The Score by Howard Marks Page A

on a site for trank survivors. He was meant to be cyber-buddying her through the withdrawal process. But things had quickly gone the other way. Rob had wanted to unburden himself and confide. It was his way of making her feel better about what she was going through, because what he’d gone through was so much worse. He was someone who’d had everything – a loving family, an involving job, true friends. But the tranks had sneaked in and pilfered the lot.
    He had encouraged her to talk to him in ways she hadn’t talked to anyone for years. Gratitude tumbled with affection, tumbled with reliance, tumbled with need.
    Cat sensed he was shy with women. She’d asked to meet him, to make him smile, to buy him coffee, anything to give back a small portion of what she had taken from him. But he always refused. When she finally coaxed him onto a webcam, he had reminded her in appearance of a young priest. She had expected someone tough and streetwise, but his eyes were soft still, and tender. His face had the pallor of a scholar. He sat in such a way that she couldn’t see his hair. From what she could make out it had thinned at the top, and looked unwashed. He had the air of a man with no pride or illusions left, except in his respect for the truth. That was the only condition he’d set on their friendship, that she never lie to him. She wasn’t sure what drew her to these unworldly types, or them to her; Martin had been the first of them.
    For a moment she caught her reflection in the screen. She didn’t like what she saw and looked away. It was time to do some proper work. When her Mac came to life, she ran searches on the names of Delyth Moses and Nia Hopkins. She found that beyond Nia’s YouTube clip, neither had any presence online. Same with Esyllt. The girls all seemed uncharacteristically antisocial for their age. She clicked onto Nia’s YouTube site. There were no links to other sites the girl had used.
    There was a screech of brakes outside. Cat raised her head. It was a local in a souped-up Mini. She watched the boy racer hunched now over his wheel, talking to a friend. Cat looked beyond the kids at the row of shops opposite. Two had been boarded over. The door of a travel agency displayed stickers for holiday companies, but the window had been whitened with cleaning fluid. A To Let sign hung there. Behind the shops stretched an area of public land, partly visible over the roofs. A group of youths slouched on a bench looking bored.
    Cat went back to her Mac. She began running searches on Gwen Kyle, looking for more about the suicide of her foster-daughter. It had no obvious connection with what was happening, yet Kyle was involved in this, or felt she was.
    Only one article from the right period came up, a page scanned from a local paper. The details of what had happened seemed as simple as they were sad. The piece reported that the girl had broken into a country train station about five miles from Kyle’s cottage where she’d been living for two years, having moved there from a previous foster-family in Llanelli. It had been early morning. CCTV footage showed how she’d waited alone on the platform for half an hour, not moving. At ten to five a night train had entered the station at speed. Tilly had walked fast to the edge of the platform, then thrown herself in front of it. Cat winced. The article went on to say that it had taken three days to recover all the body parts. Kyle had returned immediately from the flat in Cardiff she used when working but had refused to answer any questions put to her by the reporter. The writer described her as ‘visibly upset’ and mentioned that Kyle was known to have been a ‘devoted and caring foster-mother’.
    Clicking over to the newspaper’s own website, Cat searched on ‘Gwen Kyle’. Several pages were suggested. The first was the report of her foster-daughter’s death, then a brief account of the funeral. The girl had been a promising singer and had won several