The Shadow of the Soul Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 irritatinglawyer forgotten, Cass picked up his keys and headed out into the wreckage of London to face the day.
    ‘Coffee, sir?’ Toby Armstrong stood in the doorway with a mug already in hand.
    ‘Thanks.’
    Cass waved his new sergeant in and took the drink, and for a second there was an awkward silence. Armstrong was, by all accounts, a likeable character and a good policeman, and although Cass didn’t doubt either, he hadn’t yet seen much evidence of the first. At best they had a polite working relationship. They didn’t go to the pub together. They didn’t discuss their personal lives.
    Cass wasn’t bothered by the coolness between them. He was happy as long as the sergeant got on with his job; he could understand why being allocated to the DI who was almost single-handedly bringing down the Met might not be Armstrong’s idea of a great partnership. The sergeant might not have said anything, but it was obvious he didn’t want to get tarred by the Cass Jones brush.
    ‘The Mitchell death?’
    Cass looked up. ‘What about it?’ Barbara Mitchell had been clubbed to death with a tyre-iron in her kitchen a few days before. It was the closest Cass had come to a real case in six months, but it had proved depressingly lacking in anything remotely brain-taxing.
    ‘I did what you said, brought the husband’s secretary in and let her sweat overnight. She broke at four this morning. She started banging on the cell door, desperate to talk. Said he wasn’t with her after all.’
    ‘Got someone picking him up?’
    ‘Already done,’ Armstrong said, ‘and he’s cracked. His confession’s being typed up now.’
    ‘Good work.’ Cass attempted a smile but it was empty. The Mitchell case had been blindingly obvious from the moment he’d first walked into that house and seen the husband’s scrubbed pink hands and spotless clothes as he stood shaking beside her battered and bleeding body, stammering as he claimed he’d found her that way. It had only ever been a matter of time before they had their confession.
    A small huddle of officers gathered in the corner of the Incident Room outside caught his eye, and he frowned.
    ‘What’s going on with them?’
    ‘They’re watching the news,’ Armstrong said. ‘A couple of bombs went off in the Moscow Underground during rush hour.’
    ‘Like ours?’
    ‘Looks that way.’
    ‘Poor bastards.’ He meant it too. For a moment he was tempted to go and join the group and watch the disaster unfold in all its glorious televisual Technicolor, but he shook the thought away. The bombings were someone else’s problem, part of the bigger picture that made up the slowly rotting world. For Cass, all that mattered now were the small tragedies, the tiny deaths – the ones he could actually do something about.
    ‘I’ve got a job for you.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Student suicides. I want to know how many there have been in the past month – no, in fact, maybe go back three months. Get me whatever files we’ve got.’
    ‘London, or nationwide?’
    ‘London for now.’
    ‘Can I ask why?’
    Cass looked up. Claire could have asked why, and he’d probably have told her, but not this career copper who