by Howard Marks
Thomas shuffled. ‘He could even show us video of every minute Morgan has been in there if we want.’ He sniggered. ‘Made a big song and dance about his communications being monitored too, chance of him organising anything on the outside less than nil.’
‘Well, he’s the g’vnor, he’s going to say that.’
‘No, but I checked in with Sol Bowles, remember Sol in Prisons?’
This was another rhetorical. He might as well have been asking if she remembered her own name. There was also a reproach here, Thomas had been keeping up with Sol, and probably knew she had not. A fellow Drugs man, Sol had switched into prisons inspection after a bad burn-out, going down to booze and painkillers before cleaning up big time. ‘Had a cosy with Sol,’ he continued, ‘says Belmarsh is being given its annual inspection currently and there were no surprises. Security around Morgan has been tight as a mouse’s arse.’
Cat shrugged. ‘All right, I get the picture.’ She bent down and tapped out a text to Sol. She would check in with him later.
She took the stick and had a go at drawing the cartoon. The ledge over which the eyes peeped came out wobbly, and she hadn’t got the eyes right. She passed the stick back, took out a biro and had a go on the back of the printout Thomas had passed her.
She broke it down. Tried each line separately. One wavy line did the nose and the eyes, two straight for the ledge. Then two half-circles the pupils. Five strokes in all, with some shading in the eyes. Even after six more goes, it still had not come out quite right. It was something that needed practice, but once you’d got it you’d always be able to do it, she reckoned. Like writing your own signature.
She had another go, but still it wasn’t right. She felt the frustration building inside herself and put the paper aside.
‘Enjoy your lie-in?’ he asked.
‘Breakfast was the full spread.’
‘Really?’ He looked surprised.
She gestured up towards the pit. ‘So what do you reckon, then?’
Thomas made a sour face. ‘There’s another angle we’ll have to eliminate.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘A couple of recent teen suicides down in Bridgend spoke of having imaginary friends. People who they thought would be waiting for them on the other side. Cobain, that sort of thing, just predictable teen barminess. Bridgend isn’t too far away. Maybe these girls saw Morgan as something similar, he had a symbolic role of some sort for them?’ He smiled at Cat’s drawings.
‘Psychopomps.’
‘Steady on, Price.’
‘They’re mythological figures who guide souls from one world to the next.’
‘Right, it’s shite obviously but the sort of shite that young girls believe in.’
‘And Morgan is still alive.’
‘Just about.’
Cat thought about this. Her searches the previous night had turned up no Free Morgan campaign, not even an informal one. The T-shirts were just fashion items, prisoner cool, like the Charlie was a surfer T-shirts from a few years back. It seemed a big leap from a few T-shirts and some nonsensical graffiti to a suicide ring. And until the forensics were in, she knew Thomas was just pissing in the dark.
The places where Nia and Delyth had been hiding out had felt like typical teen dens but also like refuges, safe-houses of a sort. Judging from the T-shirt, Esyllt had been one of them, though Cat would have to wait for the reports to come back to be sure. Her best bet, she reckoned, was to shadow Thomas for the routine inquiries at the homes of the two dead girls, see what they turned up, then tackle Martin again when she had more information.
‘No sign of Esyllt, then?’
She had raised her voice and Thomas waved his hand to the area behind him where a woman stood, gazing into the fields. It was a warning. The woman looked briefly towards them, then away again into the trees.
Kyle. She was wearing a townie’s version of country gear: a padded jacket and sensible boots. She looked like she was off to a corporate clay pigeon shoot somewhere. Had she spotted Cat? Hard to tell. There had been no obvious reaction.
Cat stepped back behind the stack of logs so she wasn’t so visible. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked Thomas, wondering if it was his revenge for the night before.
‘Because you’d have gone back to town like a good girl, would you?’ His voice was sneering, but also held some admiration for her tenacity.
Kyle moved away from them, skirting the edge of the hill.
‘Why is she here, Thomas?’
‘Spends a lot of time in the area. Renovating her weekend cottage.’
‘But why’s she at the scene? One of the families call her in to help?’
A light shake of the head came from Thomas. He took another drag on his cigarette, looked around. He could have been a man at a bus stop, mildly irritated by a late bus.
‘No. She expressed an interest in the other two girls when they were filed as Mispers.’
‘Bit small-time for Kyle, isn’t it?’
Thomas snorted quietly. ‘It’s not a professional interest, it’s personal.’
‘Personal?’
Like most other members of the force, Cat found it hard to imagine Kyle having a personal life. Cat peeked out, seeing Kyle stood under one of the trees, peering at the bottom of the field. There was nothing down there, just the bare banks and a shallow, freely flowing stream.
‘She lost her foster-daughter five years back. Suicide.’
Christ. ‘She blames herself?’
Thomas shrugged. ‘The girl just did it, right out of the blue. Standing alone at the station, jumped out in front of a train. No sign she was unhappy. There was nothing Kyle could do.’
Poor cow, thought Cat. Having to carry that around with you. That might be a reason Kyle was so fierce and cold at work, pushing everyone away. Thomas stubbed the cigarette out under his shoe, turned back towards the farmhouse. Cat looked briefly over at the trees, and at Kyle staring at the field. Kyle had moved further away, was looking down towards the stream, then back towards the trees. She seemed lost, unable to focus.
The front door to the farm was open. Thomas stood aside, ushered Cat in before him. Not from chivalry, she thought.
At the end of a passage she could see a farmhouse kitchen, the threadbare arm of a settee, an old sink packed with washing-up, a corrugated draining board. To the right a female Family Liaison Officer stood beside a chintz sofa. A woman was lying on the sofa, stretched out flat, one arm bent above her head, clearly sedated. Nia Hopkins’s mother. Every so often the FLO softly patted her arm, as if she were a pet dog.
Cat became aware of another presence near her in the hallway, turned back to where a tall, dishevelled youth stood, swaying gently, at the foot of the stairs. He wore a khaki T-shirt, sweat stains under the armpits, decorated with an image of a cannabis leaf. His jeans were mud-spattered, although his trainers were a brilliant white, and looked as if they’d just come out of the box. His face was pale, his mouth partly open. He caught Cat’s eye, then Thomas’s. They turned back to face the kitchen. Seconds later the sound of his feet dragging up the stairs filtered down to them.
‘That’s the half-brother. Calls himself Moose.’
Thomas went up after him and Cat followed. Thomas gently pushed open the door of the room at the top of the stairs, revealing a modern bathroom. Judging by the smell of bleach it had recently been cleaned. The room to its left was a large double bedroom, clearly the master. The next door but one was shut. Thomas rapped it with his knuckles, pushed it open before there was any response. Cat and Thomas stepped inside.
The room was narrow, the curtains drawn. Moose was sitting on the bed, wiping his nose with his hand. He was putting something away, his long thin hands skipping over some debris on the bedside chest of drawers, shoving it into a bag. It looked like grass and tobacco. Thomas cleared his throat. Moose turned, the sleepy half-closed eyes that Cat had seen downstairs were gone, replaced with a feral unease.
‘Nia been unhappy recently, then?’
Moose leered unconvincingly at Cat. ‘No.’
Thomas moved closer to the bed, gently kicked his foot against it. ‘She been going up the mine a lot, has she?’
Moose opened his hands, pushed his palms together, slid them between his knees. He met Thomas’s gaze and shrugged slowly.
A lot of teenagers were turning into go-getting MBA fodder, with no rough edges, Cat thought, or else they were inexplicably tidy, like Esyllt. It seemed Moose was the original moody shrugger. Cat moved to the next door on the landing. It was shut, but she swung it open, noted the hiss as the wood caught on the carpet that still had the smell of newness about it. Thomas followed her in and Moose came behind them, hanging back in the doorway.
Nia’s room resembled Esyllt’s in its lack of obvious feminine touches. She had been no fan of frills or lace. Her bed was covered with a plain duvet, her chest of drawers a flatpack job. A desk, too small to be a comfortable workplace for a secondary school pupil, sat in the corner behind an equally small chair. An iPod dock with speakers sat on some flatpack drawers on the room’s opposite wall. The screen showed a recent playlist, mostly emo and goth artists and a few childhood favourites: The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast. On the wall behind the bed a poster advertised a My Chemical Romance gig at Brixton Academy. Her dark taste in bands seemed to contradict the banal neatness of the room; as if she hadn’t fully committed to the teenage give-a-shit attitude.
Cat stared straight into Moose’s eyes. ‘No computer?’
Moose looked blank.
‘Nia was tight with the waitress at the Owain Glyndwr?’
Moose still looked blank. ‘Never been in there, far as I know,’ he managed.
‘Knew Esyllt Tilkian, didn’t she, Nia?’
Moose shook his head. ‘Doubt it.’
Cat lowered her voice slightly. ‘Esyllt’s dad seemed well upset about some lad. Esyllt have boyfriend trouble?’
Moose flapped his hand in the air dismissively. ‘Doubt it. Esyllt’s right stuck-up. I’ve never seen her with any local lads.’
‘What lads, then?’
‘None. Never see her much at all, like.’
There was a built-in wardrobe behind the door. Cat glanced in without touching anything. There were black jeans, T-shirts and dresses, all the goth basics. At the end were some long coats and frocks that looked as if they had been bought secondhand.
Cat closed her eyes then slowly opened them, took in the rest of the room. Nia’s chest of drawers was bare for a teenager but there were a couple of keepsakes on it. A small ornament of a witch with a black cat, back arched, ceramic fur spiked into tight peaks stood next to an Indian box covered with fake jewels with a painting of an elephant on the lid.
She flipped the lid open: cheap earrings and necklaces. Peeking out from the jewellery box there was a scrap of card. Cat picked it up by its corner, not touching the surface. It had Nia’s full name printed, no address or number, but a link to an address on YouTube. It looked like a young person’s idea of a business card, the type made at an automated machine. Cat reached in her pocket for her phone, keyed in the address.
The performer was listed simply as Nia, and there was only one track, an acoustic version of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’. She clicked play on the YouTube clip. As she waited for it to boot, her mind went back to the rainy streets of Cardiff, back to the bay, before it was the Bay Development. It was early in 1996. She was sat in an unmarked car with her first love, Rhys. He let her do that when they first got together, before she was a copper even, before she was old enough to get into pubs she had seen things many people never see.
He had made her a compilation. It might have been a cheesy thing to do, but because Rhys had done it, the songs were profound to her; each one a message about life. Rain rivuleted the car windows. She was safe. She was with him. A song ended – the Velvet’s ‘Venus in Furs’ – and another started, ‘Street Spirit’, which had not long been released. He began to talk, music was the only thing that got him talking. Love, his past, their future: on these subjects Rhys was mute. But music was always his best friend, even later, when he was married to the skag. He spoke like a teacher, which was what he was to her then.
‘The KLF said that vocalists confuse their roles as singers in bands with being world leaders. Thom Yorke is Bono, without the shades or the hotline to Mandela.’
She laughed. But Rhys never laughed at his own jokes, never saw them as funny. Could she even remember the sound of his laughter?
‘Radiohead are so worthy, so dull,’ he continued, ‘normally. But this song is pure, so despairing that it can only be true.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Listen to it. This song could have been written by the devil. Or by God about the devil.’
She had never understood what Rhys had meant by that. But a sound from Nia’s room pulled Cat from her memory. It was the YouTube clip on her phone. It had started, not with music, but with a demure cough from a teenage girl on an empty stage. Cat looked up to see Moose and Thomas close to her, staring at the screen on her phone.
Either the stage had been arranged to look like a traditional theatre with a proscenium arch or it really was one. In its centre stood Nia, gently lit to reveal nothing more than a small performance area and the edge of a plush red drape. She was dressed simply in a long, white, shroud-like dress. Her dark eyes were heavily lined with kohl, her lips the crimson of a Hammer Horror starlet. The low light was bleached out as a spotlight seemed to come out of nowhere, lending an added layer of strangeness to her appearance.
As Nia sang to the backing track of ‘Street Spirit’, she swayed, her voice swooping and dipping. Occasionally she closed her eyes, clasping her hands in front of her as if undergoing some religious transformation. She seemed powered by something greater than self-confidence; a sense that she was completely in the moment, driven along by the song. Cat knew it well, and Nia’s performance had retained the essence of the original, but she had added another layer. It was as if she was pleading with some unseen person or deity, asking them for help.
Cat shivered involuntarily. It was an impressive performance, and it had already attracted a few followers. On the message board beneath the video Stevie21 had written, ‘Awesome!’ while Rockettothestars had noted, ‘I love this song – Nia, you rock!’
Cat searched YouTube for all Nia’s postings, there were three or four others, but the last one had been almost a year previously, another Radiohead track. She looked up at Moose, who betrayed no obvious feelings at watching the film of his recently deceased sister. ‘Nia hasn’t been doing any music recently?’
‘No, gave it up, I think.’
‘Did she ever mention a man called Griff Morgan? The drug smuggler?’
‘I know who he is.’
‘That’s not what I asked. Did your sister ever mention him? Have a thing for him? Anything like that.’
Moose shook his head. He’d relapsed into sulky teenage silence, tapping his foot, eye fixed on the door. Cat and Thomas took the hint, followed him out of the room. Downstairs, the mother was still out for the count. Cat went over to her, tried to make eye contact, but the woman just lay there, staring at the ceiling, a moan rising from her lips. It sounded like all the pain in the world turned down low.
They left the farmhouse. Out of earshot of the building, Cat turned to Thomas, ‘Boy got form?’
‘Nah. He’s a stoner, smokes spliff but that’s it.’
‘And Nia?’
‘Nothing.’
‘They were close?’
‘What do you think? As far as I know, he has his own friends but she didn’t mix much.’
They walked over to Cat’s Laverda. She picked up her helmet. ‘They’re locals?’
‘Not originally, they came in from Cardiff a few years back.’
The rasp of the catching four stroke engine broke the stillness. ‘The father?’
‘Died. They came into a bit of money, his insuran
ce probably, bought that farm.’
She followed Thomas back into town until he pulled over at a roadside café.
The Owain Glyndwr had a mock-Tudor facade, which lent the establishment what limited charm it possessed. The windows needed a clean and the paintwork was chipped. The menu outside was faded and most of the dishes looked like frozen microwave jobs.
Inside, any pretence of gentility had all but been abandoned. The tables were covered with plastic sheets, little better than oilcloths. Glass bottles of salt, pepper and vinegar stood on each table with sticky, half-empty bottles of ketchup and brown sauce.
A small, middle-aged woman was using a mop; judging by the dirt on the floor she hadn’t bothered to sweep it first. She had tied back her greying hair, dyed auburn but growing out at the roots. Hastily applied make-up failed to conceal the age spots on her cheeks. She wore a striped pinafore over a pair of jeans, a fraying rugby shirt poking out over the top. Thomas took out his warrant card. ‘Delyth Moses worked here, right?’
The woman glanced up briefly at Thomas’s warrant card, unwilling to meet his eyes, and continued to mop the floor. This was the reaction of people with experience of the police. No piece of information would be offered freely. Anything Cat and Thomas learned here would be down to their own powers of observation, and by reading between the lines.
‘She did the late-morning to early-evening shift.’
Cat stepped forward. ‘Where was she rooming?’
The woman sighed, motioned at Cat and Thomas to follow her up the stairs. On the way up, the doors were all closed. At the top there was a landing into a low attic space. A bedroom and adjoining bathroom took up the whole of this upper floor.
Most of it was empty, of both furniture and personal effects. In one corner under a dusty dormer window there was a three-quarter bed, then a chest of drawers underneath a tiny window that offered Cat only a view of the roof. Standing on her toes she was just able to see the drive at the side of the property, the street, some playing fields beyond.
She stepped back, opened the wardrobe. It was barely a quarter full. Jeans, sweatshirts and tops, two skirts, one a tweed pattern, another black and decorated with patches of sequins. One white blouse that would be suitable for formal wear. It didn’t look as if Delyth had had much interest in clothes or fashion.