Talking to the Dead: A Novel Read online

  Talking to the Dead is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Harry Bingham

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Orion Publishing Group, London.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bingham, Harry

  Talking to the dead: a novel/Harry Bingham.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53374-6

  1. Policewomen—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.

  3. Cardiff (Wales)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6102.I54T35 2012

  823′.92—dc23 2011041365

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover art: Carlos Beltran

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Cotard’s Syndrome

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Interview. October 2006

  Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park. One blue, one yellow, one pink. Their shapes are precise, as though stenciled. From this distance, I can’t see the lines that tether them, so when the kites move, it’s as though they’re doing so of their own accord. An all-encompassing sunlight has swallowed depth and shadow.

  I observe all this as I wait for D.C.I. Matthews to finish rearranging the documents on his desk. He shuffles the last file from the stack in front of him to a chair in front of the window. The office is still messy, but at least we can see each other now.

  “There,” he says.

  I smile.

  He holds up a sheet of paper. The printed side is facing him, but against the light from the window I see the shape of my name at the top. I smile again, not because I feel like smiling but because I can’t think of anything sensible to say. This is an interview. My interviewer has my résumé. What does he want me to do? Applaud?

  He puts the résumé down on the desk in the only empty patch available. He starts to read it through line by line, ticking off each section with his forefinger as he does so. Education. A levels. University. Interests. References.

  His finger moves back to the center of the page. University.

  “Philosophy.”

  I nod.

  “Why are we all here, what’s it all about. That sort of thing?”

  “Not really. More like, What exists? What doesn’t exist? How do we know whether it exists or not? Things like that.”

  “Useful for police work.”

  “Not really. I don’t think it’s useful for anything much, except maybe teaching us to think.”

  Matthews is a big man. Not gym-big, but Welsh-big, with the sort of comfortable muscularity that suggests a past involving farmwork, rugby, and beer. He has remarkably pale eyes and thick dark hair. Even his fingers have little dark hairs running all the way to the final joints. He is the opposite of me.

  “Do you think you have a realistic idea of what police work involves?”

  I shrug. I don’t know. How are you supposed to know if you haven’t done it? I say the sort of thing that I think I’m supposed to say. I’m interested in law enforcement. I appreciate the value of a disciplined, methodical approach. Blah blah. Yadda yadda. Good little girl in her dark gray interview outfit saying all the things she’s supposed to say.

  “You don’t think you might get bored?”

  “Bored?” I laugh with relief. That’s what he was probing at. “Maybe. I hope so. I quite like a little boredom.” Then worried he might feel I was being arrogant—prizewinning Cambridge philosopher sneers at stupid policeman—I backtrack. “I mean, I like things orderly. I’s dotted, T’s crossed. If that involves some routine work, then fine. I like it.”

  His finger is still on the résumé, but it’s tracked up an inch or so. A levels. He just leaves his finger there, fixes those pale eyes on me, and says, “Do you have any questions for me?”

  I know that’s what he’s meant to say at some stage, but we’ve got forty-five minutes allocated for this interview and we’ve used only ten, most of which I’ve spent watching him shift stationery around his office. Because I’m taken by surprise—and because I’m still a bit rubbish at these things—I say the wrong thing.

  “Questions? No.” There’s a short gap, in which he registers surprise and I feel like an idiot. “I mean, I want the job. I don’t have any questions about that.”

  His turn to smile. A real one, not fake ones like mine.

  “You do. You really do.” He makes that a statement not a question. For a D.C.I., he’s not very good at asking questions. I nod anyway.

  “And you’d probably quite like it if I didn’t ask you about a two-year gap in your résumé, around the time of your A levels.”

  I nod again, more slowly. Yes, I would quite like it if you didn’t ask about that.

  “Human Resources know what’s going on there, do they?”

  “Yes. I’ve already been into that with them. I was ill. Then I got better.”

  “Who at Human Resources?”

  “Katie. Katie Andrews.”

  “And the illness?”

  I shrug. “I’m fine now.”

  A non-answer. I hope he doesn’t push further, and he doesn’t. Instead, he asks who’s interviewed me so far. The answer is pretty much everyone. This session with Matthews is the final hurdle.

  “Okay. Your father knows you’re applying for this job?”

  “Yes.”

  “He must be pleased.”

  Another statement in place of a question. I don’t answer it.

  Matthews examines my face intently. Maybe that’s his interview technique. Maybe he doesn’t ask his suspects any questions, he just makes statements and scrutinizes their faces in the wide-open light from the big Cardiff sky.

  “We’re going to offer you a job, you know that?”

  “You are?”

  “Of course we are
. Coppers aren’t thick, but you’ve got more brains than anyone else in this building. You’re healthy. You don’t have a criminal record. You were ill for a time as a teenager, but you’re fine now. You want to work for us. Why wouldn’t we hire you?”

  I could think of a couple of possible answers to that, but I don’t volunteer them. I’m suddenly aware of being intensely relieved, which scares me a bit, because I hadn’t been aware of having been anxious. I’m standing up. Matthews has stood up too and comes toward me, shaking my hand and saying something. His big shoulders block out my view of Bute Park and the kites. Matthews is talking about formalities and I’m blathering answers back at him, but my attention isn’t with any of that stuff. I’m going to be a policewoman. And just five years ago, I was dead.

  May 2010

  It’s true. I do like routine work, but you can have too much of a good thing.

  A former copper with the Met in London—twenty-two unblemished years on the force—was obliged to retire following an injury received in the line of duty. He took a job as bursar of a Roman Catholic boys’ school in Monmouthshire. He started nicking bits of money. Didn’t get caught. Nicked more. Didn’t get caught. Went crazy: bought himself an upright piano, a golf club membership, two vacations, a conservatory, a share in a racehorse.

  The school authorities were dopey, but not actually brain-dead. They came to us with evidence of wrongdoing. We investigated and found a whole lot more evidence, then arrested the suspect, Brian Penry, and took him in for an interview. Penry denied everything, then stopped talking and waited out the session staring at the wall and looking like crap. On the tape, you can almost hear his slightly asthmatic breathing, a thin nasal whine sounding like a note of complaint between our questions. We charged him on eleven counts of theft, but the correct number is probably somewhere closer to fifty.

  He’s still denying everything, which means that we have to prepare the case for court. Five minutes before the trial starts, Penry will change his plea, because he’s completely stuffed and he knows it and it won’t make much difference to his sentence whether he pleads guilty now or on the day itself. In the meantime, I’ve got to go through every single detail of his bank records over the last six years, every single credit card payment, every single withdrawal from the school’s bank account, and identify each and every rogue transaction. I’ve got to do all that and document it so meticulously that a defense lawyer won’t be able to pick trivial little holes in our case when it comes to court—which, as I say, it never will, because Penry is stuffed and he knows it.

  My desk is covered with paper. I loathe all banks and credit card companies. I hate every digit between 0 and 9. I despise every dopily run Catholic boys’ school in South Wales. If Brian Penry were in front of me now, I would try to force-feed him my calculator, which is as large and chewable as a Bakelite phone.

  “Having fun?”

  I look up. It’s David Brydon, a detective sergeant, sandy-haired, thirty-two, a moderate case of freckles, and a disposition so friendly and open that I sometimes find myself saying something obnoxious, because too much of a good thing can be disconcerting.

  “Sod off.”

  I don’t count that. That’s just my version of friendly.

  “Still on Penry, are you?”

  I look up properly. “His correct title is bastard, thieving, wish-he’d-go-and-drown-himself Penry.”

  Brydon nods sagely, as though I’d said something sensible. “I thought you had sophisticated views on moral responsibility.” He holds up two mugs. Tea for him, peppermint for me. Sugar in his, none in mine.

  I stand up. “I do, just not when I have to do this.” I gesture at the desk, already hating it a bit less. We go over to a little seating area by the window. There are two chairs there and a sofa, the sort with tubular chrome legs and stain-resistant gray upholstery that you get in offices and airport lounges and nowhere else. There’s a lot of natural light here, though, and a view of the park. Plus I do actually like Brydon. My bad mood is increasingly just for show.

  “He’ll plead guilty.”

  “I know he’ll plead guilty.”

  “Got to be done, though.”

  “Ah, yes, forgot it was State the Obvious Day. Sorry.”

  “Thought you might be interested in this.”

  He passes me a clear plastic evidence bag that contains a Visa debit card. Lloyds bank. Platinum account. Expiration date October last year. Name of Mr. Brendan T. Rattigan. Card neither shinily new nor badly marked. It is a dead card, that’s all.

  I shake my head. “Nope. Don’t think so. Not interested at all.”

  “Rattigan. Brendan Rattigan.”

  The name means nothing to me. Either my face says it or I do. I sip at the tea—still too hot—rub my eyes, and smile an apology at Brydon for being a cow.

  He wrinkles his face at me. “Brendan Rattigan. Newport’s finest. Scrap metal man, moves into steel. Mini-mills, whatever they are. Then shipping. Worth some ridiculous amount of money. A hundred million pounds or something.”

  I nod. I remember now, but it’s not Rattigan’s wealth that I remember or care about. Brydon is still talking. There’s something in his voice that I haven’t yet identified.

  “He died nine months back. Light aircraft accident in the estuary.” He jerks his thumb in the general direction of Roath Dock in case I don’t know where the Severn Estuary is. “No cause established. Copilot’s body recovered. Rattigan’s body never was.”

  “But here’s his card.” I stretch out the clear plastic around the card, as though getting a clearer look at it will unlock its secrets.

  “Here’s his card all right.”

  “Which hasn’t spent nine months in salt water.”

  “No.”

  “And you found it where exactly?”

  Brydon’s face freezes for a moment. He’s stuck between two alternatives. Part of him wants to enjoy his little triumph over me. The other part of him is grimmer, a fifty-year-old head on younger shoulders, gazing inward at the dark.

  The grimmer part wins.

  “Not me, thank God. Neath police station got a call. Anonymous caller. Female. Probably not elderly, probably not a kid. She gives the address of a house here in Cardiff, Butetown, says we need to get over there. A couple of uniforms do that. Locked door. Curtains over the windows. Neighbors either out or unhelpful. Uniforms go round the back. Back garden is”—Brydon turns his hands palm upward and I know instantly what he means—“Rubble. Garbage bags that the dogs have been at. Rubbish everywhere. Weeds. And shit. Human shit … The drains inside are blocked and you can imagine the rest. The uniforms had been hesitating about going inside, but not anymore. They break down a door. The house inside is worse than the garden.”

  Another short pause. No theater this time. No hesitation. Just the awful feeling that decent human beings have when they encounter horror. I nod, to say that I know what he feels, which isn’t true but is what he needs to hear.

  “Two bodies. A woman, maybe twenties. Red-haired, dead. Evidence of class A drug usage, but no cause of death established. Not yet. And a little girl. A cutie, apparently. Five, maybe six. Thin as a matchstick. And … Christ, Fi, somebody had dropped a fucking sink on her head. A big farmhouse-style thing. The sink didn’t even break, it just crushed her. They hadn’t even bothered to fucking move it afterward.”

  Brydon has emotion in his eyes, and his voice is crushed too, lying under that heavy stoneware sink in a house that stinks of death, even from here.

  I’m not that good at feelings. Not yet. Not the really ordinary human ones that arise from instinct like water bubbling up from a hillside spring, irrepressible and clear and as natural as singing. I can picture that house of death, because the last few years have taken me into some pretty bad places and I know what they look like, but I don’t have Brydon’s reaction. I envy it but can’t share it. But Brydon is my friend and he’s sitting in front of me, wanting something. I reach for his forearm. He’s not w
earing a jacket, and the exchange of warmth between his skin and mine is immediate. He breathes out through his mouth. Noiselessly. Releasing something. I let him do it, whatever it is.

  After a moment, he throws grateful eyes at me, pulls away, and drains his tea. His face is still grim, but he’s one of those elastic sorts who’ll be fine. It might have been different if he’d been the one finding the bodies.

  Brydon indicates the platinum debit card. “In among the crap, they find that.”

  I can imagine it. Dirty plates. Furniture too large for the room. Brown velour and old food stains. Clothes. Broken toys. A TV. Drug stuff: tobacco, needles, lighters. Plastic bags filled with useless things: car mats, clothes hangers, CD cases, nappies. I’ve been to those places. The poorer the house, the more the stuff. And somewhere in among it, on a dresser under a pile of late notices from the utility companies, a single platinum debit card. A single platinum card and a little girl, a cutie, with her head smashed to nothing on the floor.

  “I can imagine.”

  “Yeah.” Brydon nods, bringing himself back. He’s a D.S. This is a job. We’re not in that house, we’re in an office with low-energy ceiling lamps and ergonomic desk chairs and high-output photocopiers and views out over Cathays Park. “Major hoo-ha.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jackson is running the inquiry, but it’s an all-hands-on-deck affair.”

  “And he wants my hand on his deck.”

  “He does indeed.”

  “This card. Why it was there.”

  “Yep. It’s probably just some druggy card-theft type thing, but we need to follow the lead anyway. Any connections. I know it’s a long shot.”

  He starts telling me things about the investigation. It’s being called Operation Lohan. Daily briefing at 8:30 sharp. Sharp means sharp. Everyone expected to show, that includes non–core team members like me. The press has received a very brief statement, but all further details to be kept quiet for now. Brydon tells me all this, and I only half-hear him. It’s called Lohan because there’s an actress named Lindsay Lohan who’s a redhead and has had drink and drugs issues. I know this only because Brydon tells me, and he tells me only because he knows I’d have no idea otherwise. Famous for my ignorance, me.

  “You got all that?”