Talking to the Dead: A Novel

by Harry Bingham

  I’m pleased to have these feelings too. Really am. But these things aren’t simple for me. I know that too much all at once can flip my fragile little boat and leave me much worse off than before. The whole Lohan stuff doesn’t help. It’s a risk factor. The anxieties I’ve had ever since Penry walloped me are the same, only more so. My little boat is on high seas already.

  We kiss once more, and I feel myself urgent with lust. Tugged by it. Eight hours of rowdy sex feels like a good option right now. But I’m in control of myself again and I know what I need to do. After our second kiss, I pull away, albeit gently.

  “Thank you for dinner, Detective Sergeant,” I say.

  He gives me a little salute. “D.C. Griffiths.”

  “My treat next time,” I tell him.

  “There’s going to be a next time?”

  I nod. That’s an easy one. “Yes. Yes, there will.”

  Home.

  Anxiety at the door. There’s a security light at the front of the house, so I’m not worried about possible lurkers outside. It’s the possible lurkers within that freak me out. I know the burglar alarm is now working properly, just as I was perfectly sure it was working properly before, but this is a fear that goes beyond reason.

  “Fuck feelings, trust reason,” I tell myself. An old slogan. Not much needed now.

  I insert my key in the lock. Turn it. Let myself in. The alarm starts blipping at me, as it always does, and I put in my access code to silence it.

  House empty. Lights on, as I’d left them. No noise. Nothing untoward.

  My brain is running through the checks, but my heart is racing as though it’s not too much interested in words from the boss upstairs. I go to close the front door. As I get there to swing it shut, my toe brushes against something on the floor.

  Instant terror.

  Instant, unreasonable terror. I fight it and make myself look down at my feet. It’s just a sheet of paper. An advertising flyer or something like it. I close the door, lock it, check the lock twice, then bend to pick the paper up.

  Not a flyer.

  It says this: WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. No name. Regular office paper. Ordinary household printer. No need for forensics, because I know already that there’ll be nothing to find.

  My panic is instant and convulsive. I’m down on my knees by the door, attempting the same dry retching that I had after Penry left. My clutch bag is well named for once, because I’m clutching it obsessively in my right hand, so that I can feel the haft of the knife. I’m ready to stab straight through the end of the bag if needed, extravagant silk bow and all.

  For ten minutes, fear is two tries and a penalty kick to the good. Griffiths F has yet to get out of her own half. I want to call Dad, have him come and rescue me. Call Brydon, have him come and rescue me. I’ll give him the best night of his life if he does. Or call Lev, and get his menacing effectiveness working for me once again.

  But those old slogans have their uses. Fuck feelings, trust reason. Dad, Brydon, and Lev are all stopgaps. Good for the night. Useless for a lifetime. If I’m in the grip of fear, I need to deal with it myself. And besides, I’ve a funny feeling that my dad’s already helped me.

  Checking the door locks again, I go through to the living room and my phone. I call Brian Penry. His landline, because I’d put his SIM card in a kettle. It rings four times, and then he answers it.

  “Penry.”

  “Brian? It’s Fiona Griffiths.”

  There’s a short pause. I’d pause if I were him. But maybe he just needs the time to find the right attitude to me. Nineteen seventies cop movie attitude? “Fucking tit” attitude? Slap your head off attitude? He opts for none of the above. Instead, he just says, “Well, and how can I help you today?”

  “Did your mam get those tulips? I sent them. I felt bad.”

  “Yes, she did. Thank you.”

  “Okay …” Don’t know how to answer that. I stole his phone. He hit me. I bought his mam tulips. It’s hard to work out who owes whom what exactly. “I got a note this evening. Through my letter box. It said ‘We know where you live.’ ”

  “That’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t asking for literary criticism. I know it’s a cliché.”

  “Any case, I do know where you live. You gave me bagels and smoked salmon, remember?”

  “It wasn’t from you. I know that.”

  “But you’re ringing me up.”

  “Did you know Huw Fletcher went missing from Rattigan’s Newport offices two weeks ago? It’s just you had his number on your SIM card.”

  A long silence. I let it run.

  “Listen. None of this has to be your problem. You’ve got D.C.I. Jackson on the murder inquiry, right? Let him run things. He’ll get his guy. Forensics. CCTV. All that stuff.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t need to do any more.”

  “Only I already have done more, haven’t I? Apart from anything else, I’ve got people sticking threatening notes through my letter box.”

  There’s a sigh—or not a sigh, maybe, an intake of breath—down the other end of the phone.

  “Huw Fletcher is an idiot,” he says. “He’s not a dangerous idiot, not dangerous to you, I mean. If you ask me, he’s going to be a dead idiot before too long. I didn’t give him your address. I did give him your name. Part of explaining that that text you sent didn’t come from me. I did use your surname. I did not use your first name. I did say you were a cop.”

  I do the same calculation as he’s just made. There are plenty of Griffiths in Cardiff, but not that many F. Griffithses. If Fletcher knew I was a cop, he could probably have found out my first name simply by ringing the Cathays Park switchboard. They certainly wouldn’t have given out a home address, but maybe every F. Griffiths in Cardiff got that message through their letter box this evening.

  “It’s the sort of thing that idiots do,” says Penry. “Doesn’t mean you need to worry about it.”

  “I saw a prostitute on Monday. I doubt if you know her. Ioana Balcescu. Someone had beaten her up quite badly. Not a punter having a go. A punishment beating of some sort. She didn’t tell us anything at all”—not true, but I want to protect her—“but she looked scared when it came to a couple of names.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Not your name, though I did ask.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “De nada. No, the two names that bothered her were Karol Sikorsky.” I leave a pause in case Penry wants to make a comment, but he doesn’t. “And Brendan Rattigan.”

  “Brendan Rattigan is dead. Didn’t you know that? Plane crash in the Severn Estuary.”

  “I know. Seems surprising that he’s still terrifying prostitutes in Butetown.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  A long pause. It should be the end of the call, except that neither of us is hanging up.

  “Do you want a word of advice from somebody who once used to be a half-decent policeman?” says Penry finally.

  “I’ll take anything going.”

  “Stay out of this. There’s nothing you can do, and as you’ve already noticed, Brendan Rattigan is perfectly well able to injure people from beyond the grave. Ready and willing. Just stay out of it.”

  “Have you stayed out of it?”

  He laughs. “I used to be a half-decent policeman. Doesn’t mean I am now.”

  “And maybe I’m already in it, whatever it is.”

  “Maybe.”

  Another beat, then him to me: “Are you all right? After I hit you?”

  “Fine. Yes. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I haven’t been worrying.”

  “No, of course not. Thanks anyway, Brian. You’ve been helpful.”

  “And Huw Fletcher’s an idiot. Trust me.”

  “I do, weirdly. Can I ask just one more question? Brendan Rattigan, just how dead exactly would you say he was?”

  Penry laughs. A proper laugh. No disguise or fakery in it. “Well, I wasn
’t watching at the time, but I’d say he was pretty damn dead. That’d be my guess, anyway.”

  We wish each other a good night, and I hang up. Oddly, I find myself trusting Penry more than not. I don’t know if that’s because he was a copper once, and in the end coppers stick together through thick and thin. Or if it’s something to do with him hitting me. If that’s exorcised something in our dealings with each other.

  If the note came from Huw Fletcher and if Fletcher is a nondangerous idiot who might be dead soon, then I don’t have more to worry about now than I did before I went out this evening. On the other hand, I honestly don’t know if I’m “out of it” or “in it,” whatever the “it” might be. And if the real danger comes from the possibly dead Brendan Rattigan, then the Penry-Fletcher axis is by no means the only way in which I might have been stirring up trouble for myself. There were all those calls and texts I made to the numbers in Penry’s phone book. There was my amazing ability to upset Ioana Balcescu by mentioning Rattigan’s name. Who knows by what routes word of my activities might have traveled back to people who might consider me a candidate for a punishment beating or worse?

  Not a good thought that. If those people ever do to me what they did to Ioana, then I wouldn’t survive it. I’d be back where I was as a teenager. As good as dead.

  The terrors that have so often assailed my nights seem to be creeping into my waking hours. Against some threats, a paring knife concealed in a blue silk clutch bag is not weaponry enough.

  And without considering my actions more than a moment, I’m at the door, going out. As I get into the car, I realize I’m still in my glad rags, kitten heels and all. Logic suggests going back inside to change, but I always keep a fleece top and hiking boots in the back of my car, and just now I’d rather keep moving.

  The roads are empty. I’d normally put my foot down, but bearing in mind where I’m going, I’m a good girl and stay within five or ten miles an hour of the speed limit. Up to Pontypridd. On to Treharris and Merthyr. Then the Heads of the Valleys road toward Ebbw Vale. Shapes and shades of coal mines. Their ghosts.

  I make the turn to Llangynidr. National Park country now. Not mountainous exactly, but high moorland. No dead miners here, just sheep looming white in the tussocky grass. I stop at one point to check my position and can hear the wind sighing through the grasses. No cars. No buildings. No people. There were quarries up here somewhere once, but I don’t know where and I don’t think they still operate.

  Turning down toward Llangattock, I have a sudden worry that I won’t find the barn. No directions. Driving at night. My satnav in the dark as much as me. But then I come to the turn in the hill. There’s a little passing place and, down a farm track maybe four hundred yards away, there’s a big white barn with a light over its door. Just where Aled said it would be. I can see farm machinery and a big concrete yard and not much else.

  The track is gated, but I think I’d feel safer walking than driving anyway. I change my cute little kitten heels for hiking boots, pull my fleece top over my dress. It’s colder up here. Partly the altitude, partly being out of the city. The sky is overcast. Some stars, amid long reaches of blackness. The pattern of lights reveals the landscape. Orange glow over toward Crickhowell and Abergavenny. Virtually nothing when it comes to the looming bulk of the Black Mountains beyond.

  I’m scared, but it’s a good fear. The sort that encourages action, not the sort that encourages me to kneel by my front door, trying to retch up my supper. I feel clear and purposeful.

  I walk toward the barn. I’ve left my knife and clutch bag in the car, because they seem silly out here. I find myself almost enjoying the feeling of exposure.

  Once I hear a sudden movement of feet. My adrenaline responds instantly, but it’s only sheep—I can see their thick, stupid, lovable faces peering through the darkness—and I walk on.

  I reach the concrete yard. There is no one here. No sound other than those belonging to a farm at night. I don’t know what I expected to find or what I expected to do. There’s a big metal sliding door, the sort they have in industrial sheds, but it’s closed and, even if it’s not locked, I wouldn’t know how to pull it back. Beside it, though, there’s a smaller door. Human size, not tractor size. I go up to it. Try it. Find it open.

  I go on in.

  It is a huge place. Barns are, obviously, but there’s something about the huge roof, about the whole vast, silent space which alters something in you, whether you like it or not. I move forward, as though tiptoeing through a cathedral.

  The place is lit—if that’s the right term—by two bare bulbs hanging from long cords. They chuck out a hundred watts each, maybe, but in this space and this darkness the light gives up hope before it’s traveled far. Underneath the near bulb, there are a few bales of straw, marking out a line across the barn. Farther on down, beneath the other light, there’s a row of paper targets. Human-shaped, not target-shaped. Picked out in black and white. Black to congratulate you for a chest shot, white to mark you down for a shot to the arm or head.

  When I reach the straw bales, I find a handgun there. I don’t know what sort. A cardboard box with bullets lies beside it.

  I know that guns have safety catches, and I fiddle around, trying to work out if the safety catch is on or off. I’ve no idea. Only one way to find out.

  I feel half like an idiot and half like I’m Cagney and Lacey. I adopt the pose. Feet apart. Arms out. Steady gaze. Fire.

  Nothing.

  I put the thing that I think has to be the safety catch into the only other position it can be in and do the same thing again.

  The shot is astonishingly loud. Like when Penry hit me, only the audio equivalent. I don’t know if my ears are sensitive, or if guns really are that loud, or if it’s the sheer volume of silence in the barn that threw me.

  As I put the gun down, arms trembling slightly, I notice that there are ear defenders there on the straw as well. I wouldn’t even know what to call them if Aled Whatsisface hadn’t mentioned the term. Good old Aled. One of Dad’s boys. My ever reliable dad. The ultimate Mr. Fix-it, the ne’er-do-well made good.

  Since I’m here, I figure, I might as well use my time.

  I learn how to load the gun, by sliding the magazine out of the handgrip. I practice doing it, until it seems simple. I close my eyes and, in the dark, unload and reload the gun, and flip the safety to off with my thumb. I could probably be faster about it, but I can do it. On the straw, there are four boxes of bullets, all told.

  I decide that one box can go on practice.

  Fire. Fire. Fire.

  Close eyes. Turn around. Then whip round to the targets and fire, fire, fire.

  There are 250 bullets or so in the box. I fire about 150 of them. Some of my shots aren’t hitting the target. Plenty of others are hitting white areas: head, hand, groin, leg. But there are plenty hitting black. The target I’m aiming at doesn’t have much of a middle now. It’s looking ragged.

  My arms are aching from the effort of holding the gun out, and I put it down, sitting for a rest next to it. There was a posh girl in my year at Cambridge, also a philosopher, who gave names to every significant possession in her life. She had a teddy bear, of course, but her car had a name too. So did her phone. So did both of her laptops and her camera. For all I know she gave names to her knives and forks as well—I don’t know how far these things go with the English aristocracy. Me, I’m not the object-naming sort at all, but if I were then I think this gun would be the first to get a name. A Huw, maybe. Stupid, but just possibly dangerous. Or a Brendan, dead as fish meal but still terrifying prostitutes near you. Or maybe a Jane Alexander, neat, sleek, and a little bit scary.

  I decide to finish firing off this box of ammo, then leave with both the gun and one more box of bullets. If there are more than 250 people coming to get me, I’ll just have to take my chances with the paring knife.

  I get up again and start my routine. Arms together—ignore the ache—feet apart—both eyes open—breath
ing steady. Fire. Fire. Fire.

  I do the turning around stuff. I try shooting one-handed. My accuracy is definitely worse, but I still wouldn’t like to be the target.

  And then as I get ready for another close-my-eyes-turn-fire routine, I suddenly notice that the door I came in through is open. There’s a man standing there. Flat cap. Checked shirt under thick farmer tweed. Ageless. Could be thirty. Could be sixty. He’s looking straight at me. He inclines his head to acknowledge my presence, but otherwise says and does nothing. For the first time, I notice that, up at the other end of the barn, the end which is unlit and in darkness, there are animals stirring. Cattle, I think. Sheep would be out in the fields. I can dimly see amber eyes gleaming in the shadows. I wonder what the cows make of my shooting. Whether this is something they hear often, or almost never.

  I wouldn’t know. I pull my ear defenders off.

  “Drop your shoulders,” the man tells me. “And soft hands. Don’t tense up. Ease the trigger. You don’t want to jerk it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you right-handed?”

  I nod.

  “Then left foot slightly forward. Just slightly. Shoulder’s width apart. Select a new target.”

  I turn back to the gun. The shooting range has lost some of its dimness, now that my eyes are fully adjusted. Feeling the man’s eyes on my back, I adopt my stance and shoot off a magazine of ten bullets in the space of three or four seconds. I try keeping my shoulders dropped and my hands soft. I’ve left the ear defenders off, but this time I’m expecting the noise and quite like it. It fills the space.

  I turn back to the man, who only nods.

  I interpret that as a “go on” and shoot off another four magazines. I concentrate on my shoulders and hands, and my accuracy is better. I’ve got nothing to compare it with, but overall I’d say it was good.

  I turn back again to the man.