Sympathy for the Devil (20 page)

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 streets 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.

That wasn’t the sort of mistake she usually made. She would have to go and pick it up later, not a prospect she relished. She still had her cigarettes and her phone, though. And the photo of Rhys, the one she’d printed from a still in the CCTV footage, in her breast pocket next to her heart.

She checked her rearview, then looked up the road ahead. No one had followed her. She left the bike fastened to the railings, walked round the block in the opposite direction from where she was going, then doubled back to the entrance of Shift studios.

She heard the chanting before she turned the corner. Three security guards stood close to the doors, a crush of teenage Goth girls jostling each other behind red velvet cords. They were chanting the names of the three surviving band members with one voice at the blind windows of the façade above.

Catrin pushed through the crowd, made her way up the steps to the guard in front of the smoked-glass doors. She reached into her coat and brought out her warrant card, held it close in front of his face. He spoke into the two-way radio clipped to his jacket, then held the door open for her.

He opened a second set of heavy doors in the hall just enough to let her pass. She smiled, and he led her over to the lifts. As they came out on an upper floor Catrin felt a vague sense of claustrophobia, and concentrated her gaze on the framed photos along the walls. At the end of the passage some heavily built men were pulling out large black cases from the mouth of the goods lift. All were dressed in black trousers and sweaters, their heads shaved, and on the back of their sweaters the crest of a London-based private security outfit.

As the men stood aside, the guard ushered her into a larger space with long glass panes facing back along the passage. The windows had been blacked out.

At the far end she could just make out the three surviving band members. Teifi appeared small and frail behind his drums, while Jonnie, almost as short, but stockier, was huddled in conversation with a petite blonde woman with a laptop on her knees. In the shadowy space behind them Leigh Nails was standing alone, seemingly in a world of his own, his Les Paul slung around his neck as he ran through chord progressions.

As the guard led her closer and her eyes adjusted she was surprised to see how much older Jonnie and Teifi looked than in photographs. Jonnie’s hair was thinning, his brow creased with deep lines, while the shadows around Teifi’s eyes belonged to a man many years his senior. Of the three Nails appeared to have changed least, his eyes were still bright and alert, but his prettiness was almost gone, his cheeks hollow but without definition. His plain trousers and shirt betrayed none of the extrovert glamour she had seen in the earlier videos.

The blonde woman’s puckish features were creased into what appeared to be a habitual expression of irritation, which she made little attempt to hide. ‘The boys are putting down tracks on the new album,’ she said. ‘They’re busy. You’ve only got a couple of minutes, okay?’

Teifi put down his drumsticks, but did not step out from behind his kit. Jonnie had moved fractionally closer to him, their faces blank as children in a class too advanced for them. On the platform behind, Leigh slowly took his guitar from around his neck and rested it on the floor, not looking at Catrin.

‘I suppose that none of you have heard from Owen Face?’ she asked softly.

Jonnie and Teifi did not look at each other as she spoke, then Leigh slowly raised his head.

‘Do you know how long we’ve known each other, Owen, Jonnie, Teifi and me?’ Catrin noticed at once the weary, impatient tone in his voice. ‘We used to play in the same sandpit when we were babies. Do you think we’d forget to pass on that we know he’s safe and well?’

She held up a hand and nodded to show she understood. The expression on Leigh’s face was a mixture of incredulity and hostility, but Teifi and Jonnie were more difficult to read.

‘Any idea why Face might have been putting away money into several bank and building society accounts?’ Catrin asked.

Teifi cleared his throat.

‘We never talked about money, financial arrangements, that kind of thing. But Owen was never much of a spender, he was most likely just putting by the money he didn’t spend.’

‘He didn’t spend, didn’t have girlfriends, didn’t like cars. Not exactly your typical rock star, was he?’

She could hear a vague murmur of assent from the shadowy space above her, but no one spoke. She stepped closer to the platform.

‘He spent a lot of time alone, didn’t he, when he wasn’t with the band?’

The only sound from the platform was the tapping of someone’s shoes.

‘And when he got depressed he’d spend a lot of time alone?’

‘So what? What are you getting at?’ It was Jonnie speaking now, in a weak, reedy voice that sounded both pained and impatient at the same time.

‘Can you remember which rehab clinics he went to?’ she asked.

‘He didn’t like people to know. He always kept that side of his life private.’

‘So much of the time none of you really knew where he was?’

From the platform came another weary murmur of assent. Catrin continued. ‘His flat’s plain, not like a home, no pictures on the walls, not even a phone or a television. He spent a lot of time alone, but no one knew where he was. It sounds almost as if his real life was somewhere else, doesn’t it?’

The three men were still looking down at their instruments. Nothing in their manner told her that they were the least surprised or interested in what she’d just said.

She let her heel rest on the edge of the riser, tried to catch the attention of the hunched figure behind the drums. He was looking over her head at something behind her.

‘So you didn’t notice anything different in his behaviour in the days before he disappeared?’

She could hear Leigh sucking in his breath.

‘Look, no offence, but we’ve been asked these questions many times before. No, we don’t know where Owen is, no, we don’t know why he left, no, he hasn’t been in touch. We’ve all of us shed tears for Owen but it’s no good. He’s not coming back.’

Behind the drums, Teifi was shifting his weight from one foot to another. He peered at her.

‘We’ve just had to move on, as a band and as individuals.’ She had the sense he’d had to use these same lines more times than he could count. He’d spoken to her in that soft tone reserved for the very old or very young, people who can’t understand the obvious.

‘So none of you heard from him after his car was found at the bridge?’

Leigh turned his back on her, picked up his Les Paul.

‘No, nothing. He obviously jumped, didn’t he,’ he said in the same weary voice.

Teifi picked up his sticks again, and twiddled them in elaborate circles around his shoulders. Jonnie was looking down at some notes on his lap. Catrin knew that she’d have to be quick now.

She took out the image of Rhys, the still she’d taken from the CCTV footage.

‘Any of you ever see this man?’ She held it out. Jonnie took it, passed it to the others. They all looked, shook their heads.

‘One final thing. Did Face have any connection with the far west, the national park area?’

Leigh looked for a moment as if he was giving the subject some thought, but he might equally have been admiring his guitar.

‘When we were starting out we did a few gigs over in Narberth. That’s the nearest Owen ever went to that area, far as I know.’

‘He never went there on a break, even a short one?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

She picked up her bag, stepped down from the platform.

‘By the way, do any of your crew drive grey vans?’

‘No, ours are white.’

Leigh had already turned away, his expression calm and far off. He walked slowly into the shadows, resuming his search for a lost chord.

The back of her throat felt scratchy and raw, her head sore from last night’s drinking. The guard had disappeared, so she made her way back down the corridor alone, stopping in the empty hall. She found a machine that offered a selection of soups and hot chocolate and dug in her pockets for change.

‘You should have used one of the others. Everything tastes the same from that machine.’

A lone figure was standing in the doorway. Like the roadies she’d seen earlier, he was shaven-headed and wore black trousers and a turtleneck. But his jacket looked worn, his trousers as if they hadn’t been washed for a while.