Sympathy for the Devil (8 page)

‘It’s Della, dear. Della Davies, remember me?’

‘How did you get this number, Della?’

In the background Catrin could hear bracelets jangling. Then silence. She’d never liked Della. And not just for the obvious reasons. She was the type people probably imagined first when they thought of a successful media operator: no cracks showing through her hard shell, all side. She’d heard Della had done well for herself. She had her own press agency now, and a celebrity column in the
Echo
.

‘You sound well, Cat?’ the soft voice said at last.

Catrin was aware she’d hardly spoken yet.

‘Anyone say I wasn’t?’

‘Right as rain – that’s what I heard.’

Slowly Catrin leant back against the wall. ‘So why do I feel you’re about to tell me something that’ll stop me feeling that way?’

‘Still the sharp one, eh Cat?’

Catrin could hear faint music now, as if playing on a car stereo.

‘I don’t think I want to talk to you,’ she said.

The music stopped. Down the line came a low rustling sound.

‘It’s about Rhys.’

The gentle purr again. It was still a voice that sounded as if it was used to getting what it wanted.

‘Oh.’

‘We both knew him, I thought you’d want to talk about it. That’s all.’

Della held the pause a moment. Catrin kept her silence, hoped Della would just hang up. But she didn’t.

Catrin was intrigued, she had to admit it. Why was this woman calling her after all these years? It certainly wasn’t for sentimental reasons.

‘They’ve closed his file, I suppose?’ the soft voice said.

‘Yes.’

‘Accidental Death no doubt they called it.’

‘They did, yes.’ Catrin held the phone a hand’s length from her ear; she could hardly bear to hear the voice, its gentle, wheedling sound.

‘What if I told you Rhys was working a case when he died.’

Catrin laughed. She couldn’t help herself. There was no joy in it though.

‘Working a case? He wasn’t working anything except a needle into his arm.’

‘Yes,’ said Della, ‘he was doing that all right. But it didn’t mean he didn’t have a brain. Did you ever know anyone smarter?’

‘No,’ said Catrin, her voice suddenly weaker, ‘no, I didn’t.’

‘Well he didn’t lose that, no matter how much shit he took. And he was working a case.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Cause he was working with me on it, that’s how. You want to know what it was?’

Catrin kept the phone raised, and waited.

‘It was the Owen Face case. Remember, the bloke from Seerland?’

Catrin let out a humourless bark. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. That’s just junkie bullshit. That’s not a case.’

‘There’d been a new sighting.’

Catrin gave another dry laugh. ‘But that’s just a tabloid myth, like Lucan. No one actually takes that stuff seriously.’

There was another pause, longer this time. For a moment she thought the line had cleared.

‘What if I told you that I’d seen something that would make you change your mind?’ the voice said at last.

There was a metallic scraping sound in the background Catrin couldn’t place, then a sharp intake of breath.

‘Rhys had some photos, some new evidence.’

She noticed Della spoke more quietly now.

‘New evidence, eh? Another loser’s staggered out of a pub, skinful of Brain’s Bitter, and had a close encounter with Face – this sort of nonsense has been going on for twelve years. Next you’ll be telling me Elvis is running the gift shop on Barry Island.’

‘I thought you were a fan?’

‘No, I was never a fan.’

‘No?’

Catrin paused, her attention distracted by a spider’s web in the corner of the hall. ‘Rhys was a junkie. He fell in the water. It happens. Whatever he was working on, it’s not important.’

‘A bit strange, don’t you think. First time you’re back for twelve years, and he winds up dead. You were even there on the scene, I heard.’

‘What do you think you know, Del?’

‘Meet me, let’s talk about it.’

‘We never liked each other, Del. Why would I want to do that?’ Catrin sat down on the ledge, took a deep breath, then laughed dismissively. ‘It’s not possible anyway,’ she said, ‘even if I wanted to. I’m in the middle of nowhere.’

There was a background rustling, like leather brushing over leather. ‘I know. You’re in the cottage near the top of the hill. I can see it from here.’

Catrin felt a sudden clamminess.

‘Where are you, Del?’

‘I’m down in the village, at the Red Lion. I’ll be waiting for you.’

Catrin put down the receiver, then bent down and pulled the wire from the wall socket. Sitting back on the cold floor, she ran it through her fingers.

Outside the window she could just make out the track disappearing over the brow of the hill towards the village. The forms of the trees were barely visible through the rain, the lines of the hills lost in the low clouds.

Catrin eased her old Laverda through the muddy track, and out along the lane. The bike was jittery at low revs. She had to hold on hard to stop it losing grip. It wasn’t more than a mile to the village. She could easily have walked, but the clouds had darkened, promising sleet, perhaps snow.

Briefly she checked her reflection in the side mirror. Her jacket was fraying, her hair hung down limply, almost obscuring her face. Her T-shirt was stretched tight over her small breasts, the words
THE BAD SEEDS
faded to a blur.

The hedges along the road were threadbare, wearing winter colours. The lane came down to a fork, then ran between some firs towards a solitary pub. Its narrow drive was empty apart from an ancient van and a black Range Rover with a Cardiff dealer’s plate. She parked her bike beside it.

The pub’s interior was dark, the walls covered with the usual horse brasses and prints of hunting scenes. In front of the bar three men were standing. All were dressed in corduroy trousers, thick jumpers, green wellington boots. They’d been talking to the barman and stopped when they heard Catrin enter. She walked around the corner, into the snug. At first sight it seemed to be empty. The walls were covered with more hunting prints. Beyond the last of these, she saw a woman sitting in the corner. Her back was turned to the door, a Bloody Mary, half empty, on the table in front of her.

In this light, she thought, Della looked younger. She was wearing a pair of white Diesel jeans that showed off her pared-down figure, and a skinny leather jacket, the sort that doesn’t come under a grand; a matching Chloé buckle bag took up the whole seat beside her.

Della was standing now, her smile revealing ice-white veneers where once there had been gaps and angles. In close-up, her lips were plumper than Catrin remembered, her forehead smooth and free of wrinkles. When Catrin gripped her upper arms, partly to steady herself, partly to keep her distance, she could feel the muscles shifting beneath her hands.

Della moved her phone and handbag, patting the seat beside her and waiting for Catrin to sit. Catrin remained standing, resting her hands on the table. She looked straight into Della’s eyes, which were narrowed, slightly bloodshot, tired. Nothing like she remembered. She was looking at an entirely different woman from the one who’d taken Rhys from her all those years before.

‘Did you love him?’

‘Jesus, Catrin!’

‘Did you kiss him behind the ear, that sweet spot he had there?’

She saw that Della was staring at her like she was looking at a madwoman, and maybe she was.

‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘yes I did.’

‘Yeah?’ She was sitting down now, still looking Della right in the eye. ‘And after he came, when he was lying on top of you, did he cry just a little bit?’

Della shook her head imperceptibly, broke eye contact.

‘You fucking bitch.’

Catrin felt a moment’s triumph then a giddying swing down into pure self-loathing.

‘Yeah well,’ Della said, ‘I stole him from you, didn’t I?’ She stood up. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

Catrin nodded and sat back. In the background, Nick Drake was singing ‘Time of No Reply’. She still couldn’t believe that Nick Drake was a popular act and not the secret treasure he’d been half her life, the discovery she’d made, hidden at the back of her mum’s stack of old vinyl. She’d always thought Rhys looked a bit like Nick Drake, a bit too sensitive for this world. She’d never told him that, wished she had now.

Della put two brandies on the table, large ones. Then she sat down beside her on the bench, closer than before.

‘There was something you didn’t let me get to on the phone,’ she said quietly.

Della was lifting a manila envelope out of her bag, placing it on the table.

‘The day after Rhys died this arrived in the post.’ Della had opened the envelope just enough to reveal some black-and-white photographs. As she pushed the envelope closer, Catrin smelt her perfume. Rive Gauche, a clean but not especially feminine scent. Della spread the photographs out on the table.

They looked blurred. The light was too low to make out anything more than a series of tree-like shapes over on the right side. Catrin turned over the first photo and saw a sticker with the address of a photographic shop near Fishguard way out west, in the wilds.

In the next picture she was able to make out a little more. There were figures in hooded robes dancing around a fire.

‘Looks like a bunch of location stills from
Blair Witch
.’

‘Keep going,’ said Della.

When Catrin came to the sixth or seventh photo she stopped, held it up to the light and scrutinised it carefully. The shot appeared to have been taken with a telephoto lens. A man stood in a cloak and hood, but his head was turned to the right, as though he half suspected he was being watched. The figure had the same hollow cheekbones and gaunt features as the late Owen Face. The resemblance was undeniable even to the most sceptical eye.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Della, ‘that’s the one got me going as well.’

‘But what’s to prove it wasn’t taken years ago? Could be a still from one of those old videos Seerland used to do.’

‘Could be,’ said Della, ‘only they were developed last week, according to the camera shop stamp.’

Catrin put down the photos, pushed them back towards the middle of the table.

‘But it could just be an old roll of film someone passed off on Rhys?’

‘Yes,’ said Della, ‘the thought occurred to me too. Only thing is, Rhys called me two weeks ago, said he’d tracked down Owen Face and was sending proof.’

Catrin sat back. The whole thing had the smell of a scam about it, but who was working who? That she couldn’t get a handle on yet. If it was a scam it was a slick one and it had taken money and organisation, more than Rhys would have had.

But looking again at the picture, she wasn’t sure. Something about it was drawing her in; it looked and felt right. She’d developed a sense over the years, knowing what was real and what wasn’t. The truth was she couldn’t understand any of it yet, and wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

She only had Della’s word that Rhys had any connection to the photos, and Della’s word counted for nothing.

‘How do you know he wasn’t playing you?’ she asked.

‘What? Rhys?’

‘Mocking stuff up to get more money from the client?’

‘Rhys wouldn’t have risked playing me,’ Della said. ‘I owned him, he got every penny he ever earned through me. I was his meal ticket.’

Della moved her hand up to the stem of her glass, was touching it gently. ‘In any case, he still loved me.’

Catrin kept her head down, focused on her drink, she wasn’t going to rise to this. ‘But even if Rhys believed the shots were genuine, it doesn’t exactly give them credibility. Rhys was a street junkie.’

‘That’s how he looked on the outside, maybe, but he was still as smart as they get. A bit like you, eh?’

Della leant forward, smiling thinly, tight leather rustling like a lizard through the undergrowth. Gently she put one hand on Catrin’s: it felt soft, moist with some expensive lotion.

‘You and Rhys, you’re very alike, aren’t you?’

Catrin could feel the heat gathering under her collar, making her skin prickle. She wanted to reach up, loosen her shirt.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You act like a rock chick, hard living, but underneath you’re all steel and muscle and alpha-plus brains.’

A compliment of sorts. That meant Della was trying to sell her something, and whatever it was Catrin wasn’t going to buy it. She’d hear her out, pick up any useful information, then leave and hope never to see the woman again.

‘How did Rhys seem to you when you last saw him?’ Catrin asked.

‘A mess as usual, just looking for money for his next fix.’

‘Was he still doing his origami? Those little birds he made?’

Della shrugged. ‘So far as I know, why do you ask?’

‘Because if you were still close to him, you’d have known that.’

A brief image flickered through Catrin’s mind of the photos she’d seen in the case notes of his desolate room in Riverside. The backpack full of Oxfam clothes and three battered books of poetry, and that single origami bird they’d found in the fireplace.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘how about you fill me in on some ancient history. Last I heard of Rhys was twelve years ago. He takes himself off in the middle of the night to live with you. Haven’t heard a word from either of you since.’
Haven’t spent a day since without thinking about Rhys either
.

Della slid closer along the bench so that their thighs touched briefly. She lowered her voice, though there was no one else in the room.

‘We split up after a few months, I’d begun walking on the other side of the street if you know what I mean.’ She was so close now that her breath tickled Catrin’s ear. Their thighs were touching again. The bitch is actually getting off on this, she thought.