The Score by Howard Marks Page A

nose with his hand. He was putting something away, his long thin hands skipping over some debris on the bedside chest of drawers, shoving it into a bag. It looked like grass and tobacco. Thomas cleared his throat. Moose turned, the sleepy half-closed eyes that Cat had seen downstairs were gone, replaced with a feral unease.
    ‘Nia been unhappy recently, then?’
    Moose leered unconvincingly at Cat. ‘No.’
    Thomas moved closer to the bed, gently kicked his foot against it. ‘She been going up the mine a lot, has she?’
    Moose opened his hands, pushed his palms together, slid them between his knees. He met Thomas’s gaze and shrugged slowly.
    A lot of teenagers were turning into go-getting MBA fodder, with no rough edges, Cat thought, or else they were inexplicably tidy, like Esyllt. It seemed Moose was the original moody shrugger. Cat moved to the next door on the landing. It was shut, but she swung it open, noted the hiss as the wood caught on the carpet that still had the smell of newness about it. Thomas followed her in and Moose came behind them, hanging back in the doorway.
    Nia’s room resembled Esyllt’s in its lack of obvious feminine touches. She had been no fan of frills or lace. Her bed was covered with a plain duvet, her chest of drawers a flatpack job. A desk, too small to be a comfortable workplace for a secondary school pupil, sat in the corner behind an equally small chair. An iPod dock with speakers sat on some flatpack drawers on the room’s opposite wall. The screen showed a recent playlist, mostly emo and goth artists and a few childhood favourites:
The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast
. On the wall behind the bed a poster advertised a My Chemical Romance gig at Brixton Academy. Her dark taste in bands seemed to contradict the banal neatness of the room; as if she hadn’t fully committed to the teenage give-a-shit attitude.
    Cat stared straight into Moose’s eyes. ‘No computer?’
    Moose looked blank.
    ‘Nia was tight with the waitress at the Owain Glyndwr?’
    Moose still looked blank. ‘Never been in there, far as I know,’ he managed.
    ‘Knew Esyllt Tilkian, didn’t she, Nia?’
    Moose shook his head. ‘Doubt it.’
    Cat lowered her voice slightly. ‘Esyllt’s dad seemed well upset about some lad. Esyllt have boyfriend trouble?’
    Moose flapped his hand in the air dismissively. ‘Doubt it. Esyllt’s right stuck-up. I’ve never seen her with any local lads.’
    ‘What lads, then?’
    ‘None. Never see her much at all, like.’
    There was a built-in wardrobe behind the door. Cat glanced in without touching anything. There were black jeans, T-shirts and dresses, all the goth basics. At the end were some long coats and frocks that looked as if they had been bought secondhand.
    Cat closed her eyes then slowly opened them, took in the rest of the room. Nia’s chest of drawers was bare for a teenager but there were a couple of keepsakes on it. A small ornament of a witch with a black cat, back arched, ceramic fur spiked into tight peaks stood next to an Indian box covered with fake jewels with a painting of an elephant on the lid.
    She flipped the lid open: cheap earrings and necklaces. Peeking out from the jewellery box there was a scrap of card. Cat picked it up by its corner, not touching the surface. It had Nia’s full name printed, no address or number, but a link to an address on YouTube. It looked like a young person’s idea of a business card, the type made at an automated machine. Cat reached in her pocket for her phone, keyed in the address.
    The performer was listed simply as Nia, and there was only one track, an acoustic version of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’. She clicked play on the YouTube clip. As she waited for it to boot, her mind went back to the rainy streets of Cardiff, back to the bay, before it was the Bay Development. It was early in 1996. She was sat in an unmarked car with her first love, Rhys. He let her do that when they first got