‘They’re telling me it’s because the CNS have their hands full dealing with this spate of global attacks, but I’m not buying it. I don’t know who you are, Jones, but someone obviously thinks you’re better at your job than I am.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on that,’ Cass said, ‘but tell your boss this: there’s no transfer to Special Branch – I’ve got cases I’m working that I’m not leaving. But I am curious, and I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say, because, trust me, I want to know as much as you do why someone would want me in particular on this case. But there’re no promises.’
‘He’s not going to like it.’
‘Well then, we’ll see how much he really wants me on the case then. Those are my terms.’
‘Okay. I’ll see you at the CNS in an hour.’
‘No, I’ve got some stuff to do. It can wait until tomorrow.’ He paused. Fuck it, he might as well push as far as he could. ‘And you can come to Paddington Green.’ He hung up before Fletcher could protest. He fought the urge to look around him. Even if Mr Bright was watching him, he wouldn’t see it. The Network were too damned good. He hadn’t noticed their presence in his life for the first thirty-six years; he was unlikely to spot them around now.
He pushed Abigail Porter out of his head. She was tomorrow’s problem. For now, he had other issues to deal with.
‘T
urn that TV down, Roger.’ Cathleen Watson placed the tray on the table between her and Cass as her husband begrudgingly did as he was told. The devastation in New York faded to a gentle hum as the images screamed more quietly from the screen.
‘I don’t see why anyone would be asking questions about it now, that’s all,’ Roger Watson muttered. ‘No offence, but I’d have thought there would be more pressing matters for the police these days. What exactly are you here for?’
‘Don’t be so rude!’ Cathleen apologised for her husband as she poured.
Cass hadn’t known anyone still used a tea service any more outside of period drama, but this one even had a sugar bowl that matched. His hand felt clumsy around the thin china handle. ‘It’s all right; he has a point,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m really investigating Flush5 – there have been some complaints about the way they operate. Nothing I can go into detail about; I’m just trying to get a sense of their background. I hope this won’t bring back too many painful memories for you.’
‘It’s nice to talk about them. We don’t do that much now.’ Mrs Watson sipped her own tea. ‘You know how time is. It doesn’t heal, but it does put things in boxes for you. It’s how we all go on, I suppose.’
Cass’s smile was genuine. He liked this woman. He understood boxes.
‘Why did Elizabeth have a C-section? Can you remember?’
‘She hadn’t thought she’d needed one. As far as she was concerned, everything was fine, but then she got a call that morning saying the doctor had been double-checking some scans and they thought her placenta might be obstructing the birth canal. She went back for a secondary scan that evening when Owen got home, and they decided to get the baby out straight away.’ A ghost of pain flashed across her eyes. ‘Not that it helped the baby, poor little mite. She barely saw him. I don’t remember if she even held him, not when he was alive.’ She stirred her tea, even though she hadn’t added sugar to it. ‘They didn’t let her see him for hours; he was cold by then. She didn’t want to see him again after that.’
Cass looked down at his own cup. Of course the baby was cold. They’d probably had to source one. Where had they brought it up from, the hospital mortuary? A nearby morgue? A time-share dead baby. He fought the image of the two women, both now dead: one crying and one smiling, both over the same child, while another was stolen away.
‘And then of course the accident happened such a short while later.’ Mrs Watson’s smile was wistful. ‘They’d gone away to recover. Life is full of cruel ironies, don’t you think?’
Cass wondered how the woman would feel if she realised just how ironic her words really were. Part of him wanted to tell them that the baby they thought they’d lost had grown to be well loved, even by a father who had doubts about whether they were the same flesh and blood. He wanted to tell them about the things Luke had liked and disliked, the things that made him laugh and made him smile. Maybe
they’d recognise their own daughter in some of it – but he couldn’t share any, because the story would end with a shotgun and a cold, dead child, and then their grief would be fresh all over again. He wasn’t sure these two could live with that knowledge. Their pain had settled into a quiet ache over the years, he could see that. He wouldn’t tear open those scars.
‘Why did she go private for the birth? Was that a personal choice?’
‘It was Owen’s job. He didn’t even realise it was part of his package. I mean, he had some medical benefits, but he hadn’t realised they covered his spouse as well, especially not for maternity. She was six months gone before he found out. His boss told him.’
‘Who did he work for?’
‘I can’t remember now – some financial company with a foreign name. Something Swiss, I think.’
‘Cathleen,’ Roger Watson cut in, ‘you’re not supposed to talk about any of this. For God’s sake, woman, can’t you ever keep your mouth shut?’
‘It’s all such a long time ago now – surely it’s all right? I mean, we’re not talking about the case, are we?’
‘What case?’ Cass asked. His fingers tightened around the fragile handle of the cup so hard he feared it might snap. ‘Why aren’t you supposed to talk about this?’
‘They were going to sue.’ Roger Watson leaned forward in his chair. Perhaps he’d had enough of staying silent. ‘Owen was unhappy with the way the hospital had handled the birth. It was nothing we understood because we didn’t get there until it was all over, but he had a bee in his bonnet about something. To be honest, I just wanted him to calm down and let my girl grieve, to let all of us get over this terrible thing. But he wouldn’t let it go.’
‘That’s why we paid for the holiday. Owen was getting into trouble at work for kicking up a fuss, and he was starting some kind of malpractice suit, but none of it was going to bring little Ashley back. So we thought the holiday would be good for them.’
Her face twitched with feelings she couldn’t express – or couldn’t allow herself to express.
Cass wondered at the weight of her guilt. He wondered if he should tell her that by paying for the holiday they hadn’t influenced Fate or Luck, or any of that bullshit. He had a feeling that all the Watsons had done was just make things slightly easier for the people who were finding Owen Gray’s refusal to let go of his son’s death an inconvenience.
‘And then they died,’ Roger Watson said, ‘and we thought about carrying on with it, like Owen would have wanted, and Elizabeth would have wanted because she would have stood by him, but then there were all these complications with their life insurance payouts, because of the faulty car. We were having problems getting their bodies back from France.’ He looked back at the television, as if the devastation showing there was a comfort compared to what he’d lost.
‘And then a man came to see us and he offered us a settlement.’ Cathleen Watson’s eyes darted across to her husband and back again. ‘We were tired. We’d lost everything.’
‘We took their money.’ Roger Watson glared defiantly at Cass. ‘And I don’t regret it. We got our daughter’s body back and we laid them all to rest. Together.’
‘Was the life insurance issue resolved then too?’ Cass asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And didn’t you find that a little odd?’
‘What I found odd,’ Roger Watson stood up, ‘is none of your business. I didn’t care about odd. I just wanted it over.’
Cass took the other man’s action as his own prompt and got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any offence or upset, Mr Watson. I’m just trying to do my job.’
‘That’s fine.’ Cathleen Watson favoured her husband with a glare. ‘You haven’t caused any trouble at all.’ She smiled. ‘Let me walk you to the door.’
In the hallway, Cass stopped. ‘I don’t suppose you remember the name of the doctor working on the ward that night, do you?’
Mrs Watson opened her mouth to speak, but it was her husband, in the sitting room doorway, who got some words out first. ‘No. We don’t.’
Cathleen Watson shut her mouth and smiled apologetically.
‘I don’t suppose you do,’ Cass said, and smiled at the man whose grandchild he’d bounced on his knee and kicked a football around with.
The door closed behind him.
Cass got in the car, but sat watching the house for a few minutes longer. The curtains didn’t twitch. They were glad he was gone, and were probably turning the TV up and talking loudly to each other about the news to shoo away any ghost of his presence. Maybe money truly was the root of all evil. It was the root of their guilt, that much was for sure. They’d taken the settlement rather than find out the truth, and they’d learned to live with that, but living with something and thinking you’d done the right thing were poles apart. He’d seen that in the defiance in Roger Watson’s eyes. His phone buzzed. An email from Perry Jordan. He smiled.
*
At home, he opened a beer, plugged the BlackBerry into the printer and waited for it to spit the sheet of staff names out. It was a short list, and that was fine with Cass. Next to the names were phone numbers and current addresses. He sighed and leaned backwards in his chair, stretching his arms out so far that his shoulders cracked. Outside, the violin played something light, nineteen thirties, maybe, with a flavour of France between the notes. Cass ignored it. The old tramp wasn’t causing him any bother, and if he was Mr Bright’s spy in the camp then he wasn’t seeing very much from out there. Somehow it didn’t feel likely. The violinist was too obvious for Mr Bright’s methods. Mr Bright was a man who lived in the shadows; a puppet-master in the darkness high above the gods of this theatre – it wouldn’t be like him to let the strings show.
He looked down at the list of names. The doctor listed as working the maternity ward of Flush5’s wing of the hospital was Andrew Gibbs. His current address was Muswell Hill, London. Cass’s stomach turned slightly. It was a small world. He punched the attached number into his phone and stored it. He could find out where Gibbs was working now easily enough, after he’d heard what David Fletcher had to say. His eyes ached from too many sleepless nights; it was time for an early one.
His turned the sitting room light off and headed for his cool, empty bed. As darkness ate the room up, Cass turned his back on the hungry eyes of the dead that screamed out at him from the corners. He hadn’t forgotten them. Tomorrow he’d go through their medical records and see if he could find some similarity between the students that way. For now, they could get off his case. He needed to sleep.
He dreamed of Owen Gray and Christian. They were standing side by side and smiling.
‘How much more do we have to do?’ Mr Yakama said.
The man being addressed turned back from refilling his tea cup and looked around at his audience. Mr Yakama was somewhere near the back. There was no formal meeting table here; Monmir had dispensed with that some time ago. Now the vast space was filled with huge cushions and ornate chaises longues, each with its own hookah alongside. There was an elegance to the place that recalled Monmir’s own understated elegance.
‘Plenty,’ he said, sipping the sweet mint tea. ‘This is only the beginning.’
The hookahs remained untouched. It didn’t surprise the man. He remembered the lepers of old as they clutched with rotten hands and begged to be healed, back when all this was just part of some glorious game. These of his number had that same desperate look.
Morelo coughed, a loud, hacking sound that set off a wave of flinching around the gathering. It had taken all that one’s energy to get out of the hospital in Russia and make his way here, and now it was obvious to all that he didn’t have long left. That suited the man who stood healthy among the sick. When they lost all hope they became a liability.
‘You have to keep your dyings hidden for as long as you can.’ He wondered if they hated him for his health. Probably. He would despise them if the roles were reversed. ‘If Mr Bright comes to realise that this
ennui
, as he calls the cruel fate that is upon you, has spread so far, he’ll start to look for a conspiracy and come for you all.’
Eyes widened. Morelo was the only one of the Inner
Cohort present; the rest of the number came from the First Cohort, with a few from the second.
‘He’s not a fool.’ Morelo’s voice was barely audible; bark crumbling on an old tree. ‘He knows.’
‘Yes, he does, but he doesn’t know
who
, and that’s what counts.’
‘We need to get home soon,’ Morelo said. ‘How much more do we have to destroy for his forgiveness? All of it? Ourselves?’
‘How much sacrifice does he want?’
‘Is the emissary here?’
‘Yes, I saw the signs. There is one.’
‘Can we see them?’
‘I can’t die here.’ The voices came all at once on breath that stank of dead earth. He lifted one hand. ‘I understand your concerns. I feel your pain. But we are on the right path and all the pieces are nearly in place. The Interventionists you helped release have caused chaos in three of the major cities. More cities will follow. Their leaders will fall. The world will sink into the collapse that has been its destiny for years, and then we shall be allowed home.’ He paused for full effect. ‘But you must be patient. And in order for me to undertake this during your sicknesses, I will need access to command some of your businesses and resources. Documents have been prepared and are waiting in your cars to be signed. I have planes ready to take you back to your sectors as soon as we are concluded here. From then, you must be strong and await further instruction.’
‘It seems so very little to do after all this time.’ Morelo sank back into the chaise longue. ‘I would have thought he would demand more.’
It would be better if Morelo went to his dying sooner
rather than later, the man mused. But then, dying, from what he had observed, could be a sudden occurrence. Especially in the very sick.
‘It’s been a long time,’ a voice from the back argued for him.
‘Yes, things might have changed.’
‘I can’t die here.’
He said nothing. The sickly were tiresome and an embarrassment, but for now a necessity. He’d learned that during the millennia that had passed; there was no greater motivator than fear of death, and the dying always allowed themselves to be fooled quite easily in the name of hope. He sipped his tea.
When they had gone, he dismissed his man and walked through the long stone corridors of the mosque. It was not yet time for prayer, and his feet barely made a sound on the red patterned carpet. Above his head, pale lights hung in bronze baskets from the pinched archways. The mosque had been built more than a thousand years before, when Monmir had had a sense of humour. In those days the area, part of the medina quarter, had been surrounded by sellers of manuscripts, so its name had been derived from the word
al-Koutoubiyyin
, the Arabic for librarian. Beneath the surface of this iconic place of worship were now housed one of the original scrolls of the Story, kept safe and revered, and only ever seen by the Inner Cohort. It truly was a place of history.