Talking to the Dead: A Novel

by Harry Bingham

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “First off, can I ask if you’ve ever heard of a guy called Huw Fletcher? Some connection with prostitution and/or drugs, but I can’t tell you more than that.”

  “Huw Fletcher? No. Never heard of him.”

  “Okay, that’s fine. But look, I think this man Fletcher is involved in something nasty. Something nasty to do with the women you try to protect. I can’t tell you why, but I’ve serious reason to think so. Trouble is, I can’t reveal the witness who gave me Fletcher’s name, and I can’t introduce Fletcher into the investigation unless I can supply evidence that connects him to it. I want you to be that evidence.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just say that you’ve heard rumors from the girls you work with that Huw Fletcher has been involved in sex trafficking and prostitution. You heard the rumors and wanted to pass them on to me.”

  “Okay. Yes, I’m happy to say all that.”

  “You may one day be asked to say the same thing in court.”

  “I understand. That’s fine.”

  “You may find yourself being asked the same questions in the course of a missing persons investigation.”

  “Okay.” A drawn-out okay, that one. “Who’s the missing person? Fletcher?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Go on, then. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  “Bryony, you’re a star. Whatever’s one step up from a star. A quasar? Something like that.”

  “That’s all right. It’s not every day I’m asked to fabricate evidence by a police officer.”

  We ring off. I don’t yet do anything, but I feel better for knowing that the possibilities have just widened. Fletcher, Fletcher, missile man.

  That evening, operational requirements are such that Brydon and I are in a position to go out together. We agree to meet in a wine bar at seven thirty.

  “Gives me a chance to go to the gym and gives you time to get ready. Get changed or whatever.”

  Get changed? I hadn’t been intending to. I don’t even know if Brydon was nudging me that I ought to, or whether he was just being male-clumsy. But the awkwardness affects both of us. Are we friends? Colleagues? Potential romantic partners? We’re both unsure but, I suppose, keen to find out.

  In any case, I like it that I’ve been told what to do. I leave the office punctually at five and go home. It feels odd to be back. Still not safe, but not as radically threatening as it had been after Penry’s visit. I open my fridge and am surprised to find it full of food. I forgot that I’d restocked it on Sunday. I think about having a smoke and decide against. I go upstairs to try to work out what a girl is meant to wear to a date that might not be a date. Then I hear a van pull up outside.

  I’m flooded with fear.

  My knife and hammer are downstairs. I should have brought them up. My curtains are open, and I should have closed them.

  A man gets out of the van, walks to the front door, and knocks. He looks like an ordinary guy. Could be a plumber. A meter reader. A delivery guy.

  But what do killers look like? What did the man who killed Stacey Edwards look like?

  I don’t move. I don’t know what to do. The man knocks again, and I let the sound echo around in the silence.

  Then the man walks back to his van. Gets out a phone and dials. I can see him but am careful to step back far enough from my upstairs window that he’ll have a job seeing me.

  Luckily, my bedroom window is open a tad. Just four inches to let air in, and there’s a window lock preventing it from going any further. But the gap is enough that I can hear the man’s conversation. Not all of it, but enough. He’s got a loud voice and he’s asking for Mr. Griffiths. My dad.

  Fear rushes out. I’m shaky, but I’m moving again. My brain, which was completely stuck, can now operate. I go downstairs, holding both walls, and throw open the door.

  “Fiona Griffiths, is it? Your dad sent me. Wanted me to have a look at the alarm and a few bits and pieces.”

  South Wales is full of people that my dad knows. I guess he must pay a lot of them, but the relationship never seems to be about employment, or even much about pay. It’s just that if Tom Griffiths asks a favor of you, then you do it, knowing that one way or another that favor will be repaid. I’ve never really thought much about how all this works. It’s just the way it is. “Your dad sent me.” Four words meaning your problem is fixed.

  “Come on in. Sorry. Did you knock? I was upstairs and wasn’t sure …”

  It’s a feeble excuse but doesn’t need to be any better. The man (Aled someone or other—Dad’s people work by first names only as a rule) doesn’t care. He’s inside, taking the front off my burglar alarm, getting me to punch in my access code as he ostentatiously looks away, then he’s off running test programs and checking connections. And all the time he’s talking. A big alarm installation job he worked on at a canning factory in Newport. The silly things some people do with their access codes. The importance of maintenance.

  At first I’m irritated, because I don’t want to have to stand around and make chitchat when I’m about to go out. Then I realize that he doesn’t give a damn whether he has anyone to talk to or not. I tell him I’m going upstairs, and do. It’s even, strange to say, easier to get myself ready with him downstairs. I get less lost in my own head. I make simpler, better decisions. This dress. (Midnight blue, Monsoon, nice but not fussy.) This necklace. (Silver and jet beads, an old standby.) These shoes. (Dark blue satin-trimmed kitten heels, comfortable enough to walk in.) I put the things out on the bed, then wash and blow-dry my hair. It looks much the same after as before, but I like knowing that I’ve made the effort.

  I don’t want to get dressed up while Aled Whatnot is still in the house, so I go downstairs to hurry him up. He’s done with the burglar alarm and is busy polishing away the adhesive scabs with fine steel wool and paint thinner.

  “I’ll touch these up after. It’s going to show otherwise.”

  “Do you want a cup of tea?” I offer, because it’s what you say to workmen, and Dad’s cronies like tea just as much as anyone.

  “White, no sugar please, if you’re making it. I’ve got a cupboard door off there.” And indeed, on going into the kitchen, I find what had been a perfectly serviceable cupboard door lying on the floor. “Hinge needed adjusting, you probably noticed. It wasn’t opening right. It’ll be back on in a tick, though. I expect you’re wanting to get off, are you?”

  “Yes, in a bit.”

  I’m not in any rush—it’s still only six fifteen—so I make the tea and try to remember if I’d noticed any problem with the cupboard before. A little clicky thing, maybe, on opening. No big deal. Aled Doodah is busy with paint cans now, and whistling.

  I prefer chat to the whistling, so I hand him his tea but hang around, inviting conversation.

  It’s like inviting a lecture from a Mormon, a rant from a jihadist. Aled Thingummy is a whirlwind of chat, he’s the Muhammad Ali of white noise. Gossip, unconnected little snippets, political comment, questions that are asked but invite no answer pass his lips in an unending torrent. I say almost nothing and marvel at his ability to blather.

  As he’s putting the cupboard door back on, one thing he says does catch my attention. He’s been moaning about youth gangs in the city center, then talking about guns and knives, then—with the sweet inconsistency of his kind—switches the focus of his monologue to the overregulation of gun clubs.

  “People don’t want that, see. That’s why you get these places springing up. Unregulated like, not that I should tell you that, seeing you are who you are. There’s one place, farmer’s turned a barn into a firing range. Nothing dodgy, if you get me, it’s just for people who want to have a bit of fun. Handguns, that sort of thing, nothing dodgy, like I say. Up above Llangattock, it is. If you take the Llangynidr Road from the Heads of the Valleys, then take the Llangattock turn when it comes. It’s the barn on the turn of the hill. Big white thing. They probably need
ear defenders for the sheep, eh? Health and safety.”

  With that thought his chat streams off again in a different direction. He’s on to health and safety fascism now. Bad things about the government. Bad things about the city council. But not for long. The adhesive scabs are gone. The cupboard door is back. The burglar alarm is as happy as it’s ever going to be. Aled Thingummy opens and closes all the remaining cupboard doors to check that they’re swinging right.

  “Sound as a pound,” he tells me, banging them shut.

  He scoops up his stuff and whizzes off. The house feels weirdly quiet without him. It does also feel a bit safer, though I hadn’t actually thought to worry about the burglar alarm in the first place.

  I go up, get dressed, and put on some makeup. I don’t often make the effort, but if I put my mind to it, I can look all right. Not Kay-like gorgeous. That’ll always be well beyond me. But nice. An attractive girl. That’s all I’ve ever hoped to achieve, and I feel a kind of satisfied relief at being able to achieve it. More than relief. Pleasure. I like it. I like the way I look tonight.

  At seven ten, I skitter out of the house. I’ve still got an undercurrent of anxiety about my physical safety, so I carry a kitchen knife in my clutch bag, but the knife is quite a small one, and the clutch bag matches my dress, has silver trimmings and boasts an extravagant silk bow, so as far as I’m concerned I’m still in girlie heaven. I get to the wine bar at almost exactly the same time as Brydon does.

  “Bloody hell, Fi, you look absolutely smashing.”

  He’d have said that whatever I looked like, because Brydon is a proper gent, but the expression on his face and the way he keeps looking at me tell me that he means it.

  “You too, Mr. B,” I tell him and allow him to take me inside.

  The first forty minutes we’re together are pretty toe-curling, in all honesty. Neither of us had quite decided the date-nondate thing before arriving. Or rather, I think we’d decided that it must be a date but didn’t quite know how to get from comradely professional banter through to dating intimacies.

  After forty arduous minutes, Brydon rather abruptly calls for the bill and says, “Let’s eat.”

  The restaurant he’s chosen is only a few minutes away—we’re off the Cathedral Road, the other side of the river from Bute Park and our offices—but he walks half a step ahead of me, moving a bit faster than I can manage, and he has his chest thrown out and his shoulders pulled back as though he’s a soldier bracing himself for combat. I realize that this is his way of preparing for an all-out assault on Fortress Fi, and I’m touched, though I would slightly prefer it if potential suitors didn’t regard a date with me as akin to entering combat. It’s possible that I was prickly with him in the wine bar. I sometimes am without knowing it, my habitual default position. Not good, when it comes to flaunting those feminine charms.

  I determine to do better.

  When we get to the restaurant—nice, “modern Welsh cuisine,” fifteen pounds a main course, no less—I tell him that the place looks lovely. When we get to the table, we have a comedy moment around my chair. I am about to pull it out and sit on it when I realize Brydon is wanting to do the gentlemanly thing and slide it out for me, so I can sit down in a gracefully ladylike way. I’m a bit slow to realize this, so we have a short tug-of-war with the chair back before I figure out that I’m doing something wrong and transition as fast as I can into graceful ladylike mode. Then, because I’m not good at these things, I start to sit before he’s ready, and he only just has time to get the chair under me in time to avoid disaster.

  Brydon freezes for a moment—he’s awkward too—then he starts laughing, and I do, and everything suddenly feels more relaxed. His air of grimness dissipates visibly. I smile at him when we’re sitting and tell him again that this is lovely. I even go as far as being coaxed into ordering a glass of white wine. I realize that I’m operating as though following instructions from some kind of dating manual, but I’ve found out that that’s usually okay with people. It’s only me that feels weird.

  From that point on, things go much better.

  The manual says that I should ask my date about himself, so I do. I can’t ask about work without sounding all copperish, and I don’t know much about his personal life, so I ask about his time in the Army. It feels like a clunky question to me. “So, Dave, how come you’ve never told me about your time in the Army? What made you join up?” As I say it, I feel like a bad chat-show host. Spray tan and an idiot smile. But it works. The manual works. Brydon tells me about his time in the Army. In 1998, he’d applied for the Paras, been accepted, and found himself flung into conflict in Kosovo the following year. He’s characteristically modest in how he says what he says, though for all I know he has a drawer full of medals for gallantry. A better friend than me would already have known some of these details, and I feel a bit ashamed of myself for not having found out before.

  From then on, I stick close to the textbook. When the starter comes, I tell him it’s delicious. When the main course comes, I tell him it’s wonderful. We eat off each other’s plates. Brydon tells me again that I look absolutely beautiful. I remember to smile a lot.

  I also try to reciprocate Brydon’s candor. A big ask for me. The one thing that everyone would want to know more about—those two years of illness—is off-limits as far as I’m concerned. The less said about that the better. But I do what I can. I tell him bits and bobs about Cambridge. I talk about my family. When Brydon says with a grin, “Your dad’s settled down now, has he?” I deflect the question and tell him about the club my dad is wanting to get started in Bristol. He asks if I want another glass of wine, and I say no.

  “Alcohol and me didn’t used to mix at all. It’s not so bad now, but I don’t like to push it.”

  We don’t talk about work much, but we do talk about why we do what we do. For Brydon, it was a fairly natural step. He wanted to get out of soldiering. “It wasn’t the danger, so much, more I got cynical about the way politicians used us. I didn’t know if I was making a difference, and thought that in the police I could use my skills, day in, day out, to make a difference.” On other lips, it would sound like self-righteous bullshit, but not on his. When he says it, it’s just the truth. I love that it’s so simple for him. Admire it.

  Then he says, “Go on, then. What about you? Why did you join up?”

  I laugh. “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m nuts.”

  He expects me to go ahead and tell him anyway, but I don’t. When you’re proper nuts, as I am—or as I’ve been, anyway—then you’re careful about what you do and don’t reveal. But here it is.

  Fi. That’s if backward.

  Griffiths. Nice ordinary name, but two more ifs lurking at the heart of it. My name, literally, is as iffy as you can get. The only solid sound, the only one you can actually hang on to, is that opening G, and it’s not to be trusted.

  I first noticed these things when I was nine or ten, and the feeling of giddiness it induced has never left me. My entire name feels precarious, a conjecture balanced on a riddle. That’s partly why it made sense to me becoming a detective. I’ve finally become what my name implies: a practitioner of ifs. If Rattigan. If Mancini. If Fletcher. If Penry. If poor old Stacey Edwards. A million ifs, all looking for me to solve them.

  Brydon stares at me with his big, serious eyes. “But I already think you’re nuts,” he says.

  I still don’t tell him, but he’s earned another smile.

  When we leave the restaurant, it’s still just quarter to eleven. Brydon is doing that male thing of making the space contain any possibility at all. Back to his place for eight hours of rowdy sex. Chaste kiss on the cheek and a meaningless promise to do the same again sometime. He’s letting me decide. Bad idea on the whole. I tend to make these decisions by playing safe.

  I try to figure out what the manual says to do. As far as I know, standard Date Girl Operating Procedure is: bad date—polite goodbyes; good date—modest kiss.

  As far as
I can tell, this has been a good evening. The start was rough, but everyone’s allowed a ropy opening. After that—I think I had a nice time. I think Brydon did. I’m in the doorway of the restaurant ludicrously hesitating.

  “Shall I walk you back to your car?” Brydon says. He’s smiling at me. I mean: I think he’s laughing at me, but in a nice way.

  He walks me back. Warm air and quiet streets. Daylight, or the memory of it, still alive in the sky. I’m feeling a bit spacey, but not necessarily bad spacey. I’m pretty sure I can feel my feet when they hit the ground, and my heart seems okay, if a little distant. Still, the point is, I’m feeling spacey. When we get to the corner with Cathedral Road, I start to step straight out into the traffic, where a series of fast-moving metal vehicles prepares to flatten me. Brydon, with surprising deftness, grabs me and swivels me, so I stay on the pavement and avoid being splatted. With equal deftness, he keeps his arm on my shoulder as we walk on down the road. I’m not the wrong sort of spacey, because I can feel his hand on my bare arm.

  Date Girl is surprised by this. She’s been outmanuevered, but she quite likes the result. I like his hand on me. I like the weight of his arm on my shoulder. I can’t quite believe this has happened, but I like it.

  We walk about two hundred yards past my car, because I didn’t tell Brydon when we walked straight past it, then he asks me where it is, and we walk all the way back again. All I can think about is his arm on my shoulder and the fading violet sky.

  When we get to the car, there is a decision I can’t avoid, but that’s okay. I have decided. I turn my back to the car so I can lean against it, and start to look up at Brydon. He’s on the case, is the good detective sergeant. His mastery of Date Guy Operating Procedure is frighteningly complete. He has a hand behind my back and kind of scoops me toward him for a kiss. A very good one too. Just for a moment, my brain shuts down and my feelings take over. Something in my stomach flips.

  Steady on now, Griffiths. Take it easy.

  This situation feels risky now. My mental health workers all used to be delighted if I had natural, uncomplicated, ordinary human feelings. Big fat check mark on their clinical interview sheets. Something to boast about as they sip their Styrofoam coffees at the eighteenth annual psychiatric conference of whatever.