The Score

by Howard Marks

  She struggled for clarity – and then it came. The front page of the Echo with that photo of a thin man struggling up the steps of a large Hampstead house. That was where she’d seen the street before.

  Bloody hell. Her disenchantment with the Hywel Small trail evaporated. She bolted back across the road towards the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. ‘You know where we are?’

  Thomas raised a finger at the street sign that stood just ten yards from them. His way of saying, Stupid question.

  She didn’t care. The street name wasn’t the point. ‘We’re only a block from Morgan’s house.’ She pointed.

  For a moment, it all felt clear in her head. The murderer who couldn’t have killed anyone. The victims who were nevertheless perfectly dead. A line of light bulbs shone: the graffiti in the cottage – the Mandrax traces there – the dead girl in the landfill and the Mandrax found in her flat – the link to Diamond Evans and Hywel Small. And now to Morgan. For half a second, it was as though everything was there, as though the logic was all in place, just needing to be teased out.

  Then the bulbs disappeared abruptly. She was plunged back into darkness as completely as if she had been in the mine tunnel. Nothing made sense any more except their immediate reality. She saw Thomas’s forehead was corrugated in a frown. ‘He’s not going to shit where he eats.’

  The stage is dark, but then a second spot clears a circle for her. A circle of light. A microphone.

  An invitation.

  She doesn’t need to be asked. She finds herself stepping forward. In the long dress, the scarlet nails.

  Again, from nowhere, that shudder.

  What is there to be nervous of? In any case, she’s practised this. She plays it cool.

  ‘I’ll sing some scales first, if you don’t mind. Can you give me a middle C?’

  The man has a tuning fork, a good one. The note sounds out, totally pure. It steadies her.

  She warms her voice. Tripping up and down those scales. A few bars of simple songs. Stretching her voice. Loosening her vocal cords.

  And then, all of a sudden it seems, she’s ready.

  She launches into the song. No, that’s not right. She becomes the song. Sinks into it, and the song becomes her. One music, one light, one circle, one song.

  She sings until the last note is completely finished. The sounds roll away down into the last recesses of this strange old building.

  She notices for the first time that there are holes in the roof. Pigeons roosting above her.

  She smiles. Pigeons! It’s funny.

  She asks, ‘How was it?’

  But she already knows the answer. So does the man. His smile says what his words only later confirm.

  ‘It was perfect!’ he says. ‘Perfect.’

  12

  SHE PULLED THE seatbelt around her. ‘The drop’s cash. My guess is he wants an eyeball.’

  Thomas smiled impassively. She started the car, following the satnav around the one-way system, down Well Road to the end, then left onto East Heath Street. The houses looked even bigger, most of them set back from the street. They might even have enough garden for a kick-about. They followed Heath Street until they reached the hill that formed Morgan’s street.

  They got out of the car, spotted a loose group of people hanging about in front of the house. Journalists, she realised, the remainder of the scrum that would have been camped out for Morgan’s release on compassionate grounds, trying to get the last shot of Morgan before he died.

  She looked down the hill towards the house where they had just found the cash. The way the roads were positioned meant she had a clear view to the back of the drop house, the one with the scaffolding. She glanced up at the edifice of the Morgan house; somebody in the upper storeys of that mansion would have a good view of the back yard, of the seemingly everyday garden-waste bin.

  Things were coming together, pointing in the same direction. But this clear view from Morgan’s house also meant she could have been spotted herself poking around in the bin. She wondered if this was the reason she had felt watched. Not from the house she was investigating maybe, but from up on the hill.

  She felt angry with herself. She had moved too fast. She leaned back into the car, told Thomas to hop into the driver’s seat, park it, and walk back towards her.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he came back with, but he did it anyway.

  She studied the Morgan house. It stood above the street and all the curtains were closed. In the stillness, with its black front door and black railings, the place seemed already in mourning for its owner. To the side, a gate gave onto a private parking area where three black saloons stood like a cortège in waiting.

  She looked again at the journalists. They seemed dispirited, had the air of having given up on seeing Morgan. A couple were kicking a ball through the puddles. Another was huddled over his BlackBerry. Others were sitting on the terrace of the street’s gastro pub, smoking as the sun peeked out hesitantly between the clouds.

  Cat scrutinised the journalists outside the pub, her attention caught by a women sitting on a heavy wooden pub bench, sheltering beneath a large, designer umbrella. Beneath the curve of the umbrella, Cat gained a partial sight of her face: a taut profile, a mane of immaculately maintained black hair. The woman yawned, and stretched her arms up as she did so, the umbrella moving up in the same motion, showing Cat the woman’s whole face, sleek as a racehorse: a face that seemed accustomed to soak up glances.

  Della Davies – Cat had last seen her following Morgan at the marina. In a former life Davies had been a press officer at Cathays Park. But then she had begun walking both sides of the street, making spare cash by running her own press agency on the side, handling stories with a Welsh connection. When the agency had taken off, Della had left the force, got herself a column in the paper, equipped herself with a Merc, a town house in Llandaff and a weekender in the Mumbles. Become a proper rich tart and a handful to deal with.

  Cat dipped back close to the walls of the houses opposite Morgan’s, out of the sight line of Davies. Her limbs ached again, the tick started up in her left temple. She tried to get a better look at who Davies was with.

  Up close one noticed the twitching lines of determination around her pillowy lips, the loneliness behind the eyes. She was talking to a stocky mixed-race girl with a buzz cut. Perhaps a photographer. It made sense that Davies was here. Morgan was a national figure, but he was also a Welshman. Many of the press stories – the human interest ones, ‘Griff Morgan: the person I knew’ – would link back to Wales. Davies’s agency would be the first and easiest line of enquiry for most of the nationals. This was her chance to cash in.

  Cat didn’t like Della’s life choices, but she couldn’t hate her. After the Dinas case, Cat had gone up to Della’s country house a few times, had even gone there with Thomas; the three of them tied together by a case that had screwed them all up. But then Della had stopped being so fragile, had got better; returned to her press agency, dredging up the misfortunes of others to make her own fortune. Della had returned to her venal game-playing and Cat had let things slip. She had not spoken to Della in three years.

  Thomas hadn’t yet noticed her, and was walking over to the pub, chest swaying as he crossed the road. Cat beckoned him to stand back, out of sight, nodding towards Davies beneath her umbrella.

  ‘Fucking Davies’, was Thomas’s comment. ‘What now, Sherlock?’

  In answer, Cat pointed almost directly upwards, to an open window in the building just to their left. The glass in the window was flickering, some of the meagre London light bouncing off something placed just inside, she guessed. The building was a large redbrick structure, a hostel or a student hall of residence maybe, and it was virtually opposite Morgan’s. Thomas followed Cat’s gesture, followed her logic, and grunted assent.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  They took the few steps towards the entrance, palmed the hefty wooden door open, stepped into a hallway. On the stairs a couple of papar
azzi types were loitering. They went past the boys, up the stairs.

  The landings were all empty. They carried on until they came to the floor where Cat thought she had seen the lens flicker. They didn’t need to speak now. Thomas gave the knock and pushed the door. By the window was a sallow boy in a Band of Horses T-shirt, his camera on a stand. Cat flashed him her card from the door so he wouldn’t see the details.

  ‘Out,’ she said, ‘there’s been complaints.’

  Thomas stood over the boy as he picked up his camera, and when he’d gone, Thomas locked the latch. Cat looked for signs as to when the room’s real occupant might be back. On one side a desk with built-in shelves reached to the window. The desk was a mess, papers and files piled in no apparent order on top of a scuffed laptop. Cat rifled the pile, found a nurse’s timetable from the Royal Free Hospital. Parts were highlighted with marker. It looked like they had a few hours before the occupant returned.

  It was a small space. The floor was covered in a cream carpet that had seen better days. On the fridge were a few basics: a kettle, teabags, a milk carton, a half-eaten packet of biscuits. The window gave a view down over the front of Morgan’s house but with the curtains closed there wasn’t much to see, beyond marvelling at its scale.

  Cat scanned each window carefully. On the upper storey three of the curtains had been left with a small gap between them. She guessed this was deliberate. It allowed Morgan, or whoever was with him, to peer out without any movement that would attract the attentions of those outside. In the rooms where the curtains were parted the lights were out and nothing was visible.

  ‘We need the binocs, Price. They’re in the car.’

  She smiled. ‘Go and get them then, Thomas.’

  ‘You go,’ he said. ‘You’re fitter than me.’

  ‘Let’s toss.’

  Thomas agreed. Thomas lost. In the minutes he was away Cat studied the three windows but nothing moved.

  With the binoculars only a little more was visible. A patch of wallpaper and something that might have been shelving in the first room. In the second there was more of the same wallpaper. In the third, a table was covered with dusty antiques magazines.

  Cat tried to seem calm and on the level, but she was nothing of the sort. They might just be wasting their time, watching empty windows. Her temples pulsed and twitched, as though some epileptic fly was caught under her skin. Her limbs felt lactic and cold. She couldn’t bear it, and if she was like this, how was Martin? Worse, no doubt, exponentially worse, pacing his lonely house, sleep a stranger to him.

  ‘Where are you at with Kyle?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Honestly? I’m not really sure. She told me to get back to Cardiff, but somehow I don’t think she wants me in that basement inputting data. Don’t know why, but I get the feeling she’s not going to kill me for this.’

  ‘No, I don’t think she is.’

  There was something in Thomas’s face which signalled that he was withholding. ‘What?’ said Cat and then, when he showed no sign of answering, she gave him a swift chop to the upper arm, and said again, ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck off.’ He rubbed his arm. ‘She called while I was back at the car – said something about how she knew you were with me. But she didn’t sound pissed-off, not by her standards. She said it was all right as long as I had no objections. Of course, I may have objections.’

  Cat decided that he was telling the truth about Kyle’s call, which meant that Kyle did want her involved. And that meant it had to be for personal reasons – because of her foster-daughter. But why pick Cat? Kyle had always indicated that she thought Cat a waste of space; now here she was making the opposite moves. Strange. Cat noted the issue and filed it for future thought.

  Meanwhile, she took out her phone to call and reassure Martin. But she had no reassurance to give. They were out on a limb and she knew it. She went through to the answer machine, said what she could, knowing that Martin would hear the lack of hope in her voice. She had managed to fake a message the night before, but she felt worse now.

  Thomas sat in a chair by the desk, picked at his fingernails. Cat steeled herself, re-focused on the watch. Another hour and she felt she had been staring at the three windows all her life. Letting Thomas take over she palmed out her phone and checked her mail. There were three messages from Rob – Benzo Rob, her mentor – asking if she was coming to see him, as she’d said she might. He asked her to give him notice if she did come over, so he could clean the flat, which just confirmed to her his shyness around women. Rob had left her an address in Battersea: ‘Brand Wharf’. Must be one of those new blocks by the river, she thought. It was a fancier address than she’d expected for him.

  As Thomas glassed the Morgan house, Cat stepped towards the window, peered down at the street, watched the movements of the journalists below. Some were already giving up for the day; others were milling about looking disconsolate. Cat knew it was a waiting game that could go on for weeks.

  She saw Della had left the terrace of the pub. She was on the steps of the hostel now, smoking with the mixed-race girl. The girl was probably also using a room somewhere in the building. Cat had a better view of her now. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a khaki top and had the air of someone who’d knocked around on the streets. The girl followed Della to a waiting Jaguar, and Della turned and patted the girl’s shoulder before getting in. Then the car moved off and the girl sauntered back towards the hostel. Cat saw her take the entrance stairs below and disappear from view, in through the front door, no doubt.

  Moments later Cat heard the girl’s boots on the stairs as she approached the room she was in. The steps neared, seemed to move away again. She guessed that the girl had climbed to the next floor. Then they heard footsteps in the corridor above them and a door opening. They waited, listened. A minute more and there was the sound of the same door locking, steps in the corridor above and on the stairway, then the girl surfaced on the entrance steps below, walked down to the pub. She was checking something in her hand, it didn’t look like a phone.

  Cat knew it was common practice for paparazzi to set up several cameras on a stationary target. Sometimes they could be movement-triggered, but it looked as if the girl was keeping control from a handheld device.

  Cat asked Thomas to keep an eye on the girl. Then she went upstairs and stood in the corridor. She couldn’t hear anyone in the other rooms. The lock on the door was a basic Yale latch. After a short struggle with a credit card and Vaseline from her bag, she opened it. Not exactly a procedure taken straight from the manuals of acceptable police practice, but you couldn’t have everything.

  She locked the door from inside and leaned with her back against it until her breathing returned to something like normal.

  The room had the same layout as theirs but didn’t look as if it had been occupied. There was nothing on the shelves and the mattress was bare. By the window there were cameras on tripods, each focused on one of the three gaps in the curtains. Cat checked their memories but no pictures had been taken except some test shots to get the light and focus right.

  She looked around to see if the girl had left anything else behind, but apart from some back-copies of the Echo and plastic cups the room was empty. It seemed a fair assumption that, if the girl had got nothing through the windows, then neither had the other paps. Apart from that picture of Morgan on the steps, there was no evidence he was even still in the house. Cat sat on the bed and tried to think clearly. She felt the sweat gathering under her collar and a mounting sense of futility. An image came to her mind of herself standing, feverish, outside a series of locked doors, and nothing behind them.

  Quickly she leafed through the three back-copies of the Echo to see what angle Della had on the story. On each day Della had devoted her whole column to Morgan, but the contents seemed thin. Della was trying to build human interest around Morgan, but so little was known about his life that this had not proved easy.

  The first column quoted interviews with unnamed inmates
at Belmarsh. It seemed Morgan had been aloof with the staff and other prisoners, hardly talking to them. The second column was titled ‘Morgan’s Lost Love’: it claimed that early in Morgan’s career there had been a fire on a yacht Morgan had been using as a drugs lab. Morgan’s first girlfriend had perished in the blaze and he had never forgiven himself. Over the years the guilt had eaten away at him and he had ceased to care whether he lived or died. No sources or names were given. The story had the feel of a rumour rather than an account by credible witnesses. It was sloppy journalism.

  In the third column there was a picture of an urban fox that Morgan had apparently fed from his bed in the hospital wing. This story was a joke, the journalistic equivalent of desperation. Della clearly had no real information on Morgan. She was waiting for the money shot like the rest of the pack.

  Cat folded the papers, put them back as they had been, went over to the door. She stepped into the hallway outside the flat, heard footsteps coming towards her up the stairs, then laughter, two female voices talking. Shit. It sounded like Della and her snapper. Why hadn’t Thomas called her when he’d seen them coming? She checked her pocket. No phone. She must have left it downstairs. Nerves and fatigue making her careless. Think quick, she told herself.

  The flat was at the end of the corridor. Nowhere to go but forward. She mussed up her hair, coaxing it to hide some of her face, bowed her head and walked briskly forward.

  The steps sounded close now. She looked down the dim, long hostel corridor, saw the mixed-race girl and behind her, clacking in her heels, Della carried some delicatessen bags from Hampstead High Street. Inside bottles clinked. Her car journey had clearly been a local one. Cat hardened herself, walked towards them, head bowed. They drew level, passed by each other. Cat exhaled. She’d made it.

  Then, ‘Price.’ A throaty voice came from behind her. ‘Saw you outside the pub.’

  Cat turned, faced her head on.

  Della was standing still, staring at her, the other girl by her side.