He’d said he had orders, but who could order the heir apparent to a Clan Lordship to do anything? Whoever it was, they would almost certainly be at the top of the food chain.
Volderiss could have given the order, theoretically, but there was no love lost between the Liverpool and Manchester clans. I could easily imagine Jasper telling Volderiss to take a long walk off a short pier if the Symposium member had tried to order him to do anything he didn’t want to do.
If not Volderiss – and I wasn’t ruling him out– then who was pulling the strings here?
I thought of Ambrose Beeks. He’d been Domini. Domini collected powerful people like others collectedstamps. Jasper Cathill, soon to be a leader of one of the biggest vampyr clans, was powerful all right. And his body had turned to ash before I could check him over for any interesting tattoos.
‘Did you ever get anything on Ambrose Beeks?’ I asked Bastion.
The line went quiet except for the faintest crackle. Somewhere on Bastion’s end, I heard a soft shift of movement, like he’d adjusted his grip on the phone. My skin tightened, bracing before my brain could. ‘That’s the second piece of bad news.’
‘You didn’t get anything?’
‘Oh, I got something, but you’re not going to like it. I did some digging. A decade or so ago, Beeks used to run with Jude Jingo.’
Fuck. Did that mean Jingo was Domini? Why then had he given me the damned picture with their symbol on it?
My thoughts were sprinting and I needed them to slow down and line up. I took another sip of cold Dr Pepper and rubbed my forehead with newly cooled fingertips. This was a clusterfuck.
Loki hopped down onto the table with a soft thump, claws skittering on the wooden table as he walked closer to me, offering support as he felt my turmoil.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said aloud. ‘This is a mess.’ I gently stroked the caladrius. Just the small action soothed me a little more.
‘You’re not wrong,’ Bastion said grimly.
‘Beeks was Domini. At least he was when he died. Is Jingo?’
‘I haven’t ascertained that. But I found out that Beeks acquired his new tattoo in the last five years. Before that, no mark on the shoulder.’
‘Social media?’ I asked.
I flipped the page in my PNB and the paper rasped loudly in the quiet. My handwriting had turned into lawyer scrawl, ugly, barely legible and scribbled, the way it did when adrenaline took over. Another reason to appreciate the SPEL app: notes typed in it were legible, though that wasn’t an option when we were operating off the books.
‘Yeah, he had a couple of accounts. I looked through alotof holiday photos. The man was a narcissist.’
‘My brain thanks you for doing that so I didn’t have to. All right, so Beeks may have been a relatively new recruit.’
‘He may have been, or he may have been slow to indelibly tattoo an organisation’s symbol on his body,’ he said drily.
‘Yeah. True.’
‘What are you planning to do with this information, Inspector?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’re certain it was Jasper Cathill?’
‘Yes. Not only does he match the description and photos perfectly, but he’s unexpectedly missing.’
I grimaced. ‘All right. I’ll have to update my report.’
‘Don’t be so hasty. Another vampyr went missing the same night. A female from Clan Heylin. Word is, they’ve run off together. Having a sordid affair. No one’s looking too hard for Cathill yet. Don’t update the report yet. Stay off the radar a while longer. Let people think Cathill has run away with the other vamp.’
‘But we know that’s not true.’ Jasper was too true-dead to have run away with anyone.
I ran my hands through my hair.
Lady Heylin of the Cheshire Clan didn’t like the Connection or the police. Rumour had it that she and Faraday had once had a tempestuous affair that ended badly.
When we had issues with the Cheshire vamps, Faraday always handled them himself, but …
