The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (DC Fiona Griffiths)

by Harry Bingham

  We’re too tired to bicker now. And in any case, our little sisterhood has done well tonight.

  The ground smells of wet clay and moorgrass. We can hear the thin sigh of wind moving in the bilberries. Sheep champing. And somewhere, a movement of water over rock.

  55

  Homecomings. Real life in all its sweet complexity.

  The easiest bit is my family. Dad’s uproarious desire for reunion. My mother’s fussing delight. My sisters’ unfeigned pleasure at seeing me again. It’s all that I could have wanted, and more. I’ve missed them.

  My sister Ant, who has always for some reason wanted to be blonde, loves my new look and my mother, I think, is secretly curious. But my sister, Kay, who I always trust on these things, tells me it’s no good at all and, with my encouragement, does stuff with hair dye and scissors that turns me back, more or less, into the person I was. She takes three of Jessica’s tops and two of her skirts by way of payment.

  It is a relief to be able to look into a mirror and not see that blonde self peering out at me. I never got on with Jessica, the poor, temporary creature. I’m pleased she’s gone.

  The next easiest bit is work. I don’t go back into Cathays straight away. Partly Jackson and Brattenbury both want me to spend a couple of days reacquainting myself with my nearest and dearest. But also, I end up spending a night in hospital. My injuries aren’t particularly profound. I was taken off the mountain by helicopter and brought straight back to Cardiff. The shot which hit my leg was fired blind and I was hit only by a perimeter scatter. The skin around my ankle looks angry and red, with pimples rising where the pellets entered. Of more concern to the doctors was the damage done to my feet, which were raw and cut all over, with half a hillside worth of mud and sheepmuck trodden into every wound.

  They cleaned my feet, using a few stitches where the cuts were notably bad. As for my calf and ankle, they simply extracted as many pellets as they could and left the rest. Hooked me up to an IV antibiotic for twenty-four hours, more as a precaution than anything else. They tell me that the flesh will simply close over the pellets that remain, forming little fibroids under the skin. I’m given a letter confirming the existence of metal shot in my body: I may need it, in case I bleep in airport metal detectors.

  I like that thought. Like the idea that I’ll carry this encounter on the mountain with me wherever I go. Some women, I know, have favourite bits of jewellery that they can’t bear to be without. I’m not like that. I do have some bits and pieces – necklaces mostly, some earrings and a silver bracelet – that do me good service. But they don’t feel essential. They’re not core me.

  These gunshot spheres – about a dozen, the doctor guessed – feel right. Precious and personal. I even like it that they’re hidden. Spoils of war. The doctor said, ‘You may not feel them at all, but experiences vary. You could get a bit of soreness in some weathers, or feel some coldness.’ My leg is bandaged now, so I can’t see it, but I’m looking forward to the removal of the dressings. I hope there’ll be something to see. Small white freckles and lumps beneath the skin.

  And for all that I want to get into the office, catch up with the investigation, I enjoy the hospital. Its cluttered quiet. This fresh, medicinal linen and the chatter of nurses.

  One of them, a student nurse, sits on my bed for forty minutes and tells me about her degree course. I ask to check my chart and she passes it to me, putting a blood pressure cuff on me as she does so. But it’s not my blood pressure I care about, but my name. FIONA GRIFFITHS. Block capitals and computer printed.

  The nurse says, when she sees my gaze refusing to detach from the chart, ‘It looks all OK. It’s all fine.’

  I nod and hand back the chart. She’s right.

  After a long sleep, at the hospital and a second one, the following night, at home, I’m ready for work again, or sort of. Buzz comes to get me. He says, am I strong enough to go into work. ‘Jackson wants you for a debriefing if you’re up to it.’

  I say I’m fine. It’ll be weird going into the office again after so long, but nice-weird, not bad. We drive there in Buzz’s car and, for once, I’m allowed to put my hand on his leg and keep it there, even when he’s changing gear. I’m on oral antibiotics and aspirin, and I’ve been given special orthopaedic boots and crutches, which I don’t really need. My feet are sore, but not atrocious.

  At Cathays, I hobble into a lift and up to Jackson’s floor. Go to his office.

  He’s there with Brattenbury. He and I sit side by side on the squeaky fake leather sofa. Jackson leans back on a matching chair. The shadow line of dust under Jackson’s sofa is still there. Mr Conway, the strictest of my various bosses, would have reprimanded me for that.

  I pluck my jacket into some sort of shape. Try to look professional. Try not to notice the brown leaves curling on the carpet.

  Jackson sends someone to get hot drinks and brings me up to speed with the case itself. Some of it I already know, but it’s nice to have the whole thing from the top.

  ‘Roy’s fine. Legs smashed to buggery. They need to be reset. A whole lot of surgery. Don’t even ask, but . . . compared with what might have been, he’s fine.’

  Jackson’s face moves. I already know that a man was sent down to the cellar to kill Roy. Part of the clean-up. Roy shot the man with a triple blast from his shotgun, killing him outright from close range. I don’t know if he shouted ‘Police!’ first.

  Jackson tosses me a photo of the dead man. It’s not a face I recognise, but there were no innocents in that farmhouse.

  I say this to Jackson, or something like it, but he shrugs. ‘There’ll be an IPCC investigation, of course, but they’re very sympathetic. We won’t have any problems with them.’

  The IPCC is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and they’re obliged to mount a full inquiry whenever a police officer discharges a weapon. That inquiry will certainly include me in its scope. I think, though, strangely enough, I didn’t operate outside the law at any stage. It’ll be odd to be the subject of an inquiry and not have to lie. I’m getting old.

  Then I remember that I have sixty thousand pounds of Tinker’s money in an offshore account so secure that only I can access it and which is untraceable by any British law enforcement agency. Money which I have no intention of declaring. I also remember that, after spending a day learning computer hacking at the hands of a master, I emailed myself a copy of the Trojan horse software in question. It occurs to me that while the IPCC would be quite interested in these things, I am most unlikely to tell them.

  I feel faintly relieved, like finding that my lost youth isn’t actually lost at all.

  ‘What about Tinker?’ I ask. I want to know if they ever pressed Terry’s Fuck It button.

  Not unexpectedly, the answer is yes.

  Brattenbury says, ‘The fake software went live from about the time you started blowing things up. We got alerts out to everyone we could. Sent officers to the IT departments of every corporate which we knew to be compromised. Notified banks. Notified the software supplier. HMRC. Got some accounts frozen.’

  ‘And?’ I ask.

  ‘They took thirty-four million pounds. From twelve different corporates, ones we didn’t even know were in danger. Even there, I have to say, the firms concerned were not . . . they were not as security-aware as you’d think they would be. None of the firms in question will be endangered by the loss. It’s a maximum of a week’s payroll in most cases. They can think of it as a small reminder to tighten up their act.’

  ‘Thirty-four million?’

  Jackson doesn’t let Brattenbury answer. He says, ‘We were expecting a further three weeks before that button was pressed. Given the circumstances, and the fact that liberating Roy, and you, and securing the farmhouse were our top operational priorities, I think it’s remarkable how well we did. Tribute to Adrian’s professionalism. His and that of his colleagues.’

  I don’t doubt Brattenbury’s professionalism. Never have done. But thirty-four million qu
id?

  ‘Who have we got?’ I ask in a low voice. ‘That first farm buggy, did we get any of those?’

  ‘Three. Allan Wiley. The man you call Geoff. One other.’

  He throws some photos on the table. Sure enough: Allan, Geoff, one other I don’t recognise. Brattenbury tells me that his men heard the shooting up on the hill, where the fields met mountain, and responded instantly. They saw the damaged buggy, saw that any fugitives would now be escaping on foot and poured search teams into the area to pick them up. It took until two hours after dawn to get the three men – all scattered, all located in different spots. At one point, there were a hundred and fifty police officers engaged in the hunt.

  ‘This man,’ I say, indicating the photo of the man I’ve not seen before. ‘Is he . . .?’

  ‘No. He’s a thug, basically. A hired hand. Michael Edwards. Did a tour in the army. Conviction for affray. Involved with a unlicensed boxing gym in Llanrumney. He doesn’t seem any too bright. Plus he wants a legal aid lawyer, because he claims not to have the cash for one of his own.’

  So Mr Big has got away. I think of that black figure hurrying away from me and Vic, on that distant ridge. Him and whoever else was with him. Anna Quintrell’s ‘rich guy’ with ‘legitimate money’ is thirty-four million pounds up and laughing.

  ‘Henderson?’ I ask in a low voice.

  ‘Alive. But in a very bad way. Broken neck, broken back. Bad head injuries. Last I heard, he might survive.’ He shakes his hand in a toss-up sort of way. ‘Might.’

  I don’t know what I feel about that.

  Part of me wants the full police experience. I want to be there behind the one-way mirror as I watch the interrogation. Watch as they play the audio of his and my little session in that hotel bedroom. Watch his face change, as he realises how complete, how inescapable, is the case against him.

  But not all of me. Fiona Grey, I think, wants him to complete his act of escape. Wants that leap into night to be rewarded by death. A dark almost-love-affair finding its dark almost-resolution.

  Me too, I think. I usually want my criminals to encounter their justice at the hands of a court, behind the bars of a jail. But Vic, I think, might be an exception. Faced with the choice of death or jail, he chose the former and I’m not too sure I’d want to challenge or alter his decision.

  ‘Four?’ I ask. ‘We got four?’

  ‘Five, if you count the man that Roy shot,’ says Jackson. ‘Plus five dead in the barn. Plus the whole of the Indian IT team. The Metropolitan Police arrested the lot of them at Heathrow. They were flying to Dubai. We’re charging them not just with fraud but with conspiracy to murder. We’re telling them to expect life in prison. I’m told they’re absolutely terrified. Giving us very full cooperation.’

  His face moves. One of those Jacksonian faces I can’t interpret. Boulders in an empty river bed. Grey stones beneath a grey cliff.

  ‘And look, at some stage, you’re going to get a lecture from me about making appropriate judgements of risk in fast-moving situations. There’s absolutely no way you should have pursued those vehicles on your own. You had absolutely no right to place yourself at risk in the way that you did. But if you hadn’t broken up that escape route, the men involved would have got away. All of them, not just some. I’m still going to give you that lecture, but not right now. Speaking not as a police officer now, but just man to man, you did a bloody good job.’

  I stare at him.

  He says, ‘Man to woman, then.’

  ‘Women. Fiona was there, Fiona Grey. And Jessica.’

  Jackson doesn’t share my passion for exactitude, and in any case Brattenbury is saying something now. ‘And remember, we’re still working. We’ve got a lot of leads.’

  ‘Ownership of the farmhouse?’

  ‘A Jersey registered company. Beneficial owners in Bermuda.’

  ‘Forensics? DNA?’

  ‘Well, between you and Henderson, we weren’t left with quite as much as we’d have liked, but the farmhouse was only partially damaged. We’ve got a lot of traces, including a laundry room which our forensic boys are absolutely loving. We’re working through it all now.’

  ‘Vehicle movements to and from the farmhouse? Where’s the nearest camera?’

  My two bosses exchange a look, but indulge me for a change.

  Brattenbury says, ‘The nearest camera is two miles away on the far side of the village. If they chose a route to avoid the location, they could easily drive fifteen, twenty miles without passing anything.’

  That’s not helpful, obviously, but ANPR doesn’t just rely on fixed roadside cameras. Filling stations and police cars are also linked in to the system. And although you can get from Cardiff to the Brecon Beacons without using the A470, you’ll waste a lot of time doing anything else. A rich man, in a hurry, believing himself to be beyond police scrutiny – might he not use the A470 before starting to wiggle around on back roads? Not in the past year perhaps, but before then, well before, when the whole of Tinker was just a gleam in the eye? And indeed, I don’t think the barn was constructed just to service Tinker. I think other criminal enterprises have been conceived there too. Legitimate ones as well, maybe.

  It’ll be a massive exercise. Massive beyond massive. Tracking every car on the A470. Homing in on those owners who boast a few million in assets, quite likely a lot more. Trying to determine how many of those have legitimate business up in Brecon or deeper into Powys. Cross-tabulating that data against users of the business centre neighbouring Henderson’s osteopathy place.

  As I’m thinking this through, I mutter, ‘That health centre. Henderson was meeting a guy called Davison.’

  Brattenbury and Jackson both look at me sharply.

  I add, ‘He’s some kind of fixer. Does dirty jobs for cash. He’s been Henderson’s go-between. Henderson meets Davison. Davison liaises with Mr Big.’

  There’s a pause and a micro-nod from Brattenbury, indicating that he’ll leave this one to Jackson.

  Jackson says, ‘Fiona, the source for this is . . .?’

  ‘Henderson.’

  ‘He told you this?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ I make something up. An overheard phone message. A strange reaction from Henderson. Blah, blah.

  Normally I try to make my lies convincing – or I do when I’m speaking to my superiors. It’s a mark of respect, the least I can do. On this occasion, though, my heart’s not quite in it and I peter out before I should.

  I try to scratch my foot, which is itchy, but the boot prevents much scratching action.

  ‘We’ll mark that down as unconfirmed intelligence, shall we?’ says Jackson.

  ‘You can call it conspiracy hearsay bollocks if you like, sir. But I believe it.’

  Jackson once told me that if I ever found myself believing a piece of ‘conspiracy hearsay bollocks’ then I was to tell him so, and he would treat it as true, no matter how dubious the source. It was part of a pact between him and me, a pact whose purpose was to stop me ending up in places where bad guys were trying to shoot me. Obviously the arrangement hasn’t worked out too cleverly, but a promise is still a promise.

  ‘OK. Then so do we.’ He nods at Brattenbury to tell him that he’s included in the deal too. Brattenbury is perplexed, but accepting.

  There’s a pause.

  Grey light enters through a grey window. I have a strange feeling. I think, This is my life. My ordinary life. No one is trying to kill me. This is the ordinary life I always wanted.

  The thought doesn’t make me feel good, particularly. More accurately, I suppose, I just don’t know what I feel beyond a certain giddiness. It’s as though, in some ways, I’ve learned to live on Planet Normal. Breathe its atmosphere, cope with its gravity. But that doesn’t mean I’m at home here. Perhaps this soil will always be alien, and its people strangers.

  Brattenbury starts to say how pleased he is. Not just with my safe return: all that has already been said. He starts to say how well the operation has gone down
in London. ‘We have disrupted the largest theft ever to have been attempted in the UK. Most of its perpetrators are dead or in custody. Those in custody can expect very significant sentences, life in most cases. As you know, because you’ve been working undercover, we’re prohibited from making any public recognition of your work, but I want to you know that our DG, the Director General, has told me that he’s written to the Home Secretary herself to express—’

  He means well, I recognise that, but Adrian doesn’t know me the way Jackson does.

  I interrupt. In my opinion, an operation which allows its primary perpetrator to escape uncaught – his identity not even guessed at – is a near-total failure. An operation which enriches the primary villain by thirty-four million quid is nothing short of a catastrophe. I state these things in an English which is pithy, expressive, and makes generous use of terms drawn from the Anglo-Saxon and Old High Dutch. I use the mature and respectful tone I usually adopt when expressing disagreement with a superior officer.

  Brattenbury sits back, so Jackson can yell at me better. But he doesn’t yell. Just shakes me into silence with his empty coffee mug.

  ‘Fiona, shut up. Just for a change, shut up. Yes, this is a partial success, not a full one. But the case isn’t closed and we’re not going to close it until we have the main man. If you want to remain associated with the operation, that’s fine with me and I’m sure . . .?’

  ‘Of course,’ Brattenbury says. ‘Same here, of course.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say sulkily.

  Then I have one of those clear windscreen moments and add, ‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’

  Brattenbury says, ‘The fact is that, and I’m speaking for SOCA here, we are very good at disrupting major criminal activity. We are good at securing convictions for the lower-level criminals. But we often just don’t have the tools to arrest the top-level operators. If the money goes offshore, we can’t follow it. If we don’t get a confession or some unusual breakthrough, it’s relatively rare for us to get the guys at the very top. But we go on trying. And we know that the better we are at disrupting crime, the more we raise the costs of criminal activity.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘SOCA top brass: they regard this case as the biggest success they’ve had in years.’