by Howard Marks
Cat didn’t plan her move, just made it. She burst from her position, waving her timber. One step, two, three. Walter’s words were in her head: ‘Not rage, Catrin. Not fear.’ Words that made no sense until you understood that those words held the only sense there was.
There was a shot from somewhere. Fired at Cat, but missing. Her move. She swept her make-shift club down. Simultaneously, Tilkian lashed out with his bound feet. Tilkian’s move was understandable, but wrong. It shifted the balance. Instead of catching the bigger man’s head, Cat’s blow caught the man on the angle of his shoulder and neck. The blow was hard, but the man had built his body from countless gym-hours and protein-powder.
Ox-like, he blinked off the pain and raised his gun a second time. He was too close to miss. Cat dived, looking to roll into shelter behind the speaker, but it was a desperate move and any shelter would be strictly temporary.
Where the fuck was Kyle’s cavalry?
She heard the shot, felt her body smash onto the stone floor. She executed her roll badly, but somehow found herself behind the speaker.
She wasn’t dead.
She looked for the wound. Patting herself down to find crimson. She found nothing. Muzzily she looked up.
The smaller man was looking down at the big one. The man he’d just shot dead. Above them, Cat could finally hear rotor blades. Out on the road there were sirens, screaming in the distance but closing fast. She could hear nothing from the river flats, but there would be armed police there too. Searchlights. Boats. Assets.
Cat dragged her way out of shelter.
She was exposed to the older man’s fire but this brutal endgame was finally coming to a close. He hadn’t much use for his weapon now. He held it at his side, but indolently, not poised. She pulled off the big man’s mask. Probert. The bastard who’d grabbed her at Kyle’s place. Fucking sadist.
The older man looked at her. Humour in his voice. ‘I thought I’d cancelled that lot,’ he said, gesturing outside at the sirens, the helicopter. You could see the copter’s searchlight beaming down on the chapel now, poking through the holes in the roof, baffling the pigeons.
‘I got Kyle to un-bloody-cancel, didn’t I?’
The man removed his mask. Thomas. ‘Well,’ he said, nodding at Cat, at Tilkian, at the world. ‘Fair play to you. I was close but no cigar, eh?’ To Tilkian, he said, ‘Nice to meet you at last. Funny the way these things work.’
And then in one fluid move, he raised the gun to his head and fired. He hit the floor before his gun.
Briefly, just briefly, the chapel felt silent.
23
IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON and the pier lay in outline against the ribbon of the sun dilating the clouds over the estuary. Cat had her old helmet on, the one with the strap under the chin. The air rushed free over her face so she had to squint. She buzzed along the front. As she worked the throttle, her shoulder ached, but not unpleasantly.
She dismounted at Penarth Marina. Already the chill of autumn was in the air, and there were fewer birds over the water. For a moment she watched them. The gulls flapped slowly back towards the shore. Further out, a large black bird swooped down towards its shadow. It glided at an even height above the glistening foam, hardly moving its wings.
All the time its shadow was there, a few feet behind, like something following under the surface of the water. Finally the bird rose and disappeared. She thought of Thomas. He had shot himself in the head but, the stupid sod, his hand had been shaking. He’d blown off the right-hand parietal part of his skull, driving bone fragments deep into his brain. He’d been in intensive care for two weeks now, in a coma for the first few days, then in a state of very low responsiveness, unable to talk, unable to eat.
He might live, he might die. If he lived, he might make a full recovery. Or he might spend the rest of his life brain-damaged and high-dependency. He deserved death for his crimes, but he had still been Cat’s partner. A friend. Could you wish someone gone and yet still grieve for them? Was someone still alive if the essence of who they were had vanished? If they were dependent on an IV drip for nutrients and liquid? Cat was discovering the answers now.
What Thomas had done to the girls was unforgivable, and for what? To find the drugs and sell them for cash. She did not even pity him. He had tortured for cash. She guessed that he had probably got Probert to do the dirty work, egging him on, exploiting his sadistic tendencies. She saw him managing things, stopping Probert now and again, giving the girls a chance to talk. Not that they would have had anything to tell the two men. None of them would have known Morgan’s real location.
And so in the end Probert had gone further, until their hearts stopped with shock and pain. Was that why Thomas had shot Probert in the chapel? Because he hated him for the torture, hated Probert even though he, Thomas, had colluded in it? Perhaps that bullet in Probert’s head was really aimed by Thomas at himself. A sighting shot for what would follow.
Or was it that he didn’t need Probert any more? That he’d decided to take the drugs for himself, alone. Or was it Cat? Was it that, when it came to the crucial moment, he found he couldn’t let Probert kill her? All possible answers. Cat would never know. Perhaps Thomas didn’t even know himself.
She walked down the ramp to the quays. She could see Kyle already, beckoning her to a small sail boat moored at the end. Cat approached, stepped up and onto the boat. At the back of the deck was a seating area, some wine open on a low table. Kyle wore a long fisherman’s jersey, her legs bare and tan.
‘Wine?’
Cat refused and Kyle passed her some water from a cooler at her feet. The bottle of wine was almost empty – drunk alone before lunch – and Kyle looked tired and slightly ashamed. Her connection with Probert, though innocent on her part, was not something that would be forgotten in a hurry, and it could always be used against her. There were rumours of an imminent inquiry. Cat felt for Kyle. As far as that was possible.
Kyle half-smiled, looked at her, seemed about to say something friendly then changed tack. ‘Thomas had an informant who knew Diamond Evans. That’s how he heard about the switch on the night of the bust. He knew Morgan was out there with the first half of the stash. He just had to find him.’
‘That’s where Probert came in.’
‘Right. He’d been mouthing off about Morgan’s connection to my Tilly, about Morgan’s obsession with Hetty Moon. Thomas must have heard him yammering on about it.’
Cat raised her eyebrows. The post-bust clean-up was running full steam, but what the courts would be told wasn’t always the whole truth. A portion of that truth sat here in the boat with Kyle.
‘My foster-daughter, Tilly. She was his first avatar – his first Hetty Moon. The girl in the hotel-room story. At any rate, that’s what he wanted her to be. Pressured her. Used drugs.’ Kyle’s face puckered with emotion. There was grief present in the mixture. Also anger. Also something unreadable beyond both things. ‘He didn’t get what he wanted. But he’d messed with her head. She was fragile anyway and the drugs … Don’t ever tell me that Morgan didn’t kill. He killed all right. And not just Tilly. Those others. He was responsible for them, too.’
Cat nodded. She couldn’t disagree.
‘And that was it. Thomas and Probert. Both knew a piece of the truth, wanted to get rich. They teamed up.’
‘The brains and the brawn,’ Cat commented. ‘I thought Thomas moved out to Tregaron because of burn-out. But it wasn’t that. It was the opposite. Your foster-daugher, Tilly, was in Tregaron. Odds were then that Morgan had some link with the place too. It was just too remote for him to have found her otherwise.’
‘But Tregaron itself didn’t give them their breakthrough. They must have found the Croat girl, Tana, online covering Moon’s act. When they saw she had form for mandies they knew they were getting close. They found Tana, tortured her, but she could tell them nothing. Morgan had not disclosed his location nor his identity to her.’
Cat put down her water.
‘But Morgan was an ob
sessive with a conscience. When Tana got pulled, he gave the rest of his girls access to safe houses. The cottage by the mine for the Tregaron girls, the chapel in London for the others. Passports, identities, cash, just like he said. The girls’ presence online was shut down completely. So Thomas and Probert were back where they started. The trail went dead.’
Kyle nodded in recognition.
‘Then after a year,’ Cat continued, ‘the girls got slack. Stupid really. They began posting their reels again in the hope of attracting talent scouts. I imagine Morgan never knew about that; he wouldn’t have been so stupid. Thomas and Probert picked up their performances. Used their IP addresses to track them to Tregaron. Then did exactly what you did. No warrant, just a quiet word with the relevant ISP. Got an address. The safe house at the mine. I imagine they arrived when only Delyth Moses was there. Nia Hopkins must have been terrified when she found her friend gone, so she began using the mine itself to hide in. A place she knew, because it had been a teen drinking hole.’
Cat didn’t say it, because it was too horrible to think about, but she knew she had led Thomas to Rhiannon. She’d asked him for the IP address, given him the identity of his next victim. Had Probert been in the area anyway, ready to make the kill? Quite possible: if they were already investigating Tana’s Deptford address, Probert would likely have been in the area. Thomas would have told him to move fast, not to spend time enjoying himself, to get out quick before Cat arrived.
Cat’s intervention – intended to save a life – had ended up taking one. Something she’d just have to live with. And that was OK. Her heart was already held together by scars.
‘How do you feel about it?’ asked Kyle. ‘About Tilkian, I mean. He’d been a friend.’
Cat shrugged. She didn’t know. That he had lied to her was nothing: everybody lied all the time, that’s how the world managed to work. It was what he had done to the girls that preyed on her mind. Although he had in the end tried to protect them he had sucked them into his dark sex charades, used them to satiate his own haunted needs, projected the face and voice of a dead lover onto them, with no thought for who they were themselves.
Kyle looked at Cat, a rare softness in her eyes. She saw the battle within Cat. There were to be no games today, no rank pulled. ‘You OK Cat? Off the tranks?’
‘The tranks are not an issue. It’s Martin – Morgan – he’s my wound.’
‘Seems to me you got lucky, Cat.’
‘Why lucky?’
‘Because you’ve got it both ways. You saved his life. And you put him in jail where he belongs. Best of both worlds.’
Well, yes, there was that way of looking at it. The CPS were preparing their case against Tilkian–Morgan now. They’d be pressing for the longest possible sentence. Ask for it, and almost certainly get it.
Cat got out her tobacco, loaded a roll-up with canna, blew the smoke out to sea.
‘And Thomas. You knew not to trust him. But how? You haven’t told me that.’
‘Small stuff. Whispers not screams. That’s why I called you, not him, that evening.’
There had been other things, she had realised, about Thomas. He wasn’t a by-the-book copper. He’d been happy to beat a defenceless Riley, but had refused to hand over an IP address, which would have been a far smaller infraction of the rules by which policemen lived. The clincher had been his effort to get Cat chucked off the case by leaking stuff to Della Davies. He’d known she’d be suspected, must have assumed she’d be suspended, pending an inquiry. That had been a low move, really low, and after that, after Rhiannon, Cat had known her life was no longer safe. So she’d dropped out of sight. Out of sight even of a police pursuer with access to every electronic database in existence. She’d trusted Kyle and Kyle alone – and she hadn’t been let down.
Kyle had countermanded Thomas when he told the Met to put the cavalry on hold – but more than that, Kyle had believed in her, despite appearances.
The sun was still bright but the temperature cooling. Cat glanced towards the water. The large black bird swung back across the bay.
‘Are we going to take the boat out?’ said Cat, changing the mood.
‘Yes, but …’
‘But?’
‘We’ve been waiting for someone. Here she comes.’
Kyle gestured along the quay. A pony-tailed girl, blue-and-white striped boat top, was walking towards them, searching. She broke into a smile when she saw Kyle. The girl was very tanned.
Kyle waved and Esyllt broke into a jog. She got level with the boat and clambered in with that late-teenage combination of ridiculous grace and clumsy awkwardness.
‘Hi.’ To Kyle first, then to Cat: ‘Hi, I’m Esyllt? Tilkian?’ She also had that rising teenage inflection.
‘Hi, Esyllt. I’m Catrin.’
‘I know.’ Cat saw the girl eye her warily, resentment maybe mixing with gratitude.
Cat was aware of Kyle casting off the boat, pushing the bows out towards the open water. Kyle was enjoying Cat’s confusion; she knew that somehow.
‘When Dad sent me to the Caribbean, he told me who he was. I hadn’t known before that.’
Cat nodded. That was probably true, but even if it wasn’t, it wasn’t police practice to start whacking family members with conspiracy charges.
‘He said there were three possible outcomes to … to everything. One, he got killed. Two, he got jailed. Three, he made his escape and would be on the run for the rest of his life.’ A tear, glassy and brief, slid down her cheek. She continued, her voice less steady. ‘Don’t expect me to thank you for what you did, but …’ Still tears came. She said nothing more. Esyllt lowered her eyes, and Cat thought she saw a faint smile of something like acceptance there.
Cat rubbed her shoulder, and glanced again towards the water. The large bird still glided low. No doubt it was looking for food near the surface. A couple of feet behind, its shadow followed.
‘Come on, Cat, untie that sail,’ Kyle said.
Cat rose and pulled the sail as Kyle steered the boat out onto the sea.
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Copyright © Howard Marks 2013
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