The Score by Howard Marks Page B

together, before she was a copper even, before she was old enough to get into pubs she had seen things many people never see.
    He had made her a compilation. It might have been a cheesy thing to do, but because Rhys had done it, the songs were profound to her; each one a message about life. Rain rivuleted the car windows. She was safe. She was with him. A song ended – the Velvet’s ‘Venus in Furs’ – and another started, ‘Street Spirit’, which had not long been released. He began to talk, music was the only thing that got him talking. Love, his past, their future: on these subjects Rhys was mute. But music was always his best friend, even later, when he was married to the skag. He spoke like a teacher, which was what he was to her then.
    ‘The KLF said that vocalists confuse their roles as singers in bands with being world leaders. Thom Yorke is Bono, without the shades or the hotline to Mandela.’
    She laughed. But Rhys never laughed at his own jokes, never saw them as funny. Could she even remember the sound of his laughter?
    ‘Radiohead are so worthy, so dull,’ he continued, ‘normally. But this song is pure, so despairing that it can only be true.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
    ‘Listen to it. This song could have been written by the devil. Or by God about the devil.’
    She had never understood what Rhys had meant by that. But a sound from Nia’s room pulled Cat from her memory. It was the YouTube clip on her phone. It had started, not with music, but with a demure cough from a teenage girl on an empty stage. Cat looked up to see Moose and Thomas close to her, staring at the screen on her phone.
    Either the stage had been arranged to look like a traditional theatre with a proscenium arch or it really was one. In its centre stood Nia, gently lit to reveal nothing more than a small performance area and the edge of a plush red drape. She was dressed simply in a long, white, shroud-like dress. Her dark eyes were heavily lined with kohl, her lips the crimson of a Hammer Horror starlet. The low light was bleached out as a spotlight seemed to come out of nowhere, lending an added layer of strangeness to her appearance.
    As Nia sang to the backing track of ‘Street Spirit’, she swayed, her voice swooping and dipping. Occasionally she closed her eyes, clasping her hands in front of her as if undergoing some religious transformation. She seemed powered by something greater than self-confidence; a sense that she was completely in the moment, driven along by the song. Cat knew it well, and Nia’s performance had retained the essence of the original, but she had added another layer. It was as if she was pleading with some unseen person or deity, asking them for help.
    Cat shivered involuntarily. It was an impressive performance, and it had already attracted a few followers. On the message board beneath the video Stevie21 had written, ‘Awesome!’ while Rockettothestars had noted, ‘I love this song – Nia, you rock!’
    Cat searched YouTube for all Nia’s postings, there were three or four others, but the last one had been almost a year previously, another Radiohead track. She looked up at Moose, who betrayed no obvious feelings at watching the film of his recently deceased sister. ‘Nia hasn’t been doing any music recently?’
    ‘No, gave it up, I think.’
    ‘Did she ever mention a man called Griff Morgan? The drug smuggler?’
    ‘I know who he is.’
    ‘That’s not what I asked. Did your sister ever mention him? Have a thing for him? Anything like that.’
    Moose shook his head. He’d relapsed into sulky teenage silence, tapping his foot, eye fixed on the door. Cat and Thomas took the hint, followed him out of the room. Downstairs, the mother was still out for the count. Cat went over to her, tried to make eye contact, but the woman just lay there, staring at the ceiling, a moan rising from her lips. It sounded like all the pain in the world turned down low.
    They left the farmhouse.