The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (27 page)

He rubs my arm and says goodnight.

I turn to go in. Henderson isn’t about to follow. He’s with the big boys in the farmhouse.

‘Don’t come out here again, please. We need you to stay in the barn. This evening was a one-off.’

I nod.

My submissive nod. My obedient one.

That’s the thing about we battered women. Our ‘stop’ never really means ‘stop’. The average victim of domestic violence suffers thirty assaults before she reports anything and that number is only a guess. It could easily be much more. Henderson’s technique – hit then kiss – is the abuser’s way to maintain control. And Fiona Grey is under control again. She’s going to see out her time here, good as gold.

33.

I sleep for ever, or it seems that way. Kureishi comes to me in my dreams, his darkened screaming, but there’s something muffled about his presence this time. As though he’s been muted. As though there’s glass between him and me. That doesn’t feel like a comfortable fact, though. It feels sinister, like when music plays softly in a horror film and the pretty teenager decides to explore the empty house. I can’t find Hayley, though I do try.

When I wake up, I patter upstairs in my bathrobe. Geoff is around. A couple of Indians are watching a cricket match on TV.

I ask Geoff to sort me out some breakfast – eggs, orange juice, herbal tea – and ask him what time it is. After nine is the answer, which means I’ve slept almost ten hours. Fiona Griffiths never sleeps that long. Fiona Grey seldom does either.

Shower.

Eat.

Talk rubbish with Geoff, who seems nice, apart from the Glock, the handcuffs and the whole organized-crime thing.

I put on underwear and a clean T-shirt, but apart from that I don’t get dressed, just stick to the bathrobe. My tracksuit trousers
are
horrible. Wrong size, torn, stained. And just horrible.

My neck feels sore from the blows I took last night. Also my arms ache down their whole length. It’s not safe handcuffing people behind their backs. Certainly not if you’re hitting them at the same time and yanking at their wrists. I stretch a bit, but not much. I’m not convinced it really helps.

Go back to my room and read speech therapy stuff.

Phonation is the term given to the vibration of the vocal folds. Sounds that involve the vibration of the vocal folds are said to be voiced. If there is no vocal fold vibration, the sounds are said to be unvoiced, or voiceless.

I sit there feeling my vocal cords vibrate when I say
ga-ga-ga
and
da-da-da
. Feel them not vibrate when I say
ka-ka-ka
and
ta-ta-ta
. The voiced and the voiceless.

I sit there, doing the exercises, concentrating on my sound production, when the door opens.

Henderson is there, holding two big bags from Gap.

‘How’s it going?’ he asks, meaning the speech therapy.

‘I like it. It’ll suit me.’

‘Good.’

I don’t really know how Henderson sees the endgame. Does he plan to kill me, drop me in a river somewhere, wipe away a possible loose end? Or is the visa thing for real? Will he let me go?

Mostly, I think the latter. Murder sounds tidy, but it usually isn’t. The crime brings massively resourced police investigations like nothing else. I think I’ll get a lecture about the importance of keeping my mouth shut, but apart from that I’ll be allowed to go.

Probably.

Henderson puts the bags on the bed. ‘Clothes.’

I take a look. There’s a grey dress, a nice tweed skirt, some jeans, a belt, a couple of smart shirts, two pairs of shoes, tights, some other bits. It’s good. Better than Fiona Grey’s own wardrobe. Probably better than mine, if I’m honest.

The sizes look right, but I won’t know until I try stuff on.

‘Thank you.’

‘And look. I got you a present. This is from me.’

Henderson produces, with a flourish, a brown leather attaché case. There’s a yellow legal notepad inside, a couple of pens, and a sharp pencil.

I’m speechless. It’s one of the nicest presents anyone’s ever given me.

‘Is it OK?’ he asks.

I nod. ‘It’s really nice.’

‘Anna says you can use her make-up if you need any.’ Then quickly adds, ‘Not that you do. You look great.’

There’s not a chance that Quintrell volunteered the use of her cosmetics, which means Henderson bullied her into it. Keeping me pliable is part of his job, certainly, but he’s not merely a thug. The best criminals never are. They always have a little something extra. A touch of class.

‘Thank you.’

I look at him. His right hand has grazed knuckles and there’s a bruise over his right eye which I didn’t put there.

‘Your eye,’ I say. ‘That wasn’t me.’

‘No. It wasn’t. I’ve had a long night.’ His face twitches. ‘I’ve not gone to bed yet.’

There’s something open-ended in the way he says that. A memory of yesterday evening. Those kisses in the twilight.

I think that if I stood up now and approached, if I put my arms to him, touched his neck, we would be making love within the minute. I feel those tugs of lust eddying round the room, kicking up like dust devils.

My lust as much as his.

His mouth is slightly open.

I say, ‘Vic, I don’t think we should.’

‘No.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘Same here.’

‘Thanks for all this. Especially this.’ I indicate the attaché case. ‘It’s really thoughtful.’

‘You’re welcome.’

He come close, lifts me, and kisses me. Kisses hard. Without consent. One of those kisses that reaches down to my feet.

I’m gasping when he pulls away, and not with outrage.

He says, ‘Remember. You’re good the way you are. Just be yourself and love yourself.’

The unexpectedness of the remark catches me off-guard momentarily. Then I realize what he’s talking about. It’s a slogan from the list I’d taped to my fridge door. Henderson must have remembered it from the last time he was in my room. The time he showed me the Kureishi murder video.

I say, ‘They’re good classes those. If you want me to sign you up …’

He grins.

Reaches for the attaché case and pulls out a sheet of A4 from an inside compartment I hadn’t explored.

‘Your agenda for the weekend,’ he says.

It’s a list of meetings, with times, attendees, draft topics. The heading on the list is
STRAND TWO: PRODUCT DESIGN
. The attendees are marked by initials. I’m there as FG. Quintrell is there as AQ. There are other initials too, ones I don’t recognize. There is no attendee marked as VH.

‘Strand two? What are the other strands?’

Henderson considers before answering. The man is a walking, talking security screen. It would be the same whether he was making love to me or chopping my hands off. A coolly considered appraisal of risks and rewards.

The appraisal, in this case, comes up positive, and he says, ‘Strand one is security. That’s my specialist subject. Strand three is distribution. How we roll out the system when we have it. Strand four is finance. How the money moves around.’

‘I never knew organized crime was so well organized.’

‘It’s that or jail, and I’ve promised myself never to end up in jail.’ He checks his watch. ‘Your first meeting is at twelve. I won’t be there, but I’ll see you around.’

‘You took my watch. My only clock is Geoff and he’s a bit too highly armed for my taste.’

Henderson shakes out the Gap bags over the bed. A watch falls out. Brown leather strap. Gold face. Not obviously tacky. He sets it to the correct time and tosses it to me.

‘Your watch, ma’am.’

I put it on.

It’s odd this. I’m still half naked. In T-shirt and bathrobe, yes, but that’s still more naked than most things. Those eddies of lust have abated but still swirl around the room, snatching at ankles, trembling on the back of the neck.

I say, ‘Vic?’

‘Yes?’

‘Sit down. You’re a mess.’

He does.

I run warm water in the sink, wet a corner of the towel, wipe the cut on his knuckles, dab at the bruise over his eye. He’s got a small mark on his jacket, blood from the look of it, and I kneel down, work at the mark until it’s mostly gone. He’s the sort of man who would have a monobrow if he didn’t work at it, and I pluck away a couple of stray hairs.

‘There,’ I tell him, as I resettle his jacket and stand back.

‘Thank you.’ The possibility of another kiss blooms in the air between us, then vanishes. He says, ‘Please follow the rules, by the way. Going outside yesterday, that needs to be an exception.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Then, standing back, by the daffodils, I murmur, ‘You’re a good kisser, Vic.’

‘You too, Fi.’ He uses the intimate version of my name instinctively. So naturally it takes me a moment to realize. ‘Maybe sometime before you head off to Kiwi-land, we could go away somewhere and forget about being sensible.’

I nod. What I say is, ‘Maybe one day I’ll fall for a good guy. It would make life easier.’

Henderson goes for the door, half opens it, says, ‘Nah. Good guys are boring.’ Leaves.

I get dressed. Grey dress with black velvet at the neck and on the sleeves. Little brown belt. Dark tights and clicky heels. Attaché case.

I do go next door to Quintrell’s room. She’s there, and lets me use her make-up without even being too grumpy about it. I’m not great with make-up, but there’s a cut over my lip which looks better for some concealer. Quintrell even helps me apply it.

I say, ‘I don’t want to fight you, Anna.’

‘I know.’

‘Can we maybe start again? As if nothing had ever happened.’

‘OK. Yes. OK.’

She’s not very communicative, but there’s a little rush of emotion in her face. I can’t read it. She probably finds all this difficult too. Henderson is core Tinker. Quintrell is no more than a hired hand. A temporary asset, like me.

I think we ought to hug or something like that. Seal the deal. But Quintrell remains pulled back and withdrawn. So I just say, ‘Brilliant, thank you.’

She smiles. It’s not a natural one, but effort counts for something too. She still doesn’t like me but at least we can be temporary allies.

Back in my room, I take the flake of rock I took from the step yesterday and crumble it up. Little red particles of grit. Meaningless to me, but eloquent enough under a microscope. I scatter the grit through my clothes. A pinch goes into the crack between the wall of my shoe and the insole. A smear gets rubbed into the hem of a blue shirt, the seam of my dress. I distribute the stuff around till it’s all gone. Effectively invisible.

Then I start to work on the towel that I used on Henderson’s blood marks. Some of the blood is his, but maybe not all of it. I take a bloodied thread from the towel and drop it into the inside seam of the pocket on my white shirt. A bit of lint, no more. Take the eyebrow hairs I plucked and put them into a jeans pocket. Although Henderson’s eye was bruised, the skin wasn’t broken, yet there was something – I think blood – matting the eyebrows.

Then wash the towel. Hang it out. Tidy my tiny room.

I like these small spaces. They swaddle me. I find them soothing.

I don’t think about Quintrell much. She’s a fraudster and a fool, but she’s not a murderer and she’s not the progenitor of this scheme. We have enough evidence on her to convict her for all that she’s done.

Henderson, though, he’s a different matter. I think about him and me, about the kiss we had and the dust devils we sought to ignore. Most of all, I think about what I said to him.
Maybe one day I’ll fall for a good guy
. That was a good Fiona Grey-ish thing to say. That poor lass has had few enough good men in her forlorn little life and the bad guys keep barging their way in.

But me? I’m engaged to a handsome police sergeant, who loves me and is patient with me. Who has a perfect service record, in the police and in the army. Who is stable, calm and kind. Who is honorable by instinct and by belief. Who is tall and strong and (if you happen to like freckles) is sandily handsome. I
have
fallen for a good guy, haven’t I? Fallen hard and fallen well.

But I don’t know if it was just Fiona Grey making that comment about good guys or if it was me too. And if it was me too, what sense can I make of it? I’ve always been attracted to Buzz. Always thought,
God, I’m lucky that this man feels this way about me
. Thought,
The love of Buzz and my family are the best things in my life, bar nothing. They’re the reasons I make it through the day.

I suspect I’m probably just experiencing what most undercover officers go through, sooner or later on assignment. The madness of isolation. A desire for intimate contact, because intimacy feels like an adequate substitute for truth. If I did have sex with Henderson, I wouldn’t even quite count it as infidelity. It would be just one of those things. An operational exigency.

At five to twelve, there’s a tap at my door. Quintrell is there: smart green dress, black jacket, dark tights, heels. She says, ‘Ready?’ and we walk upstairs together.

34.

Those meetings! Like nothing else I’ve ever encountered. Perhaps it’s always like this in the private sector. The suits. The agendas. The two types of bottled water and the thermoses of hot drinks.

There are eight of us in total. Ramesh has three colleagues with him, but he is clearly the most senior. All four speak good English. I know nothing about IT, but clearly these guys do. Clear too that they have further programmers back in Bangalore. We’re seeing the gleam of helmets, not the entire battle force.

Then there are two British guys. One, a Londoner, who calls himself Terry. Late thirties, early forties. Short hair, black shirt, a suit which probably cost a lot of money, and a gold watch which is almost certainly some expensive branded thing. Then we are also, occasionally, graced with the presence of James Wyatt. He calls himself Phil but I recognize him from the surveillance photos on our system. He tells us that he is mostly on the finance side. That he’s just here to chip in, if he can help. That he doesn’t understand all the ‘techie stuff’.

He pretends to be modest, but really his intention is to emphasize that he’s in
finance
, a holy land altogether higher and finer than the swamplands of IT. What he would think of Fiona Grey’s habitat of payroll clerking and homeless shelters, I can’t even imagine. He wears a striped blue shirt with an all-white collar. He has a handkerchief that matches his tie. I think,
Fuck you too, Jimmy boy.
Think how well that tie-and-hanky combo will go down in a Category A all-male clink.
And fuck you too.