The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (41 page)

I’m out of time really. I promised myself I would be here no more than twenty minutes, and I’ve been here closer to forty. My ankle bracelet transmits my location real-time. Henderson won’t be worried to learn that I’m in a bar, but if he or one of his buddies drops by and doesn’t find me here, I could be in trouble. Five minutes, or even ten: that could be a toilet visit. Forty minutes, though, that would be harder to explain. Once again, I become aware how narrow is the line that secures my safety. Think of Nia. How she didn’t even know that she’d crossed a line. That there
was
a line.

For a moment, I’m lost in that same tangle of nettles. Wire, dock leaves, and blood thinning to water in the rain.

But I struggle back. Dad’s presence helps. And, out of time or not, I do flip through the rest of Dad’s
Interesting!!!!!!
pile. He’s taken a look at the list of visitors: the people who entered the office building the morning of Henderson’s incursion. Here, it’s mostly DKs, or just a small red dot, marking impatience. But there are exceptions. Three people with red circles round their names and one person – N. Davison – by whose circled name stands the word
Fixer!

I look at Dad, question marks in my eyes.

Dad types, ignoring the shift key and punctuation,
fixer works for cash dirty jobs guy
. He looks at me, gesturing at his mouth. Meaning, ‘I could tell you so much more.’

I type,
Do you know who he works for? Is there anyone he’s particularly close to?

Dad ignores the keyboard. Just picks up the client list and waves his hand. I think he means ‘Anyone’ but then think maybe he means ‘All of them.’

I stare at him. I’m out of time. I want to spend two days interviewing Dad about all this, but I’m not going to get the chance. Not now, certainly, but maybe never. I suspect Dad’s current willingness to divulge has been spurred on by the thrill of this clandestine meeting. If I started to come over all police-officery, I think he’d revert to his normal cheerful evasions.

I stand. Hug my father. He wraps both arms around me and crushes me into him. He’s never really got the hang of hugging smaller women. It’s as though he doesn’t notice that my mouth and nose are struggling for oxygen, my feet slightly lifted from the floor, my back finding new shapes as his arms pull my spine towards my sternum. Mostly, since my illness, I’ve fought shy of these monster crushes. Sought hugs that are more on my terms, that give me a fighting chance of emerging with some dignity. But today this old-fashioned hug – the sort he used to give me when I was ill – feels just right. I lean into Dad’s embrace until I can’t breathe, then fight my way clear.

I type,
I LOVE YOU. I’M COMING HOME SOON. THANKS A MILLION FOR ALL THIS. YOU ARE THE BEST DAD EVER. LOVE YOU LOADS!!!!
I’m not usually one for all-caps or the multi-exclamation mark, but Dad’s earned them.

I go back downstairs. I don’t leave the bar immediately, though. The boys who had been making eyes at Jessica are still there. Blood-alcohol levels raised enough for them to call to me as I pass. Jessica spins, banters back, solicits – and gets – a drink. She spends the next hour in their company: mouthy, brassy, popular, loose. At the end of that hour, I go out the back of the bar to smoke a cigarette with Darren, the tallest and least idiotic of the boys. He wears a grey jacket and an ironed shirt, white with a blue flower design on the collar and pocket. Pulling wear.

We have a ciggy, then I throw my stub away and start kissing him. Hard, lustful kisses that he reciprocates. He tastes of cheap cocktails and Starbursts. We spend five or ten minutes like that. Kissing, squeezing, moaning.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen to him much, I suspect. He thinks he’s pulled because of his handsomeness and wit. Doesn’t know that he’s my alibi-snog. That I just want there to be a guy who, if Henderson starts poking around, will say, yes, he did have a snog that night with a pixie-haired blonde called Jessica. The timings won’t quite make sense – my absence not quite correlating with the time of the snog – but they don’t have to. Darren will say one thing. I’ll say something slightly different. Time will have gone by. Alcohol was involved. The audio recording will prove I was always in a bar or had my tongue down somebody’s throat. Any investigator – even Henderson, even
me
– would drop things at that point. The nettles and the wire: they may come to me some day, but not tonight, not because of this.

I tell Darren he’s cute, give him my number, and go home. I’d like to tell Brattenbury what I’ve discovered, except that I haven’t really discovered anything and what I do have comes from a source that I’d be highly reluctant to disclose.

Ah well. I’ve never believed in being too open with senior officers. It’s bad for their egos. I shower hard, brush the taste of Darren out of my mouth, and go to bed.

48.

As with Cardiff, so with Birmingham. Jessica flits through corporate offices. Steals passwords. Sabotages systems.

Her crimes are more or less blatant now. Every two days, I’m in a new office. The first day I steal passwords. The second day I plant software. Then move on. Henderson, or whoever, must be bribing my bosses to put me on this kind of shift pattern. Cleaners are never moved around like this unless there’s a one-off absence that needs to be filled.

But I don’t care, nor does Jessica. I’m a thief and a saboteur, but the reckoning for my thievery – for Tinker’s thefts and murders – won’t come here, but in a farmhouse somewhere in South Wales. On the Thursday of my second week in Birmingham, I plant my last keystroke recorder. A big manufacturing firm. Employs forty thousand workers in the UK. An old-fashioned firm. Avoids outsourcing. Protects jobs and skills. Invests locally. Is regularly picked as one of Britain’s top employers.

On Friday morning, I find a note from Adrian Brattenbury tucked into my cleaning stuff.

Fiona,

Well done! Just get yourself to the farmhouse. We will follow you there. We can track your ankle monitor. We will have multiple vehicles, plus air support. Real-time access to CCTV. We will
not
lose you. Once you’re there, don’t do anything. Don’t look for Roy Williams. Don’t seek to help us. SCO19 are going to be there in force and they’re trained for this. You’ve done your stuff. Now we’ll do ours.

Stay safe!

Adrian

It’s not quite ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’, but it works for me. I rip the note up and add it to my bags of rubbish.

And Jessica performs her last duties too. She gathers the harvest from her recorder. Username, passwords. Enters the firm’s computer system and plants the software which will let Ian Shoesmith sabotage it from within. Thefts of the scale we’re contemplating could, in theory, bankrupt the firm. Jeopardize jobs, investment, everything.

When I catch sight of Jessica in a mirror, her face looks angrily determined. Vengeful. If I were her target, I’d be scared.

At midday, my working day is done. I go outside. Smoke a cigarette with just a sprinkle of resin.

At quarter past, a black BMW glides up the road towards me. Window down. Henderson at the wheel smiling.

‘Ready?’ he asks.

I am, I say. I truly am.

49.

The drive from Birmingham is easy. Blast down the M5. Onto the M4. Severn Bridge. The wide blue estuary with Amina’s shushumow kicking around in the undercurrents. Mud banks and seagulls.

I’m not wearing my eye-mask. Just dandling it on my lap as Henderson drives.

He notices my fidgeting hands and says, ‘No need for that now. For the time being, we’re just heading home.’

I’m still wearing my ankle bracelet. It feels like a ten pound weight around my leg. A good weight. A protective one. I try not to fidget or draw attention to it.

We reach exit twenty-nine. The A48, Eastern Avenue. My normal route into Cardiff when coming from England. We pass the turn.

Also pass exits thirty and thirty-one.

Thirty-one: the exit that doesn’t exist. An interchange for which planning permission was granted twenty years ago but which has never been built.

Exit thirty-two, Northern Avenue. We glide by that as well.

I’m getting jittery. Trying not to show it.

Henderson notices, though. Says, ‘We’re not going into town. We’re meeting Geoff and Allan on the other side.’

Exit thirty-three. Culverhouse Cross and Barry.

We swing off the motorway, head south. Henderson makes a call as he drives. ‘We’re almost with you.’ At a retail park in Culverhouse, a car swings out behind us. Black BMW. Same model as Henderson’s. Geoff at the wheel, Allan next to him on the passenger side. Continue south. The A4050 towards Barry.

To the east of us, over Cardiff, there’s a traffic helicopter. Routine, ordinary, doing what traffic helicopters do over cities.

Only, I don’t think this is a traffic helicopter. I think it’s here for me. Watching, monitoring, passing back data. It’s not particularly close to us, but with the right optical equipment, it shouldn’t need to be.

Henderson puts his phone onto hands-free.

I start to feel frightened and I don’t know why.

Up till now, our route has been logical enough. The sort of route that a person might drive if they were looking to get from A to B. No longer.

Henderson veers off route. Down the St Lytham’s Road, then takes a turn to Dyffryn. A real Welsh lane. Hazel hedges on either side, rising to more than head height. The road so narrow, two vehicles meeting head-on can’t pass each other, without one reversing to the next field gate or passing place. Steep banks and ash trees.

Where the road allows it, and especially when trees overhead give cover, Henderson and Geoff switch places. Geoff in the lead, and Henderson following.

If we encounter cars, which we don’t very often, we hear Allan’s voice on the phone, noting make, model, color and registration.

Soon after taking the Dyffryn turn, Henderson reaches inside his jacket. Takes a Glock from a shoulder holster. Drops it into the side pocket of his door. Easier access.

I don’t comment and nor does he.

When we hit Dyffryn, we veer south again. Then twist back on ourselves. Another tiny lane. Then bury ourselves in the tiny back streets of Pencoedtre Wood.

I swivel in my seat to watch. I can’t see very well, but I think Allan is taking photos of the drivers too. Recording everything.

‘You’re paranoid,’ I say. My normal comment about all this.

Henderson doesn’t make his normal rejoinder though. Leaves a gap of silence for a few seconds, then, ‘You were in police custody a long time. Then they let you go. That’s probably fine, but we need to make sure.’

Pull back, Adrian
, I think.
Pull back
. I’m worried that Brattenbury’s surveillance team will end up burning themselves in the effort not to lose me. And we can’t afford that.
I
can’t. Nia Lewis died for less.

But I shouldn’t worry. We discussed all this in Manchester. Vehicle-based surveillance works if you have plenty of vehicles, and if the bad guys don’t have much time or aren’t taking precautions. Brattenbury won’t be short of manpower, but we know from before that Henderson is tricksy and cautious. So we agreed to play it safe with the cars. As long as my ankle bracelet is still transmitting, they can find me anywhere. And it’s pretty much impossible to hide from a helicopter.

Back onto the A4050. Speeding now. Some reckless overtaking. Geoff following us and Allan turned in his seat checking the cars behind.

Then a sudden turn onto a side road. Our BMW pulled tight onto a grassy verge, so tight that it couldn’t be seen by someone until they had almost completed the bend.

Henderson watching the road, noting cars. Geoff and Allan sixty yards behind us doing the same. Passing information to and fro. But not many cars now. I have the feeling that we’re in the clear, or almost.

I shift my legs, easing the tension.

‘You can have that off now, if you want.’ Henderson passes me a key, indicates my ankle.

I take my bracelet off, massaging the skin underneath. Drop the thing in the little shelf under the glove compartment.

‘Does anyone ever keep gloves in the glove compartment?’

Henderson says, ‘I do. Gun, gloves, bullets.’

We laugh, but without mirth. From those lips, that comment is the opposite of funny. It makes me think of that hotel bedroom. That dead light and the huge grey bay open like a boneyard. For some reason, I think Henderson is remembering the same thing.

Now that I’m free of the transmitter, Henderson asks me to step out of the car, so he can sweep me down with his RF scanner. The grass verge has been cut recently and the cut ends prickle against my ankle. The scanner comes up with nothing. I’m clean as I always am. As clean, and as naked. I pick a flower, a yellow one. Bird’s-foot trefoil is its proper name. My dad calls it Granny’s Toenails. I tuck it behind my ear.

I’ve got my bag with me. My bag, Jessica’s clothes, but including the make-up bits and pieces that Brattenbury sent me. Henderson scans the bag – it’s clean – and inspects the clothes minutely for any evidence that they have been tampered with.

‘Fuck’s sake, Vic.
You
bought me that stuff. You’ve known where I am every single minute since you gave it to me.’

He laughs. Spends another few moments looking at my stuff – belt buckles, buttons, jewelry, my little bottle of amisulpride – then crams everything back.

I say, ‘All this stuff. The scanning. The messing around with cars. Where did you learn it? Can you get an NVQ in that sort of thing?’

Henderson shoots me a glance. ‘I have a security background,’ which is hardly illuminating. His accent is basically English, but it often has a hint of something else. South African? Aussie? Or perhaps somewhere else in Africa? Kenya or Uganda or somewhere like that. I don’t know.

We get back into the car. Move off again towards Barry. The phones still busy between our BMW and the other one, but there’s something relaxed in the conversation now.

We’ve done it
, I think. Feel myself relaxing. Henderson couldn’t have been more careful to avoid pursuit and clearly thinks he’s been successful. That’s what we wanted. What we planned for. I’m careful not to look too obtrusively, but I can still glimpse, from time to time, my beautiful helicopter circling over the west side of Cardiff. Penarth. Near enough to watch a pair of BMWs playing tag in the country north of Barry, I reckon. Who needs cars when we’ve got choppers? I feel like laughing.