The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (30 page)

At eleven o’clock, I get a cup of peppermint tea. The kitchenette has a view out over the junction where Adam Street meets the A4234. There is a police car below. Parked. Lights lazily flashing. It’s joined by a second. Officers talking on the radio.

I go to my desk, change my black office shoes for the training shoes I wear when I’m cleaning. Go back to the window. The cars are still there. One officer leaning on his vehicle. No one else.

I get my coat from the rack. Take anything personal from my desk and put it in my bag. Start the DBAN disk. Get it so that I just have to hit enter to start wiping my hard drive. Go over to Zara Jones in accounts, who doesn’t particularly like me but whose desk has a good view of the lift lobby.

An elevator stops. Six uniformed police emerge. A crackle of radios, viewed through glass.

I say to Zara, ‘Someone’s got visitors.’ Leave her and go to my desk.

Take my coat and bag. Start the procedure that wipes the hard drive. Then take the back stairs that lead down to the ground floor.

As I go down, I can see the black and white of a police officer’s arm coming up. Radio noise.

I come off the stairs at the second floor. Claims Processing. Linger there until I can see officers ascend beyond me. Then back onto the stairs and quickly down. Into the lobby.

I fumble my security pass, then get it to work. The glass turnstile opens, and I make for the street. A security guard shouts ‘Hey.’

I run.

Burst through the doors. Onto Adam Street. Head for Bute Terrace. I think if I get to the pedestrianized Hayes, I stand a chance of evading pursuit.

Sirens yowl behind me. I turn up Mary Ann Street, but a car comes screaming into it from higher up. I bet the lads are loving it. City center chases are always the best.

I skip sideways into the Park Inn Hotel. A modern thing, like an ocean liner erupting from a tower block.

Inside, a huge white atrium. Modern bar. Mirrors. Red carpet on white tiles. A few people around: businessmen drinking coffee, reception staff. I try to look like them: a busy person, not a fugitive.

Head for the lifts. Hit the button.

But I’m too late. I was seen entering and a couple of coppers burst into the lobby. They see me and yell, ‘Police! Stop!’

I slam the lift button in frustration at its slowness. Run for the stairs. There’s a potted palm behind me and I tip it over as I pass. Hear one of the officers swear as he tangles with it.

I think I’ve made the stairs, but I’m wrong. One of my pursuers catches up. Slams into me, like a rugby back defending his try line. The wall and floor take it in turns to hit me with chunks of tile and plasterwork.

I say, ‘Fuck off, fuck
off
!’ Kick out. Bite something. A thumb, I think.

A pair of huge hands puts my wrists into handcuffs. The rigid sort, which I don’t like. I kick again, but the ratchet bars tighten till the cuffs are secure even on my little wrists.

There are four policemen around me now. One is reading me my rights. Another is sucking his thumb. They’re all wary of my legs.

They walk me out to the waiting squad car.

One of the coppers says, ‘Now if you calm down, we’ll take the restraints off.’

I say, ‘Fuck off, I haven’t done anything.’

He says, ‘Well then, we’ll go and talk about it. And if you haven’t done anything, then—’

I elbow him in the side and try to grab the pouch that has keys to the cuffs.

I don’t get anywhere, but the officers exchange glances and bundle me into the car, cuffs and all. In England and Wales, arrest is primarily a symbolic act. Wherever possible, ‘arrest’ is made simply by a police officer placing a hand on the suspect’s shoulder, taking emblematic control of that person’s freedom. If physical control – handcuffs, for example – is required, then it’s applied to the minimum degree possible and for the shortest possible time. Chokeholds and the like are strictly forbidden. The use of cuffs on women and minors is regarded as inappropriate in almost all situations.

As ever, I like to be the exception.

When we get to the custody suite – down on Cardiff Bay, modern facility, all very fancy – they offer again to take the cuffs off. They make it sound as if they want to do me a favor, but the truth is that any half-awake custody sergeant would demand an explanation if he saw four bulky male officers escort a young woman inside, wearing restraints. I act badly enough, however, that the restraints stay on.

As I’m being booked in, I see Quintrell being processed too. No cuffs for her. She’s in a blue and white summer dress, with matching shoes. She catches my eye, but we keep our faces closed. I can feel a bruise rising on my forehead where the floor hit me.

Custody processing isn’t quick. Because I received some injuries in the arrest process, those things need to be evaluated by a medical professional. The arresting officers have to make a statement of their arrest and restraint techniques. I’m evaluated for my likelihood of self-harm and my shoelaces, belt, bra and tights are removed as a precaution. The female custody officer who removes these things tells me I can have them back if my risk-assessment changes. She offers me a hygiene pack, which I take. Because records show that Fiona Grey has been in custody before, in Manchester, it takes some time to access both national and local intelligence systems.

The lighting in the examination room is fierce and I have a swelling headache. I ask for, and receive, aspirin.

I have a brief interview with the duty solicitor. She seems like a nice woman – Barbara, mumsy, keen to help. I tell her to fuck off.

Then sit without speaking for ten minutes.

Then we’re done.

At two fifteen, I’m taken to an interview room, a big one. Painted in those awful green-grey and cream colors that would make most people confess to anything, just for a change of decor.

DCI Jackson is there. And Mervyn Rogers, a good friend of mine from Major Crime. Also Brattenbury and Susan Knowles. And a forensics guy, Ryan, who I’ve had some dealings with in the past.

Jackson pumps my hand. Was quite close to giving me a hug, I think. Brattenbury too. Susan Knowles kisses me and says, ‘
Fiona!
’ There is cake on the table – chocolate – and a plate of lasagna.

‘Tuck in,’ Jackson says. ‘You must be starving.’

I’m not starving. I had something to eat six hours ago and I never eat much for lunch. But I know why they chose lasagna: Buzz once asked me what my favorite food was, because he wanted to cook something special. I’ve no idea what my favorite food is, so I said lasagna, because I thought I had to say something. So Buzz always cooks lasagna when he wants to be extra nice and Jackson would have asked Buzz what I’d most want, and Buzz would have said lasagna and chocolate cake, which I do certainly like.

I eat a bit.

Brattenbury says, ‘You know about Roy?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry about not giving you more notice of this’ – he means my arrest – ‘but we had to get you out. We couldn’t risk losing two officers.’

‘I know,’ I say, avoiding the question of whether I agree or not.

‘Taking Quintrell at the same time: it’s the perfect cover.’

I nod.

‘The story is that we kept an eye on the Western Vale payroll system after the arrest of Ellen Keith. We realized that the fraud was being perpetuated. Identified you as the perpetrator. Followed you to Quintrell’s house. Uncovered her past. Figured out that you and she were in collusion. Secured audio surveillance on her house. Heard everything. Ba-ba-boom.’

‘Have you arrested Henderson?’

‘No. We’re going to play dumb. We’ve got his voice on the tapes, of course, but we’re going to treat him just as “Unidentified Male”. When we interrogate Quintrell, we’ll make it seem like getting an identification on him will be a major purpose of our inquiries. But we’d rather have him loose, so we can go on watching him. We only brought Quintrell in so we could get you out.’

‘I understand.’

If Brattenbury was expecting me to be more gushing about my rescue, he manages his disappointment with nothing more than a micro-pause. He moves on to thank me for the package I left for him at the hostel. Ryan, the forensics guy, tells me that the blood on Henderson’s clothing and eyebrow has been identified as belonging to Roy Williams. I’d guessed as much, but it’s good to have it confirmed.

‘How’s Katie?’ I ask.

Jackson says, ‘Not good. Not at all good.’

‘I could see her later, maybe. If that would help.’

‘Yes, it might. Let’s see.’

We talk business. Brattenbury’s team realized fairly quickly that the entire Heathrow conference thing was just a blind. SCO19 were stood down, but by that point they had no idea where I was, where Quintrell was, where anyone was.

‘We were very frightened for you,’ says Brattenbury simply. ‘Especially after Roy.’

‘I don’t think they’ve killed Roy. He’s no use to them dead.’

‘I agree, but still …’

He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Williams’s life is in acute danger. We all know it. We sit for a moment in a ticking silence.

But silence doesn’t help. Working does. I tell them all about the barn, the farmhouse, the computer project. I tell them about Ram and Terry and Phil and Geoff. Tell them about the Fuck It button. The button that would allow them to steal one hundred per cent of all payroll payments coming from all companies using the system.

The biggest theft in the world.

Jackson is visibly shocked, but also impressed. We all are. You can’t be a police officer and not admire criminality at its most talented and audacious. These things are a privilege to witness.

I sketch out what I see now of Tinker’s organization. The full list is way longer than we’d ever imagined. And our gathering belief that we had identified most of the gang participants is proving to be way off target. Scarily far off. As we have it now, the organization chart looks like this, with question marks denoting those people where we don’t have final identities, addresses, or surveillance.

Security and operations
: Henderson, Allan, Geoff

Product design
: Quintrell, Terry, Ramesh + 3 colleagues

Distribution
: ??? Three participants, maybe four

Finance
: Wyatt, plus ??? three others

The owner / boss
: ???

It’s true I have some idea of numbers and faces in the distribution and finance strands, but it’s desperately hard to recall a face well enough to derive an accurate image of it, particularly if there’s a gap of a day or more, particularly if, as in my case, that day has not exactly been calm and without incident. And even if I were able to recall the faces, what then? Wyatt wouldn’t have shown up in any search of police records. Identity searches like that only really work where a local force is trawling through a list of known troublemakers. They don’t work when you’re looking for some guy whose face Fiona Griffiths thinks she roughly remembers.

I think our organization chart isn’t complete.

‘There were times when Henderson, Allan and Geoff were all together in the barn. But that would mean there was no one looking out for the farmhouse itself. No one protecting the big boss guy, assuming that the boss guy was present in the farmhouse the entire time. I don’t think that’s plausible. And the night that Roy Williams was abducted, Geoff and Allan were in the barn, at least some of the time. I just don’t believe that Henderson picked Roy up by himself. It’s not credible.’

Brattenbury agrees with my logic. ‘One more security guy? Two?’

His pen hesitates over the whiteboard.

‘I’m guessing, but I’d say two, minimum.’

Our organization chart changes again, so that the first line reads:

Security and operations
: Henderson, Allan, Geoff, plus ??? two other unknowns

Jackson grimaces, then changes the subject. ‘Talk to me about location,’ he says.

I give him what I have.

Nia’s accent. South, Mid or West Wales, not Cardiff. Probably not Valleys.

The stone flake from the step. Ryan tells us that it’s an example of Old Red Sandstone. There are instances of the stone as far distant as the Moray Firth, even Shetland, but the main deposit in the UK is in South Wales and the Welsh Marches. ‘Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Powys, Monmouthshire. That’s basically the main area. There are outcrops in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Also Somerset and Devon. There are further tests we can do to specify location, but we don’t have a lot of material to deal with.’ He grimaces, but I don’t apologize. Henderson searched my clothes, not intensively, but with attention before packing them in the bin liner. If I’d taken more stone, it would have been detected.

My clothes. I made a scene about what I had to wear because I wanted to make sure Henderson bought a long list of stuff. I gave Brattenbury details in my note last night: the grey dress, the brown belt, the shoes, the shirts, the jeans, the watch. Everything. ‘I had my clothes no later than ten thirty in the morning. Everything was Gap branded. So there’s a store somewhere which sold that list of clothes to a shopper, almost certainly paying cash, somewhere between opening time and ten a.m. or thereabouts. If we can get time and place for the transaction, we’ve got some coordinates to work with.’

The telecoms tower: it was neither very close by nor thirty miles distant. When the moon came out, there was an angle of, I guess, about ten degrees, between moon and tower. Henderson told me that the time was quarter to eleven, a time that was consistent with the level of darkness outside. Estimating the direction of the telecom tower from the angle of the moon should give us a bearing with which to work.

The car: the fibers I took from the second car – not Henderson’s BMW but the one I only entered blindfolded – should with a little luck be sufficient to identify a make and perhaps even a model. I check with Henderson, ‘You have video coverage of location where Henderson switched cars?’ He nods, so I say, ‘We check video for cars leaving the area at that time and driven by a lone female. Check any possibles against the fiber samples, and we should know which car I was carried in. There’s a good chance that we’ll get ANPR data on its movements.’