by Howard Marks
Cat surveyed it then ignored it. She dug down through more sites, more pastel positivity, and soon started to get where she needed to be, the sites she knew would tell her the most, the ones she felt least prepared for. She would do it for Martin. Do it for her own past self.
These were created by the suicidal kids themselves. They had a more basic design layout, hinting at an underworld of suggestible teenagers reaching out to others from the privacy of their black-painted bedrooms, a network of emo kids. The format was always roughly the same: a black background with gothic lettering and morbid symbols – skulls, guttering candles, barbed-wire crowns. There was little sophistication here, no acknowledgement of advances in web design. This was like a trip along the internet’s memory lane. She scrolled down – through all the advice about seeking help, through all the tributes to famous victims like Kurt Cobain and Lee McQueen – looking for links to the sites that offered practical information. ‘How to’ pages for wannabe suicides.
These were more clinical, lacking the goth references of the previous webpages, but still basic, functional. They had no cosy public information notices issued by the NHS, no encouraging pastel colours, no chirpy think-positive crap. No names or contact info either. Cat guessed the sites had been set up on anonymous servers and wouldn’t be easily traced back to individuals. On one page, teen suicide was referred to as ‘going to the happy place’. The same unnamed author called it ‘catching a balloon’. Cat flicked to another site. Again, the reference to suicide as catching a balloon.
She recalled the glittery shape in the pithead tunnel, near the shaft where Nia Hopkins’s body was found, the glittery shape that had composed itself into a balloon as she had got closer. The balloon had jarred at the time, not fitting with the rest of the belongings. Maybe its being there was a sign of suicide, and so perhaps Thomas’s theory was correct. Maybe they were dealing with a suicide ring in Tregaron, whether inspired by Bridgend or not.
She pushed on with her research. There were lists of drugs recommended as painless for suicide, techniques for obtaining them, links to online pharmacies that wouldn’t ask questions. Most of the traditional techniques – hanging, drowning, jumping, weedkiller and bleach – were dismissed as uncertain and potentially agonising. The focus was on a completely painless death. For those sold on cutting ‘for that unbeatable look’, it was suggested that blood-thinners like warfarin be taken and a bath of water used to assist flow. From the same site came ‘Click here for our top ten list of celebrity cutters’.
Cat felt herself pulled back to that birthday night on the train, felt the icy air between the carriages blowing her hair back, sucking the breath from her lungs. Outside, the train lights flashing past, the blur of the tracks, that feeling that she could keep on falling for ever and never hit the ground. If she’d had access to the information on these sites, would she have tried again? Refined her methods? Did they simply help destined suicides to kill themselves more efficiently? Or did they push borderline cases over the edge?
Her synapses flinched with the trank need. Her mind was back on the train again. Back to the tranks. Back to the train. Christ, she was sick of it, sick of herself. She closed her eyes, then slowly opened them. She needed help. She picked up the phone to call Thomas, hesitated, put it down again. She wasn’t ready to open up to Thomas. Would she ever be?
So instead she messaged Rob. Benzo Rob, rocksteady Rob.
He got back to her within seconds, inviting a call, and she Skyped him.
As before when she’d done this, she felt simultaneously shy but eager. Wanting to reveal herself, but to hide herself too. She canted the screen so the camera captured a side section of her face, like a teenager might drape a self-conscious fringe to cover some hated feature. She did not say anything at first. She knew he could tell by just looking at her what she was going through.
‘That bad, eh?’ There was that familiar hint of the confessor in his voice.
She nodded slowly.
‘Headaches?’
‘Yeah. All the time, pretty much.’
‘Insomnia?’
‘No,’ she said, before correcting herself. ‘At least, not too bad.’
‘APOTS,’ he said. ‘All APOTS.’
APOTS: trank speak for All Part Of The Syndrome.
‘Yeah. Only there’s my job. Investigating some suicides. Maybe suicides. We’re not sure yet.’
There was a break on the line before he spoke again, ‘You’re a – what, social worker?’
She hadn’t told him. ‘Nope. Cop.’
‘Fuck, that’s heavy. They shouldn’t get you doing that stuff. Not the way you are at the moment.’
They chatted for a few minutes. Professional benzo-users comparing notes. After a while, Cat forgot some of her nerves. The headache was still there, but some of the blackness was going.
‘Hey, you want to meet up?’ Rob said. He’d never asked before.
She did a double-take, then said, ‘I can’t.’ As far as she could remember, mentoring was meant to be a phone-only thing. The website where they’d met had a code of conduct governing mentoring and meetings were supposedly prohibited.
‘It’s your call. I don’t want to weird you out. Just – I don’t know, sometimes phone calls aren’t enough. I know that’s not what the rules say.’
She thought about that. She did need more than a voice from a laptop. ‘It’s not that,’ she deflected, ‘it’s because I’m miles away. In the sticks.’
‘OK. Well, when you get back, and if you want, come over and see me, yeah? It’s your call, no pressure.’ ‘OK.’
Things had moved on with Rob. He was the one pushing things forward now. Was it sympathy because she looked – felt – so bad? Or did he want to see her for other reasons? Futures with Rob flitted stupidly around her mind: a big dark room with a big white bed that they shared; hooning trips up into the hills, gigs maybe. Kids maybe. So they could grow up and catch a balloon. Stop it, she told herself, you’re thinking like a mad bitch. Witch’s bitch.
She talked briefly then cut the call.
Again, she was alone.
She put on some Drake, smoked with the window open. The room had grown darker. She looked out, a mass of clouds were scudding slowly in from the hills. On the patch of public land the youths had disappeared. Cat’s attention was drawn back to the street as the door of the craft shop was opened by a woman wearing a beige anorak. Just before the door swung shut behind her, the woman glanced quickly down the street, then did so again. Cat wondered what had caught her attention.
She swept her eyes in the same direction, caught a flicker of light. Between the row of shops and a freestanding post box, a figure was backing away. Cat watched him carefully now. He was about Thomas’s height – maybe an inch taller – and was slipping something – a small object – inside his jacket. Had he been watching her as she smoked at the window? She felt unsettled. Was he watching her last night too, when she undressed? Anger came now, anger mixed with fear. She stared right at him. As he turned his head she saw a hatchet face, unnaturally pale. A stripe of white hair streaked the front of his head. She shivered.
Martin’s unease now made sense. On the face of it, there hadn’t been anything so odd about a man from Tregaron being seen in Cardiff. Wales wasn’t so huge a place that coincidences like that couldn’t happen. But now everything had changed. A voice inside screamed at her to go after him. To do it now.
She snatched up her keys and helmet, ran downstairs and to the door. In the yard, she dodged the bins, squeezed past a delivery lorry, scanned for him. A few yards down the road, the man was sliding into a battered black Rover. It was stretched and looked like the type of vehicle used in funeral cortèges several decades back. She jammed her bike keys into the ignition and fired up. Out on the street, she tucked behind a Saab that had moved out after the Rover. She drove carefully, staying out of sight, knowing that her damped engine wouldn’t give her away.
The car headed for the edge of town
. The road narrowed after a mile or so and wound through half-flooded fields. The Saab pulled into a farm cottage just before the stretch of council houses near to Martin’s place. She slowed to avoid the Saab’s back end, then accelerated again on the approach to the council houses. The black Rover was nowhere. Where the hell had it gone? Beyond the council houses, there was a small estate and she drove inside, checking the parked cars. Nothing. Damn. She made another circuit the other way, peering down the short driveways into the yards where some vehicles were parked in long grass and on bricks. Still no sign of the Rover. She had lost him.
Frustrated, she turned around, gunning the engine. Her fault for being too clever. Rule two when you’re following someone is: Don’t be seen. Rule one is: Don’t lose the bastard.
She reached the short panhandle leading up to Martin’s house, drove down it, looked for signs of life. An old Audi was parked outside – Martin’s, she presumed. She squinted as a shape appeared, then disappeared just as quickly in a window upstairs. Cat edged the bike along the track, parked behind the Audi, stowed her helmet on the back of the bike. Her boots crunched on the wet gravel as she made her way to the porch door.
She rang the bell and waited.
Martin peered through the glass before opening. He looked as if he’d been lying down. His hair was sticking up and his shirt was buttoned at the top though not further down. He pulled it to. His mouth was set in a firm line.
Silently he led Cat through to the sitting room. The TV was on the news channel, a makeshift bed on the sofa in front. He stood still with his back to her, as if transfixed by something in the conservatory beyond. He seemed to be struggling to retain his composure.
‘Do you want anything to drink?’
Cat smiled, shook her head. He shook his head, echoing her, a gesture that Cat remembered from their school days. On a Thursday afternoon all pupils were expected to participate in at least one extra-curricular activity. She and Martin had chosen the Debating Society. The topic was, ‘This House believes that the death penalty is a suitable punishment for murder’. Martin had taken on one Young Tory, a rope-’em-high type, and ripped him to pieces, using that characteristic headshake of his as a way to patronise, to undermine. He had easily won the debate, perhaps his only success at that school, by playing on the innate compassion of the young. Cat wondered if he’d take to the theme with such fierce idealism now, if his own daughter turned up murdered. Would Martin still oppose the death penalty then? How little she knew of him. He was just a stranger with an old friend’s name and mannerisms.
‘You’re sure you don’t want a drink?’
It seemed important to him. ‘OK. Thanks. Water.’
He went to the kitchen and she moved towards the golden afternoon light that just then burst through the rain clouds and flooded the window. He returned and motioned to Cat to sit down, then followed. Sat looking at his hands.
‘You’ve heard about the second girl?’ Cat asked softly.
Martin swallowed hard, as if to combat nausea. Cat watched him closely, waited for him to level out. ‘But Esyllt had nothing to do with the waitress. Or with Nia Hopkins.’
‘Maybe not. But there was a T-shirt of her college at the scene.’
He flinched. ‘I heard.’
‘Obviously until it’s tested we can’t be sure it’s hers, but likely it was.’
He looked forlorn. ‘If she knew those girls, why hide it from me? They were loners, depressives, what would she be doing with girls like that?’
She said nothing. She didn’t want to give Martin false hope, nor did she want to speculate until she was on firmer ground. She knew if this was suicide the fact that the girls might not really have known each other made no difference. Each would have had different, private reasons for doing what they did. Reasons that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. Reasons that might never be known with any certainty. One girl’s death gave permission to the next to take her own life and so a cluster had formed.
But those thoughts were too harsh to look at directly. Too harsh to say out loud. She obfuscated, gesturing to the coffee table’s spotless surface. ‘You’re keeping it tidy in here. I’m rubbish at getting the housework done.’
‘Looking for things to do. Dusting is about my limit these days.’
‘This house believes in dusting.’
He smiled, weakly. He had got the reference. This was her Martin still.
‘Martin, you need to come clean with me. If you hold out on me, I’m going back to Cardiff.’
He looked at her with those watery eyes. He was thinking of blanking her again, but after a moment, decided not to.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want to know.’
‘Griff Morgan. Did Esyllt ever mention him?’
‘The smuggler?’
She held his gaze. ‘Was she involved in a campaign to free him, anything like that?’
‘No, definitely not. She never mentioned him. All her interests were musical.’
‘How did you get my number? It was an unlisted mobile.’
‘From someone who knows you, I wouldn’t want to get them in trouble.’
She let this go for the moment. She had half an idea who he had got the number from. She nodded noncommittally. ‘OK. So who the hell is white-stripe man? She cocked her head to the window. ‘I’ve just seen someone who fits his description in town. Give me everything you know about him.’
‘Well, it’s what I said.’ He paused and Cat shifted her bodyweight, ready to get up and leave, but he stopped her with a hand. ‘It’s what I said, plus Esyllt met him a few times.’
‘Here or in Cardiff?’
‘Here. Tregaron.’
‘She met him. And?’
‘And – I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me anything. She met him, as far as I know, maybe two, three times, and that was it. But she changed after that. Became more private. Seemed as though she’d entered her own world. She wasn’t as open with me.’
‘So you think he influenced her in some way, unhinged her?’
Martin put his hand to his mouth, eyes shut, nodded.
‘And he had a very pale face? Sharp? Streak of white in his hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Esyllt told you that she’d seen him in Cardiff? That’s how you knew?’
‘Yes. She seemed upset and I felt worried. That’s when I contacted you.’
‘Do you know of anything at all that connects this man to the other girls?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know anything else about him at all? Martin, if you hold back from me …’
‘No, no. I don’t know anything.’ He stopped abruptly, correcting himself. Showing he was on best behaviour. ‘His car is black – an old model, I think. I only saw him twice.’
‘OK. Thanks.’
Cat sat upright. This man was perhaps more relevant than she’d realised. If Esyllt had been close to him, he would need speaking to and before he got too far away. ‘I’ve got to go.’ She rushed across the room, whipping out her bike keys at the same time. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Cat! What do you know?’
‘Later,’ she said over her shoulder as she left the front door.
She was on her bike, down the drive, back onto the estate. She had to check again, be certain. She made another circuit of the estate, looking for the black Rover. In the rain the streets were almost empty. Up ahead of her a grey-haired man in an anorak emerged from the corner shop. One of his hands was gripping a carrier bag, the other extended to count his change. As he did so his lips moved, his head shaking. About fifty yards further on a black car pulled out into the road ahead of her. The same long shape as the Rover, funereal.
She slowed down, wiped her visor free of rain. Yes, definitely. Christ. We’re on, she thought. Let’s catch this bastard, bring him in, be home before nightfall. She smiled beneath her visor, at her luck in picking up the tail when she thought it had gone cold. She allowed the car to pull well ahead, then foll
owed. He wouldn’t slip her this time. He didn’t even know she was there.
The Rover stayed on the street that ran through the centre of Tregaron, slowing down rather than stopping as it turned left at the T-junction onto the road to Lampeter. She let her quarry gain some distance on her before pulling out. About two miles from town the car’s brake lights flared, brilliant red in the now grey light. She dropped back, feeding the driver more slack. Two miles beyond, the car slowed again, turning left onto a minor road, then almost immediately right.
Cat rode past, slowed down about a hundred yards beyond the turn-off. Parked her bike as close to the hedge as she could, running back just in time to see the car parking in front of a modern bungalow. She waited for her man to emerge. He didn’t. The driver’s door opened, and a short, overweight woman gradually climbed out. Her movements were slow, ponderous. She put both hands against her lower back, grimacing as she stretched.
‘All right, all right!’ the woman said.
She opened the Rover’s back door. Two small, blonde girls emerged, both wearing navy blue sweaters over powder blue polo shirts and navy skirts. Each held a pink Hello Kitty rucksack, dragging them on the tarmac of the drive as they rushed to the front door.
‘Wait! Mamgu has to get her keys out first!’
The woman spoke with the subtle hesitancy of someone for whom English was a second language. Cat walked up and asked in Welsh if she could speak to the woman’s husband. She looked blank. Her husband was an oil-rig worker, she said, away for six weeks.
‘A streak of white hair?’ asked Cat, gesturing.
The woman shook her head, getting suspicious.
Cat jogged back to the bike, fishing her phone out of her pocket. Should she call Martin? Or prowl Tregaron again? The light was failing and any chance of success was vanishing with it. As she was hesitating over whether to call, her phone vibrated against her palm. Text message. She opened it: Kyle’s name noted as the sender, an address and postcode, and an order: Come over now.
