Talking to the Dead (24 page)

We walk about two hundred yards past my car, because I didn’t tell Brydon when we walked straight past it, then he asks me where it is, and we walk all the way back again. All I can think about is his arm on my shoulder and the fading violet sky.

When we get to the car, there
is
a decision I can’t avoid, but that’s okay. I have decided. I turn my back to the car so I can lean against it, and start to look up at Brydon. He’s on the case, is the good detective sergeant. His mastery of Date Guy Operating Procedure is frighteningly complete. He has a hand behind my back and kind of scoops me toward him for a kiss. A very good one too. Just for a moment, my brain shuts down and my feelings take over. Something in my stomach flips.

Steady on now, Griffiths. Take it easy.

This situation feels risky now. My mental health workers all used to be delighted if I had natural, uncomplicated, ordinary human feelings. Big fat tick on their clinical interview sheets. Something to boast about as they sip their Styrofoam coffees at the eighteenth annual psychiatric conference of whatever.

I’m pleased to have these feelings too. Really am. But these things aren’t simple for me. I know that too much all at once can flip my fragile little boat and leave me much worse off than before. The whole Lohan stuff doesn’t help. It’s a risk factor. The anxieties I’ve had ever since Penry walloped me are the same, only more so. My little boat is on high seas already.

We kiss once more, and I feel myself urgent with lust. Tugged by it. Eight hours of rowdy sex feels like a good option right now. But I’m in control of myself again and I know what I need to do. After our second kiss, I pull away, albeit gently.

“Thank you for dinner, Detective Sergeant,” I say.

He gives me a little salute. “D.C. Griffiths.”

“My treat next time,” I tell him.

“There’s going to be a next time?”

I nod. That’s an easy one. “Yes. Yes, there will.”

27

Home.

Anxiety at the door. There’s a security light at the front of the house, so I’m not worried about possible lurkers outside. It’s the possible lurkers within that freak me out. I know the burglar alarm is now working properly, just as I was perfectly sure it was working properly before, but this is a fear that goes beyond reason.

“Fuck feelings, trust reason,” I tell myself. An old slogan. Not much needed now.

I insert my key in the lock. Turn it. Let myself in. The alarm starts blipping at me, as it always does, and I put in my access code to silence it.

House empty. Lights on, as I’d left them. No noise. Nothing untoward.

My brain is running through the checks, but my heart is racing as though it’s not too much interested in words from the boss upstairs. I go to close the front door. As I get there to swing it shut, my toe brushes against something on the floor.

Instant terror.

Instant, unreasonable terror. I fight it and make myself look down at my feet. It’s just a sheet of paper. An advertising flyer or something like it. I close the door, lock it, check the lock twice, then bend to pick the paper up.

Not a flyer.

It says this:
WE
KNOW
WHERE
YOU
LIVE
. No name. Regular office paper. Ordinary household printer. No need for forensics, because I know already that there’ll be nothing to find.

My panic is instant and convulsive. I’m down on my knees by the door, attempting the same dry retching that I had after Penry left. My clutch bag is well named for once, because I’m clutching it obsessively in my right hand, so that I can feel the haft of the knife. I’m ready to stab straight through the end of the bag if needed, extravagant silk bow and all.

For ten minutes, fear is two tries and a penalty kick to the good. Griffiths F has yet to get out of her own half. I want to call Dad, have him come and rescue me. Call Brydon, have him come and rescue me. I’ll give him the best night of his life if he does. Or call Lev, and get his menacing effectiveness working for me once again.

But those old slogans have their uses. Fuck feelings, trust reason. Dad, Brydon, and Lev are all stopgaps. Good for the night. Useless for a lifetime. If I’m in the grip of fear, I need to deal with it myself. And besides, I’ve a funny feeling that my dad’s already helped me.

Checking the door locks again, I go through to the living room and my phone. I call Brian Penry. His landline, because I’d put his SIM card in a kettle. It rings four times, and then he answers it.

“Penry.”

“Brian? It’s Fiona Griffiths.”

There’s a short pause. I’d pause if I were him. But maybe he just needs the time to find the right attitude to me. Nineteen seventies cop movie attitude? “Fucking tit” attitude? Slap your head off attitude? He opts for none of the above. Instead he just says, “Well, and how can I help you today?”

“Did your mam get those tulips? I sent them. I felt bad.”

“Yes, she did. Thank you.”

“Okay …” Don’t know how to answer that. I stole his phone. He hit me. I bought his mam tulips. It’s hard to work out who owes whom what exactly. “I got a note this evening. Through my letter box. It said ‘We know where you live.’”

“That’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t asking for literary criticism. I know it’s a cliché.”

“Any case, I
do
know where you live. You gave me bagels and smoked salmon, remember?”

“It wasn’t from you. I know that.”

“But you’re ringing me up.”

“Did you know Huw Fletcher went missing from Rattigan’s Newport offices two weeks ago? It’s just you had his number on your SIM card.”

A long silence. I let it run.

“Listen. None of this has to be your problem. You’ve got D.C.I. Jackson on the murder inquiry, right? Let him run things. He’ll get his guy. Forensics. CCTV. All that stuff.”

“I know.”

“You don’t need to do any more.”

“Only I already have done more, haven’t I? Apart from anything else, I’ve got people sticking threatening notes through my letter box.”

There’s a sigh—or not a sigh, maybe, an intake of breath—down the other end of the phone.

“Huw Fletcher is an idiot,” he says. “He’s not a dangerous idiot, not dangerous to you, I mean. If you ask me, he’s going to be a dead idiot before too long. I didn’t give him your address. I
did
give him your name. Part of explaining that that text you sent didn’t come from me. I
did
use your surname. I did
not
use your first name. I
did
say you were a cop.”

I do the same calculation as he’s just made. There are plenty of Griffiths in Cardiff, but not that many F. Griffithses. If Fletcher knew I was a cop, he could probably have found out my first name simply by ringing the Cathays Park switchboard. They certainly wouldn’t have given out a home address, but maybe every F. Griffiths in Cardiff got that message through their letter box this evening.

“It’s the sort of thing that idiots do,” says Penry. “Doesn’t mean you need to worry about it.”

“I saw a prostitute on Monday. I doubt if you know her. Ioana Balcescu. Someone had beaten her up quite badly. Not a punter having a go. A punishment beating of some sort. She didn’t tell us anything at all”—not true, but I want to protect her—”but she looked scared when it came to a couple of names.”

Fascinating.”

“Not your name, though I did ask.”

“Nice of you.”

“
De nada.
No, the two names that bothered her were Karol Sikorsky.” I leave a pause in case Penry wants to make a comment, but he doesn’t. “And Brendan Rattigan.”

“Brendan Rattigan is dead. Didn’t you know that? Plane crash in the Severn Estuary.”

“I know. Seems surprising that he’s still terrifying prostitutes in Butetown.”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

A long pause. It should be the end of the call, except that neither of us is hanging up.

“Do you want a word of advice from somebody who once used to be a half-decent policeman?” says Penry finally.

“I’ll take anything going.”

“Stay out of this. There’s nothing you can do and, as you’ve already noticed, Brendan Rattigan is perfectly well able to injure people from beyond the grave. Ready and willing. Just stay out of it.”

“Have you stayed out of it?”

He laughs. “I
used
to be a half-decent policeman. Doesn’t mean I am now.”

“And maybe I’m already in it, whatever it is.”

“Maybe.”

Another beat, then him to me: “Are you all right? After I hit you?”

“Fine. Yes. Don’t worry about it.”

“I haven’t been worrying.”

“No, of course not. Thanks anyway, Brian. You’ve been helpful.”

“And Huw Fletcher’s an idiot. Trust me.”

“I do, weirdly. Can I ask just one more question? Brendan Rattigan, just how dead exactly would you say he was?”

Penry laughs. A proper laugh. No disguise or fakery in it. “Well, I wasn’t watching at the time, but I’d say he was pretty damn dead. That’d be my guess, anyway.”

We wish each other a good night, and I hang up. Oddly, I find myself trusting Penry more than not. I don’t know if that’s because he was a copper once, and in the end coppers stick together through thick and thin. Or if it’s something to do with him hitting me. If that’s exorcised something in our dealings with each other.

If the note came from Huw Fletcher and if Fletcher is a nondangerous idiot who might be dead soon, then I don’t have more to worry about now than I did before I went out this evening. On the other hand, I honestly don’t know if I’m “out of it” or “in it,” whatever the “it” might be. And if the real danger comes from the possibly dead Brendan Rattigan, then the Penry-Fletcher axis is by no means the only way in which I might have been stirring up trouble for myself. There were all those calls and texts I made to the numbers in Penry’s phone book. There was my amazing ability to upset Ioana Balcescu by mentioning Rattigan’s name. Who knows by what routes word of my activities might not have traveled back to people who might consider me a candidate for a punishment beating or worse?

Not a good thought that. If those people ever do to me what they did to Ioana, then I wouldn’t survive it. I’d be back where I was as a teenager. As good as dead.

The terrors that have so often assailed my nights seem to be creeping into my waking hours. Against some threats, a paring knife concealed in a blue silk clutch bag is not weaponry enough.

And without considering my actions more than a moment, I’m at the door, going out. As I get into the car, I realize I’m still in my glad rags, kitten heels and all. Logic suggests going back inside to change, but I always keep a fleece top and hiking boots in the back of my car and just now I’d rather keep moving.

The roads are empty. I’d normally put my foot down, but bearing in mind where I’m going, I’m a good girl and stay within five or ten miles an hour of the speed limit. Up to Pontypridd. On to Treharris and Merthyr. Then the Heads of the Valleys road toward Ebbw Vale. Shapes and shades of coal mines. Their ghosts.

I make the turn to Llangynidr. National Park country now. Not mountainous exactly, but high moorland. No dead miners here, just sheep looming white in the tussocky grass. I stop at one point to check my position and can hear the wind sighing through the grasses. No cars. No buildings. No people. There were quarries up here somewhere once, but I don’t know where and I don’t think they still operate.

Turning down toward Llangattock, I have a sudden worry that I won’t find the barn. No directions. Driving at night. My satnav in the dark as much as me. But then I come to the turn in the hill. There’s a little passing place and, down a farm track maybe four hundred yards away, there’s a big white barn with a light over its door. Just where Aled said it would be. I can see farm machinery and a big concrete yard and not much else.

The track is gated, but I think I’d feel safer walking than driving anyway. I change my cute little kitten heels for hiking boots, pull my fleece top over my dress. It’s colder up here. Partly the altitude, partly being out of the city. The sky is overcast. Some stars, amid long reaches of blackness. The pattern of lights reveals the landscape. Orange glow over toward Crickhowell and Abergavenny. Virtually nothing when it comes to the looming bulk of the Black Mountains beyond.

I’m scared, but it’s a good fear. The sort that encourages action, not the sort that enourages me to kneel by my front door, trying to retch up my supper. I feel clear and purposeful.

I walk toward the barn. I’ve left my knife and clutch bag in the car, because they seem silly out here. I find myself almost enjoying the feeling of exposure.

Once I hear a sudden movement of feet. My adrenaline responds instantly, but it’s only sheep—I can see their thick, stupid, lovable faces peering through the darkness—and I walk on.

I reach the concrete yard. There is no one here. No sound other than those belonging to a farm at night. I don’t know what I expected to find or what I expected to do. There’s a big metal sliding door, the sort they have in industrial sheds, but it’s closed and, even if it’s not locked, I wouldn’t know how to pull it back. Beside it, though, there’s a smaller door. Human size, not tractor size. I go up to it. Try it. Find it open.

I go on in.

It is a huge place. Barns are, obviously, but there’s something about the huge roof, about the whole vast, silent space which alters something in you, whether you like it or not. I move forward, as though tiptoeing through a cathedral.

The place is lit—if that’s the right term—by two bare bulbs hanging from long cords. They chuck out a hundred watts each, maybe, but in this space and this darkness the light gives up hope before it’s traveled far. Underneath the near bulb, there are a few bales of straw, marking out a line across the barn. Farther on down, beneath the other light, there’s a row of paper targets. Human-shaped, not target-shaped. Picked out in black and white. Black to congratulate you for a chest shot, white to mark you down for a shot to the arm or head.

When I reach the straw bales, I find a handgun there. I don’t know what sort. A cardboard box with bullets lies beside it.