The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (11 page)

Mared says, ‘There’s a laundry room, you know.’

I say, ‘oh,’ but hang my clothes out just the same.

I quite like the hostel. Christmas lunch – everything overcooked, but big portions, warm and lots of gravy – is crowded, smelly and companionable. I sit next to a man who spends the entire time telling me about his past as a butcher. He doesn’t ask a single question about me, or not really. I eat everything, then fall asleep in the TV room.

On Boxing Day, Abs sits me down and goes through my history. I say I was in a relationship in Manchester. Say that it didn’t work out.

‘Was there physical violence? Did he hit you?’

I shrug.

‘Did you report it to the police?’

I shake my head.

‘Do you have children? Are there any children involved?’

Shake.

‘OK. Are you sure?’

I nod. ‘I don’t have kids.’

She goes through other things. My connection with Cardiff. My existing family. My job history. Any skills I have.

I say, ‘I’ve always worked.’

‘OK, good. That’s good.’

Abs digs it all out of me. I’m a cleaner now. Used to do clerical work. Filing, admin. Payroll. ‘I’ve got qualifications.’

Abs wants to know more. I tell her I got all my payroll certificates.

‘Do you still have them?’

‘No.’

Abs wants me to make a Reintegration Plan with her. I don’t do it that day, or the next. But before New Year’s Eve is breaking out in the city center like a small war, I have a draft Plan. Its gist: get a job, get accommodation, get a life. Don’t live with someone who hits me. Abs says, ‘You can do this, you know. Anyone can end up here as a one-off thing. That’s just bad luck. The trick is not to end up here again.’ I say thank you, and she hugs me.

16.

I get a job. Cleaning again. Minimum wage. Start at five, work through to two o’clock. Offices and other commercial property.

I like it, like everything about it. I like the early starts. I like the routine and the pressure. I become quite good at it, definitely one of the better cleaners. I’m still a bit forgetful, especially in the big open plan offices, but I enjoy doing the floors and I’m ace on bathrooms and toilets. I like the sparkle from a properly cleaned mirror and the gleam from a row of clean white ceramic loos. I also like the invisibility. The way no one notices you when you clean around them. People might slightly lower their voices when they speak to each other in my presence, but not much. I’ve become like one of those minor modern inconveniences: a swipe-card entry system or a telephone menu. Something that irritates briefly and is then ignored. My best friend is a Filipina, Juvy Barretto. She has six teeth and bad English, but we smile a lot. She helps me with the big offices, telling me what to do when I get confused. I help her with the bathrooms, where she doesn’t move as fast as I do.

So I mop, I clean, I dust, I hoover. I’m seldom late. I never complain. I don’t pick stupid fights with anyone. I’m issued with a new tabard – smart, polyester, navy blue – and I take good care of it. Wash it. Iron it. Keep it nice.

I make sandwiches at the hostel and eat them for lunch. Abs has got me a single room to myself – tiny, but I don’t mind that.

And she’s got big plans for me, Abs has. She wants me to get my own place. I’m not on any kind of priority housing list because I’m single, no kids, no health issues and no recent connection with the area. On the other hand, I’m earning good money now. After deductions, I’m making £189 a week. I have to pay £28 to the hostel – quite a lot, but I’m in work – and then meals and transport costs another £55. I try to avoid expensive stuff, meat especially, and walk as much as I can, but there are limits.

In any case, I’m making money and I start looking for properties to rent. Find a place on the A470 North Road, just by the intersection with Western Avenue. It’s a studio flat. All-in-one bedroom, living room, kitchenette. Shared bathroom down the hall. The bed is a single with a lumpy mattress. The living room part of the set-up consists of a giant brown velour armchair, a Formica table and two folding metal chairs. The kitchenette comprises a tiny sink, a two-ring hob and a microwave. There’s a big brown wardrobe of the sort that grandmothers used to keep in order to give small children nightmares. It smells of mothballs and something else, I’m not sure what. I’m on the second floor and my window looks out onto no fewer than nine lanes of traffic. The A470 itself, plus slip roads leading on and off the main ramp. There are always lights, always noise, always traffic.

I like almost everything about it. I like the roads outside, their neon brightness. I like the way there isn’t too much of anything: one room, one bed, one armchair, one table, one sink. I like the smallness, especially. If I sit in my giant velour armchair, I can touch the bed with my right arm and, almost, the little kitchen range with my left. It’s harder for me to get lost, physically or metaphorically.

Because the only address I can give is a homeless shelter, my potential landlord wants two and a half months’ deposit from me upfront. That’s a lot more than I can afford, but Abs helps me take out a loan from a social housing fund. The loan doesn’t just cover the deposit, but also things like bedding. When I get the money and sign my rental agreement, she’s genuinely thrilled for me. I’m thrilled for myself, actually. Proud. She tells me about a Freecycle place which helps people starting out or, like me, restarting. I get as much as I can for free. A nice man drives the stuff over to my place in his lunch break. I try to give him two pounds, but he tells me not to worry. He calls me ‘love’.

Abs makes me promise to come in for weekly counselling and ‘life planning sessions’. She wants to get me out of the minimum wage cleaning racket and into the sunny uplands of payroll clerking. She’s checked with the Institute of Payroll Professionals and found that they have a log of my payroll certificates: a log which shows the extent of SOCA’s always confident reach. Abs gives me reprints of my past glories.

‘We run a mentoring service as part of our reintegration work,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a mentor who’s heard about your case and who’s really keen to work with you, Adrian Boothby.’

Boothby: what Adrian Brattenbury has chosen to call himself for these purposes.

I promise to come in for mentoring. Say I’m keen to get back into payroll.

When I meet Brattenbury for the first time since before Florida, it’s the end of January and a grey rain beats against the window of the little room that the hostel sets aside for these things.

Brattenbury is tanned and fit-looking. Skiing, at a guess. He’s wearing a dark blue shirt, open-necked. By police standards, Adrian Brattenbury is a very dapper chap.

He says, ‘How was your Christmas?’

‘Good actually. I’ve been enjoying myself.’

He assumes I’m being ironic and makes the necessary ironic smile in return, but I’m being sincere.

‘Time to get you in play,’ he says. He outlines his plans. I’m happy with his suggestions. He seems both intelligent and trustworthy, and he’ll need to be both. He doesn’t give me much detail on the workplace I’m going to. ‘Fiona Grey wouldn’t have any background, so you shouldn’t either.’ Logic I agree with.

On Tinker, he tells me what they have: not much. ‘We haven’t been able to track the money. All those Panama foundations and BVI shell companies – they’re totally opaque. As far as the individual frauds are concerned, we know the local moles. We think we’ve identified their handler.’ He flips a photo at me. A thirty-something man. Short dark hair, starting to thin. The photo was taken on a street somewhere and shows him in a grey wool coat and navy scarf. The photo tells me nothing. The man could be an accountant or a murderer. Or both. ‘We think this is the guy, but until we get up close and personal, we won’t know.’

I look at the photo. If I’m the tethered goat, is this to be my lion?

Brattenbury wants the keys to my room. I’ve only got one set, but I give them to him. He says he’ll leave them back here at the hostel later.

‘We’ll wire up your room. Audio and video. You won’t find anything even if you search for it. We’ll do the same for your workplace when we get you in there. We’re also going to embed devices in your personal items. Bag, coats, buttons, that sort of thing. The devices themselves are tiny, it’s battery power that limits us, so please choose chunky over sleek. These things will be found if searched for by an expert, but they’ll elude any ordinary search. We get our kit from the same outfit that handles the intelligence services, so it’s as good as it gets.’

He slides a phone over to me. Cheap, non-contract. With receipt showing a cash payment. ‘Phone. They would need an electronics lab to detect the alterations we’ve made to this. Keep it with you whenever you can, so we can track your physical presence at all times. And keep it charged. The phone will pull down more battery power than you might expect.’

He gives me data too. Code words for use in emergency. Words that will get an armed response unit to me as fast as possible. But we both know that I may or may not be able to deploy those words. If my phone has been removed, and if I’m not at home or at work, I’ll be out of contact. I doubt if Saj Kureishi had code words or an armed response team at his disposal, but if he did, they wouldn’t have been of much use to him, strapped to a chair in an empty house in the empty country just south of Barnstaple.

I think of Kureishi’s face. The expression that looks astonished from one point of view, anguished from another. Wonder if these things ever mean anything.

‘You OK?’ says Brattenbury, winding up.

‘Yes, sir.’

A smile twitches at his mouth. ‘You don’t really need to “sir” me, not here.’

‘No.’ I’m not exactly known as a maximum deference type, so I’m not sure why I’ve started sirring now. ‘I think it’s Fiona Grey. I think she says “sir”.’

Brattenbury looks quizzically amused. ‘Well, whatever you want.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

And I sit there noticing dust marks while Brattenbury talks at me and a grey rain washes the window outside.

17.

Payroll. As Brattenbury promised, there’s a job up for grabs with Western Vale, an insurance company. The Cardiff office manages back-office functions for the entire national network, which is one of the six biggest domestic insurers in the UK, so it’s a big department. The job is an entry-level thing, paying twelve thousand pounds per annum for a probationary six months. Fourteen grand thereafter. By Fiona Grey standards, it’s definitely a step up in the world.

I have to interview for the post. Win it fair and square. There are written tests and an interview. I don’t have anything officey in my wardrobe, so go to Matalan the day before and buy a new grey skirt, shoes and jacket. I’m about to add a blouse, when a woman says to me, ‘You’re small, dear. Have you tried the children’s section? There’s no VAT.’ So I do, and discover that I can get a two-pack of polycotton blouses for £7, which strikes me as exceptionally good value. I think of getting three packs, except that it would seem presumptuous, so I don’t.

The written tests go fine. I have a double first from Cambridge in philosophy – the Fiona Griffiths me does, anyway – and I breeze through tests on Filing, Writing a Business Letter, and Numeracy.

The interview goes fine too, I think. The charity which runs the hostel has a business outreach program – that’s how they secured Brattenbury/Boothby as my mentor, or how they think they did – and the human resources person interviewing me treats me delicately, as though I’m half fragile ornament, half unexploded bomb. I try to act like neither. I worry that my jacket looks too cheap.

When she asks for references, I give Mr. Conway’s name at YCS and the name of my boss, Euan Tanner, at my current cleaning job. ‘I haven’t said anything to them yet,’ I say.

‘Don’t worry. We’ll only ask if we’re offering you the job.’ The human resources person – blond bob, professionally friendly eyes – squeezes out a smile at me, all lipsticked up and minty-fresh. I do my best to reciprocate, but suspect I fall short on professionalism, lipstick and all-round mintiness.

When she asks me if I have any questions, I say, ‘No, I don’t. I really want to do this. I’m a very hard worker.’

I get the job.

Start on
20 February
. I’m sorry to give up my cleaning work – indeed, I try to find out whether it will be possible to do a five to eight-thirty shift, prior to the start of my working day in payroll. It’s possible in principle, but the transport links don’t work out, so reluctantly I give the position up completely. Ask to be considered for the early shift, if they get work in my area.

Say goodbye to Juvy. We hug.

Use my life savings to buy more office wear from Matalan. The store offers exceptional value. I don’t know why I haven’t used it more in the past.

And make a new life in payroll. In at nine, out at five. Eat lunch in the office canteen. Timidly get to know my colleagues, who have gleaned little glimpses of my dark history. Homelessness. Cleaning work. Rumors about a violent relationship somewhere up north. There are eight people in our little team. Six women, two men. Neither of the men look much like Roy Williams. Plenty of the women look like me. Or like smarter, more together versions of me, at any rate.

I’d like to meet up with Roy, learn how he’s getting on, but my role prohibits any such thing. And his infiltration is running a few weeks behind mine. His payroll purgatory lies ahead.

Meantime, I process pay. Deal with leavers and joiners. Overtime and bonuses. Issue forms, chase HMRC, respond to queries, tabulate numbers. I get to know the Total Payroll Solutions software in painfully intimate detail.

I don’t enjoy this job, not really. Quite often it gets to five p.m., and I can’t think where the day’s gone. I have to keep checking the clock to have any sense of time. When we leave the building, it’s getting dark and always cold. If it’s not raining I walk home – it takes forty minutes – to save the bus fare. The walk takes me straight past the police headquarters, my beloved Cathays, but I stay on the wrong side of the North Road. Don’t let myself even peer in at the windows, even though there’s a tiny chance that I might glimpse a brief view of Buzz, framed against the light of some conference room window.