Talking to the Dead: A Novel

by Harry Bingham

  On the other hand, as I point out to Jane and as she knows full well, our choices were to act as we did or collect no serviceable evidence at all. We agree that, as soon as we step outside the house, we’ll independently make our own notes of the interview, sign them, then compare them. We’ll hope our two accounts will be identical, or near enough.

  The other big issue is how much more we can expect to achieve from continuing. The rule book says we should be asking a whole slew of further questions. Ms. Balcescu, will you please tell us when you last saw Janet Mancini? Describe for us your contacts with Karol Sikorsky. Are you aware, Ms. Balcescu, that this is a murder inquiry and withholding evidence may constitute an offense? That, pretty much, was how we conducted the last couple of interviews, and they came up with a big, fat, rosy nothing.

  “Shall I step in there, one on one, and see if she tells me anything?” I ask Jane. “If we catch the bastards, then we can probably coax her into making a statement. If I were her, I wouldn’t say a thing as long as they’re still out there. For now, I’m guessing that we’ll do better by going softly, softly.”

  Jane thinks. She’s stressed by this situation, I realize. It bothers her that she’s flying out of radio contact with the rule book. I’m not stressed. I feel more comfortable here. It’s the radio contact which stresses me.

  Jane nods. “Okay. I’ll see if we can get a doctor over, though really she needs to go to hospital.”

  I’m relieved. I wanted time alone with Ioana but didn’t want to force the issue.

  Back inside the room, I sit down again by Ioana. She looks at me—with wide, dark, south European eyes, her best feature—and I gaze back at her. Neither of us says anything. She doesn’t need a doctor or a couple of intrusive coppers. She needs a time machine. She needs to go back to the age of eight or nine, or earlier. Back to being a newborn. She needs different parents, a different upbringing, a different past. She needs to be on a completely different planet in a completely different life. No matter which way you read the signs on this one, she’s riding hard for an unhappy ending.

  Through the wall, we can hear Jane on the phone to the office, asking for a doctor to pay a visit. That’s how we do things on Planet Normal. It’s not how things have ever happened in Ioana’s world.

  “You’ve done well,” I tell her. “That’s Jane sorting out a doctor for you. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can trust him. It’s safe to let him in.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is there anything more you can tell me about Karol Sikorsky? Where he lives? Who his friends are? Anything at all?”

  She shakes her head and looks away from me. I decide not to push it any further. Instead I show her my card and write my mobile number on the back.

  “This is me. My name’s Fiona. You can call me any time at all. If you feel up to telling me more—maybe about the men who beat you up—then call me. Okay? I’ll put it here.”

  I thrust the card under the sofa cushion, so she knows where it is but it’s out of sight of any prying eyes. I don’t want Sikorsky’s thugs to find it, for Ioana’s sake and mine.

  “I’d better go now,” I tell her. “Do you want anything from the kitchen before I go?”

  “No, thank you. I’m okay.”

  “Do you want to watch the telly? Here. I’ll put it here.” I sort out the TV and remote control. I don’t think her English is good enough to make much sense of the TV, but then again, I’ve hardly heard her say anything at all. I squat down next to her and hold her hand.

  “You’ve done really well. You’ve been very brave. You’ve helped a lot of people.” Even to my ears, it sounds as though I’m not expecting her to survive, and maybe I’m not. But she grips my hand and smiles. Her life probably hasn’t been full of people telling her she’s done well.

  Then, I don’t know what possesses me, but I ask, “Ioana, can I ask you one last question? Have you ever heard of a man called Brendan Rattigan—?”

  I’m not sure what I was expecting when I asked that question. I haven’t really believed that Rattigan was alive. I’m pretty darn sure that Penry and Rattigan were up to something, and something with a connection to the Lohan murders. But I think I asked the question because I wanted to know how that damn debit card ended up in Janet Mancini’s squat. Idle curiosity. Something to say.

  But that just shows why you have to ask.

  Ioana tries to pull herself upright. Those cracked ribs stop her, and she cries out in pain. Jane’s done with her phone call and pops the door open to see what’s going on. The door interrupts anything that Ioana might have been about to say. So she says nothing. Her forte throughout this interview. But the expression on her face is shock and fear and distress.

  Jane and I gape at each other.

  “Can you tell me anything about Brendan Rattigan, Ioana? Anything at all?”

  Bad interview technique. Too nonspecific. Too open-ended. All I get is Ioana’s staring eyes and a long, swinging headshake. I don’t know if that’s no she won’t say, or no he isn’t dead. It seems like both to me. In any case, the moment passes and Ioana’s back in her own world, remote and uncommunicative.

  We say our goodbyes and leave.

  The Butetown street seems like a different planet. A bit grubby, but normal. A place where women aren’t beaten into a pulp and terrified into silence. The clouds that had bothered me before are still there, but now they feel ordinary and comforting.

  “What on earth happened in there?” Jane asks.

  I don’t tell her. Or rather I lie. Ioana sat up. She hurt herself. She’s upset. She’s frightened.

  Jane makes no comment. Just says that we’d better write up our interview notes as soon as we get back to the car. A return to the rule book. A nondescript Cardiff street. Planet Normal.

  We’d planned two more interviews that day but postpone them. It seems more important to deal with the Balcescu one. We drive a couple of blocks away, down to the railway station, just to be out of sight of Balcescu’s house, then write up our notes sitting side by side in Jane’s car, where the loudest sound is of our pens moving over the paper. Jane has another hair loose on her shoulder and I want to pick it off for her, but I want to do that only because I want her to turn to me with a smile, and I want that only because what I saw in Balcescu’s house frightened me and made me anxious for comfort. Probably best not to try to get that by soliciting a cuddle from a superior officer, however. I’ve got good intuitions about these things. It wouldn’t work out.

  I finish my notes before Jane finishes hers She looks sideways at me, and I realize that she finds me intimidating too. Not my clothes sense, obviously, or my social skills. But I’m very comfortable with words. I can zoom through things like writing notes or summarizing documents in half the time it takes most of my colleagues. I feel slightly weird that I’m intimidated by Jane while she’s intimidated by me. These things should cancel each other out, no?

  Because I’m feeling weird, I tell Jane that I’m going to step outside and get some air. And as soon as I open the car door, in between pulling the handle and it swinging out to the maximum-open position, I realize where I’ll find Fletcher. Sometimes the best thing to do is also the most obvious.

  I call directory assistance and ask for a number for Rattigan Industrial & Transport. I get put through to a corporate switchboard. I ask for a Mr. Fletcher. I’m told there’s no one at corporate HQ with that name, but which division is he in? I’m prepared for that question. Scrap metal doesn’t seem to have a whole bundle to do with the case. Shipping just might. All those ships coming in from the Baltic could be loaded up with nice Afghan heroin, enough to keep any number of prostitutes hooked. Drugs and sex. One business, not two.

  I ask for the shipping division and am put through to a separate switchboard in Newport.

  “Mr. Fletcher, please.”

  “Just putting you through now … Oh, hold on, would you?” Muffled whispering in the backgr
ound, then the receptionist’s voice clearer again. “I’m sorry, it was Huw Fletcher you wanted, was it?”

  Eeny-meeny-miny-mo. I say “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, Huw Fletcher isn’t with us anymore. Is there someone else who can help you?”

  “He’s not with you? I had a meeting arranged for this coming week. I was just calling to confirm arrangements.” I make my voice a little affronted. A what-kind-of-company-are-you? sort of voice.

  “Honestly, I’m afraid we have no idea where he is. He’s been away a couple of weeks. But if you want to speak with one of his colleagues in the scheduling department, I’m sure someone there can help.”

  There’s probably something clever to say at that point, but if there is I don’t find it. I mutter apologies and hang up.

  Bingo! Big bingo! I don’t yet know what I have, except that it’s something special. Something that D.C.I. Jackson really and truly ought to know about, except that I can’t think of a way to tell him. I don’t think the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed D.C. Griffiths would thank me for fessing up to her evil twin, the housebreaking, phone-stealing bad D.C. Griffiths.

  I get quietly back into the car and let Jane finish. When she’s done, we drive to Cathays Park, mostly in silence.

  For a while, routine takes over. Typing up notes, briefing Ken Hughes because Jackson is out of the office, getting the info on Groove. All this is of the utmost priority, because we now have grounds for arresting Karol Sikorsky for the murders of Stacey Edwards and April Mancini. A huge deal, that is. Now, for the first time, the case feels on the brink of something. We can’t arrest anyone without reasonable grounds for suspicion. A DNA sample and criminal record alone don’t provide those grounds. Those two things plus Balcescu’s evidence do. Once we have an arrest warrant, a search warrant will also be forthcoming. With luck and a following wind, that’ll be all we need to crack the case wide open. The office has a buzz again, with Jane and me as the heroes of the hour.

  It’s almost 7:00 P.M. before I’m done. I want to search out Brydon just to share a few moments with his more-than-friendly face, but I can’t find him. These big investigations, everyone is always somewhere else, or too busy to stop and talk.

  In the end, I pack up and go home, only to find I can’t stay there. The prickling feeling that I had for all those days last week is here again, a permanent guest now. I ask it to reveal its identity. This is fear. This is fear. I try the statement out in my head, but I can’t tell if it fits or if it doesn’t. What’s worse, I notice that when I stamp my feet I can only dimly feel my toes and heels striking the floor. When I rap my hand against a kitchen counter, or press it up against the point of a knife, the physical sensations of hardness or sharpness seem to be coming from a long way away, like old news reports, conveyed in jumpy black and white, or down a crackling phone line. I’m becoming numb to myself, physically and emotionally, and that’s no good at all. It’s how it starts, the bad stuff. This is how it always starts.

  I don’t muck about in these situations. I’ve learned not to. I call Mam and tell her I’ll stay over another night, if that’s okay. She says, of course, come right away. I get ready to go.

  Last thing before leaving, I pull out those photos of April. Little April, blind and dead. Little April with a sink where her brains should be. A sextuple smile and a secret I’m too dim to grasp. I don’t spend long with her, though. All I need is sleep and sanity. Right now, both things seem precarious.

  For two blessed days, life goes on. Ordinary life. Lots of work. Canteen lunches, office grumbles. It’s intense, but it’s what I know. I like it.

  There’s a strong sense that Lohan is making progress. Known associates of Karol Sikorsky have been found and interviewed. According to Dave Brydon, who did two of these interviews and who’s heard the gossip from those who have done the others, Sikorsky’s buddies aren’t the kind of crew you’d be thrilled to see at your daughter’s birthday parties. The first of Brydon’s two interviews was with a Wojciech Kapuscinski. “He was a piece of work, he was,” Brydon tells me. “A real dangerous sod, if you ask me. Got a couple of ABHs”—that’s Actual Bodily Harm, a fairly mild offense—“on his record, but that won’t be the half of it.”

  I believe him. Kapuscinski’s photo and details are up on Groove. Not only does he have a firearms conviction to go with those ABHs but he looks every inch like the dutiful foot soldier of organized crime: tough face, narrow eyes, shaven head, leather jacket. The kind of physique you get from lifting weights and avoiding vegetables: the fat-but-strong bouncer look.

  Brydon and Ken Hughes did that interview and got nothing from it. “The bugger wouldn’t tell us a thing. Didn’t expect him to really, except he didn’t come up with an alibi and doesn’t deny knowing Sikorsky.” Brydon doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t need to. These things don’t work because a thug breaks down and confesses something. They work because you apply pressure. A nondenial here. A piece of CCTV evidence there. A phone call there. Perhaps something new from Forensics. You hope to scrape together enough for a charge of some sort, and then the odds start to rebalance. You get little extra disclosures, scraps of information released in return for minor favors. You get search warrants to enter places that had been closed to you before. You ratchet up the pressure, and before too long you get a leak proper, the crack in the dam that will bring the whole thing tumbling down.

  And meantime, unexpectedly, another breakthrough. The Serious Organized Crime Agency have—on the third time of asking—provided an address in London where they believe Sikorsky has holed up from time to time. Bev Rowland tells me that Jim Davis (still not speaking to me and, I’m certain, dripping poison about me into the office gossip stream) has been putting it about that SOCA wants to take over the Lohan inquiry. I’d say they’re not likely to get it if they do. We all suspect organized crime involvement, but there’s not enough at this stage for SOCA to make a move on us. Besides, Jackson is a respected D.C.I. His inquiry has been well run. We have some names. We need to get some more tangible evidence soon, but things aren’t stuck, they’re progressing. For the time being, Jackson is arranging for Sikorsky’s London address to be watched in the hope that the guy is dumb enough to turn up there. If that fails, he’ll apply for a search warrant and raid the place anyway.

  Jackson is pleased with all this. Just after lunch on Tuesday, he comes to find me and Jane Alexander at her desk. “That Balcescu interview,” he says. “Well done. Good job.”

  We do our thank-you-sirs, and Jane glows like someone’s told her she can be team captain.

  “Is this one behaving herself?” That’s Jackson asking Jane about me.

  “Yes, sir. More than that, actually. I thought she was first class with Balcescu. It was Fiona who—”

  Jane is about to say something nice, but Jackson’s Alexander-takes-the-lead slogan is knocking around in my head, and I don’t want him to know that I went off-piste, even if it was in a good cause.

  “It was me that made the teas, sir. She’s milk-no-sugar,” I volunteer, indicating Jane. “Balcescu was one sugar, only I gave her two, given the circs.”

  “Her tea was okay, was it?” That to Jane.

  “It was fine.”

  “Good.”

  Jackson says “good” again and goes muttering off. Jane swings back to me in surprise. I tell her that I want Jackson to think I know how to follow orders. “It’s not always my strong suit,” I add.

  “You don’t say.”

  Jane looks for a moment as though she might say something further, but she doesn’t, and we go back to doing what we were doing.

  Lovely work. Tedious, necessary, safe.

  On Tuesday night, I go home but once again find my house scarily empty and vulnerable, so I bail out and spend a happy evening with my family. Dad and I haven’t had any further conversation about guns, but he asks me if I’ve had my burglar alarm checked recently. I say no. Who checks a burglar alarm? I didn’t know you had to check them. He says he’ll s
end someone round, and because nothing I say is likely to stop him from doing just that, I say nothing.

  Wednesday itself is mostly a paperwork day—I’m not unhappy about that—and the one interview that Jane and I manage is by the book and uninformative. Which is good. I could use a little boredom in my life at the moment.

  Apart from Balcescu, Jane and I have found out nothing useful from our interviews, but I’ve enjoyed working with her. Except for that one time, she asks the questions, I take the notes. She does everything by the book. So do I. The comfort of routine. Three of the girls we’ve talked to have been reluctant to say more than the bare minimum. One, Tania, a Welsh girl from the valleys, talked incessantly, mostly about what punters were and were not into, but conveyed nothing much of value. She seemed ditzy to me and muddled, but not a stereotypical victim either. She talked endlessly about sex, and I realized that she really liked it. Enjoyed having lots of it. Some prostitutes, presumably, do.

  All told, there have been worse ways to spend time. The write-ups are a pleasant way to spend the morning.

  Huw Fletcher bothers me. He matters. I know he matters, but I’ve got no way of roping him in to our inquiry. He left work abruptly enough that his colleagues are puzzled, but not puzzled enough to call the police. He sent a possibly suspicious text, which I know about only because I broke into a suspect’s house and stole his phone. And even that text is significant only if you think Penry is significant, and you think he is only if Rattigan is. And Rattigan is dead, which means that—in the eyes of my colleagues—he can’t possibly matter. I don’t see it that way, of course. I think the dead matter just as much as anyone else, but then what else could I, of all people, think?

  About halfway through the afternoon, these ruminations bother me enough that I call Bryony Williams.

  She answers after the third ring. I tell her who I am, then come straight out with it.

  “Bryony, I need to ask a favor.”