Sympathy for the Devil

by Howard Marks

  On the other side of the gardens was another gate, beyond it an empty parking area. The gate was locked, there was no way through. She ducked down behind the wall and glanced back at the path.

  At first it seemed nothing was moving there. But gradually she began to make out a thickening of the air between the trees. A man was walking very slowly towards the wall. His head was raised and moving from right to left, like a dog scenting the air. From his right hand came a momentary shimmer in the darkness.

  She couldn’t make out his face, just long dark hair drooping down the front of the hood that covered his face completely like a mask. Catrin had the strange sense that behind it there was nothing at all, just a pair of yellow eyes, no face. She moved silently deeper into the shadows. She reached down, dialled Della’s number.

  On the second ring the receiver was picked up with a dull clattering sound.

  ‘I think I’m being followed, Del.’ In the background she could hear music.

  ‘Where are you?’

  Despite the late hour Della sounded wide awake.

  ‘At a car park. Round the back of the Hayes.’

  ‘Keep walking down towards Queen Street. Someone’ll be waiting for you there.’

  Not looking back, she climbed the wall, pulling herself up on the squares of flint embedded in the bricks. On the top were shards of glass. She reached between them, hauling herself to a crouching position on the ridge. Behind her she heard a shuffling sound, then the wind hard on her neck. She dropped down on the other side. Her ankle hurt where she hit the pavement. She ran past the block-like façade of the Golden Cross, on towards the Hayes.

  The clubs and pubs there had closed some hours before. The shopping precinct looked empty. Catrin leant down over the flower beds, catching her breath, then walked on towards Queen Street. A car flashed its headlights at her. It looked like a minicab, a small dark saloon. There were coloured beads hanging from the mirror, a silver plaque of holy verses on the console.

  The driver’s window opened a crack as she came alongside.

  ‘For Ms Davies?’

  She got in. The driver looked East African with a broad bodybuilder’s chest and a long sorrowful face. The seats were covered with throw cushions, like a sofa, and smelt of sugared almonds.

  The driver turned and looked over his shoulder at the hooded figure moving fast towards them from between two parked lorries.

  ‘What are you waiting for,’ she said, ‘just fucking drive!’ With a muttered curse the driver sped off northwards. A couple of minutes later she felt the car slow again. Outside she recognised the tall Regency terraces of St Andrew’s Crescent, the polished brass plaques of city-centre solicitors and upmarket recruitment agencies.

  The car had stopped at one end of the street outside what appeared to have once been a chapel, now converted, according to the developer’s sign, into office space. ‘Up there,’ the driver said. Above the black railings there were lights on behind the stained-glass windows.

  Although the car had pulled over, the driver didn’t get out. Catrin walked up the steps, a camera in the fanlight swivelling towards her as the door clicked open.

  Inside the large space was almost empty, a flooring of some greenish-streaked rock leading up to a mezzanine with desks around a seating area. At the top she saw Della bowed over a screen, her face lit by its pale glow.

  ‘I was being followed,’ Catrin said. ‘When we went up to the service station to see where Face’s car was found, we were tailed. Then when I left the club the same man followed me.’

  Della was standing at the top of the staircase. The tapping of her heels echoed across the large empty space.

  She didn’t stand back so Catrin had to brush against her as she went past. She smelt of vodka and some very expensive scent. Catrin paused, stared at her until she backed away.

  ‘You’ve been drinking. You’re probably seeing things,’ Della said.

  ‘Speak for yourself, Del.’

  Della held out a cheek, air-kissed her, then turned back to a couch shaped like a giant baseball glove that stood against the wall. Della’s hair hung in limp trails over her face, and her eyes looked tired, bloodshot.

  In the corner was a door, half-ajar, to another space, a large cupboard it seemed to be. Along the wall were packing cases filled with files and computer equipment. A framed spread from a magazine featuring a house with a large conservatory, Della’s weekender in the Mumbles Catrin presumed. Beside the cases a filing cabinet lay on its side. The drawers were open, the contents lying in untidy rows on the floor.

  ‘What’s this, Del? Moving out in the middle of the night?’

  Della turned away, seeming to ignore the question, and reached down to a bottle of vodka by her side. What remained in the bottle she poured neat into two tall glasses, passing one across the table.

  The suit Della was wearing looked just like the one she had worn in the picture above her column. As she took the glass her hand was noticeably unsteady.

  ‘What’s wrong, Del? You seem edgy.’

  Della glanced over at the empty space below the mezzanine.

  ‘You think that man followed me here?’

  Della had finished her glass in a single swig. She kept her eyes on the area downstairs. She didn’t reply.

  ‘Let me tell you what I think’s going on here, Del.’ She looked again at Della’s suit, smiling to herself, then straight into Della’s tired eyes. ‘You hear about Powell’s obsession with Face. You smell a big money opportunity.’

  She saw Della wasn’t reacting yet, no tells. ‘You know people won’t connect you with Rhys because you put an injunction on him. So you hire him to hustle Powell, bait him with some phoney photos.’

  ‘Nice idea. And then?’

  ‘Then Rhys gets greedy, tries to shake you down. You get into a tussle with him that gets caught on CCTV. You’re wearing a slutty suit just like the one you’ve got on. Then later that night you get him offed down on the beach.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Junkies are soft targets. They’re just one fix away from death. You set him up with some strong gear, roll him into the sea.’

  Della was smiling, seemed genuinely amused.

  ‘Look, I did meet Rhys that night. I’d worked out from what Powell told me the photos must’ve come from Rhys.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Catrin moved closer to the sofa.

  ‘But I only wanted to find out where Rhys had got them. He took some cash off me, told me nothing. Except that he’d got the photos from a good source. Rhys said it was someone who knew you.’

  ‘Knew me? The source knew me?’

  ‘That’s what Rhys said. He said it was someone who trusted you, Cat. Rhys said if anything happened to him, you would be the link to the source.’

  Catrin looked hard at Della, tried to make sense of this, but couldn’t.

  ‘And you told Powell this, about the source knowing, trusting me?’

  ‘I had to give him something, after all the money he’d put up.’

  ‘That explains why Powell wanted to hire me, then.’

  Catrin still couldn’t make any sense of what Della had just said.

  ‘Who the hell was Rhys talking about, who’s the source?’

  ‘If I knew that I’d already have sold it to Powell. That’s why I wanted to hire you myself. You’re the only link there is to the source.’

  ‘That was all Rhys said?’

  ‘Yes, and that was the last time I saw him alive.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Catrin slapped Della hard across the face. She didn’t move, made no attempt to resist. Della was quivering, her mouth pursed open. Catrin slapped her again, saw she was bowing her head, her eyes glazing over slightly, her breathing fast. Della seemed to be waiting for more blows to fall. The bitch is actually getting off on this, Catrin thought.

  She stood back. There was a slight smile playing over Della’s lips, her cheeks were glowing. ‘I shouldn’t have lied to you about meeti
ng Rhys,’ she said. ‘But I had nothing to do with his death.’

  Della’s dishevelled hair covered her eyes. ‘And if I was trying to set up Powell, why would I have dismissed the photos as fakes in my article?’

  She knew Della had a point there. She let her go on. ‘Powell brought me those photos, told me to look into them, just like I told you,’ Della said. ‘I worked out they came from Rhys, so I contacted him and what he said led me to you.’

  Catrin saw she’d made a mistake. Della had probably been telling the truth. The photos had come to Huw from Rhys exactly as Huw had described, and Della had known nothing about them until Huw had shown them to her.

  She’d let her anger at the woman cloud her judgement.

  Catrin felt bad at what she’d just done. She sat beside Della on the sofa. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Catrin held her drink without sipping. She could feel Della softly touch her hand. She wanted to pull away immediately, but something stopped her. The anger had gone for the moment, replaced by a sensation that was calmer, more accepting.

  She felt Della’s lips brush hers, barely touching, just hovering there.

  ‘You’re drunk, Del,’ she said. She turned away.

  Tentatively Della reached her head up and tried to kiss her very gently again. Catrin didn’t move her lips, but she didn’t pull away. She let it go on for a moment, wanted to know what Rhys had felt. Maybe some flicker of him still lingered in what he had once felt for this woman.

  ‘You want to know what we did, don’t you,’ Della was whispering.

  Della was kneeling on the floor. She slipped the jacket off her shoulders, let it fall. She had pushed her trousers down to her ankles. It felt unreal, like some sort of bizarre joke, but Catrin could tell Della was serious.

  She watched Della bowing her head, then crawling slowly across the floor, glancing back over her shoulder. Della suddenly lay still, like a puppet whose strings had all been cut. Her thighs were covered in thin, evenly spaced bruises.

  Catrin crouched down beside her, but didn’t touch her. ‘And then, what did he do?’ she said.

  Della said nothing, just pushed her hand up to her crotch, began lazily clicking her fingers, as if calling for a waiter in an old-fashioned film or keeping time to some slow, half-remembered beat. Catrin saw now Della was just trying to taunt her. She pulled one of her arms up hard behind her back. Della seemed to be enjoying it, but Catrin carried on until she didn’t any more.

  ‘Angel Jones, did you ever know him?’

  Della said nothing, so she pulled her arm back tighter, and she whimpered slightly. ‘I met him a few times, that’s all.’

  ‘Why, Del? You got a death wish or something?’

  ‘I didn’t know what he’d done to those poor girls, I swear.’ Della was sweating, the make-up smudging on her face.

  ‘How did you know him then?’

  ‘It was via a girl I met off a BDSM site, just a bit of fun, that’s all.’

  ‘Nothing Jones did made you feel he was dangerous?’

  ‘No, he played strictly by the rules.’

  ‘And the other girl off the site was one of his victims later, was she? Bet you got off on that, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’ Della sounded on the verge of tears now, but there was a note of genuine outrage in her voice. ‘This girl had him eating out of her hand. She was dark, cloudy eyes, gorgeous, I fancied her rotten. I only went along because of her.’

  This wasn’t what Catrin had expected to hear. Jones was a monster, but here was a glimpse of another, more vulnerable side to him. Catrin loosened her grip a little. ‘This other girl, what else can you remember about her?’

  ‘Not much. She seemed a bit spaced-out, into Seerland, played their stuff constantly.’

  ‘Like half the girls in the city at the time.’

  ‘Right. I wanted to see her more. But she always wanted Jones there, so I just gave up in the end.’

  ‘And Rhys knew you’d met Jones.’

  ‘No, I never said anything about it to Rhys.’

  ‘So how did DS Thomas know about it?’

  ‘Because Thomas makes it his business to know nasty things like that.’

  Catrin let go of Della’s arm. She felt bad again for what she’d just done. Della was brazen and ruthless, but she probably wasn’t actively evil. She briefly stroked Della’s arm, and felt Della gently stroke her back. She sensed a calm again between them, an understanding of sorts.

  Catrin noticed again the half-open door in the corner. She thought she could see something that looked odd inside, not right for an office.

  She walked over to it.

  She could hear Della padding across in her bare feet behind her, the tinkling of the pendants on her ankle chain the only sound in the large hall. Della was trying to steer her back towards the couch, blocking her path to the door. Catrin pushed her away.

  ‘What’s in there, Del?’

  Della didn’t reply, and she eased her way past Della’s unsteady figure. She saw some broken blinds taped over the dormer window, a large mattress in the middle of the floor. Beside the unmade bed lay two open suitcases, a tote bag, several blister packs of pills.

  ‘What’s this, Del? Sleeping over at the office?’

  Catrin walked over to the bed. Between the cases were some discarded dry cleaning bags, an overflowing ashtray, more pills. Xanax, zolpidem with an address in the suburbs on the prescription packets.

  ‘Not sleeping well? Guilty conscience over something?’

  Catrin could feel Della’s breath close on her neck scented with the night’s vodka. From behind she heard the clicking of a lighter, as Della lit a cigarette. She said nothing still.

  ‘Something’s not right here, Del. You’re a successful businesswoman, but you’re living out of a suitcase. You’ve moved out of wherever you live, hidden out here for a while, now you’re packing up, moving on again.’

  With a long sigh Della had sat on the bottom step, her shoulders hunched up under her jacket.

  ‘Sounds like you’re getting paranoid, Cat.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I call and you’re wide awake. It looks like you’re sleeping in different places every night. You’ve got Mr T outside on call at all hours. You’re frightened of something. What is it you’re not telling me?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything.’

  ‘No, Del. You’re scared of something. I could tell it the other day when you came to see me, but it’s stronger now.’

  Catrin saw another laptop by the bed, some old copies of the Echo.

  ‘That’s why you wrote the piece in your column, wasn’t it? You wanted it to look like you weren’t interested in the photos.’

  Della was standing behind her now, absolutely still. She seemed to catch her breath for a moment before she spoke.

  ‘That night I saw Rhys.’ Della’s voice was weak, she wasn’t trying to hide the fear there any more. ‘I felt someone was watching us, someone was following him. Then the next day someone broke into my house, ransacked it. I’ve felt I’ve been watched, followed ever since.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then I heard about the arson at Powell’s office,’ she said. ‘I thought it best to hire some protection, lie low.’

  Catrin sat down on the chair, taking this in. She felt suddenly very tired. A part of her wanted to lie back, close her eyes, fall away into a deep sleep from which she would not return until it was almost dark again.

  ‘I think it would be safer for both of us if you stayed here tonight,’ Della said.

  ‘All right, but no more fun and games.’

  Catrin rolled over from the chair onto the bed. She heard Della in the bathroom for a few minutes, the water flowing. Then Della came and lay with her back to her. She fell asleep almost immediately.

  9

  Catrin sat astride the Laverda in a back street off the Newport Road. She was smoking her second of the morning, trying to clear her head. The surrounding str
eets were quiet, everyone was already at work. She’d woken late to find Della gone. The office empty. No notes, no messages on her phone. From Della’s she’d gone to Huw’s office, picked up the bike. He hadn’t been there.

  She thought back to what Della had said about the source of the photos being someone who knew her, who trusted her, that if Rhys died she, Catrin, would be the link to the source. But it still made no sense. She didn’t know anyone interested in the Owen Face mystery. She didn’t even know any journalists or music business types.

  She wondered again if Rhys had known she was back, remembered again how close he had been to her hotel when he’d died. Had her initial instincts been right, had he been trying to reach her that night? But why? What would he have wanted to tell her after so long? Or was it a warning of some sort? The more she thought about it, the less sense it all seemed to make.

  The source was someone who trusted her, Rhys had said. But the list of those close to her was small. Her family were all dead. Her father she’d never known. Her colleagues were colleagues no more. Her lovers she met in clubs and online sites. She lived a life of deliberate, almost anonymous isolation. She trusted no one, so who would choose to trust her?

  But there was another sort of trust, one not earned directly, but conferred by association. Surely this was what Rhys had been talking about. She would be trusted because Rhys had told the source that she could be, because after all these years she had been the one Rhys still trusted. She had no choice but to follow the same trail Rhys had followed, and see where it led.

  Catrin looked at her watch: half an hour to kill before her appointment. She glanced at the navigator App on her phone, double-checked she’d come to the right place. During the night a text had come through from Huw, telling her he’d arranged for her to meet the remaining members of the band at a studio one block away. She’d deliberately got there early, to scope the surrounding streets before she went in. But there wasn’t much to see, just the walls of warehouses, the few shops between them boarded up.

  The tinkle of a radio floated out onto the street. She reached into her pocket for her iPod, but it wasn’t there. In her hurry to leave Della’s she realised she’d left it behind.