The Score

by Howard Marks

  Cat knew, of course, that the figure couldn’t be Morgan. He was down for thirty years, and he would never get out of prison alive. They don’t let prisoners out to watch a movie being made, even if it is about them. She would have asked again, only Kyle was already gone, striding away past the film trucks, face set against the wind. She looked fierce and pure, like a heroine from an older, simpler world. One of the rubberneckers from behind the cordon was following Kyle, asking for an autograph perhaps. She waved him away and got into the front of the Range Rover. Cat thought she saw Kyle reach across towards the driver, then the car sped away, merging with the lights of the passing traffic and into the night.

  The black car had moved down the dock, beyond the film trucks, apparently with carte blanche to go where it pleased. Della Davies’s convertible prowled after it, a terrier at the heels of a deer. Cat watched the show for another few minutes, wondering about the figure in the back of the Volvo. Then she’d had enough, and she left.

  What is talent? It’s not being able to hold a tune. There are thousands of people who can do that. Thousands of girls, plenty of them pretty, or pretty enough if they make the effort.

  Writing? Yes, that is a talent, of course. Being able to find the melody, find the words, bring it all together. Not so many who can do that. That’s true.

  But that isn’t her talent. She respects the writers, but thinks of herself only as a performer. The vessel for the song.

  The first time she heard that phrase, she wrote it down. Vessel. It made sense. When the song is bigger than you, when it possesses you. You’re not the singer any more. You’re the channel, the vessel.

  Of course, the music game needs other things, too. The promoters. The agents. The talent scouts. She doesn’t understand that world, but knows she doesn’t need to. You just have to nurture your talent, look after yourself, take care of your voice, your vocal chords, and trust that the rest will come.

  And of course it will. That’s important too. Important enough that she writes it down, writing the word on a sheet of paper, surrounded by an ever-widening net of doodles. Trust. That’s what you need.

  And when she checks her Twitter account, she’s gone from two followers to three. She clicks through to see who’s following her. She hopes it’s someone exciting.

  3

  SO MUCH FOR the tourist season.

  Cat had only passed three people in the last five miles as the road curved between the barren, moor-like hills towards Tregaron. So much for her road trip. It was drizzling, fine soggy curtains of it drifting in from the hills. There was little oil on the road to slick, and as she gunned the Laverda the way narrowed. Hedgerows pushed in and tented over. Closer they came, and darker, forming bleak tunnels around her. She felt claustrophobic, but then her bike crested an incline and suddenly she was gazing down onto a hill-ringed view. The town was spread out like a piece of embroidery between wooded inclines.

  Cat crunched to a stop in a layer of gravel off a bend. She flipped up her rain-smeared visor and pulled a pouch of Drum out of the pocket of her leathers. Drizzle persisted down in the valley, but here and there the clouds were pierced by brash arms of sun, so that although the place was mottled light and dark, she could see Tregaron well.

  The west side looked genteel enough, the odd gingham tea place and café, and hopeful knick-knack shops trying to lure in the slender tourist trade. An architect’s eye might have noted the stout neo-Gothic of the town hall, but Cat’s cop’s eye rested on the trouble spots: the dishevelled housing stock on the town’s east side, and the pubs and slender alleys. That, she knew from a glance, was where the police work was done in this town: the minor domestics and post-pub tiffs, the small-time dealers hawking weed to bored mates.

  The police station was just visible at the northernmost point. Even from this distance it didn’t look much of a place, a small, boxy structure jockeying for room amongst the terraces. Except for the patrol car in front, it could have been a corner shop that had seen better days.

  Cat flipped her visor back down. She could imagine why a bereaved husband might seek the safety of a town like this to bring up his precious only daughter. But that didn’t explain the messages, the desperation. Perhaps Tregaron was not as innocuous as it seemed at first glance. She would need to be careful. The straightforward thing would be to drive straight to Tilkian’s house, using the address he’d given her, but as a rule Cat distrusted the straightforward. Gather all the facts you can, then act. That’s what Kyle had done down on the marina that night. That’s what every cop worth their salt would always do. She clicked the Laverda into gear and coasted down into the valley.

  She parked around the back of the police station and walked in by the holding cells to the rear. Magnolia paint was peeling off the walls. She flashed her warrant card at the baby-faced custody sergeant. The sergeant betrayed no interest. He nodded to her, motioning towards the swing doors before returning his attention to the Western Mail crossword.

  The corridor on the other side was no more than a few metres long, with two doors on either side. Windows on the left side of the corridor peered into a small internal yard. Three uniforms stood in the wet outside, two with steaming plastic cups, the third, somewhat younger, brandishing a cigarette while providing the punchline to a tall tale.

  ‘So I said, “I can fart Calon bloody Lân but that don’t make me Pavarotti!”’

  All three laughed, the teller of the tale more loudly than his small audience.

  Inside, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. One of the doors on the side of the passage was ajar. Cat pushed her hand against it and it swung open.

  In one corner, a mound of paperwork was balanced on the edge of a desk, an avalanche in waiting. Above it a wastepaper basket had been attached halfway up the wall. She knew immediately it was Thomas’s office; he liked to keep his aim sharp.

  Beside it hung half a dozen framed photographs of police rugby teams that Thomas had joined over the years. These were only team photos in the very loosest sense; each shot featured a group of sweaty revellers gathered round a bar, hands grasping pint glasses. Some of them looked so unfit it was surprising that they had made it out onto the pitch unaided. Thomas was at the centre of each. Compared to his teammates he looked like a serious prospect for national selection.

  Behind the desk, a window offered a view of the yard. The young joker in his shirtsleeves was drawing on a cigarette so hard his concave cheeks seemed to meet somewhere between his teeth. Inside the office, a half-gone Embassy smouldered illegally in a brewery ashtray. Cat made her way over to a low metal chair that seemed designed to look uncomfortable. The door creaked open and she turned, seeing Thomas’s barrel-chest enter the room before the rest of him. He looked the same, a little more salt around the temples, a few more crows had walked around the eyes, but he was ageing well.

  ‘Thomas.’

  He didn’t reply, just moved around to the far side of the desk, to establish control of the room. He plonked his mug down on the desk and picked up a pen. He assumed his usual pose, chair swivelled to the side, pen vibrating in the air as he flicked it between his index and second finger.

  ‘Come in, sit down.’ She was already sitting, but his sarcasm was gentle. By his standards.

  ‘Looking well, Jack.’

  ‘Country air, Price.’ The pronunciation of her surname was not gentle. ‘Cathays Park told me to let them know if you dropped in.’

  His smile told her he wouldn’t be doing that just yet. Not until he’d found out what he wanted to know. She said nothing. He moved his desk diary from the right of the desk to the left. ‘So, what brings a girl like you down here to Nowheresville?’

  If it was a line from a film it wasn’t one she knew. He paused for a laugh that didn’t come.

  ‘It’s those calls I told you about.’

  ‘And?’

  Cat looked at Thomas, wondering what to tell him. Whatever she said, she knew he’d remember it. Thomas had the demeanour of a l
aid-back rugby lad, but beneath lurked a shrewd and logical brain. She paused, took too long for his taste. He chivvied her along.

  ‘They came from a friend. Martin Tilkian – if that rings any bells.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Moved here a few years ago. Daughter, no wife. Daughter’s name is Esyllt.’

  ‘How old? The daughter, I mean.’

  ‘Teenage.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  Cat raised her head with interest at the precision of Thomas’s question. She took her mind back to the Wikipedia stub. ‘Sixteen,’ she calculated. ‘Why?’

  Thomas ducked the question. ‘Tilkian. Tell me what you know about him,’ he said.

  An order, not a request. Cat felt herself prickle with refusal but her operational brain was also telling her that Thomas was only behaving like this because he had something for her. She felt trapped and gazed beyond Thomas, weighing up her options. Through the window, she could see one of the PCs hunch his shoulders in the rain. He pulled a packet of cheapies from his pocket, looked hard at it, as if deciding whether to light another cigarette from the dying stub.

  If she wanted Thomas onside, she’d have to give him something. ‘The calls I was getting are from an old schoolfriend – Martin Tilkian. Haven’t seen him for the best part of seventeen years. Then, out of nowhere, he starts leaving messages.’

  ‘How did you figure it was him?’

  ‘He left a message. A proper one. But I didn’t get it until later.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. I went to school with the guy for a while. Nothing on our systems. Google tells me he used to be a games designer. That’s it. Google’s also where I got his daughter’s age.’

  ‘From here, is he?’

  ‘No. Whitchurch, Cardiff. Father worked for the council. I think his mum used to be a receptionist for the local doctor. Very respectable.’

  Thomas looked up at the wall. There was a picture of the Preseli Hills. Low green moorland, a standing stone circle, captioned Bedd Arthur. Arthur’s Grave. The picture was faded from too much sunlight.

  ‘Tilkian, Tilkian, Tilkian …’ he muttered, as though something danced tantalisingly out of his reach.

  ‘Come on, don’t play games with me.’

  ‘I don’t know shit about him.’

  The PC outside had been joined by a young female colleague. Her blonde hair had been fashioned into an elaborate French knot. She was hatless, in shirtsleeves despite the wet. She stood close to the PC, so close it would have been difficult to slide a piece of paper between them. Then she must have felt Cat’s gaze on her. She looked round, through the window into Thomas’s office, moved away quickly.

  ‘Must be difficult to keep anything private in a place like this,’ Cat said.

  Thomas lowered his head, gave her a knowing look, held it a while. For a moment she wondered if there was something specific he expected her to recall.

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know anything about him.’ He leaned forward, opened one of his drawers, pulled out a newspaper, slapped it onto the desk. ‘But I think I know why this Martin’s called you over.’

  Apart from the masthead and a few small adverts for local businesses, the front page had been entirely dedicated to the disappearance of a local seventeen-year-old called Nia Hopkins. The picture showed a girl with dyed black hair and a black T-shirt; her face was powdered white.

  Despite all the social networking media that had come the way of teenagers since Cat had grown up, some of the kids still looked more or less the same. They called themselves emos now, whereas Cat and Martin had called themselves goths, but the look had the same feel to it, and seemed to say the same thing: I am dark and in earnest and I reject your shallow, trivial world.

  She looked more carefully at the girl. Dark eyes, darker surrounds, the classic dusky Welsh look. Not a hundred miles from herself. The hole left inside her by the absence of the tranks seemed suddenly to expand. She sweated although she wasn’t hot, and her head throbbed.

  ‘You want some water, Price? You’re looking a bit peaky.’

  ‘No … Thank you.’

  ‘Something stronger, maybe?’ Thomas slid his bottom desk drawer open and there was the chinking of a bottle rolling against glasses.

  She wanted some, of course, but she shook her head. What was the point coming off tranks only to fall again? It was a classic error.

  ‘No.’ She forced herself to concentrate. Looking back at the paper, she noticed that it was dated two days earlier and that the girl had been missing over a week. She scanned the report. ‘You’ve got a list of friends, I assume?’

  ‘Friends? Shit, Price, I never thought of that. You think I should ask Nia Hopkins’s relatives for a list of her friends, in order that I could conduct interviews with the aim of identifying information that might point to the cause and circumstances of her disappearance?’

  Cat rolled her eyes. Thomas’s act was getting tiresome. ‘Well?’ she persisted.

  ‘Apparently Nia Hopkins didn’t have any friends. She might well have known Tilkian’s kid – small town like this, same age – but I’ve got nothing to suggest a close connection.’

  Cat nodded. Thomas’s phrasing was telling. Having no information about something was not the same as being sure that something did not exist. A connection, or a friendship, or some link of cause and effect.

  The silence in the room continued for a few moments.

  ‘You weren’t planning on coming here when we spoke,’ he said softly.

  ‘I didn’t know who the calls were from when we spoke.’

  ‘So why me first? Why not just go and see your friend?’

  Thomas’s eyes narrowed in the way that she remembered. She recalled how Thomas was a great weapon to have on your team, a bloody nightmare to hide anything from. Cat met his look, steeled herself not to react, not to fall headlong into his silence.

  Then, abruptly he unsprung his body, the hands now on the desk, clasped in front of him, his posture upright. He looked more than five feet eight, which was all that he was. Only, like many men who were neither tall nor truly short, he made himself seem larger with the force of his personality, something wild and dark that promised a decent fight should anyone rile him sufficiently. Here I am, world, come and have a go – if you think you’re hard enough.

  ‘You’d better start to spill, Price, or I’m on the phone to Cathays.’

  ‘You got phones out here, have you?’

  ‘Yes, Price, and computers too.’

  ‘I saw Kyle yesterday. She was down on the docks reliving her moment of glory.’

  ‘Bet she loved that.’

  ‘She told me I couldn’t leave town on her time. I interpreted that as meaning she’d be fine with me coming up here if I took it as holiday. If you want to call her?’ Cat gave him a don’t-give-a-damn shrug. She let the shrug fade. ‘Something like this, you don’t just rush in. You’d be the same.’

  Thomas considered this and seemed to accept it. He resumed his casual pose, hands folded behind his head, and gave her a smile. ‘You sure you didn’t come to see me? I mean, nobody would blame you.’

  Cat dropped the paper onto the desk. ‘Wouldn’t want to break the hearts of the milkmaids of Tregaron, would I, Thomas?’

  As the paper hit the desk the outer page became slightly detached, and she caught sight of a familiar scene. It was the quay from the previous evening, lit with arc lights. There was the crowd of students in their Griff Morgan T-shirts around the black Volvo. Next to it was another shot of a painfully thin man going into a large house in Hampstead. The piece below had been syndicated from Della Davies’s column. It was only a couple of paragraphs, and Cat didn’t need to read it all to get the gist. Morgan had been released the previous day on compassionate grounds. His melanoma had spread and he had no more than a few weeks left to live. The visit to the set had likely been his final public appearance.

  She turned her back, made her way towards the door.
/>   ‘No goodbye kiss, Price?’

  She smiled, making sure he didn’t see her doing it. She didn’t reply, just raised a hand of farewell.

  She walked on out of the station and back to the car park. Martin’s address was on the note in her back pocket. It already looked like something that had lain forgotten for too long. Martin could have called her from South Island, New Zealand, she wouldn’t have cared, she’d have dropped everything and come. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t seen each other for nigh on seventeen years. What Martin had done for her all those years ago needed to be paid back.

  One thing was certain – Thomas being on hand made no difference. His importance rested only on how easy or hard he made it for her to do this job for Martin. She fastened the strap on her helmet. As she pumped the throttle a PC came out to see what the noise was and she swung out onto the road.

  Cat rode up and down the street three times before she found the place. The council houses were identical two-up-two-down structures divided by pathways choked with weeds. Italicised plastic numbers were fixed next to the front doors. Martin’s note gave his address as number twenty-two. Cat found number twenty then, next door, number twenty-one. After that, there was a bank that obscured sodden fields beyond.

  She checked her satnav, punched in the postcode again. Yes, the marker was pointing at the exact spot where she had stopped. She was about to turn back when through a gap between two overfull wheelie bins she noticed a lane, just wide enough for a car. She followed the track as it wound around the side of the houses. Immediately past the narrow back gardens it dipped, then rose slightly into a clump of mature beech trees. Through the rain the lights of windows glowed.

  The property was a three-storey Edwardian villa, which looked as if it had been a vicarage or small local manor. It now appeared down at heel. The smells of dampness, rotting wood and compost hit her as she removed her helmet. Most of the front garden bloomed extravagantly, the path edged by flower beds overflowing with salvia and lobelias. Like the house, the garden had once been loved, but now ran amok.