Sympathy for the Devil (39 page)

‘Yesterday,’ he said, ‘the teleconference, it gave me a chance to check on something.’

‘Something you didn’t trust me with.’ Catrin stared hard at him, steadied herself on the chair and felt a surge of anger rise through her. All the times Rhys had not told her things came back to her, those nights she’d waited up at the flat, drinking alone until sleep came. At least I must really feel something for him, she told herself. If I couldn’t I wouldn’t care what he did.

‘This thing,’ he said, ‘it was about Emyr Pugh.’

‘Ah, I get it, you know Pugh and I go way back, so on this you kept me out of the loop.’

She thought he was smiling, trying to hide it. ‘No, I didn’t want to use the phones here.’

She didn’t see why he found it funny. ‘Bollocks, you’ve been haunted by this case for years, like Rhys. I’m just a means to you, a tool.’

Catrin got up, went into her room, slamming the door, then realised she’d left her tobacco behind and felt even angrier. She needed to know what the connection with Pugh was, and if she sat in the dark fuming she wasn’t going to find out.

She opened the door a crack, stood there silently. Huw threw her the tobacco, smiling sheepishly up at her.

‘Pugh,’ he said. ‘If I’d really meant to keep that from you, I’d not have mentioned it, would I?’ He looked down, no longer smiling. ‘Think about it.’

She knew he had a point, began to calm down a little. ‘So what was it?’

‘I wanted to know if Rhys had ever mentioned the case to Pugh.’ He paused. ‘I know you said Pugh sometimes saw Rhys around town, usually down the riverside where his body was found.’

‘But Pugh’s had plenty of occasions to tell me if Rhys had said anything to him, and he didn’t.’

‘Right, so I wondered, well if maybe it was something he didn’t want to tell you, because he didn’t think there was anything in it, didn’t want you chasing after what he thought was junkie bullshit.’

‘So?’

‘So I left a message, told him if there is, to get in touch but not by phone. But he’s away on leave.’

Catrin laughed. ‘I could’ve told you that anyway.’

She came back to the table and sat down at the screen beside him.

‘Any other acute liver conditions in the mispers not uploaded into the files then, the type that might’ve been caused by these extended trance drugs from the lab?’

‘I checked the GP notes, the NHS inpatients records at Withybush, Glangwili and the Morriston hospitals for all the other mispers we’ve pulled, and drew a blank for any liver or toxicity-related admissions on any of them.’

‘Anything else come up?’

‘Just the usual pre-teen, early teen issues – routine fractures, asthma, suspected meningitis, nothing that ties into the Stephens file.’

In the half-light, she began to roll a cigarette by touch.

‘Something doesn’t feel quite right about that.’

‘In what way?’

‘Mispers, runaways tend to have fairly active medical records. One would expect some incidence of teenage pregnancy, self-harm, psychological or drug-related problems.’

‘But the more sensitive issues – teenage pregnancies, self-harm episodes – these often get handled in the private sector at the request of the parents. That would explain their not showing in the NHS databases.’

She opened the steamed-up window a crack, felt in the drawer for a lighter.

‘That might explain the cases from middle-class backgrounds, but about half of them, like Stephens, were the children of long-term unemployed and travellers or were in care.’

‘But we know those are just the types that can slip out of the system altogether.’

When she sparked the lighter, the flame was too long. She could smell her hair singeing. She blew the smoke up towards the window.

‘Another explanation could be that someone deliberately wanted some of those medical histories off the radar, either by paying for the youths to go private, or by wiping the files.’ She watched the smoke drift out into the mildewed air.

‘So why did the Stephens admission still show then?’ Huw asked.

‘That admission was over five years before his disappearance. You said that the cases had all the usual records up to early teens. Maybe the wipe-out only went back five years from the disappearance dates, so the Stephens notes got through?’

She had the sense suddenly that Huw was no longer listening to what she was saying. He went through to the bathroom and turned off the taps.

She switched on the lamp, started to gather up clean underclothes, jeans, a sweatshirt. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, just as she used to with Rhys, waiting for her turn in the bathroom.

Huw stepped out of the door, a white towel wrapped around his waist. He put his right hand up to her face, pushing a stray hair away from her lower lip.

Unfastening the towel, she began to dry him. He was still, head bowed, lifting his arms as she ran the towel down his chest. She worked quietly, methodically. When she had finished she put the towel on the bed, her arms around him so that she could rest her head in the warm, salty groove of his collarbone. He was kissing the top of her head, so softly she could barely feel his breath through the strands of her hair. She felt an unexpected moment of emptiness and calm.

Huw moved away from her towards the table. Catrin carried her clothes through to the bathroom, leaving the door open so they could still hear each other.

‘Those cottages at the cove,’ she called through the steam. ‘I got another look at them. Most have been done up in a similar style to Rhys’s. It looks as if they’re all owned by a single company?’

She could hear Huw working the keyboard.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Eglwys Beach. It’s owned by a company registered to an address in Cardiff.’ He repeated the address to her. She heard more tapping. ‘But on the registry that address is listed as derelict.’

Catrin let the warm water course down her tensed-up back. Through the door she saw Huw lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

‘In the village, have you seen any other cottages being refurbished?’

‘None.’

Through the steam she could see nothing clearly now. ‘That older man with the cane, I asked him and he said he was doing up some holiday lets near the village.’

‘Must be those then.’

‘So Rhys was staying in one of his cottages,’ Catrin said. The steam was stinging her eyes, making her sweat. ‘But when I asked him if he’d seen Rhys, he said he hadn’t.’

‘Maybe he didn’t recognise Rhys from the picture?’

‘I pointed out Rhys’s earrings. They’re not the sort of thing you’d forget. Fransis Serafim he calls himself, unusual name for a local man.’

‘Rhys could’ve asked this Fransis to keep quiet about his being there?’

‘Or Fransis chose to keep quiet about it.’

She went and sat in front of the small dressing table by the window as Huw called the barman to ask if he knew where Fransis’s place was.

‘And?’

‘He thought he might be connected to the clinic in some way.’

Catrin cast her mind back to the staff register she’d run, didn’t remember his name there. ‘He’s a patient?’

‘The barman didn’t seem to want to talk about him.’

‘He seemed all on edge yesterday when the man was here. Like that dealer, he seemed uneasy when we mentioned him.’

She pulled on the band that held her hair out of her face when she did her make-up.

‘Call him again, ask him which room Thomas is in,’ she said.

Behind her she heard Huw’s calm professional tone, a pause, then the click of the receiver dropping back onto its cradle. Huw got up, stood by the door.

‘Thomas didn’t come back to his room last night.’

‘How did he know that?’

‘When he went in this morning the bed hadn’t been slept in. He said he saw Thomas leaving the building last night in a van with builder’s tarps on it.’

The bar looked closed, the doors shut. Glasses lay on the tables, uncleared from the previous night’s lock-in. A fug of stale smoke hung in the still air.

The young barman was crouching at the back, painting a long, old-fashioned surfboard. The wood had been sanded down and he was applying to it a thick coat of some pungent metallic paint.

Huw cleared his throat. ‘Sorry to bother you again,’ he said quietly.

‘That’s all right.’ He’d directed towards them that cautious yet curious expression of people from country parts for whom any stranger seems an object of fascination.

‘The man who didn’t come back last night.’ Huw was standing over the board admiring the barman’s handiwork. ‘We’re friends of his. We’d like to take a quick look in his room, if you don’t mind.’

They followed him upstairs to a room opposite the first landing. It was smaller than theirs, recently repainted in the same muted primrose as the landings. Near the ceiling the damp was already showing through.

‘There’s nothing here, as you can see.’ The surfaces in the bathroom were still wet where they had been wiped down. Catrin went and had a closer look, ran her fingers along the gaps between the tiles.

She could see the remnants of a dark stain, but it had all but disappeared. She lifted her fingers, smelt them. It wasn’t a smell she recognised, something sharp, chemical.

‘You don’t think that’s odd?’ she said. ‘He books a room but doesn’t use it?’

The man closed the door and led them downstairs again. ‘Well, that’s what happened before,’ he said.

The doors to the yard were still closed, the lights off, a feeble glimmer filtering through the dirty panes.

‘How many times has Mr Thomas stayed here?’ Huw had followed the man into the narrow passage where the old board was leaning against the wall. Catrin waited a little way behind as they spoke.

‘He’s stayed maybe half a dozen times over the last year.’

She wondered what to make of this. ‘Know what he’s been doing here?’

‘No idea. He never talks with any locals.’

The man was moving his brush quickly over the board, some drops of paint falling to the floor. She glanced further down the passage. Stacked against the wall were what looked like antique children’s toys, next to them some small dolls made from reeds. ‘This gentleman with the van, Fransis, know anything more about him?’ she asked.

The barman shook his head. Catrin thought she’d take a chance now. ‘I heard this Fransis was seen up on that escarpment above the woods,’ she said. She was a good liar, she’d kept her tone almost indistinguishable from her previous questions. The man stopped moving his brush in mid-motion, and only when the paint began dripping on the floor did he look down at it.

‘That’s not likely,’ he said. ‘No one on the island ever goes up there.’ He didn’t look round at her, but continued brushing the same small square of board. ‘It’s not safe. You have to know the paths.’

‘So what do they go up there for?’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘The people from the island, you said they know the paths.’

He kept his eyes on the board. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

Huw thanked the man, then led the way back along the passage to the day room. The curtains were still closed, the ashtray on the floor unemptied from the previous afternoon. He shut the door before speaking again.

‘What do you make of that? Thomas has been coming down here on the quiet. Then he leaves with this Fransis character, doesn’t come back.’

‘I’m not sure.’ The room felt cold. The radiator in the corner gave out little heat. Catrin sat on top of it, began to roll a cigarette. ‘The barman said Fransis was connected to the clinic. But his name wasn’t on the staff register.’

‘An outpatient?’

‘Maybe. Let’s check there, see if we can get more details on him.’

She flicked her ash into the fireplace. ‘There’s something not quite right about this whole place, don’t you feel that?’

‘In what sense?’

‘It’s as if the place is hiding something. It’s there, but just out of sight all the time.’

Huw was leaning closer to her, his eyes flicking over to the door. Catrin could hear the sound of the birds far out over the waters.

She threw her half-smoked stub into the fireplace. In the distance a figure out on the rocks was moving slowly away into the mist. She reached for the binoculars, but it had disappeared into the dimness. As the cries of the birds faded, it was difficult to believe anyone had been there at all.

‘That looked like Tudor,’ she said. ‘He was there earlier, watching us.’ She looked out into the half-light. ‘It may be nothing, but Tudor’s daughter, the pretty one. She was one of those youngsters reported missing, but she was never matched with a body.’

Huw had already turned, picked up his coat. ‘She may have run off to London or somewhere. But Tudor must have known something about those grow-sheds, his place was the closest habitation, there was nothing else near.’

‘Except the escarpment.’ She lowered her eyes from the window. ‘You don’t think Tudor’s who he appears to be?’

‘I don’t know, I’m not really sure any of them are.’ He paused. ‘Like you said, this whole place feels wrong.’

As Huw reached the door, it was already opening. Standing there was the barman and another man, their broad shoulders blocking out the light. Catrin saw that the barman was staring at Huw, not moving, as if he wasn’t going to let him pass.

The second man stepped forward. She recognised him as one of the regulars from the bar, the one with the beard and sandy hair fading to grey she’d seen on the first day.

‘Your lady friend,’ he glanced past Huw to where Catrin sat. ‘A gentleman wants to speak to her.’

The barman was still blocking the door, his arm across the gap.

‘This gentleman,’ she said, ‘who is it?’

The bearded man stepped back into the shadows. The barman was still there, watching. ‘He’s waiting for you, the gentleman, at the clinic.’