The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (23 page)

Fuck you
, I think.
Fuck you
and I’ll see you in jail
.

What I say is nothing at all.

A parking warden comes down the road towards Henderson’s BMW. We both see the warden. Henderson says, ‘Look, are you OK coming with me, just while I move the car?’

I go on smoking.
Fuck you. Fuck your car
.

‘OK, shit. Look – no, it doesn’t matter.’

We watch as the warden photographs the BMW. Starts to make out a ticket. I finish my ciggy.

‘I’ve got something for you.’ He has a document wallet with him. Hands it over.

There are qualifications inside. A couple for nursing. One for primary education. Another for something to do with speech therapy. They all look pukka, all made out in the name of Fiona Grey.

‘I don’t really know what you want. But it’s got to be something that would make you count as a skilled migrant for immigration purposes. If you want to choose something else, we’ll sort it out.’

‘I can’t be a nurse. You can’t put me in charge of patients when I don’t know anything about nursing.’

‘This stuff just gets you your visa. You can work as anything you like.’

‘Even so. It’s not right.’

‘OK, then be something else. If you need references, we’ll fix those too.’

‘You keep talking about this lawyer, but I’ve never met him. How do I even know he’s real?’

‘He’s real, all right. We can go right there if you like.’

Henderson is hopeful. He waves at his now-beticketed car.

‘I don’t want
your
lawyer. I want one that I choose.’

Henderson does a little double-take, then says, ‘OK.’

‘You pay the bills, but he’s my lawyer.’

‘OK.’

‘And you’ve got to get me my old job back. And my flat.’

‘It’s still there. Both. The job and the flat.’

‘I was on probation. It was a six-month probationary thing.’

‘You’ve been sick. We arranged for a doctor to send in a sick note. Your workmates sent you a card.’

‘Really?’

I’m moved by this. Pulled by different emotions. Impressed at Henderson’s organization. The care taken to keep me in play. Also touched that my workmates bothered to send me a card. I’ve never even bonded with them, not really. I still prefer cleaning to payroll.

Henderson says, ‘Are we good? Are you ready to come back to Cardiff?’

‘I’ve got to get Asad.’

He doesn’t know who Asad is, but he opens the car door and I get in.

29.

Arriving back: a whirl of activity.

That night, I resuscitate my cannabis plants, which have resented my absence but don’t look as though they’ll die to punish me. Jason cooks me a cabbage and bacon hotpot and I build a spliff that uses four Rizla papers and is loaded with so much grass that it threatens to burst at the seams.

I dream again of Kureishi – bad dreams, violent and too vivid – but the dope softens those edges. I can see myself smoking a lot if the dreams keep coming.

At Western Vale, lots to catch up on. My ‘portfolio’ was in reasonably good shape before I left, so although my colleagues had to cover for me in my absence, they didn’t find any horrendous giveaways that their junior payroll clerk might be stealing tens of thousands of pounds a month. I tell everyone I was sick. Gastroenteritis. People say, Yes, it’s been going around. People always say that, I realize, no matter how true or untrue it is.

At work that day, I make a list of immigration lawyers.

Henderson wants a major ‘portfolio review’ on Saturday at Quintrell’s house. I say no. He puts pressure on me, but I say I have to go to the hostel. Say I can do Sunday instead. He agrees, reluctantly. We arrange to meet at ten in the morning.

At the hostel, I find that Clementina has deserted me for a table-football partner who can actually play. She tells me a long story, almost none of which I understand. I try to find Gary, but he’s nowhere around.

I catch up on my Anger and Anxiety Management course. Our tutor is a breathlessly optimistic woman, Melinda, who wears ethnic jewelry and lots of bangles. I go on learning a lot. Melinda says, ‘Sometimes you might not notice your feelings directly, but you can often notice the results. For example, if you have problems sleeping, you might be anxious about something. Or if you find yourself getting obsessive, that could easily be because of some inner anxiety.’

She lists a few other things and ask us if any of them are familiar to us. A few people put up their hands. I don’t, then realize that I tick every one of those symptoms.

Sleep: on weeknights, I seldom get more than four or five hours’ sleep. At weekends, I try to lie in, but seldom manage more than five hours’ real sleep.

Obsession: no need to ask what Buzz would say about that. Or DCI Jackson. Even Brattenbury. I think of my untaken holidays. My endless uncharged-for overtime.

Losing touch with friends and family. Working undercover is basically a way to guarantee extreme social isolation. I was warned about this repeatedly and ignored every warning.

Melinda is on something else now, but I raise my hand anyway.

‘Yes, Fiona, did you have a question?’

‘No. Just I think I have those things. The signs of anxiety.’

‘OK, which ones?’ She starts to go through her list again.

‘All of them,’ I say. ‘All of them.’

We do Signs of Anger too. One of the signs is Unpredictable Outbursts (including Acts of Violence). I don’t raise my hand on this one, but my record on Acts of Violence is not something I’d care to share with my bosses. Melinda says, ‘Sometimes you might actually end up hurting someone.’ I don’t tell her that I’ve killed one person outright, another person sort-of, and have inflicted reasonably serious injuries on a further five. That sort of thing can get you thrown off even the best courses.

At the end of the session, I ask Melinda for any handouts from the week before. I’m going to put them all up on my fridge.

When I leave the hostel, I wander outside looking for Gary. If he’s getting drunk, he’ll be on a park bench somewhere with his mates. If he’s sober, he’ll be selling the
Big Issue
, trying to make the most of the last Saturday shoppers.

He’s sober.

Selling the magazine outside Cardiff Castle. He puts his mags down and we share a ciggy. I ask if he’s going to drink tonight. He says no. ‘Liver’s fucking killing me,’ an assessment which is no doubt medically accurate. I ask him if he can get over to Pontcanna tomorrow morning.

‘What time?’

I tell him.

‘What for?’

I tell him. Not the truth, but close enough. A version which basically just says, Henderson is a fucker and I want to know more about him. Say that he drives a black BMW and supply the registration number.

Gary’s happy enough with that. I don’t know if he believes me, but it doesn’t really matter if he does. The hostel is full of people with mental-health issues. We have delusions, pick quarrels, get angry over nothing. If Gary thinks I’m a wacko, he’s welcome.

On Sunday, I go to Quintrell’s house. Gary is there, nursing a shopping trolley full of trash and a plastic bottle of cider. I wink at him. He’s enjoying his surveillance role too much to wink back but Gary, even when drunk, isn’t a trolley-pusher, so I know he’s on the case.

Henderson arrives shortly after me. I don’t know if Gary’s clocked him, but I’ll find out later. Quintrell gets me my normal glass of water and doesn’t offer to take my coat, but Fiona Grey and I are more assertive now. We give Quintrell our coat to hang and ask for herbal tea. Quintrell fumes, but a look from Henderson makes her do as we ask.

Fuck you too
, I think, as she brings my tea over.
And fuck you too
.

We go over the portfolio: Henderson, Quintrell and Team Fiona.

There’s a pushiness now which wasn’t here before. A good sign. The SOCA surveillance boys now have a good audio feed from Quintrell’s house, so I assume Brattenbury will be listening in.

I hope he enjoys it.

With the Kureishi-vintage frauds down to just one that’s still operative, the Tinker gang have got to get the most from me that they can. And we think we now know what they’re up to.

It’s still speculative, of course, but our best guess is this. Kureishi, to begin with, was working for himself, almost experimentally perhaps. His job made it easy for him to gain control of corporate computers. He set up the first little frauds in a kind of boutique way, with his sister-in-law as his co-conspirator.

As his ambitions progressed, he came into contact, we don’t know how, with Henderson’s gang. Perhaps he needed help with arranging the movement of money overseas. Or perhaps some of the IT stuff was beyond him. Or perhaps he needed Quintrell’s expertise. Or something else. In any case, the Tinker crew took Kureishi’s work and professionalized it. Expanded the scale. Eliminated those little giveaways which first alerted Swindon Kevin to the fraud.

We don’t know what caused the breakdown in relations between Kureishi and the rest. Perhaps Kureishi got greedy. Or felt muscled out of his own enterprise. In any event, at some point he pushed things too far, realized his life was in danger, and went on the run, stealing money from Gibson and Morgan to fund his few months of liberty.

A small-time crook who learned what it was like to play in the bigger leagues.

For a long time, my SOCA colleagues assumed – as did I – that the purpose of the fraud was simply the money skimmed through my work and through that of my fellow moles.

We now think we were wrong. The clue, all along, were those nineteen dummy names in my portfolio. The clue, also, was that meeting in Heathrow, the plane from Bangalore. Clues which hint that the actual ‘profits’ from the various frauds so far have been just a way to fund an investment in a much larger IT project. One managed from the UK, but executed – or mostly executed – by professional IT technicians in Bangalore.

What’s more, if we’re right that James Wyatt is part of the gang, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Tinker is bigger than we had ever envisaged. Bigger, and better organized. Indeed, it’s alarming that we still have no real product from our watching and listening. Henderson, we know, is clearly a pro, but we all doubt that either Quintrell or Wyatt have any real training in evading surveillance, yet we’ve never traced a call to a number that looks of real interest, nor overhead any conversation of substance.

I also come to see that I’m more important to this group than I – or perhaps even they – had ever realized.

Quintrell is going through my work. Picks up an email I sent to HMRC.

‘No, look, this is wrong.’ She is scolding. Testy. It’s not just her manner, it’s that she genuinely doesn’t like me. Doesn’t like me in her house. Doesn’t like my new assertiveness, resents the support I seem to be getting from Henderson. ‘You’ve got the coding wrong—’

‘I haven’t.’

‘You have. You’ve put—’

‘I
haven’t
.’

We get into a dispute. There’s a narrow technical way in which Quintrell is right. The thing she wants me to do is theoretically correct, but because the tax coding in question is an unusual one, I would need to get a manager to sign off on it.

I explain this and say, ‘Of course, if you want me to get my boss involved …’

‘No.’ Henderson’s interjection is firm. ‘You’re right, Fiona. You did the right thing.’ He glares at Quintrell.

Thirty minutes later, something similar arises. Quintrell is again right in theory, but she doesn’t know the way that payroll departments actually operate and she doesn’t know the TPS software in the same excruciating detail that I do. Her way of approaching something would increase the risk of detection. My way would reduce it.

Quintrell and I get into one of our fights. This doesn’t end with my kicking her kitchen in – more’s the pity – but it does end with Henderson breaking us up.

‘Look, Fiona, this is really helpful. There are things in what you’ve said, which … we’re going to have to think about.’

He drums his fingers briefly, plays with his phone. ‘Look, would you mind stepping outside a moment? Maybe have a cigarette?’

Quintrell escorts me to the garden door. I roll a cigarette, topped up with weed, and smoke it under the magnolia. Put ash anywhere I want. Ditto the match. Ditto, when I’m finished, the butt.

And fuck you too
.

When I left the kitchen, Quintrell and Henderson had an intense exchange for a few minutes, then Henderson called a halt and made a call. I hoped that he’d stay in the kitchen, for the sake of Brattenbury’s audio recording, but he soon moves out onto the street. We haven’t been able to intercept his mobile calls because he protects his line well, encrypting his calls and replacing his handset at regular intervals.

Quintrell moves around in the kitchen. When she darts a look out at me, it’s full of malice.

I wonder how she’ll enjoy prison. I hope she goes to one of those dark Victorian places. Long corridors, overhead lights, and brick cells higher than they are wide. The sort of prison that looks like a workhouse and sounds like a sermon.

When Henderson comes back, his face is carefully upbeat.

‘OK, fantastic. I think we had a really good session there. Really useful.’

He sounds like an organized crime version of Melinda. I imagine him wearing bangles and an African scarf knotted in his hair.

Because of the weed I’ve just smoked, I giggle a bit and ask for biscuits.

As Quintrell fetches them, Henderson says he wants me to ‘meet the team. We really want to bring you into the center of this project, so to speak.’ He makes it sound like I’ve won some Employee of the Month contest. I think I’m meant to coo with happiness.

I don’t coo.

‘We’ve got to find dates that work. There are a lot of people to coordinate.’

I say, ‘You keep telling me what
you
want. You haven’t asked me what
I
want.’

Henderson – no bangles, no headscarf – swallows down his impatience.

‘OK. What you do
you
want?’

I get out my list of lawyers: a shortlist of six.