Talking to the Dead (3 page)

“I’m mostly on the Brian Penry case. Bank statements and all that. In my spare time, if I stay sane, I’m meant to track down that debit card thing. Rattigan’s card. Funny place for it to show up.”

“Stolen?”

I shake my head. I called the bank yesterday after talking with Brydon and—once I’d managed to clamber through all the bureaucracy to someone who actually had the information—got answers fairly easily. “Nope. The card was reported lost. It was duly canceled and a replacement issued. Life goes on. It could literally be just that. He dropped it. Mancini or whoever picked it up. Kept it as a souvenir.”

“Brendan Rattigan’s platinum card? I would have kept it.”

“You wouldn’t. You’d have handed it in.”

“Well, I know, but if I wasn’t the handing in type.”

I laugh at her. Trying to use the inner workings of Bev Rowland’s mind as a model for guessing at the inner workings of Janet Mancini’s mind doesn’t feel to me like an obvious recipe for success. Bev makes a face at me for laughing but wants to rush off to the ladies’ so she can sort her face out before hitting the road. I tell her to have a good day, and she says, “You too.”

As she leaves, I realize that what I said to her wasn’t true. Janet Mancini
couldn’t
have picked up Rattigan’s debit card from the pavement. It wasn’t possible. Mancini and Rattigan didn’t walk the same streets, didn’t go to the same pubs, didn’t inhabit the same worlds. The places where Rattigan might have dropped his card were all places that would, explicitly or otherwise, have forbidden Mancini entry.

And as soon as this thought occurs to me, I understand its implication. The two of them knew each other. Not casually. Not by chance. But meaningfully, in some real way. If you asked me to take a bet on it right now, I’d bet that the millionaire killed the drug addict. Not directly, I assume—it’s hard to kill someone when you’re dead—but indirect killing is still killing.

“I’m going to get you, you fucker,” I say out loud. A secretary looks at me startled as she walks past. “Not you,” I tell her. “You’re not the fucker.”

She gives me a little smile. The sort that you slip the schizo type muttering swearwords in the street, the sort you offer park-bench drunks quarreling over cider. I don’t mind. I’m used to that kind of smile by now. Water. Duck’s back. Paddle on.

I head upstairs.

My desk stares balefully at me, flaunting its cargo of numbers and sheets of paper. I go over to the kitchenette and make myself a peppermint tea. Me and one of the secretaries drink it, no one else. Back to my desk. Another sunny day. Big windows full of air and sunshine. I lower my head over my mug of tea and let my face warm up in the perfumed steam. A thousand boring things to do and one interesting one. I’m reaching for the phone, even as I pull my face away from its steambath. It takes me a couple of calls to get Charlotte Rattigan’s number—widows of the superwealthy are unlisted, inevitably—but I get it anyway and make the call.

A woman’s voice answers, giving the name of the house, Cefn Mawr House. She sounds every inch the servant, the expensive sort, titanium-plated.

“Hello, my name’s Detective Constable Griffiths calling from the South Wales Police. May I speak with Mrs. Rattigan, please?”

Mention of the police causes a moment’s hesitation, as it almost always does. Then the training kicks in.

“Detective Constable Griffiths, did you say? May I ask what it’s regarding?”

“It’s a police matter. I’d prefer to speak to Mrs. Rattigan directly.”

“Mrs. Rattigan isn’t available right now. Perhaps if I could let her know the issue … ?”

I don’t really need to see Rattigan’s widow in person. Talking to her on the phone would have been just fine, but I don’t respond well to titanium-plated obstructiveness. It makes me come over all police-forcish.

“That’s quite all right. Will she be available for an interview later on today?”

“Look, if you could just let me know the matter at hand …”

“I’m calling in connection with a murder inquiry. A routine matter, but it needs to be dealt with. If it’s not convenient for me to come to the house, then perhaps we could arrange for Mrs. Rattigan to come down to Cardiff, and we can talk to her here.”

I enjoy these little power contests, stupid as they are. I like them because I win. Within two minutes, Titanium Voice has given me an 11:30 appointment and directions to the house. I put the phone down, laughing at myself. The round trip will take me an hour and a half, and what could have been a three-minute phone call will end up wasting half my morning.

I spend the next hour working through Penry’s hateful bank statements, lose track of time a bit, then find myself bolting downstairs for my car. It’s a white Peugeot coupe cabriolet. Two seats. Soft top. High-pressure turbocharger that gets you from 0 to 60 in a shade over eight seconds. Soft leather seats in pale fawn. Alloys. My dad gave me my first car when I got my job three years ago, then insisted on replacing it with the new model this year. It’s a totally inappropriate car for a junior detective constable, and I love it.

I throw my bag—notebook, pen, purse, phone, dark glasses, makeup, evidence bag—onto the passenger seat and nose out of the car park. Cardiff traffic. Classic FM inside the car, pneumatic drills ripping up the A4161 Newport Road. Carpet stores and discount bed places. Clearer on the A48, the music turned up for the motorway and its views out over Newport—just possibly the ugliest town in the world—before snaking up past Cwmbran toward Penperlleni.

Because of the traffic and the roadwork, and because I’d set off late in the first place, and because I got myself lost in the lanes beyond Penperlleni, I’m about twenty-five minutes late when I do manage to find the entrance to Cefn Mawr House. Big stone pillars and fierce yew topiary. Posh and English-feeling. Out of place.

I make the turn and, shades on against the sunlight, I speed up the drive in a stupid attempt to minimize my lateness. A last twist in the way catches me out, and I emerge into the large graveled parking area in front of the house doing about thirty miles an hour, when under ten would have been more appropriate. I brake hard and go for a long, curving slide on the gravel until my speed falls away. I only just manage to stop the engine stalling. A wide spray of ocher dust hangs in the air to mark the maneuver. Silent applause. Fi Griffiths, rally driver.

I give myself a few seconds to get my head together. Breathing in, breathing out, concentrating on each breath. My heart’s going too fast, but at least I can feel it. These things shouldn’t worry me so much, but they do. There shouldn’t be such a thing as poverty and starvation, but there is. I wait till I think it’s okay, then give it another twenty seconds.

Out of the car. I slam the door closed but don’t blip it locked. On the front steps of the house, there’s a woman—Miss Titanium, I presume—watching me. She doesn’t look like she likes me.

“D.C. Griffiths?”

It’s D.C. now, I notice. Miss Titanium doesn’t strike me as altogether au fait with CID ranks, so I suspect her of doing some quick research on the Internet. In which case she knows how junior I am.

“Sorry I’m late. Traffic.” I don’t know if she witnessed my rally-driving arrival, so I don’t apologize for it and she doesn’t mention it.

The house is a modest affair. Ten or twelve bedrooms. Immaculate grounds. A leylandii hedge screening what I presume is a tennis court. Farther away a couple of cottages and what I guess is a stable or gym complex. The river Usk flows picturesquely over rocks at the end of a long sweep of lawn. We’re only a few miles away from Cwmbran and the old coal mines which injure the hillsides above. Crumlin, Abercarn, Cwmcarn, Pontywaun. Standing here, with the river Usk parading its party tricks in the sunlight, you’d think you were a million miles away from all that. That’s the point, I suppose. What the money is for.

Titanium takes me on through the front door. Inside everything is as you’d expect. Interior designed so completely that any trace of human personality vanished along with the Victorian subfloors. Our heels click across limestone in the hall, past vases of fresh flowers and photos of racehorses, through into the kitchen. A huge room, an add-on to the main body of the house. Handmade kitchen furniture in ivory. A range cooker in Wedgwood blue. More flowers. Venetian blinds, sofas, and sunlight.

“Mrs. Rattigan has been called away on something else, just temporarily. We were expecting you at eleven thirty.”

“Sorry, my fault. I’m happy to wait.”

I say this sincerely. Genuinely sorry. Genuinely happy to wait. Mature of me. Nice person. Trouble is that I’m being nice only because I scared myself a few moments back and can’t take any hassle now. For the time being, just sitting in this kitchen listening to my heart beat is enough for me.

Titanium—who gave me her name, along with a limp but elegant hand, at the front of the house—is doing things with the kettle. I try to remember her name, and nothing comes to me. I sit at the table and get out my notebook. For a moment I can’t even remember why I’m here. Titanium puts coffee down in front of me, as though it’s some art object the family has just invested in.

I can’t think of anything to say, so say nothing. I blink instead.

“I’ll go and see if Mrs. Rattigan is ready for you.”

I nod. She goes. Clicks out of the kitchen, through the hall, to somewhere else. I’m calming down now. I can hear a clock ticking somewhere. The range cooker emits a kind of gentle rushing sound from its flue, like a stream heard a long way away. A few minutes go by, lovely empty minutes, then a woman comes into the kitchen, Titanium in position on her wing.

I stand up.

“Mrs. Rattigan. I’m sorry to have been late.”

“Oh, don’t worry …”

The Internet has already told me that Mrs. Charlotte Frances Rattigan is forty-four. She has two kids, both teenagers. She is a former model. Only the last part of that is obvious from her appearance. A pale gray shirt worn above pale linen trousers and sandals. Shoulder-length blond hair. Nice skin, not much makeup. Tall, maybe five foot ten, and then an inch or so more from her heels.

She is pretty, of course, but it’s not the prettiness that strikes me. There’s something ethereal about her. As though it’s not just the house missing its Victorian subfloors. I’m immediately interested. I ask Titanium if she would mind giving us a few moments of privacy and, on a look from the boss, she leaves us.

I fix Mrs. Rattigan with my firm, D.C.-ish, professional-quality smile.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to see me, madam. I’ve just got a few questions. A routine matter, but an important one.”

“That’s all right. I understand.”

“I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you some questions about your late husband. I do apologize in advance for any distress which that may cause. It’s all perfectly routine and—”

She interrupts. “That’s all right. I understand.”

Her voice is soft, a peach without a stone. I hesitate. Nothing at all in this situation calls for me to come over all hard-edged, but I can’t quite resist and I can feel my voice harden.

“Did your husband know a woman called Janet Mancini?”

“My husband … ?” She tapers off and shrugs.

“Is that a no, or an I don’t know?”

Another shrug. “I mean, not that I know of. Mancini? Janet Mancini?”

“Do either of these addresses mean anything to you?”

I show her my notebook. The first address is where Mancini was found. The second is where she had been living previously.

“No. Sorry.”

“This second address here is in Butetown. Were you ever aware of your husband having any business in that area? Visiting anyone there?”

A headshake.

Quantum physics tells you that the act of observation alters reality. The same is true of police interviews. Mrs. Rattigan knows that I’m a detective constable assigned to a murder inquiry. There’s some absence in her answers that teases me but that could be just the effect of my job function and my assignment. Titanium’s cafetière of coffee is steaming beside us. Mrs. Rattigan hasn’t offered it, so I do.

“Would you like coffee? Shall I pour?”

“Oh, yes please. Sorry.”

I pour out one coffee, not two.

“Won’t you have any?” The question is the first positive action of any sort she’s taken since I’ve seen her, and it hardly rates high on the positivity scale.

“I don’t drink caffeine.”

She pulls her cup toward her but doesn’t drink from it. “Good for you. I know I shouldn’t.”

“I have a few further questions to ask, madam. Please understand that we want the truth. If your husband did things in the past that he might not want us to have known about—well, that’s all in the past now. It’s not our concern now.”

She nods. Light hazel eyes. Blond eyebrows. I realize that I was wrong about the house. I’m sure it has been interior-designed to within an inch of its life, but the designers caught something real about the person commissioning the work. Pale linen, light hazel, a stoneless peach. That was this house and its owner.

“Did your husband ever take drugs?”

The question jolts her. She shakes her head, looking down and to the left. Her coffee cup is in her right hand. If she’s right-handed, then the down-and-to-the-left look suggests some element of evasion in her answer.

“Cocaine, maybe? A few lines with business associates?”

She looks at me with relief. “You know, sometimes. I didn’t … What he got up to when he was away …”

I reassure her. “No, no, I’m sure you didn’t. But loads of business types do, of course. You didn’t want it in the house, though, I can see that.”

“You know, there are the children.”

That sounds to me like the comment she made to him when he was still around. Oh, don’t do that. It’s not me. It’s the children. I’m only thinking of you.

I get out the debit card and show it to her.

“This is your husband’s, I presume?”

She looks at it, then at me. She doesn’t get quite as decisive as a nod, but she gets halfway there.

“The card was reported lost. Do you recall when or where your husband lost it?”