Authors: Howard Marks
Tags: #Crime, #Drug Gangs, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Suspense, #Thriller, #Women Sleuths
17
IT TOOK CAT
four long hours to fight her way out of the Met’s clutches. They were pissed off that she – some junior cop from a force that the Londoners regarded as half-assed – had beaten them to a murder scene. But twice as pissed off that she couldn’t offer a plausible story about how she’d come to be there. She’d heard one of the detectives on the road outside the crime scene trying to explain it to a newly arrived colleague. ‘Something about a YouTube video. The girl was singing it wrong or something.’
No one liked Cat’s explanation. No one liked the little IP dodge, though no one wanted to do anything official about it – after all, it was a dodge that had led to a dead body. No cops were going to get their wrists smacked for that. But most of all, no one liked the way that when any question got too close to the nitty-gritty, Cat just clammed up and said primly, ‘I’m not sure I have authority to answer that. You should probably consult DI Thomas in Camarthen.’ The lovely people from the Met chose to interpret that as a big Welsh
fuck you
, which was precisely how Cat intended it. They tried to give her a hard time for a few hours, then got bored and let her go.
Walter had told her that she could stay at his friend’s dojo for as long as she needed it, but that didn’t feel right. It was too clean. What she had in her head didn’t fit there. So she settled instead for a Travelodge, checked in with a girl at reception who looked like the job had already killed her brain.
Cat walked the nylon carpet under fluorescent bulbs to her room. She let herself in, then carefully relocked the door. She sat down on the regulation chair, its cheap upholstery pristine, still scented with the shrink-wrapping it had recently shed. Then she stood and moved to the window glowing with lights from the car park. Cat flicked the curtain, checked for any new vehicles outside, saw nothing. And what was she looking for anyway? She dropped the curtain back.
In her mind she ran chronologically through the roll of the missing and the dead. Lisa Marr. Katie Tana. Sara Armitage. Nia Hopkins. Delyth Moses. Esyllt Tilkian. Rhiannon Powell.
She realised in her mind she’d counted Esyllt as among the dead. Maybe she was right to do so. She went to the bathroom, took the hand-towel, stood on the chair to jam the towel into the room’s smoke detector then sat on the bed and smoked some canna. Fleas held a carnival beneath her skin.
Before she thought about it too much and nerves jittered her out of it, she made another call. It was long overdue. She left a message for Martin saying there had been developments. She made sure there was nothing in her voice that would give him false hope. That wasn’t difficult.
She felt too tired to even undress, just lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling as though it were the night sky. She dipped into sleep but after a few moments something yanked her back into half-consciousness, and she noticed she was sweating. Images from her past came back to her, unbidden. Sneaking out of the house to Martin’s home. Jogging round the corner onto the long stretch of Bryant Road that led to Martin’s. Number twenty Bedder Terrace – probably wearing her Death to the Pixies T-shirt, the same one she still had, and her favourite pair of trainers; black with black fraying laces. In better times they would have talked to each other and got through this.
Cat lay back on the bed. Although she was now a husk, a nothing with only the need to rest, sleep evaded her. Bad thoughts. She needed company. She only knew one person in London – or at least only one person she could face seeing. She asked reception to call her a minicab and got it to take her to Battersea. They drove slowly into Lombard Road. To the right were the towers and ziggurats of the riverside complexes. Oyster Wharf. Falcon Wharf. Candlemakers. The wedges of Battersea Reach, vague and placid presences.
They got to the address she had on her phone. Rob’s address. Her benzo buddy. He could cope with her.
His apartment block was shaped like an L and covered in glass like a giant crystal. She wasn’t sure what she was doing. He was almost certainly sleeping. Even if he wasn’t, she knew she should have called first; he had told her that, been very clear. His shyness demanded it.
In the brightly lit lobby a concierge was sitting. He looked half-asleep. She walked in through the open doors, and he didn’t look up. She looked at the postbox to the flat number Rob had given her. There was no name on it.
Next to the lifts there were service stairs that went up the outside of the building. She took those. The steps were concrete, and on each landing were yellow safety lights. There was a view down to Putney. More darkness, more dim lights.
On the stairs she did not think, she was an automaton. At Rob’s floor, she came out into the L-shaped passage. The air felt close and artificially freshened. She checked the flat numbers then counted round, breathing heavily now. She found the flat, wanted to walk away and so knocked hard and quickly. She waited, butterflies in her stomach. There was no answer. This was stupid: she turned to go. A sound behind the door, footsteps muffled by carpet, locks clicking open.
‘You’re late, you fuck. It better be good,’ an uneven voice came before the owner of that voice was visible. Was that Rob? If so, he sounded coarser than he did on Skype.
The door opened. A dim face in the entrance, clammed with night sweat. It was Rob. He frowned, scowled, recognised her and looked down.
‘Rob, I …’
‘Cat?’ The word seemed hesitant.
‘It’s late, I can go. Sorry.’ She felt a fool.
She thought he wanted her to go, but, ‘God, no come in,’ he said. He was obviously middle class. He stepped aside, slumping against the door jamb as though he were dizzy, mussing his hair, bowing his head. She stepped inside over wooden floors.
‘I was expecting someone else.’ His voice came from behind her as she walked timidly down the hallway. ‘Hours ago, though. In here,’ he said. ‘On the left.’
His voice seemed slightly slurred. The effects of abrupt awakening maybe. They made the lounge, a deep cream sofa, a large plasma screen on the wall, turned off. She saw a rocking horse by the sofa, a small blue plastic feeding chair, a jumble of primary-coloured plastic figures on the floor by a walnut coffee table. Her heart shrank.
‘You’ve got a kid,’ she said, turning around, catching the glassiness of his eyes before he averted his face, looked down at his bare feet splayed on the wooden floor.
‘Two,’ he said. ‘Boys. I should have said.’
‘Why should you have?’
He ignored the question, told her now. ‘One by the wife who chucked me out. Another by, well, someone else.’
‘You’re not with her now?’ Cat was not being subtle, but then she had just come to his flat in the middle of the night. Such behaviour precluded subtlety.
‘No, I’m not. The kids don’t live with me. I see a lot of the youngest though, am trying to get visiting rights for the older. Ex-wife’s not too keen.’ Still he would not look at her, he turned his back, sloped over to the open-plan kitchen off the back of the lounge. He fussed in the kitchen, accidentally knocked something over, swore.
‘Are you OK?’ Cat asked.
‘I’m fine. Er, do you want some wine?’
‘Wine?’ It was the middle of the night, but still. Rob knew, if anyone knew, that Cat and wine would not be a good combination right now.
‘Of course you don’t, sorry. Coffee?’
Did he drink wine himself? He shouldn’t with his history of Benzos. Still, it had been a long time since he’d kicked them. Maybe he was allowed.
‘Sit down,’ he said, his back to her still as he filled up the kettle. ‘You surprised me.’
‘I surprised myself.’ Cat did not sit, she was wary of her worn clothes touching the cream sofa. She became self-conscious, remembered the sweat she had woken with, the coffees and roll-ups she had consumed. Her breath must stink; her body also.
‘Can I use your loo?’ she asked. Nerves had almost had her say,
Can I freshen up?
She was glad she hadn’t.
She thought he hadn’t heard her, but just as she was about to ask again, he reacted. Without turning, the arm inside his red dressing gown pointed towards a door that led from the far side of the lounge. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ Cat said, stepping towards the door.
She went in, turned the light on, surveyed the marble, stood in front of the mirror on the bathroom cabinet, looked away from it when she saw herself.
Again the exhaustion; she knew she wasn’t the best judge,
knew
also she had shocked him in the night, but wasn’t there something weird about how Rob was acting? It was making her uneasy. Her hand was on the bathroom cabinet door, opening it, then she was rifling through the creams and toothpaste. It didn’t take long. She pulled it out, a half-used blister pack of 30mg Temazepam, another two full ones behind it. All trust fell away from her. Although she was stood on a firm floor in a steel building, it was not really there, and nothing was between her and the hard pavement, nothing stopping her soft flesh from falling down to smash against the kerbstones far below. She pocketed a blister pack and turned.
She grabbed the bathroom handle, yanked it open, marched across the lounge, glanced into the kitchen. Rob wasn’t there, gone into the bedroom maybe to put some clothes on.
‘You fucking liar,’ she shouted to the flat. ‘Moron.’
She ran down the hallway and out of the front door. She made the stairwell, her heart seemed as big as an elephant’s, knocking away insupportably inside her.
She made the foyer and the concierge stared at her as she ran towards the exit. Out on the street, she walked a bit before looking for a taxi. She didn’t even make a roll-up, just cried. Who did you really know? Who could you really trust? Not Rob, obviously. Kyle? Thomas? They both had agendas of their own. Cat wasn’t sure her welfare figured high up on their lists. Martin? He had been a friend once, but he had more pressing concerns right now. Walter, of course, could be trusted always. You could depend on him, the way you could depend on the rising sun. But like the sun, his rays couldn’t always fight through to reach street level.
Cat found a cab and got back to the hotel. Back in her room, she sat on the edge of the bed, her knees parted, hands holding the pack of Benzos in front of her. Her fingers twisted painfully
over
the packaging. A vision of a train came to her mind, of herself as a teenager, opening the door that led between carriages, the shingle on the track blurring with speed below her, then Martin’s hands pulling her back. Pulling her back so he could lose a daughter to murder, pain and evil? And so he could save her for this: betrayal, dependence and failure.
She pushed the pack and popped out a pill – half red, half blue – held it between finger and thumb. She was still sitting like that when she fell asleep.
He sees her as if in a dream. She is still singing on the stage
.
That is how he remembers her
.
He half-closes his eyes. Yes, he is there again. He can see her eyes gazing shyly back at him, as they used to. How much trust is in her face. She still believes that something wonderful lies ahead. She has not given up hope
.
It is almost the end
.
He tells her to stop. The room is empty, the lights down. It’s not much of a place. Just a few tables, the candles in a circle
.
‘Here,’ he says. She tries it on and it fits. He guides her to the mirror and the old make-up there. Then to the bed. It is still the same, nothing has changed and nothing will
.
She lets him at first. She does not seem frightened
.
‘Why do you keep your eyes closed when you touch me?’ she asks
.
She is no different from the others. They all ask. Of course he cannot tell her
.
How weary he feels. How long it has all been going on – several lifetimes, it feels like
.
He puts the mask over her, watches her inhale the white smoke
.
How innocent they are, they do not know what he is
.
He is a clock which only tells one hour of the night
.
She lies still. She seems hardly conscious. Maybe he has given her too much this time. He slaps her to bring her round. Then he gets down to his work
.
18
CAT WOKE IN
the half-light of dawn, fully dressed, stiff and cold. She had a piss, splashed water on her face, set her alarm clock, checked her phone. She’d had eight messages from Rob: five texts, three calls. She deleted them all, blocked his number, deleted his number from her phone, felt better for doing it. She was back to where she was before meeting him, trusting nobody. It was easier that way. She slept another two hours and woke before her alarm.
She was doing her best to deal with a Travelodge breakfast – rubber egg, flaccid bacon – when she got a call. It was Kyle.
‘I’m in London. Victoria. When can you get here?’
‘Where’s here?’
‘The SOCA building.’ Kyle gave an address. SOCA: Serious Organised Crime Agency. Cat thought about how long it would take get to Victoria, added an hour and gave Kyle a time.
‘OK. Ask for me at the desk.’
That was that. Kyle was gone. Cat ordered more coffee, wished she could smoke, then went back to her room to pack.
She scrubbed her underwear in the basin and then put it under the blow-dryer. She got dressed, feeling rank, then she called Thomas.
‘Found a corpse, I hear, Price.’
‘Another one.’
‘You pissed off the Met boys, all right. They sounded well furious.’
‘I aim to please.’
They bantered a bit, then Cat asked if anything more had come up from Thomas’s end. Not much, was the answer. The dentals had come back on the Croatian girl, Katie Tana, and, as they had predicted, they matched the landfill body, the dead girl from Tower Hamlets. Thomas had run Tana again through the PNC and NCIS and had turned up only minor form. In January the previous year she had been cautioned twice for smoking weed at bus stops in Deptford. Four weeks before she had been reported missing, she had been busted with Mandrax at a rave in Greenwich, only small, personal use quantities. This was not exactly a surprise as they already knew Mandrax had been recovered from Tana’s flat.
‘It doesn’t get us anywhere we weren’t already,’ Thomas said morosely before he rang off.
Cat did some Krav Maga, a few jabs and kicks. Not much of her routine, just enough to check she was in working order. The withdrawal symptoms still gnawed at her, but after last night she knew she was stronger than they were; knew that the only difference between her now and being clean was time. Rob had lied to her, offered his help to pull her from the edge of the cliff, then dragged his hand away at the last minute. Why had he done it? There were a thousand deviant reasons, and she would never know which one was his. Because the only important thing was that she hadn’t fallen; had found that the cliff edge was solid, that she could step away from it. She felt relieved.
This was good news, even if it didn’t feel that way.
Cat used the hotel room’s Lilliputian kettle and a sachet of bad coffee to make herself a cup and got to work. It felt better to match a body against an existing Misper than have an unidentified corpse
and
an unresolved Misper case. She checked the Deptford bus stops Tana was busted at on lists of soliciting points on the
NCIS
and then on Punternet and other online punter guides. Neither were listed nor were the streets around them.
On her laptop, she reviewed the original missing persons report. Tana had lived alone, had no friends or family to miss her, but her absence was noticed after some weeks by the landlord. Her set-up in Deptford had been the same as at the room her body had been traced to a month later. She had paid in cash and not given the landlord her real name.
Next, Cat ran a search for Rhiannon Powell, the murdered Blackheath girl, to see if there might be anything that tied her to Tana. Rhiannon had no form at all, she did not even have a driving licence, but she was on the system from a DNA swabbing at a stop-and-search a couple of years back. Stopped in a speeding car with two males in their early twenties. The car had belonged to one of the males, and everything seemed legit. Cat ran the names. Roberts and Fuller. Both males had minor drugs form, the sort of thing anyone of their age might have, but there was no mention of Mandrax, no connection she could see with Tana, or anything else in the case for that matter.
The only thing she noted was a different address given for Rhiannon on the report. Chances were it was just an old address, and Rhiannon had since moved to the flat in Blackheath. But she would check it. With any luck the Met would not get round to it for a day or so.
Next Cat went back to the NCIS drug seizure chart to match it with Tana’s form.
The Mandrax seizure in Greenwich was recorded along with several others that month in London and Manchester and the pills photographed, but there was no other mention of Tana. The original incident report just told the usual story. When the police had entered, dozens of pills had been dumped by those present. No one admitted anything. Body searches had revealed nothing
significant.
The quantity of the pills on Tana, five only, had been deemed consistent with personal use and she had been released with a verbal warning. Other items seized were mostly ecstasy and amphetamines. That there was no other Mandrax suggested that the rave had not been part of the roll-out. Tana had likely been there in a private capacity not as a supplier.
Cat sat for some moments in the room collecting herself. She had a feeling that they were close to something. But she had had that feeling before, and each time the case had seemed to pull away from her.
She checked out of the Travelodge, a better feeling than checking in.
It was still raining. The air felt humid and close. She made her way to Victoria by tube and reached the SOCA block in Victoria just half an hour late. She was shown to a waiting room on the first floor. On the opposite side a solid flank of imposing Georgian terraces blocked out the view.
The door of one of the offices opened, exposing a rain-spattered window. A woman called her in, a civilian, and left her alone, told her to help herself to coffee from a thermos. Cat had a queasy feeling in her stomach. The same sensation that she had known during her years at school when summoned to the headmistress’s study for what always felt like it would be the last time. Cat gazed at the chairs with mock leather seats. On the wall opposite a peeling cupboard flanking a khaki filing cabinet. Rain washed the window. London traffic wound and groaned below.
Finally, Kyle arrived, dressed in a crumpled trouser suit and plain white blouse. She sat down in a large leather swivel chair, the only symbol of status in the room. She said nothing at first, letting her eyes pass around the room as if it was of more interest than Cat.
She saw Kyle differently now: she was not the careerist automaton everybody took her for, her composure was as fragile, and her private life as messy, as everybody else’s. But being treated by Kyle like this, it was difficult to like her.
Finally Kyle stared at Cat. ‘Don’t bother to get comfortable,’ she said, ‘this won’t take long.’ She spoke quietly, but her tone was icy. She reached into a drawer, took out a folded
Echo
, threw it across the desk. Nodded at Cat, a command to read its contents.
The paper was open on a half-page article. The photos of the three Tregaron girls that accompanied the story had been selected for their power to move. These were pictures of innocence, school portraits dating back to what must have been the girls’ earliest high school days. The photos of Nia Hopkins, the middle-class abductee, and of Esyllt, the missing college girl, were more prominent than that of Moses. The prevailing impression was of bunches and braces. Cat scanned the story beneath.
The gist was clear enough; the article was suggesting a cyber-stalker. It argued that the girls had been groomed online by their killer, that they’d been hooked by the oldest trick in the book, the promise of stardom. Clips of the YouTube videos were shown as stills. Threaded through everything was Riley’s crazy account of ‘Street Spirit’ as the Devil’s Song.
‘The story is in one of the national tabloids too. Your friend Della Davies gets a byline.’
Too much emphasis on the word ‘friend’.
Cat said nothing. She hadn’t been asked a question.
‘Well?’
‘Sorry, ma’am. I’m not sure what you want to know.’
‘Why the fuck you gave this to Davies? How much did that earn you?’
Cat felt herself flush with anger. ‘I’m not the source,’ was all she said.
‘Right. You’re not. Let me see, though. The only people on the inquiry team who knew this stuff are you, me, DI Thomas, and a very small and closely supervised group in Camarthen. I didn’t give this to Davies. Thomas would hardly want to fuck up his own inquiry. Same goes for the officers around him who, by the way, are reporting directly to the Chief Constable on this. Which leaves you. A friend of Davies’s. Who saw her the day before she writes this story. Who had access to all the facts. Who was not under any kind of supervision for the relevant period. And who, quite frankly, could probably use the money. Am I right?’
Kyle’s delivery was nasty. Deliberately so. Intended to wound.
Cat checked back over the relevant day to see if she could provide anything like a sensible alibi, but what she had was the exact opposite. She’d spent most of the day researching the YouTube stuff online. A log of her computer would, if anything, provide further evidence for Kyle’s misbegotten accusation.
‘You are completely wrong. Is that all?’ Cat stood up.
‘Sit down.’
Cat paused, then sat.
‘Sometimes,’ Kyle said, her voice weary now, not intimadatory, ‘sometimes the thing that’s obvious is also the truth. You. Davies. This.’ She gestured at the
Echo
.
‘Why isn’t Riley the most obvious source? He’s a journo. He makes his living from this kind of thing.’
‘Because we took precautions. He’s not technically under arrest, but he can’t fart without one of Thomas’s officers there.’
‘Thomas must have a big team. It only takes one.’
‘The Devil’s Song? Come on. That’s something you knew about and Thomas and Riley. And me, because I’ve spoken to Thomas. And no one else. Thomas didn’t release that kind of rubbish to his team, they’d have laughed at him.’
Cat nodded. ‘You know, if I’d really wanted to make some money, I’d have produced this.’
She flipped open her laptop, and jiggled it out of hibernation. She showed Kyle the images which suggested that the girls had sung their songs in the same location. The proscenium arch, the flat leaning against the back wall. Passed it over the desk so Kyle could see it. Kyle took her time to look at each shot carefully. She still said nothing.
‘Obviously I’m not expert in digital images, but …’
Kyle nodded grimly. ‘Who else has this?’
‘No one. You’re the first. It looks like all these girls used the same recording studio, or whatever this place is. Then they uploaded these recordings onto YouTube, presumably hoping to get picked up by a scout, A. & R. That’s the connection, that’s how they must’ve met the killer.’ Cat paused to let the implications sink in. ‘If I wanted to make some cash, then these are the money shots.’
Kyle considered, then nodded. ‘Fine. Good work.’ There was no apology forthcoming, nor would there be. Kyle didn’t work like that. But there was no aftertaste either. The past was past.
Except maybe where it involved dead foster-daughters and Griff Morgan.
‘There’s more.’ Cat started playing one of the reels, then another, then the third, stopping them at the points where the performances were similar. Kyle watched carefully.
‘OK, they’ve all been trained by the same person. These tapes – you think he made them as some kind of trophy.’
‘Maybe. But it could be that the interpretation someone else puts on the performances is dooming the girls.’
Kyle’s expression was as uninviting as ever, yet Cat felt determined to pursue her line of thought to its final destination. ‘There could be a drug angle here. One of the girls – Katie Tana
– was
handling Mandrax, small quantities. There were traces on the two dead Tregaron girls, too, and at the scene there.’
Kyle waved her hand dismissively. ‘They could have got that anywhere.’
Cat cleared her throat, ignored Kyle’s contemptuous gesture.
‘Maybe they sourced it at this mystery studio. Their supplier is someone high up the supply chain. Tana’s pills were wholes, not halves, which are how they’re usually dealt. And there’s evidence to suggest that all these pills trace back to your marina bust. The canoes that got away. Then there’s Morgan’s name all over this – the accusation.’
‘Except Morgan has been in a high-security prison until a couple of days ago. It’s difficult to see how he could be the direct source for the pills.’
‘I know.’
‘So what’s your theory?’
‘Forget Morgan for the time being, go back to the drugs. Let’s say these girls use the same studio. Get their drugs from the same guy. Someone high up the supply chain. At least one of them was busted with those drugs on them. No charges, because it was counted as personal possession, but our Mr Big is worried. He’s scared that that girl, or maybe one of the others, is going to grass him out. So he cleans up. Nastily.’
Kyle put her palms flat on the desk, pushed her chair back. ‘Class dismissed,’ Cat muttered under her breath. Kyle locked eyes with her as though she had heard, or at least sensed the note of dissent.
‘No. These girls were tortured. A clean-up would not have involved that. The torture was professional, not recreational.’
‘I know. We’re missing something. We don’t have a full picture yet.’
‘Or we’re not looking at it all the right way up.’
Cat nodded. ‘Exactly. But what we do know is someone likely watched all of these YouTube videos of the girls. Probably watched and rewatched. Can we get IP addresses on all the watchers over the last two years, say?’
Kyle nodded, eager. That medieval warrior look again: the zealot.
Cat said, ‘I’m imagining this time a warrant should be easy enough.’
‘I’ll action it.’
Cat was sure she didn’t want to work from an office. Not Cathays, not Camarthen, not Tregaron. Someone, not her, had leaked highly sensitive information to Della Davies. Riley had claimed he hadn’t been trying to kill her and she’d taken him at his word, but bad things were happening. Women had been tortured to death for a truth towards which, Cat felt, she was inching ever closer. It was better to fly solo awhile. No offices. Stay moving. Watch her back.