Talking to the Dead: A Novel

by Harry Bingham

  I try the main exit door, but it’s locked, as expected. There’s a fire exit, but it’s got a big green sign telling me that the handle is alarmed and I decide not to risk it.

  Oh crap. I’m really not the climbing-out-of-windows sort, but there’s not much else available. Janet and April’s window is small and high, and I can’t see anything to help me on the outside. Then I remember the viewing room, and thank God, thank God, thank God, it has a decent-size window and the inestimable blessing of the catering facility roof. I chuck my bag outside, which sort of commits me to following it. I wonder what to do about my shoes, which aren’t wildly impractical as office shoes go, but which aren’t made for climbing out of second-floor windows either. I take them off and they follow the handbag outside. Then my jacket. It’s not in the way, but I don’t want to ruin it. I wonder if there’s anyone in the catering building and whether they’ve noticed that someone is chucking her wardrobe down on top of it.

  I stand on the chair that I’ve pulled over to the window and try to clamber out. My skirt is not designed for vigorous athletic activity, but I decide that climbing naked out of a mortuary is worse than climbing out clothed, no matter how undignified. So I tuck my skirt into my tights and bundle myself out. I hurt my thigh on the window catch as I climb out, then my upper arms on the lip of the window as I drop down. My left ankle hurts too. I am really, really not cut out for this kind of thing.

  Skirt out from tights. Jacket on. Shoes on. Handbag gathered tidily under an arm. I paste my hair down, but know it’s not going to look right without a shower. Still, except for the fact that I’m standing on the roof of the University Hospital of Wales’s catering facility at five in the morning, I look thoroughly respectable, though I say it myself. There are a few people floating around the hospital campus, but mostly the kind of support staff types who don’t really care whether there’s a madwoman on top of the catering facility or not. I probe around for a while, looking for a way down. Alas, nobody thought that a ladder would be a good idea, so I end up hanging off a drainpipe, dropping a few feet to the ground, and hurting my ankle for a second time, only worse.

  I sit among a pile of garbage bags for a few minutes swearing until I feel better.

  I hobble over to my car and blip it open. Where to now? My first instinct is home to Mam and Dad. They’re only a few minutes away, and Mam’s always up ridiculously early anyway. I start driving that way, through Cathays Cemetery, up Roath Park to the lake and the world of big houses and easy living. Then, literally no more than thirty seconds from their front door, I change my mind. I pull the car around in a too-fast U-turn and head for home—my home, not my parents’.

  I’m wildly happy. Huge ocean waves of happiness come crashing down around me and I run yelling and laughing through their surf. Last night was great, but it was peaceful. This morning is great, and it’s anything but. I want to honk my horn, kiss strangers, drive at a hundred miles an hour, swim in Cardiff Bay, and shower the whole world with roses. I put the convertible top down, drive too fast, and play Take That at maximum volume.

  I can’t stop smiling and I don’t even try.

  The funeral is a hundred million times better than I expected.

  There are so many people here that the crematorium at Thornhill can’t accommodate them. Most of the service is held outside and amplified on loudspeakers so that people can hear everything, despite the growl of the M4 just beyond the trees. Probably 80 percent of those present are schoolkids, here only because their schools decided to make a statement, but I don’t care. Schoolkids are the perfect audience anyway. The ones April would care most about. My trumpeter is fantastic. The string quartet is a bit too polite and quiet to make much of an impact, but quite frankly April and Janet and Stacey are flabbergasted to find themselves with a string quartet at all. The solo vocalist is much better. Apart from mine, there’s not a dry eye in the house, and my eyes hardly count. The rent-a-quote pop star does turn up. She reads a sentimental poem badly and everyone cries. There are heaps of flowers too. I don’t know if they’re all mine, but I don’t care. They’ve all got petals, and that’s the way April and I like ’em.

  A conveyor belt takes the coffins out of the room where the service takes place and off to the furnace. Red curtains divide one side from the other. When April’s tiny coffin goes sailing down the conveyor belt to the curtains, everyone begins clapping. I think some of the schoolkids started it, because they didn’t know what they were supposed to do but felt they had to do something. Anyway, whoever started it, it was the right thing to do, and it takes only a moment for everyone, inside and outside, to be clapping and clapping hard. The trumpeter—my favorite trumpeter—seizes the moment and goes straight into a riff that’s happy and sad and final and sweet and triumphant all at the same time. The mayor of Cardiff pops up from somewhere to make a speech, which is very short and perfectly judged.

  I think it’s possible that I’m the only one not to have tears in my eyes. Most people actually have tears running down their cheeks.

  I wonder what that would be like. I wonder how it feels.

  But not mostly that. Mostly, I’m with April on her last journey. Into the fire. Up the chimney. Into the wind and out across Cardiff and all the hills of Wales. She’s happy now. Her and Janet. Her and her mam. Stacey Edwards too, I expect. They’re all happy now. Happy ever after.

  After the funeral, a couple of things.

  Brydon was there. I don’t know how he knew I cared, because I didn’t make a song and dance about it in the office, but anyway, there he is. He doesn’t come close to me at the service itself, because he wants to give me space. But as everyone spills out of the crematorium itself into the municipal, flower-beddy bit outside, he comes up and squeezes my arm.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was quite a send-off.”

  “Yes.”

  “Must have taken a fair bit of organization on someone’s part.”

  I smile at him. “Yes.”

  We chat a bit longer, and I notice that Brydon is bothered about something. Is he angry? Angry with me? I don’t know. If he is, I don’t know why. But this isn’t the place to ask him, so we say a few more things to each other, feeling strained, then say we have to rush off to something else. Which in his case is probably true. We’ve still got a date for tomorrow night, theoretically. Whatever it is will come out when it’s ready.

  More important, though—more important for now, anyway—is something that Bryony Williams has for me. She’s here, of course. No black for her. Rainbow top and big chunky beads. The kind of thing I’d look awful in. She gives me a huge hug and tells me I’m fantastic.

  “Good trumpeter,” I say. “He wouldn’t even charge me.”

  “I should bloody well hope not.”

  She goes on to say how much she liked the poem and how well she thought the pop star read it. I agree, because I don’t want to spoil the mood. She says something about it looking good on television, and I’m confused because I didn’t know anything about TV, but sure enough there were a camera and a soundman up in a gallery at the back. I see them packing up their stuff and leaving.

  “And I brought you this,” she says.

  She holds it up. A sheet of paper. One of my notes. Nothing on it, other than my own handwriting.

  As I start to look puzzled, Bryony switches the paper round. On the back, someone has written Try the old lighthouse. Kill the bastards.

  “You know that bag I carry around with me when I’m on patrol? Soup, condoms, and health leaflets. That’s what it’s full of, normally. When I was unpacking it on Sunday night, I found this inside. I don’t know who put it there or when. I don’t know what it means.”

  The old lighthouse.

  I do know what it means. I’ll need to spend some time with Google Earth and Postcode Finder to get a location, but that’s just a question of time. Try the old lighthouse. You bet I will, sister. Kill the bastards. I wasn’t planning to,
but what the heck, you never know.

  I realize I’m grinning like an idiot.

  “You look like you’ve got what you were looking for,” says Bryony.

  “The last twenty-four hours,” I say, “have been the best of my entire life.”

  Morning.

  Less than a week away from the longest day of the year. The merry old sun noses above the rooftops just after four, but the sky is full of light and emptiness long before that. I’m awake by about three thirty, having gotten to sleep only sometime after midnight, but I wasn’t expecting to sleep, so I’m not worried when I don’t.

  I put some music on downstairs, find some food, and roll myself a joint. I lie in bed listening to music, eating, and smoking. I handle my gun with my eyes shut. Safety on, safety off. Magazine in, magazine out. I reload the magazine with my eyes shut. I like the way the bullets clip in. It’s neat, precise and metallic. Reliable and with a purpose. I like my joint too, but in an entirely different way. If the gun represents the daddy, then the joint is Mummy. Embracing, comforting, soothing. It’s not about purposes but about simply being. Or adding kindness to whatever already exists. And it too has a welcome reliability. It too is something I depend on.

  I think about April’s funeral yesterday. Little April, blind and dead, now free to take the next steps on her journey, whatever that may be. Already her connection with me is looser. Looser in a good way. She told me the thing she needed to tell me. A thing so laughable in its simplicity that I can’t believe it took me so long to notice it. Fiona Griffiths, prizewinning philosophy graduate, can be a total idiot at times. I quite like that. I prefer people who aren’t too simple.

  By four thirty, I’m restless. There’s no need to wait for anything. So I get up, shower, and dress. Boots, trousers, top, denim jacket. An impulse takes me to the mirror, and I rub styling gel through my hair, spiking it up properly. Then makeup. Red lips, killer eyes. The rock-chick look. Tooled up and ready to motor.

  I’m in the car and driving by quarter past five. There’s rain coming in later, or so the weatherman promised last night, but the day opens fine and bright. The world feels like it’s on parade for a morning inspection. Shadows ruled out on roads and pavements with stencil-edged accuracy. Lawns mown. Cars all present and correct. Nothing moving except me.

  I’m out of Cardiff in no time at all, then flying west, the sun at my back, Amy Winehouse on the CD player, energy bar, handcuffs, gun, ammo, and phone on the passenger seat. My Peugeot’s shadow flies along the road in front of me, and I fly after it, trying to race the turning world.

  Cardiff. Bridgend. Porthcawl. Port Talbot. Swansea.

  It was about here Brydon and I turned off for our day out on the Gower peninsula. The sea lies somnolent and glittering on my left, watching me as I drive. It’s not impressed.

  Then beyond Swansea, to where the motorway runs out.

  Pontardulais. Llanddarog. Carmarthen.

  This is real Wales. Deep Wales. Old Wales. This isn’t the Wales created by the Victorians, all coal and iron and ports and factories. This is the Wales of the Celts. Of opposition. Opposition to the Normans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Romans. Opposition to the invader. An F-off sign, lasting centuries. Out here, people speak Welsh because they’ve never spoken anything else. Using English marks you as a foreigner.

  Saint Clears. Llanddewi. Haverfordwest.

  I’m driving more slowly now. Picking my way out of Haverfordwest toward Walwyn’s Castle. Unfamiliar lanes. Cows on the road. Just been milked and on their way to pasture. A farmworker with a hazel switch and a collie walks behind the cows, nudges them into their field, then raises a hand at me as I pass. I wave back and drive on.

  Through Walwyn’s Castle to Hasguard Cross. Beyond that to the edge of the peninsula. Sea on every side now, except my back, and I’m not going back anytime soon. Saint Brides on my right. Saint Ishmael’s on my left. And straight ahead, my target. A nowhere place in a nowhere land. An old lighthouse that lights nothing and protects no one.

  Not just an old lighthouse but, according to the Royal Mail’s postcode finder, the Old Lighthouse. And it’s white. I know that from photos of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path I managed to find on Flickr. White and close to the beach. West of Milford Haven. Martyn Roberts’s boat was based in Milford Haven, and this western outcrop is remote and hard to access, unlike the more crowded east. Until I get there, I can’t be entirely certain, but every possible indication is pointing to the same location.

  I’m farther from Cardiff now than Cardiff is from the western edge of London. This is the tip of infinity, the edge of oblivion.

  It’s seven fifteen and I’m ready.

  A mile or so away from my destination, I park. The shoulder is so thick with tall stalks of cow parsley that I have to mow a swath through them to get off the road. All their pretty, white, decapitated heads. The air above the car engine shimmers with the rising heat. Gulls wheel above me, and the sea chuckles at my presumption.

  Gun. Phone. Handcuffs. A pocketful of ammo. I don’t need anything else. With a bit of luck, I’ll need only the cuffs and the phone. I check it for signal and am relieved to see that it’s running at full strength.

  I walk slowly toward the lighthouse, cutting through the fields and navigating by feel. It’s not hard. I’m aiming for the sea, and the sea is all around me. A couple of wheat fields first, the crop just starting to show the first hints of gold. Sea breeze. Gorse and broom blazing yellow in the hedges. Then a field of sheep and my first view of the lighthouse.

  It’s a smaller building than I’d constructed in my head. A stubby little tower, disused and doing nothing. A low building beneath it, almost barrel-shaped against the slope. A door, with half a dozen stone steps running up to it. Two windows that I can see. Maybe more that I can’t. A dirt parking area with a Land Rover, nothing else. There’s a barbed-wire fence all round the property and a locked gate, but nothing impenetrable. More of a warning to tourists to keep their distance than anything else.

  I’m relieved to see just the one car. Two would have scared me, but it’s just the one.

  But then I see something that I don’t like at all.

  Along the coast, maybe four hundred yards along, there’s a boat moored offshore. A blue boat with a dirty white stripe along the side. Martyn Roberts’s boat, if the image on his website is to be trusted.

  Martyn Roberts, the only charter-boat captain in South Wales who didn’t want me to check his sailing log. Martyn Roberts, who hung up on me when I was at Rattigan Transport, making inquiries. Martyn Roberts, the ex-con.

  As I watch, a rubber dinghy chugs out from the shore. It’s hard to tell from this distance, but it looks like there are three figures onboard. Hard to tell, but I’d say that two of them were male, one female.

  I suddenly feel unprepared. An amateur.

  I feel the way I feel when I’ve seen Lev fight for real. Still practice fights—I’ve never seen him try to hurt anyone—but fights where he’s up against someone with almost his own level of training and ability. I realize, when I watch those things, that I’m a million miles from being ready for serious conflict. I realize how vulnerable I truly am.

  I should have brought binoculars. I should have been here two or three hours ago. I should have come with Penry, or Lev, or Brydon, or all three of them.

  I should have forced a meeting with D.C.I. Jackson and insisted on his sending a full armed response unit to the scene and threatened to resign if he refused.

  I could do that even now. Call Jackson, tell him where I am, tell him what I think is going on. Tell him that I need helicopters and divers and marksmen and vehicles here ASAP. But those things can’t be here ASAP. All that’s here is me and no time to lose.

  I take the gun out of my pocket and start running.

  Running fast through the sheep field. Then there’s another field—a long slope of cropped grass and lichened limestone—running down to the sea’s edge and the lighthouse. The windows are angled
away from my direction of approach. The door opens right onto it. I need to hope the door doesn’t open. I need to hope no one walks around the side of the building.

  Fifty yards from the lighthouse, I stop. Heart yammering, blood racing.

  This is it. What Lev prepared me for.

  You never get a fight where or when you want it. You never get the fight you prepared for. You only ever get the fight when it reaches out for you. And that moment is now. Battle music.

  I let my pulse rate slow, then scale the locked gate and walk resolutely toward the lighthouse door. I keep my eyes on the door. Every five paces, I sweep my gaze round everything else. The dinghy has reached the boat. There is nothing stirring in the car park. There’s a little shack housing a woodpile and some basic tools. There is no one moving to either side or behind me. The sun and the sea are my only audience. Seagulls yell their disapproval.

  I get to the base of the stone steps.

  I can’t tell if the door is locked.

  There is no sound from anywhere, except sea, sky, and gulls.

  If the door is locked, I’ll shoot the lock out. If the door is unlocked, I’ll sweep it open with my left hand and have my gun up and ready in my right. I visualize both motions, then ascend the steps.

  I’m there in an instant. Time seems to be moving in jerks. Quantum jumps from one state to another, no smooth passage in between. I’m at the door. Ready. Go.

  My left hand tries the catch. It’s free. Sweep the door open. Gun up and ready to fire. Heart in my mouth isn’t quite accurate. Heart somewhere through the top of my head and thumping around in the ceiling joists.

  But there’s no threat inside the room.

  Just carnage.

  Huw Fletcher is there all right. The man I wanted to catch. Alive and catchable.

  He’s not going to offer much resistance either. Not the way he is now. Poor old Fletcher is in a state of disassembly. He lies against the wall, mute, unmoving, eyes staring through me and beyond into the ruins of his future. On the floor next to him lie the fingers of his right hand. His ears. His tongue. And, grotesquely, his scrotum, looking like the scraps that butchers feed their dogs. Blood leaks from between his legs, from his mouth, arm, and the side of his head. He’s alive, but the loss of blood may yet collect his soul.