The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (17 page)

At the time, that struck me as a weirdly pointless piece of grammar. Why ask a question to which you already knew the answer? But the more I’ve studied interrogation, the more I realize that the French have got it right. More than half the time, we ask questions whose answers we think we know. Often enough, you ask the question
because
you know the answer and because you want to force the other person to acknowledge that fact.

This is one of those times.

A question expecting the answer ‘yes’
.

I stare down at my hands. Don’t catch Henderson’s eye. I mumble, ‘I don’t know what you want. I don’t know anything about you.’

I can’t see anything except my hands white around my water glass. A spread of expensive Scandinavian table. But I somehow feel an exchange of glances over my head. I don’t know what those glances say, but Henderson rips into an old-fashioned police-style grilling, each question coming at me fast, hard and low.

I don’t change position. Speak my answers into my glass or just move my head.

‘You took a job cleaning. Why?’

‘Earn some money.’

‘Did you tell Western Vale?’

Head-shake.

‘Are you planning to keep both jobs?’

Nod.

‘But you didn’t tell me. Why not?’

Shrug.

‘I said why not?’

‘I didn’t know I was meant to.’

‘Well you know now, don’t you? If you work for us, we need to know what you’re up to. At all times. Do you understand?’

Nod. ‘Yes.’

‘You go to the homeless hostel still, even though you’re no longer homeless. Why?’

‘People. There are courses and stuff. And just to hang out.’

He probes away at that. I let him find out about Boothby. I realize that Brattenbury will now kill those weekly ‘mentoring’ visits. Too much of a security risk. I can’t say I’m sorry, but I realize I’ve half-deliberately severed another link with my previous life. Another connection to Planet Normal.

Henderson gets a who’s who of my friends at the hostel, then moves on to other things.

‘Why were you worried by Anna’s car? Why did you react the way you did?’

‘She was stalking me.’ I say that a bit angrily. Or defiantly. But I don’t shift my gaze from the glass in front of me.

‘So you did twelve hundred pounds’ worth of damage?’

‘She wouldn’t say who she was. She freaked me out.’

Henderson allows that answer to stand for a moment or two before he resumes.

‘You found out her name and address. Why?’

‘I was freaked out. I said.’

‘How did you obtain the information?’

‘I rang the garage.’

‘How did you know which garage?’

‘I rang all of them.’

Another short pause. Henderson, I assume, knows what I’ve just said to be true. If he can hear my phone calls from work and see what I do on the computer, then he has pretty full insight into my affairs.

‘And you came here why?’

‘I didn’t want to be scared. I thought if I came …’

‘You thought if you came, what?’

‘I’d find out what was going on. I thought … You don’t know how scary it is. It was four in the morning and she was being weird.’

There’s a pause. A change of tempo. Into the silence, I say, ‘Is it all right if I smoke? Sorry. I can go outside.’

Again, that unseen exchange of glances over my head. Quintrell says, ‘You can go into the garden if you like. Don’t leave your cigarette butt lying around.’

‘Thank you.’

I get up. Meekly. Head for the garden but can’t manage the sliding door. Have to wait for Quintrell, tsking, to rescue me. I say thank you again.

Outside, amongst the glazed earthenware and ornamental bamboos, I roll a cigarette and start smoking it. I have a bit of weed with me but, though I’m tempted, don’t add that to the mix. Inside, in the kitchen, Henderson and Quintrell are locked in serious conversation. Henderson makes a phone call, keeps darting glances out at me.

I smoke one cigarette fast and needily, then a second one more slowly.

I quite like this garden. It’s paved in some kind of stone, edged in brick, and has a stone bench shaded by next door’s magnolia. The day isn’t sunny, but it’s trying. It’s halfway there.

I wonder what Kureishi’s house was like. The house he had before he went on the run. Before he ended up in an end-of-season let in Devon, taped to a chair and his life’s blood spurting from his wrists. I usually get to see those things. It’s odd working undercover and being so remote from the corpses.

When I’ve finished my second cigarette, I gather up the two butts and the matches into a Rizla paper and stand outside the kitchen door waiting to be readmitted.

Henderson finishes his phone call, none too hurried, then signals to Quintrell that she can let me back in.

I throw the cigarette bits away, then sit back at the table. I keep my eyes forty-five degrees below the horizontal and say to Quintrell, ‘I’m sorry about your car.’

Henderson likes that. ‘Good. OK. Good. That’s a better attitude. Now, Anna, remind me exactly how much the car cost to fix.’

‘Nine eighty, plus VAT. Eleven seventy-six, all told.’

‘OK. Fiona, we gave you a thousand pounds last week for doing five minutes’ work. I think you need to give that to Anna. I’m sure she’ll be happy to overlook the rest, won’t you, Anna?’

‘Yes. A thousand would be fine.’

‘Fiona?’

I nod. Sulkily: ‘OK.’

‘Good. That’s settled. Now look, Fiona, we’ve decided we would like to try to work with you again. One more chance. If you behave yourself, there’ll be a lot more money to come. More money and we’ll help with your emigration. Our promise to you is that, if you do well over the next year, we’ll make it possible for you to leave the country to wherever it is you want to go. We’ll pay for the lawyer. If we need to provide proof of any training qualifications, we’ll arrange for that too.’

He goes on. Tells me, and my two recording devices, exactly what he wants. Looking after what he calls my ‘portfolio’ of payroll assignments. He tells me, in plain English, that some of the people receiving salaries are fictional.

‘That doesn’t need to affect you,’ he says. ‘We need you to keep their tax records up to date, enter their overtime payments, all the stuff you would normally do. Can you manage that?’

I nod.

‘It’s stealing. You realize that? There’s no point in doing this if you’re going to lose your nerve.’

‘I’ll be OK,’ I mumble.

He stares at me. His gaze is a laser-sight roving over my face and forehead. A red dot tracking the contours.

‘You may find that some of the names
aren’t
fictional,’ he says. ‘About thirty names are fictional. The rest are real. But we need you to treat them much the same way. If any questions arise about those names, if anyone challenges you, or if you notice any unusual activity, you tell me at once.’

‘OK.’

‘And I mean at once, do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I need you to stay in communication with us, me or Anna, all the time. One of us will meet you every week and we’ll check over your portfolio. If your employment arrangements vary, or if you want to take a holiday, or if you have a day off sick, or you want to leave Cardiff, you tell us
before
you do anything. Is that clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can contact us by simply sending an email to yourself from your computer at work. We will be able to see that email. Don’t put anything secret in that email. Just say, for example, “I need a sick day” or “please can we talk” and we’ll do the rest. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘And from time to time, we will keep an eye on you. That might be Anna, or it might be me, or it might be someone else.’

‘I don’t want to be followed.’

‘As long as you work for us, we want to be sure that you
are
working for us and no one else.’

‘I still don’t think you should stalk me. It’s creepy.’

Henderson says, with emphasis, ‘I don’t care
what
you think. If we want to keep an eye on you, we will. If you notice us – and you probably won’t – you will not overreact the way you did on Monday. Is that clear?’

Shrug. Mumble. ‘Yes.’

‘You need to mean that. I should warn you, we can be quite tough with colleagues who don’t do as they’ve promised.’

I shrug.

‘And I do mean tough. You wouldn’t like it.’

I don’t react to that much. The way Henderson says what he says makes me think he either is the man who killed Kureishi or a very intimate conspirator. Either way, a murderer in my books.

‘That also means that as far as you are concerned, you’ve never met me, never met Anna. Do you understand?’

I give him something that’s halfway between a shrug or a nod.

He studies me a moment longer, then unpins his gaze. ‘Good. Excellent.’ His signal for a change of mood. Enough bullying. Now for phony-niceness. Except I don’t respond the way I’m meant to.

I stay stubbornly silent for a moment or two. Then, ‘You haven’t told me what I’m getting.’

‘We’re going to pay you properly. And, if you perform well, we’ll arrange for your emigration. I’ve said that.’

‘I need to know how much.’

Henderson tries to divert me, but Fiona Grey isn’t to be diverted. She hangs tough. Henderson offers a grand a month plus an immigration visa to an English-speaking country in twelve months’ time. Fiona Grey holds out for three grand a month, plus the visa. We end up settling at a thousand a month for the first four months. Then two for the next four. Then two point five grand a month for the next four.

I insist on writing it down. Ask for the name of the lawyer. Ask for details of when I’ll get my visa, what’s involved, what Henderson means when he says he’ll provide proof of my training qualifications.

He answers with increasing terseness, but his answers indicate that he’s done his research, that he knows what he’s talking about. To the last question, he says simply, ‘If we need to fabricate something, we will.’

‘Fabricate? You mean, make something up?’

‘Yes. Provide false documents, that sort of thing.’

When I have the main points written down – on the back of an envelope that Quintrell has fished from her bin – I get Henderson to initial them.

I can feel I’m angering him, but the anger is good. A police spy would have made all this easier. A police spy wouldn’t have sat for five hours on a suspect’s doorstep. Fiona Grey may be difficult to manage, but she’s beginning to earn these people’s trust.

And when we’re done, when Fiona has her ‘contract’ tucked into her bag, she asks, ‘Where’s the nearest Post Office, please?’

Quintrell says that there’s one at the top of Pontcanna Street.

Fiona says, ‘I’ll get your money.’

And we all troop out together. A warm afternoon. The plane trees are still marking shadows on the pavement. I get the money and hand it over. Henderson and Quintrell walk away together, talking animatedly.

As for me, this is my first day of approximate holiday since Florida: although I turned up at my cleaning shift as normal at 4.00 am, I told Western Vale that I wasn’t coming in that day. I celebrate my freedom by buying a sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. Take them to Llandaff Fields and eat by the weir, where the black water breaks into a temporary, troubled white.

Life is good, I think. But when I bring Buzz to mind – try to remember what he looks like, what he feels like – I retrieve nothing but shadows.

I try thinking about our engagement. Our theoretical wedding. Me in a white dress, a veil, a froth of petticoats. Buzz, dark-suited, next to me, speaking his responses with that broad-chested male confidence. Shapes beyond us in the dimness: friends, family, those people you have to invite.

The whole idea seems inconceivably distant. Like something half recalled from childhood. Disney misremembered.

I do what I always do to center myself. Breathing exercises. Try to feel my body. And allow my mind to seek sanctuary in the places it finds most restful. Hayley Morgan’s tiny body, Kureishi’s anguished surprise. Those things help a bit, but not as much as usual. I think,
It’s not surprising. I’m Fiona Grey now. Fiona Griffiths is hardly even here sometimes. There are whole days when I barely remember that I’m her
. A strange death this, to be alive in theory and present so little in the ways that matter.

A strange death this, for me who has been so strangely dead before.

I eat my sandwich and black water streams endlessly to the sea.

24.

May. Wet and cold. The year began with warnings of drought, but already flooding has affected thousands of homes. Power lines have been down. Rivers gurgle through living rooms. In Somerset, a pub landlord shows a TV reporter the dead fish he found floating behind his bar.

I don’t mind the weather. It suits me, suits Fiona Grey. The two of us settle further into our odd life, making our home here.

I buy more boots from a charity shop, hoping these ones are more waterproof.

I’ve expanded my repertoire of one-pot cooking until I’m almost competent. Jason and I take turns to cook for each other. He’s better than I am, but we enjoy the company.

Meantime, my Saturdays at the hostel go on being beautiful things, all the better because Brattenbury does indeed cancel his weekly visits as a security precaution. I use the extra time to start my Anger and Anxiety Management course, which is surprisingly useful. Our tutor gives us a handout with Ten Things to Remember printed out on bright yellow paper and I stick it up on my fridge. I look at it most nights.

Clementina and I are knocked out of the table football tournament in the first round, because she had been out drinking the night before and couldn’t focus very well. I was useless, as always, but it was nice being part of a team.

And I am now for the first time, guilty of criminal fraud.

I start to manage my portfolio as Henderson and Quintrell instruct me. Sometimes I’m told to go to Quintrell’s house and I sit there in her kitchen, at her fancy Scandinavian table, showing her copies of pay slips and HMRC input forms. She gives me a glass of water, but never offers me anything else to eat or drink. She doesn’t use my name ever. Never says please or thank you. Just checks my work. Says, ‘OK,’ if it’s all right and, ‘No, this is wrong,’ or ‘You’ve made an error,’ if there’s something she wants me to change.