The Score (24 page)

He swept past a dirty kitchen and an unspeakable bathroom into a surprisingly large living room. Blackout curtains prevented any street light entering from outside. There was no electric light, only twenty or thirty wax candles. Apart from Roberts and Cat herself, there were three people in the room: an unusually tough-looking hippy in combat gear and dreadlocks – Fuller? – two girls, all dramatic eye make-up, black dresses and beads. There was a table covered in black cloth, and at the centre a human skull.

One of the girls was more finely dressed than the other and more alert. Her close-fitting black jacket looked like something a professional horsewoman would wear.

The girl eyed Cat apprehensively, whispered something to her friend. As Cat approached, she saw that she looked about the same age as her friend, but, with her finely cut clothes, she exuded a greater air of authority. A woman trying to look older than her years.

‘Do you believe in the devil, pig?’ said Roberts.

‘Does the name Rhiannon Powell mean anything to you?’

‘Look out over London. Tell me, who’s winning?’

‘I have reason to believe that Rhiannon Powell used this address. She was murdered.’ And here Cat looked at the two girls. ‘Murdered recently, in her own garden.’

‘Or sacrificed.’ The hippy was standing now. He had the dissociated look that goes with PTSD or a bad drug experience.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t pay any attention. He’s out of it.’ Roberts again.

The guy was tall – six two, six three even – and a strong
bastard,
gym-muscled. He stood too close, breathing tobacco and garlic breath into Cat’s hair.

‘Oi,’ said Roberts, but the hippy wasn’t listening.

‘She was frightened as shit that’s what.’ The hippy stared at her. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I think you should leave.’ It was one of the two girls speaking, urgently but quietly.

‘Frightened of what?’ asked Cat, but she got no answer.

‘Fucking pig.’ The hippy had his hand on Cat’s chest and was pushing her back against the wall. She didn’t know the room layout and the place was so untidy she had no idea what might be lying on the floor to trip her.

‘She wouldn’t tell us.’ One of the girls looked more frightened than the others. She went over to Roberts.

The hippy was still closing. Cat was pinned against the wall. The girl took the key from Roberts, was opening the door. Then it slammed and she was gone.

The hippy had his bearded face up close to Cat’s. ‘I don’t remember inviting you in here.’

‘Steady,’ Cat said, ‘steady,’ as though talking to a horse.

He pulled his head back. Cat wasn’t sure why. He was going to either spit or headbutt her, and if it was the latter she wasn’t sure she’d win any fight that followed.

She stamped on his instep, and brought her knee up as his face folded down with the pain. She made good contact – felt blood soaking into her trouser leg – and flung the guy to the side.

‘Fuck’s sake, man.’ That, from Roberts.

She needed to move fast to reach the girl. She edged towards him and the door, hoping that he’d be only too happy to let her out.

He was. She ran forwards. Roberts first forgot he had a key, then remembered, then fumbled the lock, then undid it. The
hippy
was at the end of the short corridor, with a Gothic-looking hunting knife in his hand. Cat fled. She pounded down the stairs, to the back room with the immigrant family in it, didn’t trust that the front door could be opened from the inside. Without a word of explanation, she flung open the window and bundled herself out onto the roof, from there to the pavement.

She leaned panting against a graffitied wall. She had to laugh at herself, really.

Reaching the street Cat saw the retreating back of the girl. Keeping a steady pace she kept her close, waited until she was out of sight of the house. Further down, the street branched off into separate roads containing large Edwardian houses. The girl crossed over to the other side.

The clatter of retreating heels was not the syncopated click-clack of the self-possessed: their rhythm was quicker, more urgent, brisker than a purposeful stride. The footfalls had upset in them. Cat turned, looked again, saw now that the girl was running.

She crossed the street again. Cat made her move. ‘Wait!’

The girl spun around, looked startled. Cat could see the marks of tears on her cheeks. She clutched a balled tissue in her right hand, sniffed.

‘You were a friend of Rhiannon’s, weren’t you?’

Cat moved closer, put a hand on her left arm, squeezed gently. The girl did not nod, but she did not move away either. Shock kept her still.

‘I’m police, but not what your friends thought.’ She gestured back behind them. ‘Can we talk?’

The girl did not stop, and Cat walked fast beside her. ‘I never really knew her. I mean, she answered an ad for the room, paid the rent, but she was hardly there.’

The girl hoped this was enough but Cat stayed on her.

‘All her stuff – she didn’t have much – she took to the other flat.’

‘Two places she had?’

‘Maybe more, dunno.’

‘OK, I believe you,’ Cat said gently. ‘Did she see an older man ever?’

‘No. I don’t know. She never mentioned anything like that, but she kept going away.’ The girl bowed her head. ‘It just feels so wrong that she—’

The girl started to cry. Cat asked for a name – Jen – and gave her own. Cat patted her pockets, pretending to look for a tissue but knowing she didn’t have one.

‘She was a singer, wasn’t she?’

Jen nodded.

‘Listen, can I ask if any of these pictures mean anything to you? Do you know where they might have been taken?’

Cat showed the printouts she’d made of the missing girls. All singing the same song. ‘These ring any bells?’

Cat kept her eyes fixed on the girl’s face for any sign of recognition. She showed close-ups of the victims’ faces, then focused on features of the stage. The peeling paint on the proscenium, the corner of the flat at the back with the painted battlements. Nothing produced so much as a flicker.

‘No, I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

The girl removed her hand from Cat’s, put the tissue to her nose as she shook her head. She pulled away, moved across the street to a hatchback. Its scratched paintwork had faded to an unattractive pinky-orange. The back bumper was dented in several places. The girl removed a bunch of keys from her pocket, opened the door, slid in quickly behind the wheel. The engine coughed briefly, then caught.

Something clicked in Cat’s mind. ‘Wait?’ She screamed, belted
forward,
reached the car just as the girl was pulling out into the road. She banged an open palm on the windscreen, her rings clattering on the glass. Cat mimed winding down the window, held her hands together in a plea, caught the girl’s eye with her imploring own. A small chink appeared at the top of the driver’s window. Cat moved round, breathless.

‘Rhiannon, she didn’t have a driving licence, did she? You gave her lifts.’

Jen nodded. ‘Sometimes, yeah. I mean, she had a bike too, but …’

She gestured quickly upwards, by way of explanation, at the rain. But something in her mood had changed. Her hands were tensed on the steering wheel, her leg moving as she pumped the clutch, inching to get away. Cat knew she would have to act fast. ‘Ever drop her off in the Deptford area?’

There was an almost imperceptible twitch in the girl’s cheek. ‘Yes.’

‘Where? Where did you take her?’

The girl took a deep breath, cleared her throat. ‘It was funny. She never told me where she was going. Just asked me to drop her by the river.’

‘Jen, this is really important. Really, really important. Can you take me there? Take me there now?’

Jen reached over to move a patterned straw shopping bag from the passenger seat. ‘Be my guest,’ she said.

20

JEN DROPPED CAT
at an unlit spot near the river. She told Cat her friend always went off past the yards by the water, and that the place gave her the creeps. Cat could just make out the yards, a building site and a taller structure beyond them.

‘Listen, wait here for me. If you see anything that scares you, just call the police straight away. Say you’re calling in relation to Operation
Bedd Arthur
.’ The Welsh name was Thomas’s invention, his little Welsh welcome present to any interference from London.

Cat made Jen repeat the name, made her check she had a phone signal, got her to lock her doors and turn the car so it was pointing out of the complex and ready for a quick get-away. Jen sounded compliant, but Cat expected her to disappear as soon as her back was turned.

Nearing darkness, the river was just a wasteland of rubbish and industrial flotsam, some moving upstream on the tide. Cat hugged herself for warmth, and peered around. There was a strip of empty lots and a couple of builder’s supply yards, with wide turning areas for incoming trucks. Wire-mesh fences and cameras; security lights starting to blink on. Not exactly a place to coax a fine performance from a wannabe singer. Across from the waste ground and the builder’s yards, there was what looked like a deserted chapel. Any view it had once enjoyed had been taken by a warehouse to the front, currently undergoing
conversion
to flats. As a working place of worship, the chapel must have been impressive in its glory days, but now it was just a fume-blackened shell, ripe for restoration or, more likely, demolition.

The sky above turned an unearthly mauve, the chapel lit by a corona of light coming from a small break in the clouds. She shivered and approached through an evening that was now as cold as it was wet.

A path threaded off the pavement, round the back of a yard. She took it. The chapel was set back behind a box hedge which had been left to go wild. A no-trespassing sign was sealed in polythene against the elements. Incongruously, some borders had been planted with roses, perhaps to lighten the air of dereliction. The brightness of the roses seemed feeble against the ruin. Rubbish was strewn in the borders and gang tags covered the wall behind. The gate was topped with wire and secured with a padlock, but gaps had been worn in the hedge to the side.

She glanced up at the chapel. It seemed familiar somehow.

Inside the grounds, the paving was broken and moss-covered. A big pile of weeds and hedge clippings sat in a wide, woven polythene builder’s bag, awaiting removal. To the side of the chapel entrance, a glass-fronted board lay shattered on the ground and covered in graffiti. It’s been deconsecrated, she thought. Desecrated as well, perhaps.

Just then, her phone rang. She jumped – literally jumped. The panic was momentary – only Kyle had her number – but her reaction revealed her own state to her. She palmed the phone from her pocket and answered.

‘Price, you OK?’

‘Yes. Making progress.’

‘Anything you want to tell me?’

‘Not sure. Maybe not right now. It’s not a brilliant time.’

‘OK. Look, one thing you ought to know. I went by your flat just now. I thought I ought to.’

Cat gulped. Fear wasn’t an intangible thing. It was real. It gripped you. It could make you choke. She fought out a word. ‘Yes.’

‘Someone’s gone over the place. I’m standing in it now.’

‘Fuck.’

‘It’s a shit-hole, but I expect it was before.’

‘Yes.’ Cat tried a little ghost of a smile. She thought that was probably Kyle’s humour at work. A rare misshapen thing, but delicate and easily bruised.

‘There’s no computer here,’ said Kyle, returning.

‘There
was
a desktop. A black tower unit—’

‘I know. Only the monitor’s here and the keyboard. They’ve just taken the computer itself.’

‘There was nothing on it. Personal stuff, I mean.’

‘A fishing trip,’ said Kyle. ‘You’re safe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Phones, credit cards, email accounts?’

Cat told Kyle what she’d done on all those fronts.

‘Good,’ said Kyle.

‘Is the flat in a real mess?’

‘Yes.’ There was a moment’s hesitation, then Kyle chose to opt for honesty. ‘They’ve knifed most of your clothes, your bedding, your mattress. Not looking for anything, I don’t think, more just sending a warning.’

‘They could have tried a card’: Cat’s own feeble attempt at humour.

‘Yeah, look, you can come in. We can bring in the Met. Throw resources at it. Make this whole damn thing so big, so public, so out there, you won’t be a target any more.’

‘Unless I want to be.’

‘Yes, there’s that.’

‘And going big might just make our man bolt for the hills.’

‘It’s your call, Price. My advice would be to call it a day.’

‘Thanks.’ Cat fell silent for a moment. Gulls cawed overhead in the purple sky. Ahead stood the smoke-blackened facade of the chapel. ‘Look, I’ll call you back.’

Cat pocketed the phone. She had no headache. She was fighting her way clear. This is what being clean would feel like one day. Clarity you could taste.

She approached the main door to the church and twisted the iron handle. It moved to the right, but when she leaned against it there was no give. She made her way round the side of the building. The path was narrow, slippery with lichen in places. At the back there was another door. This looked in worse repair. The varnish had peeled and the wood was exposed to the elements, had cracked in places. She bent down, placed a wide eye to a crack, looked inside but could make out nothing. She pulled her hand back into her jacket, pushed her arm at the rotten section of the door, felt it give. The panels made no noise as they crumbled. Reaching in through the gap, she moved her arm upwards until she felt the door handle on the inside. Down an inch or so. She changed her position slightly, worked it until it turned.

Inside it was damp. She felt the atmosphere collecting in her throat. She coughed, rebuked herself for the noise, listened. Nothing. If the killer was in here he was silent as the grave. Had he already heard her? Cat stepped forward, cracked her shin on something, heard a scraping. If she carried on in the dark, inevitably she’d make more sound as she moved forwards. She decided to chance a light, pulled her phone out, flicked the beam level down by touch. She was in the vestry. There was an old open-fronted cupboard where once surplices and cassocks had hung. A door gave onto a narrow cubicle containing a toilet without a seat, rust stains in the bowl.