Sympathy for the Devil (12 page)

He reached out his hand, but without moving. She had to come forward to shake it. That’s how the powerful do it, she thought, they make you come to them. She looked closer at him. Apart from a slight redness around the rims of his eyes, there was nothing to suggest he’d been partying hard. He straightens up fast, she thought.

‘You sounded as if you were having a good time earlier,’ she said.

‘I like to smoke temple balls after work,’ he said. ‘Helps me to unwind. They come from a little valley in the tribal regions. Best fucking dope in the world.’

He’s not even denying it, Catrin thought. With money like that people soon stop worrying about what others think of them. He was an even six foot, somewhere in his late fifties, she reckoned. But looking well on it, broad shouldered and no sign of a gut. His black hair was shot through with silver, and there were fine crow’s feet around his green eyes. Otherwise time seemed to have left him well alone. His features were dark, powerful. He looked rather like a lion, a green-eyed lion carved out of Welsh rock.

Powell was ushering her through a series of hallways, all panelled in the same rare teak, his hand placed very lightly on the small of her back. She felt a faint flutter in her stomach, and then it passed. She could see already she’d have to tread carefully with this man.

He guided her into a giant open-plan living space. It reminded her of the reception area in some high-tech City office, appeared to have been designed more for visual impact than for comfort. It felt pristine, unlived-in. On the walls, the only colour was provided by giant framed Seerland posters, some featuring Owen Face, others more recent.

He asked what she wanted to drink, then disappeared through a folding door. Through the gap Catrin could see the monitors of several large state-of-the-art editing suites, banks of screens flickering in the half-light.

‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ she called through.

He returned with two screwdrivers in tall glasses.

‘The company runs itself,’ he said. ‘We know the formats that sell. We just give people what they want but are ashamed to admit they want.’

‘What shows do you make?’

‘The ones with big ratings. Reality shows, hidden camera shows. It’s just a question of editing the raw material, holding up a mirror to nature.’

‘It’s a business that must have needed plenty of seed money?’

Powell was looking at her with a slightly disappointed expression. She couldn’t read it exactly, somewhere between quizzical and suspicious, his head tilted to one side as if considering an object that had fallen off its axis.

‘You’re referring to the old rumours, I suppose,’ he said, smiling now. ‘That I left the force all those years ago on some kind of corruption rap.’

‘These things get around,’ she said.

‘You’re thinking I had money stashed away from my time at the force to start the business.’

‘Did you?’

He was smiling broadly, almost laughing, appeared completely relaxed.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I left the force because I had a good business idea, for no other reason. I may smoke a bit of weed, but I’m a straight shooter. You see what you get with me.’

The silence hung between them.

Then he motioned his glass towards hers in a wordless toast and gestured towards one of the sofas. Catrin took a swig of her drink. It tasted just right, as if it had been made by a professional barman. She wondered if an invisible army of staff waited just out of sight.

‘Della said you might want to ask me some questions about those photos?’ He was looking faintly impatient now. He probably has far, far more interesting things to do than talk to me, Catrin thought. She knew she’d have to get in her questions quickly or she might not get another chance.

‘Della said you’d got them from an ex-copper, someone who’d just died.’

He was nodding.

‘That’s right.’

‘But you wouldn’t tell Della who that was.’

He smiled. ‘Well, she might not have taken the job if I had.’

‘Why was that?’

She saw Powell wasn’t about to answer her. Maybe this was going to be just another dead end. She glanced at one of the huge framed Owen Face posters on the wall, his face gaunt, his floppy hair hopelessly dated. It looked like an exhibit in a museum, already a piece of history. Then she saw his eyes, large and sad. Watching her, watching her as the eyes of the missing on the hoardings and school gates had. Mute, reproachful, as if she owed him something, owed something to the missing and all the time they had been waiting patiently to collect.

‘I was thinking how Face’s disappearance coincided with something that happened to the people around me,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘It was like when Face went they noticed a part of them had already disappeared. After that they knew they couldn’t be whole again, couldn’t be normal again.’

He’d begun picking at his lapel, as if only half listening.

‘But no one’s life is normal, Catrin,’ he said after a pause. She noticed how he’d said her name slowly, slightly dismissively but letting the sound of it linger on his lips. A shape moved across the large window, a gull: it hovered there a moment. She watched it dive out of view.

‘You said if you told Della who the man was you’d got the photos from, she’d not have taken the job. Why?’

‘She disliked him, thought he was a loser, a liability.’

Catrin thought about this for a moment. ‘As long as there was money in it, I don’t think Della would’ve have cared where the photos came from.’

‘Maybe. But I reckoned she wouldn’t risk her reputation getting mixed up in something that might turn out to be just bullshit. I thought it safer not to tell her where they came from.’

‘The photos came from Rhys Williams, didn’t they?’ Catrin said.

He nodded. He seemed relaxed about admitting it now, didn’t hesitate for a moment. A straight shooter? Maybe he really was, she thought.

‘Why did you hire Rhys?’

‘I didn’t. More like he hired himself.’

She caught his eye. He returned her glance unblinking.

‘I ran into him one day, down the quay.’ He jerked his head towards the window. ‘It felt like he’d been waiting for me, was going to hustle me a bit.’

‘And?’

‘Rhys said he knew I was interested in the Owen Face mystery, did I want to hire him to do some research. I gave him four grand. Never thought I’d see him again.’

‘Did you?’

‘No. About eight weeks later the photos of those men in robes arrived. Then two days later Rhys was dead.’

Outside Catrin could hear the clink and whistle of the wind through the metal fastenings on the masts down in the marina. Powell had let his hand drop onto the leather of the sofa in the space between them.

‘Rhys send any message with the photos?’

‘Just that he’d got them from a very reliable source.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And no indication I suppose who that source was?’

‘No, none at all.’

He was gesturing vaguely out towards the water.

‘Sad what happened,’ he said.

‘You don’t think the photos are connected in any way to how Rhys died then?’

He didn’t seem to have heard at first. She saw he was looking at her lips, as if waiting for her to continue. Then he shook his head slowly.

‘They say it was just an accident,’ he said.

She looked down at her glass.

‘You must have known Rhys from the old days?’

‘Not really. I left the year after he joined.’

Powell was running his fingers slowly over the sofa. His fingers were not touching her, but the ripples from their movements she could sense along her thigh. He was looking at her, not at her eyes but at her mouth.

‘Perhaps we could see each other again,’ he said. This time his smile was so brief that it disappeared almost before she registered it.

She wondered what this might lead to, what his interest might be. A man with his money could have almost any woman he wanted. What did he know about her personal life? She looked down at his hand moving steadily in a rhythm over the soft fabric. She remembered the slightly dismissive but lingering way he’d said her name and felt suddenly uncomfortable.

She pointed at the reflections of the Owen Face posters. ‘You don’t really believe Face is still alive after all this time, do you?’ she asked softly.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘The odds are against it.’

‘Della said you’ve spent years on the mystery.’

‘She’s exaggerating a little. I’ve circled the case from every angle over the years, gone down a lot of blind alleys. And now I need to know what really happened before I can finish my film.’

He stood up, walked slowly across the room to the window that overlooked the marina. He appeared to be enjoying the view, but Catrin couldn’t escape the feeling that he was turning his back on her in some more general way. He folded his arms and looked out again.

‘You’re not really that interested in Face, are you?’ he said. ‘Your main interest is in Rhys.’

‘Why do you say that?’ She felt Face’s eyes watching her from every wall, waiting for her answer, that whole silent choir of Faces in the room watching her. She couldn’t bear to meet the eyes and what they seemed to foretell. An image came to her of Rhys: he was walking away from her, white summer blossom swirling around him in the darkness. He turned back to face her for a moment, but his features were no longer clear to her. He walked on until he disappeared from view.

‘I know you and Rhys used to be an item.’ Powell moved back to where she sat, standing over her. ‘Why else would you be here if it wasn’t for Rhys?’

She didn’t look up at him, her eyes on the seagull hovering outside the window. There’d seemed genuine sympathy in his voice, she noticed, and a hint of something else – anger, maybe even fear. In such a man the two emotions are probably very closely connected, she guessed.

‘I’d like to show you something,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow over lunch.’

He was staring at her lips again, then down at her hips. He wants me to see that he’s looking at me that way, she thought. He’s used to getting his own way, and he’s not even hiding it from me. She felt angry, wanted to give him a kicking, leave him with a nice big shiner on his smug rich man’s face. Then the feeling passed.

‘You said it was an accident,’ she said.

‘I said the police said it was an accident. I didn’t.’

‘So you think his death was connected to the photos?’

He said nothing, shrugged his shoulders.

‘Stop playing games,’ she said. ‘If you know something, tell me now. You won’t get another chance.’

She stood now, bending to pick up her bag from the floor, opening it to look for her keys. She was aware of his eyes on her as she did so. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, she had to admit. But still the sense of discomfort she’d felt earlier persisted.

‘Let me show you something,’ Powell said.

He was behind her, gently taking her arm. He led her up a spiral staircase to a large, almost empty room. It occupied the pyramid at the apex of the tower, the lights of the entire city spread out beneath them, on the other side the dark expanse of the channel.

He sat at one end of a table. On it was a small scale model of the tower, and some exotic fruits Catrin had never seen before. To either side of him were two young, well-built men. They were standing back at a respectful distance. The room was so large they couldn’t hear what was said at the table.

Powell gestured for her to sit opposite him.

‘You’re going to work for me,’ he said matter-of factly, as if he was stating something they both already knew would happen.

‘I have a job already thanks,’ she said.

He pretended not to have heard, waved to one of the guards, who brought a square object to the table and two envelopes.

‘By the time I’ve finished what I’m saying you’ll have decided to work for me,’ he said.

He was opening what looked like a backgammon box. It was rubber-sealed, Catrin noticed. Inside it was divided into small square airtight cubicles. In each was a small bag of what looked like grass or hash.

‘This is for afters,’ he said. ‘To celebrate when we’ve signed our contract.’

The rich, she thought, they think they can buy us and use us at will. She got up, began backing away to the door. Powell made no attempt to stop her. He’d taken out what looked like a contract from the first envelope. He’d left the smaller envelope closed.

Then he took out a glass stem, a pipe, and several bags from the box.

‘These are some of the finest dopes in the world,’ he said. ‘Temple sticks from the Manali Valley. The Dom Perignon of hashish, you’ll like them.’

He picked up another bag. ‘This is from Pakistan, Chitrali. So good the locals keep it for themselves. It’s very rare to find it in the west.’

She’d reached the doorway, was about to go down the staircase. But she kept her eyes on him. He’d put his hand on the small, unopened envelope.

‘It’s in here,’ he said. ‘The thing that will make you change your mind.’

Catrin stopped, waited. He was opening the envel-ope, spreading some papers face down on the table like a deck of cards.

‘Here’s the deal,’ he said. ‘Three weeks of your time investigating the photos. In return, I’ll show you something that may prove Rhys’s death was not an accident.’

From the second envelope he’d counted out eight pieces of paper, face down, all identical except the last. She felt a flush of anger mingled with anticipation as she stared down at the papers.

He pointed at the contract. ‘This is a confidentiality agreement, it’s for your own protection. No one will ever know you worked for me.’

‘Why me?’ she said. ‘You could hire anyone you wanted.’

‘Because for you this will be personal. That could make the difference between a result and a lot of expensive pissing in the dark.’