Love Story, With Murders (32 page)

I try to do two or three hours each day I’m in bed. I get through about a third of the material, no more. There’s far more to be done, but I’m already certain that my
father’s past holds the clue, in some way, to the mystery of my origin. I’m just daunted by the scale of the investigation.

When I need a break, I retreat to the sweet enchantments of Operation
Stirfry. I’m missing the briefings, and the incident room all aflap with paper. But I have the intranet and I have my
phone. Watkins is now investigating, as well as Langton and Khalifi, the matter of possible illegal arms export, the possible framing of Mark Mortimer, and any threats that may have been made
against Sophie Hinton. Oh yes, and the small matter of the ‘attempted murder of DC Fiona
Griffiths,’ on which a team of three is now labouring full-time.

It’s clear that the dramas of Capel-y-ffin have revived Stirfry. Interest from senior command has revived. There’s a new intensity about the operation. And part of that is for my
sake. I appreciate it. I get a home visit from none other than Detective Superintendent Kirby, who sits awkwardly on the edge of my bed and praises
me for my courage and resourcefulness in the line
of duty.

I don’t think it’s seeing one of his young female officers in her nightdress that makes him awkward. More that he’s in the home of Tom Griffiths and speaking to his
daughter.

I look at my hands and say, ‘Thank you, sir.’ The weird thing is that I mean it. Then my mam brings in tea and biscuits, and we all sit around and talk
about the weather.

I’m still involved in interesting stuff too.

Watkins phones to ask if I have any suggestions about reviewing those engineering drawings from Barry Precision. I do. I know a guy called Stuart Brotherton, an engineering lecturer at the
University of Leeds. I knew him when he was a junior research fellow at Cambridge – he was my first ever drug dealer, in fact, though
Watkins doesn’t need to know that. I tell Stuart
what we need and why we need it. I say he can charge us a consultancy fee if he likes. He says he’ll be happy to do it.

I also log into the secure network and keep up to date with what’s been going on while I’ve been adventuring. Less than I’d hoped, in truth. Although Watkins’s demand for
more manpower is now being treated sympathetically
by those above her, the cold weather has drained the force of resources. Officers are managing blocked roads, failed power lines, and abandoned
vehicles and supporting a programme that aims to protect the elderly against the cold. Until the weather relents, we’re struggling to cover what we need to do.

But progress is slow, not absent.

I click through to Bev’s researches. She’s listed,
with true Rowlandian neatness, every payment made on Khalifi’s bank card, every payment on his credit card. The same for
Langton, though her transaction record is so meagre as to be almost silent.

Bev’s work is wonderfully literal. When Khalifi bought stuff from Tesco, her notes report, ‘
Tesco: large supermarket.
’ When he spent seventy quid at the Swansea Bay
Yacht Club, her notes say, ‘
Swansea Bay Yacht Club: primarily a yacht club. Also windsurfing and similar social/recreational activities
.’ I can see why, if you’re a Watkins
or a Jackson, you want plenty of Bev Rowlands on your team, not so many Fiona Griffithses.

But still, I’ve got my uses. I spend hours studying Bev’s spreadsheets. They are things of beauty. A life photographed in data. The commercial imprint of a
man. And these things are
strangely informative. I check some websites, phone through to the yacht club. Call up and study as many photos of Langton as I can find.

My orchard of knowledge grows another apple.

Langton and Khalifi. The leg and the lung.

Her grinning blonde head rising from its barrel of oil. His freshly scattered parts gleaming in the Llanishen mud.

I still feel
close to Mary Langton, but I’ve got a better relationship with Khalifi now too. That mobile, ambiguous face feels friendly, not just evasive. I realise too that I think of
them as a pair, Langton-and-Khalifi: the way you think about friends who are dating steadily.

My colleagues are excited because Khalifi might have led them to an arms-smuggling ring, as though that’s where the glamour
and the excitement really lies. For me, all corpses count the
same. One dead body might lead to Barry Precision. Another to nothing more than a love poem lost down the back of a sofa. There is no eminence here, no lowliness. We are all equal under
Death’s scythe.

I silently apologise to Mary Langton for my colleagues’ mood of indifference. Promise her that it’s temporary. I’ve been a little
neglectful myself, in truth. Because
I’ve had to work hard on Khalifi–Mortimer, I haven’t quite given Langton the attention she deserves. But time enough for that now. I think we’ll get her killer too.

Meantime, I research Saadawi. Some of the websites I need are in Arabic, but the English-language
Egyptian Gazette
has a story which seems to identify Saadawi as a businessman with
trading
and construction interests. Whose brother is a procurement officer in the Egyptian defence ministry.

What you might call a smoking gun.

I also research Barry Precision’s other overseas buyers. The company boasts a Libyan buyer. Also Lebanese, Moroccan, Saudi. I can’t yet find obvious connections between those names
and defence or security services, but there’s a limit on what you can
do with Google alone, and I’ve not been on the case for long. I mention these things to Watkins, who tells me
brusquely that she has a pair of DCs on the case already.

Stuart phones me back the afternoon after getting my data – my third day at home. He tells me I’m right. Barry Precision makes bits and pieces for all manner of people, but a
sizeable portion of its business appears to be
manufacturing parts that are weapons-suitable. Blast protection equipment for trucks and armoured cars. Gun barrels for tanks. Probably a whole lot
more besides.

I ask him to put his preliminary conclusions in an email.

He does. Although the email is carefully circumspect, we don’t need proof to secure a search warrant, just reasonable suspicion. I forward the email on to Watkins.

I spend more time on Bev’s spreadsheets. They speak to you differently, depending on what you know.

Four years ago, before Mortimer started having his suspicions, before anything irreversible had happened, Khalifi took his holidays in Spain. Later on, Khalifi’s holidays changed. Dubai.
Jordan. Lausanne, Doha, Vienna, Cairo. It doesn’t take long to figure out. A few mouse clicks.

I’m still
grinning when Watkins calls.

‘I’m going to raid Barry Precision tomorrow morning.’ She briefly spells out her intentions. Five vehicles. Two dozen coppers. Arrive at 6.30
AM
, an
hour before dawn. Gain entry. Seize files. Seize computers. Interview all members of staff. Interview top management under caution.

She asks if I want to be there. I say, ‘Yes.’

‘Are you okay to move? I don’t
want –’

‘I’m fine. I just won’t kick any doors down, if that’s all right.’

Watkins responds to that with her normal lighthearted grace and wit. She wants to send a car for me, but I don’t want that.

Instead I say, ‘Idris Prothero owns the company. He lives on Marine Parade in Penarth.’

She thinks about that, then says, ‘Okay. We’ll take Prothero in first.’ She gives me details
of where and when we’re meeting.

I say, ‘We’ll need to interview him, of course.’

‘You want to?’

‘Yes.’

She thinks about that a moment. ‘All right. Mervyn Rogers leads. You support.’

I nod. Then, because nodding isn’t a brilliant telecommunication technique, I say, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And you both stay in close touch with me. No flying solo, Constable.’

I can’t quite say
‘Yes, ma’am’ again, so instead I say, ‘Did you know Swansea Bay Yacht Club doesn’t do boat hire?’ which might not be the best way to
put it but was how it came out.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Watkins says something growly and hangs up.

I think that’s interesting, even if she doesn’t.

I get out of bed.

Apart from short visits to the bathroom, I’ve mostly avoided moving around.
That’s partly because my healing skin is still fragile and so wants to be moved as little as possible. But
also, bed has been the most comfortable place to be. Since I’ve not needed to be anywhere else, I’ve not forced myself to move.

Time for that to change.

I pull off the T-shirt of Kay’s that I’ve been using for a nightie. Examine myself in the mirror.

I’m okay. A bit bashed around,
but okay. Walking feels a little strange, because toes turn out to be oddly important when it comes to balance and I still don’t have full feeling
anywhere that’s been blackened by frost. But still. I’m on my feet. I’m not falling over. I feel achy and sore, but I felt achy and sore in bed too.

It’s odd examining myself like this. Back when I was staring into a shop mirror with Kay, I couldn’t
connect with my own visual image. I seldom can. But I have no difficulty with
that now. My face doesn’t seem particularly to belong to me, but the rest of what I see prompts a feeling of belonging. Of recognition. This is me. This petrol-scorched, frostbitten,
snow-burnt, glass-lacerated body is mine. We feel a kind of kinship – the thing in the mirror, the brain in my head. When I move,
the mirror-beast moves and it makes sense. It all makes
sense.

I stare at the mirror until not just the body but the room behind starts to blur into unreality.

I run the taps and do stuff with water and soap. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but it’s what you do. Chomp some aspirin.

Get Mam upstairs to help change my dressings. Shoo her away when we’re done.

I dig through
the clothes that Kay has brought me. Opt for leggings and a jumper. Boots. I check the mirror-beast to see if I recognise myself but I don’t. Not really. I’m not
especially disconnected, just normal. My version.

Call Buzz. He tells me he’ll pick me up once he’s done at work.

I’m back in the saddle and it feels good. Me and Penry. Two sides of the same copper coin.

The next morning. Long before dawn.

It’s still astonishingly cold. Astonishingly snowy. This isn’t Wales as I’ve ever known it. It feels as though South Wales has somehow cut loose from the mainland and drifted
north. We’re bumping shorelines with Baffin Island and Spitsbergen. Polar bears on Queen Street and penguins clucking in
Bute Park.

I like it. When I’m not being left to die in it, I like it.

The alarm goes off at four fifteen. The rendezvous is at Cathays at five thirty. Because of the snow, we can’t just scream down to Barry in a blaze of sirens. We’ll need to creep
there. And because Watkins is in charge, no one will dare be late.

Buzz gets up, showers, gets dressed. He chooses the sort of clothes
you’d want if you were about to see real action. Boots. Thick trousers. Ski jacket. Combat wear. It’s hardly
necessary, of course. We’re hardly expecting armed resistance. Indeed, we’re not expecting anything beyond an empty building and some unguarded computers. But still. The drama of a dawn
raid seizes the imagination. Even for Buzz, who’s presumably kicked down a door or two in his time.

Bosnian doors. Doors with scarier things behind them than anything we’re likely to find in Barry.

But the mood is contagious. Instead of lying in bed and saying annoying things, I get up too. I don’t shower – I’m still wearing too many dressings to make that particularly
easy – but I clean myself with a flannel. Do something to my hair so that it looks like I’ve done something to it.
Buzz is in the kitchen, singing to himself and making a fry-up. Bacon
and eggs. Probably a heap of other things besides.

I get stuck in the bedroom wondering what to wear. I’m not normally girly about that sort of thing. I just choose something and wear it. I never buy anything complicated, so the choices
are easy.

But I already have a reputation in the office. A bit wild. A bit strange.
My mountaintop adventure was always more likely to happen to me than to anyone else. So I want to downplay it. Make it
seem smaller than it was. I want to diminish the gossip, not inflate it.

Buzz comes through to see where I’ve got stuck. I explain my dilemma.

‘You could wear that new outfit of yours.’

What new outfit? I can’t remember anything. He reminds me. There was a Hobbs
bag in my car. He took it out when he loaded the back with snow shovels and sleeping bags. It’s now in my
corner of the wardrobe.

‘You could wear that,’ he says.

I blink.

Yes, I could. I’d never really expected to wear it at all, if I’m honest, but nothing says ‘I’m not the almost-victim of a hypothermic contract killing’ like a
three-hundred-pound suit from Hobbs. And, strangely
enough, it’s not a bad choice. It’s loose over the parts of me that will welcome looseness. It’s comfortable enough to wear,
chic enough to deflect attention from the way I spent my weekend.

So I put it on. My face has some minor burn marks and there’s still some abraded skin where I pulled my cheek from the frozen car panel, but I play around with makeup until I look
presentable.

‘Bloody hell, babe, you look gorgeous!’

He gets a kiss for that, despite his tone of surprise. A kiss, but not a long one, because we have a fry-up to eat and a raid to attend. He clears away. I put on socks and boots, coat and hat,
scarves and gloves. It’s a cold world and I don’t want to feel it.

The rendezvous at Cathays is a thing of headlights and car exhausts. Men in black jackets
and knitted hats. Feet stamping on icy pavements. Snow in heaps along the North Road. The dirty
grey-brown of city snow. Darkness overhead, battling streetlights for control of the city. Watkins, in her granny coat, bustles in and out of view.