The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (DC Fiona Griffiths)

by Harry Bingham

One of the coppers says, ‘Now if you calm down, we’ll take the restraints off.’

  I say, ‘Fuck off, I haven’t done anything.’

  He says, ‘Well then, we’ll go and talk about it. And if you haven’t done anything, then—’

  I elbow him in the side and try to grab the pouch that has keys to the cuffs.

  I don’t get anywhere, but the officers exchange glances and bundle me into the car, cuffs and all. In England and Wales, arrest is primarily a symbolic act. Wherever possible, ‘arrest’ is made simply by a police officer placing a hand on the suspect’s shoulder, taking emblematic control of that person’s freedom. If physical control – handcuffs, for example – is required, then it’s applied to the minimum degree possible and for the shortest possible time. Chokeholds and the like are strictly forbidden. The use of cuffs on women and minors is regarded as inappropriate in almost all situations.

  As ever, I like to be the exception.

  When we get to the custody suite – down on Cardiff Bay, modern facility, all very fancy – they offer again to take the cuffs off. They make it sound as if they want to do me a favour, but the truth is that any half-awake custody sergeant would demand an explanation if he saw four bulky male officers escort a young woman inside, wearing restraints. I act badly enough, however, that the restraints stay on.

  As I’m being booked in, I see Quintrell being processed too. No cuffs for her. She’s in a blue and white summer dress, with matching shoes. She catches my eye, but we keep our faces closed. I can feel a bruise rising on my forehead where the floor hit me.

  Custody processing isn’t quick. Because I received some injuries in the arrest process, those things need to be evaluated by a medical professional. The arresting officers have to make a statement of their arrest and restraint techniques. I’m evaluated for my likelihood of self-harm and my shoelaces, belt, bra and tights are removed as a precaution. The female custody officer who removes these things tells me I can have them back if my risk-assessment changes. She offers me a hygiene pack, which I take. Because records show that Fiona Grey has been in custody before, in Manchester, it takes some time to access both national and local intelligence systems.

  The lighting in the examination room is fierce and I have a swelling headache. I ask for, and receive, aspirin.

  I have a brief interview with the duty solicitor. She seems like a nice woman – Barbara, mumsy, keen to help. I tell her to fuck off.

  Then sit without speaking for ten minutes.

  Then we’re done.

  At two fifteen, I’m taken to an interview room, a big one. Painted in those awful green-grey and cream colours that would make most people confess to anything, just for a change of decor.

  DCI Jackson is there. And Mervyn Rogers, a good friend of mine from Major Crime. Also Brattenbury and Susan Knowles. And a forensics guy, Ryan, who I’ve had some dealings with in the past.

  Jackson pumps my hand. Was quite close to giving me a hug, I think. Brattenbury too. Susan Knowles kisses me and says, ‘Fiona!’ There is cake on the table – chocolate – and a plate of lasagne.

  ‘Tuck in,’ Jackson says. ‘You must be starving.’

  I’m not starving. I had something to eat six hours ago and I never eat much for lunch. But I know why they chose lasagne: Buzz once asked me what my favourite food was, because he wanted to cook something special. I’ve no idea what my favourite food is, so I said lasagne, because I thought I had to say something. So Buzz always cooks lasagne when he wants to be extra nice and Jackson would have asked Buzz what I’d most want, and Buzz would have said lasagne and chocolate cake, which I do certainly like.

  I eat a bit.

  Brattenbury says, ‘You know about Roy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry about not giving you more notice of this’ – he means my arrest – ‘but we had to get you out. We couldn’t risk losing two officers.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, avoiding the question of whether I agree or not.

  ‘Taking Quintrell at the same time: it’s the perfect cover.’

  I nod.

  ‘The story is that we kept an eye on the Western Vale payroll system after the arrest of Ellen Keith. We realised that the fraud was being perpetuated. Identified you as the perpetrator. Followed you to Quintrell’s house. Uncovered her past. Figured out that you and she were in collusion. Secured audio surveillance on her house. Heard everything. Ba-ba-boom.’

  ‘Have you arrested Henderson?’

  ‘No. We’re going to play dumb. We’ve got his voice on the tapes, of course, but we’re going to treat him just as “Unidentified Male”. When we interrogate Quintrell, we’ll make it seem like getting an identification on him will be a major purpose of our inquiries. But we’d rather have him loose, so we can go on watching him. We only brought Quintrell in so we could get you out.’

  ‘I understand.’

  If Brattenbury was expecting me to be more gushing about my rescue, he manages his disappointment with nothing more than a micro-pause. He moves on to thank me for the package I left for him at the hostel. Ryan, the forensics guy, tells me that the blood on Henderson’s clothing and eyebrow has been identified as belonging to Roy Williams. I’d guessed as much, but it’s good to have it confirmed.

  ‘How’s Katie?’ I ask.

  Jackson says, ‘Not good. Not at all good.’

  ‘I could see her later, maybe. If that would help.’

  ‘Yes, it might. Let’s see.’

  We talk business. Brattenbury’s team realised fairly quickly that the entire Heathrow conference thing was just a blind. SCO19 were stood down, but by that point they had no idea where I was, where Quintrell was, where anyone was.

  ‘We were very frightened for you,’ says Brattenbury simply. ‘Especially after Roy.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve killed Roy. He’s no use to them dead.’

  ‘I agree, but still . . .’

  He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Williams’s life is in acute danger. We all know it. We sit for a moment in a ticking silence.

  But silence doesn’t help. Working does. I tell them all about the barn, the farmhouse, the computer project. I tell them about Ram and Terry and Phil and Geoff. Tell them about the Fuck It button. The button that would allow them to steal one hundred per cent of all payroll payments coming from all companies using the system.

  The biggest theft in the world.

  Jackson is visibly shocked, but also impressed. We all are. You can’t be a police officer and not admire criminality at its most talented and audacious. These things are a privilege to witness.

  I sketch out what I see now of Tinker’s organisation. The full list is way longer than we’d ever imagined. And our gathering belief that we had identified most of the gang participants is proving to be way off target. Scarily far off. As we have it now, the organisation chart looks like this, with question marks denoting those people where we don’t have final identities, addresses, or surveillance.

  Security and operations: Henderson, Allan, Geoff

  Product design: Quintrell, Terry, Ramesh + 3 colleagues

  Distribution: ??? Three participants, maybe four

  Finance: Wyatt, plus ??? three others

  The owner / boss: ???

  It’s true I have some idea of numbers and faces in the distribution and finance strands, but it’s desperately hard to recall a face well enough to derive an accurate image of it, particularly if there’s a gap of a day or more, particularly if, as in my case, that day has not exactly been calm and without incident. And even if I were able to recall the faces, what then? Wyatt wouldn’t have shown up in any search of police records. Identity searches like that only really work where a local force is trawling through a list of known troublemakers. They don’t work when you’re looking for some guy whose face Fiona Griffiths thinks she roughly remembers.

  I think our organisation chart isn’t complete.

  ‘There were times when Henderson, Allan and Geoff we
re all together in the barn. But that would mean there was no one looking out for the farmhouse itself. No one protecting the big boss guy, assuming that the boss guy was present in the farmhouse the entire time. I don’t think that’s plausible. And the night that Roy Williams was abducted, Geoff and Allan were in the barn, at least some of the time. I just don’t believe that Henderson picked Roy up by himself. It’s not credible.’

  Brattenbury agrees with my logic. ‘One more security guy? Two?’

  His pen hesitates over the whiteboard.

  ‘I’m guessing, but I’d say two, minimum.’

  Our organisation chart changes again, so that the first line reads:

  Security and operations: Henderson, Allan, Geoff, plus ??? two

  other unknowns

  Jackson grimaces, then changes the subject. ‘Talk to me about location,’ he says.

  I give him what I have.

  Nia’s accent. South, Mid or West Wales, not Cardiff. Probably not Valleys.

  The stone flake from the step. Ryan tells us that it’s an example of Old Red Sandstone. There are instances of the stone as far distant as the Moray Firth, even Shetland, but the main deposit in the UK is in South Wales and the Welsh Marches. ‘Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Powys, Monmouthshire. That’s basically the main area. There are outcrops in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Also Somerset and Devon. There are further tests we can do to specify location, but we don’t have a lot of material to deal with.’ He grimaces, but I don’t apologise. Henderson searched my clothes, not intensively, but with attention before packing them in the bin liner. If I’d taken more stone, it would have been detected.

  My clothes. I made a scene about what I had to wear because I wanted to make sure Henderson bought a long list of stuff. I gave Brattenbury details in my note last night: the grey dress, the brown belt, the shoes, the shirts, the jeans, the watch. Everything. ‘I had my clothes no later than ten thirty in the morning. Everything was Gap branded. So there’s a store somewhere which sold that list of clothes to a shopper, almost certainly paying cash, somewhere between opening time and ten a.m. or thereabouts. If we can get time and place for the transaction, we’ve got some coordinates to work with.’

  The telecoms tower: it was neither very close by nor thirty miles distant. When the moon came out, there was an angle of, I guess, about ten degrees, between moon and tower. Henderson told me that the time was quarter to eleven, a time that was consistent with the level of darkness outside. Estimating the direction of the telecom tower from the angle of the moon should give us a bearing with which to work.

  The car: the fibres I took from the second car – not Henderson’s BMW but the one I only entered blindfolded – should with a little luck be sufficient to identify a make and perhaps even a model. I check with Henderson, ‘You have video coverage of location where Henderson switched cars?’ He nods, so I say, ‘We check video for cars leaving the area at that time and driven by a lone female. Check any possibles against the fibre samples, and we should know which car I was carried in. There’s a good chance that we’ll get ANPR data on its movements.’

  And finally, of course, the barn itself. When I paced up and down, I made careful measurements of both the main barn itself and the side buildings which housed our bedrooms and the common room. I give the measurements as accurately as I can. Draw it out. ‘The renovation is fairly recent and expensive. Assuming they applied for planning permission, the application should be traceable. And if not – well, we can always go back over aerial images.’

  Jackson and the others scribble furiously all through this. Jackson tells me that they’re already asking Gap head office for store by store sales data. I ask how many stores they have in South Wales.

  ‘Outside Cardiff? Not many. Ebbw Vale. Bridgend.’

  I say, ‘Try Ebbw. I think we were in the mountains. No lights. Minimal traffic. No planes. Nightjars. At least one or two steep ascents. I also think the telecoms tower was on elevated ground. There were trees between me and it, but its topmost lamp rose clear of the leaves. If we were in the mountains, it wouldn’t make sense for someone to drive to Cardiff or Bridgend.’

  ‘Good. We’ll call Ebbw direct.’

  There’s a bit more discussion. Ryan is a bit negative on the fibres I collected from the car. He says you have two or three big carpet manufacturers who supply all the big car companies. We spiral off into technicalities.

  I say, ‘Look, I think we should have a little police brutality, if you don’t mind.’

  Jackson and Brattenbury exchange a look. Susan Knowles covers her mouth.

  Jackson starts to talk, but I interrupt.

  ‘Look, you’re going to put me in a cell with Anna Quintrell, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So let me look the part, the way she imagines it, anyway. She’s already seen me in handcuffs. We may as well add some colour. We want her to unload.’

  ‘You’ve already taken a knock or two from when they brought you in.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ I shrug. I saw myself in the mirror when I was getting my medical inspection. A knock or two. No big deal.

  Brattenbury says, ‘Look, Fiona, I appreciate your—’

  Jackson says, ‘Actually, Adrian, I agree with Fiona here. Mervyn, this is your field of expertise, I believe.’

  Rogers grins at me and says, ‘I thought I’d never get the chance.’ He leaves the room.

  I eat some lasagne, which is now cold.

  Brattenbury says, ‘Fiona, this is remarkable work. You—’

  Jackson interrupts him. ‘Don’t flatter her. She’ll cock everything up. Or start shooting people.’

  Rogers comes back into the room with a wooden hockey stick. I view it with some alarm. I do vaguely remember that one of Buzz’s hockey team-mates works in the custody suite, but when I suggested police brutality, I wasn’t thinking of this exactly. And Rogers looks like a man who knows how to use a hockey stick. Except maybe when it comes to hitting hockey balls.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says cheerfully. ‘This looks worse than it is. Here, take these.’ He gives me some aspirin. ‘Reduces pain, increases bruising.’

  I’ve already had as many aspirin as I’m meant to take, but I crunch up what he gives me and swallow the dust with some cold tea.

  ‘Give it twenty minutes,’ Rogers advises.

  Jackson nods. Says, ‘This farmhouse, wherever it is. You think Roy Williams is there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any actual evidence?’

  ‘No. But they’ve taken acute care to protect the place. Roy Williams will be a prize asset for them. Why give yourself two locations to worry about when you could focus on a single site?’

  A bit of chat about that too. The consensus agrees with my verdict.

  I ask if they’ve found anything out about Henderson’s alternative health place. Brattenbury would have gone mental at me if I’d told him about Gary, so I just said Henderson happened to mention the place in passing.

  ‘We’ll have a video on the relevant doorway later today. It seems Henderson sees an osteopath most weeks. He doesn’t always make it, but pays whether he comes or not. The osteopath seems for real. Getting an interception warrant for the osteopath’s room, though. That could be hard.’

  An understatement, I would think. Our reasons for suspicion are highly circumstantial and bugging a quasi-medical practice with the attendant ‘collateral infringement of privacy’ will be a hard sell, even for SOCA.

  Brattenbury and Jackson both take calls, receive texts, confer with colleagues. Brattenbury is in charge of the operation overall, but most of the manpower is now coming from Jackson’s team and command seems about equally shared to me. Plus Roy Williams is Jackson’s man, not Brattenbury’s. And it’s more than just a chain-of-command issue for Jackson. He was a guest at Roy and Katie’s wedding. I saw the pictures.

  It’s been twenty minutes, or a little more.

  ‘OK,’ Rogers says. ‘Stand up. There, yes, like th
at.’

  I stand. He places the hockey stick upright, so it touches the bone above and below my right eye socket. Jackson gets into position behind me. Susan Knowles is staring at us, like we’re a collection of savages.

  ‘Short, sharp knock,’ says Rogers. ‘Close your eyes. On three.’

  He hits me on two. Doesn’t move the stick, just slams it hard and sharp with his hand. I feel a fierce blow on my skull, but it’s shocking more than actually painful. Like a sudden bolt of blackness, shot through with stars.

  I fall over. Jackson catches me. Slides me sideways into a chair.

  I put my hand to my face. Feel a lump already starting to rise. Skin and muscles starting to rise and thicken, obedient to a new physiognomy.

  ‘Ow!’

  Rogers inspects his handiwork and grins. ‘It’s coming up lovely.’ To Susan Knowles’s appalled face, he adds, ‘Trained as a sports physio once upon a time. Amazing the things you learn.’

  I ask for peppermint tea. Then there’s a bit where we all just sit around and drink tea and eat cake.

  I say to Brattenbury, ‘You’ll have to take me to Manchester, of course?’

  ‘Yes.’

  To Jackson: ‘Is there any way you could arrange—’

  ‘Already done. Your young man will be in Manchester. We’ll give you as much time together as we can arrange. Make the most of it.’ His face shifts a little and he adds, ‘These long assignments. They get to anyone. It can take time to settle back into normal.’

  I realise that my apartment would have been under surveillance from the moment that Roy Williams was reported missing. Someone would have seen Henderson kiss his fingers and touch them to my lips. Seen that and reported it, but Jackson is too wise an owl to let the matter go any further.

  I also realise that from Jackson’s perspective and from Brattenbury’s this whole arrest process is a way to get me out from active undercover work. They couldn’t simply withdraw me: that would flag me up as a spy to Henderson and his buddies. A big, loud, public arrest is probably the single most common way of withdrawing an undercover officer from duty. From their point of view, Fiona Grey has just about reached the end of her useful life.