A Matter of Blood (34 page)

The director of the rescue centre was a middle-aged woman called Sheena Joyce. She walked with a slight hunch, and Cass wondered whether it was arthritis or another degenerative condition, or an accident. As she shut out the barking that had accompanied their walk past the rows of kennels that led to her offices, she leaned on the door for a moment and sighed.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I think the place was designed so that anyone visiting would have to see the animals, and hopefully take pity on one. Unfortunately I have no room for more at home, but I still have to pass them every time I need to use my office.’ She dropped into the chair behind her desk. ‘But to be honest, that isn’t often.’

Cass didn’t envy her. However much you loved animals, that constant noise must drive you mad. It was a tatty old place. He’d noticed a lot of the dogs were two to a kennel, and he figured it would be the same with the cats. The director looked like she could use a make-over as much as the building. Now that they were in the well-lit office, he could see that she couldn’t be more than fifty, and she had the look of an ageing Brigitte Bardot, her thick grey hair piled into a loose chignon, though without the heavy make-up, not even a lick of mascara. He wondered if she’d look better after a decent night’s sleep; she was obviously running on fumes. Despite all that, she had what was probably a completely unintentional quirky bohemian look.

‘So, this is about the Pentobarbital theft, is it?’

‘That’s right,’ Cass said. ‘We’re sorry that it got lost in the system.’

‘Why are you all interested now?’ Her eyes were tired, but they glittered with intelligence.

‘Why didn’t you chase up the report?’ Cass ignored her question. ‘Pento’s a controlled drug - and a lethal substance at that - and it’s not like whoever stole it wanted it for a good purpose, is it? I’d have thought you’d expected at least one visit from the police.’

She watched him steadily for a moment and then leaned back in her chair. ‘I suppose I didn’t want to draw attention to malpractice within the shelter.’ She shrugged slightly. ‘A scandal could lose us funding and things are tough enough as it is. If I’d been here, the theft probably wouldn’t have been reported in the first place.’

‘Malpractice? What happened?’

‘The business of running a shelter has never been easy, even at the best of times. It’s almost impossible now. The first thing people dump when money’s tight is the family pet. First the cats, and then the dogs; our intake has more than tripled. The bigger problem is the sheer number of strays out there: they’re not getting neutered, so they go on reproducing. The feral animal population has increased massively, especially in these poorer areas. People used to say wherever you were in the city, you were never more than a few feet away from a rat. Now it’s cats. Keep your eyes open. You’ll see what I mean.’

‘At least the cats must be keeping the rats down,’ Cass said with a wry grin. ‘And how does this affect the theft?’

The director ignored his poor attempt at humour. ‘I’m getting there. This could be the end of my career, so let me tell it in my own time.’ She paused as the door opened and a young girl in scrubs brought in a tray with four mugs of coffee and a jug of milk. Cass took one and sipped it gratefully.

‘You have better coffee than we do.’ He smiled. He liked this tired woman with her crisply efficient voice.

‘Better behaved inmates too, I should imagine.’ She added a little milk to her own cup. ‘Anyway, as our numbers have been increasing, so our funding has been decreasing. Battersea’s the high-profile London shelter, always has been, so we’re left with the scraps, even though we have twice as many abandoned animals to deal with, not to mention a much poorer local constituency. As well as having to run this place on very limited finances, I’m also chief veterinary officer. We can’t afford many full-time staff, so most of our helpers are volunteers, like young Stacey who brought the coffee in. She’s a student, comes down when she’s not at lectures, but we also have a lot of unemployed people who want to feel useful. To be honest, without them, we couldn’t keep going.’

‘And one of the volunteers took the drug?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’ She looked around the dilapidated office. ‘Pentobarbital is a controlled substance, for veterinary use only, and we keep it locked up.’ She paused. ‘Normally.’ She took a sip of her coffee and went on, ‘We have two vets onsite, but as I’ve been saying, times have changed, and we can no longer keep every animal that’s brought in to us. We certainly can’t care for all the newborns that get brought in - or are left dumped on our doorstep.’ For the first time her eyes slid away from Cass’s.

‘We vets, we train to save animals. But we’ve had no choice but to go back to the dark old days, when any unwanted animal is automatically put to sleep. And trust me, it’s not a job I’d wish on anyone. It’s soul-destroying.’ She looked back up. ‘It’ll be easier for you to understand if I show you. You’ll want to see where the drug went from anyway. Follow me.’

She took them out through the kennels and into a separate block where the cats were kept. Cass was relieved to note the felines were far less interested in them than they were in sleeping.

‘Here you go.’ She typed in a code to a room at the back and opened the door. ‘There’s my afternoon’s work once you’ve gone.’

A cacophony of tiny mewls and squeaks filled the room, escaping from the cardboard boxes that littered the floor. Cass crouched and opened one to reveal eight tiny black and white kittens stumbling over each other. He looked around him.

‘There must be ten boxes in here - twelve maybe,’ Claire said. ‘You have to put all these to sleep?’

Ramsey stood in the doorway, saying nothing, but Cass could see her revulsion mirrored on his face. He closed the box. It was the innocence that did it. He could feel bile curdling at the back of his throat.

‘We had a new volunteer. He was only here a month. He wasn’t like the others.’ Sheena Joyce sat on the bench and looked mournfully at the boxes that awaited her. ‘I was working in here’ - she let out a small, sad laugh at the irony of her words - ‘and I must have not shut the door properly. Anyway, suddenly he was just standing there. I had the syringe in one hand, a kitten in the other, and I was crying.’ She stopped, and swallowed. ‘He had a presence about him. A stillness. He sat beside me and told me it was all right, and before I knew what had happened, he had the animal in his hands and he’d injected it. He told me I’d done enough, that he could take care of this.’ She took a deep breath to control the tears welling in her eyes. Her voice shook. ‘And God help me, I let him.’

‘That’s what this man did for you?’

She nodded. ‘I shouldn’t have let him. None of us should. Even these days you still need a euthanasia licence to put animals to sleep. But I just couldn’t do it any more. I needed a break. Neither I nor Martin - the other vet - could reconcile ourselves to spending half the day trying to save animal lives and then the other half quietly taking them before they’d even begun.’ She chewed her bottom lip. ‘And he was so kind and calm. If I’d thought he was getting any kind of thrill out of it, obviously it would have stopped immediately.’ She lifted a hand and rubbed her lip. ‘It was just such a relief.’ She sighed. ‘But then one day he just didn’t show up. We tried to avoid all this’ - she waved her hand at the cardboard boxes - ‘and managed about a week, but there was no way we could feed them all, let alone look after them as they needed. Martin was working a night shift when he came back to start taking care of it. He noticed the 500ml of Pentobarb was missing.’

‘Not before?’

‘No, we keep separate supplies. There’s 400ml down in the hospital area, and more up here, obviously. He’d taken the largest bottle and a box of syringes.’

‘How many animals could he kill with that?’ Claire’s question was careful, and once again Cass was grateful he had such a clever sergeant. This poor woman had enough to deal with already; she didn’t need to know that her weakness might have helped get five women murdered. Not yet, at any rate.

‘Recommended dose is 4ml per 10 kilos.’

Cass did the sums.
Jesus Christ - how many women was this bastard intending to kill?

‘What was his name, Ms Joyce? And have you got an address for him?’ He’d probably have used a false name, but the address might give them something, even if he’d moved on already.

‘Yes, of course, I should have said. His name was Solomon. Mr Solomon. I’ve got the address in my office.’ She frowned a little as something dawned on her. ‘I never got his first name.’

Cass’s mouth drained dry. Mr Solomon.
The Solomon and Bright Mining Corps
. He turned and stared back through the doorway, picturing the photograph of his parents standing in front of that sign. It had been taken thirty years ago. Could Bright and his partner
both
have sons who were somehow now linked?
Don’t trust them
, that’s what the caller,
Solomon
, had said.
They have their own agenda
. Don’t trust who? The police? The Bank? This shadowy X-account organisation both Bright and Solomon had connections with?

‘Something you want to share?’

Ramsay’s question broke the moment and Cass looked up. For an instant he thought he saw pale yellow light shining at the corner of the other detective’s eyes.
The Glow
. He blinked it away. What the fuck was going on? He could feel Christian, Bright, and now this Solomon winding themselves around him, tangling him in a web of murder and lies.

‘No. It’s nothing.’ He forced a thin smile. Kittens mewled at his feet. ‘I was just trying to figure out if I knew the name from somewhere. But no. Sorry.’ He shut the door firmly, hearing the lock click back into place, and pushed past Ramsey to catch up with the director.

‘How old was he, Ms Joyce, this Mr Solomon?’

‘Hard to say exactly. My gut instinct is to say about thirty, but really, he could be anywhere up to forty-five.’ She smiled a little. ‘He was a good-looking man. He had thick golden hair . . . but he had old eyes.’ They made their way back through the barrage of barking towards her office. ‘They say some people are old souls, you know that expression?’ she added.

Cass shook his head.

‘I’ve got a friend who believes in reincarnation; she said there are people whose souls have lived many times. If there are such people, then I’d say Solomon was one of them. He was a relatively young man, but he had the air of someone tired, and wise beyond his years.’

‘He had quite an impact on you,’ Claire said.

‘Oh yes. He was quiet, but he spoke well - I got the impression that before the economy collapsed he must have had a very good job.’ She tilted her head reflectively. ‘He drew you to him, somehow. I wouldn’t have given him the responsibility that I did if he hadn’t had that certain something.’

‘Charisma?’

Sheena Joyce smiled a little wistfully. ‘Yes, I suppose that was probably it.’

Cass registered Claire’s quiet excitement as the director turned away to rummage through a filing cabinet. She was thinking of Hask’s profile: over thirty, charismatic, intelligent.
Solomon and Bright
. Wheels within wheels. Solomon must have watched Bright organise the film to be sent to Cass, then left a body there, just to get at the other man. These two men were obviously playing some kind of game of their own, and he and his family were involved somehow. He didn’t like it, not one bit.

‘Ah, here we go.’ She handed the form over. ‘It’s a White-chapel address. Arbour Street. Shouldn’t take you long from here.’

Cass handed it back, but she shook her head. ‘I presume you’re going to need it for your records. I know what I did was terribly wrong, and I imagine I’ll lose my job over it.’ Her eyes clouded over and Cass knew her thoughts were back in the locked room in the cattery. ‘In many ways that will be a relief . . . but if you could try and keep the shelter out of things as much as possible . . .’ She turned her head away, trying to hide her brimming eyes. ‘It’s not the fault of the animals,’ she said softly. She tugged out a tissue and blew her nose, regaining her balance. ‘Right. I’d better see you out.’

‘I’ll try my best, Ms Joyce,’ Cass said, and he meant it. ‘I’ll keep it as quiet as I can, but I can’t promise anything.’ Unfortunately, he meant that too. If they closed this case, the papers would be tearing the world apart for the details.

The smile she gave him quite transformed her face, and Cass was relieved to see no unnatural light in the corners of her eyes. Ramsey’s were normal again too. It was just psychosomatic, he told himself. You’re tired and overwhelmed. There was no Glow. There never was. His dad had been deluded and that delusion had infected Christian. A long-buried memory rose in a dark corner of his mind but he crushed it before it could blossom into a thought and he headed out into the noise.

Dogs leapt at the wire mesh cage fronts, every one of them wagging their tail furiously and barking for attention. It was a huge relief when they stepped out into the sunshine, shutting the racket away. Ms Joyce followed them down to the car park and waited as they found the Audi and pulled away. As her figure diminished in the rear-view mirror, she looked fragile, Cass thought. He hoped she wouldn’t become another of Solomon’s victims, destroyed in his wake rather than by his touch.