The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (DC Fiona Griffiths)

by Harry Bingham

  I start to climb.

  Quite quickly, I find that my ankle is not happy with my decision making. It’s arguing in favour of doctors, hospitals, painkillers and clean linen. My feet are sending memos that make mention of clean water, soap, medical care, bandages.

  The numbness that has gripped my lower half is beginning to pale into some low throb of pain. A beat I’m now struggling to ignore. I find myself falling, when I now, more than ever, need to move.

  At one point I see a rock which is well-positioned for where my right foot needs to be. I put my foot onto it – watch it into position – then shift my weight over. And simply fall. Sideways and painfully. I think, How can I even climb what lies ahead when I can’t even stand on a stupid rock?

  I actually hit my thighs in frustration. Stupid, useless things.

  Not good.

  Not good at all, and I’m aware of a kind of anger at this situation. In a way, my whole life has been an exercise in cutting off from my feelings. I’m a world-class dissociator. Numbness is my forte. I’m the empress of numb. Most of the time, somehow, I still manage to get on with my life.

  So why not now?

  For a moment, I struggle to get a grip of myself, to wrestle the pain into oblivion. To force it away with simple mind power. That doesn’t work, but when I withdraw my attention, with a silent pop, the pain vanishes. Not just the pain, but almost all physical sensation. I can hear the wind, feel the rain gentle on my face, but that’s more or less it. I can’t feel the barrel of the Glock jabbing against the top of my leg. Can’t feel the shotgun, cold in my hand. Can’t feel tiredness or pain or even fear. It’s like I’m walking alone in the universe, the only person here.

  A strange state of mind, but useful.

  Fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you.

  Somehow, I manage to keep climbing.

  The slope increases. To start with, I was using my hands and arms only occasionally for balance. Now, I’m using them all the time. Hands, elbows. The stock of my gun. Whatever works.

  I still can’t see much, but I can see enough. And strangely, there’s some sort of upside in having no boots. My toes clutch at stones. Stab themselves into mud. Twist into whatever wiry grass that survives at these heights.

  I inch higher.

  Or more than inch. The valley starts to level beneath me. Tracking sideways with my gaze, I estimate I’m a quarter of the way above the valley floor. Then halfway. Then even more.

  Left foot, right foot, hand, hand.

  Left foot, right foot, hand, hand.

  I sing, chant and swear myself upwards as the wind chatters at my clothes and hair. It’s not wet, not really, but there’s still enough rain that I’m properly soaked. Jessica’s pretty floral shirt – £9.99 at H&M, a bargain we were both happy with at the time – is a thing of rags. Her loose jumper – some acrylic thing in red, bought at a price and from a store I no longer recall – is near useless. Freely letting in the wind and rain and yet managing somehow to impede my movements.

  Up and up.

  The slope to either side of me is some good fraction off vertical. Perhaps twenty degrees at its steepest. The wall itself is made of bands of rock, mingled with sodden moorgrass and slopes of tumbling scree. It’s steep enough – high and exposed – that you find arctic alpine flora here. I don’t know enough to name the species, but these mountains were sculpted by the Ice Age and you feel its blast in these lines, these screes.

  My gully, lying at an angle, is a little shallower than the wall itself, but best of all, it’s like a notch carved into the slope. I can use the left hand wall to brace myself as I move up on the right, and vice versa. One muddy hand steadying me, as the opposite muddy foot claws to find support.

  Everything hurts, but in some other land. The empress of numb waves a vague hello to that land of sensation. She’ll make contact when she’s ready.

  The wind snickers, waiting for a fall.

  Once, out to my left, I see a couple of sheep placidly munching, an extraordinary sight in this luminous pre-dawn. White smudges grazing the edge of the impossible.

  I test everything before trusting my weight to it. A few times, too often to count, I feel myself slipping. But I never slip more than a few inches. The holds that don’t give way make up for those that do. One time, the worst time, three-quarters of the way up the wall, both handholds give simultaneously with a wet ripping of grass and root, and my right foot flails to find a hold that will keep me in balance. I manage to save myself by biting down on the knot of vegetation in front of me. I survive the moment, but realise that if I slip more than a foot or two, nothing would stop me. And if I tumbled out of my gully onto the headwall proper, the momentum of a fall would be irreversible. I’m sheeted with mud and water. A human toboggan.

  And every further yard is a yard further to fall.

  Left foot, right foot, hand, hand.

  A low dawn burns on some far-off horizon. My mouth tastes of red sandstone. My hair is moorgrass and peatwater. My nails date back to the Old Devonian. My feet are rags of shoe leather, pulled from a Celtic bog.

  And then – I’m there. The sky seems suddenly closer. The summit line lies fierce and low above my head. The wind gives out a low whistle as it breaks over the bowl of the ridge.

  All that, and a cigarette end. A broken V, split where the filter meets the tobacco.

  The cigarette is wet, but not sodden. Not pulped. In this weather, it can’t have been lying here long. Any real time up here and the damn thing would have almost melted into the mountain.

  I look up, see nothing, but there’s nowhere to go but up.

  The ridge is closer than I’d understood. Indeed, I only really become aware of how close it is when I look up and see a knot of dim whiteness huddled close above me. I don’t understand what I’m seeing and am peering for a better view when I dislodge a rock and the huddled white resolves itself into a little trio of sheep, nestled against the wind but now startled by my presence.

  The leading sheep, frightened, breaks out onto the summit edge with a clatter of hooves and a small avalanche of tumbling stone and scree. A second sheep follows.

  I’m about to follow when I realise there’s a dark figure on the skyline. A figure summoned by the noise of the first sheep. A figure that is upright, armed and watchful.

  Henderson.

  He has a rifle levelled at the head of the gully. Night vision glasses round his neck. But, as the final sheep heaves its way out of the gully, in another explosion of kicking hooves and scattering stones, he smiles. Lowers his gun. Puts a cigarette in his mouth and tries to get it lit. One hand working the lighter as the other hand cups the flame.

  Bad move, Vic. You never were a capable smoker.

  Two hands occupied and my turn for the exit.

  I pull my way out, levelling my gun as I do so.

  ‘Morning, Vic.’

  His eyes jump to his rifle but he can see I’ll fire if he moves for it.

  ‘Back off, Vic. Back away.’

  He does so.

  I get level with his gun and kick it over the cliff. It disappears into the wind, soundlessly.

  ‘Walk up to the edge.’

  He doesn’t do that. He thinks I’m going to shoot him and leave him to fall, but that’s not my intention. I just know he’ll have other weapons and I want him in a place where he won’t be tempted to fool around. I explain this and he complies. Standing on a rock at the lip of the cliff. He takes off his scarf and down coat as I watch. He’s got a shoulder holster with the Glock. A spare magazine for the rifle and the handgun. A radio. He throws his goodies over the cliff, at my instruction. Puts the coat back on. Leaves the scarf.

  My gun never deviates. He watches me continuously, disarms slowly, but he’s not in a good place to try anything stupid, his face to the wind and his back facing emptiness.

  ‘Can I smoke?’ he asks when he’s done.

  I nod.

  He lights up. Throws me cigarette packet and lighter.r />
  I put a ciggy in my mouth. It’s hard lighting it one-handed. Hard lighting it when my eyes never flicker from the man with his back to the cliff. But I’m a resourceful girl. Tobacco and I go way back. I get the damn thing lit and we smoke.

  ‘You came up the valley?’ Henderson asks, trying to work things out.

  I nod.

  ‘Up there? The cliff?’

  I nod.

  It isn’t a cliff, not really, but I’m not about to argue. Every twenty seconds or so, I glance behind me. I don’t know who else was on that buggy, but don’t want someone sneaking up behind me.

  Fortunately, the mountain here is wide, bare and open. No men. No guns.

  On a far ridge, I do see a couple of figures hurrying away towards the west.

  Henderson sees my glance and says, ‘That’s them. You won’t get them.’

  ‘They left you?’

  ‘No. I stationed myself here. To ward off pursuit. Security: it’s what I do.’

  Not quite well enough, in this instance, but I don’t press the point. Up on this ridge, he’d have detected pursuit from any direction, except the one I came in.

  Henderson has never quite been explicit, but I’m certain that he’s the head of security, the boss of Allan and Geoff and those other guys. And if that’s right, then the two men I see hurrying away are the ones that matter. Mr Big and some close associate. The ones we’ve been so anxious to catch. Henderson, I know, wouldn’t have entrusted their safety to any lesser hands.

  I think, Henderson has sort of lost, but sort of won. He’s lost, because here he is at the point of a gun, his chance of Caribbean freedom dwindled down to two shakes of nothing at all. But he’s won, because his job was to save Mr Big and that’s just what he’s succeeded in doing.

  I think these thoughts, but keep glancing behind me, unsure if Henderson is truly alone.

  He says, ‘It’s just me. There were only the three of us.’ He gestures down to the valley, to the four-by-four he left behind.

  I believe him, but stay watchful.

  There’s a pause for a moment. Not silent. Just wind in the moorgrass, a low and turbulent moan.

  Henderson: ‘You’re police.’

  It’s not a question, except that it is, a bit.

  ‘No, Vic. Not now. Never was.’

  ‘You rescued the copper.’

  ‘Really, Vic? Really?’

  I’m not sure whether to grace him with an answer, but I do. Angrily.

  ‘You get me involved in all this.’ I wave my hand, down the valley. There’s no fire down at the farmhouse any more, but a thread of smoke still winds up from the fields and trees far below us. ‘You invite me to come with you on your boat and, by the way, I was really tempted, I really wanted to come, but I was being good, trying to get my life together, so I said no, but kind of hoping you would come out to New Zealand, kind of hoping we could finally get it together, properly, away from all the bollocks. But instead, you boys arrange for me to come to your leaving party. A party I don’t think I would ever have left alive. What the fuck would you do if you were me?’

  ‘How do you know about the leaving party?’

  He asks the question, but it’s hardly relevant, and I don’t answer it. He continues anyway.

  ‘OK, so you find out somehow. And you think, you need to switch sides. Give the cops something in exchange for immunity.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you even know we had a guy in the basement?’

  ‘I didn’t. I just entered the farmhouse to see if there was anything – data, proof, I don’t know – just something I could take to the police. I heard a guy moaning. I went downstairs.’

  I’m not quite sure why I’m still pushing the Fiona Grey story. I mean: what I’m doing is perfectly in line with undercover procedure. Wherever possible, our legends are maintained into eternity. For my protection, for tactical interrogation reasons, for possible reuse on another case. But it’s not procedure that’s driving things right now. It’s Fiona herself, the other Fiona, Fiona Grey. It’s her angry and alone on this mountaintop, confronting the man she once sort-of loved and yet sort-of hated.

  I leave the two of them to get on with it. A guy and a girl, sorting through their issues. But it’s me, Fiona Griffiths, with her hand on a gun and her finger on the trigger.

  Henderson: ‘He told you he was a cop?’

  ‘Yes. I told him I wanted immunity. He said he couldn’t promise it, but told me to fuck things up as much as I could. So here I am. Fucking things up.’

  ‘Fairly effectively too.’

  He smiles.

  I smile.

  Two Japanese combatants, bowing over tatami mats and little brass bowls.

  ‘You could let me go,’ says Henderson. ‘I’d pay.’

  ‘Yeah, you could pay. Or possibly kill me.’

  Henderson nods. Not saying, Yes, he’d kill me, just acknowledging the validity of my concern.

  ‘And,’ I add, ‘I still need to give the police something. So far, I’ve just spoken to one man who claimed to be a copper and who might or might not be alive to confirm my story.’

  ‘Yes.’ Henderson nods, agreeing with the logic. ‘Thing is, though, I don’t want to go to jail. Not even to help you out.’ He pauses. There’s tactics here, but also emotion, blowing through this thin mountain air. ‘For what it’s worth, I didn’t want you to come to that leaving party. Yes, I wanted you to come to the Caribbean, but . . . If I’d had my way, Fiona, we’d have left you free to go to New Zealand. I wanted you to.’ His mouth wrinkles. ‘Unfortunately, we had a house rule. About emotional entanglements. I made the rule. And when it came to the point, I lost the argument. I’m sorry.’

  I shrug. A de-nada-ish sort of shrug.

  Silence falls. There’s a long conversation we could have, but now isn’t necessarily the best time for it. Perhaps the best time lies far back in the past. And in any case, Henderson has other things on his mind.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ he asks. ‘You’re going to take me down into Brecon?’

  It’s a good play. A sensible one. But I’m not buying it. I’m barefoot. Wounded. Tired. A creature of mud and stone and water.

  Perhaps I could get Henderson down to Brecon at the point of a gun. But perhaps not. One stumble, one misplaced step, and I’d soon find out whether I was escorting Nice Vic or Nasty Mr Henderson. And I’m pretty sure that neither of them has romance on his mind right now.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  I jab my shotgun towards his lower legs. A couple of shotgun blasts down there and he won’t be leaving this hill, except by stretcher.

  ‘Yes, fair enough.’ His tone is casual, as though confirming a dinner date. ‘Just . . . just, I can’t go to jail. I always promised myself.’

  He darts a half glance behind him. The arrival of dawn is touching the sky with a swelling grey light, but the light hasn’t properly reached the valley below, which is a brimming well of darkness. A bird of prey swings out from the gloom beneath us, hits the air streaming over the ridge, and the uplift sends it shooting above us, out of sight.

  Henderson swallows. He chucks his cigarette away, gropes for another, but I have the packet and the lighter. It’s as close as I’ve seen him come to a show of fear.

  A show that doesn’t last for long. Something else is there now, I don’t know what.

  His face wrinkles again.

  ‘We still on for that dirty weekend?’

  ‘You bet. Just as long as you promise to do a little less murdering. I never quite got to grips with that side of you, Vic. You were very sweet in other ways.’

  ‘You think you’ll really do it? The speech therapy, I mean?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘Pity. You have some wonderful criminal talents.’

  I smile. Fiona Grey does, or I do, or we both do, I don’t know. One of us says, ‘Thanks for the books, Vic. I will remember you.’

  ‘Enjoy New Zealand. I’m sure you will. Th
ey’re good people, the Kiwis.’

  I’d say something to that. Express my respect for New Zealanders in general, their country, outlook and landscapes. I’d discourse on speech therapy. My hopes and plans for a new life.

  I’d say something to continue this conversation, because I don’t want to watch what happens next.

  And what happens is this. Henderson touches his fingers to his lips. Nods once. And leaps backwards. Arcing backwards, a backwards flip, an attempt to bring his head down and his feet up.

  I hear one sound only. Not a scream. Just the collision of something hard against something rocky. The night vision glasses, perhaps. His skull? I don’t know. What impresses more is the silence. The way a human can vanish into it so completely, leaving not a trace behind.

  I stay with the silence for a while. The silence and the wind.

  He was sweet, Vic. A multiple murderer who bought me books on speech therapy and once searched my bathroom for corpses that he knew could not be there. Searched for them, because I asked him to.

  And that leap, that final, silent leap. I think that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. That movement of his fingers to his lips – regretful, tender, so much unsaid – and that leap backwards into night.

  I want never to see something like that again.

  There’s enough light now for the search-and-rescue boys to get active and, sure enough, down the valley, a couple of choppers start to circle the land over the farmhouse.

  Better late than never, boys, better late than never.

  I don’t need to do anything now. Just wait. Someone else can think about how to get me off this mountain. Someone else can figure out what to do with my feet, my ankle, my identities, with whatever’s left of Vic Henderson, with all the rest of this the whole damn complicated shemozzle.

  I stick my shotgun, barrel down, into the ground. Tie Henderson’s scarf to it. An improvised flag. And lie down. Fiona, Jessica and I, on the cold ground together. A red acrylic jumper and the skinniest of skinny jeans.