The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths

by Harry Bingham

  The plain fact is that Brattenbury has discovered almost nothing of value, and shabby little Fiona Grey remains the only ace in his denuded deck.

  So I sit there, on the arm of my slumbering, velour bear, sipping my tea and feeling the rain. I have a murderer and two corpses for company. The steel tip of a javelin that is travelling nowhere.

  Henderson sits at my Formica table and studies my documents.

  And then – it all changes. I sense it from the way Henderson looks up at me from the table. His face has a gravity in it. A weight.

  ‘This is good, Fiona. It’s all good.’

  I don’t say anything to that. Not even a ‘thank you’. Henderson doesn’t expect one. We both know this is an introduction to something else.

  ‘Even Anna thinks so. I know she doesn’t always show it.’

  I don’t answer.

  The thing that Henderson isn’t saying is now the biggest thing in the room. Bigger than my armchair. Bigger than either of us.

  ‘And you’re happy with us, are you? You’ve got no complaints?’

  I’m not here any more. This is Fiona Grey’s world, not mine, and it’s she who sits in her grey skirt and white child’s polycotton blouse, staring out at Henderson. She’s scared, I feel it. I think she’s right to be.

  I don’t say anything and Henderson continues softly.

  ‘Because you’ve done well, we want to ramp it up. We want to slightly increase the work you do for us and the money too.’

  My mouth moves and after a bit words come out. ‘What work?’

  ‘It’ll be easy enough. Nothing difficult. Like I say, we’re pleased with you.’

  I have my hands crossed over my stomach. Henderson nice is more frightening than Henderson nasty.

  ‘You have nineteen names in your portfolio where everything is just ordinary, yes? Where you don’t yet do anything?’

  Don’t answer. Just stare.

  The light in the room is starting to fade. Shadows crawl out to join the twilight. Car headlights pass like alien moons.

  ‘It’s simple enough. We just want you to keep an eye on things. If a monthly pay slip comes past your desk and registers a change from what you’d expect, we want you to make a note of the irregularity and simply make the correction you normally would. Basically, all I’m saying is that these pay slips might start to look a bit funny from time to time and we just want you to keep an eye on them for us. Not just pay slips, but P60s, overtime forms, submissions to HMRC, anything like that. Is that clear?’

  I nod. It’s very clear and if Brattenbury is listening to all this, I bet he’s nodding too. SOCA has some fancy computer experts and if they’re listening in, I bet they’re nodding most of all.

  ‘For the first few weeks, you’ll be seeing a bit more of me and Anna. Probably best we meet at her house. Maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays. Is that OK?’

  Nod.

  ‘Good.’ The thing that Henderson isn’t saying is still here. A creature of these emerging shadows. He says, ‘You haven’t asked about your pay. I said I’d increase it.’

  I say nothing.

  He says, ‘We’ll double it. Is that fair? From right now.’

  Through cracked lips: ‘What about my lawyer?’

  He doesn’t hear me at first, but when he does, he says, ‘As soon as you start this new work, we’ll take you to London and you can get started with the lawyer. We’ll push things forward as quick as we can.’

  My mouth opens and closes in a thank-you-ish sort of way.

  ‘But look. There’s one more thing. This operation involves a lot of trust and you haven’t been with us long. We like you, but I wouldn’t say we know you.’

  That sounds like a formula Henderson had thought of before entering the room. He reaches for his bag. Produces a laptop. Fires up.

  ‘Come and sit here, please, Fiona.’

  He indicates the folding metal chair he’s been sitting at. I sit as he instructs.

  ‘I’m sorry about this. It’s going to be a bit unpleasant, but it makes a point.’

  He navigates to a video site. Calls up a clip that’s got a private listing. The clip is eight minutes long. The first three minutes show a cat fooling around in a garden. The garden looks more American than British. I assume the video’s just nicked from YouTube. A blind.

  But Henderson doesn’t bother with the cat. Drags the cursor through to the start of the fourth minute, where the screen changes.

  The picture is familiar and unfamiliar. It’s of Sajid Kureishi. Alive. Bound to his chair. Hands still attached to his arms. He’s talking, fast, terrified, almost incoherent.

  Henderson, looking at my face, jumps to mute the sound, and Kureishi’s voice disappears.

  But not his anguish. Not his astonishment.

  The video is shot in close up, so nothing much is visible in the picture except Kureishi’s face, chest and arms.

  Then the murder.

  A few slashes with a billhook. The sort of thing used to lay hedges and slay brambles. I can’t see whoever is wielding the tool, but I do notice that Henderson isn’t looking at the screen. I don’t know what that means except perhaps that he’s more likely a murderer-for-business than a murderer-for-pleasure.

  First one hand goes, then the other. Blood jets fast and horribly initially, then slows down to a flow, a trickle, a drip. Kureishi’s blood, Kureishi’s life.

  I can’t look. Or sort of do, because Henderson checks to see I have my eyes on the screen, but sort of don’t too.

  I discover something about myself. Me and Fiona Grey, the both of us. We hate what we’ve just seen. Hate and loathe it. Hate and loathe everything about everyone with any part in that video’s creation. It’s not the presence of death that bothers me. I enjoy the company of the dead. But murder is different and murderers are different.

  I vow to myself, again, that I will see Henderson jailed for this. Him and all his brood.

  Henderson murmurs, ‘This was a man who let us down. And we don’t permit that. If you do what we ask, you’ll be fine. We’ll help you leave the country. Make sure you have cash in your pocket. Some qualifications. Everything you need. If not – well, you know what happens.’

  I’m in shock. Me personally, I guess, but Fiona Grey is for sure, and she’s in control here. She clasps her belly, hugs and rocks.

  Even before the video has ended, before Kureishi’s life has finally dripped away, Henderson has closed the video software, deleted the file, folded the laptop.

  He puts the laptop in his bag. Shifts his cup of tea – half drunk – to the sink.

  He moves like an undertaker, treading softly in the silence.

  I think he wants a reaction from me. Or wants to find my eye so he can say something. Fiona gives him neither option. When he pauses by the sink, she says, quietly, ‘Please leave my room. Please just go.’

  He hesitates another second. Glances towards his own video-transmitter down by the skirting board. Then leaves.

  The door closes with the gentleness of death.

  I don’t know how long I sit there. An hour maybe, perhaps two. The violence still echoes round the room. Kureishi’s shrieks dangle from the light fittings, ricochet from the walls. Blood drips from the tap.

  I’ve been present at scenes of violence before. Not as a bystander, either, but as a participant. Yet nothing has affected me like this video. It’s not just Fiona Grey who is shocked. I am too. We hug each other and rock.

  I’ve wondered sometimes why I came into policing. I know I like solving puzzles. I know I like the dead. Like the comfort of rules and hierarchies, however bad I am at following their strictures. But now, I think, I’ve found the real answer. The core of it. I like this because I hate that. Have to solve crimes because I can’t abide the violence that generates them.

  Whenever I close my eyes, I see the descending billhook. Those knotted brown wrists. The way it took more than one stroke to sever them.

  And then Fiona, my companion Fiona, shi
fts from her seat. Starts shoving clothes into her only bag. She has more possessions now than will fit into that bag, so she has to be selective. This skirt, yes. That jumper, no. She takes her saucepan, mug, a couple of plastic bags of dried leaves and flowers from her cannabis plants. The yellow page of Anger and Anxiety advice from the fridge door.

  The yellow page has ten tips, good ones. Developed by people who know what people like Fiona and I need. But they missed some crucial points. Tip Eleven: Do not allow murderers into your home. Tip Twelve: Do not watch footage of a recent murder. Tip Thirteen: Do not live undercover. Do not separate yourself from the people who love you. Do not reject the good advice of the man who wants to be your husband.

  Tip Fourteen: Escape while you can.

  Fiona puts on a cardigan, a coat, picks up her bag and leaves the apartment.

  It’s still raining. It’s a forty-five minute walk to the bus station, but forty-five minutes it is.

  Fiona walks steadily. On Wellington Street, a man stops her and asks for directions. She gives them. Feels something slip into her pocket. Ten minutes after the man has gone, she checks her pocket. Finds a mobile phone.

  Beyond the railway line, but before the din and chaos of the bus station itself, she uses the phone to call Brattenbury. His personal mobile. He answers at the first ring.

  ‘Fiona, are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He tells me that there are armed police who have me in direct view. That it’s my call if I want to ‘come in’ as he puts it.

  ‘I’d quite like to nail this fucker, sir. And all his fucker friends.’

  That doesn’t quite sound like my voice, but it’s close enough.

  ‘Yes. I would too. What’s your plan?’

  There are a couple of options. Basically: go walkabout and come back again. Or just go walkabout.

  I argue for the latter. ‘At the moment they trust me about eighty or ninety per cent. We’ve got to get them to a straight one hundred. We can’t leave them in any doubt.’

  He agrees. Since the mole has been arrested at Fielding Insurance, we believe that I’m the only payroll insider that Tinker still has. They need me. And we need them to trust me.

  ‘Do you know where you want to go?’

  I do. It has to be somewhere I can be traced. I say what I’m proposing.

  ‘Ah yes. And you had an employment reference from them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Two, actually. One for my cleaning job, one for payroll. And I left my iPad in my room. That’ll have my application letter on it.’

  ‘Perfect. Go for it.’

  I say, ‘Those nineteen names. I think we know what they’re up to now.’

  ‘You think? I’m not sure. But we’ll see. Good luck, Fiona. Take care, stay safe.’

  I walk into the bus station. Buy some fast food. Eat some of it. Put the phone into the paper bag with the remains of my meal and throw the whole lot away.

  There’s a bus leaving for London in five minutes. I buy a ticket, sit at the back.

  We pull out of the city on sodden roads. Midnight tarmac spins endlessly from our departing tires. Black water plunging to the sea.

  27.

  That first night in London, I spend in Victoria Bus Station. Buying hot drinks in all-nights cafés when I get too cold. Otherwise trying to snatch little fragments of sleep on seats designed to deter the homeless.

  A man stinking of piss and alcohol tries to make a pass at me. There are two Transport Police officers close by. They watch, but don’t intervene. I don’t summon them.

  I miss Gary from the hostel. His raggedy beard and tobacco-stained laugh.

  When I sleep, I see Kureishi. His face as the first blow falls. Just that moment, again and again. I shake myself from sleep as soon I can scramble out of its pit.

  At seven, I go into the Ladies and try to sort myself out in the mirror. Fiona Grey looks exhausted and shocked. We do something with her hair. Put some blusher on, some eye make-up. She doesn’t look good, but she doesn’t look scary either. She did before.

  I find it easier to deal with her appearance than my own.

  I buy a bacon roll and a cup of tea. Make them last.

  Then take the tube across town to Ealing. Walk to Amina’s house.

  She’s not there. No sign of Man in Purple Shirt. No sign of the baby.

  I sit outside and wait. It’s not raining today and it’s warmer here than Cardiff.

  Smoke one cigarette that’s only tobacco. Smoke another that’s mostly weed.

  Amina turns up at half past two. She doesn’t see me straight away, but when she does, her face breaks into that huge, genuine, lovely smile of hers.

  ‘Fiona, my friend!’ she says and hugs me.

  She takes me into her house. Leaves me there while she fetches her baby from a neighbor. The motorbike is still sitting in the kitchen. Ditto the spatters of fat. The smell of lamb kidney and cumin seeds. There aren’t any rags or tools by the motorbike though. Few hints of a man in the house.

  Amina confirms as much when she returns. ‘It is just me and Asad now.’ Asad, the baby.

  I say I’ve got nowhere to stay.

  She says, ‘You are my friend. You stay with me.’

  And I do.

  We spend that first day smoking, playing with the baby and cooking. I ask her about the man who was here before, and she just says, ‘He is away.’ I don’t know if away means ‘in a different place but returning’ or if it means ‘gone for ever’. I don’t pry.

  At the end of the day, I give Amina fifty pounds. ‘For rent,’ I say. She tells me I don’t have to, but keeps the money.

  I call Mr. Conway at YCS and ask him if he has any work available. I say, ‘I don’t mind if I have to work some extra hours to start with.’ Meaning: it’s OK if I work four hours and he pays me for two. YCS isn’t particularly exploitative, but they all cut corners where they can. Conway takes my phone number and says he’ll see.

  There are only two bedrooms in the flat – no beds, just mattresses on the floor – and Asad has a room all to himself. I’m happy to sleep in the living room, but Amina is perplexed and, I think, upset by my assumption. It’s clear she’s used to sleeping many to a bed and so when it comes to the evening, we just go upstairs together. My short, milky limbs lying next to her long, ebony ones. ‘We are sisters now,’ Amina announces and turns out the light.

  I still see Kureishi when I close my eyes, but it’s better now that I’m not alone. I sleep badly, but it’s not awful.

  The first morning, Amina goes out to work leaving Asad – ‘his name means lion’ – with a neighbor. I tidy the house and try to bring order to the kitchen.

  That afternoon, Conway does call. Asks me in for work the next day. I don’t know if Brattenbury found a way to nudge that forward or if Conway really is that short of almost-reliable cleaners. I’m guessing a bit of both.

  And, pretty soon, Amina and I find our rhythm.

  We leave the house at just after three. Work from four to nine, cleaning offices for YCS. Then Amina leaves for a job at a local hotel which keeps her busy until early afternoon. I go straight back to the flat and retrieve the lion, Asad, from the neighbor. Then I keep him clean and entertained. Do what I can to clean in the kitchen. Get the house a bit tidier. All this, until Amina returns.

  She usually criticizes my cooking, which I can understand, but is also strangely dismissive of my efforts to clean, although the place is already a million times cleaner than it was. I’ve already filled five black sacks with rubbish and have got through three packets of kitchen cleaning cloths and two bottles of cleaning fluid, all of which I bought with my own money. But Amina’s sourness doesn’t tip over into anything serious and before too long we’re friends again. Spend the afternoons watching TV, which Amina doesn’t understand very well, and singing Asad songs in Arabic and Somali which I don’t understand at all. Amina and I go to bed at eight. We don’t cuddle or touch particularly, but if we happen to wake up skin to skin, t
hat doesn’t bother either of us. It’s a nice way to pass the night.

  At the weekend, there’s some kind of gathering of the family or clan and Amina and I work like slaves cooking and tidying and getting things ready. The people who come are almost all men or older boys. I mostly stay in the kitchen and help with the dishes. When it’s obvious that Amina needs help to clear the living room, I ask her if I ought to wear a headscarf. She says no, but there is something dark in her face, so I go upstairs and borrow one of her scarves anyway. No alcohol is served, but the men all chew khat and have teeth ranging from dark-yellow to almost-black.

  And that’s my life.

  Amina says we are sisters, but when she returns home from work, and I greet her at the door, with a clean baby in my arms, a tidy kitchen, a hoovered floor, the laundry drying upstairs, and something bubbling on the stove, I feel like something more than that. A wife. A helpmeet. Once, and it was only once, I spilled something in the kitchen – meat, quite an expensive item in our budgets – and Amina, quick as a flash, slapped me across the face and cursed me in Somali. I apologized quickly and after a minute or two, Amina relented and started smiling again. ‘But you are a very clumsy woman. Your mother did not teach you.’

  Teach you: Amina’s limbs are longer and more beautiful than mine, but they bear scars which, she told me, came from her mother beating her with wire. I’m not sure, on the whole, that I’d like to be a Somali wife, sister or daughter. Not permanently, anyway.

  On the fifth day, I have a long phone call with Brattenbury, from a payphone in Drayton Park. I say, ‘That Heathrow hotel. We’ve got CCTV of incoming guests?’

  Brattenbury has to double-check, but says yes. He reminds me that day-users of the hotel don’t need to register.