by Howard Marks
‘Now,’ said Thomas, ‘can someone tell me what the fuck is going on?’
Cat thumbed at Morgan’s chair. ‘Detective Inspector Thomas, meet Diamond Evans. Diamond Evans, DI Thomas.’
Small grinned his evil assent.
‘Here’s the way I see it,’ Cat continued. ‘At the Penarth Marina bust, Evans already knew he was ill. Maybe he knew he was dying. So he took the fall for Morgan. Neither men had previous, no prints or DNA on the system. The switch had been safe as long as no one talked. So Morgan got away and the whole world thought he was behind bars. All the time, it’s been business as usual for him. And all the time, there were those mandies. A nice business line that just needed a little care and attention. Small here was charged with managing the roll-out. The marketing guy, if you like. The drug drop in that back garden was set up so that Evans could watch over it as he lay dying here. Maybe a kind of drug dealer’s homage. A goodbye and thank-you for everything. That plan would have worked once the press melted away. It was our intervention that spoiled it, made the whole thing too dangerous. I guess our friend here,’ she kicked Small only somewhat gently in the shin, ‘came by to find out what went wrong.’
Thomas caught up slowly. ‘Fuck,’ he said.
Cat nodded. And she hadn’t even said the important bit. Drugs were only drugs. Murder was murder.
‘Meanwhile, Morgan had a – uh – rather specialised hobby. He was crazily in love with this singer, Hetty Moon. I’ve seen a video of her. She’s magnetic, something really special, or was. He was obsessed, but – she died. Morgan killed her. Inadvertently, no doubt. A total accident, but it was his yacht, his drugs – his responsibility. He went a bit crazy with it all. He kept trying to bring her back. Retrieve the memory, relive the experience. Make other girls play her role. That’s what the hotel worker saw.’
But there was still a gap in her explanation here. A hole. Why create all these fake Hettys, these substitutes, and then kill them? Torture them to death, no less? It made no sense. Cat had a hunch as to the real truth, but the pieces were shadowy and the darkness was frightening.
‘Well,’ said Thomas, ‘shall we hand our killer here over to our not very enterprising London colleagues?’
He got his phone out to make a call.
‘Yes,’ said Cat, ‘only he’s a drug dealer, not a killer.’ On Thomas’s questioning look, she added, ‘The body’s cold. The motorbike was warm. Small here came to find out what was going on. He wasn’t going to kill anyone. I guess he had a key to the outside gate, but found the front door locked on him. The lad showed enterprise.’
Thomas made his call. His accent was always fairly strong, but he added a little juice to it, Welshing it up as much as he could, to cause maximum offence. ‘That’s right, DI Thomas, from Tregaron in Ceredigion. Got another corpse for you. And a drugs dealer you didn’t quite manage to catch. But I’m sure you’ll be fine from here. Just shout for help, if you need anything.’
Thomas winked at Cat as he made the call. Cat herself was on the phone to Kyle, giving her brief details, keeping her updated.
As Cat spoke, she kept her eyes out onto the yard outside. If Morgan was Evans, then where the fuck was Morgan?
She heard a sound, looked down into the yard. The gate giving access to the private parking was slowly rolling across. The nearest BMW seven series was gliding out and the gate was closing. Fuck.
She grabbed Small’s helmet and his taser, then charged down the stairs. She punched the manual over-ride, trying to stop the gate from closing so they could chase in Thomas’s car. But the gate stayed shut. She felt a sudden, impotent rage. It looked like Morgan had just slipped them another dummy. The house had all the latest in security equipment, cameras trained on the front door and the gate. But the BMW’s tinted windows would conceal any view of Morgan leaving. She still had no usable visual of her quarry. She’d been in the same building as him and still had no idea what he looked like. She crunched up her fist in frustration, until it hurt.
She ran for the yard, where Small’s Yamaha still lay on the ground. She put on the helmet, wrestled the bike up onto two wheels, started it, bumped it up through the broken window and into the house. She rode across the drawing room, leaving a black track across the wooden floor. Cat made the entrance hall, paused, then opened the bike up and cracked it hard into one of the reinforced windows. The glass cracked, the wood struts crunched and split, but not enough. Cat herself was thrown half off the bike, against the wall. She repeated the manoeuvre, twice, faster each time. She forced it all the way open and bounced down through the front entrance and down the steps. She was out and onto the road. As she revved away she caught a glimpse of the two journalists still holding their drinks, eyes wide with disbelief.
There was no sign of the BMW. It had had too much head-start and, in any case, Morgan was too cautious. He knew there were intruders in the house. Perhaps he even knew they were police. The BMW would be used as a getaway, then discarded. He’d be in a taxi now, or a car registered to some clean alias.
It didn’t matter. When people leave a burning house, they take the one thing – photo, ring, diary – that matters to them more than anything. When Morgan was fleeing a failed operation, he’d do the same thing.
Cat rode steadily, not fast, around the Hampstead ponds, then doubled back towards town. The traffic thinned as she ran down the hill, then she drifted with other traffic south towards Marylebone, then on towards Park Lane. She didn’t accelerate hard from the lights, didn’t make use of the bike’s power. In London traffic, a Yamaha would always outrun a car. She didn’t need to push it. She headed down towards the river and followed the embankment east. Then over Tower Bridge.
Would her hunch be proved correct? It was impossible to be sure. Perhaps, with Morgan, caution would win over obsession. He’d know that his switch with Evans had been sussed. He would have contacts at airstrips, at marinas. In hours he would be overseas, invisible again. Moving drugs, grooming girls. If that was how he chose to play it, the old story would be repeated again. And again. And she could string herself out for a hundred thousand years, chase cases like this until the sun exploded, and it wouldn’t make any difference: the innocent always suffered. The devil always won.
Or maybe not.
It all depended on the next few minutes.
The riches of central London gave way to the rags of Deptford. Blackened railway bridges, halal butchers, second-hand furniture depots. And builder’s yards. Ruined chapels.
Cat rode down to the nearer of the building yards and parked there, dumping the helmet. She called Kyle. Told her everything. Gave her the location. Told her about Evans and Morgan. Told her about Small. Told her where she’d left Thomas: doing his best to piss off the entire Metropolitan Police.
Kyle listened, asked questions where she had to, took notes in the background.
‘You want support?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Cat. ‘Big time. Road, air, river. The whole fucking cavalry.’
‘OK. You’ll wait for them?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I can make that an order.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, I think I’m losing signal.’
Cat cut the phone, looked over at the chapel.
It was now or never.
She breathed in. The air smelt of the river. She had no headache. Her blood ran clear.
It would be now.
She walked towards the chapel, slid in through the gap in the hedge again. She moved to the main door and put her ear to it. There was nothing audible from within but in the stained-glass above she could make out a faint light.
She made her way round to the side door. The gap she had made previously was still there. She put her hand through, eased open the latch and stepped inside, lifting the door to avoid it scraping on the flagstones within. She knew the way now, walked through the dark vestry towards the nave, quietly opened the door. The light she had seen from outside was brighter now. It seemed to be coming from the
far wall where the altar had once stood. The curtains that had hung around the stage on Cat’s first visit to the chapel were open.
She edged towards the flickering. Projected on the painted backdrop of the stage was an image of one of the girls, superimposed across the painting of the Mad Ludwig castle. Cat recognised her, it was footage of Delyth Moses. She loomed up and filled the wall. She wore a flowing white dress and her eyes were almost closed, as if in a trance. Her lips moved soundlessly. Cold fury moved into Cat. He was getting off on the girl even after she had been horribly killed, owning her even in her death. Cat moved closer to the stage, listening. A light shuffling sound could be heard from behind the theatrical flats, coming from the space in which Cat had seen the half-tester bed.
Cat withdrew her taser and walked on soft feet towards the noise.
A man stood there. He was opening out two suitcases on the bed. He had his back to Cat. His movements were decisive, but not anxious, not hurried.
She moved to within easy tasering distance and raised her weapon.
‘Police,’ she said, in a quiet voice. ‘Raise your hands above your head and turn around slowly.’
The man didn’t turn straight away. He moved his head back with a brief laugh of surprise, the way someone does who receives a new and unexpected piece of information. But then he raised his hands – weaponless – and turned slowly.
His face was the one she’d always known. The face she had half-expected to find.
‘Just you, Cat?’ said Martin Tilkian. ‘You shouldn’t have come alone.’
‘I’m not alone.’
Tilkian looked around the deserted church. A pigeon flapped somewhere in the roof. ‘You look alone to me.’
‘There is an electric cable on the floor four feet to your right,’ Cat said. ‘I want you to unplug it from the socket and wind it securely round your ankles.’ Stupid mistake, coming here to make an arrest with no cuffs. But Cat’s taser was level and her aim steady.
Tilkian laughed again, shook his head, then bent to unplug the cable. He made no further move, though, just swinging the flex in his hand.
‘You know you can’t do this. I saved your life. We made an oath. An oath sealed in blood.’
‘Five seconds, Tilkian. Four. Three. Two.’
He bent down, as though to comply with her instructions, but at the last moment flung the cord at her, hurling his own body towards the shelter of the big speakers behind the stage. Cat had expected the move and was undistracted by the flying flex.
She fired. The taser’s darts snaked through the air, hit flesh, passed some unimaginable voltage through his system. He collapsed. Thrashed in pain, as she’d seen Thomas do shortly before. She used her opportunity. Ran forward, and smashed the butt of her weapon down, hard, on his head. He reached for her ankles but the movement was clumsy and oversignalled, weakened by the electric shock and the blows. Cat hit him again, then stepped back and stamped hard on his crossed ankles. She was wearing her motorbike boots. Somewhere, bone crunched. He curled in pain. She stamped once more. Bones would heal and she didn’t want him running.
He yelped again and Cat staggered back. Tilkian wasn’t out for the count by any means, but he didn’t have to be. Kyle would bring a whole damn army to this place in a matter of minutes. It was enough to delay him, to enfeeble him. The man was as good as arrested already.
‘Where are they?’ she asked.
Tilkian – Martin Tilkian, also known as Griff Morgan – nursed his head and ankles, and didn’t answer.
Cat looked back at the bed and the suitcases. He’d been packing them. And he didn’t have forever to do it. Whatever he’d been intended to put in the cases lay close at hand.
Maybe very close. Cat approached the bank of speakers and put her hands to the black material that covered the first speaker’s front. It took her two goes to get a purchase: her hands were shaking too much. Then Tilkian swung his body upright. He still had too much mobility for her liking. She delivered a fluid roundhouse kick to his head and dropped him. This time he was out cold enough that she could approach close to knot the electric cable round his ankles, pulling them as tight as she knew how. She could hear Rhys’s voice in her head, encouraging her on. ‘Good going, girl. You drop the little bastard.’
Tilkian groaned. He was conscious, but not struggling. He knew he was beaten.
Back to the speakers. This time she got the purchase she was looking for. In one long movement, she ripped away the black material that covered the front of the nearest speaker. The casing was packed high with shrink-wrapped banks of pills. The Mandrax. A few million quids’ worth of it. The dirty lure at the end of this long and murderous chain.
Cat stared at the pills for a moment.
‘Martin,’ she said, ‘please tell me … the girls, that you didn’t …’
‘No.’ He shook his head groggily. ‘I would never do that.’
‘That cottage in Tregaron and here. They were prisoners?’
‘No. Never prisoners. They had freedom to go at any time. I gave them passports, identities, cash. I gave them a base, safe houses really, where they could regroup, get their heads together. When they needed more help or more money, or just a rest, they came back to me. We spent time together.’
Cat thought about that a moment. It sounded good, but wasn’t really. Tilkian might not be a murderer but his selfishness and obsession had still ruined these girls’ lives. Turned them into a succession of Hetty Moon imitations, his one true love. Turned them into targets for those who wanted to find him. So they became fugitives and dependants. He wouldn’t have told them any of that when he’d recruited them.
‘Moose Hopkins, Nia’s brother, wrote graffiti accusing you of murder.’ Cat repeated the words of the graffiti. ‘He was too frightened to say he’d written it, but he wanted you caught.’
‘I know. The Kilroy part I put there. I told Nia that it was my old tag. Nia must have told him so, when the girls went missing, he presumed I was the killer and wrote the words underneath.’ He gestured into the near darkness. Against one wall over some planks leaning there she could just make out several faint scratches, Kilroys, their eyes peeping back at her. Silent witnesses.
‘And the accusation?’
‘Look, I loved Nia. I would never hurt her. I was giving her a new passport. I told her I was turning her into somebody else.’
‘And Esyllt?’
‘She’s fine.’ Cat didn’t let that answer go and kept her gaze boring into her one-time friend, until he gave a fuller answer. ‘I gave her three thousand quid and sent her to the Caribbean. After Nia and Del, I was afraid for her safety. I thought I could make her safe and use her absence as a way to get you involved. Maybe track down the people who did that to Nia and Del.’
‘And Katie Tana.’
‘Find the people who did all the killings.’
Even under these strange circumstances, in the gloomy chapel with pigeons flapping in the roof, Cat could feel the ghost of their old friendship present. Even knowing what Tilkian had done, their friendship flickered still. It mattered that he had never killed or used violence. That would have been unforgivable.
But something had shifted in the atmosphere. Tilkian felt it too. Where the fuck was the support Kyle had promised? Was the Met deliberately going slow because Thomas had pissed them off so much already? There was something bad in the air and Cat had a nasty feeling she knew what was coming.
‘Martin, are there weapons here?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve never been into that.’
They stared at each other with apprehension in their eyes. Someone had, like Cat and Riley, stumbled across the Hetty Moon sound-alikes as a way to track Griff Morgan. Riley had wanted a story. Cat had wanted justice. These others wanted Morgan’s drugs and were prepared to kill and torture their way to them.
At the far end of the chapel, there was a dull boom merging with the groan of metal. A second boom told them what was happening. Someone was using a sil
enced gun to shoot away the lock on the main door.
Tilkian looked frightened but composed. His ankles were tied and his feet were now too damaged to walk on. He nodded at Cat with a half-grin.
‘You know the old tethered goat trick?’
She smiled back her assent, moved off between the theatrical flats, out of sight. There was a pile of spare timber, offcuts from the stage set. Cat chose herself a length of two by two. Not the best weapon, but all there was. Her taser had fired two shots. It had no more.
Cat palmed her phone, set it to silent. She couldn’t risk calling Kyle but she could text her. ‘SOS’, she wrote. ‘NOW’.
She clicked send. At the end of the church, there were a couple of heavy, dulled blows and the sound of the big door opening. Tilkian glanced across at her, caught her eye. He mouthed something. First she couldn’t read it, then she could.
Your turn, he was saying. To honour the oath. To save a life.
She’d do what she could.
There were footsteps coming up the aisle. More than one set. Odds that were maybe manageable, maybe not.
Must be a strange sight for the newcomers. To find Tilkian battered and bound at the foot of his mountain of drugs. A tethered goat indeed.
Cat craned cautiously round her corner. Two men in face masks. Both armed with automatic weapons. One built of muscle, the other older, fatter, but still chunky, still powerful. The sadist and the brains.
The bigger man pointed at Tilkian with his gun, asking something of the other man. Asking permission to kill, Cat guessed. Tilkian heard the same. His eyes, in a moment’s giveaway, flashed towards Cat. Only for a moment, but the tell was there.
The smaller man was saying ‘Fuck’s sake, no,’ but things had already moved on.
The bigger man raised his gun and shifted position. He was planning to fire first at Tilkian, shoot next at whatever it was his eyes had darted to.
