The Score

by Howard Marks

  ‘I think so,’ Cat confirmed.

  ‘Someone did her?’

  ‘I can’t say, Martin.’

  ‘Someone did her.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’

  Martin shuddered but he did not speak. If Nia Hopkins had been murdered, he knew that Esyllt’s chances had just got slimmer. They walked down the stairs without speaking. Martin went straight back to the front door. He wanted Cat to go, it was clear; he needed to be alone. Was that wise? Grief and anxiety multiplied in solitude.

  ‘I can stay for a while,’ she offered.

  ‘No,’ he said simply.

  Their catch-up would have to wait. If it ever came at all. He opened the front door and Cat began to step out. Martin looked at her then looked away. He made a choking noise, raised his hand to his mouth, holding back something that was half-scream, half-sob. For a moment, it looked like he would speak. Cat put her arm out to him, but he twisted, pulling free so violently that Cat almost fell out of the porch. She steadied herself, called his name, but Martin had already shut the door.

  The new follower has no photo up on their account, merely uses the ovoid avatar provided. Their user name is a jumble of letters and numbers that might be a product description of a circuit-board for all she knows. It tells her nothing.

  Is the new follower someone from school? Is she about to be bullied again?

  She feels nervous as she looks at her Mentions. She has a new one. A Tweet from the latest follower. She feels elated as she reads it, vindicated.

  @purevoice94: Saw your YouTube film. You have REAL talent.

  From the TV downstairs she can hear the sound of studio applause. As her hands move across the keyboard, she begins to feel revived.

  4

  THERE WERE NO police lights, but Cat could tell that this was the place by the occasional flash of torchlight that appeared between the trees around the abandoned pithead as the SOCO team battled the rain and the dusk.

  The ground was too muddy to use the Laverda’s stand so she leaned the heavy bike against a tree. Ducking under the police tape, she flipped her warrant card open in the face of the PC who had been smoking outside the station. She was waved through.

  The path petered out into bushes. Cat pushed her way through them, drawing in her breath sharply as she turned her foot on the uneven ground. There was a bust-up old wooden door across the entrance to the pithead tunnel. She swung it open. The air inside was still, stifling. She took a deep breath as she entered, saw the blue and white of the police tent erected inside the tunnel which led on to the mine shaft. A few police lights were placed on the floor here and there. Thomas’s familiar outline was a few yards further down.

  ‘It’s Nia Hopkins, isn’t it?’

  Thomas straightened up, winced as he flattened a hand along the small of his back and rubbed at his spine. He could only just stand up straight beneath the low, bowed roof.

  ‘Yes. Just now got positive ID from the friend who found the body.’

  ‘Martin Tilkian’s daughter’s gone. Four days ago.’

  Cat looked around, saw something beyond Thomas on the floor. A luminous glow, growing brighter as her eyes adapted to the dark. She stepped forward, bent closer. The glow lit up some areas of glitter that formed a rough oval. It was a helium balloon, somewhat deflated. Next to the balloon was a bright mauve sleeping bag, glistening with damp, and a row of empty superstore vodka bottles lined up against the wall. A pair of black pumps were splayed next to a plastic bag half-filled with socks, a Griff Morgan T-shirt, a heavy black jumper.

  Thomas stooped over to Cat, stood next to her by the balloon. ‘There.’ He pointed further along the tunnel. ‘Down the shaft.’

  ‘She fell?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  If she’d fallen, then that meant that there was no killer; if Nia had fallen then Esyllt was safer. Thomas nudged the sleeping bag with the toe of his shoe. ‘Looks like she’d been here alone for a while. The friend said she’d been depressed, agitated.’

  ‘How do you know she’d been here alone?’

  Thomas pointed at the busted door Cat had just come in through. ‘Locked from the inside.’

  ‘So how did her friend find her?’

  Thomas moved a little deeper into the tunnel, pointed to an opening close to the roof. A crude gap formed a skylight. It had been plugged with industrial glass, cobwebs restricting the light still further. ‘The friend looked down, saw the sleeping bag, recognised it as Nia’s.’

  Cat walked further into the tunnel. Thomas pointed upwards. He’d clearly asked himself the same thing that she was. ‘You seen those cobwebs, Price? Thick as a bloody curtain. Nobody’s been down that way in years.’

  ‘Are there other entrances?’

  She could just about make out Thomas shaking his head. ‘Been closed up for years. It’s a huge system, stretches for miles underground. They’ve been mining here since Roman times, so there’s bound to be another way in somewhere, but this one’s been nobbled by Health and Safety. Too close to civilisation for comfort, apparently.’

  Further down the tunnel, almost disappearing into the darkness, an old piece of plastic sheeting had been fashioned into a tent, to keep off drips from the rough rock ceiling above. A few dry branches did the job of tent poles, sheltering a mound of polystyrene containers, two Domino’s Pizza boxes and a mountain of empty cans. It was away from Nia’s things, and Cat guessed that the girl had neither made nor used it.

  She looked over at Thomas. ‘What’s this stuff here?’

  ‘Kids used to use the place as a drinking hole. Council found out eventually, closed it up.’

  Cat pointed back towards Nia’s sleeping bag. ‘Did her friend ID all that stuff as belonging to Nia? Nothing here of Esyllt’s?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘No, it’s all Nia’s. I called around when you left the office. Can’t find any connection between the two girls. But,’ he shrugged, ‘early days.’

  Along the tunnel, yards beyond the drinkers’ den, Cat felt Thomas reach for her, felt his burly hand. He was shepherding her. A darker area appeared on the floor.

  They stopped and peered down the sudden drop. Thomas aimed a torch beam into the hole. The figure below looked like a crumpled white doll, a gash on her throat the only colour. Around her something was glimmering, shallow pools of water. Cat wanted to climb down and hold her and lay her arms along her sides, set her head straight so she looked at peace. But her training held her back.

  ‘The gash caused by the fall?’

  ‘There’s sharp ledges all the way down, she could’ve caught one, but we’ll have to wait for confirmation on that.’

  ‘Any drugs on the scene?’

  ‘Nothing found so far. We’ll know for sure when the tox report comes back.’

  Cat motioned back towards the mouth of the tunnel. ‘All that stuff. Looks like she was here for a while. If she came to do herself in, she thought about it plenty.’

  ‘We’ll probably never know what made her do it. These teen cases are a nightmare. Nine times out of ten there’s no clear answer.’

  ‘Her friend say anything? Boyfriend trouble? Exams?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. Just that she hadn’t been herself, wanted to be alone.’

  The last phrase was accompanied by a vampish Garbo accent. Cat looked hard at Thomas until his mouth twisted in a wry apology.

  ‘Well, you know how girls are at that age. They keep a lot to themselves. The slightest thing goes wrong and …’

  Thomas made a plosive sound with his lips.

  Cat closes her eyes. She is back in the train on the night that she and Martin celebrated her birthday. They are on their way home. She leaves her seat ten minutes out of the station. She makes her way to the space between their carriage and the next, pulls the window down, feels the icy air blowing her hair back, sucking the breath from her lungs. It is one of the old carriages, the door opening from inside. The next few seconds bring tog
ether clarity and confusion, her hand on the door handle followed by a bang as the momentum of the train pulls it out of her grip. She stands outside, between carriages, the train lights flashing past. Then looking down at the tracks, she wants to jump, into the alluring blur of the metal lines, into the irresistible feeling that she could keep on falling for ever and never hit the ground.

  Then ‘Cat! Cat!’ the shock as she is pulled back, Martin’s horrified voice shouting her name. She collapses onto the floor, her head on Martin’s shoulder. For what seemed hours she couldn’t look up, only stare at the ground. That was all she trusted herself to look at. Martin was kneeling on a discarded flyer, a second-hand furniture store advertising repossessed dining tables and chairs. She remembered that still. Then glancing up, the pallor of Martin’s face.

  Looking back, she wasn’t really sure why she had done it, tried to do it. She’d been picked on and abused before. It was nothing new. Why was that night different? Maybe she’d had an intimation in those moments that her life was only going to get more isolated, harder in every way, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. And so she’d gone for the nearest exit. If people knew what lay ahead for them she wondered how many would do the same.

  Thomas was staring at her. She caught him studying her face and he shifted his gaze away. In the darkness of the tunnel he looked different, not the cocky hardcase of the day but the vulnerable animal everyone is at night. Cat pulled out her phone, moved to the mouth of the tunnel where there was a weak signal. Punched in Martin’s number. As usual there was no reply, it was switched off. This time she left a short message, confirming that there did not appear to be any connection between Nia’s death and Esyllt’s disappearance.

  Suddenly Martin’s voice broke in, ragged with anxiety. ‘It was an accident then, the other girl?’

  ‘We think so but we’re still not sure.’

  On the other end of the line there was a stifled sob. Martin breathed out noisily and deliberately. Cat waited for him to finish.

  ‘Martin?’ she prompted, but all she got was that sound again. Half-sob, half-choke. Then silence. She prompted a second time: ‘Martin?’ But the line was dead.

  Cat shouted back into the tunnel, telling Thomas that she was going. She neither saw nor heard any reaction.

  The bike was parked just the other side of the trees. She edged it onto a flat piece of ground carved out of the verge to allow vehicles to pass each other. The route to Martin’s house was almost deserted as she sped through quickening rain. Darkness was slowly falling, the light limited, but it wasn’t yet dark enough for headlights. Cat checked her speed, aware that this was the time most accidents happened.

  The driveway to the house was lit by a single lamp. The porch was dark, all the curtains closed. Cat ran her hand down the porch door, noticed for the first time how many locks had been fitted. Two Yales had been added to a mortice. Martin would have to be well organised to avoid shutting himself out of the house.

  She rang the bell, waited for a minute, rang again. Then she knocked on the porch door with her fists and called out. Still no answer. She made so much noise she expected someone from the council houses to come down. But no one did. She tried Martin’s phone again, but this time he did not break in when she spoke.

  She punched in Thomas’s number.

  ‘Bloody hell, Price, you come and you go, and then you call. You need to settle down, girl.’

  She ignored the sally. ‘Any troublemakers moved to the area recently?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Thomas sounded distracted.

  ‘Martin Tilkian said something about a guy with a white streak in his hair. Might’ve been following his daughter. Seen here and in Cardiff. I don’t think Tilkian is giving me the full story.’

  Thomas made one of his noises, a dismissive puffing.

  ‘Highly strung that Martin, by the sounds of it. Everyone’s bloody paranoid these days.’

  Cat could hear harsh, raised voices in the background, Thomas talking to someone, his voice far away from the mouthpiece of his phone. Then more rustling as he moved it back to his face. His tone was different when next he spoke; strained, tired.

  ‘You’d better get back here. They’ve found something else.’

  Cat ended the call and looked up at the big, old house. Grand but overgrown, like the garden. Neglected. The games industry must have made cash for Tilkian, but there was no sign of an income stream still coming in. There was something weird about the place, but maybe that’s just what you got in cases like this: seeing old friends when you’ve both moved on. Or maybe it was just the tranks.

  She jumped onto the Laverda, heart thudding – and that was the tranks. This time she did not check her speed. She gunned over to the pithead. Cat parked the bike well off the road again, among the trees. The lights were circling a different area now, several hundred metres west of the first discovery. She ran through the long grass. It was some time before she reached the scene. Someone had hitched a floodlight on an abandoned JCB, a yellow hulk being claimed by rust. To the left an ancient Portakabin had sunk into the ground. Mud sucked at Cat’s boots.

  As she neared the Portakabin she could see the dark circle of another mine shaft. At the side of the opening, several lengths of chain lay coiled around each other. To the left, a uniformed figure was bent double, expelling his lunch onto the grass. Thomas stood next to the PC, patting his back but looking distracted. Seeing Cat, he headed her way.

  ‘One of the search dogs found her.’ Thomas was shaken but was trying to be matter-of-fact.

  ‘Is it Esyllt?’

  Thomas shrugged, wrinkled his nose. ‘Difficult to tell yet.’

  She ran over to the hole. This opening was less a tunnel, more a sheer drop that ended in a pool of water about five metres down. Cat peered in. The body looked like a half-finished three-D jigsaw. What remained of it lay bloated under torn rags that had once been clothes. Cat stifled a retch. She could not tell who this was. But still she stared, trying to make out what she knew she could not. Behind Cat a figure in white coveralls, one of the SOCO team, was whispering to Thomas. Her temples throbbed with the absence of tranks, her belly with anxiety. She tried to calm down, waited for Thomas to join her.

  ‘Easy, Price: it’s not Esyllt.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘This one’s been there a couple of weeks at least, they reckon.’

  Cat glanced again at the body in the pit. Thomas flicked his hand against hers, directing her back from the edge. He breathed out. ‘One of our boys thinks he recognises her. Though God knows how.’

  Thomas’s face was pale. Cat noticed that he looked middle-aged. ‘Delyth Moses. A waitress from the Owain Glyndwr café, went missing a month or so back. He says he used to see her walking up here.’ He gestured vaguely back to the road.

  ‘Any connection to Esyllt?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Doubt it. Wasn’t a local, as such. Hadn’t been here long, either. Just came down to pick up a bit of seasonal work.’

  He grimaced and rubbed his face. Cat knew what that meant: the case had been booked as a Misper according to the rules, but no one had really done anything because it was assumed the waitress had just upped and left for reasons of her own. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that’s the right decision to make. One time in a hundred, and the stuff hits the fan.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Cat, with a shrug, ‘if she wasn’t a local.’

  Thomas looked at her, made a face, then grinned weakly.

  They heard the dog team before they saw them. The gentle soughing of the grass punctuated by panting and the occasional excited bark. Torches switched on, they fanned out, the furthest handlers disappearing along the width of the area, stopping only when the ground dipped, moving in formation.

  Following them, a tall, lean figure with a receding hairline made his way through the long grass. With red hair turning grey and a face so gaunt his nose looked like a beak, he was the physical opposite of a typical
Welshman. In his left hand he carried a plastic evidence bag. As he reached Cat and Thomas he raised his hand in greeting.

  ‘Noswaith dda, Price. Long way from home.’

  Cat eyed the pathologist, Dr Matthews. She knew him from his occasional visits to Cathays Park. He’d already been attending the previous scene, so he would have been among the first to see the body. If there was any indication of time and cause of death at the scene, and often there weren’t, he would have seen them.

  ‘Any idea what happened to the Hopkins girl?’

  ‘No, but from rigidity and eye condition she’s been dead more than two days.’

  ‘And this one?’

  ‘Body’s in too bad a state to tell.’

  Tell me something I don’t know, Cat thought. She looked over to a tarpaulin about fifty metres to the left of the pit, stretched over a mound, the bottom layer of which was partly visible. Smaller, freshly dug pits ringed the pithead and continued down to the JCB. She could just about make out signs on the fences, scarlet danger notices. They looked new. The pathologist caught her glance.

  ‘Another couple of days we wouldn’t have found either of them. This whole place is due to be levelled. The MoD want it as a firing range, apparently.’

  A volley of barks rang out not far from the pit. There were shouts from the other dog handlers. Some of them were still making their way across into the wood beyond.

  Cat followed the line of handlers with her eyes. A narrow track of bare earth wound through the long grass. The land was sloping steadily upwards. A building stood perched at the top of a drop, back towards the road where Cat had parked her bike. Its shape was barn-like, but it had several windows, all on the upper storey. It looked as if it had once been associated with the pit in some way, possibly a foreman’s cottage.

  From up close, the place seemed to have been designed back to front, the house facing into the woods. It sat snugly on the edge of the drop, a small gated garden claimed from the wildness. The gate was padlocked. The windows were covered by iron grilles despite their height, and the curtains were all drawn.