Talking to the Dead: A Novel

by Harry Bingham

  I think he already knew.

  One day I will apologize.

  But for now I need to focus on things closer to home. I’ve done the immediate essentials, but what next? What should I do next? What do I want? Nothing comes to me, so I get out my paper again and write: WHAT DO I CARE ABOUT?

  Almost immediately, I write in strong capitals APRIL MANCINI. I move my pen, ready to add more names to the list. Janet Mancini. Stacey Edwards. Ioana Balcescu. The names of the victims. And maybe there are other things, other people I want to find out about. Rattigan. Fletcher. Penry. Sikorsky. But my pen doesn’t move. APRIL MANCINI. That’s who I care about. She’s all I care about. The toffee apple kid.

  With a sudden, awful rush, I realize that I’ve forgotten her funeral. I promised to go to it. I even promised to tell the nice lady—Amanda, I think it was—who phoned the help line and started crying when I told her how Janet and April died. She was going to come to the funeral too.

  I phone the office. I can’t find anyone there who knows or cares. I phone the hospital. Ditto. But I’m not on maximum power, so I’m probably asking the wrong people in the wrong way. Instead, I phone Bev Rowland. She doesn’t know but promises to find out, and sure enough calls me back in ten minutes. The funeral is going to be Tuesday, the day after Stacey Edwards’s autopsy. Unless something unexpected crops up at the mortuary on Monday, Stacey Edwards and Janet and April Mancini will all be cremated the following day.

  I thank Bev and put the phone down.

  I feel instantly more human. I know what I’m doing now. I need to arrange a proper funeral for April. I don’t know why, but I do. April needs me to.

  I phone her school. Insist on being put through to the head teacher. I encounter a bit of resistance from a pointlessly obstructive receptionist, but my juices are rising now and I’m getting harder to resist. I bulldoze my way through to the head teacher and tell her that April’s entire class needs to come to the funeral. She tells me that their lessons have already been planned. I remind her that someone dropped a sink on April Mancini’s head and she isn’t lucky enough to have any lessons. The head teacher tells me, tartly, that the crematorium is too far from the school and it’s too late to organize transport. I tell her that that’s a good point, when does she want transport and how many kids are there in April’s class? Ten minutes later I call back, having hired a bus to come and pick up the children. The head teacher says fine. She even thanks me.

  Zoom zoom. My speed is picking up. Next stop, neighbors. Not neighbors at the squat, because they barely knew Janet, but at the complex in Llanrumney where she and April used to live. I get a local print shop to print up five hundred flyers. Nothing much. Just information about the funeral arrangements and at the bottom a request for information. “Janet and April Mancini were murdered. Call in confidence.” That, and my phone number.

  I drive over to the complex and find a couple of kids mooning around on BMX bikes. I offer them fifty quid to distribute my flyers to every house and flat on the estate. Twenty up front. Thirty when they’ve done it. I tell them I’ll check three random doors to ensure that the flyers have been delivered. They have a brief discussion, then agree. I stick around for just long enough to see that the flyers are entering some letter boxes, then off I zoom.

  There’s a drug users’ drop-in center that Janet used to go to. I go there and get them to put up a notice. A helpful woman serving tea says that she’ll email a few people who might be interested. Good for her. I ask her if she knows any women’s centers that might be interested in knowing about the funeral. She says yes, and she’ll get straight onto it. I tell her she’s an angel.

  I call Amanda, the lady who cried. I tell her when the funeral is. She cries again, promises to come, and says she’ll phone some of the other mothers.

  Back to Llanrumney. The kids are still shoving flyers through letter boxes. Good enough for me. I give them the thirty quid.

  I ask them if they want another fifty quid for doing the same farther up the road, around Stacey Edwards’s old stomping ground. They look at me as though I’m mad, and I take that as a yes. I phone the print shop again and get them to run off more flyers, only with Stacey Edwards’s name in place of Janet’s and April’s. I tell the kids where they can pick up the flyers and tell them to call me when they’re done.

  The kids pedal off, delighted at my inability to drive a decent bargain.

  Zoom zoom.

  What else? Flowers. Music.

  I call the Thornhill crematorium. What do they do for music? They’ve got tapes. I don’t want tapes. I want an organist. I want a choir. I want a parade of trumpeters, for fuck’s sake. After a bit of discussion, I learn that I can get a string quartet and a solo vocalist for four hundred quid. That seems steep to me, but I say yes. I do ask about a trumpeter, but they’re out of stock, alas.

  I have this conversation as I’m driving to Cardiff Market. Not on the hands-free, just juggling the phone, the steering wheel, and the gear stick as I drive. I know that sounds bad, but it helps build concentration and does wonders for the coordination. Like simultaneously rubbing your tummy and patting your head, only harder.

  I arrive at the market as it’s closing down. A clutter of stalls housed in a palace. Like some entrepreneurial refugees got stuck in some Victorian railway terminus, and set up shop there. Stallholders are taking down their T-shirts, their ethnic jewelry. Pulling shutters down over veg boxes and book stands. A pleasant, end-of-day mood. A box of red apples being flogged off for two pounds the lot.

  I run round looking for a flower stall, find one, and ask the bloke in green wellies how much for his flowers. He looks at me like I’m mad. He points to the buckets. Each one has its own little blackboard on a spike, with prices chalked on each little board. I look at him like he’s mad. I don’t want one stupid bouquet, I want his flowers. I want the whole shop.

  Once I manage to explain this, he asks me if I’m serious, then quotes a price of five hundred quid. I’ve a feeling I could get them for a lot less, but I don’t want April to think that I’m stingy, so I say yes but can he help get the flowers into my car and can I have the black buckets as well.

  He agrees, which proves to be a bad move on his part, because my lovely Peugeot isn’t really the acres-of-trunk-space sort of car and it takes half an hour of careful wiggling to get everything inside.

  I get a call from the BMX kids and go to pay them.

  Then home.

  Eat. Drink. Make some more calls. The church in whose parish Janet Mancini was found dead. Ditto the one in the part of town where she used to live. Ditto Stacey Edwards’s old parish. I speak to the vicars. One of them agrees to say a blessing. He’s nice about it actually. A good soul. I say to him, “You don’t happen to know a trumpeter, do you?” and, Lord bless the man, he does. He gives me a phone number, and two minutes later, I have my trumpeter. He asks me what kind of music I want played. I say I don’t know, but I want it to be upbeat. Not funereal. Triumphant, if he can think of something. He says he can. He says his rates are sixty quid for up to two hours, but given the circs he won’t charge anything. I tell him that he’s my new favorite trumpeter.

  I call a couple of newspapers and place funeral notices there. I pay extra for all the bits and bobs. Extra words, bold type, boxes.

  I’m just wondering what to do next when I get a call. It’s Brydon, back at Cathays Park. He says that the office is going full pelt on Lohan, and the forensics on the Kapuscinski house look positive. I don’t care about that and say so.

  “Listen, I’ve got the day off tomorrow,” he says. “I thought maybe we could—”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “I was going to say maybe we could spend some time together.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow morning, then? We could go somewhere.”

  That sounds like a man plan to me. We co
uld go somewhere. Gosh, the imagination! But I don’t argue. A man plan is good enough for me. We ring off.

  I’m slowing down now. Tired but in a good way. I need to get an early night tonight, so I can catch up on some sleep, but there are things to do first.

  I make up some bouquets. I’m not the world’s best bouquet maker, but I don’t need to be. I make about twenty, tie them with kitchen string, and drop them on the passenger seat of the car. In each bouquet, I’ve put a handwritten note:

  Most of all, I would like it if you came to the funeral. But I am also a police officer. If you want to tell me anything about Brendan Rattigan, Huw Fletcher, Wojtek Kapuscinski, Yuri Petrov, or Karol Sikorsky, then please call me, in total confidence, on the number below.

  Very many thanks, Fiona Griffiths.

  I drive down to the Taff Embankment. Blaenclydach Place. It’s a bit early for things to be really busy, but Friday night is crazy night, and the girls are already out, hunting for business. I know a lot of them now. Some of them even like me.

  One bouquet at a time, one prostitute at a time, I approach.

  With each girl, I explain who I am and why I’m here. I’m a friend of Janet Mancini’s. Also of Stacey Edwards. It’s their funeral on Tuesday. I wanted people to know. I also wanted to give out flowers.

  I see Kyra, the stupid cow who gave Jane and me nothing at all that first time we met her. She’s wearing platform shoes with five-inch heels. She’s absurdly happy to see me, which means nothing about me, everything about how recently she’s taken smack.

  “Flowers? For me?” she asks.

  “For you. Or for you to bring along to the funeral to place on the coffins. I don’t mind. Either way, the flowers are to commemorate the women who died. And Janet had a little girl, so the flowers are for her too. She was six years old, and her name was April.”

  Kyra looks at me as though I’m crazy, but she takes the flowers. Same with the other girls I meet. They think I’m nuts, but I tell them that I’ll see them at the crematorium on Tuesday.

  It takes me four hours to hand out most of my bouquets. I’m beginning to sway with tiredness when I hear a familiar voice behind me. Bryony Williams. Equipped with her ciggy, her canvas jacket, and her messy hair. And a bouquet-wielding prostitute whom I vaguely recognize. Altea, she might be called.

  “I heard someone was doling these out,” says Bryony, indicating the flowers. “Thought it might be you.”

  I grin. “Three more to go, and I’m done for the evening.”

  Bryony says she’ll do them. I tell her about the notes I’ve put inside, and she nods approvingly.

  “Where did you get the flowers?” she asks.

  I bought the shop, I tell her. I explain that I want people to come to the funeral. I don’t know why it feels important, but I think it’s because Janet and April and Stacey had such unnoticed lives. I want them to go out in a blaze of glory. I tell Bryony about my trumpeter and the coach-load of schoolchildren.

  She gives me a hug, hard and long. When she comes away, her cheeks are wet.

  I envy her her tears. I wonder what they feel like. I wonder if they hurt.

  Saturday.

  Dave Brydon calls me at eleven. I’m ready for him, give or take. It’s another proper summer’s day, a hot one. I’ve tried on four different outfits, and ended up with the pistachio-and-coffee striped top that I was wearing the day Penry hit me, a long skirt, and flat shoes. I look nice. I look all right.

  When he calls, I’m amazingly nervous. I think he is too. We start out very awkward, and only begin to shake free of it when we decide that rather than him coming to collect me, or vice versa, we should meet out of town somewhere. The beaches are going to be absolutely heaving today, but I don’t mind that. I’d quite like it. We agree to meet at Parkmill on the Gower peninsula. He tells me to bring my swimming costume. I tell him that I bet he’s got white legs and that he burns after ten minutes in the sun.

  We hang up. I don’t have a swimming costume. I can’t even swim very well, but I do have a couple of bikinis and, after trying them both on, I choose the one that gives me a tiny bit more cleavage and wear it under my clothes.

  I drive to Parkmill. The traffic is ridiculously slow because we’ve chosen the worst day of the year to make the trip, but I don’t care. Brydon and I talk to each other on the hands-free, comparing notes on how rubbish the traffic is. We agree not to talk about work. Our awkwardness is evaporating in the heat.

  He gets there first, and he tells me which café he’s in. He says we can pretend this is a blind date, that we’ve never met before.

  I get to Parkmill, park, and go to find Brydon. I’m so nervous that, fifty yards away from the café, I have to stop and collect myself. But it’s a natural sort of nerves. No depersonalization. No losing touch with my feelings. I’m nervous but okay.

  I spend a moment texting Bryony. I think I need to stay away from the streets tonight, and I tell her that I’m on a date and won’t be able to get away. I tell her to spend as much money on flowers as she wants, give them out to whoever she wants, and that I’ll pay. That leaves me with a stackload of flowers to deal with, but I’ll just take them to the funeral with me.

  Then, as I move closer to the café, I see Brydon at a table. White parasol flapping in the sea breeze. Shadows jumping to avoid the sunshine. He’s nervous too, and I realize that he’s nervous because he cares. Cares about me. I feel a wave of pleasure at that thought. What have I done to be so lucky?

  I come closer, and he sees me only at the last minute. We play our blind-date game for a bit, and it definitely helps to deal with the nerves. I’m awkward and klutzy, but Brydon accepts it in a way which makes it seem endearing, not just edge-of-breakdown weird.

  Brydon does have white legs, and I bet he will burn before the day is out. In this light, his hair looks properly blond, not just sandy.

  We eat lunch. Brydon has a glass of beer. We walk along the beach. He swims. I sort of swim. We throw water at each other. I try to duck him under and fail totally, until he laughs at me and does this huge pretend drowning act. Then he picks me up and drops me in. I shriek, but I like the way my body feels in his arms. When I’m duly ducked, we stand up and he kisses me. I feel Comrade Lust tugging at me again, but I send the good comrade packing. Me and D.S. Brydon are taking things slow. I’m going to be his girlfriend, you know.

  When we’re tired—which comes fairly early in my case—we drive back to my house. I cook spaghetti Bolognese, and we eat that with a bottle of extremely cheap red wine that I have knocking around for such contingencies. I have only a token sip, but Brydon disposes of half the bottle manfully.

  When the Bolognese is done, Brydon washes up. I’m supposed to dry, or do something, but I don’t. I just watch him. The way his hair is speckled with ginger and has tiny salt crystals glittering close to the scalp.

  I kiss his neck and ask if he’s okay with going home. I’m trying to be sensible. I know that I need to take this all slowly and I was just trying to say, in a nice Date Girl way, that I wasn’t ready for sex quite yet.

  He doesn’t take it that way.

  “Not exactly,” he says, with exaggerated patience. “No. Not unless you’ve got me a special license to drive with raised blood-alcohol levels.”

  I stare at him. Is he serious? He’s had half a bottle of wine and won’t drive the ten minutes it’ll take him to get home?

  For a second—maybe twelve seconds—I’m genuinely panicked. I think this is some kind of ruse on his part to get into my knickers. Oh no, Fi, I can’t possibly drive home. I’ll have to spend the night here. No, I can’t use the spare room. Come here, my beauty. My panic is temporary, but immediate and all-consuming. Comrade Lust is nowhere to be seen. Shuddering, knock-kneed, in the understairs cupboard. It’s as though my reason has been taken over by a troop of Methodist grandmams, wagging their fingers at me and declaiming, They only want one thing, you know.

  I don’t know what look I have on my face,
or what I say or do. What I do know is that Brydon reacts like the sane me would expect him to react.

  “Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay. I can’t drive, but I can order a taxi.”

  He phones for one, ostentatiously. When the cab firm asks what time he wants the pickup, he says to me, “We’ve got time for coffee, haven’t we?” The Methodist grandmams go into overdrive, chorusing about the double entendre in the word coffee, but I am already calming down and tell the grandmams to shut up. I tell Brydon of course he’s staying for coffee.

  He orders a cab for half an hour’s time.

  I make coffee for him, peppermint tea for me.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m not very good at this.”

  There’s a question on his face, which I answer. “I’m not a virgin, but … I’m not very experienced.” I think about that answer and realize that it’s the truth but not the whole truth. “Also, I’m an idiot.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “You do know that I’m not quite like you, don’t you? That I’m a bit strange?”

  He makes a joke. Deflects. Is a man.

  I persist. “No really. It matters. I’m not like you. If that’s a problem, then—I don’t know. But you need to know that. Sometimes I’ll go to places that you’ve never been. I might need your help.”

  He looks at me. I can’t interpret the look on his face. He says, “Well if you do, just ask,” which sounds like the right thing to say, but somehow isn’t.

  I don’t quite know what the best thing to say is, so I say what is almost certainly the wrong one.

  “And I’m not great with rules. I don’t get on with them very well.”

  “I’m a police officer, Fi. So are you.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Rules are our business.”

  “I know …” But the gun. The marijuana. The thing I’m planning for Monday. The thing I’m planning for later in the week. The list of possible buts is long and getting longer. I don’t finish my sentence. Nor do I push the point. Another rule of mine: Always, always put off till tomorrow anything that doesn’t have to be done today. I don’t apply that to work, but I do to pretty much anything in my personal life.