Love Story, With Murders (21 page)

Still, I feel a bit too jiggy to dive into full-on girlfriending yet. I need something to take the edge off my energies.

In the car, driving slowly, windows still down, heater to full but the air still cold. From Barry to Swansea. I hug the coast instead of blasting straight down the M4. I want to see
the seas as
much as possible. Slate-green water and Atlantic winds. The waves foam-topped, with that foam that’s never really white.

When the Ice Age comes, it’ll start like this.

I drive to Swansea, because I want to connect with Mary Langton. I seek out her old haunts. Places she lived as a student. Cafés we know she frequented. End up down by the sea, in the
blast of the wind.

Five years ago, Mary Langton left a party in a quiet part of Cardiff and walked away to her death. A few days ago, Ali el-Khalifi walked out of a coffee shop, out of CCTV range, and also ended
up dead. The two corpses strewn across Llanishen in a muddy unity.

Last night’s insight still seems true to me now: The two of them knew each other, were more than strangers. I don’t know where
these reflections take me, but you can’t rush
these things. I feel like I’m getting to know them, though. Mary Langton and Ali al-Khalifi. My all-too-human dead.

When I’m too cold to brave the seafront anymore, I zip back to Cardiff, to the office.

Up to my desk. Computer on. Enter the police database. In the ‘search for persons’ box, I type ‘Thomas Griffiths.’ My father. There are a
few different Tom Griffithses
available, but my pa’s folder is eight times longer than all the rest put together.

Click it.

View All. Select All. Print.

My paper tray starts filling with printouts. I realise I’m shaking. But this is a huge step for me. A step towards knowledge.

Frightening knowledge.

And as the print tray fills, I get a call. It’s Buzz.

‘You’re late,’
he says.

‘I’m on my way, Buzzling. I’m on my way.’

And I am. On for an afternoon and evening of high-intensity girlfriending. An afternoon during which I won’t think or talk about work at all.

Supergreat and perfect. What I aim to be.

Monday. Rhiannon Watkins. The briefing for Operation Abacus, aka Stirfry. An event which used to be daily and is now only twice weekly, with additional helpings of Watkinsian
sunshine served as required. Kirby floats on the margins now, distancing himself. Our ‘persons of interest’ board now has 275 names.

But this morning Watkins
is in the closest thing to a good mood as she ever gets. Close the way Antarctica is to Cape Town. It’s not that she cracks a smile or anything anatomically
dangerous like that, just when she ejects nails, the nails fly out at slightly lower velocities than usual and aren’t always aimed at the eyes.

Good mood – good news. Intensive enquiries over Sunday afternoon and evening succeeded in
tracing one of the waitresses from Gavin Watson’s now-defunct greasy-spoon café. The
waitress, one Sandrine Cooper, currently working as a server in her uncle’s fish-and-chip shop in Tongwynlais, was shown eight photos of different women, including Mary Langton and another
dancer who worked at the Unicorn over the relevant period. Cooper picked out both girls immediately, and correctly named
them both. She also picked, from a group of eight photos, a picture of
Khalifi. She didn’t know his surname, but named him correctly as ‘Ali.’ She thought that he and Mary had a relationship of sorts, but she wasn’t sure. She knew they
‘hung out a bit,’ but didn’t know any more than that.

It’s not much, but enough. Watkins finally has her connection.

To any copper, a connection like
that is like a point of weakness in a fortification, a vulnerable angle on an unguarded wall. It’s where you train your artillery. Where you concentrate
your fire.

Watkins must know that the Khalifi–Langton connection brings as many questions as it answers, but she redeploys the manpower she has to focus aggressively and intensively on this new line
of attack. She wants people who saw
Langton and Khalifi together. Anyone connected with the two of them. We’ve done some work on that in the past, but we’ve never brought all our
resources to bear on that single question.

The enquiry has found its centre.

Watkins starts to dole out assignments and interview schedules. I vaguely notice that Watkins didn’t mention it was my text to her that gave us the Sandrine Cooper connection.
I
don’t really care, but it’s a breach of senior officer etiquette. They’re meant to give patronising little public accolades to us baby detectives when we manage to do something a
tiny bit right.

But that’s not what concerns me most. What concerns me more is this bit now. What happens next.

And what happens next is that people are paired up. Given targets. Buzz and Jon Breakell will
be interviewing or re-interviewing current club employees. Bev Rowland, Jane Alexander, Jim Davis,
and Angela Yorke are going to re-interview as many dancers as they can find – not the current generation of dancers, obviously, but those that were working in Cardiff or Swansea five years
ago. For the first time in what seems like ages, there’s a stir in the room, a sense of excitement. A fire
trying to fan itself back into life.

I wait for my name to be read out. Relieved to hear I’m not with Jim Davis. Sorry that I’m not with Bev Rowland. Then realise the meeting is ending and I’ve been excluded
completely. Kicked off the whole damn operation. My eyes are widening with indignation. The normal charge for the coffee machine passes me by, led as ever by Jim Davis, and I don’t even
take
the opportunity to say something pointlessly offensive.

I’m still standing there, appalled, when I realise Watkins is at my elbow.

‘My office, Constable,’ she says.

She walks away and I follow. Other senior officers would make small talk. How was your weekend? Cold, isn’t it? If I was a bloke, they’d be talking rugby. Normally, I like
Watkins’s bluntness, but I’m feeling pissed
off with her, so right now I don’t.

On the way upstairs, my phone rings. I don’t answer it. A couple of moments later, a text comes through. I don’t look at it.

We get to her office. I close the door behind me and sit down without invitation. We face each other over her desk. Storm grey eyes from her. A fuck-you face from me. Lines of battle.

‘Okay,’ she says.

‘Okay what?’ I should
probably add a ‘ma’am,’ but don’t remember in time and might not have added one even if I had.

‘Your semi-official conversations. Who, where, when, what?’

‘I spoke to some of the barstaff, without gaining any real information. I subsequently called Rhys Jordan and asked him if there was a place where dancers and bar staff used to congregate
after hours.’

‘And it was Jordan who told
you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you made a note of that conversation for the records?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Do so. You should have done so immediately.’

I nod.

She needs something on the system to document how the enquiry came to bang on Sandrine Cooper’s door. Like every good copper, Watkins always has an eye on how an eventual prosecution case
will play out in court.

‘Right. Now this
Langton connection. According to DS Brydon, your father simply volunteered the information without prompting.’

‘Correct.’

‘Correct, meaning that is what Brydon reported? Or correct, meaning that that is in fact what happened?’

I’m tempted to fudge the issue, but I don’t. A sudden burst of honesty finds me saying, ‘I nudged my father for information, yes. Not directly, but via a trusted
colleague of
his. What my father did with that nudge was up to him.’

‘You didn’t offer any kind of protection or amnesty?’

My mouth falls open at that. If Watkins is asking that question, it’ll be because the entire high command of the South Wales force is uncertain about my ultimate loyalties. I’m
genuinely astonished and I think I look it.

‘That would be beyond my pay grade,
ma’am.’

‘It would be a
very
long way beyond your pay grade, Constable.’

‘I offered my father nothing. The day after DS Brydon and I went to interview Rhys Jordan, my father asked me if there would be any comeback. I assume he had in mind any tax
irregularities. I said I didn’t think there would be an issue. That was the entire extent of our conversation.’

Watkins’s does her storm-grey
thing at me. I stare back.

Eventually she sees what she needs to see. Or just moves on. Either way, she gives a sharp nod. ‘If the Unicorn is involved in this case in any way, I can’t have you connected with
it. Not that aspect of it.’

‘My father isn’t –’ I begin, feeling angry again.

I don’t get far. Watkins interrupts, ‘Your father has been repeatedly investigated for serious offences.
He’s been prosecuted five times –’

‘And found not guilty.’

‘Don’t be stupid. At least two of those trials were farces.’

She doesn’t complete the thought, but she doesn’t need to. Dad’s prosecutions comprised two armed robberies, one possession of a firearm with intent, and one each of kidnap and
arson. A well-balanced portfolio, if you ask me. The crimes of which he was suspected
but for which he was never tried would have made a vastly longer list. Handling stolen goods was – as far
as I know, at least – his particular forte, but my good and worthy predecessors on the force never collected enough evidence to mount a prosecution.

The intelligence that they
did
collect is currently weighing down the bottom drawer of my desk. I feel its tug. Its undertow.

And I
know Watkins is right. Our investigation has to be whiter than white. If the Unicorn connection becomes central to a prosecution case, I need to be nowhere close to it. I feel angry and
disappointed.

‘I don’t want to leave the case,’ I blurt out. I’m not being strategic. Not figuring out how best to get what I want. It’s just the truth. I say, ‘Mary
Langton. Al Khalifi. I feel I know them.
I don’t want to be reassigned.’

‘I’m not reassigning you.’

‘You’re
not
?’

I’m stunned. If I’m still on the case, then what’s the problem? My look must reveal my confusion.

‘I need you off the Langton–Khalifi connection, that’s all.’ Watkins says that almost gently.

Her version of gentle: one that leaves the skull intact.

‘Okay.’

‘I wasn’t asking for your permission,
Constable.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘I’m guessing there are aspects of the case you have an interest in exploring?’

‘Yes.’ Then, as she glares, I add, ‘I think there continues to be merit in exploring Khalifi’s engineering connections. Reason one, the nature of any connection between
Langton and Khalifi remains very unclear. Two, even if he killed her, his own death is completely unexplained.
Three, he
did
know Mortimer, who
did
die violently. Four, there is a
consensus among Mortimer’s family, friends, and colleagues that he was not a drug-smuggling type. And five – well, why does anyone kill anyone, if it’s not just a pub brawl type
thing? It always comes down to sex or money, doesn’t it? And there is money floating around at the edges of all this. Mortimer’s drug smuggling.
Khalifi’s work for the university.
Those private-sector consultancies. His taste for the expensive.’

Watkins nods. ‘I agree.’

She doesn’t seem to be angry with me now, which always feels weird. If I spend too long alone with a senior officer without them reprimanding me, I’m not quite sure what’s
going on. Watkins nods. Something happens to her lower face which could be a muscle spasm
or could be an attempt at a smile. She’s about to say something when her phone rings and my phone
vibrates again with a text. She answers her phone, only to say that she’s not taking calls. I use the interruption to look at my phone. When Watkins turns back to me, she’s ready to
restart from where we were.

I’m not.

I show her my phone. My text, the second one, is from the duty medical
officer at Cardiff Prison. It’s about Brian Penry.

He’s been attacked. He’s in hospital. He’s asking for me.

A ward on the fourth floor. Squeaky hospital trolleys on overpolished vinyl floors. Medication and bedpans. Nurses in starchy uniforms and sensible shoes.

Penry is in bed by a window, looking south. He’s in a good mood.

‘I can see my wing from here,’ he says, pointing south at the prison.

I pretend to look, but I don’t really.
I prefer the light beyond the city. I like the way it reminds you that the universe is huge and that we humans dance on its surface, briefly, and
without sound.

Penry’s head is swathed in bandages. Recently done, so blood hasn’t yet had time to soil the nice white linens. He hasn’t shaved for a day or so, and he’s one of those
men who looks almost instantly grizzly.

‘Making friends,
then?’ I ask.

He grins. ‘Yeah. In prison, everyone loves a copper.’

I sit down. The squeaky leatherette chair is designed to be comfortable for long visits, but it’s too big for me and the synthetic fabric immediately starts gluing itself to my legs.

‘DI Watkins is outside.’

‘Watkins?’ Penry spent most of his policing career with the Met in London, but he’s a Welsh boy at heart
and knows most of the older hands at Cathays. ‘I get a visit from
the Ice Queen herself, eh?’

He chuckles at that. For him, being out of prison is as good as a trip to the seaside, even if the local tourist attractions involve the A&E department and Cardiff’s scariest
detective. But it’s also information. DIs don’t chase around after every lead. The fact that Watkins chose to come is partly
police-solidarity – Penry is a former officer, even if
he’s also a convicted criminal – but it’s mostly because Watkins doesn’t have complete confidence in the Langton–Khalifi connection. Or indeed, complete confidence in
me.