The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths

by Harry Bingham

  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.

  ‘OK,’ Henderson says. ‘Almost done.’

  Out of Barry on the Port Road. Normal speed. Normal everything.

  Normal everything, except for that phrase, ‘Almost done’, which trips a feeling of gathering sickness in the pit of my stomach. I’m not good with feelings always. It can take me a long time to feel them. To know what they are and make sense of them. But I know this one. The clenching in the abdomen. The dry mouth. The spasms in the palms of the hands.

  This is fear and I know her well.

  From the A4226 to the airport. Cardiff International.

  I see my friend the helicopter clearly now. We’re moving west all the time and the pilot isn’t moving with us. We’re driving into the most heavily restricted airspace in Wales and the chopper can’t travel a single inch closer. It’s five miles from where it needs to be and there’s nothing it, or anyone, can do.

  W
e will have multiple vehicles, plus air support. Well, Adrian old son, the vehicles were burned off as soon as Henderson made the effort to lose them. The air support is in the wrong place. And as for that ankle bracelet, I’m betting that Henderson has a plan for that too.

  He does.

  We drive into a multistory car park. Henderson in front. Allan and Geoff close behind.

  ‘Quickly now.’ Henderson’s command.

  His voice is terse. I don’t mind that. I can handle terse. But he’s carrying a loaded gun and he gestures with it as he speaks. Not exactly pointing it at me, but not exactly pointing it away from me either. His voice, his gestures are hardened by the car park’s steel and concrete. Every word, every movement has the force of ricochet.

  I do as he says.

  We bundle out of the BMW, engine still running. Allan runs from the rear car to take the wheel. Henderson directs me to the back of a white Transit van, its rear door hanging open.

  My ankle bracelet is in the car that Allan is now driving. As all this is happening, a pickup truck is reversing out of its parking space. The red face of a Welsh builder back from holiday. Him and his fat wife. They’re looking at the gap between their wing mirror and a concrete support pillar. Checking to see they can make it out without dinging the mirror.

  They can. They definitely can. But they’re not looking at the bit which most interests me. The ankle bracelet flipping through the air into the back of their truck. Henderson closing the doors of the Transit. Tossing me an old red cushion to soften the metal floor of the van.

  Our van driver – I don’t know who it is – drives off. Moving down the exit ramps. A bit of stop-start traffic, then the steady burr of an open road.

  An airport car park will be covered by plenty of security cameras, but you never get total coverage from those things. There are always blind spots in the imaging, or a camera that doesn’t work or has been disabled. If Henderson was careful enough to set up this particular maneuver, he’ll have been careful enough to avoid doing it on TV.

  The moving pickup truck was a lucky stroke, but it didn’t really matter. They could just have left the bracelet on the ground, or disabled it, or attached it magnetically to any other car in the car park. It would all have worked every bit as well.

  We will not lose you.

  Don’t do anything.

  Stay safe!

  Henderson listens to the thrum of the road rising through the wheel arches. Moves forward to speak to the van driver, through a little grille-covered hole in the plywood panel. Then leans back, grins and relaxes. The gun that he’s been carrying loose in his hands gets holstered again.

  ‘Sweet,’ he says. ‘Very sweet.’

  And it is. It really is. A textbook evasion.

  Jessica, the traitor, smiles.

  50.

  We drive to the farmhouse. A two-hour journey, though I can’t shake the feeling that we’re circling round rather than driving straight there. The three or four hundred square miles of possible territory we identified all lies within forty or fifty minutes of Cardiff. An hour, max..

  Hill roads, often enough. One sharp bend on an abrupt slope sends me scooting across the van into Henderson’s lap. He helps turn me the right way up. I give him my flower.

  We don’t talk much. The back of the van is too noisy. The metal walls and floor reverberate constantly. The vibration enters my head, a tremor cased in mild steel. My feet buzz, as though my boots and trousers were acrawl with bees.

  Henderson has his fingers twined into the perforations on one of the metal uprights supporting the van roof, and keeps himself from sliding around. I try the same thing, but my fingers get sore, so I give up and just let myself bounce and slide. I end up colliding with Henderson three more times. Hit the rear doors twice, once quite hard with my head.

  And eventually we’re there.

  The same steep ascents. The sharp bends. The transition onto a rough country track. The van stops. The driver in front kills the engine. My head is still ringing, but the note has changed. My legs are still buzzing probably, but I can’t feel them any more. Can’t feel anything below my waist.

  I still have the eye-mask with me. Henderson tells me to put it on. I do. Henderson bangs on the van doors and they’re opened from outside. Henderson and another strong male hand guide me up the steps into the barn.

  They sit me down, take the eye-mask off.

  It’s the same as before. Same barn, same decor. Same locks on the door, same padlocks on the windows.

  Geoff and Henderson in front of me. Geoff holding out a bottle of water, in case I’m thirsty.

  ‘OK?’ says Vic.

  ‘It was better than the Stereophonics,’ I say, taking the water.

  I get the same room as last time. Same bed, same bathrobe, same little paper-wrapped soap and hotel-style shampoo. No daffodils, though, and no Quintrell.

  ‘It’s weird without Anna.’

  Henderson gives me the work schedule for the weekend. It was intense last time, but this is worse. Ramesh has a team of five working with him this time. The big downstairs room is full of Ramesh’s guys, each with laptops, a server on a table in the corner, and a big beast of a printer on the floor beneath.

  The talk now isn’t of field selection and filter value resets. All that stuff has been done. What we’re doing now is the ‘test, test, test and test’.

  Ram and his boys run an endless series of pay slips for me to examine. Pay slips, and a whole menagerie of tax forms: the plain old fare of P14s and P45s and P35s, the vaguely aristocratic P11D, its rarer cousin the P11D(b), those crafty P9(T)s, the plain old P6 and the ugly P7X. We have to deal with the exotica too. The monarchs of the payroll savannah – the P46(pen), the WNU and the P46(expat). Forms which almost never crossed my desk at Western Vale. Form retrieval matters too: we lowly payroll clerks need to be able to call up such things as the SL1 and SL2 from the HRMC system.

  There’s no Quintrell here, so the burden of testing falls on me entirely. And in any case, this is more my sphere than hers. I’m the person who’s processed a million of these things. I start work on my day of arrival – no one cares that I’ve already worked an eight hour cleaning shift, or that I’ve spent seven hours playing car chase with Henderson. I get given a sandwich and a drink, then get sat in front of the first mound of dummy forms.

  I work from half past seven to half past nine, under Ramesh’s supervision. He tried the ‘beautiful lady expert’ line once, but it reminded us both that my sister in beautiful expertise is currently behind bars, her plain vanilla fraud charge wittily accessorized by a shiny new conspiracy to murder one.

  So Ram drops the effort to charm. Treats me instead like one of his underlings. As brusque and, when I make a mistake, as snappy. And because Ram puts his underlings under pressure, they apply the same pressure to me. They give me long lists of things I have to accomplish. Circle round behind my chair as they’re waiting. Because the team is badly lopsided – six of them and only one of me – they get to spend time drinking coffee and talking in their own language, well garnished with English and laughter. I think some of that mirth is aimed at me, I don’t know why. At one point, one of the men came to me with a stack of about a thousand payroll forms, dropped them on my desk and said something to his colleagues which made them all howl with laughter. He then moved the forms and patted my shoulder, but didn’t for a moment suggest that I could join in the joke.

  I have once again, it seems, found my true level, which is to be the most junior element in any hierarchy. The most risible. The element that starts cleaning bathrooms at four in the morning and has its shoulder patted at nine in the evening.

  I don’t mind, or not really. At half past nine, Henderson comes to rescue me.

  He takes me outside for a cigarette and a cup of coffee. I sip the coffee, but I’m still wary of caffeine. I like the ciggy, though, and have two. We sit on the steps in the darkness, listening to owls hoot in the woodland beyond.

 
The sky is blanketed in thick cloud. I can’t see the moon, or the telecoms mast, or anything at all beyond the little parking area and a glimpse of hawthorn. You can just about sense the change in the seasons, even now, even at night. The air carries a new chill. A sense of the leaves turning. It was this time of year when I found Hayley Morgan.

  A weird thought that: a year gone and the case still running.

  ‘Is Ram treating you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means no, not really, but I don’t care. It’s not for long.’

  ‘Can you do another hour or so tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We smoke a while in silence.

  Henderson seems reflective. It’s not just my part in all this that’s coming to an end. His is too. Once our dodgy software is installed and operative, it either works or it doesn’t. The theft either happens or it doesn’t. But any problems will be dealt with either by Shoesmith or, remotely, from India. The money exiting the country will be looked after by James Wyatt – a task that can be accomplished from anywhere. Henderson’s own particular brand of expertise will no longer be called for.

  ‘What will you do after all this?’ I ask.

  ‘Take a bloody holiday.’ Henderson laughs, then coughs. Stubs his cigarette on the step, breaking it at the join of the filter.

  ‘What does a Vic Henderson holiday look like? I’m thinking maybe Paris and fancy hotels and lots of beautiful women.’

  He looks sideways at me. ‘Yes, some of the time. But right now, I think I’d be in the mood for a few months in the Caribbean. Rent a boat. Drift around between the islands. I wouldn’t exactly say no to the beautiful women, though.’

  Something in that image tugs at me. The way he looks at me as he says it. I realize that his words contain an invitation. That if I want to be the girl on his boat, I can be. Wear a loose cotton tunic and watch my legs turn brown as Spanish cedar. All I’d have to do is share my bed and not mind that my lover has an itsy-bitsy tendency to murder.