A
bigail Porter scanned the room as the PM and the foreign ministers from Chechnya and Russia respectively smiled and nodded at the flashing cameras and declared how happy they were with the peace talks. She didn’t have to listen to know what was being said:
Although no final agreements have been reached we are confident that all parties are moving in the right direction to secure more friendly relations between these two proud nations –
some bullshit like that. She’d heard enough of these speeches from trips to the Middle East and China, about all those suicidal little countries that were eager to self-destruct, as long as they were taking someone else out with them.
The room was barely half-full after this afternoon’s bombs, with only a select few journalists allowed access to the short post-dinner press conference. Security on the way in had been beyond tight. As Barker, Number 10’s press officer, took to the microphone, the three politicians slipped into a side-room, Abigail falling in behind them. Her job was not the security of all; only the security of the stolid, serious woman who had been elected to run the country.
In the quiet office the smiles fell away from the Eastern Europeans as if their weight had been unbearable. The Prime Minister poured both men a brandy, and took one herself. For a moment none of them spoke.
‘I’m sorry your visits couldn’t have ended on a happier note,’ Alison McDonnell said after swirling her brandy, sniffing it, then taking a sip, ‘but after today’s events the inability of your nations to get on with each other is no longer my immediate concern.’
Abigail could see that her boss was exhausted. Cracks were visible in her usually impeccable make-up, which sat uncomfortably on her drained face.
‘Let me reassure you once again,’ the Russian started, his thick accent sounding grumbling as he spoke, ‘these terrible events had nothing to do with Russia. We have always considered the United Kingdom to be among our friends.’
‘As have we.’ The Chechen Foreign Minister glared at the Russian. ‘But this you know. Chechnya does not have the capability to organise such attack on your capital.’
‘Don’t treat me like I’m naïve, Mr Maskadhov. Of course you do. Your people have survived through terrorism.’
The other man stood up abruptly, and she raised her hands. ‘I’m sorry. That was harsh, perhaps, and poorly expressed – but you understand my concerns. Hundreds of British citizens died today, and I am quite sure you are aware it will not look good for any future talks if either of your nations is found to bear any responsibility.’
‘You will have our full support in your investigation, and our own security forces will be on hand to assist, should you need them.’
She smiled at the Russian. ‘How kind,
gaspadeen
Nemov. If only you’d been so generous and shared your intel earlier – I’m aware your agencies had knowledge of a potential attack. Perhaps next time you’ll pass that on before it’s too late?’
‘Unfortunately,’ Nemov replied smoothly, ‘there are too many threats every day, and it is not always easy to know which are serious. And the one to which I think you are
referring was not this kind of threat. It was …’ he hesitated, then continued, ‘more personal, shall we say.’
Ignoring the crackling voices in her ear alerting her to the dignitaries’ cars arriving, cleared by security, Abigail homed in on his comment.
More personal?
So the intel the Russians had uncovered was for an attack on McDonnell herself. The news didn’t surprise or overly concern her. The nation’s security level had been rated critical ever since the Eurotunnel disaster, and no one was keen to lower it, not even down to severe. There were too many threats constantly flooding the system. Still, Russian intel was normally reliable; maybe they were just a little off with their interpretation of the target. London certainly got hit today.
‘Perhaps whichever MI6 agents you have in our services’ – Nemov smiled, before draining his brandy – ‘should pay more attention to the detail.’
Abigail stepped forward and filled the space occupied by tense silence. ‘Prime Minister, gentlemen, your cars are ready and your routes are secured.’ As she spoke she saw the tiniest flicker of a smile on the PM’s face. Abigail didn’t blame her. This was a day that everyone wanted to be over.
By midnight her relief had arrived and within fifteen minutes Abigail had changed into her jogging suit and trainers and was running past the guards, who let her out of the small gate at the bottom of Downing Street. Her feet thumped out a steady beat as she ran around St James’ Park and then headed along the Embankment and up into the old city towards her flat, just off Fleet Street. It wasn’t a long or particularly taxing run, but it did help her unwind for the night. There had been a time when she would have used the clear air to calm down and sort the rush of thoughts that
filled her head, but recently she found she simply switched it all off and let the physical take over.
Around her, London was deathly still, but already invisible people had stuck pictures of the missing up on lamp posts and the thick grey stone that lined the river, and paper flapped in the light breeze. She didn’t pause. People died every day. She let the emptiness take her. There was a comfort in it.
She was nearly home when a figure caught her eye, a man on the other side of the road, in a dark suit. A very fat man in a dark suit.
She stopped, her heart still pounding from the exercise, and frowned. What was he doing out tonight? And at this time, after everything that had happened? Her skin tingled with something that wasn’t fear or unease but something
other
, something indefinable at her very core. She didn’t move. He was strange. A
stranger
– instinct told her that. Her thoughts had stilled, but her eyes continued with the tasks she had been so well trained in. She scanned his large body: the pale hands that hung straight at his sides held no posters or papers, so he wasn’t looking for a missing loved one. The suit was tight against his round body, and although she couldn’t be completely certain, there were no tell-tale breaks in the line hinting at a concealed weapon – plus the three buttons that ran down the middle were neatly done up, making it difficult for a quick attack.
She watched him while she consciously slowed her breathing, the only noise in the quiet night. He stood next to an old-fashioned red phone box, and for a moment they faced each other across the deserted tarmac. Despite his bulk he looked ill, or perhaps more as if sickness was his natural state. He was pale, his visible skin almost marbling in the streetlights. He didn’t smile, and she was too far
away to make out the expression in his dark eyes. Her feet shuffled, breaking the stillness.
‘What do you want?’ she called over to him. The words surprised her. She’d meant to ask if he was okay, or if he was lost, but somehow that wasn’t the question that came out. Maybe it came from that
other
feeling, the one she couldn’t put her finger on. He wanted something, this stranger, she was sure. And he wanted it specifically from her.
He raised one finger to his lips. The air around her softened and settled in her lungs. For a moment the emptiness was all, and then he walked away, his back stiff, his movements precise as he turned the corner and headed down a gloomy alleyway. As Abigail watched him go, part of her brain thought she should run after him, but her feet didn’t move.
I’ll see him again
. The thought anchored itself in her mind for a moment before drifting away.
She shook herself. She peered into the alleyway, but there was no one there. The weirdness of the moment slunk away into the night and she shivered a little as her running sweat dried. It had been a long day, that was all: just a long day filled with death. She needed to sleep. She walked the rest of the short way home and she didn’t look back. Whoever the man was, he was gone.
Inside her practical, modern and impersonal flat she stretched for twenty minutes and then headed for a long shower. The water was almost hot enough to burn and her taut skin was pink when she stepped out. She wasn’t sure she’d even really felt it.
It was two a.m. when she set her alarm for 6.30 and let her eyes close. She fell asleep quickly, her head uncluttered with any mundane trivia of emotion and reflection. At some point during the short course of her adult life she’d found that where others’ lives were getting filled with more people,
and families, and mortgages, hers was emptying. There had been no serious boyfriend in nearly five years, despite her sensual good looks. She had sex when the urge came on her, and she found that she didn’t much mind whether it was with a man or woman, but male or female, she avoided any more than a second or third date. What was the point? They were all incidental; a virus spread across the earth. Nature’s accident, that’s all anyone was – herself included. There was neither logic nor rhyme nor reason to it.
She would live out her time alone. Her flat was rented so she could leave at a moment’s notice, should she choose, and what possessions she had, though expensive, were all necessary. Life was fleeting. There was no point in trying to anchor yourself with things.
It was only just before unconsciousness claimed her that she realised she hadn’t thought to check on Hayley today, to see if she had been affected by the attacks. The thought made her soul tremble. Even for her, there was too much that was wrong in that inaction. How could she not have checked?
How could she not have cared?
Her heart thumped loudly for a beat or two and then settled into its normal slow march. Their parents would have checked on her. If anything had happened to Hayley, they would have called. She let that thought calm her, even though she knew it didn’t touch the problem.
She
was the problem.
When she slept, she dreamed of running through endless corridors of darkness chasing a strip of glowing gold light that was always out of reach. She wouldn’t remember it in the morning. She never did.
Katie Dodds had turned the TV off an hour or so ago, and since then had just stared at the ceiling. She was barely aware of the sharp knife in her hand. The news had gone round
in circles all night, and it had all become a blur. The newsreaders talked too fast, and the images were confusing. With awkward fingers she pulled up her sleeves and then sighed, feeling the heaviness that sank back into her limbs. The bulb hanging from the ceiling reflected in the dark shine of her dulled eyes. She wasn’t sure of the time. Four a.m. maybe? It was dark outside, but the thickness of night had faded. Her room was silent apart from her shallow breath, but despite the late hour there was still noise in the rest of the house. Laughter drifted under the bottom of her closed door, but she didn’t recognise it. Her forehead tensed in a small frown. That wasn’t quite true. She did know whose laugh it was, but she couldn’t quite match it up with the faces of the other students in her house. It was dislocated. Just like her.
As she stared at the ceiling her mouth moved, though she emitted no sound. It had not been a good day. Her brain had felt wrong; not painful, but as if someone had been pulling down on one side of it. Her words hadn’t come out right all afternoon. She’d been glad to get to the quiet of her room, away from everyone. She’d thought about going to the hospital – briefly – but she hadn’t been in any pain outside of this weird confusion, and then with all the bombs going off there would have been no one to see her anyway, and after a while it had all been too much effort.
Her mind emptied. She tried to focus on something other than the buzz in her ears. Her heart raced and her eyes forced themselves inwards. She gasped. She didn’t want to see. She’d never wanted to see. Her hand tightened around the knife. On the ceiling the bland paint swirled in a million colours, wanting to suck her in. For the briefest moment she thought she saw her own face staring back behind them.
After a while she became aware of coolness in her wrists.
She glanced down. Her left hand dropped the small, sharp knife, as if aware of guiltily being caught after the fact. She frowned again. Shouldn’t it hurt? Shouldn’t all this bleeding hurt? She looked from one slashed wrist to the other as her blood pumped out of her and onto the covers below. She sighed. It took all her effort to dip one finger in the soaking mess and write on the wall beside her the only sentence that would stay in her head.
When she was done she closed her eyes and died. It came as a relief.
C
ass Jones took the stairs up through the untidy student house two at a time, ignoring the faces that peered nervously out from their bedroom doors. He was tired. He was always fucking tired, and in the chaos of the past two weeks since the bombings, the rest of the force might have caught up with him, but he’d had a bloody good head-start. For Cass, the past six months had dragged on forever, in a constant round of interviews, arrests, statements, and of course the backlash that comes with uncovering corruption among your own. The resentment was far from behind him as the overloaded justice system slowly trundled towards court dates. Still, it wasn’t like he really gave a shit what the rest of the force thought of him. He only had to remember Clare May’s broken body lying at the bottom of the stairs of Paddington Green nick to feel good about the number of careers that were now well and truly over. They’d done it to themselves.
‘The constable downstairs says it’s suicide.’
Cass paused as he took in the scene in the room. ‘So what the fuck have you called me up at stupid o’clock in the morning for?’ He finished the sentence more quietly than he’d started. The dead girl was kneeling in a pool of her own blood. Her arms were thrust into the glass screen of the TV, and her wrists were slashed on the jagged glass
edges. There was still a sour tang of electricity in the air. Cass didn’t know how she’d looked alive, but there was nothing pretty about her dead.
‘I can think of better ways to kill myself,’ Cass muttered.
‘Great, isn’t it?’ Josh Eagleton, the assistant ME, straightened up from where he’d been crouched by the body and smiled at Cass. ‘Morning. Glad you could make it.’
‘At least one of us is.’
Eagleton’s cheeky grin didn’t fade, and despite his own frown, Cass was glad to see that easy cheer. Eagleton might have been left with a slight limp, but the young pathologist was lucky to be alive after being run down and left for dead. If he was still smiling, despite whatever nightmares Cass was sure he must have, then Eagleton was going to be okay in the long run.
‘I think you’ll like this. It’s a curious one.’
‘Is it murder?’ Cass looked at the girl again. Her head had lolled forward as her body slumped into the TV, and her hair now hid her face. He didn’t want to disturb the scene just to see her expression. Novels and films overrated the death stare. You couldn’t read much from a dying face – everyone died scared, whether it was suicide, murder or natural causes. All he ever saw on a corpse’s face was the ghost of that fear.
‘Not murder in any ordinary sense, I don’t think. But there’s definitely something weird going on here.’
‘Spit it out, Josh. I’ve got a busy day ahead.’
‘Tell me about it. Everyone who’s breathing in my job is still spending all their spare time in some hospital somewhere, putting together pieces of the dead. Most of the time it’s just a lucky dip: if the limb fits, use it. This girl’s lucky she got anyone at all.’
The young man had a point. Dr Marsden, the new ME
for Paddington and Chelsea, had pulled triple shifts in one of the central hospitals in the aftermath of what was already known only by its date: 26/09, and the gruesome task was still ongoing. Even for people who worked with the dead on a daily basis, the mangled wreckage of bodies from the explosion sites was disturbing. He looked at the doctor’s assistant more closely. Judging by the bags under Eagleton’s eyes, he’d put in plenty of hours himself.
‘Point taken,’ Cass said. ‘But what’s so interesting about this one? Apart from her imaginative choice of exit?’ He glanced around the rest of the room. Textbooks lay sprawled open across the floor beside the bed, with half a joint and the rest of the contents of a fallen ashtray sprinkled across them. Some hippy jewellery shit hung over the corners of the mirror, and photos and posters covered the cheap wallpaper. The room could have belonged to pretty much any female student in the country.
‘Her boyfriend was here when she did it. They’d been watching some movie. He’d fallen asleep and woke up to see her crawling across the floor to the TV.’
‘Is the boyfriend still here?’
‘Yeah, downstairs. Shaken up, not least by the electric shock he got trying to pull her out.’ Eagleton paused. ‘Don’t think I’ll tell him that his pulling her backwards only made her bleed out quicker.’ He held up his own slim wrists where the blue veins stood out against the skin. ‘He tugged, she tore.’ He mimicked the movement.
‘You were born for this job, Eagleton, you know that, don’t you?’
‘There’s something to be said for spending your days with the dead.’ Eagleton pulled his gloves off. ‘They don’t interrupt me, or complain about my singing. And I get to be surrounded by nudity.’
‘You’re going to have to learn some new jokes if you’re ever going to get promoted. That kind of comment is so old it should be on a slab itself.’
‘Haha! You’re funny, Jones, very funny.’
‘And back to the point?’
‘It’s what the boyfriend said. He told me he woke up and tried to talk to her, and all she said was this one sentence. She said it three times, once just before she did this.’
‘What pearl of wisdom was that, then?’
‘She said, “Chaos in the darkness” and that was all.’
‘What?’
‘ “Chaos in the darkness.” He heard her pretty clearly, and it’s not the kind of thing you’d make up.’
‘She was stoned.’ Cass pointed to the joint. ‘She was probably just talking shit.’
‘Yeah, and I’d probably have thought that too, if it was the first time I’d come across the phrase.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve seen it before – two weeks ago. Another student topped herself, this one from Chelsea Art College. She slit her own wrists – admittedly in a more traditional way – but she wrote the same sentence on the wall, in her own blood, probably as she was dying. “Chaos in the darkness.” ‘
Cass looked down at the dead girl. Her blood would be settling quickly into her lower limbs, and soon her skin would turn bluey-purple. Hopefully Eagleton would get her out quickly, before her body distorted too much. At some point her parents were going to want to take her home.
‘Are you sure it was the same sentence? She said the same thing the other girl wrote? Not your memory playing tricks?’
‘No,’ Eagleton said positively, ‘I was called to the other one the morning after the bombs – had to go straight to Chelsea from St Mary’s. I haven’t forgotten anything about
that particular twenty-four hours. And apart from that, there are photos in the file.’
Cass didn’t speak.
Chaos in the darkness
. What did it mean? He fought a yawn. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all. He looked at the girl again and felt the familiar twinge that came with the job: the wanting to know
why
. It was a strange sentence for last words: it was a declaration of fact, not an explanation of her actions. Nor a suicide note. Or maybe in some way it was all three. His brain ticked and whirred, turning the words around this way and that.
‘You on a good case at the moment?’ Eagleton asked, breaking into Cass’s reverie.
‘You know the answer to that – until all that other shit is done and dusted I’m getting the dross. I’m spending too much time retelling the same story to different lawyers for them to trust me with a decent murder. You know how it is.’
‘Oh yeah. I love those lawyers.’
For a moment the two men said nothing. The weight of the black mark they shared had formed a bond between them. Eagleton’s evidence had been more than enough to get the old ME, Mark Farmer – his boss – charged, and Cass’s information had led to the arrest of too many of Paddington Green’s officers. Some had been quietly let off the hook in an effort to stop the press realising how far the corruption in the system had spread; in exchange they in turn fingered the ringleaders. But all of those involved in the conspiracy, not just to take money from criminals in exchange for looking the other way, but actually getting in on the criminal action themselves, had friends, and there were plenty among them who believed no one had really been doing any harm; it wasn’t as if they were letting
murderers
off the hook, after all.
Cass looked again at the younger man. Eagleton didn’t really look like a kid any more. He’d done a lot of growing up fast.
‘You’re right,’ Cass said. ‘This could be worth a quick check, as long as no one gets on my back over it. What was the other suicide’s name, can you remember?’
‘Yep. Katie Dodds. Just turned twenty-one. I’ll get the file over to you. Someone’s already taken an official statement from the boyfriend here. When I’m done here I’ll get you a copy of the report. Can’t see anyone else being interested.’
‘Thanks. It’s probably nothing, but I’ll take a look.’
‘Good,’ Josh Eagleton said. ‘They’re only young. They deserve someone to know why.’
Cass headed back down the stairs. Eagleton was already well ahead of his old boss, in Cass’s opinion. Cass knew all about how the fingers of the dead could grip you; looked like the lab rat was fast learning that too.
It was still early, and as he’d not showered or shaved before heading out to meet Eagleton, Cass headed home before going to the nick. He had plenty of time before he had to be in, and he wasn’t ready for anyone at Paddington Green to see him looking anything less than professional. Sometimes appearances really were everything; he knew that better than most. He flicked on the kettle in the small kitchen before heading into the shower. His new flat in St John’s Wood was small but functional, and it suited Cass, probably better than the big house in Muswell Hill ever had.
He stepped under the shower. He’d be glad when the house sale finally completed. He’d sold at a ridiculously low price, the only way to shift it in the dead housing market, but it was worth it, just to draw a line under some of the memories. And it wasn’t as if he was short of cash: The
Bank had cleared his brother’s mortgage once he’d proved Christian had been murdered, and that house was now rented out, while the life insurance pay-out was sitting as yet untouched in Cass’s own bank account.
He let the hot water run over him. Every life could be accounted for by a cash sum. If the world had taught him anything it was that. From betrayal for thirty pieces of silver to Claire May tumbling to her death to protect illegal earnings, to family life insurance, life and death all came down to currency. It left a bad taste in his mouth … he had a bad taste in his mouth and the healthiest bank balance he’d had in years. And on top of all that, his pay packet was going to be substantially bigger, as he was due a whole load of official bonuses after the arrests and convictions of his fellow officers. That was another reason why there weren’t too many people at the station – and in nicks across London – keen to stand by Cass; there was a distinct feeling that he was profiteering from the force.
He turned up the heat, sending a cloud of steam billowing out through the shower curtain. He could live with all that shit. After all, he’d been through worse. As he scrubbed at his skin he started wishing it was as easy to clean off the memories of the past and the ghosts of the dead: Claire May, his wife Kate, Christian and his family, the lost child Luke … and over everything loomed the dark shadow of The Bank, and the mysterious Mr Bright. He shut it out.
There is no glow
– the thought beat at his skull every morning, and though he knew it was a lie, he didn’t care; he intended to try and live by that lie. Cass had no intention of taking part in whatever games Mr Bright and Solomon had wanted to play with him and his family. The gritty, real world of crime was all that interested him. They could find another family for their experiments.
Out of the shower, he quickly towelled himself dry.
There is no glow
. That sentence was replaced with another, equally strange, if less familiar:
Chaos in the darkness
. Eagleton had been right: he was intrigued. Two girls at two separate universities, both using the same phrase while killing themselves – coincidence? A man had told him recently that there were no coincidences. Cass was inclined to agree with him.
He drank a quick cup of coffee as he dressed and headed for the door, until the answerphone’s flashing light caught his eye. Two messages had been left while he’d been in the bathroom. The world might be dead on its feet, but it still started work early.
‘Mr Jones? This is Edgar Marlowe, from Marlowe and Beale solicitors’ office? It’s really rather important that you call me back on—’
Cass didn’t give the man a chance to finish his sentence before he hit delete. Another fucking lawyer. The voice sounded familiar, and Cass wondered if he had called before. More than likely; Bowman and Blackmore’s trials were coming up soon, and most of the calls put through to his office were something to do with the fucking case. This one pissed him off though: this was his home number. Who the hell had given them that?
The next message clicked in: ‘Wondered if you were up for a pint tonight?’
The very English sentence sounded strange in DI Ramsey’s US drawl, but it made Cass smile.
‘Meeting up with someone you’d probably like to see. We’ll be at the Fox and Garter on Marylebone High Street at eight.’
At least Cass knew he still had some friends left on the force, and Charles Ramsey was top of that list. The irritating
lawyer forgotten, Cass picked up his keys and headed out into the wreckage of London to face the day.