It’s a miserable day. Not freezing, but cold. Not raining steadily, but heavy intermittent downpours. A blustery wind blows in from the Atlantic, foul-tempered and hostile. I’m wearing office clothes, a mac, scarf and woolly hat. The mac isn’t warm enough or properly waterproof even. I got it second-hand because the good coats cost £40, even in Matalan.
I was here early. Six twenty. Have been walking up and down since then looking in at the warmly lit windows and feeling out of place. One of my boots has a hole in the sole and my foot is sodden.
But in the end, I go in.
It’s a smart bar, nicely done. Dark wooden floor. Scrubbed wooden bar. Lots of heavy fittings: oak casks, brass nautical lamps, a huge glass bowl filled with wine corks and dried hops.
I stand, dripping, in the entrance area as men in suits and women in tailored outfits talk, laugh, fiddle with their phones. A waiter with a stubbly beard and a blue neckerchief approaches. He’s wearing a smile but I have this vision of him simply clearing me away, the way you might if you came into your kitchen and found a dead pigeon or a stray drowned mouse making a mess of your scrubbed limestone floors.
I stand there, dripping, waiting to be tidied. Wet cotton mops and metal buckets.
But I’m not tidied. Vic emerges from behind a raw oak pillar. My face must change somehow, because the waiter swings round, sees Vic. Some look is exchanged, and the waiter waves me over to where Vic has a table waiting.
‘You made it,’ he says.
He clucks around me, a fussy uncle. He wants me to remove my coat, but I keep it on. Take off my hat, but keep it close.
He wants me to choose a drink. Pushes a long wine list at me, tells me to order anything. I ask for water. He tells me again to order
anything
, meaning that water doesn’t count, so I say orange juice, a small one.
He orders another glass of red wine for him, a bowl of olives, toasted ciabatta slices and olive oil, a selection of antipasti, and my orange juice.
I sit there with my bag on my lap. The bag is wired for sound. So is my coat.
‘Filthy day, isn’t it? I don’t mind it cold, but this is vile.’
I don’t say anything. Maybe shrug. Look sideways.
‘Listen, love, you’re frightened, aren’t you? And that’s my fault. I think I frightened you yesterday. Let’s just get to know each other a bit maybe.’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘OK, full disclosure, we took a look at your laptop when you were out. Checked your room. We like to know a little about the people we work with. That’s how I know you’re thinking of emigrating down under. Get some sunshine, eh? Not like this.’
‘Canada.’
‘Canada, is it?’
‘Or America. I don’t know. Wherever.’
Vic pauses to see if my little conversational spurt will run anywhere. It doesn’t, so he puts his shoulder to the wheel once again.
‘What is it? Need a break? Or just start again somewhere, completely fresh. I’ve always thought about doing that. Just going somewhere else, starting with a clean slate, see what happens. Bit of an adventure.’
Since I don’t respond to that, he says, ‘But it’s tough, isn’t it? If you’re married to an Aussie, or whatever, then it’s hi, Sheila, come in, g’day. If not, then it’s do you have the skills, do you have the money? Fact is, if you’ve got the cash, then anything can happen. If not …’ He shrugs.
My mouth moves but doesn’t actually say anything, so Vic puts his shoulder to the wheel once again.
‘You’ve got your payroll skills. Those are good qualifications, aren’t they? The sort of thing that might help get you a visa. But, you know, is payroll here the same as payroll there? I don’t know how far those qualifications stretch. You don’t have anything like nursing, do you? That’s a good one. Or school teacher. Everyone needs teachers.’
There’s a pause.
I do my share of pausing, but this moment belongs to Vic. He’s using it the way we use silences in interrogation. Dropping uncomfortable facts on the table and allowing them to swell in the emptiness.
I don’t say anything.
A waiter comes with drinks and food and we wait as the table is spread with good things. When he leaves, Vic drops a letter on the table.
The letterhead belongs to a British law firm, headquartered in London. The letter starts,
Dear Mr. Henderson, Thank you for your enquiry about a subject, Miss Fiona Grey, who is seeking to emigrate to an English-speaking country in the southern hemisphere, preferably Australia or New Zealand. We understand that Miss Grey (a) speaks fluent English, (b) has no criminal record, (c) holds NVQ-type certifications in payroll, (d) has no family overseas …
Vic flips me straight to the last paragraph.
We feel confident of being able to progress this matter and look forward to receiving further instructions from you.
‘Money,’ says Vic. ‘It’s all about money. Getting some dick-for-brains lawyer to package you up so you look like God’s gift to Oz, or wherever the hell you want to go.’ He waves the letter in the air, before folding it back into his pocket. ‘Let’s say twelve K for the lawyers, plus maybe ten or twenty in your bank account so you can prove financial solidity. Allow a bit more for any bullshit qualifications you might need to acquire. Thirty or forty grand and you can live in Oz. Not on some temporary visa thing, but for life. Become a citizen. Or Canada. Or New Zealand. These guys’ – tapping his pocket – ‘they’ll sort you out.’
Vic watches my face. Looks pleased with the result.
Says, ‘Not so scary now, am I?’
He grins.
If Brattenbury looks like an unusually dapper policeman, then Vic looks like an unusually dapper gang member. He’s wearing a nicely fitted jacket in brown tweed herringbone. Lining in damson silk. A black woolen roll neck that might even be cashmere. I have to remind myself that these neatly manicured hands might yet be the ones that swung the hatchet. Part of me wants to ask. Wants to say, ‘What is it like, to sit in bars like this, to wear clothes like this, and to know that you and your friends cut a man’s hands off and let him bleed to death as you watched and he screamed?’
But I don’t.
Don’t say that, or anything else. But when he says, ‘Here, why don’t we get that wet coat off,’ I do put my hand to my throat and undo the first couple of buttons. Reach for an olive. And, for the first time, catch Vic’s eyes and don’t look away.
20.
Saturday is my favorite day of the week. A day for play, work and self-improvement. I spend most of my day at the hostel, which isn’t only a place for people like me to get shelter for the night. It runs a drop-in center too. Group therapy. Skills workshops.
I fit right in. Fiona Griffiths’s various injuries and vulnerabilities are somewhat different to those of Fiona Grey, but both of us feel comfortable with this beat-up, muddled, slightly crazy level of society. We can be ourselves. We disappoint no one’s expectations. If we let a little craziness show, that’s OK. People don’t notice or, if they do, don’t care.
I’ve joined a regular Saturday morning session on domestic violence. Fiona Grey doesn’t contribute much, but when she does, people listen and understand. She and I both listen to other people’s tragedies and are stunned at the ordinary braveries we hear. The braveries and stupidities. The two things, hand in hand. We feel moved to be there. I sign up for a counselling course which takes place one weekend a month in Birmingham. If I attend all four weekends, I get a diploma.
Later in the afternoon, Fiona and I also attend classes on Cooking For Yourself. The class is brilliantly practical. It’s not one of those things that’s all about potato ricers and how to get a glass-like finish on your crème brûlée. We’re told things like where to buy the cheapest saucepans and how to cook a nutritious meal for less than £1.50. I’ve learned heaps of stuff I never knew.
There’s also an Anger and Anxiety Management course which looks good. Also one on Life Skills which sounds enticingly ambitious. I sign up for the first one, leave the second for later.
Mostly, though, I like the hostel for its social side. There’s a games room where I’ve been learning to play table football. My best friend is an ex-addict, ex-soldier, ex-husband, called Gary. He was the raggedy-bearded man who held the door open for me my first night here and is one of the senior members of Cardiff’s
Big Issue
fraternity. He and I share roll-up tobacco and life stories, but Gary’s not really a table football type and my regular partner is a woman called, impressively, Clementina who speaks a kind of gypsy-English I don’t completely understand. But she is a constant cackle of laughter and has a whip-like action in front of goal which compensates for my deficiencies in defense. We smoke, play table football, and drink lots of tea. I haven’t smoked or drunk as much tea as this since the last time I was in a mental hospital.
All this and I meet my ‘mentor’ Adrian Brattenbury, who goes by a different name here, of course.
We meet, in late morning, up in a tiny room on the top floor, one set aside for various different types of counselling. It boasts two small armchairs and three inspirational prints: of a waterfall, the sun setting behind clouds, and an autumn forest.
I sit where I can see the window, not the prints.
Brattenbury waits until he has my attention, then his eyes move to a small wicker hamper on the table. He whips it open with a
ta-daa
.
It’s rich-person food. A half bottle of champagne. Bagels with salmon and cream cheese. Orange juice, freshly squeezed. A flask of coffee. A heated dish with sausages, mushrooms and egg. Real china, metal cutlery. A champagne glass hunkered down in its own satin-lined compartment.
He reaches for the champagne, but his words are strictly business. ‘Audio, absolutely crystal. Bag and coat. Courtroom quality. Easily enough there for a conviction. Wham, bam, and thank you, ma’am.’
He tries to whip off the cork to coincide with the
ma’am
, but his timing falls narrowly astray. He’s good with the bottle, though. One of these people who holds the thing by its bottom, knows how far to fill the glass without spillage, an easy twist to prevent drips at the end.
‘Bucks fizz or as it is?’ he asks, waving the orange juice.
‘I don’t really drink. Sorry, sir.’
‘You don’t drink? That’s a you thing, or a Fiona Grey thing?’
I shrug. I don’t understand the question. ‘I’ll just have orange juice, if that’s OK.’
He pours orange juice. ‘And coffee?’
‘I mostly avoid caffeine. Sorry.’
‘Well.’ Brattenbury looks uncertain how to react. Like a parent whose six-year-old has just rejected a Christmas present. His face flickers through various different options, before it settles for Brightly Optimistic. ‘Never mind. Just help yourself to whatever you do want.’ The hand gesture which accompanies the invitation doesn’t look brightly optimistic to me. A hint of thunderclouds.
I start to eat the sausages.
At the library, I have to check in my bag and coat. Brattenbury has installed one of his guys as a cloakroom attendant and, by the time I’m in line to collect my stuff at closing time, the audio data has been collected and the memory cleared. If I want to leave a message, I simply speak into one of my devices before checking it in.
I receive instructions at the same time. Brattenbury has his messages printed on the inside of food wrappers, Twix and KitKat mostly, then rewraps them around the original chocolate. A cute touch that. I can’t let Vic and his buddies find me in possession of any messages, but nor do I want to have to burn, shred, eat or otherwise destroy ordinary slips of paper. If I was seen doing that it would be almost as dangerous as being found with the original. So I just open up my chocolate, read the message while I’m eating, then chuck the waste into any street bin. Occasionally I get messages via Western Vale’s internal mail, but not mostly.
‘Well, if you’re not going to …’
Brattenbury helps himself to champagne, which seems to restore his mood. He’s in his Saturday attire. Dark jeans, suede shoes, suede jacket, pale blue shirt. It’s a look which vaguely suggests the casual without, I think, actually being anything of the sort. But that’s OK. I prefer my spymasters to be sticklers for detail. He has the pinkish, self-righteous glow of a man who has already visited the gym.
I finish my first sausage. I want Brattenbury to tell me what they’ve found out about Vic, but I don’t ask. Start on some egg.
‘Vic Henderson. Not his real name, of course. Apartment down on the Bay. We’ve installed surveillance. Non-intrusive. Got permission to listen in to his landline. We weren’t able to do that before because we didn’t have sufficient grounds for a warrant. Thanks to you, we do now.’
I wait for him to tell me more. He waits for me to ask him a question.
I help myself to mushrooms.
I’m a slow eater.
He says, ‘We don’t yet have useful data, but it’s only been two days. He’s careful.’
I put my fork down. ‘Vic must have reported back on me. Must have done.’
‘He uses a disposable mobile phone. We’re trying to intercept it, but he’s been careful so far.’
There are lots of ways to be careful. You can take the battery out of the phone, rendering it invisible except when you make or receive a call. You can change phones frequently. You can make sure your calls are encrypted. Or you can use your phone only in places, like the center of Cardiff, where no interesting location data is imparted. It’s pretty much impossible to intercept a call on a phone whose number and location you don’t know.
‘His movements?’
‘He’s careful. Full of tricks.’ Brattenbury doesn’t elaborate, but it’s not that hard to shake off a tail. Hopping on and off public transport, reversing course, entering public buildings. The tricks used in any spy movie are still reliable ways to evade pursuit. And, of course, Brattenbury’s surveillance guys have to be acutely careful not to be identified, or ‘burned’, because any slip on their part could easily compromise me. ‘But we’re patient,’ he says. ‘These guys always lose patience before we do. The key thing is getting access and you’ve given us that. We think Henderson is probably a handler, nothing more. We suspect that the gang probably has a finance expert. Probably also a computer guy, unless that’s the same person. Maybe also an overall boss, if that’s how they organize themselves. So perhaps three to four people in total, and you’ve given us one of them.’