The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series)

by Harry Bingham

  I say nothing.

  Burnett says nothing.

  The air moves and kestrels glide and water burbles and drips.

  He says, ‘Those number plates . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How far have you got?’

  ‘I’ve done about half the data, sir. Isolating number plates registered to London addresses. I’ve only got three London-based vehicles entering this valley. Many more if we look at the A4067 in total but, even there, and excluding goods vehicles, I have only eighty-seven movements.’

  Burnett nods. ‘Good. Those are manageable numbers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve done about half?’

  ‘About that, yes.’

  ‘OK. Good. Keep going. Thank you.’

  I shrug. A de-nada type thing.

  He says, ‘And we’ve got that box of stuff from Jack Gerraghty.’

  ‘Yes.’

  A case that had no leads at all – a white dress and an undigested barley seed – is beginning to thicken with the kind of operational data that police inquiries are made of. This case still has plenty of don’t-knows. Plenty of need-to-find-outs. But the biggest one yawns just behind us.

  A dark opening.

  A black tunnel.

  A maw. A muzzle. A mouth.

  A gob. A gullet. A craw.

  29

  Cardiff. Not my house, but Watkins’s. Hers and Cal’s.

  It’s Cal who answers the door. Welcomes me. I’ve left my boots in the car, changed into something less clumpy, less heavy with clay. But the rest of me has still been squelching around in old pond mud and Breconshire streams. My hair is matted. I am not fragrant. I look like something rescued from a storm drain.

  Cal chides me gently on the doormat. Makes me take off my trousers. Picks at my jumper until I release that too. She coaxes me to take a shower and I do. Stay under the streaming water till the water gurgling off me runs clear. Dress in some clothes which Cal lends me: a pair of navy leggings and a thick patterned jumper which somehow expresses a wholesomeness that my own wardrobe sorely lacks.

  I’m then hustled, nicely hustled, through to the kitchen, where Watkins sternly bustles. She’s pleased to see me – she’s always telling me that I should come round more often – but she’s awkward enough that her pleased-to-see-you expression appears only flickeringly, one short spasm of discomfort, before giving way to the inevitable default glare. I don’t mind. It’s not often that I get to be the more socially sophisticated half of a pairing and I welcome the change.

  Cal, immune to her partner’s idiosyncrasies, asks if I want anything to eat. When my answer is a bit vaguer than it should be, her tone changes and she asks – sternly, suspiciously – ‘Have you actually had breakfast, Fiona? Have you eaten anything today?’

  I fess up. Admit my fallibility in the remembering-to-eat department. So Cal starts offering me things and I say no to everything until I realise that I’m meant to say yes to something, so then I say yes to whatever the last thing was that Cal offered, which turns out to be some granola-y thing so frighteningly wholesome that it looks like it could split a lip or crack a tooth.

  Cal says, ‘Coffee?’ and, because I’m trying to be good, I say, ‘Yes, please,’ prompting Watkins to say, sharply, ‘But you don’t like coffee,’ and I’m forced to admit that, no, I don’t like coffee, sorry, and could I please have some peppermint tea.

  Anyway. Gradually, everyone sorts me out. My head returns to normal, or as close to that happy place as I ever get.

  And I realise something. This nice, ordinary house. Its tidy kitchen, its scrap of lawn. Its apple tree pecked about by birds. I’m here because these two people actually like me. I don’t know why they do, but they do. It’s why they invite me round, why they ply me with tooth-crackingly fierce granola. And the truth is, it’s nice. I like it.

  I realise something else too. Watkins and Cal are too old to have kids and maybe that wouldn’t have been their thing anyway. But for them, I’m a kind of substitute. A slightly too-vulnerable young woman in need of adult protection. In need of love.

  I’m a bit old, of course. Really, I should be a dewy eighteen-year-old just off to university and rushing back home every time I broke up with a boyfriend or needed my clothes washed. But if you’re two lesbians who found love relatively late in life, maybe you’re good at making the best of what you’re given. Since I’m as close as they may ever get to that dewily hypothetical daughter, perhaps they’ll just make do.

  And I like it. I think I like it. When Cal steps next to me, bringing cold milk for my, genuinely quite hard-core, granola, I lean my head against her. She’s wearing one of those super-soft woollen jumpers – containing mohair or angora or something of that sort – and I just lean in, against her side, against that soft, ticklish warmth. She puts her hand to my shoulder and squeezes. No one says anything and the moment doesn’t last more than a couple of seconds. But’s that it, I think: a contract sealed. They’ve invited me to be their sort-of daughter and I’ve said yes. It feels odd, but good-odd, definitely good.

  We eat. We talk. My head becomes more normal.

  Watkins says, ‘Fiona, the mud?’

  I check that it’s OK to talk about a live investigation in front of Cal, and it is, so I tell them. The pond. The digging. The tunnel.

  The pond that was really an entrance. The dead end that was really a door.

  ‘Does Burnett know?’

  ‘Yes. He was with me when we made the breakthrough.’

  ‘We’ll have to investigate.’

  By we she means you.

  By investigate she means crawl into a tiny enclosed space knowing that there is an entire moutainside of rock and earth above your head.

  I say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s turned into a good case, though.’

  I nod. Yes, it has. It really has.

  Watkins looks for a moment like she’s going to say something further. She looks like that time at night in the Operation April suite, when she stopped at the door to say something, then turned that something into a bland ‘Well done.’

  Once again, though, she pulls back. Just does one of her strange faces at me. It’s like some team of nerdy NASA engineers has been commissioned to convey warm, human emotion using nothing other than remotely controlled facial muscles and carefully calculated eye contact. The operation is sort of successful, if judged in narrow, technical terms, but still mostly serves to remind you that NASA isn’t that great at everything.

  I smile back.

  Watkins says, ‘We’ve had the new budget through on Operation April.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dennis pushed for the maximum he could get.’

  ‘And . . .?’

  ‘There’s no budget. They haven’t given us one. They’ve just folded what’s left of the operation into Major Crime’s ongoing remit. There’ll be an announcement in due course, but . . .’

  I don’t actually say anything, but I don’t need to.

  ‘I know,’ says Watkins, ‘I know,’ as her tear-stained and unboyfriended daughter comes home from university with a bagful of wash.

  I accept her commiserations, but mentally log the fact that I have a new item for my To Do list, a list which now contains two items:

  (1) Find, arrest and prosecute Carlotta’s kidnappers.

  (2) Revive Operation April in order to find, arrest and prosecute all its principals.

  And, in the end, that two-and-a-bit item list reduces to one.

  Nail the fuckers, what it always comes down to in the end.

  30

  I don’t go home.

  Should, but don’t.

  Should, because it’s Saturday. Because I’m meant to restock my fridge, do some cleaning. Tidy my kitchen, my car, my house, my life.

  Should, because I’ve got a bin liner full of clothes that want washing.

  But don’t, because that’s not the way the wind blows for me today. Not the way this breeze breezes.


  I sit in my car and call Bev. She’s pissed off with me because I forgot our swimming date this week. Forgot to let her know I wouldn’t be there. So I call her. Say the right things – the sorries, the promises. Ask about her and Hemi Godfrey.

  She gushes about how well things are going, but adds, ‘Fi, he does talk about himself a lot. I mean, it’s early days and maybe he’s feeling a bit insecure, but do you think I should say anything at all?’

  What I think is that Hemi Godfrey looks handsome enough, but that he’s a self-absorbed arsehole whose conversation would bore a tree stump. I dilute that sentiment down to some homeopathic quantity and deliver it gently. Bev instantly starts defending her beau and I say yes to everything she tells me.

  We talk for thirty minutes then ring off.

  Bev is too nice, really. There should be some protection service you can get. Someone to keep the arseholes away.

  I think that, then wonder if I’d make it through the net.

  I sit a bit longer to see if I feel like doing the Saturday cleaning/food-buying/laundry thing but find I still don’t. That breeze just ain’t a-breezing.

  Think, I should probably get something to eat. Then remember I’ve just eaten.

  Delete the thought.

  Scrap it, release it, let it go.

  I have, I think, one of those time-slippages like the one I had that first night at Ystradfflur, under the tower of the church. Detach briefly from this place and time. This quiet car, this peaceful street. A bare-branched cherry tree alone under the sloping light.

  I can’t, for the moment, tell what’s alive and what’s not. The tree, the car, the street, me. I know Carlotta is here somewhere but know I won’t find her if I start to look.

  Who? Where? What? When?

  At times like this, I don’t know anything at all. Feel nothing. Think nothing. Know nothing.

  Then something changes again. The tree is just a tree. The car is just a car.

  I start the engine and drive slowly to Penarth.

  The seafront first. Iron railings and Victorian lamp-posts. A frill of cafés and beachside things, all empty now. Closed shutters and vacant car parks. A brown sea snapping at this iron shore.

  I watch the sea for a bit, then drive up the hill to call on my friend, Ed Saunders.

  Reliable Ed. Safe Ed. Good and kind Ed.

  Ed who once tended to my angrily psychotic teenage self. Ed who was – years later – my lover. My sort-of-but-never-quite boyfriend.

  He comes to the door wearing dark jeans and a shirt in sky-blue that makes his eyes pop.

  I poke him in the tummy and say, ‘That shirt makes your eyes pop.’

  Say, ‘Any room for random waifs and strays?’

  Would go on with the patter, except that he’s opening the door wide and welcoming me and saying, ‘No, it’s fine, come on in.’

  Come in to meet a woman uncrossing her legs from his sofa. Skinny trousers in, I don’t know, amethyst or something like that. Blue jumper, loosely cool with a Jackie Onassis collar. Patent-leather slingbacks glossily discarded on the floor.

  The woman stands. Taller than me, but everyone is. Shinier than me, better groomed, but again, ditto, ditto, ditto. Everyone is.

  Ed is doing the socially graceful thing. The person-meet-person thing. Names, introductions.

  I do my best to be Little Miss Normal greeting my fellow guests at Château Average, but it’s not a great act.

  ‘Milly, did you say?’

  ‘Jill. Or Jilly. Whichever.’

  ‘Jill. Jilly. Jilly. I’m terrible with names.’

  The sort of thing you say when you’re being introduced to five people all at once, but doesn’t work so well when there are only three people in the room and you’re one of them and your best friend is one of the others. Cal’s thickly knitted jumper is a bit bigger than I am and hangs low enough over my bum that it looks like a slightly questionable sort of mini-dress. One I can’t slip out of, because the T-shirt underneath isn’t as clean as it could be.

  Also: I can’t wear slingbacks because they either fall off or lacerate my tendons.

  Also: I’m not one hundred per cent sure that I don’t still have mud in my hair.

  The woman is nice. She doesn’t bite me, anyway. And Ed is used to me. Settles me down. Calms me. Equips me with a plate of salad and apple tart to follow. Water.

  The grown-ups drink espresso from tiny Spanish-patterned cups and make smiley eyes at me.

  This, I realise, is A Date. Part of Ed’s settle-down-and-get-married campaign which he’s been running with increasing seriousness for about a year. In that time, he had one quite committed relationship with an Australian colleague, a blue-eyed, blonde-haired woman who said ‘Grrreeat!’ a lot and showed her very even, very white and very large teeth when she did so. The relationship did OK, I think, but she wanted to return to the land down under and he preferred to stay the right way up. To remain with these Welsh winds. Our brown seas and chilly rains.

  This woman, this Jill, this Jilly, this possibly-Gillian or possibly-just-plain-old-Jill, is clearly a fairly serious proposition, because first dates have to happen in restaurants – that’s the rule – and even second dates don’t normally mean lazily casual Saturday lunches at the guy’s house.

  Conversation happens.

  Ed says, ‘No, it’s great. Jill, Fiona is one of my most important friends.’

  The yes-she’s-a-girl-I-once-shagged conversation is presumably something that happens after I’ve gone. Jill asks about my morning.

  ‘You know. Same old, same old. Crawling into caves. Searching for corpses. Smoking dope in front of a detective inspector.’

  Jill doesn’t know what to say to that. Looks over at Ed. A look which confirms to me that this pair have already crossed over into whatever number date it has to be where you sleep with each other. I realise – stupid me for being so slow – that, most likely, they’re here now because they were here together last night.

  Ed says, ‘This is Fiona. She’s probably telling the truth, unfortunately.’

  Jill does the ‘Gosh, that must be an interesting job’ thing at me, the sort of shiny conversational tuppences you throw to people unable to manage a pair of slingbacks. Alms for the poor.

  I eat my salad. Eat my tart. Go moodily to Ed’s fridge so I can steal any good leftovers he has. He finds some Tupperware for me and watches me steal.

  He’s got a new pestle and mortar, I notice. Uncracked.

  Jill stands in the doorway, checks her watch and darts a look across at Ed. He does a Roger Wilco look back again, but no one has to hustle me anywhere, because I’m going to leave this place of my own free will, magnificently knitted mini-dress and all.

  Say bye to Ed without poking him in the tummy. Say to Jill how great it was meeting her. Say I must get the pair of them over to mine, a promise which Ed will know for the untrustworthy lie that it is, but which Jill or Jilly or Gill or Gillian is gracious enough to accept at face value.

  Leave clutching Tupperware.

  Drive away, brightly waving.

  I don’t think I’m weirded out because I’m secretly lusting for Ed and have just managed to suppress that feeling for the last however many years. I am weirded out, though, and I think it must be because I can see that the Good Ship Ed Saunders is starting to steam away from me. Not away-away: never that, I hope. Just – he’s becoming the sort of person where I can’t simply turn up unannounced and slightly pongy on his doorstep. Can’t poke his tummy, make comments about his shirt and march on in as though he had nothing better to do than cook me proper food and talk me into becoming something like a passable human being.

  I drive home, annoyed with all tall dark-haired women with a loosely cool Jackie Onassis vibe. Annoyed with Ed. Annoyed, most of all, with myself.

  I go home.

  Go home and, for one short afternoon, comport myself like a model citizen of this difficult planet. Clean. Buy food. Do laundry. Pay bills.

 
Do those good things, then drive over to my Uncle Em’s house. Not a real uncle, just the very closest of Dad’s partners in the dark days of their mutual past. Em was always the first to arrive, the last to leave. My dad and Em often slightly withdrawn from the crowd, Em muttering to Dad behind his glittering, signet-ringed hand. If criminal gangs had handed out titles in the manner of some American corporate, I think Uncle Em would have been the chief operating officer. Not the strategist, but the engineer. The fixer.

  I’ve asked Em for photos before, and he told me he had none. But that, I’m certain, was just a reflexive, precautionary no. So I let it be. Allowed time for him to check in with my father. And when I asked again recently if anything had come to light, he said, as a matter of fact, yes. Invited me round to take a look.

  So I sit together with Em. A slow man now, attentive and kind.

  He teas me. He biscuits me. He gives me a little china plate, decorated with miniature dogs, ‘for the crumbs’. And we sit on the sofa and look at pictures of Emrys’s past.

  A christening, two weddings, a funeral.

  Something on a boat.

  Because Em will have checked all this with my dad beforehand, I know I’m looking only at approved photos, ones that tell me nothing.

  But Em has always liked me. And as we sit and chat and eat butter-rich shortbread from a dachshund-rich plate, the conversation spills over to the races. That’s a topic that never fails to engage Em, and at one point he stands up and says, ‘Hold on, I wonder if . . .’

  If he has more photos.

  His face does that security thing. That checking-against-risk thing that was the iron discipline of my father’s inner circle. But his face clears the checks. Even then, when he locates a fat paper wallet of his racing photos, he doesn’t hand it to me, but scrutinises each photo first before handing it over, slowly, formally, like a parole officer checking a discharge order.

  Horses. Men. Women.

  Most of the photos, he just hands over. But one arrives with an odd gesture beforehand, a quick brush of the fingers against the photo’s rightmost edge. A flick which was, you’d say, an attempt to get rid of a speck of dust, except that this photo had lain sandwiched in a group of forty or fifty others, in a closed envelope, and none of the others have been even the slightest fly-blown or dusty.