The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (22 page)

Susan says, ‘I saw pictures of what you did to her Audi. They’ve gone viral in the office.’

We talk about the Tinker team. When we started the project we assumed a shortish list of personnel. Our first hypothesized team composition ran as follows:

??? – Boss

Vic Henderson – Security & operations

Saj Kureishi – IT guy

??? – possible additional gang members

Already, that list has been expanded. Our list now looks like this:

??? – Boss

Vic Henderson, Allan Wiley [plus others???] – Security & operations

Anna Quintrell – accounting

Bangalore consultant[s] – IT

??? – possible additional gang members

I say, ‘All that funny money in the Caribbean. Those Panamanian foundations and all the rest of it. You need to know what you’re doing to set that stuff up. I can’t see Quintrell knowing enough to do that. Or Henderson.’

‘True,’ says Brattenbury. ‘But you can just buy that kind of expertise in. London’s a world center for that kind of knowhow.’

‘Right. But if you’re holding a big get-to-know-you meeting with your new IT guys, wouldn’t you want
everyone
there? I mean, all the systems will have to coordinate. Getting the money offshore. Hiding it when it’s there.’

Brattenbury and Susan share a look. He says, ‘Yes, worth a look.’

She flips open a laptop, calling up a SOCA screen with a list of all the vehicles parked in the hotel car park on the relevant day. The vehicles and their owners. Brattenbury, meanwhile, is dragging a bunch of files from a black document case.

SOCA’s data systems look a little different from ours, but the principle is the same. The hotel car park saw a total of 127 cars present for all or part of the meeting time. SOCA’s analysts have already pulled together names, addresses, vehicle types, entry and exit times, home phone data, usually mobile data too. Often job descriptions. Links to Facebook and other online pages. They’ve even used Google Street View to collect photos of the car owners’ homes and another website to collect guesstimated market prices.

I say, ‘The guy we’re looking for has got a nice car and an expensive house.’

Susan filters the data to include only properties worth £750,000 or more.

‘That’s not a lot for London,’ she cautions.

Thirty-two names are left.

‘Let’s try a million.’

Twenty-four names.

Susan tries a few other filters – car values, length of stay, any phone use to or from the South Wales area – but they don’t seem to shed much light. We go back to the twenty-four.

‘We don’t have to do this now,’ Brattenbury says.

I stare at him. Like I have something better to do.

He shrugs. From one of his folders, he pulls out a bunch of stapled sheets, one bunch for each of the 127 cars parked. He starts picking out the twenty-four individuals we’re now concerned with. As he’s doing that, Susan kicks off her shoes and does a series of stretches. Yoga probably.

Someone’s ordered sandwiches from room service, and a big tray of them arrive.

We eat sandwiches and play hunt-the-villain.

We’ve got lots of accountants, bankers, lawyers, management consultants, that sort of thing. But given that this is a business hotel outside Heathrow, we’d have expected nothing less. Brattenbury finds a lawyer, cautioned for cocaine use while at university, specialty in European tax law, big house in Chelsea, recent phone use to and from South Wales.

‘Sounds good,’ says Susan.

‘Mmm,’ I say, and reach for more food.

‘Try these. They’re goat’s cheese and roasted pepper.’

‘Thing is,’ I say, ‘phone use to South Wales looks too blatant, doesn’t it? If we know anything about these boys, it’s that they’re a hundred per cent on anything to do with security. Outside an emergency, it would be all disposable phones, bought for cash.’

‘It’s his sister,’ says Susan, looking at her laptop. ‘I’ve got her Facebook page up. She runs a small stud farm outside … wherever that is.’

‘Mynyddislwyn,’ I say, helping her with the place name. ‘Outside Pontllanfraith.’

There’s nothing in my pile of stuff which interests me. I reach for Susan’s discards. Start to work through them. Reach the sixth name down.

James Wyatt. A London accountant. Working for a firm just outside the big four. Background in audit, but now a ‘consultant’, whatever that means. Nothing particularly interesting in that, except that an article in
Accountancy World
magazine, dating four years back, happens to link him to a company called Bay Properties. Which is majority owned by a man named David Marr-Phillips. A man who lives in Cardiff and whose integrity and lawful conduct I do not completely trust.

Is this the slimmest of all slim leads? Or nothing at all?

Mr. Wyatt drives a Porsche Boxter. Value: about forty-five thousand pounds. Lives off the Old Brompton Road in London. Two-bedroom flats in the road go for more than one point five million, and it’s not quite clear from the data we have whether Wyatt has a flat or a house.

‘What do accountants earn?’ I ask. ‘Used to be, um, a senior audit manager,’ and I name the firm.

‘We can check,’ says Brattenbury. He calls his office. Gives instructions to a colleague.

Susan is online, checking a salary guide published by a London recruitment consultancy. ‘A hundred K,’ she says. ‘That’s an upper limit, unless the guy is very experienced.’

‘He’s thirty-four,’ I say, checking. ‘Lives near here. Is that a flat or a house?’

Brattenbury makes another call. To the grey-Mondeo men from earlier, I’m guessing. He tells them to attempt a ‘delivery’ to the address, scope out whether Wyatt has the whole property or just one floor.

I study Wyatt’s call log. Plenty of international calls there – not too surprising, given the kind of names we’re looking at – including a good few to the United States. Only, I think I’m right in saying that the US shares its ‘1’ country code prefix not just with Canada, but the Caribbean too.

‘Susan,’ I say, ‘can you check area code 345 for me?’

She does.

The Cayman Islands.

‘Area code 284?’

‘British Virgin Islands.’

About the same time, Brattenbury gets a couple of texts in.

Looking over my shoulder at the call logs, he says, ‘At his last place of work, the guy earned about £125,000, including bonuses. That house he’s living in, he’s got all of it. Value about two and a half, three million.’

There’s a pause, then someone says, ‘Gotcha.’

I think the someone was me.

‘Yes, gotcha,’ murmurs Brattenbury. He calls the office. He wants surveillance on Wyatt’s house, but will need an interception warrant. We don’t actually have any evidence of Wyatt’s involvement in crime, but the circumstantial evidence we have is powerfully suggestive and the crimes here are big ones. I don’t think Brattenbury will have much difficulty in obtaining what he needs.

Our putative list of gang members grows another name:

James Wyatt (?) – offshore finance specialist

If I could, I’d work all night on this. I’d turn the lights down, eat at strange hours, make a nest of pillows and cushions on the floor, access every database I could think of, trace every lead no matter how minor. Once, on a different case, we made a breakthrough because I found, on the suspect’s partner’s niece’s Facebook page, a photo of a school concert with one face partially out of frame. I used a combination of Photoshop and online facial analysis software to determine that the out-of-frame face was highly consistent with that of our suspect. I then visited the Facebook page of every other parent and schoolchild present that night until I found a photo that was unmistakably of our guy, placing him in Cardiff when he’d claimed to be in Porthcawl. The case wasn’t even a big deal. A handling stolen goods charge with a probable six-month sentence. I didn’t even tell the DI leading the investigation how I’d found the photo, because I wasn’t really assigned to the inquiry and I prefer to hide how obsessive I actually am.

But, much as I’d love to stay and work through the night, my cover demands that I go back to Amina’s.

Out on the street, with Brattenbury and Susan both saying goodbye to me on the steps of the hotel, I feel weird. Like I’m suspended in the gap between two lives, unsure which is mine. I feel colorless and weightless. An air bubble waiting to dress itself in somebody else’s clothes.

I say, ‘I am Fiona Grey. A cleaner.’

The man who looks like Adrian Brattenbury says, ‘Yes, and you are also Fiona Griffiths, a very capable police officer.’

The woman who has hair like something out of Titian and whose long green legs are like a daffodil unfolding, gives me a hug.

I don’t know what to say, so I blink instead.

Brattenbury says something. Maybe, ‘Stay safe.’ That’s what he normally says.

I can’t feel my body at all and I look down to check that my legs are still there.

They are, but they don’t look right.

The man who looks like Brattenbury says more things. The woman too. I don’t know what she says exactly, but she smiles nicely.

I do something, or say something, or at any rate, I find myself walking away up the street. As soon as I think it safe to do so, I stare down at my legs, and maybe hit them with my hand, to see if I can feel anything. I don’t succeed or not really, except that I think the Fiona Grey person starts to thicken and the other one, the one who is a policewoman, starts to dissipate.

When I reach the corner, I look back and see Brattenbury and the other one deep in conversation on the steps of the hotel, flicking glances up the road as I disappear.

28.

Back at Amina’s place, I find my balance again, or sort of.

I clean. We play with Asad. I fret about whether Tinker will come and find me or not.

One afternoon, the thirteenth day, I walk down to the railway station. Drayton, the area where Amina lives, is not lovely, but at its best it has a quiet suburban charm. Almost villagey. Ice cream vans and privet hedges. Quiet roads and dads who wash their cars at the weekend.

There’s a phone box there, an old-fashioned thing. I use it to call Buzz, a breach of procedure.

Buzz answers. Says, ‘Babe, are you OK?’

I say yes, as I always do, then, ‘Buzz, when we can – I mean, as soon as it’s safe – can we do something weddingy together? Maybe look at dresses or, I don’t know, venues?’

‘I’m not meant to see your dress before the big day.’

‘I know, but can we anyway?’

He says yes. He always does.

I say, ‘And Buzzman, can you do me a favor?’ I ask him to print a good color photo of Henderson off from police records and leave it for Gary at the hostel. ‘Say it’s from me. And that I’ll be in touch.’

‘Who’s Gary?’

‘A homeless guy. Bit of an alkie. A
Big Issue
seller.’

‘You want me to hand over data from a top secret police inquiry to an alcoholic homeless man, with probable mental-health issues?’

‘He was an NCO in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Expertise in signals. Combat experience. And he’s a buddy. He’d walk through fire for me.’

‘I know, Fi, but when he’s pissed, if he starts talking in a pub …’

‘Gary? In a pub? Paying two pound fifty a pint? You have to be joking. When Gary gets pissed he buys two liter bottles of Diamond White for three quid and change, and drinks on a park bench until he’s too drunk to see.’

‘If you’re sure …’

‘I’m sure.’

‘And naturally you’ll have consulted your senior investigating officer about this strategy.’

I laugh at that. I tried raising the matter once. Brattenbury heard me out, but said, snobbily, ‘He’s not an appropriate person,’ as though we were discussing a new member for the Athenaeum.

‘That’s not the same thing at all,’ I object. ‘My senior investigating officer isn’t allowed to sleep with me.’

The conversation changes tack at that point, Buzz’s thoughts turning to just how little he’s been able to exercise his fiancé-privileges in recent months.

We talk rubbish for a few minutes, then hang up.

A butterfly settles on the phone box in front of me. The air smells of sunshine on plastic. I lift the handset again so I can hear the dial tone, which sounds like Buzz’s bass rumble.

I’m scared that I’m losing myself. I feel spacey and unsure.

It’s a relief when, the very next day – day fourteen, a Wednesday – Amina and I complete our early morning shift for YCS, and walk out onto the street to find a black BMW purring on the curb.

Henderson is inside it. Gestures me over.

Amina sees the gesture. I’ve told her nothing about where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing since I last saw her, but men in black cars have a significance that crosses any boundary of language or culture. She looks at me and at Henderson. Her face has that fierce, impassive African quality, unbroken by any smile.

She says, ‘You need to get Asad,’ then stalks off, without a glance back.

I don’t go over to Henderson. Sit on the granite steps of the office I’ve just cleaned and start to roll a cigarette.

Henderson parks, illegally, and comes over.

‘May I?’ he says, wanting to sit beside me.

I don’t say yes and I don’t say no, so he sits anyway.

‘Look, Fiona, we screwed up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was horrible. It scared you. I’m sorry.’

I don’t say anything, but I’ve got my cigarette rolled now and I light up.

I wish it was a big fat spliff with handfuls of sweet Griffithsian weed in it, but there are times when the thin brown taste of tobacco just has to do instead.

‘If I’m being honest, I have to say I didn’t like doing that. You and me, I think we had trust anyway. Some of my colleagues, they haven’t met you, they felt we had to do more. And they were wrong. They pushed too hard.
I
did.
I
pushed too hard. I want to say sorry.’

I shrug. It’s an apology which has nothing to do with repentance. No sorry-we-murdered-that-guy. No sorry-to-have-threatened-you. Not even an
I, Vic Henderson, apologize for being a total asshole
, because his ‘apology’ took care to make clear that he had been forced into doing something he’d argued against. And, I note, nowhere did Henderson suggest that the threat of murder he levelled at me that night has been lifted, not even one iota. The threat is still there, still alive. His only apology is for the manner of presentation.