55.

Homecomings. Real life in all its sweet complexity.

The easiest bit is my family. Dad’s uproarious desire for reunion. My mother’s fussing delight. My sisters’ unfeigned pleasure at seeing me again. It’s all that I could have wanted, and more. I’ve missed them.

My sister Ant, who has always for some reason wanted to be blonde, loves my new look and my mother, I think, is secretly curious. But my sister, Kay, who I always trust on these things, tells me it’s no good at all and, with my encouragement, does stuff with hair dye and scissors that turns me back, more or less, into the person I was. She takes three of Jessica’s tops and two of her skirts by way of payment.

It is a relief to be able to look into a mirror and not see that blonde self peering out at me. I never got on with Jessica, the poor, temporary creature. I’m pleased she’s gone.

The next easiest bit is work. I don’t go back into Cathays straight away. Partly Jackson and Brattenbury both want me to spend a couple of days reacquainting myself with my nearest and dearest. But also, I end up spending a night in hospital. My injuries aren’t particularly profound. I was taken off the mountain by helicopter and brought straight back to Cardiff. The shot which hit my leg was fired blind and I was hit only by a perimeter scatter. The skin around my ankle looks angry and red, with pimples rising where the pellets entered. Of more concern to the doctors was the damage done to my feet, which were raw and cut all over, with half a hillside worth of mud and sheep muck trodden into every wound.

They cleaned my feet, using a few stitches where the cuts were notably bad. As for my calf and ankle, they simply extracted as many pellets as they could and left the rest. Hooked me up to an IV antibiotic for twenty-four hours, more as a precaution than anything else. They tell me that the flesh will simply close over the pellets that remain, forming little fibroids under the skin. I’m given a letter confirming the existence of metal shot in my body: I may need it, in case I bleep in airport metal detectors.

I like that thought. Like the idea that I’ll carry this encounter on the mountain with me wherever I go. Some women, I know, have favorite bits of jewelry that they can’t bear to be without. I’m not like that. I do have some bits and pieces – necklaces mostly, some earrings and a silver bracelet – that do me good service. But they don’t feel essential. They’re not core me.

These gunshot spheres – about a dozen, the doctor guessed – feel right. Precious and personal. I even like it that they’re hidden. Spoils of war. The doctor said, ‘You may not feel them at all, but experiences vary. You could get a bit of soreness in some weathers, or feel some coldness.’ My leg is bandaged now, so I can’t see it, but I’m looking forward to the removal of the dressings. I hope there’ll be something to see. Small white freckles and lumps beneath the skin.

And for all that I want to get into the office, catch up with the investigation, I enjoy the hospital. Its cluttered quiet. This fresh, medicinal linen and the chatter of nurses.

One of them, a student nurse, sits on my bed for forty minutes and tells me about her degree course. I ask to check my chart and she passes it to me, putting a blood pressure cuff on me as she does so. But it’s not my blood pressure I care about, but my name. FIONA GRIFFITHS. Block capitals and computer printed.

The nurse says, when she sees my gaze refusing to detach from the chart, ‘It looks all OK. It’s all fine.’

I nod and hand back the chart. She’s right.

After a long sleep, at the hospital and a second one, the following night, at home, I’m ready for work again, or sort of. Buzz comes to get me. He says, am I strong enough to go into work. ‘Jackson wants you for a debriefing if you’re up to it.’

I say I’m fine. It’ll be weird going into the office again after so long, but nice-weird, not bad. We drive there in Buzz’s car and, for once, I’m allowed to put my hand on his leg and keep it there, even when he’s changing gear. I’m on oral antibiotics and aspirin, and I’ve been given special orthopedic boots and crutches, which I don’t really need. My feet are sore, but not atrocious.

At Cathays, I hobble into a lift and up to Jackson’s floor. Go to his office.

He’s there with Brattenbury. He and I sit side by side on the squeaky fake leather sofa. Jackson leans back on a matching chair. The shadow line of dust under Jackson’s sofa is still there. Mr. Conway, the strictest of my various bosses, would have reprimanded me for that.

I pluck my jacket into some sort of shape. Try to look professional. Try not to notice the brown leaves curling on the carpet.

Jackson sends someone to get hot drinks and brings me up to speed with the case itself. Some of it I already know, but it’s nice to have the whole thing from the top.

‘Roy’s fine. Legs smashed to buggery. They need to be reset. A whole lot of surgery. Don’t even ask, but … compared with what might have been, he’s fine.’

Jackson’s face moves. I already know that a man was sent down to the cellar to kill Roy. Part of the clean-up. Roy shot the man with a triple blast from his shotgun, killing him outright from close range. I don’t know if he shouted ‘Police!’ first.

Jackson tosses me a photo of the dead man. It’s not a face I recognize, but there were no innocents in that farmhouse.

I say this to Jackson, or something like it, but he shrugs. ‘There’ll be an IPCC investigation, of course, but they’re very sympathetic. We won’t have any problems with them.’

The IPCC is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and they’re obliged to mount a full inquiry whenever a police officer discharges a weapon. That inquiry will certainly include me in its scope. I think, though, strangely enough, I didn’t operate outside the law at any stage. It’ll be odd to be the subject of an inquiry and not have to lie. I’m getting old.

Then I remember that I have sixty thousand pounds of Tinker’s money in an offshore account so secure that only I can access it and which is untraceable by any British law enforcement agency. Money which I have no intention of declaring. I also remember that, after spending a day learning computer hacking at the hands of a master, I emailed myself a copy of the Trojan horse software in question. It occurs to me that while the IPCC would be quite interested in these things, I am most unlikely to tell them.

I feel faintly relieved, like finding that my lost youth isn’t actually lost at all.

‘What about Tinker?’ I ask. I want to know if they ever pressed Terry’s Fuck It button.

Not unexpectedly, the answer is yes.

Brattenbury says, ‘The fake software went live from about the time you started blowing things up. We got alerts out to everyone we could. Sent officers to the IT departments of every corporate which we knew to be compromised. Notified banks. Notified the software supplier. HMRC. Got some accounts frozen.’

‘And?’ I ask.

‘They took thirty-four million pounds. From twelve different corporates, ones we didn’t even know were in danger. Even there, I have to say, the firms concerned were not … they were not as security-aware as you’d think they would be. None of the firms in question will be endangered by the loss. It’s a maximum of a week’s payroll in most cases. They can think of it as a small reminder to tighten up their act.’

‘Thirty-four million?’

Jackson doesn’t let Brattenbury answer. He says, ‘We were expecting a further three weeks before that button was pressed. Given the circumstances, and the fact that liberating Roy, and you, and securing the farmhouse were our top operational priorities, I think it’s remarkable how well we did. Tribute to Adrian’s professionalism. His and that of his colleagues.’

I don’t doubt Brattenbury’s professionalism. Never have done. But thirty-four million quid?

‘Who have we got?’ I ask in a low voice. ‘That first farm buggy, did we get any of those?’

‘Three. Allan Wiley. The man you call Geoff. One other.’

He throws some photos on the table. Sure enough: Allan, Geoff, one other I don’t recognize. Brattenbury tells me that his men heard the shooting up on the hill, where the fields met mountain, and responded instantly. They saw the damaged buggy, saw that any fugitives would now be escaping on foot and poured search teams into the area to pick them up. It took until two hours after dawn to get the three men – all scattered, all located in different spots. At one point, there were a hundred and fifty police officers engaged in the hunt.

‘This man,’ I say, indicating the photo of the man I’ve not seen before. ‘Is he …?’

‘No. He’s a thug, basically. A hired hand. Michael Edwards. Did a tour in the army. Conviction for affray. Involved with a unlicensed boxing gym in Llanrumney. He doesn’t seem any too bright. Plus he wants a legal aid lawyer, because he claims not to have the cash for one of his own.’

So Mr. Big has got away. I think of that black figure hurrying away from me and Vic, on that distant ridge. Him and whoever else was with him. Anna Quintrell’s ‘rich guy’ with ‘legitimate money’ is thirty-four million pounds up and laughing.

‘Henderson?’ I ask in a low voice.

‘Alive. But in a very bad way. Broken neck, broken back. Bad head injuries. Last I heard, he might survive.’ He shakes his hand in a toss-up sort of way. ‘Might.’

I don’t know what I feel about that.

Part of me wants the full police experience. I want to be there behind the one-way mirror as I watch the interrogation. Watch as they play the audio of his and my little session in that hotel bedroom. Watch his face change, as he realizes how complete, how inescapable, is the case against him.

But not all of me. Fiona Grey, I think, wants him to complete his act of escape. Wants that leap into night to be rewarded by death. A dark almost-love-affair finding its dark almost-resolution.

Me too, I think. I usually want my criminals to encounter their justice at the hands of a court, behind the bars of a jail. But Vic, I think, might be an exception. Faced with the choice of death or jail, he chose the former and I’m not too sure I’d want to challenge or alter his decision.

‘Four?’ I ask. ‘We got four?’

‘Five, if you count the man that Roy shot,’ says Jackson. ‘Plus five dead in the barn. Plus the whole of the Indian IT team. The Metropolitan Police arrested the lot of them at Heathrow. They were flying to Dubai. We’re charging them not just with fraud but with conspiracy to murder. We’re telling them to expect life in prison. I’m told they’re absolutely terrified. Giving us very full cooperation.’

His face moves. One of those Jacksonian faces I can’t interpret. Boulders in an empty river bed. Grey stones beneath a grey cliff.

‘And look, at some stage, you’re going to get a lecture from me about making appropriate judgments of risk in fast-moving situations. There’s absolutely no way you should have pursued those vehicles on your own. You had absolutely no right to place yourself at risk in the way that you did. But if you hadn’t broken up that escape route, the men involved would have got away. All of them, not just some. I’m still going to give you that lecture, but not right now. Speaking not as a police officer now, but just man to man, you did a bloody good job.’

I stare at him.

He says, ‘Man to woman, then.’

‘Women. Fiona was there, Fiona Grey. And Jessica.’

Jackson doesn’t share my passion for exactitude, and in any case Brattenbury is saying something now. ‘And remember, we’re still working. We’ve got a lot of leads.’

‘Ownership of the farmhouse?’

‘A Jersey registered company. Beneficial owners in Bermuda.’

‘Forensics? DNA?’

‘Well, between you and Henderson, we weren’t left with quite as much as we’d have liked, but the farmhouse was only partially damaged. We’ve got a lot of traces, including a laundry room which our forensic boys are absolutely loving. We’re working through it all now.’

‘Vehicle movements to and from the farmhouse? Where’s the nearest camera?’

My two bosses exchange a look, but indulge me for a change.

Brattenbury says, ‘The nearest camera is two miles away on the far side of the village. If they chose a route to avoid the location, they could easily drive fifteen, twenty miles without passing anything.’

That’s not helpful, obviously, but ANPR doesn’t just rely on fixed roadside cameras. Filling stations and police cars are also linked in to the system. And although you can get from Cardiff to the Brecon Beacons without using the A470, you’ll waste a lot of time doing anything else. A rich man, in a hurry, believing himself to be beyond police scrutiny – might he not use the A470 before starting to wiggle around on back roads? Not in the past year perhaps, but before then, well before, when the whole of Tinker was just a gleam in the eye? And indeed, I don’t think the barn was constructed just to service Tinker. I think other criminal enterprises have been conceived there too. Legitimate ones as well, maybe.

It’ll be a massive exercise. Massive beyond massive. Tracking every car on the A470. Homing in on those owners who boast a few million in assets, quite likely a lot more. Trying to determine how many of those have legitimate business up in Brecon or deeper into Powys. Cross-tabulating that data against users of the business center neighboring Henderson’s osteopathy place.

As I’m thinking this through, I mutter, ‘That health center. Henderson was meeting a guy called Davison.’

Brattenbury and Jackson both look at me sharply.

I add, ‘He’s some kind of fixer. Does dirty jobs for cash. He’s been Henderson’s go-between. Henderson meets Davison. Davison liaises with Mr. Big.’

There’s a pause and a micro-nod from Brattenbury, indicating that he’ll leave this one to Jackson.

Jackson says, ‘Fiona, the source for this is …?’

‘Henderson.’

‘He told you this?’

‘No, of course not.’ I make something up. An overheard phone message. A strange reaction from Henderson. Blah, blah.

Normally I try to make my lies convincing – or I do when I’m speaking to my superiors. It’s a mark of respect, the least I can do. On this occasion, though, my heart’s not quite in it and I peter out before I should.

I try to scratch my foot, which is itchy, but the boot prevents much scratching action.

‘We’ll mark that down as unconfirmed intelligence, shall we?’ says Jackson.

‘You can call it conspiracy hearsay bollocks if you like, sir. But I believe it.’

Jackson once told me that if I ever found myself believing a piece of ‘conspiracy hearsay bollocks’ then I was to tell him so, and he would treat it as true, no matter how dubious the source. It was part of a pact between him and me, a pact whose purpose was to stop me ending up in places where bad guys were trying to shoot me. Obviously the arrangement hasn’t worked out too cleverly, but a promise is still a promise.

‘OK. Then so do we.’ He nods at Brattenbury to tell him that he’s included in the deal too. Brattenbury is perplexed, but accepting.

There’s a pause.

Grey light enters through a grey window. I have a strange feeling. I think, This is my life. My ordinary life. No one is trying to kill me. This is the ordinary life I always wanted.

The thought doesn’t make me feel good, particularly. More accurately, I suppose, I just don’t know what I feel beyond a certain giddiness. It’s as though, in some ways, I’ve learned to live on Planet Normal. Breathe its atmosphere, cope with its gravity. But that doesn’t mean I’m at home here. Perhaps this soil will always be alien, and its people strangers.

Brattenbury starts to say how pleased he is. Not just with my safe return: all that has already been said. He starts to say how well the operation has gone down in London. ‘We have disrupted the largest theft ever to have been attempted in the UK. Most of its perpetrators are dead or in custody. Those in custody can expect very significant sentences, life in most cases. As you know, because you’ve been working undercover, we’re prohibited from making any public recognition of your work, but I want to you know that our DG, the Director General, has told me that he’s written to the Home Secretary herself to express—’

He means well, I recognize that, but Adrian doesn’t know me the way Jackson does.

I interrupt. In my opinion, an operation which allows its primary perpetrator to escape uncaught – his identity not even guessed at – is a near-total failure. An operation which enriches the primary villain by thirty-four million quid is nothing short of a catastrophe. I state these things in an English which is pithy, expressive, and makes generous use of terms drawn from the Anglo-Saxon and Old High Dutch. I use the mature and respectful tone I usually adopt when expressing disagreement with a superior officer.

Brattenbury sits back, so Jackson can yell at me better. But he doesn’t yell. Just shakes me into silence with his empty coffee mug.

‘Fiona, shut up. Just for a change, shut up. Yes, this is a partial success, not a full one. But the case isn’t closed and we’re not going to close it until we have the main man. If you want to remain associated with the operation, that’s fine with me and I’m sure …?’

‘Of course,’ Brattenbury says. ‘Same here, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ I say sulkily.

Then I have one of those clear windscreen moments and add, ‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’

Brattenbury says, ‘The fact is that, and I’m speaking for SOCA here, we are very good at disrupting major criminal activity. We are good at securing convictions for the lower-level criminals. But we often just don’t have the tools to arrest the top-level operators. If the money goes offshore, we can’t follow it. If we don’t get a confession or some unusual breakthrough, it’s relatively rare for us to get the guys at the very top. But we go on trying. And we know that the better we are at disrupting crime, the more we raise the costs of criminal activity.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘SOCA top brass: they regard this case as the biggest success they’ve had in years.’

I glower. Not at them – I have no complaints with their handling of the operation, none whatever – but at a world where enriching some rich fuckwit by thirty-four million stolen pounds is regarded as a success.

I say, ‘Arresting Henderson, killing and arresting all those other people – you realize that’s only increased Mr. Big’s profit? If Henderson and the others had been around, the money would have had to be shared out somehow. I don’t know how, but it would have been parceled out. As it is, our bad guy has no one to share it with. He’s made thirty-four million pounds, in a single night’s work. How is that raising the cost of criminal activity?’

My question doesn’t have an answer. It’s not that Jackson and Brattenbury don’t share the same objectives as me. More that, with time, they’ve grown accustomed to outcomes that fall short of what they once wanted. It’s not a skill I’ve yet learned. Not one I want to learn.

Brattenbury says, ‘You’re OK, are you? Your feet and everything, I mean.’

‘Yes.’

He pauses a moment. I notice for the first time a graveness in his face. A remorse.

He looks at his coffee cup, finds it empty and puts it down. He swivels to face me.

‘Look, Fiona, I need to say sorry. I promised I wouldn’t lose you. I promised to get SCO19 to the farmhouse and I failed. I allowed you to enter a situation which was unacceptably dangerous and I apologize. I’ve asked the IPCC to include that failure in their investigation and they’ll have their process. But quite separately from that, from me to you, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let that happen. Or allowed you to enter a situation where it could have happened.’

I say the right things, or think I do. But the truth is, I think I knew SOCA would lose me. I think I knew Henderson’s subtlety would defeat Brattenbury’s. For all SOCA’s efficiently deployed resources, it is easier to shake surveillance than to maintain it. I think that, when I stepped into Henderson’s car, the day he came to pick me up from Birmingham, I knew I would be entering the farmhouse alone. Trusted my own wits to do whatever needed to be done. I don’t say that exactly, but I don’t want Brattenbury to feel bad.

Jackson looks at his watch. Brattenbury too. Says he has to catch a train to London. Has a cab waiting downstairs. Jackson and I walk him to the lift. Or Jackson walks him, and I hobble him. I use my crutches, but only just need them.

‘You’ll come and see us in London sometime? Let me take you and Susan out to lunch?’

I nod. Make a promise.

The lifts open and close.

One phase of my life finishes. Another, presumably, starts.

Jackson says, ‘They’ll offer you a job. You know that?’

I look at him. Probably do something with my face that implies a question.

‘They’ll give you lunch somewhere nice. Little tour of SOCA HQ. Get you to meet the DG. Flatter you a bit. Tell you how important their work is, how sexy it is. They may not even offer you a job directly, just encourage you to ask for it. That way, the theory is, I don’t get pissed off when they nick my best officers.’

This is news to me. I hadn’t even thought about working for SOCA.

‘They’ll have bigger cases to offer you. More resources. More opportunity.’

‘Oh.’ I can’t imagine leaving Cardiff, and say so. ‘I think I like it here, sir.’

‘Good.’

He starts steering me towards the stairs, then remembers my crutches and goes back to the lifts. Punches the down button.

‘Sir, when I’m like that.’ I point back at his office and my stream of Old High Dutch. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t always help it. And sometimes I can help it, but I do it anyway.’ I’m about to end that little speech with another ‘sorry’, but I seem to be all out of apology juice, so I just shrug instead. Jackson looked at me as I was speaking, but his face doesn’t do or say much afterwards.

When the lift arrives, he hits the button for the basement. The canteen.

‘Fiona, I’ve been talking with some of my colleagues. Senior ones, including the Chief Constable and including Rhiannon Watkins.’

I nod. That sort of intro normally spells trouble, but I don’t think it can on this occasion.

The giddy feeling I had before is stronger now. I have to lean against the wall of the lift to keep my balance.

‘And we agree, all of us, that it’s ridiculous you still being a detective constable. An officer of your abilities needs to climb the ladder. I know Rhiannon has already spoken to you about this. We want you to take the exams for detective sergeant.’

I start to object, but Jackson says, ‘Fiona, I’m trying to do things nicely, but I’m not really asking a question. I am telling you what you are going to do. We call it giving an order.’

‘Oh.’

‘You remember those?’

‘Yes. I mean, yes, sir’.

We’re at the canteen now. Double doors, opening in. There’s a noise from inside. The rolling buzz of conversation. A conversation that self-silences as we enter.

The room – the biggest in the building – is a jam of people. The whole of CID. A spatter of uniforms.

I shrink back. My giddiness is now out of control. I’m a marionette without the strings. Just for a moment I don’t know who or where I am.

Somehow, though, my feet know to follow Jackson. If I’m clumsy, my crutches excuse me.

I feel very strange.

There’s a podium of some sort. Roy Williams on it in some weird form of wheelchair that allows his legs to lie flat in front of him. Katie is there in the front row, next to the chief constable.

Jackson says something. A speech. I can’t hear much of it. Or rather: I hear it all, but don’t make much sense of it. I see Buzz sitting next to Katie. His face seems like the most familiar thing in the world and the strangest, both at once.

Jackson’s oration concludes.

‘We did everything we could. Every resource, every database, every lead, every officer, every bit of fancy technology at our disposal. And we failed. We did our best to get Roy back and we failed. But our police service has never just been about technology and fancy databases. It’s about guts and brains and sheer damn determination. And I’m telling you that Roy here owes his safety and well-being entirely to the actions, courage and resourcefulness of this young officer. And if—’

He doesn’t finish.

The room stands. There’s a roar of applause, of clapping. A wall of sound: that phrase which doesn’t quite mean anything until you encounter something like this. A physical sensation, of being pushed back almost. Something dense pressing to occupy a once empty space.

Roy is a popular officer and there’s a way that this is Roy’s show more than mine, his harvest of approval. But it’s my show too. Jackson pumps my hand. Roy Williams gets his arms round my waist – the only place he can reach from his wheelchair – and hugs me in a way that still somehow manages to lift me off the ground. Katie – dewier, tearier and prettier than ever – joins in too. Buzz hugs me and says something in my ear that I can’t really hear because of the noise, but it was a nice thing, whatever, and I make nice in return.

I do what I think I’m meant to do, but I find it hard. The noise of the applause – the din, that sense of mental concussion – is like the shooting up on the hill, only I was more comfortable there. More at ease. Since I can’t reasonably start shooting anyone now, I just shrink into myself and wait for it all to stop.

For a moment, I don’t know where to look or what to do. I talk to Katie, because it means I don’t have to face my colleagues. Then the chief constable sorts out my social awkwardness by making a short speech that manages to deflate the mood and send everyone into a coma of talked-at, semi-official boredom.

Then some catering folk start serving beer and wine and nibbles and I hide out in a corner with Katie and my friend Bev and try to avoid people coming up to me. The strategy doesn’t work tremendously well, but in the end it’s Jackson who rescues me. He’s with Buzz. Jackson has a full bottle of beer in his hand, and it’s not his first. Buzz has a glass of wine, and it’s not his first.

‘I think you two little lovebirds ought to bugger off now,’ says Jackson.

I say, ‘Is that you doing it again? Saying something nicely, but really—’

‘Yes. Bugger off. That’s an order.’

I polish up one of my gay-man-waving salutes and hand it over. ‘Yes, sir.’

Buzz salutes the military way, crisp and correct.

We leave.

As the canteen doors swing shut behind us, and we walk down the corridor, I ask Buzz if we can stop a moment.

We do, and there is a look of enquiry on his face, but all I want is to listen to the sound of the room behind us. The rolling sound of conversation, drink and laughter.

I realize this is the sound of happiness. Of a collection of human beings who, more than not, like and respect each other. Who like their work in life. Who form a community, a mutually supportive community, that shares its troubles and its triumphs. That welcomes back its own.

I realize too that, for all my odd awkwardness, I am an accepted member of that community, today more than ever. I feel moved, more than when I was shrinking from attention up on the dais earlier.

Buzz is looking at my face. Gesturing at the lifts.

‘OK to go on?’

I nod. I surely am.