The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths

by Harry Bingham

  I glower. Not at them – I have no complaints with their handling of the operation, none whatever – but at a world where enriching some rich fuckwit by thirty-four million stolen pounds is regarded as a success.

  I say, ‘Arresting Henderson, killing and arresting all those other people – you realize that’s only increased Mr. Big’s profit? If Henderson and the others had been around, the money would have had to be shared out somehow. I don’t know how, but it would have been parceled out. As it is, our bad guy has no one to share it with. He’s made thirty-four million pounds, in a single night’s work. How is that raising the cost of criminal activity?’

  My question doesn’t have an answer. It’s not that Jackson and Brattenbury don’t share the same objectives as me. More that, with time, they’ve grown accustomed to outcomes that fall short of what they once wanted. It’s not a skill I’ve yet learned. Not one I want to learn.

  Brattenbury says, ‘You’re OK, are you? Your feet and everything, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He pauses a moment. I notice for the first time a graveness in his face. A remorse.

  He looks at his coffee cup, finds it empty and puts it down. He swivels to face me.

  ‘Look, Fiona, I need to say sorry. I promised I wouldn’t lose you. I promised to get SCO19 to the farmhouse and I failed. I allowed you to enter a situation which was unacceptably dangerous and I apologize. I’ve asked the IPCC to include that failure in their investigation and they’ll have their process. But quite separately from that, from me to you, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let that happen. Or allowed you to enter a situation where it could have happened.’

  I say the right things, or think I do. But the truth is, I think I knew SOCA would lose me. I think I knew Henderson’s subtlety would defeat Brattenbury’s. For all SOCA’s efficiently deployed resources, it is easier to shake surveillance than to maintain it. I think that, when I stepped into Henderson’s car, the day he came to pick me up from Birmingham, I knew I would be entering the farmhouse alone. Trusted my own wits to do whatever needed to be done. I don’t say that exactly, but I don’t want Brattenbury to feel bad.

  Jackson looks at his watch. Brattenbury too. Says he has to catch a train to London. Has a cab waiting downstairs. Jackson and I walk him to the lift. Or Jackson walks him, and I hobble him. I use my crutches, but only just need them.

  ‘You’ll come and see us in London sometime? Let me take you and Susan out to lunch?’

  I nod. Make a promise.

  The lifts open and close.

  One phase of my life finishes. Another, presumably, starts.

  Jackson says, ‘They’ll offer you a job. You know that?’

  I look at him. Probably do something with my face that implies a question.

  ‘They’ll give you lunch somewhere nice. Little tour of SOCA HQ. Get you to meet the DG. Flatter you a bit. Tell you how important their work is, how sexy it is. They may not even offer you a job directly, just encourage you to ask for it. That way, the theory is, I don’t get pissed off when they nick my best officers.’

  This is news to me. I hadn’t even thought about working for SOCA.

  ‘They’ll have bigger cases to offer you. More resources. More opportunity.’

  ‘Oh.’ I can’t imagine leaving Cardiff, and say so. ‘I think I like it here, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  He starts steering me towards the stairs, then remembers my crutches and goes back to the lifts. Punches the down button.

  ‘Sir, when I’m like that.’ I point back at his office and my stream of Old High Dutch. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t always help it. And sometimes I can help it, but I do it anyway.’ I’m about to end that little speech with another ‘sorry’, but I seem to be all out of apology juice, so I just shrug instead. Jackson looked at me as I was speaking, but his face doesn’t do or say much afterwards.

  When the lift arrives, he hits the button for the basement. The canteen.

  ‘Fiona, I’ve been talking with some of my colleagues. Senior ones, including the Chief Constable and including Rhiannon Watkins.’

  I nod. That sort of intro normally spells trouble, but I don’t think it can on this occasion.

  The giddy feeling I had before is stronger now. I have to lean against the wall of the lift to keep my balance.

  ‘And we agree, all of us, that it’s ridiculous you still being a detective constable. An officer of your abilities needs to climb the ladder. I know Rhiannon has already spoken to you about this. We want you to take the exams for detective sergeant.’

  I start to object, but Jackson says, ‘Fiona, I’m trying to do things nicely, but I’m not really asking a question. I am telling you what you are going to do. We call it giving an order.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You remember those?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, yes, sir’.

  We’re at the canteen now. Double doors, opening in. There’s a noise from inside. The rolling buzz of conversation. A conversation that self-silences as we enter.

  The room – the biggest in the building – is a jam of people. The whole of CID. A spatter of uniforms.

  I shrink back. My giddiness is now out of control. I’m a marionette without the strings. Just for a moment I don’t know who or where I am.

  Somehow, though, my feet know to follow Jackson. If I’m clumsy, my crutches excuse me.

  I feel very strange.

  There’s a podium of some sort. Roy Williams on it in some weird form of wheelchair that allows his legs to lie flat in front of him. Katie is there in the front row, next to the chief constable.

  Jackson says something. A speech. I can’t hear much of it. Or rather: I hear it all, but don’t make much sense of it. I see Buzz sitting next to Katie. His face seems like the most familiar thing in the world and the strangest, both at once.

  Jackson’s oration concludes.

  ‘We did everything we could. Every resource, every database, every lead, every officer, every bit of fancy technology at our disposal. And we failed. We did our best to get Roy back and we failed. But our police service has never just been about technology and fancy databases. It’s about guts and brains and sheer damn determination. And I’m telling you that Roy here owes his safety and well-being entirely to the actions, courage and resourcefulness of this young officer. And if—’

  He doesn’t finish.

  The room stands. There’s a roar of applause, of clapping. A wall of sound: that phrase which doesn’t quite mean anything until you encounter something like this. A physical sensation, of being pushed back almost. Something dense pressing to occupy a once empty space.

  Roy is a popular officer and there’s a way that this is Roy’s show more than mine, his harvest of approval. But it’s my show too. Jackson pumps my hand. Roy Williams gets his arms round my waist – the only place he can reach from his wheelchair – and hugs me in a way that still somehow manages to lift me off the ground. Katie – dewier, tearier and prettier than ever – joins in too. Buzz hugs me and says something in my ear that I can’t really hear because of the noise, but it was a nice thing, whatever, and I make nice in return.

  I do what I think I’m meant to do, but I find it hard. The noise of the applause – the din, that sense of mental concussion – is like the shooting up on the hill, only I was more comfortable there. More at ease. Since I can’t reasonably start shooting anyone now, I just shrink into myself and wait for it all to stop.

  For a moment, I don’t know where to look or what to do. I talk to Katie, because it means I don’t have to face my colleagues. Then the chief constable sorts out my social awkwardness by making a short speech that manages to deflate the mood and send everyone into a coma of talked-at, semi-official boredom.

  Then some catering folk start serving beer and wine and nibbles and I hide out in a corner with Katie and my friend Bev and try to avoid people coming up to me. The strategy doesn’t work tremendously well, but in the end it’s Jackson who rescues me. He’s with B
uzz. Jackson has a full bottle of beer in his hand, and it’s not his first. Buzz has a glass of wine, and it’s not his first.

  ‘I think you two little lovebirds ought to bugger off now,’ says Jackson.

  I say, ‘Is that you doing it again? Saying something nicely, but really—’

  ‘Yes. Bugger off. That’s an order.’

  I polish up one of my gay-man-waving salutes and hand it over. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Buzz salutes the military way, crisp and correct.

  We leave.

  As the canteen doors swing shut behind us, and we walk down the corridor, I ask Buzz if we can stop a moment.

  We do, and there is a look of enquiry on his face, but all I want is to listen to the sound of the room behind us. The rolling sound of conversation, drink and laughter.

  I realize this is the sound of happiness. Of a collection of human beings who, more than not, like and respect each other. Who like their work in life. Who form a community, a mutually supportive community, that shares its troubles and its triumphs. That welcomes back its own.

  I realize too that, for all my odd awkwardness, I am an accepted member of that community, today more than ever. I feel moved, more than when I was shrinking from attention up on the dais earlier.

  Buzz is looking at my face. Gesturing at the lifts.

  ‘OK to go on?’

  I nod. I surely am.

  56.

  Homecomings and sadness. The sweet and the sour.

  That evening, I go back home with Buzz. We go to bed together, eat together, renew our acquaintance, like a couple of blind people each tracing hands over the other’s once-familiar face.

  I had intended to do this tomorrow, but when Buzz starts talking about dates for the wedding, I have to tell him. Have to say the truth.

  ‘Dearest Buzz, I have something to tell you. Something difficult. And I’m so sorry. I always wanted to be the best girlfriend in the world for you, because you deserve nothing less. But I’m not that person. I’m not …’

  I don’t quite know how to say the things I need to tell him. Buzz is so intact, so sure of himself, of who he is, what he wants, the things he likes, that it’s hard communicating with him sometimes. I’m his opposite in too many ways.

  I say, ‘I’m a mess, Buzz. More of a mess than you understand. I’m not very good at knowing anything about myself. I’m not very good at being a human being, it just isn’t one of my strengths.’

  I say more than that too.

  I tell him that being Buzz’s girlfriend and then fiancée have been just about the best things in my life. My highest accomplishment.

  I tell him that I love him and respect him and have depended utterly on his love and straightness.

  Tell him that I wouldn’t be as much of a human as I am had it not been for him. It was Buzz, more than anyone else, that first helped me tread the soil of Planet Normal.

  But there are things I don’t tell him. Don’t, because I can’t, because he wouldn’t understand if I did.

  I don’t tell him that Fiona Grey was mostly happier than I am. That her milieu of homeless shelters and divorced bus drivers and single-parent Somali immigrants and richly bangled mental-health workers was easier for her to navigate than the one I live in. That Buzz’s remarkable strength, patience and simplicity are almost problematic for me. He’s too good for the person I am.

  I say, ‘I think I need to find myself more before I can commit to anyone. Even to you, my best and dearest Buzz. And I’m so sorry, because I owe you so much more than this. I will always love you and always want your happiness. But I’m not the woman who will make you happy. I can’t marry you. I’m incredibly sorry.’

  It’s not as simple as that, of course. Buzz cries. I don’t because, apart from one time, I’ve never cried in my adult life. But I feel the emotion. Keep telling Buzz he’s the best of men, and yes I’m sure, and yes, this feels like the ultimate, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’.

  As we talk all this out, Buzz understands what I’m saying, or almost. Understands it in a Buzzian way, which is all I can hope for. He’s not happy. Not reconciled. He looks broken-hearted, in truth, and the worst thing about all this is that I’m the one doing the breaking. But I don’t have any doubts, not even now.

  I had wanted to spend the night with Buzz, this night of reunion. Spend one last night with Buzz and tell him tomorrow of my decision. But it doesn’t work like that and we both realize it’s impossible for me to stay under his roof tonight. To share a bed together.

  So I leave. I don’t have my car with me – it’s at home – so Buzz calls a taxi for me instead. We wait, cuddling, till we get a call telling us it’s arrived.

  I say, ‘Buzz, promise me you’ll seek your own happiness. Don’t let this be more than a road-bump. You deserve the best.’

  He nods, but that isn’t good enough.

  ‘Buzz, I need you to promise. Get over me. Find someone else. Not straight away, but do it. Please. Promise me.’

  He nods and this time it counts. We kiss each other lightly on the lips. My giddiness is so great now, I have problems with ordinary movements.

  ‘You’re OK, are you?’ says Buzz. ‘Sometimes those painkillers …’

  ‘I’m on aspirin, nothing else. And my feet are fine. It’s my head. It’s – not well. But it’s my problem. I should never have tried to make it yours.’

  He walks me downstairs, an awful sadness in his step.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  I give the taxi driver my home address. He drives up into the town center then out on the Newport Road towards Eastern Avenue and Pentwyn.

  My house, my life.

  A world without Buzz.

  I’ve got too many things in my head and I don’t know how to sort them out.

  When we’re no more than a minute from home, I ask the driver to turn around. Ask him to head back in towards Cathays, to the office. The driver does as I ask. It’s been a good fare from his perspective.

  I pay him and he goes.

  Roll myself a cigarette and smoke it, a dark shape against the pale glass.

  Then go inside and sign in. The desk officer doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t care. It’s not so usual for detectives to work through the night, but it’s not so unusual either. I left my crutches with Buzz. They’d been annoying me, a hindrance more than a help.

  I take the lift up to Jackson’s floor.

  Go to the cleaning cupboard opposite the lift. It’s not locked. There’s a trolley there, a good one. Different cleaning products from the ones I’m used to, but good enough. A vacuum cleaner. I drag everything out. Look for a tabard. I like those, when they fit. But there’s nothing there, so I do without. Hoover the carpets first. Long sweeps of grey, changing color slightly as I work. Do Jackson’s room with care. Move the sofa and hoover underneath. The skirting board hasn’t been touched for ages, so I sponge-wash it, scrubbing till I bring out the white. Dust the window sill. Squeegee the window. Do a careful job on the pot plant, picking off all the bits that are brown or heading that way. His keyboard is disgusting really. Needs a proper clean with the right sort of fluid, but I don’t find any in my trolley, so Jackson will just have to suffer.

  I normally do a room like this in eight minutes, but because of the sofa and the skirting board, and because I took extra care with the other bits, and because my hobbled gait and painful feet make everything slower, it takes me sixteen. I do two other offices, and one set of bathrooms, the women’s ones. The longer I work, the more I relax. I would do more, but my feet won’t let me.

  It’s only when I’m just about done on the bathroom that I dare to look at myself in the mirror. Look properly, I mean.

  Jessica’s gone. It’s only me and my sister-Fiona here now. We’re relieved to be left alone.

  I can’t quite tell what I see in our face, but it’s OK, I think. It’s scary letting go of Buzz. I know it’s the right thing to do, but it’s still a very big deal fo
r me. Trusting that I’ll be OK on my own.

  Anchored enough. Sane enough.

  I give the sinks a final wipe. I like the shine of ceramics under halogen.

  Put the cleaning stuff away. Call a taxi.

  I’ve cleaned three offices this evening. One of those belongs to a superintendent, the recently promoted Gethin Matthews.

  Before I go downstairs, I re-enter Matthews’s office. Turn on his computer. I can’t log in as him without stealing his password, and since I can’t be bothered to wait that long, I just log on using the default login details, the one any copper can use to access the basic databases. Then I go to my fake Hotmail account. Download the Trojan horse software that poor, dead Ian Shoesmith gave me. Load it onto Matthews’s computer. Close down. I feel a little ripple of Jessica-ishness rise in me as I do all that. I didn’t get on with her, but I liked her coolness. Her brassy don’t-give-a-damn quality. Enough to forgive her the odd push-up bra and questionable top.

  Gareth Glyn went missing in 2002. There are, broadly speaking, three possible explanations for that. One, he just got tired of his wife and wanted to make a clean break. You don’t usually do that by simply vanishing, but still: stranger things have happened.

  Two, he was indeed murdered, as his wife alleges, albeit for a crime of whistle-blowing which he committed some fifteen years earlier. Again, not obviously likely, but you can’t rule it out.

  Or three, that request for information from the security services could have related to something, some current inquiry, which was threatening to resurrect the ghosts of the past. Ghosts that might have called for Glyn to have entered a witness protection service.