He was only thirty-five after all, there was plenty of time for him to change. She wasn’t the innocent kid she’d been when they first got together. She was twenty-two years old now, a serving Drugs officer, just like him. She was going to save him.
Then she noticed the suitcase, lying on the floor at his feet.
‘What’s that?’ Her voice was small and scared. ‘What are you doing, Rhys?’
It was obvious what he was doing. He was taking his clothes from the cupboard and he was putting them in the suitcase.
‘I’m sorry, Cat,’ he said.
She got out of bed, hoping that the sight of her fit young body would be enough to give him second thoughts. Fat chance. He didn’t even look at her. He just kept stuffing his things into the case, and all at once she felt self-conscious in her nakedness, and aware that he was no longer hers. She quickly pulled on her joggers and T-shirt.
‘Where are you going, Rhys?’
His eyes gave him away, flickering towards the window. She crossed the room and opened the curtains a crack, just enough to see the street outside. There was a car parked there, a long, dark, expensive-looking coupé. A woman stood next to it, smoking and looking straight up at her.
She’s standing there so I can see her. The bitch, she’s relishing this. Even in the half-light Catrin saw how slim, how lithe she was. She was dressed in a tight shiny dress with a snakeskin pattern, and heels, as if she’d just left a glamorous club or party. Catrin shivered, closed the curtains again.
‘It’s that bitch. Della Davies,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ Rhys was closing the suitcase, moving away towards the door. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’
Had she known? Of course she had, but increasingly she’d hidden it from herself. When the gossip in the station had stopped, a part of her had so much wanted to believe it was over. All at once it hit home, how terribly young and naïve she’d been. What could she offer him now that would make him change his mind? She felt a rising panic.
‘Please,’ she said. She needed urgently to get away from the flat, from the place they’d shared. ‘Let’s take a walk, talk for a minute.’
Catrin moved her hand to touch his cheek. Rhys didn’t look at her but nodded. She sighed with relief. He still cared enough to do that for her. She left her fingers there, drew them softly down to his neck. She slapped him hard where she had just stroked him. He didn’t move. His eyes were still, expressionless.
‘Hey,’ he said, a tiny smile playing around his chapped lips, ‘that’s no way to say goodbye.’
She couldn’t help smiling back. They both loved Leonard Cohen. Did Della Davies love Leonard Cohen? She couldn’t imagine it. She put her trainers on, and they walked out of the house together into the mild night.
She kept her eyes straight ahead, looking away from where Della was standing. She caught a brief flash of stretched halter-top, big gold jewellery, deep fake tan. The light from the street lamps glimmered over the car behind her. It was a late-model Mercedes, looked as if it had just come from the showroom.
That’s an expensive car to run on a press officer’s salary, she thought. But then she’d heard the rumours around the station, that Della had some line on the side. What this line was, no one really knew. Some said she worked as an escort for wealthy businessmen, and that she offered unusual, very specialised services. Others that she ran an agency for officers moonlighting in the shadier end of the private-security game. There were other rumours, even more bizarre. But no one had ever backed up a single rumour with a single fact.
She’s the sort of woman who knows about everyone else’s business, but nobody knows about hers, Catrin thought. And she’s too smooth an operator to let that change.
Rhys was leading Catrin down the street now. He was heading towards the park, the stretch of empty lawns behind the trees. He walked to where the ruins of a small bandstand were circled by railings overgrown with ivy. The floor of the shelter was littered with cardboard where rough sleepers had been; tall beeches hid the place from the lane.
She saw the glow of Della’s cigarette behind the trees, and Rhys glancing back towards her as if at a view of something indistinct and far away. Catrin nodded towards the trees. ‘She’s just a user, she wants you for something. After that, she’ll treat you like you never existed.’
‘This isn’t about her,’ he said slowly.
They stood there, six foot apart. Catrin wanted to close the gap but knew she couldn’t. For the moment they were like opposing magnets. She waited, watched Rhys make the effort to start saying what he had to say. Finally, he was ready.
‘Cat,’ he said. He paused, took a deep breath, carried on. ‘You know about the tests?’
She nodded hesitantly. Rhys had been drug-tested at work a month back. He was a DS. Undercover on the Drug Squad. Of course – the tests. She felt a sickening lurch in her stomach. He moved forward, held her by the wrist. She felt their pulses collide, weirdly out of sync.
‘They’ll question you first,’ he said quietly. Although she could not see his eyes she knew he was watching her closely. ‘That’s the way Internals and DPS always do it. They start with who they think is the weakest link.
‘Say nothing,’ he said in the same level tone. He’d taken a soft pack of Marlboro from his pocket, was tapping one out into his hand.
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘It’s all right. I know.’ He lit a cigarette and she caught a glimpse of his sunken cheeks, his clouded eyes. Still, betraying nothing.
‘But you’ve heard rumours, haven’t you?’ he said.
‘What’s been going round the station. Nothing more.’
He’d raised one hand, opened it as wide as it would go and closed it again.
‘These rumours. What have you heard?’ He glanced back towards the lane.
‘Only the same talk that’s been around for months. That the squad’s dirty, and it’s down to you.’
‘Well the results came back. On the back-up test as well. I’m fucked.’
She stepped back, feeling confused, slightly faint now.
‘But I thought you always carried a vial of clean.’
‘I forgot it that day.’
For the first time that night he was looking straight into her eyes.
‘It’s simple. If I stay, you’ll always be under a cloud. You could go down with me. But if I leave, you’ve still got a chance.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You will, Cat. Area has got you marked down for great things. Don’t let this screw it up for you.’
She reached around his waist and grasped at his belt, trying to pull him back. She could feel how loose the belt was on his hips as she drew him closer. He was pushing her away.
‘But you’re still a good officer. You took down Angel Jones, Angel of Darkness Jones.’ She heard the desperation in her voice. ‘That has to count for something.’
She gripped his belt harder. But he turned away.
‘Oh, that.’ He seemed hardly to be listening, as if she was talking about something someone else had done, not the man standing in front of her.
She saw he was no longer trying to find her eyes in the dimness.
‘That counts for nothing any more.’ He was backing away from her towards the entrance to the shelter. ‘A Drugs officer with a habit, they need that like a hole in the head.’ She saw he was looking again towards the lane.
‘So this is where the bitch in the Benz fits in, is it? A sugar mummy for when you’re out of the job? She’s playing you, and you can’t even see it.’ She was crying now, damn it. Such a fucking girl.
‘No, you’ve got that wrong.’ She saw he looked pained now, he could never bear to see her cry. ‘She has connections. She can help someone like me.’
He’d let her pull him back against the railings. But he was straining against her grip. Something small and white had fallen from his pocket to the ground.
‘Look at me, Cat,’ he said. He moved her
hand down so she could feel how thin he was, pushing her fingers over the ridges of his chest. ‘I can hardly look after myself.’
As she pulled her hand away, he broke from her, moved out onto the leaf-strewn grass. She went after him, ran ahead, blocked his way. ‘Rhys?’
‘Please,’ he said, ‘for your own good, never try to follow me. Never contact me again.’
He walked away, the dead leaves swirling behind him. This time she let him go, crouching with her back against the damp railings. She picked up what had fallen.
In her fingers there was a paper bird, half torn, an origami figure with a long bent beak. It was a raven, a good likeness of one.
She watched as Rhys made his way through the trees to where the lights of the passing cars merged with the glare of the night sky.
Then she sank, very slowly, to her knees and started punching the railings. She did it methodically, right left, right left, till her knuckles were bleeding and her blows started to skid and slide off the surface and then, only then, did she stop.
PART ONE
2010
1
It was a dry cold January evening. DS Catrin Price was looking out of the window of the Future Inn lobby towards what had once been the docks.
The motel hadn’t been there when she’d left all those years before. Nor had much of what she could see over by the water. The glittering copper dome of the Millennium Centre opera house, the glass and steel structure that housed the Welsh Assembly, the lights of new hotels and waterfront apartments. ‘Cardiff Bay’ everyone called it now. No doubt she’d get the hang of it soon enough.
She glanced down into the street. A man was getting out of a grey Audi, which he’d parked at the entrance of the brightly lit drive-thru pizza opposite. That hadn’t been there in the old days either. But the man walking towards her from the car, he’d been there. DS Jack Thomas. Obvious copper even in his smart casuals. Fortysomething, clean cut, a little grey around the temples, a self-satisfied grin. He’d been tasked with showing her the ropes her first week back before she was assigned to one of the DI’s teams.
‘You ready then?’ he called out chirpily.
He hasn’t aged much, the bastard, she thought. He still walked with the old swagger, his broad chest moving through the air slightly ahead of him. If anything the walk seemed to have become more pronounced with the years.
‘Maybe we could cover another sector tonight?’ she said. His grin was still fixed on his face.
‘The way this works, love –’ there was a slight edge to his voice now – ‘you shadow me, not the other way around.’
Catrin nodded, without looking up at him. She’d have to toe the line for this first week: what other choice did she have?
Thomas was walking ahead of her back to the car. ‘My report will go to Human Resources. The various DIs in Major Crimes, they’ll all see it, decide which is the right team for you.’
It was something he had over her, for these first days at least. After that, she’d make sure he never had anything on her ever again. He opened the car door for her, and held it as she got in.
‘I heard you used to be on the Drugs Unit,’ he said, ‘back in the day?’
Didn’t Thomas remember her then? If he did, he was making a good show of disguising it. He was treating her as if they’d never met before. She saw him glance briefly at her legs before closing the door.
She remembered him well enough. He’d been CID intake three years ahead of her, before that a sergeant based down in Butetown, the old docks. Always used to give her little looks whenever their paths crossed, the sort of looks that made you check all the buttons on your blouse were done up. Was it her imagination, or hadn’t he had a bit of a thing for her? He’d had a habit of turning up in places just before her, as if by chance, or perhaps it had been chance. And then there’d been that night they’d got drunk together, and what had followed. She felt a little inward shiver of shame at the memory of it. Maybe he was embarrassed. Maybe he’d genuinely forgotten. Men can be like that, she thought.
Had she really changed that much? Catrin looked briefly into the passenger mirror, pushed her hair away from her face. Though her hair was longer, her make-up more rigid, it was not a face someone would forget that easily. Childlike still, a little weird, the features not quite spaced right, as if once they had been pulled apart and they’d never been put back quite right, and dark in that Celtic, almost Romany way. And the way she dressed hadn’t changed. It wasn’t a look you forgot in a hurry either, at least not on a plain-clothes. More like a reject from a biker gang than a cop, everything black, leather, heavy eyeliner, black tatts on her arms, and on a lot of other places. But then, twelve years was a long time to have been away. Twelve years working in London and Reading. Twelve years since her mam died. Twelve years since Rhys and all the pain and con-fusion that she had coped with in her own strange, stubborn ways.
‘Why did you come back?’ he asked. She pretended not to hear, focused on the radio.
Why was she back? She’d asked herself the same question enough times, not found an answer that made sense yet. On one level she knew. It was a decent opportunity for her, a promotion. But there were other jobs out there. If she’d been more patient she could have held on for something in her home force in Reading. She’d had a life there, she’d felt safe. And instead she’d taken Cardiff, where there were nothing but ghosts. Or maybe that was the reason why. Maybe it was time to lay the ghosts to rest.
As on the three previous nights, their brief was to follow up on some minor complaints from members of the public. It was midweek, and cold. The streets in the centre of town were quiet. Thomas drove first to an alley near the station. There’d been reports from a residents group that a gang of Kosovans was using it to sell drugs to passers-by.
‘So what are we looking out for?’ she said. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to brief her.
‘The obvious. Anyone loitering.’
But both corners were deserted. The only sign of life was a small late-night store, dim lights bleeding from behind its metal blinds.
They waited in the car for a few moments in an uncomfortable silence. There wasn’t much to look at, and no one passing. Thomas seemed bored already, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
‘Looks like a false report,’ he said at last.
He told her the next stop was another alley, on the far side of Caroline Street. There’d been some muggings a couple of months back. Since then, it had become a regular stop-off point for night patrols with time on their hands.
He drove past the mouth of the alley without stopping. It looked quiet also, and dark. There were no obvious signs of suspicious activity. The only figures visible were a couple of elderly rough-sleepers, pulling a trolley piled with bin bags.
This time Thomas parked two streets away, and they approached on foot. She followed a couple of paces behind to discourage conversation. He was taking the route down Chip Alley, fifty yards of kebab shops and curry houses, the haunt of after-pub stragglers. But it was still only Wednesday, and hardly anyone was about braving the cold.
Glancing at the neon of the shopfronts, memories of her teenage years came flooding back; ending up here at the end of a big night out, some boy who couldn’t hold his cider chucking up in the gutter while the rest of them threw chips at each other and wondered what might happen next.
But the city she grew up in had a yeasty, comforting smell. This new place smelt like plastic, and something else. There was just a hint of vomit in the air, not strong but lingering in the background like an unpleasant memory that refuses to fade.
Thomas had slowed his pace, was following her sightline towards the kebab and curry houses.
‘Brings back memories, does it?’ He said this without the earlier edge in his voice. ‘This is one of the parts that hasn’t changed much.’ It was an unusually sensitive remark for Thomas, but she ignored it all the same.
They had come back to the mouth of the alley. The
rough-sleepers and their trolley had gone now. The shops were closed, blinds down. The place was dark, empty of human life.
At one end of the alley there was a CCTV camera on a high metal pole. These had been placed at all the city’s trouble spots, but the alley was so poorly lit the thing was next to useless. Thomas was waving into the lens. Maybe he’d check the footage later, she thought, see how effective it was. Maybe he was just clowning about.
‘There’s fuck all here,’ he said.
She noticed he was stifling a yawn.
‘What next?’ she said.
He didn’t answer, just drove away, circling the block. He wasn’t even bothering to look at the figures walking on the pavements. He seemed to be marking time.
Then his phone went off, the ringtone from The Pink Panther. He cracked the window, leant away, so she couldn’t hear, but she could of course.
‘A floater?’ he said. ‘At the tidal barrier? Are you sure about that?’ He didn’t sound too excited, but she saw his legs jerking, as if to some fast, inaudible rhythm.
She remembered the term floater from the old days. The strong tides brought bodies from all the way down the coast into the bay. The bodies would turn up every couple of months, drunks and suicides off the Severn Bridge usually. Some things obviously didn’t change.
‘Keep the press away,’ she heard him say. ‘We don’t want another scrum. No, doesn’t matter if it is or it isn’t – either way we don’t want them within a mile of this.’
‘What’s all that about?’ she said.
‘You’ll see, love,’ he said, the irritating smirk back in place. ‘You’ll see very soon. We’re taking a little trip down the bay.’
They drove down Bute Street, past the Butetown housing estate, the shadowlands where the last remnants of the old Tiger Bay were still clinging on. It looked every bit as dilapidated as Catrin remembered. At the end of Bute Street came the grand Victorian commercial buildings, left over from the years when Cardiff was the world’s premier coal port. It was in these buildings that the world’s price for coal had once been fixed, and the first cheque for a million pounds written. But not even ghosts seemed to remain there now, just smoke-blackened walls and a labyrinth of mouldering inner passages and yards where it always seemed night.