The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths

by Harry Bingham

  Amazingly enough, every interception warrant is personally authorized by the Home Secretary herself, and no sane Home Secretary would conceivably reject most of the applications we’ve made so far. But bugging an entire building full of perfectly innocent people in the hope of catching a single (and very occasional) non-innocent encounter that probably takes place somewhere in that building – well, you don’t have to be much of a civil libertarian to have anxieties about that approach to policing. I think Brattenbury expects a no.

  So near, but yet so far.

  I’ve made arrests before. Secured prosecutions, convictions, seen people put away for life. But I’ve never hit the big guys. The owner-managers of organized crime. The people who are so far above the dirty day-to-day stuff that they run their legitimate enterprises, send their kids to private schools, collect fatuous awards for entrepreneurship, make ostentatious donations to charity, collect trophy wives and pretty mistresses, and no one even thinks to ask if this or that well-connected businessman might actually be a major league asshole.

  Am I bitter? I am. The last big case I worked on had a rich, successful guy as its primary target. A man who, at one stage, ordered me killed and who evaded our intended prosecution with such sweet ease that we might as well have tried to clap handcuffs on the ocean.

  In my only big case before that, the same thing, except that the bastard rich guy in question had the good grace to die before my investigation even started.

  I’d dearly love to break my duck. Dearly love to get Tinker’s Mr. Big behind bars. To nail him on a series of charges so long, so inescapable, that he’ll grow old and die behind prison bars. I’d like to watch as he finds his comb thicken with grey hairs, as he feels the first loosening of teeth in his gums, as he watches his face slowly break into a river delta of wrinkles, and to know that the only thought which beats in his head is, This is all remains to me now. This ten foot by six foot cell. This prison food, these clanging doors.

  As I walk home under this northern sky, the stars above ask if I’m ready. If I mean business. If I’m going to get my man.

  And I am, I tell them, I really am.

  47.

  Wednesday night. Dad’s cocktail bar.

  I enter the place not long after its evening opening. We minimum wage cleaners keep early hours, even Jessica. I order a drink – a fruit juice thing that looks alcoholic but isn’t – and sit at the bar in a place where the security cameras can easily see me. Turn to the camera and wink. A couple of boys are eyeing Jessica up from their corner booth. Jessica’s their sort, I think. She’s aware of their gaze and flirts a bit. She’s wearing skirt and heels, nothing too trashy, but her ankle bracelet is very visible and I think it may be acting as an extra come-on. But these are Welsh lads still on their first drink and I predict they’ll need a second before they make their move. I don’t think I’m going to be waiting that long.

  I’m right.

  I’ve not been there ten minutes before a guy comes in at the front door and raises a thumb to the barman. The barman slips me a note in Dad’s handwriting which just reads, All clear at the front. Come on upstairs.

  The office: not Dad’s corporate headquarters, but the little back room which all his ventures possess. A place where Dad can retreat to with his cronies. Green benches round a wooden table, low lighting, office stuff intermixed with Dad’s remarkably eclectic collection of mementoes and knick-knacks.

  I go up to the office, but I’m not thrilled about it as a location. The bracelet will tell Henderson where I am and bars aren’t meant to be quiet places.

  I needn’t have worried. As I swing open the office door, the murmur of a bar greets me. People talking, laughter, footsteps, even the sound of a falling glass. There’s no one here though, only Pa, who stands to greet me with a huge bear hug. We just stand and embrace without words, the best way.

  Then we do pull apart. Dad points to the speakers which are piping sound up from below. I’m impressed, as ever, at Dad’s remarkably neat stage-management. His approach gives us privacy whilst also giving me the perfect auditory cover. I give Dad a pearly-toothed smile, showing him I appreciate his thoughtfulness. He plucks at Jessica’s blond locks, looks down at her ankle bracelet and laughs at her.

  We sit.

  Dad has put out a laptop for us – I type fast and he’s no dab hand with a pen.

  I write, Lovely, lovely, lovely to see you, Dad. Been missing you soooo much!

  He’s a poor typist. He told me once, I don’t know with what truth, that he’d always assumed he was stupid, because he never got on well at school. Struggled in tests, left without qualifications. It was only later, when he was in his thirties and his flourishing criminal career very much established, that someone told him he suffered from dyslexia. Dad even claimed that his switch to legitimate business came about mostly because he realized he could get an accountant and a lawyer to do all the stuff he had never been able to do himself. Register companies, fill out VAT forms, all that side of things. I don’t believe him, not entirely. There must have been more to his particular career choices than some dismissive teachers and some crappy schooling.

  Anyway. It takes Dad time to answer. Even now, he’s sensitive about his writing skills and his finger hesitates over the keyboard, picking out the letters one by one like an elegant woman selecting chocolates from a box.

  He writes, Lovely to see you too! Your Mam misses you. He’s not all that confident in his use of the shift key. So when he wants a capital letter or an exclamation mark, he secures the shift key with the index finger of his left hand, checks it, then whacks the ‘L’, the ‘!’, the ‘Y’ or the ‘M’ with his other index finger, trying to whip both fingers away at the exact same time. The technique works, however, just as well as mine.

  I write, Can we go straight to business? I can’t be here too long. Sorry! The case won’t last much longer.

  Dad doesn’t type an answer. Just moves two stack of papers in front of me. The documents I sent him, but annotated in his own terrible handwriting.

  The first stack is marked Boring. Names and faces that Dad doesn’t know. Paperwork that didn’t strike a note with him. I flip through it, to remind myself what’s there and to see if I have any questions. Dad doesn’t interrupt me exactly, but silence isn’t his forte. As I read, he does a huge yawn, pretends to fall asleep, shoots himself with an imaginary gun. I laugh at him. Punch him in the chest. He leaves the room, comes back with a beer, asks me in mime if I want anything. I mouth ‘no thanks’, but he leaves again anyway to come back with another fruit thing and some salted nuts.

  He can’t stay still, my dad. Another big reason for his becoming a criminal, I think. Most regular jobs would have driven him crazy.

  Then I turn to the pile marked Interesting!!!!!!

  A smaller pile this, but he’s not wrong about its interest. The building next door to the health center houses a property management company, a firm of solicitors and a firm of accountants. The data I sent over to Dad – data I’ve not been able to look at properly myself – contains long lists of clients, both personal and corporate.

  Now that I have time to look at them, those lists look fairly classy. There are some names I recognize. Charlotte Rattigan: the widow of a very wealthy, very wicked man whose doings I once had a hand in exposing. Ivor Harris: local MP, immaculate reputation, but too close to Brendan Rattigan for me to trust him. Idris Prothero: an arms dealer who once tried to kill me and was involved in at least one other death, arguably two. David Marr-Phillips: a man who had some minor business dealings with Prothero. Other names too: Galton Evans, Joe Johnson. People I have no real reason to think badly of, except that they were also close to Brendan Rattigan and I don’t trust anyone who knew that man well.

  Cardiff’s not a huge city, of course, and it’s not bursting with the upmarket professional advisory types that London is full of. There are probably only a small number of firms that handle the prestige clients so it’s no surprise to find many o
f those names here. It’s not even as though there’s an obvious pattern in who does what. Ivor Harris, for example, seems to get his annual tax returns done by the accountancy firm, but has no dealings with the other two. Marr-Philips is, via a couple of his businesses, a client of the property management company, but appears to get his legal and accountancy work done elsewhere. And so on.

  But my suspicions aren’t allayed. Henderson would not have walked through that connecting door without a reason. Henderson does nothing without a reason. And if you wanted to meet someone in the center of town without anyone knowing the two of you had met – well, what could be a neater arrangement? One man goes to his osteopath. The other goes to his accountant, or solicitor, or property guy. The two men are in different buildings. Enter and leave at different times. Sweet, simple, effective.

  Dad’s comments are even more interesting than the names themselves. He’s been through those client lists with a thick red pen. Against some names – most of them – he’s scribbled Don’t know or, when he got tired of writing that much, just DK. A red scrawl that flies from the page with impatience.

  Against other names he’s written Legit, a word that gradually becomes abbreviated to an L, and then simply to a flicked flash of the pen, no longer readable as a letter.

  But then, on a minority of names, a small minority, he’s written more. Bastard!!! Don’t trust, is the first such comment. Against Marr-Philips he’s written Shark! Very dangerous man. Against Ivor Harris, he’s written Would do anything for cash. But not a real player. Against Prothero: Nasty piece of work, but not big time.

  Not all the names that mean something to me incur a wrathful comment from my pa, but it seems to me there’s a more than random overlap between the names that arouse my suspicion and those that arouse his. I’m also struck by some of his judgments. Idris Prothero – who exported at least sixteen million pounds’ worth of armaments without an export license, who ordered me killed, who had one of his own engineers framed for a drugs charge, who almost certainly arranged for the professional murder of a would-be competitor – this person is one whom my father regards as a small-timer. It’s not even as though he didn’t know Prothero’s background. I’ve told him all of it, except the part about my almost-killing. I’m struck by how little I really know of Dad’s past. That, and the depth of his own criminal professionalism. A fund of knowledge that has no bottom.

  I’m out of time really. I promised myself I would be here no more than twenty minutes, and I’ve been here closer to forty. My ankle bracelet transmits my location real-time. Henderson won’t be worried to learn that I’m in a bar, but if he or one of his buddies drops by and doesn’t find me here, I could be in trouble. Five minutes, or even ten: that could be a toilet visit. Forty minutes, though, that would be harder to explain. Once again, I become aware how narrow is the line that secures my safety. Think of Nia. How she didn’t even know that she’d crossed a line. That there was a line.

  For a moment, I’m lost in that same tangle of nettles. Wire, dock leaves, and blood thinning to water in the rain.

  But I struggle back. Dad’s presence helps. And, out of time or not, I do flip through the rest of Dad’s Interesting!!!!!! pile. He’s taken a look at the list of visitors: the people who entered the office building the morning of Henderson’s incursion. Here, it’s mostly DKs, or just a small red dot, marking impatience. But there are exceptions. Three people with red circles round their names and one person – N. Davison – by whose circled name stands the word Fixer!

  I look at Dad, question marks in my eyes.

  Dad types, ignoring the shift key and punctuation, fixer works for cash dirty jobs guy. He looks at me, gesturing at his mouth. Meaning, ‘I could tell you so much more.’

  I type, Do you know who he works for? Is there anyone he’s particularly close to?

  Dad ignores the keyboard. Just picks up the client list and waves his hand. I think he means ‘Anyone’ but then think maybe he means ‘All of them.’

  I stare at him. I’m out of time. I want to spend two days interviewing Dad about all this, but I’m not going to get the chance. Not now, certainly, but maybe never. I suspect Dad’s current willingness to divulge has been spurred on by the thrill of this clandestine meeting. If I started to come over all police-officery, I think he’d revert to his normal cheerful evasions.

  I stand. Hug my father. He wraps both arms around me and crushes me into him. He’s never really got the hang of hugging smaller women. It’s as though he doesn’t notice that my mouth and nose are struggling for oxygen, my feet slightly lifted from the floor, my back finding new shapes as his arms pull my spine towards my sternum. Mostly, since my illness, I’ve fought shy of these monster crushes. Sought hugs that are more on my terms, that give me a fighting chance of emerging with some dignity. But today this old-fashioned hug – the sort he used to give me when I was ill – feels just right. I lean into Dad’s embrace until I can’t breathe, then fight my way clear.

  I type, I LOVE YOU. I’M COMING HOME SOON. THANKS A MILLION FOR ALL THIS. YOU ARE THE BEST DAD EVER. LOVE YOU LOADS!!!! I’m not usually one for all-caps or the multi-exclamation mark, but Dad’s earned them.

  I go back downstairs. I don’t leave the bar immediately, though. The boys who had been making eyes at Jessica are still there. Blood-alcohol levels raised enough for them to call to me as I pass. Jessica spins, banters back, solicits – and gets – a drink. She spends the next hour in their company: mouthy, brassy, popular, loose. At the end of that hour, I go out the back of the bar to smoke a cigarette with Darren, the tallest and least idiotic of the boys. He wears a grey jacket and an ironed shirt, white with a blue flower design on the collar and pocket. Pulling wear.

  We have a ciggy, then I throw my stub away and start kissing him. Hard, lustful kisses that he reciprocates. He tastes of cheap cocktails and Starbursts. We spend five or ten minutes like that. Kissing, squeezing, moaning.

  This sort of thing doesn’t happen to him much, I suspect. He thinks he’s pulled because of his handsomeness and wit. Doesn’t know that he’s my alibi-snog. That I just want there to be a guy who, if Henderson starts poking around, will say, yes, he did have a snog that night with a pixie-haired blonde called Jessica. The timings won’t quite make sense – my absence not quite correlating with the time of the snog – but they don’t have to. Darren will say one thing. I’ll say something slightly different. Time will have gone by. Alcohol was involved. The audio recording will prove I was always in a bar or had my tongue down somebody’s throat. Any investigator – even Henderson, even me – would drop things at that point. The nettles and the wire: they may come to me some day, but not tonight, not because of this.

  I tell Darren he’s cute, give him my number, and go home. I’d like to tell Brattenbury what I’ve discovered, except that I haven’t really discovered anything and what I do have comes from a source that I’d be highly reluctant to disclose.

  Ah well. I’ve never believed in being too open with senior officers. It’s bad for their egos. I shower hard, brush the taste of Darren out of my mouth, and go to bed.

  48.

  As with Cardiff, so with Birmingham. Jessica flits through corporate offices. Steals passwords. Sabotages systems.

  Her crimes are more or less blatant now. Every two days, I’m in a new office. The first day I steal passwords. The second day I plant software. Then move on. Henderson, or whoever, must be bribing my bosses to put me on this kind of shift pattern. Cleaners are never moved around like this unless there’s a one-off absence that needs to be filled.

  But I don’t care, nor does Jessica. I’m a thief and a saboteur, but the reckoning for my thievery – for Tinker’s thefts and murders – won’t come here, but in a farmhouse somewhere in South Wales. On the Thursday of my second week in Birmingham, I plant my last keystroke recorder. A big manufacturing firm. Employs forty thousand workers in the UK. An old-fashioned firm. Avoids outsourcing. Protects jobs and skills. Invests locally. Is regularly
picked as one of Britain’s top employers.

  On Friday morning, I find a note from Adrian Brattenbury tucked into my cleaning stuff.

  Fiona,

  Well done! Just get yourself to the farmhouse. We will follow you there. We can track your ankle monitor. We will have multiple vehicles, plus air support. Real-time access to CCTV. We will not lose you. Once you’re there, don’t do anything. Don’t look for Roy Williams. Don’t seek to help us. SCO19 are going to be there in force and they’re trained for this. You’ve done your stuff. Now we’ll do ours.

  Stay safe!

  Adrian

  It’s not quite ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’, but it works for me. I rip the note up and add it to my bags of rubbish.

  And Jessica performs her last duties too. She gathers the harvest from her recorder. Username, passwords. Enters the firm’s computer system and plants the software which will let Ian Shoesmith sabotage it from within. Thefts of the scale we’re contemplating could, in theory, bankrupt the firm. Jeopardize jobs, investment, everything.

  When I catch sight of Jessica in a mirror, her face looks angrily determined. Vengeful. If I were her target, I’d be scared.

  At midday, my working day is done. I go outside. Smoke a cigarette with just a sprinkle of resin.

  At quarter past, a black BMW glides up the road towards me. Window down. Henderson at the wheel smiling.

  ‘Ready?’ he asks.

  I am, I say. I truly am.

  49.

  The drive from Birmingham is easy. Blast down the M5. Onto the M4. Severn Bridge. The wide blue estuary with Amina’s shushumow kicking around in the undercurrents. Mud banks and seagulls.