‘What’s her name?’
‘Julia.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘She’s an art student. Lives in Bristol. We were beginning to do OK.’
‘She can visit you. It doesn’t have to end.’
‘She won’t visit.’
I let time go by. We’ve got plenty of time. I was arrested just after eleven. Quintrell would have been taken about the same time. The law permits us to be held for twenty-four hours without charge, thirty-six hours with the authority of a superintendent – something that Jackson can easily obtain – and ninety-six hours if a magistrate agrees. A magistrate probably would agree, given the circumstances, but it would be easier just to charge us. For a serious offence, like ours, and with murder and abduction in the background, we’ll almost certainly be remanded into pre-trial custody.
Fear, exhaustion and time: interrogation’s holy trinity.
I say, ‘Anna, how did you get into all this? Why did you get started?’
And she tells me.
Almost without further prompting. Without thought for where she is or who could be listening. It’s a beautiful illustration of the interrogator’s oldest maxim: that people
want
to confess. An urge as deep as breathing. The beautiful relief of sharing secrets.
As she tells it, Henderson approached her eighteen months ago with some queries about payroll. That must have been when Henderson discovered what Kureishi was up to. The point at which a little local fraud started to go big time.
‘I mean, I’m a
trained
accountant. I’m a
professional
. Vic’s just a thug. He knew nothing at all. Didn’t know the basics. He didn’t even understand the potential. It took me to explain it. I mean, really, that’s the silly thing. The whole thing was my idea. They just took it from me. They treated me … treated me like …’
She isn’t able to finish that sentence, because what she means is ‘they treated me like
you
’. Quintrell still sees herself as officer class. I’m several rungs below that. Servant class. A skivvy. Her confessional impulse now is given extra urgency by her bitterness at Henderson’s treatment of her.
I neither challenge nor support her. Just let her talk and let the hidden microphones record her song.
‘Terry – that’s not his real name. His real name is Ian Shoesmith. He ran some kind of IT start-up thing in London. Enterprise software. Got loads of money from investors and screwed them over. I think they looked at prosecuting him, but there wasn’t enough evidence. But he was shafted anyway. Not a fit and proper person and all that. Couldn’t be a company director again, and no one was going to employ him. So when Henderson took
my
idea, and it was
totally
my idea, to him, he took it up. The idea, back then, was that Terry would do the IT stuff. I’d be in charge of designing what the system had to do. James Wyatt was brought in because they thought they needed an accountant. But really! What did he ever add?
You
knew more.’
She’s wrong about Wyatt, as it happens. His real expertise was with the offshore plumbing. The network of accounts in Panama, Belize, the Virgin Islands. I don’t say so though. Just let her talk.
And talk she does, in sour, extensive detail. She seems affronted that a bunch of gangsters stole her intellectual property. Like she was expecting them to give her share options and a seat on the board.
I ask if Henderson is in charge.
‘
No
.’ Her
no
is scathing. ‘There’s some rich guy behind it all. He’s got legitimate money, I think, but Vic says he just invests in whatever promises a return. This looks good, so it gets the investment. Vic says they’ve spent four million already. Obviously got some of that back from’ – she waves her hand at me dismissively – ‘
your
stuff. But still. Four million.’
Your
stuff: she means the payroll frauds that I and the other moles enacted.
‘That barn. The place we were taken to. Is that where the rich guy lives?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve always been blindfolded. I’ve never left the barn. Nor has anyone else. Ram told me they came in the back of a van without windows.’
I say, ‘That guy who had his hands chopped off. Did you know about that?’
She says, dismissively, ‘He was stupid. I mean, none of us wanted to do it, but he
was
talking. He was dangerous. If we hadn’t done it, he could have messed the whole thing up.’
That sounds like conspiracy to murder to me. It’ll sound that way to a court too. Quintrell doesn’t yet know it, but she’s just upped her maximum sentence from a dozen years or so to life imprisonment. She can hang her pretty blue summer dress up somewhere safe. She won’t be needing it for a while.
Shoesmith probably doesn’t wear summer dresses, but he’s fucked too. Him, Wyatt, Quintrell, Henderson. We have enough on them now to secure convictions for fraud at a minimum, conspiracy to murder at a maximum. If our colleagues in India come through for us, then Ramesh and his buddies are screwed as well. The UK has a decent extradition treaty with India. And we’ve a decent chance of getting the identifications we need.
We eat breakfast at six thirty. Break open the plastic-wrapped packs we were handed last night. Cereal. Two slices of bread. Jam. Margarine. I eat my cereal, leave the rest.
Quintrell talks about herself until eight thirty. She asks nothing about me. At eighty thirty, I pee and wash my hands.
The act interrupts her self-absorption.
‘You, you’ll be all right,’ she tells me. ‘I mean …’ She waves a hand. ‘You’re used to it.’
I don’t reply. A few minutes later, she’s taken off for interviewing and she’ll learn just how stupid she’s been.
I’m alone in an empty room. Invisible microphones close on silence.
39.
Manchester. Cheadle Heath.
Another custody suite. More solicitors. Mental-health examiners. More procedures. More searches. But this time I get a cell to myself. I ask for pain relief and get it. I still have a headache, but it’s concentrated round my eye. No longer extends to the entire skull.
I sleep for ever.
Morning comes and my first court appearance. I’m charged with fraud and resisting arrest. I plead not guilty.
The magistrate asks, ‘How did you come by those injuries?’
I say, ‘I slipped in the shower.’
The magistrate orders an investigation and yet another report. I’m remanded to custody, to await trial. Two uniformed officers escort me downstairs to an underground car park, mostly full of police patrol cars. But I’m not going in one of those. Brattenbury is there, at the wheel of a silver Lexus with leather seats and exhausts with a lovely deep growl.
I get in, feeling sore.
Brattenbury watches solicitously. ‘Head still hurting?’
‘A bit.’
I don’t mention it, but my neck has hurt ever since Henderson slapped me. It would be quite nice to go a few days without anyone hitting me. Or chasing, arresting, imprisoning, handcuffing or blindfolding me.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘A private house. You’ll like it.’
We drift into silence.
It’s mid-July, but you wouldn’t guess it. Rain and wind. Grey skies bolted down over sodden earth. Brattenbury drives impatiently, the way I do. Keeping too close to the car in front. Overtaking with a surge of power when he gets the chance.
Wet tires on wet roads. Wipers like metronomes. Sidelights on, even though it’s broad daylight.
‘Will you charge her with conspiracy?’ I say.
‘Not yet. We want to keep that back as a bargaining chip.’
‘Anything more on Roy Williams?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘The shop in Ebbw?’
We’re stopped at lights and Brattenbury slides me a look. ‘Someone came in at opening time. Bought the full list for cash.’
‘CCTV?’
‘We’re looking at it.’
‘The telecoms tower?’
He laughs. ‘Taking all the bits you’ve given us, we reckon we can narrow the area to about three or four hundred square miles. The southern part of the Brecon Beacons, most likely. That sounds a lot, but you’re only talking about an area twenty miles square. We just need to find a barn and a farmhouse, where the barn has been through some extensive remodeling.’
‘Name searches for Nia? Even in Wales, that’s not so common.’
Brattenbury sees a gap in the traffic and blitzes through it. The sprayback from a lorry up ahead drenches our windscreen and Brattenbury has to put the wiper on full to clear it.
‘Fiona. We’re doing everything. We do know how to do this.’
‘I know.’ There’s a brief moment when I see myself through the eyes of a superior. Talented but difficult. Hard to manage. I have a moment of clear vision, a windscreen newly cleared of rain. ‘Sorry,’ I say. Then the rain comes again. The spray. The splashback. And I don’t know what I’m apologizing for.
Brattenbury drives to a place in Altrincham, I think. I don’t really notice. Edwardian houses. Pretty street. Front gardens that smell of rose blooms in the wet. Philadelphus. A taste of orange blossom.
I feel a sudden surge of emotion. A surge that takes me by surprise and, because I’m unprepared, it takes me a few moments to find any description of it at all. There’s a period – a few seconds maybe – where I don’t know if I’m feeling, happy, sad, angry, frightened, or anything at all. I just feel that rush of internal movement. See the rain shine on wet streets and fallen petals.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Where are we?’
‘This is a colleague’s house. He and his wife are away for a few weeks, I thought it would be nicer for you to stay in a real family home than a hotel.’
‘Oh.’
That phrase
family home
gives me the clue. I’ve spent so long away from all of that – from my house, from Buzz’s flat, from my parents’ home – that I find myself moved and disconcerted to be here in this wet street, these quiet gardens. As though the kind of life they promise is still a possibility.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Is Buzz going to be here?’
‘Buzz?’
‘David Brydon. My fiancé.’
‘He’s coming this afternoon. We’ll have debriefs most days. Long ones to begin with. You and – did you say Buzz? – can have the rest of the time together. We’ll still need to process you through the courts, but you’re on record as being held at Cheadle Heath. You might have to do some nights there, just to maintain the legend.’
‘That’s fine. And yes, I’m OK.’
I don’t move though.
It’s strange to know that I can just walk up and down this street. Go to the shops, eat a meal, chat with a neighbor. I can be Fiona Grey or Fiona Griffiths, it doesn’t really matter.
It feels almost like that time outside the hotel. The air bubble. Neither color nor weight. Only it’s different this time. Like it’s a good weightlessness, not a bad one. It’s as though I feel both my lives walking in front of me and realize I can choose either one.
A sense of potential.
‘What about Western Vale? I’ve been fired, I assume?’
‘Just a bit.’ He laughs. The laugh says,
You’re very fired.
‘What about my cleaning?’
‘I don’t know. They probably just think you’ve gone AWOL.’
I nod. Cleaners come and go. The ultimate transient workforce. When I stop turning up for work, my boss will just replace me. I wonder who Lowri is coughing at now. But I’ll miss it, the cleaning. I never liked payroll.
‘Are you OK to go in?’
‘Yes.’
But I don’t move. Brattenbury thinks this is the end. Not of the operation, but of my role in it. The public arrest. The criminal charges. The unlamented collapse of my career in payroll.
This, in undercover terms, is the start of my reintegration. The nice house in a pleasant district. Time spent getting to know Buzz again. A gentle reintroduction to my old job, my old commitments. It’s everything I’m meant to want.
Please don’t be concerned
.
I say, ‘I can’t forget Roy Williams.’
‘Nor can any of us.’
‘I’d like to see Katie, please. When she’s ready. When there’s time.’
‘Of course. We’ve already asked her and she’s said she wants to see you.’
‘He’s in that farmhouse, isn’t he? I was a hundred feet from him.’
‘Probably.’
We do know how to do this.
‘Have you arrested James Wyatt?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Ian Shoesmith?’
‘Not yet.’
First intelligence, then arrests. The SOCA way.
‘He was nice, Ian, Terry, whatever you want to call him. He helped me at Monopoly.’
‘So we shouldn’t arrest him?’
‘No, we should just arrest him nicely.’
We’re doing everything.
Brattenbury thinks that this is the end for Fiona Grey, but I’m not so sure. My cover is now perfect, beyond question. And little Fiona may yet have her uses.
The rain starts to clear. The pavement starts to shine with an apologetic sunlight. The Lexus engine ticks softly as it cools.
Buzz is coming this afternoon and I realize I do want to see him. I’m not sure what that thing with Henderson was – lust? fear? isolation? – but I feel insulated from it now. Seeing Buzz will be strange, but good-strange, I think.
I open my car door.
‘OK. Let’s do it.’
And we do.
40.
Buzz says, ‘You’ve lost weight.’
He says, ‘Your hair’s longer.’
He says, as he gives me a bunch of yellow roses in a pale blue jug, ‘I got these, because I thought you’d prefer something simple.’
He says, as he shows me the suitcase of my own clothes he’s brought from my house, ‘I didn’t know what you’d want, so I asked your sister to help choose.’
He says, as he soaps my back in the large white rolltop bath with claw feet that stands in the prettily decorated upstairs bathroom, ‘Your face, babe. It looks terrible.’
He says, as we go through to the bedroom, and the big white bed, and the rose-patterned wallpaper and the sweet peas in a glass on the window sill, ‘We can take it slow.’
And I say, as I lie beside him afterwards, staring up at the ceiling and burying my hand in the thickets of his hair, ‘Oh Buzz, I would get so lost without you.’ And we press up close and I don’t talk much and don’t let him talk much except that, when we get hungry, he’s allowed to walk downstairs naked to the kitchen and come back with brown bread and butter and smoked salmon and (for him) a bottle of beer. And we eat sitting up in bed, telling each other off when we drop crumbs onto the sheets, and we lick each other’s fingers clean, and when Buzz settles back with his beer, I sip the foam from the head and start nibbling the hillock of muscle at the top of his arm.