by Howard Marks
Thomas took a right onto the flyover and crossed to the western side of the bay. Once there he turned again and headed along the dark riverbank. They came down to the edge of the tidal barrier, a vast, black, grid-like structure that lay across the mouth of the river. Within it, a series of gigantic locks blocked off the Taff estuary, separating it from the tidal chug of the Bristol Channel. From above, it looked like a huge piece of wreckage dropped from space.
In the car park there were already three squad cars, lights flashing, and an ambulance with all its doors flung open. Without a backward glance to see if Catrin was following, Thomas had jumped out of the car, zapping the lock before she’d got out. Wanker, she thought, as she hurried after him.
A couple of uniforms stood to one side of the blue-and-white crime tape, and on the other was a small but noisy crowd of youths. Most were dressed identically, clones of each other in black leather jackets with long, raven-dyed hair. It was nearly impossible to tell the boys apart from the girls. There was something vaguely familiar about the general look of this crowd, she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Some of the youths were holding hastily made placards. No Cover-Up!, one said, and another Truth Will Out!
Heading for the centre of the action, Thomas went straight past the crowd, a huddle of people up on the barrier where the lock gates opened to let boats in and out. Catrin stopped to talk to one of the uniforms.
‘What’s with all the youths?’ she asked him.
‘They hack the police radio frequencies.’
‘They?’
‘They’re Owen Face fans, the new generation. Every time a body’s washed up, they come to see if it’s him. Barmy after all this time, but there you are.’
‘They believe after all this time there will be anything left of him?’
‘They’re obsessed.’
‘Sounds like people round here should get out more.’ The uniform was peering at her, but she wasn’t going to try to explain herself. She turned away, looked at the growing line of officers blocking the way down to the barrier.
She still remembered the night it all began of course, the events that would later fuel the myths. For a long time, the story had been the only reason the city ever made the news. It was the nearest thing the place had ever had to an international mystery. Owen Face had been the front man of the city’s biggest indie-rock band, Seerland. After his farewell concert, his car had been found at the Severn Bridge, a notorious suicide spot. But no body had ever been recovered. And for a while the case had become a magnet for every media wonk and wacko with a conspiracy theory to peddle.
But that had been over twelve years ago. The story had long gone stale, everyone had lost interest apart from a few late-night radio jocks and diehard fans in the chatrooms. Then a few months back, a skeletal foot had turned up in the bay. It had been wearing the brand of trainer Owen Face used to wear. The story had gained second wind as all the local channels and many of the internationals, CNN and BBC World covered it again.
To Catrin the whole business reeked of a publicity stunt – his band getting themselves a lot of free airtime every time a body washed up anywhere in South Wales. There’d been another a month or so back. A body had pitched up on the Newport mudflats. The press were all over it as some pathologist refused to rule out the body being Face. Then, a couple of days later, they found out it was just a sixty-year-old alkie. Publicity whores the lot of them, these days: coppers, rock stars, even bloody coroners.
One of the youths had got through to the other side of the tape. A young girl, no more than fifteen or so. She was standing alone, biting her nails, crying. The girl’s coat swung open to reveal a T-shirt bearing a photo of Face, all snow white skin, jet black hair and red lipstick. It was the iconic shot, frozen in time, every Goth girl’s dream boy.
‘You think they’ve really found him this time?’ the girl asked one of the uniforms. But no one was paying attention to her. The crowd’s focus was on the crime tent set up on the tidal barrier.
Catrin began to move towards it, straining her eyes to get a better idea of what was happening.
‘You can’t come through, dear – only authorised personnel beyond this point,’ the uniform said to her with a self-important sneer. Another young male PC throwing his weight about, he looked barely out of police college.
It was a mistake she was used to, of course. She didn’t look anything like a police officer, more like one of the crowd with her heavy make-up and black leathers. Her eyes had a half-closed look about them, like a cat’s sometimes. People often thought she wasn’t the brightest branch on the tree. But she’d topped exams nationally in forensic computing and digital surveillance for three grades above her present ranking, and under the layers of black was a fit, natural athlete’s body trained in martial arts so exotic most people had never heard of them. They’d been a study in self-discipline. She wasn’t an aggressive person, she hated and feared any type of violence except with consent in the bedroom – that she needed from time to time. But she could have had the little runt in seconds.
She flashed her warrant card, and he let her pass.
She walked over to the lock gate and joined the huddle of police and medics. She heard the buzz of excitement as she approached. The group was tightly packed and all she could make out, as she peered between the shoulders of two PCs, was the bottom end of a body laid out on a stretcher. It was too dark to see much more. A couple of medics were struggling to rig up arc lights and she stepped back, to wait until she could see better.
Catrin was standing back from the body as DS Thomas caught her by the arm. She turned to face him.
‘Had a look yet?’ she asked.
‘Nah, not yet.’ He shrugged, his earlier excitement apparently all gone now. ‘Just waiting for the medics to do their stuff.’
Then he pointed to the other side of the marina. There was a fire guttering beside some sort of beach hut.
‘I’ll give you long odds body’s come no further than from over there,’ he said.
She looked over at the bleak stretch of moonlit pebbles beyond the barrier. The hut seemed to have been an ice-cream stand, but it was now covered with strips of corrugated iron and hardboard. There were smaller shelters built along its sides, their walls blackened by previous fires.
‘It’s where junkies and rough-sleepers doss down,’ he said. ‘We get their bodies turning up here every couple of months or so.’
She looked over at the shelters, but there was no movement. In the gloom she could just make out a security camera over the shingle. The place seemed deserted.
‘How come they get in the water?’ she asked.
‘The tides come up. The junkies light their fires, fix up and drift away. Sometimes literally. We must’ve recovered half a dozen bodies here over the years.’
He gave Catrin a look then.
She said nothing. It was quite a distance from the beach to the barrier. She wondered if Thomas wasn’t being a little premature in his assessment of what had happened. Maybe trying to impress her, show her how much catching up she’d have to do. Before she could feel it was her turf again.
She saw him following her look, reading the scepticism in it. He was nodding down at the black, frothing base of the barrier beneath them. The arc lights came on. Thank Christ, she would have kicked him if he’d said another word.
As she got close there was a gasp from the watching huddle. She pushed to the front and saw the skeletal-thin body lying on its front. It was dressed in Face’s trademark black, from biker boots to leather jacket, and it had the coal black hair of the missing rock star.
Catrin turned to look at Thomas, expecting some signs of his former excitement. But he was still looking bored, detached from it all, as if he knew something the rest of them didn’t. She turned back to the body, wondering at the adrenalin that was coursing through her veins. After all, it wasn’t like she was ever that fussed about Seerland. As for Owen Face himself, she could understand why the little Goth girls
loved him, but personally speaking, she could never get past all that lipstick and make-up. One of the medics approached and without ceremony, like a butcher with a side of beef, flipped the body over.
Another gasp from the onlookers but this time of disappointment. It wasn’t Owen Face. For one thing this man couldn’t have been in the water for more than a few hours. Secondly he was a good ten, maybe twenty years older than the missing guitarist. Thirdly – oh sweet Jesus, she knew who it was.
Catrin reeled away from the crowd, walked fast towards the barrier and stood looking down at the black waters. She was trying hard to take deep breaths and not throw up.
‘You all right?’ said Thomas, joining her, still with the air of being one step ahead of everyone else that made her want very much to punch him.
‘Yeah, no. I don’t know,’ she said, sounding like an idiot but not caring, past caring. Then taking another deep breath, composing herself.
‘I know who it is,’ she said.
Thomas didn’t respond for a moment, lit up a cigarette, and offered her one. She hesitated, then almost snatched it from his hand.
He waited till she’d taken a couple of drags then said, ‘Yes, I thought you might do.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Catrin. ‘You know who that is?’
‘Course,’ said Thomas, smirk still in place, ‘Rhys Williams. He used to be a copper. He’d been hanging with the junkies here for years. It was an accident waiting to happen.’
‘You . . .’ she said, then stopped before she could get herself into trouble. She turned away, didn’t want him to see the confusion and anguish distorting her face. ‘How did you know I knew him?’
Thomas dropped his fag to the ground, stubbed it out with his heel. ‘You do have a file, love. And I do have a memory.’
Catrin stared at him, trying to hold onto her anger as it seemed to be keeping the nausea at bay.
‘You’re not even going to bother to spend time on this, are you?’ She looked down so he couldn’t see what was going on in her eyes.
He spoke more softly now.
‘There’s nothing here, love. It was an accident. Either that or he just jumped off the barrier. Couldn’t stand the sight of himself any longer.’
‘You really are a bastard,’ said Catrin.
Thomas looked at her carefully. ‘There’ll be an inquest of course. We’ll go through the formalities. One dead junkie fallen in the water. He wasn’t the first out here, won’t be the last.’ He paused. ‘Why all the attitude anyway, love? What did he ever do for you?’
‘What did he do for me?’ she said. ‘He saved my fucking life.’
2
It was over a week since the body had washed up, and Catrin still felt disorientated, her mind in a fog. Partly it was the diazepam, of course, doing its numbing work, keeping the panic at bay. As she went down the steps to the pathologist’s office, she clutched the rails to keep her balance.
From the window there was the view out over Cathays Park. A lane between the formal gardens, the pavements covered with black leaves from the beeches and horse chestnuts that overhung the unlit paths. A vague memory was floating to the surface of her mind. DS Thomas standing there among trees, watching her.
The truth was she couldn’t be sure if it was real, and even if it was, that was what men did sometimes, she knew that, quite ordinary men. They waited for women, and watched them. That he might or might not have been there, it probably meant nothing. She was over-reacting, sweating it, she needed to get a grip.
The front office of the pathologist was filled with the usual police-issue desks and chairs, the walls blank except for some postcards stuck to a board. She sat opposite the biggest desk, which he was gesturing her towards.
‘Hi Cat, heard you were back.’ He shook her one hand with both of his. They felt cold. That’s how a priest does it, she thought.
He was a tall man in late middle age, pale ginger hair matching a puce bow-tie. Emyr Pugh. They’d exchanged Christmas cards every year, the lines inside getting shorter with the years. She’d known him since she was a teenager, since he’d lived next door to them in Bute and dated her mother for a couple of years. And this being Cardiff, less a city than a giant village, that was how things were, only two or three degrees of separation, and everyone related and knowing each other’s business. He’d made a point of coming to see her and say hello her first day back on the job. But she’d been out and he’d left her another card, a short note inside. Just reminding her he was there if she wanted to talk about the old days, which of course she didn’t. She hadn’t called him on the number he’d left, felt bad about it now. He was probably just lonely: his wife had died a few years back, she’d heard.
He looked older of course, but different in some other way she couldn’t quite put her finger on, more reserved, as if with the years he’d grown in on himself.
‘You know I can’t show you the body.’ His tone was grave, apologetic, that hint of the priest again, as if he was apologising for all the sins of the world.
‘Oh?’ She pretended to sound surprised, but of course she knew the rules.
‘Not family, and it’s not your case.’
She looked up at him, held his gaze.
‘But the autopsy, your report notes?’
‘I can show you those.’ He reached down, opened a drawer. ‘But they’re not of any interest.’
He spread some discs over the desk, and a file, without opening it. He was smiling at her, a soft, lopsided smile she remembered from the old days.
‘Every few years, I’d run into Rhys, usually down at the riverside, where they found him.’ Pugh sounded as if he was reminiscing about something that was sad but already ancient history. ‘Every time he’d look a little worse, more gaunt, more run-down.’
‘He was ill?’
‘No, just the classic symptoms of long-term heroin abuse.’
He turned, pointed at the tidal barrier on a map of the City.
‘The place where they found him,’ he said. ‘It’s where quite a few junkies from those shelters have washed up in the past.’ He indicated the strip of shingle where the shelters were. ‘The reason the junkies and dealers like this part,’ he said, ‘is that you can only get there on foot. They can see who’s coming.’
She nodded; nearer the water the shingle would be rougher. Above it was a slope a car couldn’t handle. It would be difficult for officers to get there quickly. That’s why the cameras and lights had been put there, to deter drug-taking, soliciting, fly-tipping. It was official Area policy at every known crime point in the city, an unofficial saving on police man-hours.
‘Any witnesses?’ she said.
‘We’ve got better than witnesses.’ Pugh turned again, to a monitor on the desk. ‘I shouldn’t show you this,’ he said. ‘But we have a record of his movements before he went under. And it isn’t pretty.’
She recognised the street immediately. It was the alley she had checked with DS Thomas earlier the same evening, and she was watching footage from the CCTV camera on the pole. The alley was empty, but there was light coming from one of the broken, lower windows. Two figures were standing there: a man and a woman.
The man was Rhys. The woman looked slim, attractive, was dressed in a dark, well-cut trouser suit. Catrin couldn’t see her face. There seemed to be some sort of struggle going on, the man pushing the woman back against the wall.
He was slapping her face, his other hand running over her thighs. There was no sound on the film, but the woman’s head was thrown violently back, her mouth open wide. As Rhys moved away the woman relaxed her stance, slumped back against the wall. Her face was still unclear.
‘It’s an area known for muggings.’ Pugh had picked up a Biro and was pointing at the screen. ‘Look at Rhys’s right hand as he leaves.’
She could see Rhys was holding some notes now, maybe a couple of twenties. He was hurrying away out of shot, down towards the water.
‘Has the woman come forward?
’ she asked.
‘No, but that’s not so unusual. The muggers usually pick on women who’ve been drinking heavily. Seventy per cent of these type of incidents never get reported.’
She knew he was right, she’d seen CCTV of city-centre muggings enough times to know that’s probably what she’d just watched. Younger junkies usually shoplifted; the older ones who were too well known, barred from shops, tended to house-break and do muggings. After closing hour, with lone drinkers wandering about, that was when most of the incidents were caught on camera.
He flicked the control again. The next sequence showed the shelters on the beach. It had been filmed from some distance above, by the CCTV camera on the slope above the shingle.
Unlike the earlier footage, this was a series of stills, a couple of seconds between each, the movements of the figures jagged like a primitive cartoon.
This time Rhys was approaching a man standing by the door to the ruin of the beach hut. The man passed over something, a bag of drugs it looked like. Rhys gave him the twenties that were still clasped in his right hand.
Then Rhys was hesitating, backing away a few feet. He was holding something long and jagged. It seemed to be a broken bottle.
The second man was turning now, trying to enter the hut, Rhys moving in behind him. Rhys was pushing the bottle at his back, once, twice. The second figure was falling inward, face first, disappearing from view.
‘Who’s the second man?’ she asked.
‘Another local junkie, a dealer.’
She sat back, shuddering slightly. She was grasping for alternative explanations, anything to show Rhys in a better light, but the more she thought about it the worse it looked for him.
‘That was a serious assault. Why hasn’t this been investigated?’ she said at last.
‘No hospital admissions fitting the description of the victim. No body – no crime.’
