Sympathy for the Devil

by Howard Marks

  ‘The bodies don’t come back at predictable times and places. They’d have had to search hundreds of miles of coastline for months. Face’s hardcore fans in those days were a scruffy, spaced-out crowd. They’d never have had the resources for an operation like that.’

  Catrin remembered what had first bothered Rhys about the suicide story.

  ‘But why d’you think Face came all the way down to the bridge from the gig? Why couldn’t he have topped himself at the concert hall?’

  ‘No one really knows. It may just be that he wanted to go by his flat first, collect something or drop something off perhaps.’

  ‘But the team never found anomalies at the flat. There was nothing left there or missing. It would’ve come out in the inquest.’

  ‘No, there was nothing there at all.’

  ‘No signs of a clean-up either, I presume.’

  ‘The place was exactly as those who visited it remembered it. Empty apart from the basics.’

  ‘Nothing weird in there that they would’ve ignored at the time but would tie in with the film? Dead animals, masks. That kind of thing?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Anything that would link with the photos in the woodland? Robes? Maps of the west?’

  ‘No. And the flat was so bare, things like that would have been noticed. Nothing had been touched. His paperwork was all there, his passport, bank statements, bank cards and several savings accounts.’

  ‘But no withdrawals in the months prior to the date of his going missing, no run money.’

  ‘Nothing. The inquest showed royalties and fees from the band as his only source of income. He wasn’t a big spender, as you can tell from the Civic.’

  ‘And his flat, he owned it?’

  ‘Correct. It’s not there any more because of the docks redevelopment.’

  ‘But there were photos of the interior at the inquest.’

  ‘Only small-scale to support the forensic checks. He never had it redecorated, there wasn’t even a single piece of art in there. He never splurged on drugs and partying, any of the typical rock star’s trophies. He lived austerely. No television, no sound system, no luxury articles of any type. He didn’t even have any girlfriends that we know about.’

  ‘What about political interests, hobbies, private causes?’

  ‘Nothing like that. He seems to have lived quite separately from the world around him.’

  Huw took his briefcase from the car and went ahead of Catrin towards the pub. It didn’t seem to get much custom now the new road had been built. Beneath the terrace area, the car park was empty. The path led up between barrels filled with black earth to an archway, one of the doors loose and fretting in the wind.

  At the far end the doors opened onto a patio where piles of rusted garden furniture were stacked and chained to pillars.

  The place was deserted. At a table in the corner Huw opened the case, took out two maps and spread them on the table. The first was a map of the world, the type that hung on the wall of schoolrooms, the different countries clearly demarcated by colour. The other was a 1:250,000 scale map of Wales. The maps were covered with dots in different colours. At the corners he’d placed ashtrays as weights to hold the paper down against the wind.

  On the map of the world she could see clusters of green dots over Southern Europe, and blue ones in Asia. The barman brought a light to the table along with their drinks. It was a spotlight, on a stand, the type that might be used in a presentation.

  He angled the beam over the maps, turned off the overhead lights, then closed the door and left them alone in the hall. Evidently the man had done all this before. It felt almost like a routine.

  She waited for an explanation of what was going on. All the time Huw was smiling thinly, staring at the maps.

  ‘Don’t worry, I own this place,’ he said quietly.

  ‘This old pub?’ Catrin glanced around at the dim surroundings.

  ‘Right, it comes with all the land down to the bridge. I didn’t want it going to developers, any potential evidence getting lost.’

  She looked at him. ‘You really are obsessed with this Face thing, aren’t you?’

  He didn’t reply. He was running his fingers around the green dots on the map.

  ‘These represent the cluster of sightings in the first years after Face’s disappearance,’ he said softly.

  ‘Anything even remotely plausible?’

  He was shaking his head.

  ‘Most can be discounted. These areas, the Canaries, Ibiza, Cyprus, were where a lot of Face’s rank-and-file fans went on holiday. In most cases the sightings were late at night in bars. Too much sangria and the imagination starts to work overtime.’

  ‘And the blue dots?’

  ‘The ones in Goa and Kerala were reported by older, diehard fans, out on spiritual quests of self-discovery. It’s known there was a culture of psychotropic drug-taking among this older fan group. So the reliability of these later sightings can largely be discounted.’

  He began to point, more carefully and slowly this time, at the clusters of dots over the high-detail map of Wales. He told her these were the sightings reported in the last two years. There were fewer dots and they were less diffuse. Many of the sightings had been out in West Wales. There were several in Tenby, Newgale, the typical holiday spots. But the wild area to the north, the part where Rhys’s photographs had been developed, this seemed almost clear of marks.

  ‘None to the north. What could that tell us?’ Huw cleared his throat.

  ‘It’s isolated, the boondocks. Either they haven’t heard of Face, or wouldn’t recognise him if they ran into him.’

  The expression on his face told Catrin that she was missing the point. She realised he was reading a significance into the absence of sightings, presumably seeing it as a sign that the locals might know Face was there and were protecting him. She knew at once this was far-fetched, stoner’s logic, not evidence of anything at all. She crossed her arms, sighed, looked at him hard and sceptically.

  ‘Face’s not even from there, though. His family were from further east. As far as I know he’s never had any connection with that area.’

  ‘Of course, you’re right,’ he said. Huw looked genuinely apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been lost in this Face mystery too long. The sad truth is I’ve gone down so many blind alleys, run in so many circles over so many years, I’ve begun to clutch at any shadows I can.’

  ‘These sightings you’ve mapped, are any of the sources even credible?’

  ‘Varied. Reports published in local newspapers, gossip in the band’s chatrooms. Official, unofficial. There’s a fair bit of speculation out there.’

  She nodded, took out her iPhone and opened a couple of pages she’d bookmarked. ‘I checked through them all last night,’ she said. ‘After I left your place I was up half the night. Nothing I found stood up at all to serious scrutiny.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No, not really. The ones out in the west mostly come from unofficial chatrooms. These characters seem your classic paranoid types, secretive, changing names, moving all the time. If they appear on the same site more than a couple of times, they get flamed. But there was something about the writing style that was similar. Maybe the same small group is behind them.’

  She looked down at Huw’s hands, noticed that they were clenched tightly around his glass.

  ‘There are some strange ideas out there,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I noticed that,’ she smiled, ‘mostly stoned ramblings.’

  He glanced out of the window, then back at her.

  ‘Some of the weirder ones seem to be coming from an individual who calls himself Overseer. He uses that name on all the unofficial sites and he seems to command particular respect from the other users. He posts very irregularly. Months can go by before there’s anything new from him.’

  Catrin thought she’d seen a movement through the window. It was dark now, the shapes outside vague beyond the glass.r />
  ‘So what does this Overseer have to say about Face?’ she asked.

  ‘Funny thing is, this character doesn’t actually talk about Face much.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘He seems to be peddling a strange theory, about how some of the fans from the early days, who tried to find Face after he disappeared, have themselves now gone missing or died.’

  She smiled again. ‘Right, sure. Any actual names?’

  ‘The only name I recognised was “Gerard Butcher”, the photographer who was the source of that weird footage of Face in the tunnel.’

  She put her hands up to her face, looked at Huw sceptically again. ‘But this Butcher character didn’t even shoot that film.’

  ‘No, we don’t know how he came by it.’ Huw was starting to shake the maps, fold them back along their well-worn crease lines.

  ‘Anything even remotely suspicious about this Butcher’s death?’

  ‘Not really. He’d been an alcoholic and a heavy drug user since he was a teenager. He died from a heart attack.’

  Huw put the maps in his briefcase and locked it. He finished his drink in one swig. Through the patio doors Catrin could see at the bottom of the overgrown garden a row of yellowish lights, their faint reflections bobbing and glimmering in the waters. Outside heavy rain had started falling again. As they left, the barman was still standing by the windows looking out into the dimness. She wished him goodnight, as Huw pushed past him silently.

  Down the driveway the wind was blowing twigs and discarded cartons across the yard. The dim shape of a van was just visible, parked under the swaying trees. There was no movement inside, no lights. Its snub nose facing out towards the waters it looked like the same van that had been up at the services. Catrin moved closer, trying to read the plates.

  Huw had begun to cross towards the trees. There was a sudden flicker as the vehicle’s lights came on, the whine of its engine rising through the wind.

  For a moment they were blinded as the van swung forward, towards them over the uneven ground. It lurched straight at them, not stopping.

  8

  Catrin detached herself from Huw’s arms. ‘He was coming straight for us.’

  ‘Probably drunk and didn’t see us.’ Huw was walking down to the Lexus. ‘You know how they are out here.’

  ‘No, not any more I don’t,’ she said. In silence they drove back across the bridge, along the road into town.

  She cracked the window, kept a fresh stream of air around her face. She changed pace a few times, slow, fast, checked for tails. Nothing. There was no sign of the van behind or ahead of them.

  Huw reached for a pipe hidden under the console. A small chillum, with carvings around the bowl, an antique by the look of it. He tamped it up and lit it. She didn’t bother to try to stop him. He told her to go straight to her motel. His people would be waiting there he said, they would accompany him back to his office.

  The pipe smelt strong, another cocktail. But when Huw spoke he sounded sober, focused. ‘Anything I’ve told you sound like a credible lead yet?’ he asked. She told him she’d run checks on Butcher and the Overseer, report back the next morning. But she made it clear to him that both lines of inquiry would likely end nowhere.

  The footage he’d shown her seemed strangely still imprinted in Catrin’s mind when she blinked her eyes closed, as vivid on her retina as if she’d just watched it. It was inside her now, like a bad taste that just wouldn’t lift. Those dim shapes of the four limbs on the floor and the shadow rearing up over the wall. But as it was among Butcher’s possessions at his house-clearance sale, she figured the photographer might not even have known he owned it. And this Overseer character, he was probably some online nut.

  ‘You must think I’m just another eccentric recluse, clutching at the shadows of shadows, trying to draw you into the web of my obsession,’ Huw said finally.

  She told him she didn’t know if he was or not. All she did know was that by obtaining the Face photos Rhys had put himself in danger, and now it was her duty to see the job through.

  Huw asked her a few questions about herself, her career, her family. It was all very polite, very conventional. But he sounded genuinely interested in her answers. He wasn’t looking at her in the way he had done, at her mouth, or down at her thighs. He became quieter, seemed increasingly lost in his own thoughts as they drove to the motel.

  When they arrived she saw the two bodyguards sitting in the lobby, an identical Lexus parked outside. With them was a hard-faced man in his fifties, well-groomed like a news anchor, probably one of Huw’s executives.

  Huw got out, escorted her to the door. He was subdued as he shook her hand gently. He seemed genuinely sad to be parting from her, and strangely, she noticed she was feeling the same way.

  Back in her room, Catrin called the photographic shop out in the west where Rhys’s pictures had been developed but got the answerphone again. She then called all the shops in the same street, asked if the owners had left contact details before they’d gone on holiday. None of them knew where the owners had gone, and they hadn’t left any contact details. She noted again the date of their expected return, in three days’ time, and that they lived above the shop.

  Then she booted up her Mac and ran searches on the National Criminal Intelligence Service database of aliases and gang names. She went into all the regional force databases. But as she was expecting, she came up with no matches for Overseer. A quick check on Butcher’s Police National Computer record confirmed what Huw had already told her. The photographer hadn’t moved to Wales until several years after the film in the tunnel would have been shot.

  Then she clicked into the website of Huw Powell Productions. It all looked conventional enough. There were short excerpts from reality and clip shows the company was airing. She scrolled down into the section containing the company reports. Those for the last five years were all on file.

  Remembering her forensic accounting at Hendon, she looked for the telltale signs. But everything seemed straightforward. The cost structure was exactly what would be expected of an independent production company, mainly salaries and the various production budgets. The company was making respectable seven-figure profits every year, mainly from its foreign rights sales. There were some write-downs relating to development costs for shows that had never been bought, tax-efficient donations to a series of academic and local charities. No unusual outgoings, no signs of any off-book accounting.

  The only thing that struck her was how little Huw Powell himself featured in any of the material. He was listed as sole owner, but appeared to have had little hands-on role in the company’s affairs for years. The executive type she had just met in the car park was listed as CFO, and directly managed all the sales and production teams. At most of the board meetings Huw Powell was not even listed as having been present.

  It looked like Huw had had a lot of time on his hands, time to get high and indulge his obsession with the Face mystery and get a little lost, maybe. Catrin wondered if this had made him a man others were now trying to take advantage of. Her instinct was telling her that rich men with obsessions were often singled out as potential marks, as victims. She didn’t think people were right to see Huw like this, but she could see why they might do.

  She clicked to the site of the private bank the cheques to Rhys had been made out on. It was a tax-planning vehicle, incorporated in the Caymans, and used as a platform to re-invest the company’s offshore revenue streams. There was nothing illegal or improper about this. The practice was common enough, and looking in detail at the company reports Catrin could again see no sign that Huw had much role in the bank’s day-to-day management.

  She did a few online searches on his name. There was no sign he courted publicity on behalf of the company, no sign he’d particularly avoided it either. There were photographs of him with Branson, John de Mol and executives from Endemol and other well-known media players. There were reports of his attending industry events, some old goss
ip pages linking him to various glamorous local women, a news anchor, an opera singer, an actress on a long-running S4C show. This last she noted was from the online version of Della’s column. Most of these reports pre-dated his interest in the Face story. In the last few years, Catrin noticed, Huw had kept more and more out of the limelight, possibly as his interest in the mystery had increasingly taken hold of him.

  Still, Huw seemed to have led a pretty charmed life, the only cloud over his head those old rumours about his resignation from the force all those years previously. Chances were this was in no way related to current events. But it was something Catrin knew she’d need to follow up on, if only to eliminate it.

  She remembered now that DS Thomas’s father had also been an officer at around the same time Huw had been serving. And immediately she wished she hadn’t. Thomas’s door was the last door she should be knocking on. But his father would have been a contemporary of Huw’s at Cathays Park, might well even have served in the same unit at the same time.

  The father was dead now, she knew that, but then Thomas had a good memory. That was how he got by, doing so little on the job, by remembering things others had to graft to find out. She phoned Thomas on his mobile, asked him if he wanted to meet for a drink. He sounded half asleep as usual, but he accepted without hesitating. He was acting as if he wasn’t in the least surprised she’d asked, as if he’d been half expecting it.

  ‘This isn’t a date,’ she said firmly.

  She said she’d meet him at a car park off the Newport Road. That way she hoped she wouldn’t have to depend on him for a lift back. She knew only too well what that could lead to.

  She washed and changed quickly, then headed out with the Cowboy Junkies on her iPod. She didn’t like to play music on her phone. A phone left a trace, an iPod used only in play function didn’t. This was how she liked it when she was working: as few traces as possible.

  She checked her phone before she switched it off. She saw a text from Della, just asking her to call if she needed help. She wondered what she knew.

  She tried closing her eyes for a moment, but the image of Face over those shapes on the floor and that strange unearthly shadow on the wall were still floating there as vivid as before. She walked out into the dark.