man dribbling blood and saliva into his own stained lap that made the scent so sour.

Mr Solomon had always disliked Asher Red. He’d called him a man in denial of his own humanity: an overblown peacock. Perhaps Solomon had been right. Mr Bright had neither liked nor disliked the man, but he had put an element of faith in him. His father had served the Network well, and he’d always presumed the son to have the same qualities, but it would appear that was not the case. His terrible ambition had made a fool out of him; the pen-pusher had been around power so long, he clearly thought it belonged with him. But he had been stupid in too many ways, and he’d sold himself cheaply – perhaps not in terms of money, but certainly in terms of information. The Network had so many assets that money was of no value.
Information, on the other hand, was always a commodity.

‘So, you never met them face to face?’

‘No.’ Asher Red’s voice was barely recognisable through his swollen lips and bleeding mouth. ‘It was all through emails and phone calls. They promised me a place in the Network. They said I had the
Glow
.’ He looked up, his eyes pleading for some kind of understanding. ‘They promised me that under the new regime I would have my own sector. I would be someone. One of
you
. They said I would live here.’ He sobbed again, and Mr Bright thought it was well that he should. The man was a fool. Had it not occurred to him that if his secret partner felt he was so special, why had he never shown his face, or given him a name or two? Had Red really been that arrogant that he hadn’t seen how expendable he was?

‘What do you know about the women?’ Mr Bright asked.

‘I already told you.’ Asher Red managed a small, helpless shrug. ‘I had to set up a Hotmail account for each one. I contacted them with a precise message when I was told to. I met them at the Lathan Hilton.’ He blubbed out fresh tears as the stupidity of what he’d done finally hit home. ‘They’d told me there were no cameras, that I wouldn’t be seen.’ A thick line of mucus hung from his nose. ‘I believed them. I kept each girl until I got a call saying a car was ready for them at the back of the hotel. I took them down and I didn’t see them after that. They were strange, almost like they were sedated.’ He sniffed, but the stream of snot refused to shift. ‘And that’s everything, I promise you. I haven’t heard from him since.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ Mr Bright believed him. ‘You were just a lackey, and you’ve done your task.’ He let out a long breath. ‘Your father would have been disappointed if he’d been here. He was an intelligent man. He understood loyalty. He was
respected.’ He let his voice linger over the last word, before moving over to the door. He needed some clean air, and perhaps a strong coffee.

‘What are you going to do with me?’ Asher Red asked so quietly that the tremulous words barely made it across the room.

Mr Bright didn’t answer, but quietly closed the door behind him. Asher Red was in no place to be asking questions. His own office next door was a pleasant relief. There was no scent of fear staining the surfaces, and the temperature of the air was pleasant; neither too hot nor too cool. He poured himself a coffee from the freshly brewed pot and sat behind his large desk. The three women’s folders were neatly lined in a row, their photos on top. He needed to look into their family backgrounds if he was to find out who was manipulating them.

A red light flashed on the large phone and he answered it on loudspeaker.

DeVore said, ‘All three women
were
projected, fifteen years ago when they were teenagers. I fed their images in and searched the data stream. The results were one hundred per cent.’

Fifteen years ago these women were flagged up by the Interventionists?
He looked down at the files again. What had made them so important? They had been to someone, however. And that someone had clearly spent the years since playing the long game. He felt a small flash of respect for his mystery opponent. ‘Why? What questions were asked? Were they requested information, or just random data?’

‘I don’t know.’ DeVore sounded tired, but Mr Bright didn’t care. There had been a time when it had taken far more than several sleepless nights to bring on even the hint
of fatigue. They’d grown soft. Maybe that’s why death had finally come among them.

‘But each woman was projected from one of the three who left their hard reflections behind and subsequently died,’ DeVore added.

‘I want to know why.’ If they had come from the three dead Interventionists, then the display of their faces in the stream fifteen years ago would not be coincidental. They either projected them purposefully, or someone asked them a question which produced those women as the answer. But who?

‘The only people who put questions to them are us: the Inner and First Cohort.’

‘I know that.’ Mr Bright tried to keep the impatience out of his voice, but didn’t succeed. Perhaps some of their own were as intellectually challenged as Asher Red – or maybe they had just been here so long they’d forgotten who they really were. ‘Go through the data again, and again if you have to, until you can give me something more.’

He ended the call and leaned back in the vast leather chair. He pushed a button under the desk and his computer rose up from within its surface. Another button turned on the slim TV on the wall, which was tuned to the 24-hour news channels. Anything else was unnecessary. He watched for a few moments. The leadership debate was now in full swing, with various Cabinet ministers coming out with their knives. On other channels images of the destruction caused by the recent spate of international bombings still raged out from the screen.

Everything was unsettled. The world was already financially on its knees and now
someone
– one of their own – was intent on unbalancing it further. Whoever it was wouldn’t be working alone either. They’d invaded the House
of Intervention and used those poor freaks to wreak havoc. The challenge was coming – but from where, and why? He looked again at the three women’s files. Fifteen years of planning at least. He had been watching the Jones family for the greater good of all, but who had been watching these women? He needed to go through the X accounts and that was going to take some time. Asher Red was going to have to wait a while for his answer.