The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (DC Fiona Griffiths)

by Harry Bingham

  And if tomorrow dawns without the smash of bullets into woodwork, without the Kevlar jackets and the jabbing guns, what then?

  How do I rescue Roy Williams?

  How do I rescue myself, if it comes to that?

  That fear I felt when I realised Henderson was deliberately driving into restricted airspace is with me again now. Or rather: it’s been with me all the time, but only now, in the silence and the dark, do I feel it completely. Like a bronze statue pulled from the ground, but still present in all its parts.

  A bronze statue glittering with ice and frozen soil. The hole beneath it shaped like a coffin and the earth still fresh.

  How do I rescue Roy Williams? How do I rescue myself?

  I think of Jackson’s joking comment when I was pulled into custody. Don’t flatter her. She’ll cock everything up. Or start shooting people. He’s not wrong. It’s true that it was Brattenbury’s job to follow me here, a job that he flunked, but the bigger failure is mine. This whole venture was my idea. My idea to reinsert myself into Tinker. My idea to distribute software for them. My idea to lay myself in front of Henderson again.

  More blameworthy still, it was me who demanded a level of operational independence so great that it ended up blinding the judgement of my more cautious senior officers.

  But perhaps I don’t have to stop at proving Jackson right. What if I proved him righter than right by cocking things up and shooting people? What if a little carefully considered violence ended up saving Roy’s life, and mine? Saving our lives and smashing this gang?

  That thought appeals no small amount. But Henderson is armed, as is Geoff, and as is Allan. And we strongly suspect that the security team is more than three strong. And I’ll bet that every member of it is armed.

  Plus the exits are all locked.

  Plus Geoff, Allan or occasionally Henderson are always within sight of the front door.

  Shooting people is one thing. Shooting people and surviving quite another.

  I wish Lev were here. Or that he was in the woods outside. I’d back Lev’s abilities against a barnful of Hendersons. But Lev isn’t here and Lev isn’t coming. The woods are empty of both him and SCO19. It’s me, little me, and nobody else.

  How do I rescue Roy Williams? How do I rescue myself?

  Some time after two, I fall asleep. The same two questions in my head. The same roaring absence of an answer.

  51

  Saturday and Sunday: work, more work.

  I start at eight. Ramesh’s boys, or at least two of them, have been at their desks an hour or two before I arrive. They hurl me straight back in it. Another mountain of tax forms. Error messages and computer screens too. They need me to check that their software looks right and handles right. They want it to feel like the real thing. Once, I come across a page which normally loads instantly but on the fake system is taking as much as twenty seconds to show its face. There’s a brief fury of recoding, then I’m asked to check again. For some reason, I don’t know why, I’ve become known not as ‘Fiona’ but as ‘FG’. So when I’m needed at a computer terminal, there are cries of ‘Effgee, Effgee, come please!’

  Shoesmith talks with Ramesh about program code. Wyatt comes in now and again and annoys everybody. Henderson comes regularly as well, careful to protect me. He insists that I’m worked for no longer than three hours at a stretch. That I get half-hour breaks in between. If Ramesh is naturally patriarchal, used to treating women as servants, Henderson is something more primitive. A he-lion stalking in the long grass, skin hot in the sunshine, and one fierce eye fixed on his harem.

  Maid-of-all-work or concubine. Those are my choices.

  Again, I don’t mind. In a funny way, it’s nice to be told what to do and when to do it. Nice to be able to defer the moment at which I have to decide what the hell I’m going to do.

  Our first full day, the Saturday, we work till nine p.m. Everyone’s keen to keep blasting on – it’s dull work and it needs to get finished – but Henderson, Geoff and Allan break things up. They drag a big-screen telly in from somewhere, play a movie, distribute beers and pizza. A party atmosphere prevails. We’re not going to be done by tomorrow, the original hope, but we look set fair to have everything complete before the end of the day on Monday. Terry says, ‘We should have a big celebration. A giant piss-up.’ Geoff catches Henderson’s eye, laughs, and says, ‘Well, you might just get lucky.’

  By ten o’clock, I bail out and go to bed.

  Sleep badly. Hayley Morgan, Saj Kureishi and Roy Williams crowd in on me. I keep asking them to leave, and they do, but as my awareness dims again, they always come back. Roy Williams keeps asking me to help him back to Katie and his little girl. I am vaguely aware of Katie too, but she’s a long way off. The wrong side of a dark hill, unreachable.

  The next day, Sunday, it’s back to work. Start early. More tedious, patient work in two- or three-hour blocks. I’m less tired than I was. Have caught up with myself a bit, but I still don’t fancy starting work as a cleaner in London tomorrow or the next day. I try to ask Henderson about this, but he’s away a lot today. Busy and pressed. He just says, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort it,’ and gives me the kind of gesture which makes me bide my time.

  At five in the afternoon, Henderson orders us all out because they need the room for a while. I can’t think why. There are fewer people here than last time. Three people working in Distribution. Two, including Wyatt, in Finance. There are other rooms in this building that would easily accommodate anything that Henderson has to do and by turfing us out, he’s simply put back the time by which we might finish. We can’t even reassemble in some other room, because all the office equipment is in the main conference area and we can’t work without it.

  I try to find Geoff to talk crap with him, but he’s in with Henderson too. So is Allan. With our armed guards all hidden away for the time being, I think seriously of getting my lock picks to work on the front door. Would probably even try it, in fact, except that Ram and his boys are setting up a game of cricket, played with a cardboard tube and an old tennis ball, and the tennis ball bounces too often into the front hall for me to have any chance of privacy.

  So I go to my room and lie on the bed and drink peppermint tea and try to remember what Buzz looks like. Or what I do, for that matter: the beast in the mirror is still blonde and pixie-locked.

  Strange to say it, but I miss Quintrell.

  It’s ten to seven before we’re allowed back. There’s a smell of toner cartridge and the printer output tray is warm to the touch. I tweak out the main paper tray and crunch up the pages on top before returning the thing to its place.

  We continue work for forty minutes. The accuracy of our fake system is getting better all the time. Shoesmith sets up a whiteboard with forms and output data to be checked. Each item has to be checked a minimum of ten times, using different combinations of input variables on each occasion. Shoesmith, a bottle of brown ale in hand, says, ‘We need ten out of ten scores on every single thing. Or twenty out of twenty. Then one more run of everything for luck. Then we’re done.’ The whiteboard marks our progress. Still slow, but some niggles with changing tax codes were sorted just before five and our successes are coming faster now.

  At half seven, someone tries to print something and the machine jams. The man who tried to print – Dilip Krishnaswamy, the one who got the cricket game started – jabs impatiently at the green print button, then calls out to me, ‘Effgee, printer jam!’

  Effgee, aka Jessica Taylor, aka Fiona Grey, aka the woman I once thought I was, goes over to sort things out. The printer’s on the floor, so I get down on all fours to attend to it properly. I’m hardly an expert in office machinery, but I understand these things better than my current colleagues. And printers, I happen to know, contain their own computer chips. Their own stored memory. I clear the jam, but stay down on hands and knees flipping through the menu options. The machine does its best to be helpful and, Lord bless its inky little printer head, the thing succeeds.
‘Print History’ it suggests. I hit OK to see the submenu and it offers me a choice of Print Last and Print All. I choose the latter and replace the paper tray. Pages start pouring from the machine.

  When it comes, I give cricketing Krishna his work. Keep everything else.

  We work till nine thirty, at which point Henderson comes in to inspect. I’ve got about fifty reports to inspect and the IT boys are now mostly just goofing around as they wait on me.

  Henderson – beer on his breath – asks me how it’s going.

  ‘Not well, to be honest. I’ve got a splitting headache. I might go and lie down for a while.’

  Henderson checks his watch. ‘No. Let’s end it there for tonight. You’ve done enough. Have you eaten?’

  I ask him for a club sandwich and tell him that if he’s extra nice he’d get me a mug of peppermint tea. He promises to be extra nice. I pick up my pile of work papers, including the stuff from the printer, and go to my room.

  Henderson joins me there in ten minutes with the sandwich, some tea, a bottle of beer for him and a bowl of crisps for us both.

  ‘Can I join you for a while?’ he asks, and I nod.

  I’m lying on my bed, back against the wall. My stack of papers down on the floor beside me. He notices them, but it’s just work stuff. I’ve had papers in here all weekend, and there’s nothing obviously special about these.

  ‘Your team seems to be making good progress,’ he says. ‘Terry is happy.’

  ‘Yes. Vic, look, I’m meant to be cleaning in London tomorrow morning. That’s obviously not going to happen, but I might need a couple of days off before I do start. I’m knackered.’

  One of those micro-pauses, then a nod. ‘That’s fine. In fact, I’ve got good news for you. We’re ditching those London dates. We’re just going to launch everything just as soon as Terry and Ram give the thumbs up.’

  I stare at him, wondering if this is a genuine change of plan or if those London dates were all just another blind. A red herring. With a bolt of alarm, I realise that Terry may be planning to push his Fuck It button as soon as Monday evening. If that happens, then Brattenbury won’t be ready. He’ll be assuming he has another three weeks, and instead he’ll be presiding over one of the worst bungles in law enforcement history. One officer kidnapped. Another infiltrated to no good effect. And the biggest theft in history taking place right under SOCA’s always-confident noses.

  Don’t flatter her. She’ll cock everything up. And I have done. Brattenbury wanted to know the date of launch and I gave it to him, but the wrong one. The police officer who enabled the biggest crime in history: that’s me.

  Trying to keep my voice level, I say, ‘I thought London was the biggie. I thought the biggest payroll departments were based there.’

  ‘They are. We found . . . other means of access. But we won’t be paying you any less. We’ll stick to what was agreed.’

  I nod. In actual fact, they already have paid me. This last week, as it happens. The full amount. Sixty grand. Sitting in a bank account, offshore, in my name. That might seem unusually trusting for a bunch of criminals, but for one thing, they do trust me. For another thing, they’d happily kill me if I crossed them. Trust comes easy when you’re the one with the gun.

  I say, ‘You’ll get your holiday early, then.’

  ‘Yes. The offer’s still open. If you care to join me . . .?’

  This time his question is direct. It wasn’t last night.

  I shrug apologetically. My answer remains the same. He looks genuinely sad. Runs his finger down the line of my jaw. ‘Pity,’ he murmurs. I think he means it. I give him sad eyes too. I mean those too, about 50 per cent.

  We talk a bit. Eat the crisps. I yawn. He leaves.

  He leaves and I turn to my pilfered documents. Documents that were so secret, the likes of Ram, Shoesmith and myself were never meant to see them.

  And yet – there’s nothing remarkable here at all. There are some work schedules of the sort that have already been distributed. A checklist of things to be done before launch, a document that has been kicking around all weekend. Then too, a menu for Terry’s precious ‘Leaving Party’: a list of canapés and drinks. We’ve seen that too. Geoff’s initials, GK, against a draft shopping list. A draft list of attendees: I appear only as ‘FG? – check with VH’, which doesn’t say much for my overall importance. But Ram and his team aren’t there at all, which suggests it wasn’t much of a list anyway.

  I throw the paper in the bin and go to bed.

  Sleep.

  And wake, icy with a sudden realisation. I flip the light on and go back to the Leaving Party. The initials that aren’t on the list. Vic isn’t there. Nor Geoff, nor Alan. Ram isn’t there, nor any member of his team. That leaves me and Terry from the Product Design team. James Wyatt isn’t there, but his colleague from Finance is. The three people from Distribution.

  Not much of a party.

  I’m left wondering what kind of ‘leaving’ Geoff had in mind, and I don’t think I’m going to like the answer.

  At any rate, the question crystallises things. I need to get out now, tonight. I need to liberate Roy. And I need to let Brattenbury know where the hell we are.

  The shock of action sheathes me in something cold, but I recognise, underneath, the beat of a gathering energy. The beat of Fiona Griffiths in hunting mode.

  I pull on jeans, T-shirt and a loose floral shirt. Leave my room. Go up the little flight of steps to the hall table, where Geoff is flipping through yesterday’s paper. His gun is lying on the table next to a packet of biscuits and a can of Coke.

  ‘You all right, love?’ he says, with a note of surprise. It’s two thirty in the morning.

  ‘Not really. I’m coming down with something. Do you have paracetamol or codeine? Something like that.’

  ‘Not here, but I can get you some.’ He gestures through the wall towards the farmhouse.

  I say, ‘Yes, please.’

  He pockets his gun. There’s a keypad on the wall which releases the main door lock, but it’s a six digit code and Geoff shelters the pad as he keys it in. He leaves.

  I jog back down to my room. Come back with my hairgrips and make-up stuff. The door has an electronic override, but the basic mechanism is still a regular lock. The torsion wrench goes in easily, and it’s obvious which way the lock turns, which isn’t always the case. I rake out the lock, then start with my picks.

  I’m not familiar with these damn picks though and this is a big brute of a lock. Heavy and difficult to work.

  Excuses, excuses.

  I get a couple of pins free, but I’m working way too slowly. Then my left hand, the one that holds the torsion wrench, slips and the lock pings back to its original position, cancelling my gains.

  Sod it.

  Plan B.

  I shove my tools into a back pocket, go over to Geoff’s table and pour a good glug of my amisulpride into his Coke. It’s not a particularly dangerous drug in overdose – you wouldn’t give it to nutters if it was – but, like everything, it has side-effects, which are all the more prominent for those who aren’t used to it.

  I asked Henderson for the liquid formulation on the assumption that the taste must be OK. I’ve always used tablets myself.

  I start to make myself peppermint tea in the kitchenette.

  Geoff comes back. He gives me the painkillers, which I swallow.

  I gesture at my tea and say, ‘Thanks. Look, can I sit with you awhile? I’m feeling weird.’

  That’s no lie. I am feeling strange. Shaky from the stress, or shaky, perhaps, because I feel new blood surging back into my system. My blood. Fiona Griffiths’s finest.

  Geoff says, ‘Course you can.’ Insists on going to my room and fetching me a jumper.

  We sit down, share his biscuits. I clink my tea mug against his Coke and we both drink.

  We chat a bit. About work, of course: the damn project looms over us like those mountainsides of colliery spoil. Huge grey slopes hanging over rows o
f little white cottages. Obliteration in a single slip of rock.

  We talk about Ramesh. Timetables. I say it’ll be odd when everything’s over. Geoff rubs my forearm and says, ‘We’ve all enjoyed having you on the team.. You’ve been . . . you’ve been great.’

  His eyes want to say something more and his hand is a little too slow to leave my arm. Half creepy, half motherly. Somewhere in between.

  I say, ‘Thanks.’ Crinkle my eyes at him.

  We do a quick crossword together, then I stand up in a going-back-to-bed sort of way.

  Geoff stands too. He has that kind of courtesy. Henderson does too. It must be part of the professional killer’s training.

  But it’s hard standing on a bellyful of amisulpride. Big doses make you drowsy and first-time users, even those on a more regular dose, usually complain of faintness on standing.

  Taken aback, Geoff starts to say something. His hand reaches blurrily for his Glock.

  But I’m there first.

  Pick it up by the barrel. Lash the butt into his head. My first blow dazes him. The second one, a smasher, lays him out cold. The floor is stone and his head bounces, once, on impact. A little curl of blood leaks from his left ear.

  ‘You’ve been great too, Geoff,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve been great too.’

  I check I know how the gun works – I’ve made that mistake before – then stuff it into the waistband of my jeans. Go back to the door.

  I’ve got more time now, but more adrenalin too.

  Torsion wrench. Raking tool. Then the picks, the delicate picks. The too-delicate picks straining to shift the too-heavy tumblers.

  Sod the sodding SOCA idiots, I think. I bet they gave me a girly little lock set. I bet they keep the real tools for the big rough tough guy cops who know how to use them.

  A flare of anger.

  Stupid. Not helpful.

  I try to keep my attention in my fingertips.