I bring myself up to speed with what’s been happening in my absence. Not much, the simple answer. Check lists of actions. Emails. Data.
But still: those scraps of progress are accumulating.
Our number plates team has found that one of the three potentially interesting London-registered vehicles belonged to a woman then in her late sixties, now in a home for dementia sufferers. We can’t very well interview her, but she doesn’t seem like a likely prospect. Two number plates left.
The explosives lead. Late on Christmas Eve, the team obtained the CCTV from the agricultural merchants’ car park. We have almost decent pictures of our suspect. The images have gone off to a specialist lab for amplification and analysis. Results required back as urgently as possible.
Eight in the morning and I’m still checking these things, when there’s a scrabbling at the incident room door. It’s Burnett. Still in a wheelchair, but looking much better than when I last saw him. I let him in. The chair is motorised, driven by a little joystick. Burnett wears heavy strapping and padding round his torso, but his face and eyes are brighter, much brighter, than they were.
We how-was-your-Christmas each other but soon give way to the dark hunger which drives us here.
Burnett does something with the coffee machine to produce the highest-octane brew known to industrial science. He gazes at the dark brew smouldering in his mug, takes a pill of some sort, then hurls the lot down his throat. One gulp, two gulps, done.
As he does that, I go around the incident room ripping down tinsel. Destroying foil stars.
Then we’re done.
Off to the side of our little suite, there’s a little conference room. Burnett wheels over. I help with the doors.
‘So,’ he says. ‘So.’
We start big picture. A case overview.
I stand at the whiteboard, mark out the headings that Burnett gives me.
KNOWN FACTS.
CONFIDENT ASSUMPTIONS.
HYPOTHESES.
QUESTIONS.
Burnett says, ‘OK. Here’s what we’ve got. We know about five kidnaps in total. The Mishchenko one, plus the four that Gerraghty was told about. That’s five, minimum. Maybe plenty more besides. Five kidnaps, plus at least one murder, that of Rhydwyn Lloyd. Two attempted murders, you and me.’
I mark that down on the board under ‘known facts’, though personally I don’t count attempted murder on the tally. A murder without a corpse isn’t much of a murder at all.
I don’t say that, though, not with Burnett still in a wheelchair. Not with the coffee-’n’-painkiller diet he’s on.
Burnett: ‘These kidnappers are highly professional, enough to impress a man like Jack Gerraghty. They’re financially sophisticated, operationally sophisticated. They have the capacity, or have had the capacity, to infiltrate police systems. They’re looking at very high payoffs per operation. And they’re ruthless. Ruthless enough that they aimed to solve a possible problem with a sack of explosive.’
I write, ‘Sophisticated, ruthless, ambitious.’
Burnett waits to see if I write anything further, but I don’t.
‘OK, then, here are two more pieces. One, obviously, we’re dealing with some kind of local connection here. We found Alina Mishchenko in Ystradfflur. She appears to have spent time in Llanglydwen, though we’ve got some uncertainties about exactly where, how, and for how long.
‘Two, we’re basically confident that Len Roberts spirited Bethan Williams out of the valley at the time she went missing. How he did it was remarkable, but it was remarkable mostly because a fifteen-year-old girl, without any strong interest in adventure sports, was willing to enter a flooded cave, traverse a long way underground, then emerge by a different exit, also flooded. Yes, she was with a man who knew that cave extremely well. And yes, he placed a rope to help with the second, and more difficult, of the two dives. But all the same, we have to believe that Bethan Williams was in fear of her life. That strongly suggests she had stumbled onto some aspect of the kidnap operation. Those things together – the Mishchenko sightings plus the Williams case – imply that the Welsh end of this kidnap operation has its centre in Llanglydwen or somewhere very close.’
I mark the board as Burnett talks. We’re seeing the case the same way now. No points of discord.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘That’s known facts and probable assumptions. Hypotheses?’
It’s my turn, it seems, so I say, ‘Well, we can’t be sure, but we presume that one of the houses in that valley has been used as a safe house to store our kidnappees. So someone there has a secure cellar. They have, or can arrange, a black cloth backdrop, and a video camera. Enough stores of food that they don’t all of a sudden walk into the village shop and start buying for one extra person. Those things are noticed in places like that.’
Burnett nods and agrees.
I write, ‘SAFE HOUSE = LLANGLYDWEN’.
Burnett says, ‘And what do we think? The gang who makes the snatch?’
I shake my head. ‘No. They’re London. Different skill sets. Very different territory. The London end has to make the grab, then deliver that guy or the girl to whoever runs our safe house. If I were doing it, I’d make the swap somewhere completely random. A truck-stop on the M1. A bit of woodland outside London. Anything neutral and meaningless.
‘That way the London end has one job to do. They do it. Get paid. Move on. They know everything about the target – who she is, where she lives, all that – but nothing about what happens next. The Llanglydwen end is the exact opposite. It’s perfectly possible that whoever runs the safe house doesn’t even know the name of whoever he’s got. He just keeps that person locked up and fed, clean and warm. What happens next depends on the victim’s family. If they pay the ransom and follow the rules, he just drops the victim in some random location and simply drives off again. Or, if the family breaks the kidnappers’ rules in any way, he kills and dumps the victim.’
Or doesn’t kill them and doesn’t dump them.
I’m not sure we’re looking at killers here, but what evidence do I have for that speculation? None at the moment and Burnett is a man who likes to take things one step at a time. Evidence first, conclusions second.
I keep my mouth shut, my speculations silent.
Write, ‘SNATCH SQUAD = LONDON’ before shifting my pen rightwards to the heading that says, ‘QUESTIONS’.
Burnett says, ‘Still the same one as we started with.’
I write, ‘WHY A.M. TO YSTRADFFLUR?’
A.M.: Alina Mishchenko. My dead Carlotta.
And why the Bible? The candles? The dress?
Write: ‘WHY BIBLE? WHY CANDLES? WHY DRESS?’
Burnett says, ‘The monastery? What do we think about that?’
I shake my head. I don’t know what I think. What I say is, ‘The monastery pretty much has to be involved in some way. The barley-seed doesn’t prove it, because anyone held against their will in Llanglydwen might well eat bread that’s been baked and bought locally. And our forensics don’t quite do it, because anyone could have planted the things that we found. But the monks do acknowledge that she was there and the whole set-up at Ystradfflur smelled of something religious. So, yes, on balance, we have to guess the monastery is involved in some way.’
I suddenly think of the pigs, oinking in their hoggy happiness. Think of the way the world vanished when I leaned into Father Cyril’s blessing.
Burnett – trying out a hypothesis, no more – says, ‘So what if we say that the monks are all phoneys. They’re the safe house. They keep their victims in a barn or a cellar or something, and either collect their share of the money or just kill them.’
I shake my head, and this time it is a no.
‘I’ve gone to and fro on this, I really have. But I just can’t make it work. For one thing, these monks aren’t phoney. They’re always praying. Always on silent retreats. Always giving shelter to the needy and all that. They work damn hard and there’s no money there. I mean, nothin
g’s uncomfortable or badly made, but there’s just no mismatch between their visible income and their visible outgoings. No hint of luxury. They’re basically vegetarian. They’ve got one van and that’s a piece of crap. And then . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, they don’t do locks. Not that I’ve seen. Not in the guest house. Not on the front door. When I was there before Christmas, Father Cyril just left me alone in his study. Alone in the whole farmhouse. I could have gone anywhere, looked at anything. And remember, they have strangers floating around all the time. I mean, yes, the whole place is big enough that you could certainly find, or build, a decent hiding place. But it would be a weirdly complicated set-up if all you need is a quiet safe house.’
Burnett fires a look at me. ‘You were there before Christmas?’
Interviewing material witnesses without another police officer present. That’s a massive no-no. A career-ending one.
I say, ‘I went to church there. While I was there, I talked to the abbot. He mostly told me about medieval saints of theirs. If he’d even started to tell me anything that was inquiry-relevant, I’d have told him to shut up and taken him off to Carmarthen.’
Burnett rumbles at that. A not-how-it’s-done-in-Dyfed-Powys rumble. I get the same rumblings in South Wales too.
We talk a bit more about those monks, and while nothing coalesces, our unease remains. Burnett’s and mine. Under ‘QUESTIONS’, I write, ‘MONASTERY???’
If I could, I’d want to smash that monkish serenity. I’d want to detain each one of the monks and interrogate them under caution. Have a team search every damn inch of that monastery. Guest rooms. Monks’ rooms. Communal areas. Barns and outbuildings. Say to Father Cyril, ‘So, Father, what does Mother Julian mean to you?’
It’s not even that I think those guys are killers. I don’t. Their air of godly gentleness isn’t faked. It just runs too deep. Yet that same basic evasion that Burnett and I detected on our very first visit has never quite gone and that’s been an itch I’ve not been able to scratch into submission.
Burnett grimaces. It’s frustrating to be this far into an inquiry and to have quite such an unquenched sense of unease around a major piece of the investigation. But we have nothing to justify a warrant – nothing, remotely, to justify an arrest – and we’re forced to leave it. The law of England and Wales doesn’t allow us to kick doors open, just because those doors happen to annoy us.
Stupid laws. They should make me prime minister.
‘OK,’ says Burnett. ‘Actions.’
I write, ‘ACTIONS’, lettered in blood.
We go through the various strands of our inquiry. The progress that we’ve already made. The bits that need more attention.
We go on talking. As we talk, people start entering the incident room behind us. A couple try to barge through. Want to exchange Christmas chat with their heroically injured and now heroically returned boss. Burnett’s look tells them to fuck off, though his actual lips just ask someone to get him more coffee.
We go through our lists. Talk things over. A plan evolves.
Burnett is really impressive in command. He’s just better at this, the leadership thing. Flashes of insight and occasional obsessive brilliance: that’s what I bring to the party. But effective policing is about much more than that, and Burnett’s skills in managing this operation show why he’s heading for DCI, and I never will.
I say, ‘Bethan Williams is still alive. She’s out there somewhere.’
Burnett nods. We’ve already put out all the media appeals that make sense. No useful response so far, but we just might get something now that Christmas is gone.
I say, ‘Her dad still wants her back. It’s like his life has been frozen for eight years.’
Burnett nods. ‘I’m sending a couple of officers to re-interview the mother. See if we get anything further.’
I write, ‘WHERE IS BETHAN?’ on the now-crowded whiteboard. The only part of it that holds my attention, however, is the single word, ‘MONASTERY???’
We fall silent. Burnett’s face changes, getting himself ready for that incident room.
His change of expression: it’s as though he’s buckling on his armour, readying himself for battle. The burden of leadership. Rather you than me, mate. Rather you than me.
And as I’m thinking those excellent thoughts, I realise that Burnett is looking at me with a certain intensity.
He says, ‘Go on.’
‘Go on, what? Go on where?’
Burnett gestures at the whiteboard. Says, ‘Fiona, this lot, it’s all important, it all has to be done, we know that . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not engaged, not really. When we were talking all that through, you didn’t stick your hand up for any of it. You’re normally biting my hand off to do the next thing.’
I make a face. I don’t like being so easily read.
‘Sorry.’ One of my not-sorry sorries.
‘So?’
‘Sir?’
‘Fiona, I know you. Somewhere in the recesses of what you’re pleased to call your brain, you’ll have something you want to do. Chase a barley seed, talk to plastic surgeons, start digging in the hills above Llanglydwen. I have no idea, I have absolutely no idea what that thing might be. But I would quite like it if you told me. You know, told me before you started doing it.’
I make my face again. The one about not liking being so easily read.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So? Fiona . . .’
That’s his warning Fiona. His rumbly, growly one.
‘Bethan, sir. Bethan Williams. I’d like to understand more about Bethan.’
‘Go on.’
‘Look, she learned something. Something that no one else in the valley knew. Where did she go? What did she see? Who did she talk to? When did her behaviour change? Why did she trust Len Roberts and no one else?’
Some version of those questions were asked in the original Bethan Williams inquiry, of course, but only in a context where the investigating officers knew nothing about kidnap and had strong reasons to suspect Len Roberts of being the killer. Asking the same questions but from a different position of knowledge could – just could – yield remarkably different results.
Burnett nods.
A slow nod. A good one.
As he stares at me, I write the question in letters as large as our now-crowded whiteboard will allow.
‘WHAT DID BETHAN SEE?’
What did Bethan Williams see? What did she learn? How did she come by the knowledge that sent her scurrying for her life through the wet and gloomy labyrinth that all but killed Burnett and me?
Burnett says, ‘OK. Bethan Williams. How do you want to play it?’
He means, do I think we should pull Neil Williams into a police station and give him a formal interview?
But the answer to that is clearly ‘No’, and Burnett, for all his instinct towards tidy police procedure, sees that too.
I say, ‘I’ve got a good relationship with him. I’ll just go over for cup of tea and a chat, sir. See what I can get. It’s intelligence we’re after, not evidence.’
Burnett nods. ‘OK, good. Do what you need to do, Fiona. Just do what you need to do. Stay in touch.’
I say all the things I’m meant to say. Hold the door open as he buzzes himself through. But all I can think is, Bethan Williams. I’m going to meet Bethan Williams.
The teenage girl with the answer to everything.
42
Credit where it’s due: and Kay exceeds expectations, not least in looks.
She’s beautiful, Kay, much more so than me, but her wardrobe is usually stuck in Late Teenage, a range that extends from Darkly Moody through Sulky to Stupidly, Wildly Sexy.
Not today. She wears a floral dress in black and white. (‘Ebony and natural,’ she admonishes me. ‘That’s not a hard black and that’s more like a really soft lime-white than an actual white-white.’) Either way, it’s a nice dress which she teams
with a tailored jacket in very dark grey, the sort of thing that I used to wear to interviews, and smart shoes, and she’s tied her hair in a bun.
Gone is my sulky teenage sister drifting from job to temporary job. Here instead is a self-confident young woman who looks like she’s already interior-designed a few dozen homes into carefully managed beauty. Kay looks like a young woman who knows who she is and what she wants from life and, if that’s the case, I wish her the very best of Welsh luck. Hope that the hounds of Luck and Providence and Good Fortune yap always at her heels.
In the back of the car, three ‘mood boards’ rattle and shake.
Kay has assembled these things with astonishing speed – astonishing to me, that is. She says, ‘It’s mostly just a couple of catalogues. It’s called cutting out pictures.’
‘You’ve got actual fabrics there too.’
‘A shop? Called John Lewis? You ask for samples and they give them to you.’
There are paint cards too, but I don’t ask about those. I’ve been put in my place and there I’ll stay.
The mood boards have titles. One is ‘1950s retro/cool’. The second is ‘Contemporary neutrals/textures’. The third is ‘Classic’, which, Kay tells me, is her way of saying ‘incredibly boring and safe’. I think I know which one Neil Williams will choose, but he’s the client.
We arrive at the farmyard. I’m in jeans and old shoes, but Kay has to find a way to tiptoe and jump through the mud and the dung and the puddles and the coarse granite chippings to the relative safety of the cracked concrete paving that runs down the side of the house. I carry the mood boards and offer her an arm when she has a long step to make.
We go on in.
Neil Williams is visibly impressed by Kay. Calls her ‘Miss Griffiths’ and pulls a chair out for her and asks her, three times, if she would like tea. At the sight of the mood boards, he says, ‘Goodness gracious’ and ‘Well I never’, even though he’s only a little past fifty.
I think part of him thinks that the mood boards are the product. That it’ll be down to him to reproduce those colours, those fabrics, that look in his living room. He has a daunted, even terrified, expression locked away behind that armoured politeness. But Kay says no. Explains it all to him. How he has to choose a look, then she’ll take it from there, and in stages.
The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series) Page 30
