The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (40 page)

I don’t know what my face said, but Susan said, ‘He’s a good man, your one. Hang on to him.’

I nodded, dumbly. Thinking that for this long year Buzz must have had half a worry that I wasn’t just working undercover but working under the covers too. A Welsh Mata Hari.

‘Anyway. We’ll put a room aside for you. And record the hell out of it.’

‘Thank you.’

She looked at me and grinned. Gave me a hug.

‘We’d best keep this short,’ she said.

I nodded.

‘Not long now.’

Nod.

‘And make sure you get the bastard.’

By now, I expect, she knows I did.

When I leave the hotel that night, walking back to my flat, still feeling the touch of that almost-intimacy on my skin, I think of how much it has taken us all to get here. Hayley Morgan and her purposeless sacrifice. Saj Kureishi and his anguished astonishment. Nia Lewis, in her tangle of nettles and wire netting. But Buzz too. His honorable waiting. Dennis Jackson and his gruff, senior-officer kindness. Brattenbury’s professionalism, Susan’s intelligence.

I’ve got Anna Quintrell in jail. Henderson now on record as confessing to murder. Wyatt and Shoesmith in our crosshairs. Ramesh and his buddies too.

If we get them, we’re likely to find enough to get Geoff and Allan too. When we rip into the house searches, the forensics, the interrogations, we’re pretty much certain to get the leads we need. Geoff, Allan, plus some of the others involved in finance and distribution.

But that’s not enough. The Hendersons, the Wyatts, the Quintrells – they’re not enough. I don’t just want them: the salarymen and women of this particular crime. I want the person I’ve never heard mentioned. I want whoever it is that owns the farmhouse. I want whoever has four million pounds of seed capital to fund this venture. When Brattenbury and I have sketched Tinker’s hypothetical organization chart, we’ve always had a space that just says,
The Boss – ???
. And I want that man. In jail for fraud and murder. A life sentence. Some huge minimum tariff.

So far, we’ve not had the glimmer of a clue as to that person’s identity. We don’t, if we’re honest, even
know
that the person exists. But Henderson walked from his osteopath’s office into the building next door, presumably in order to see someone. You don’t do that – find a building with that odd connecting door arrangement, attend a long sequence of osteopathy appointments, then use that cover to skip next door for an hour before returning the same way – unless you are seeking to cover something up.

Something – but what? I don’t know, but for the first time I feel we have a tangible clue. I hope Brattenbury feels the same excitement. I guess he would, except that I think he was nudging me to lower my expectations. His letter said,
We’re applying for surveillance warrants for that other building now. Fingers crossed on that.

Fingers crossed
: a reminder of the legalities involved. Thus far, there’s been little difficulty in getting authority to surveille, bug and tap almost everything we’ve wanted. Our legal argument has been textbook in its straightforwardness. Roughly speaking: we know, or have a very strong and evidentially based suspicion, that this person (Henderson, Quintrell, Allan, Shoesmith, Wyatt) is involved in criminal fraud and conspiracy to murder. We want to bug their home/phone/mobile/whatever. Easy.

Amazingly enough, every interception warrant is personally authorized by the Home Secretary herself, and no sane Home Secretary would conceivably reject most of the applications we’ve made so far. But bugging an entire building full of perfectly innocent people in the hope of catching a single (and very occasional) non-innocent encounter that
probably
takes place somewhere in that building – well, you don’t have to be much of a civil libertarian to have anxieties about that approach to policing. I think Brattenbury expects a
no
.

So near, but yet so far.

I’ve made arrests before. Secured prosecutions, convictions, seen people put away for life. But I’ve never hit the big guys. The owner-managers of organized crime. The people who are so far above the dirty day-to-day stuff that they run their legitimate enterprises, send their kids to private schools, collect fatuous awards for entrepreneurship, make ostentatious donations to charity, collect trophy wives and pretty mistresses, and no one even thinks to ask if this or that well-connected businessman might actually be a major league asshole.

Am I bitter? I am. The last big case I worked on had a rich, successful guy as its primary target. A man who, at one stage, ordered me killed and who evaded our intended prosecution with such sweet ease that we might as well have tried to clap handcuffs on the ocean.

In my only big case before that, the same thing, except that the bastard rich guy in question had the good grace to die before my investigation even started.

I’d dearly love to break my duck. Dearly love to get Tinker’s Mr. Big behind bars. To nail him on a series of charges so long, so inescapable, that he’ll grow old and die behind prison bars. I’d like to watch as he finds his comb thicken with grey hairs, as he feels the first loosening of teeth in his gums, as he watches his face slowly break into a river delta of wrinkles, and to know that the only thought which beats in his head is,
This is all remains to me now. This ten foot by six foot cell. This prison food, these clanging doors.

As I walk home under this northern sky, the stars above ask if I’m ready. If I mean business. If I’m going to get my man.

And I am, I tell them, I really am.

47.

Wednesday night. Dad’s cocktail bar.

I enter the place not long after its evening opening. We minimum wage cleaners keep early hours, even Jessica. I order a drink – a fruit juice thing that looks alcoholic but isn’t – and sit at the bar in a place where the security cameras can easily see me. Turn to the camera and wink. A couple of boys are eyeing Jessica up from their corner booth. Jessica’s their sort, I think. She’s aware of their gaze and flirts a bit. She’s wearing skirt and heels, nothing too trashy, but her ankle bracelet is very visible and I think it may be acting as an extra come-on. But these are Welsh lads still on their first drink and I predict they’ll need a second before they make their move. I don’t think I’m going to be waiting that long.

I’m right.

I’ve not been there ten minutes before a guy comes in at the front door and raises a thumb to the barman. The barman slips me a note in Dad’s handwriting which just reads,
All clear at the front. Come on upstairs.

The office: not Dad’s corporate headquarters, but the little back room which all his ventures possess. A place where Dad can retreat to with his cronies. Green benches round a wooden table, low lighting, office stuff intermixed with Dad’s remarkably eclectic collection of mementoes and knick-knacks.

I go up to the office, but I’m not thrilled about it as a location. The bracelet will tell Henderson where I am and bars aren’t meant to be quiet places.

I needn’t have worried. As I swing open the office door, the murmur of a bar greets me. People talking, laughter, footsteps, even the sound of a falling glass. There’s no one here though, only Pa, who stands to greet me with a huge bear hug. We just stand and embrace without words, the best way.

Then we do pull apart. Dad points to the speakers which are piping sound up from below. I’m impressed, as ever, at Dad’s remarkably neat stage-management. His approach gives us privacy whilst also giving me the perfect auditory cover. I give Dad a pearly-toothed smile, showing him I appreciate his thoughtfulness. He plucks at Jessica’s blond locks, looks down at her ankle bracelet and laughs at her.

We sit.

Dad has put out a laptop for us – I type fast and he’s no dab hand with a pen.

I write,
Lovely, lovely, lovely to see you, Dad. Been missing you soooo much!

He’s a poor typist. He told me once, I don’t know with what truth, that he’d always assumed he was stupid, because he never got on well at school. Struggled in tests, left without qualifications. It was only later, when he was in his thirties and his flourishing criminal career very much established, that someone told him he suffered from dyslexia. Dad even claimed that his switch to legitimate business came about mostly because he realized he could get an accountant and a lawyer to do all the stuff he had never been able to do himself. Register companies, fill out VAT forms, all that side of things. I don’t believe him, not entirely. There must have been more to his particular career choices than some dismissive teachers and some crappy schooling.

Anyway. It takes Dad time to answer. Even now, he’s sensitive about his writing skills and his finger hesitates over the keyboard, picking out the letters one by one like an elegant woman selecting chocolates from a box.

He writes,
Lovely to see you too! Your Mam misses you.
He’s not all that confident in his use of the shift key. So when he wants a capital letter or an exclamation mark, he secures the shift key with the index finger of his left hand, checks it, then whacks the ‘L’, the ‘!’, the ‘Y’ or the ‘M’ with his other index finger, trying to whip both fingers away at the exact same time. The technique works, however, just as well as mine.

I write,
Can we go straight to business? I can’t be here too long. Sorry! The case won’t last much longer.

Dad doesn’t type an answer. Just moves two stack of papers in front of me. The documents I sent him, but annotated in his own terrible handwriting.

The first stack is marked
Boring
. Names and faces that Dad doesn’t know. Paperwork that didn’t strike a note with him. I flip through it, to remind myself what’s there and to see if I have any questions. Dad doesn’t interrupt me exactly, but silence isn’t his forte. As I read, he does a huge yawn, pretends to fall asleep, shoots himself with an imaginary gun. I laugh at him. Punch him in the chest. He leaves the room, comes back with a beer, asks me in mime if I want anything. I mouth ‘no thanks’, but he leaves again anyway to come back with another fruit thing and some salted nuts.

He can’t stay still, my dad. Another big reason for his becoming a criminal, I think. Most regular jobs would have driven him crazy.

Then I turn to the pile marked
Interesting!!!!!!

A smaller pile this, but he’s not wrong about its interest. The building next door to the health center houses a property management company, a firm of solicitors and a firm of accountants. The data I sent over to Dad – data I’ve not been able to look at properly myself – contains long lists of clients, both personal and corporate.

Now that I have time to look at them, those lists look fairly classy. There are some names I recognize. Charlotte Rattigan: the widow of a very wealthy, very wicked man whose doings I once had a hand in exposing. Ivor Harris: local MP, immaculate reputation, but too close to Brendan Rattigan for me to trust him. Idris Prothero: an arms dealer who once tried to kill me and was involved in at least one other death, arguably two. David Marr-Phillips: a man who had some minor business dealings with Prothero. Other names too: Galton Evans, Joe Johnson. People I have no real reason to think badly of, except that they were also close to Brendan Rattigan and I don’t trust anyone who knew that man well.

Cardiff’s not a huge city, of course, and it’s not bursting with the upmarket professional advisory types that London is full of. There are probably only a small number of firms that handle the prestige clients so it’s no surprise to find many of those names here. It’s not even as though there’s an obvious pattern in who does what. Ivor Harris, for example, seems to get his annual tax returns done by the accountancy firm, but has no dealings with the other two. Marr-Philips is, via a couple of his businesses, a client of the property management company, but appears to get his legal and accountancy work done elsewhere. And so on.

But my suspicions aren’t allayed. Henderson would not have walked through that connecting door without a reason. Henderson does
nothing
without a reason. And if you wanted to meet someone in the center of town without anyone knowing the two of you had met – well, what could be a neater arrangement? One man goes to his osteopath. The other goes to his accountant, or solicitor, or property guy. The two men are in different buildings. Enter and leave at different times. Sweet, simple, effective.

Dad’s comments are even more interesting than the names themselves. He’s been through those client lists with a thick red pen. Against some names – most of them – he’s scribbled
Don’t know
or, when he got tired of writing that much, just
DK
. A red scrawl that flies from the page with impatience.

Against other names he’s written
Legit
, a word that gradually becomes abbreviated to an
L
, and then simply to a flicked flash of the pen, no longer readable as a letter.

But then, on a minority of names, a small minority, he’s written more.
Bastard!!! Don’t trust
, is the first such comment. Against Marr-Philips he’s written
Shark! Very dangerous man
. Against Ivor Harris, he’s written
Would do
anything
for cash. But not a real player.
Against Prothero:
Nasty piece of work, but not big time.

Not all the names that mean something to me incur a wrathful comment from my pa, but it seems to me there’s a more than random overlap between the names that arouse my suspicion and those that arouse his. I’m also struck by some of his judgments. Idris Prothero – who exported at least sixteen million pounds’ worth of armaments without an export license, who ordered me killed, who had one of his own engineers framed for a drugs charge, who almost certainly arranged for the professional murder of a would-be competitor – this person is one whom my father regards as a small-timer. It’s not even as though he didn’t know Prothero’s background. I’ve told him all of it, except the part about my almost-killing. I’m struck by how little I really know of Dad’s past. That, and the depth of his own criminal professionalism. A fund of knowledge that has no bottom.