A Matter of Blood (39 page)

She peered at Cass over her glass, making sure he was following. He was. ‘He’d never been sure why they’d headhunted him in the first place. I told him it was because he was brilliant with figures, which he was, but I think he convinced himself that there was something else going on.’ She paused. ‘I think he was getting a little paranoid.’ The blotches on her neck flared red at her own disloyalty.

‘Anyway, out of the blue about two months ago, he was told he was going on some kind of management weekend course. I didn’t know any of the details, which I found odd, as I was his personal assistant, but sometimes they’re just like that at The Bank. What I found stranger was that no one else seemed to be going - even Mr Red wasn’t invited. Christian thought maybe his opposite numbers from the other headquarters across the world would be there, but I never found out.’

‘Didn’t he tell you when he got back?’

‘No.’ She shook her head, visibly upset. ‘He changed after that. He didn’t really talk to me about much any more. He just withdrew. He was quieter. He still stayed late, and I’m sure he was still doing his own research into the company, but he didn’t open up to me. He looked tired, and then he began taking long weekends. I wondered if maybe Luke was ill again, but when I asked, he always said he was fine. After a while, I just stopped asking if he was okay, because it was pretty clear that whatever was bothering him, he didn’t want to talk to me about it.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she carefully wiped them back. ‘Maybe I should have pushed harder. Shown him how much I cared.’

Cass realised that Maya had been a little bit in love with Christian. He wondered if his brother had even noticed. Probably not.

‘You couldn’t have known. And if anyone should have been there for him, it should have been me.’ He paused, giving her time to collect herself. ‘There is one thing you could help me with though.’

She looked up.

‘Just before he died, Christian asked you to find some information out for him about two accounts. He seemed to think that there was something slightly wrong about the transfers, I think?’

Maya looked at him blankly and he pulled his phone out and found the numbers. He jotted them down on a piece of scrap paper, along with his own phone numbers, and slid it across to her. ‘It was in his emails to you. I saw them on his laptop.’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t remember. We deal with so many different accounts.’

‘Could you have a look for me? Something about these two had obviously bothered Christian. And I just want to make sure that there’s nothing suspicious about them.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘if Christian had asked me for the details then I’ll have them to hand somewhere.’ The wine was obviously making her braver. ‘But tomorrow I’m in a meeting with Mr Red. It might be the afternoon before I can get back to you.’

‘That’s fine.’ Cass smiled. ‘I guess I’d better make sure you get home safe. If you need the loo before we go, I’ll keep an eye on your bag.’

‘I guess I can trust you.’ She smiled back at him. ‘You are a policeman, after all.’

He waited until she’d disappeared around the corner before unzipping the large leather purse and rummaging inside it until he found the pass that she’d tucked into the inner pocket. Bingo. He quickly tucked it into his jacket and replaced the bag exactly as it had been. When he was done he’d drop the pass in the doorway on his way out, try to minimise the trouble she might get into. With any luck she would persuade herself that it must have fallen out of her bag somehow. He was abusing her trust, but he didn’t feel that bad. It was in a good cause - and after all, he’d done much worse in his time.

 

Even though it was nearly eleven, there were still plenty of lights blazing out from the building. The Bank, with all its global interests to manage, was a company that obviously didn’t believe in sleep. Cass kept his head down slightly as he walked with brisk efficiency into the foyer. He gave the girl behind the desk a quick, confident smile which she returned with impersonal professionalism before returning to whatever was occupying her on the small computer screen.

Maya’s pass let him through the clear barriers and he headed towards the lifts, half-expecting armed security guards to leap out of the stylish black central office and drag him out of the building. The heels of his shoes sounded louder against the marble than they had earlier, as if the building was aware of his illegitimate presence, even if the security team hadn’t yet noticed him. He waved the card again to call the lift and the doors slid open immediately. Inside, he pressed the button for the eleventh floor and wondered where in the panelling the security cameras might be. He stayed facing straight ahead. There was no point in worrying. If they decided to double-check if Maya Healey had been in the building, he was sure there would be no shortage of cameras showing his face. What he’d do then - well, he didn’t yet know. All that mattered right now was to get into the computer system and see what information on Bright and especially Solomon he could find. If he did find anything, then maybe the commissioner wouldn’t give a shit that he’d entered the building unauthorised. Or at least he could hope as much. Right now, his career wasn’t an issue. He just wanted answers.

The quiet corridor was softly lit by silver spotlights embedded in the ceiling, and Cass hoped that the lack of any noise meant that all those who worked in this section had headed home for the night. He didn’t imagine that there were too many people with offices up here. There were few doors breaking the antique white walls, maybe six on either side. He made his way carefully to what had been his brother’s office. The door was open and he went in, closing it behind him. For a moment in the gloom he thought he saw a figure seated behind the desk, one dark arm rising to mimic making a phone call, but as he flicked the switch on the wall there was only the chair pushed in close behind the vast desk. No Christian. Just an echo of a memory.

Aware that his intrusion could be noticed at any time, Cass flipped open the lid of the embedded computer and hit the power button. The screen lit up immediately and demanded a password. He typed in the number seventy-four and hit enter. Nothing happened. He tried again, this time with his own name. Again, nothing happened. Shit. The dawning realisation of how stupid he’d been slowly hit home. They hadn’t just wiped Christian’s personal files from the system; it looked like they’d wiped the whole computer clean. Of course they had. Why wouldn’t they?

He thought of Maya Healey and the way he’d stolen her pass so thoughtlessly, and all for nothing, and then he looked at the pass again. Maybe it still had some use. He closed the screen down and went back into the corridor, carefully trying each door as he passed it, hoping that the plastic rectangle would open Maya Healey’s office when he found it. He’s seen that glimpse of love in her eyes earlier. If he was right, and if he could get to her computer, he’d be willing to bet she’d used his brother’s name as her password. Finally, the small panel next to one heavy wooden door flashed green. He smiled. The expression didn’t last. He turned the handle, but the door refused to budge. It was only when he peered closer, swearing quietly under his breath, that he realised there was a second lock: a good old-fashioned one that required a key. Bollocks. Whatever they did on the eleventh floor, they obviously didn’t want anyone unauthorised getting in.

With nowhere else to go and his mood darkening, he recalled the lift. He’d fucked up big time; he’d just not thought the whole thing through properly. How the hell had he thought he was just going to waltz into The Bank and get into their system, simple as that? It had been fucking stupid. He pressed the ground-floor button and the machine slid into silent action.

He was still silently cursing his own stupidity when the lift eased to a halt a few seconds later. He frowned. The lit button in the row above the double doors read five. His guts sank an inch. Great. Not only had he entered the head office of the world’s biggest financial institution under false pretences, and attempted - very badly - to hack into their computer system, but now he was stuck in the fucking lift. It was almost laughable. Whatever was left of his career was creeping away.

The light on number five went out and a breath later the machine’s engine whirred. The lift was going up again. In the panel against the wall the ornate middle section that had jarred with him earlier in the day glowed green at its edges, as if a light underneath it had switched on. Was that some kind of concealed control button? But he hadn’t pressed it. Cass jabbed his finger on the ground-floor button, trying to override whatever command the machine was following, but the round disc remained grey. His heart thumped. Wherever this lift was going, he was along for the whole ride.

Finally, it stopped. The green light behind the panel changed to a pale pink and the doors slid open. Cass’s hand automatically reached for the ground-floor button again, hoping to get the doors closed and moving again before anyone on the other side could either get in or recognise him, but he paused. There was no one waiting to get in, and as he looked out, he felt his feet moving forward. This wasn’t a floor like the others. This was very different indeed. He stepped out of the lift. Maybe his trip to The Bank wouldn’t be in vain after all.

The wood beneath his feet shone cherry-red with age, and it absorbed his footsteps almost as well as the carpet on Christian’s floor. To his right, beyond the low chesterfield sofas and armchairs that made a lounge from the middle section, rose a wall of books, their spines red and green and blue; books from an age ago that had only their titles embossed in gold on the front, to encourage readers to open them. Alongside the bookcase, a wide spiral staircase of burnished bronze led up to a second floor that was swallowed in darkness. His mouth dried.

Pools of light shone out from various lamps creating a subdued, shadowy atmosphere so different from the sharp business floors below. Were they below? Or maybe they were above. Cass realised he had no idea exactly where in the building this place was. The heart of it, that’s where he was. Even through his shoes he could feel the quality of the vast rug that stretched over to the far wall, the pattern in reds and creams looking to his untutored eye like a vague blend of Oriental and Middle Eastern characters. Heavy velvet drapes the colour of claret hung from the ceiling to the floor, covering what Cass could only imagine would be a bank of glass windows from which most of London could be seen. He turned to his left. Two thick wooden doors framed an inset modern fire where blue and yellow flames flickered from the stones sitting within the square steel frame. It was the only thing Cass could see that looked like it belonged in the present century.

He took a step closer and peered at the small bronze plaques attached to each door. His heart stopped and for a few seconds silence reigned completely, both within the network of his veins and in the stillness of the room.
Mr Bright
was embossed in black on one, and
Mr Solomon
in matching writing on the other. His heart burst back into life.
Solomon and Bright
, with offices here in the heart of The Bank . . . His mouth was dry, but his palms leaked hot sweat as he stepped to his left and pushed open the doorway into Mr Solomon’s room. He stared. It was a far cry from the filthy bedsit where they’d found the flies and the notebook. A thick red carpet, so dark it was almost as black as clotted blood, covered the wooden floor. A vast desk was the main centrepiece of the room, behind which sat three large plasma screens, side by side on the wall, their screens black, dead. The desk was cleared and the waste paper bin empty. On a low table in the corner sat a huge globe of faded yellow, the map lines of the world drawn in ink a hundred years or more before. A vast painting hung on the left-hand wall, and Cass stared. It was beautiful, and ignorant as he was about art, he knew without a doubt that it was the original.

In the gloom, the paint appeared almost luminescent, the pale skin of the recumbent man like marble. The naked figure lay on one thick wing, and an angry eye peered over the raised arm that hid its face. Ghostly winged figures filled the sky above where this creature lay on the burned earth. Cass stared at it, for a moment all thoughts of Solomon and Bright forgotten.

‘I think I shall have that moved into my office.’

Cass’s skin almost lifted from his body as he jumped at the sudden intrusion of sound.
What the fuck?
He turned to see a silver-haired man standing at the top of the spiral staircase.

‘It’s too good to just hang there with no one to see it.’ The man’s feet tapped out a quiet rhythm on the metal rungs as he came downstairs. ‘Although, who knows? Perhaps we’ll find someone to take over Mr Solomon’s position soon enough.’

He reached the bottom and smiled at Cass, his perfect teeth gleaming white in his tanned face. Cass understood what Adam Bradley had meant when he said there was ‘just something’ about Mr Bright. He was shorter than Cass, and thicker around the middle, but there was an air of contained danger and energy in his confidence.

Cass stayed where he was.

‘Mr Bright, I presume?’

Again the flash of that smile. ‘I’m impressed with you, Cass.’ On the other side of the room, Mr Bright folded his arms. ‘You’ve found us quickly.’

‘As far as I was aware, the lift brought me here. I didn’t push the button.’

‘I was speaking in a more general sense. Of course,

I brought you
here
. But I thought you’d earned it.’

Cass didn’t like the tone of amusement. It made him feel like a child, and he hadn’t been one of them in a long time. There was a familiar twinge in his jaw as his teeth ground together. He wouldn’t bite back. If this man underestimated him, then all the better. Still, he couldn’t shift the unease from the pit of his stomach; this man looked identical to the person in the photo with his parents, far beyond what you’d expect from even the most similar father and child; this Mr Bright was an exact replica of the one his father had known.