The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (DC Fiona Griffiths)

by Harry Bingham

  ‘That’s perfectly true. There’s a huge difference and yet the training is designed for real life. By people who have lived that life.’

  Nod.

  ‘Fiona, we need a payroll clerk. Someone who looks like a payroll clerk. Someone who could do the job of a payroll clerk. We need an outstanding investigator and someone with nerve. Preferably also someone local. We could bring in someone from Birmingham, say, but then they look like someone being brought in for a reason. They’ll be the first person our targets will suspect.’

  Nod.

  There’s a glance between Jackson and Brattenbury. Jackson reaches out and flips the last photo. It’s of Kureishi. His corpse. Not a shot I’ve seen before. This one is full frontal. It takes a moment to notice that he has stumps in place of hands. There’s blood all over his legs. From this angle, the look on his face isn’t one of astonishment, but of anguish. Either that, or I’m just viewing it differently.

  ‘Fiona.’ This is Jackson talking. ‘I want you to know that you do not have to accept this assignment. I want you to know that we regard it as exceptionally dangerous. If you are exposed, the likelihood is that you end up like this.’ He taps the photo of Kureishi. ‘If you say no, that will not be held against you in any way at all. Not when it comes to promotion. Not when it comes to allocating work. Not in any way at all. Do you understand?’

  Nod.

  ‘I need you to say yes or no.’

  ‘Yes. I understand.’

  My voice is gravel moving on sandpaper. Cinders blowing in an empty grate.

  Another look passes between the two men.

  Brattenbury says, ‘I’d like to offer you the job. Your task would be to infiltrate the organisation and help us destroy it. You will continue to be employed here, by the South Wales CID. You’ll be seconded, on a temporary basis, to us at SOCA. I’ll be your case officer, but you’ll also have a reporting line direct to Dennis here. You’ll be able to reach either of us at any point.

  ‘We’ll work with your Fiona Grey legend. We’ll have you under our protection the entire time. We’ll surveille your flat and your workplace. We’ll have armed response officers ready should the situation ever call for it. But I don’t want to pretend these things are perfect. They never are. As Dennis says, this is a dangerous game. It’s OK to say no.’

  ‘Yes.’ Because neither of the men react, I say it again, more clearly this time. ‘I mean, yes, I’ll take the job.’

  Brattenbury doesn’t move. It’s as though he doesn’t want to move in case he breaks some meniscus that is only just holding its tension.

  Jackson is the opposite. He does a tiny double-take, as though checking he heard me right, then moves in quickly, forcefully, to say, ‘Fiona, you’re not to make this decision on the fly. You need to think about it. Your chap, now. Sergeant Brydon. You’ll need to talk to him. You can’t talk about this to your family or friends or other loved ones, but you need to think about them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This could be a long assignment.’ Jackson has some of my course paperwork in front of him. Paperwork in which I stated that I only wanted short duration assignments. ‘You have to think about the consequences. Not just for you, but for those around you.’

  ‘Yes.’ I don’t say anything for a while and nor does anyone else. Then: ‘I’ve got a holiday coming up. In Florida.’

  Brattenbury nods. ‘We don’t have to get in the way of that. It might be a good idea, actually.’ Gives me a half smile. ‘Perhaps go easy on the tan.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about payroll.’

  Brattenbury smiles again. ‘The company we want to place you in is an outfit called Western Vale. An insurance company. They use a system called Total Payroll Solutions. TPS. It’s standard software, easy to use. As luck would have it, this office uses identical software. So do half the offices in this city. If you’re up for this, we’ll start training you tomorrow. We’ll need to do some work on your legend. Get you familiar with the duties of a payroll clerk. Start the infiltration as soon as you get back from holiday.’

  His face asks, Anything else?

  I nod. I can’t see that there’s much else to say.

  I stand up. Or rather: two of me stand up. Fiona Griffiths, a policewoman, and Fiona Grey, a cleaner. Fiona Griffiths is comfortable enough in this environment: in a room with two senior officers and neither of them yelling at her. Fiona Grey feels out of place. As a cleaner, I was used to exiting a building before the employees turned up. I don’t know what to do under this scrutiny. Just look at the floor and wait to be dismissed.

  Brattenbury says, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll get started then.’

  Jackson says, ‘Think about it, Fiona. Think about it and talk it over.’

  He wants to hold my gaze, but he can’t find it. Whoever hoovered the room didn’t push the cleaning head properly under the sofa, so there’s a shadow line of dust visible beneath the seat. The miniature palm tree in its ceramic pot is dropping brown leaf curls on the carpet.

  Fiona Grey says, ‘Yes, sir,’ and leaves the room.

  13

  Florida. Blue seas, white sands. Men in red shorts. Women – women, including me – in itsy-bitsy bikinis, walking hand in hand with their men, down these implausible, glittering coasts.

  We live in an hotel block painted the colour of ice cream. Have the use of a pool where the sunbeds match the umbrellas and a bamboo- and rush-covered bar opens at eleven in the morning. I paint my toenails while Buzz does lengths. He reads a book about the war in Iraq. I have a paperback novel and a book of philosophy by Colin McGinn. I don’t read either. Mostly just leaf through women’s magazines left by other holiday-makers.

  Nothing feels real.

  Buzz was not happy with me. Not happy at all. We had the only proper argument we’ve ever really had. He couldn’t understand why I would take the Tinker assignment. Felt hurt. Maybe even frightened for me. I’m not sure. I was very slow to decode his feelings. Could only feel his anger. Felt his anger and responded stupidly.

  ‘You had Bosnia,’ I said. ‘Risking your life to defend the citizens of some other country. I’m a police officer. I’ve got a duty to our citizens.’

  ‘There are other ways to do your duty, Fi.’

  ‘Oh, because girls should stay clear of the rough stuff? Leave that to the lads, eh? Maybe they could put me in Family Liaison. I could look pretty and hand out the paper tissues.’

  I was stupid. Said stupid, hurtful things.

  We argued, badly, and didn’t make up before we went to sleep.

  It was my fault. As we reviewed things the following day, I realised that for Buzz these things are simple. If you’re single, you can do what you like. Male or female, no distinctions. Any degree of danger acceptable.

  But he doesn’t see my situation, or his, that way. In his eyes, we’ve given up our freedom for the relationship. There are escapes we can no longer take, dangers we may no longer face. Buzz, I realise, sees his life with a straightforwardness I am unable to match. Realise too that the commitment he makes to me is as total and uncomplicated as the one he expects from me in return.

  When I finally understand these things, I apologise, sincerely, for my behaviour the night before. I don’t cry, because tears don’t come easily to me, but I feel a kind of pricking in my eyes. Feel something liquid, or molten, loose inside me.

  I say, ‘Buzz, I would like to do this, because I’ve accepted the assignment and because I want to do something like this, at least once, so I know what it’s like. But if you say I can’t do it, I won’t. I’ll say no to Brattenbury. Say no to Jackson. And if I do do it, then I’ll never do anything like it again. Nothing so long-term. Nothing where the dangers are so obvious.’

  Buzz holds my face between his hands. His eyes are as big as a labrador’s. He’s so serious, I want to laugh.

  ‘That’s real, Fi, is it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a promise.’

  He’s moved. Emotions move in his
face like the wind over Cardiff Bay. Compared with me, he’s so easily explained. I am constantly learning from his simplicity.

  ‘Well, then. OK.’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘I think you should do it. I think you should be bloody careful. I hope you’ll see sense and choose to back out. But if you want to do it, you should do it.’

  His big eyes get bigger. We have make-up sex of the sort that we should have had the night before.

  And then – well, I think everything is all right. We don’t argue again. Start to make plans. Once I’ve slipped into being Fiona Grey full-time, I won’t be allowed to see Buzz more than once a month. Shouldn’t ever speak to him outside that time. But Buzz says, and I agree, that some rules are made to be broken. We figure out safe ways to communicate if need be.

  I start to work with Brattenbury. Spend days in our payroll department, learning my way round the system that powers the accounts. Learn about employment contracts and induction packs, payroll files and attendance trackers. Learn to generate P60s and P45s. Memorise HMRC rules on NI rates, statutory payments, and a host of other things. I work hard. I’m not particularly great with numbers, but the rest of it I find easy. I’m overqualified for this work.

  Evenings, and any other time I have spare, I work with Brattenbury. My legend takes shape. Fiona Grey grows a past, a present. Get a set of documents that are all fake, but the lie they tell starts to become so complete, it feels more like truth.

  Brattenbury comes round to my house with a female colleague. The two of them look at my wardrobe and tell me what Fiona Grey can and can’t take with her. Most of my clothes are off limits. Not because I’ve got so much classy stuff, but because Fiona Grey, poor lass, can’t afford even average stuff.

  Brattenbury gives me £160 and tells me to go to Primark. The female colleague comes with me, shepherding me through the store, editing my choices. I put everything that’s washable through at least five wash cycles, using a high-bleach detergent.

  I buy shoes, second-hand, from eBay. Pay £1.99 for one pair, £2.50 for some second-hand black boots. Wonder who is selling shoes for these prices.

  Brattenbury doesn’t want me to get a haircut. Tells me to cut it by myself, in front of a mirror, if I want it shorter.

  I don’t mind his bossiness. I like his attention to detail.

  He tells me that Fiona Grey has had a rough time in Manchester. She was physically abused. Had some run-ins with the police. Wants to emigrate.

  It’s a good story. Undercover operating procedure demands that every legend should offer a ‘bribe’ and a ‘bully’. For most people, the ‘bribe’ will simply be an offer of cash. If an officer is infiltrating a jewel-robbery team, his jewel-robbing colleagues will assume that any newcomer will be working for cash, just as they are. But these things are never constructed in a one-size-fits-all way. An officer infiltrating a group of neo-fascists will need to be ‘motivated’ by ideology. For Fiona Grey, the mistreated little payroll clerk, a simple appeal to avarice would never be entirely persuasive. Give her the chance to leave the country, though, and she might be induced into anything.

  ‘And the “bully” part?’

  Brattenbury raises his eyebrows. ‘You’re wanted by the Greater Manchester Police. That’ll be a real thing, by the way. We’ll create a crime report for a stabbing incident and set up an alert on the PNC names database. If you come into contact with the regular police, you’ll be brought up to Manchester for questioning.’

  ‘It’s just I was thinking, maybe something lower tech could work too. As a supplementary item.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, sir, when I was a student, I became reasonably proficient in growing cannabis. Obviously, I never inhaled and—’

  Brattenbury just laughs. ‘OK. Good. A little home horticulture. Why not?’

  ‘And if possible, sir—’

  ‘If possible, you’d like me to keep your supervising officer in the dark about this particular element of your legend? That’s fine. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  Undercover officers are permitted to break the law as long as any breaches are reasonably necessary for the purpose in hand. If you want to infiltrate that gang of neo-fascists, for example, they’ll probably need to see you smash a window, throw a punch, pull a blade, or attack a policeman. Those things are necessary, but they give case officers the heebie-jeebies: do too little and you may expose the officer as a plant. Do too much, and you’ll be in front of a disciplinary inquiry for exceeding your brief. By those standards, a few puffs of weed hardly signify.

  I also meet Roy Williams, a brother officer in CID, and one of the few beside me to have passed the undercover training course.

  Roy is an ex-rugby player, with a broken nose, some partially visible tattoos, and hair that’s cut with those electric clippers, leaving the kind of fuzz you measure in sixteenths of an inch. When he wears T-shirts, his biceps bulge like bratwurst tied with string.

  He doesn’t exactly look like your classic payroll type, but he does look splendidly like an undercover policeman.

  Brattenbury explains, ‘They know that we’ve found Kureishi. They’ll guess we’ve uncovered those frauds, at least some of them. What they won’t know is whether we believe Kureishi to have been the main perpetrator or whether we suspect wider organised crime involvement. Either way though, they’ll expect us to poke around. So Roy here will do the poking. We’re going to train him up, Fiona, same as you. Infiltrate him. Do everything right, just as if he were the main thrust of our investigation. In effect, we’ll show the bad guys that we’re looking around. I imagine they’ll stay well clear from any involvement. In due course, we’ll stand Roy down and the bad guys will think we’ve folded our investigation. Think of him as a red herring, if you like.’

  If he’s a red herring, Roy is certainly a well-muscled one. Also one who has acute difficulty with even the basics of payroll. We end up working together, side by side in the police’s own payroll department. Roy isn’t that bad with numbers, not really, but he has a kind of allergy to them. Both the numbers and the paperwork. The endless computer screens. We get the same training, but it’s always me that helps out Roy. Helping him actually makes me learn faster and more confidently. I’m good at this, I realise. I’ll make it as a payroll clerk.

  Perhaps that realisation, or the job itself, or the awareness of what will follow makes me increasingly adopt the colours of my new habitat. I wear neat little dresses from Next. Court shoes and pencil skirts. Give myself a dab or two of perfume in the morning, the first time I’ve done that, I think, since joining the police.

  As I blend in, Roy seems to blend out. He starts the day in suit and tie – the compulsory wear of male payroll clerking – but he quickly sheds the jacket, then the tie is loosened and by lunchtime his sleeves are rolled up, his gold signet ring is tapping anxiously against his teeth, and his eyes hold the agonised look of a man who knows that a P11(D) has to be inspected for accuracy but who is long past caring what the hell a P11(D) is meant to signify.

  We take lunch together most days. Roy talks about cases he’s worked on and asks me about my past. I don’t answer him, not really, and tell him he’s doing fine. We get together socially too. Me and Buzz, Roy and his wife Katie. Except that’s the wrong pairing really, the wrong way of expressing it. Roy is so entirely blokey that he ends up talking sport and policing with Buzz. I end up talking girl-stuff with Katie. She’s ten years younger than Roy, and visibly adoring of him. Katie was in charge of supper, but told Roy to look after things while she put their two-year-old daughter to bed. Roy forgot and I forgot to remind him, so I chat with Katie over a piece of chicken that is halfway to becoming coal. We talk about her daughter and her desire for more children. She asks about me and Buzz. She is sweet and wide-eyed and easily awed and charming.

  The next day I tell Roy he’s lucky, and I mean it.

  I don’t think anyone could say the same to Buzz, or not in quite the same way, at any r
ate.

  And through all this, Brattenbury doesn’t tell me much about Tinker. Says I’ll be more natural if I know fairly little. That’s OK with me. Brattenbury has the air of a man who knows what he’s doing.

  Before coming out to Florida, I also did what I could to make things right with my family. Saw my parents, my two sisters. Told them I was going to be on secondment to a Human Trafficking Unit, based in London but starting with a six-month capacity-building mission to the Balkans. Dad was protective, almost jealous. He was like this when I went off to Cambridge too. Mam said she’ll miss me, but she’ll be fine. My sisters weren’t that fussed.

  And here I am in Florida, as the year starts to tilt into Christmas, my toenails painted and my itsy-bitsy bikinis unnaturally bright under this almost tropical sun.

  Buzz and I have a nice time. I don’t swim much. Wear sun cream with a protection factor of fifty. Also broadbrimmed hats and, when I’m not under the shade of a sun umbrella, I’m quick to cover myself in long skirts, loose cotton tops.

  My pale skin doesn’t change colour much. Buzz goes a classic Welsh pink, then tilts over into a proper golden tan. He laughs at my milky limbs.

  Buzz swims. We both read, or pretend do. Go on long walks down those improbable beaches. Make a couple of excursions to supposed local attractions that don’t, in fact, seem very attractive.

  We make love in a hotel room, darkened by a venetian blind and a ceiling fan revolving slowly above our heads.

  On the penultimate evening of our stay, Buzz insists on our having a full romantic experience.

  French cuisine. View over the sea. Candles and big menus. In the lobby, lobsters idle in a lurid aquarium, unaware that their only remaining life-task is to seduce a diner into ordering their execution. No wonder they turn red when they’re cooked. That’s when they realise how stupid they’ve been.

  And after the wine is poured, and the candles lit, and the waiters sent away, Buzz gets out a tiny box. A jewellery box. He passes it over the table.