She's Leaving Home (18 page)

“She’s taken packets of biscuits with her. Rich Tea. About a dozen.”

“So? Maybe she likes Rich Tea biscuits.”

“She could have left us some,” complained a copper.

An officer came in and looked around. “Didn’t you hear? Put the tea on. He’ll be back with the sarnies any mo, speed he was driving.”

Nobody moved. Eyes turned towards Tozer.

“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered.

“Got it,” shouted a copper, sticking his head around the hallway door. He was holding a piece of paper. “I got the registration number. Sir?”

Block bowled downstairs and snatched the piece of paper from him.

“Well, well. It looks like the Metropolitan Police aren’t useless at everything,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“One of your lot did Major Sullivan for going through a red light. Maroon Jaguar. Registration ALP 367G. Good work. Phone that in, Constable.” And he handed the piece of paper back to the constable. “Get it out on the phone, now.”

“Can I see that?” said Breen.

The constable looked at Block; the sergeant nodded. “Make sure we get it back, though.”

The Jaguar had been pulled over after passing through a red light on Edgware Road. Breen noted the name of the officer who had issued the ticket.

When Tozer emerged from the kitchen, a scowl on her face and a tray filled with cups of tea in her hands, Breen held the document up for her.

“What is it?”

“Look at the date.”

She read it. 12 October 1968. It took a little while longer before the penny dropped.

“Hell,” she said. “He was in London the day before his daughter was murdered.”

Breen nodded.

“That was a Saturday. He told us he went to London the week before, but didn’t say anything about being there on the twelfth,” said Tozer.

“No. We only asked him where he was on the Sunday.”

“She said he was back here.”

“Maybe he was. Maybe he came back. It’s a fast car. He could have driven up there and back in a day.”

“Was it him, then?” she asked.

Across the room, a voice called, “Get a move on. That tea will be cold by the time it gets to us.”

T
hat evening Tozer suggested they eat out at a carvery in Newton Abbot. “Can’t stand being around my dad too long. I don’t know how my mum does it. He’s like a ghost. Mum thinks his hearing’s going, but I just think he can’t be bothered to listen anymore.”

The restaurant was mock half-timbered, with loudspeakers that wired Mantovani to every corner. The walls were covered with antique copper bed pans and horse brasses. Red-fringed lamps sat on each table. Theirs was table 11, according to the triangular plastic sign next to their cruet set.

“Mum wants me to move back. I’m not sure I could take it. I do like it here, don’t get me wrong, but I think I’d go nuts.”

The side of Breen’s head where the glass had cut him was throbbing.

“You’re quiet.”

He nodded. “I just feel tired.”

“You should see a doctor.”

“I did. He told me to rest.”

Tozer lit a cigarette, looked around for a waiter and said, “I could kill a drink.” Breen pulled the two photographs he had of Morwenna out of his wallet and looked at them.

“So,” said Tozer. “Why do you think she killed him?”

“What if it wasn’t her?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, but it were, weren’t it?”

An elderly pair of women sat silently spooning soup, one plump and the other thin, tipping their bowls away from themselves as they scooped up the last drops.

“I mean, how can you kill a man you’ve lived with all those years? Like that too. From right close to him. I’ve never seen anything so disgusting in my life. Do you want to eat à la carte, or shall we go for the buffet?”

Bored, she took the lid off the mustard pot and peered inside.

“She must have really hated him,” she said.

“If it was her…”

“Helen bloody Tozer!” Their waitress finally appeared, dressed in a black shirt with a white pinny tied round her waist. Big pink plastic earrings dangled from her ears. “Look at you.”

“Val? You work here?”

“Almost two years. Silver service and everything. Oh, God. You look fab. You’re so bloody thin. You living in London now, your mum said. What’s that like? I heard it’s full of wogs…You having starters?”

They ordered a carafe of red wine. “School friend,” Tozer said, when she’d disappeared to fetch it. “Well, not friend really. We were on the same hockey team.”

“I could tell you some stories about Helen,” the waitress said to Breen, bringing the wine back to the table. “We were mad girls, weren’t we?”

“Speak for yourself, Val.”

She poured a drop for Breen to taste, then held out her left hand. “Look at this, Hel.”

“You married? Who to?”

“Guess!”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”

“Course you do. Go on, guess.”

“Kevvo?”

“God, no. Not in a million years. He lives in a caravan now up Bovey Tracey after his mother kicked him out for stealing out of her purse. Honest.”

“Dennis?”

“Helen! Act serious.”

“Who was that boy you were caught with by your dad? Rich?”

Shaking head. “No way. Come on, Hel. It’s obvious.”

Breen noticed a large man in a dinner suit trying to get the waitress’s attention.

“Sorry. Um. I give up.”

“Graham.”

“Graham with the three fingers on one hand?”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn’t he the one who used to peek over the shower stalls when we were changing for sports?”

Val laughed. “Yeah.”

“I never knew you were interested in him.”

The fat man took a knife and hit a wineglass with it three times,
ping ping ping
.

“I was too. Don’t you remember? I always thought he was nice.”

“I remember you saying he gave you the creeps.”

“Hel. I never did. I must have been joking. I was always nuts about him.”

“Were you?”

She pulled a purse out from her apron and opened it. “Here. That’s my little boy. Graham Junior.”

“Excuse me, miss!”

“Sorry, Hel. I’ll be right back.”

The moment she was gone Tozer rolled her eyes. “We should have gone to Torquay. Less chance of bumping into anyone I know.”

The two ladies who were eating together passed their table, returning from the carvery, one behind the other, with plates piled perilously high. Breen read the short typewritten menu the waitress had left on their table, trying to decide what to have.

She returned with a notebook and pencil and stood there, scratching her head with the blunt end. “And what about you, Hel? Any romance in the air?” she asked, looking meaningfully from Breen to Tozer and back again.

“We’re just down here on work.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Who are those photos of?”

“Just somebody,” said Breen.

“Made up your mind yet?”

When she returned with two hot plates so they could take them to the carvery, she said, “So, Hel. There’s no special man in your life, then?”

“No.”

The waitress pulled a sad face. “Don’t worry. It’ll happen. And who knows, you might strike it lucky like I did.”

“Super,” said Tozer. She stuck out her tongue when the waitress turned her back.

Breen was still there looking at the photographs when Tozer returned, plate piled with beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, cabbage, parsnips, turnips, coleslaw and fried onions.

“You should eat something, sir. Keep your strength up.”

“Where’s this taken?” He was looking at the photo of Morwenna standing at the doorway to her tree house.

“You think it’s important?”

“I don’t know what’s important right now. I can’t get anything into focus.”

Tozer started eating, sawing through a thick lump of beef.

“Actually it’s more like it’s all in focus, and I can’t sort out what’s important or not.”

“Sounds like a trip.”

“What?”

“LSD. What the hippies take. We had a lecture about it the other day. You take a pill, you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.”

“Sounds terrifying.”

“Some people like it, though. Mind-expanding.”

Breen lifted up his bare plate. “If we’d not gone to tell them about their daughter, that man would still be alive.”

Tozer slurped in a big chunk of beef and a bit of gravy trickled down her chin. “Oop,” she laughed, picking up her napkin and wiping her face. “Yes, but that doesn’t make it our fault.”

Breen stood up with his plate.

The man at the carvery wore a big white chef’s hat and held a newly lit cigarette. He put it in an ashtray on the next table while he drew off a thick slice of beef. The fat on it looked pale and waxy. Breen watched the knife carving slowly through the flesh.

“I don’t really want meat.”

“Sorry?”

“No meat.”

“No meat?”

“That’s right. I’ll have vegetables.”

“This is a carvery, sir.” There was a long pause. The man glared, put down the carving knife and fork and lifted up a spoon instead. “Potatoes, sir?”

“Thanks.”

“Carrots?”

“OK.”

“Cabbage?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Nothing else? Nice bit of gravy?”

“No thanks.”

He sat down to find that their waitress had pulled up a chair and joined them at the table. “Ciggy break,” she said. “What’s London like?”

They walked back to the farm in the dark. Tozer knew a way that cut across the back of the town, across small wooden footbridges, through damp marsh land and along the side of the river.

Breen jumped as a startled bird clattered out of the reeds close to their feet, sending him into a puddle; the water went in over the top of his brogues. “Damn,” he said.

Tozer laughed.

He joined in. He was a little drunk. After the carafe of wine they had had brandies. The air was still and warm. The day had been a tough one, but he was oddly happy. It was funny, because when he first met Tozer, he had disliked her. She was too opinionated for a woman. Too awkward. These things seemed to matter less now. Was it since he had learned about her sister?

“See up there?”

In the darkness she pointed up the estuary. The tide was full. In the far distance, miles down towards the sea, lights reflected off the water.

“The Beatles stayed there last year. In a hotel. When they were filming
Magical Mystery Tour
. Imagine that. The Beatles coming to this godforsaken backwater. Alexandra would have been in heaven.”

“Did you see them?”

He had an impulse to take her hand, but she had already started walking again, squelching through the mud. He was glad he hadn’t done it. It was the drink, like last time.

“Me? I was in London, worse luck. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time, me.”

The lights of the farmhouse were ahead of them now, a single bulb lighting the farmyard.

Mr. and Mrs. Tozer were in bed by the time they got in, the house dark and silent. The kitchen was still warm, though. Tozer started opening cupboards. “I know they got some bottles stashed away somewhere,” she said. “Here. I found some Martini. Do you like that?”

“Not for me.”

“There’s a drop of whisky. Want that?”

“A little, then.”

Breen sat at the kitchen table and pulled out the three photos of the dead girl again: the morgue photograph, and the two he had taken from the house.

She sat next to him, so close he could smell the alcohol and cigarettes on her breath. “Promise me one thing. You won’t let my mum and dad see those, will you?”

He took off his left shoe and removed his sock. It was sodden.

“Hang it on the range,” said Tozer.

He sipped the whisky and pulled out his packet of cigarettes. In the last couple of days, he had taken to writing marks on the packet to remember how many he had smoked. Today there were four downward strokes and a fifth, crossing them out. He had already smoked five. He went to put them back in his jacket, then thought better of it.

He smoked the sixth cigarette flicking through the pages of his notebook, glancing up occasionally to look at Tozer, sitting by the range, bare feet up on the surface warming her long legs. It tasted particularly good.

When he came to the address of the solicitor he had found, he asked, “Do you have a phone book?”

B
reen sat up slowly in bed and looked out of a small, square window onto the estuary below. He slept later here than he ever did at home. His head felt thick and slow.

A cold, bright day. Seagulls wheeling in a blue sky. A group of swans dawdling on the tide, a small red boat chugging against the current in the estuary below. The prettiness of the scene was unnerving. The domesticity reminded him of what he had never had. His good mood was gone. He wished he was back in London, amongst the gray of it. Sighing, he got up to dress. Mrs. Tozer had washed a shirt, a pair of underpants and a pair of socks for him, leaving them neatly folded and piled on a chair.

He was shaving when he heard a car coming down the lane towards the house. He pulled the curtains to one side and saw it was a police car, slowly weaving through the puddles.

When he came down to the kitchen there was a man sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea. Mrs. Tozer was cooking bacon.

“Sergeant Breen?” said the man. He wore a suit that looked too small for him, and had a thin moustache on his upper lip.

“Yes?”

“Sergeant Sharman,” he said. “Plymouth CID.”

“Sharman?”

“A little birdie told me you were involved in a bit of drama. I thought I’d find out what was up.”

Mr. Tozer was there too. His corduroy trousers were tucked into the thick woolen socks in which he stood. He must have just come in from the farm and left his boots outside.

“You spoke to Sergeant Block?” asked Breen.

Sharman shrugged. “You’re in the country now. Everybody knows everyone else’s business round here.”

Mrs. Tozer put the bacon into a sandwich and put it down before Sergeant Sharman. She looked pale. “Fred says you’re here to investigate a dead girl,” she said to Breen. “Only, Helen had said you were down here looking into people who were making dirty films.”

Sharman laughed loudly. “She said what?”

“She said you were looking into a pornography ring.”

“Round here?” said Sharman. “Making smut films?”

“That’s what Hel said.”

“First I heard of it, round here.”

“She told you that because she didn’t want you to know about the case we were working on,” said Breen. “In case it upset you. I’m sorry.”

“Only you’re really down here about a girl that was killed?”

“Yes.”

“A young girl?”

“Seventeen.”

Mrs. Tozer nodded. Her husband was sitting stonily, looking straight ahead, eyes focused on the kitchen wall.

“How was she killed?” There was a flicker in Mrs. Tozer’s eye.

“She was strangled.”

Mrs. Tozer nodded.

“Naked too,” said Sharman. “I looked it up. That’s right, Breen? Nasty business. Got any ketchup?”

Helen’s father stood, rangy and tall, tweed jacket fraying at the cuffs. “I noticed one of the cows had pink-eye this morning. I better go and check,” he said.

He left the mug in the sink and opened the door. Leaning on the frame, he tugged on his Wellington boots. Cold air filled the kitchen.

“Poor old bloke,” said Sharman when he had gone. “He’s not doing too well, all things considered. It’s a bloody shame.” He scratched the back of his hand.

Mrs. Tozer said, “I expect you two need to talk.”

“Lovely grub, Mrs. T. As always,” Sharman called after her. When she was out of earshot, Sharman said, “You should have stayed in a hotel, instead of bothering them here. It’s only going to upset them, bringing this kind of business into their house.”

“Is that why you came? To tell me that?”

Sharman took a gulp from his tea. “I spoke to Block this morning. He’s not had a sign of Mrs. Sullivan yet. Nor has anyone else.”

“Did he call up Marylebone CID this morning?”

He nodded. “She hasn’t turned up there, either.”

Breen sat down at the old kitchen table opposite Sharman, watching him take another bite from his sandwich. Sharman chewed his mouthful, swallowed, then said, “I expect she’ll turn up, sooner or later. So. You and Helen, you going out?”

“Sorry?”

“Interested, that’s all. I know she doesn’t think that much of me these days.”

“No. I mean, we’re not going out.”

“She’s a great girl. My trouble was I was too keen, I suppose.” Sharman smiled. “Frightened her off. I should have been more patient.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and belched quietly. “To business. Supposing it was Julia Sullivan that did it, what do you think it was you said to them that made her blow his head off?”

“I thought this was Block’s case.”

“We’re all in this together down here. It’s not like the Met.”

“Block is sure it was Julia Sullivan?”

“It’s a theory,” Sharman said. “Apparently he was in London the day before their daughter was killed. So you think he was involved in the death of his daughter?”

“Somehow. But he was back in Devon by the day she was actually killed. So it doesn’t make sense.”

“And why would he kill his own daughter?”

“I have no idea.”

Sharman nodded.

“I think the major was covering something up too,” said Breen. He told Sharman how the major had lied to his wife about reporting their daughter missing to the police.

“Probably thought you lot at the Met are useless anyway.”

Helen Tozer clattered into the room. She glared at Sharman. “I thought I heard your voice. What are you doing here?” she said, looking at his empty plate in front of him. “Isn’t your wife feeding you enough?”

Sharman stood again. “Nice to see you too, Hel. I was just saying to Sergeant Breen. I would have thought he would have stayed in a hotel rather than here.”

“What’s wrong with the farm?” She cut herself a slice of bread and buttered it thickly.

“I heard you were down. Val called me up last night. Said she’d seen you in town. I came to talk about your case.”

“I knew she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.” She took a jar of honey from the shelf. “Did you see Dad?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you talked to him.”

“Of course. We’re old friends, him and me.”

She stuck the knife deep into the honey. “Tell him about our girl that was killed and everything?”

Sharman leaned back on his elbows. “Your dad seemed to think you were investigating some nudie movie setup.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Why not?”

“You’re such a prannock, Fred. Where is he now?” She spread the bread thickly with honey.

“Just gone out. Something about a cow with pink-eye.”

She walked to the window and looked out into the yard.

“You heard I got a baby now?”

“Good for you.”

“A boy.”

“Naturally.”

She took a bite out of the slice of bread, laid it down on the counter, then picked up the kettle and filled it at the tap; it hissed when she placed it on the range. Then she picked up an apple from a bowl on the windowsill and set about cutting it into quarters with a small knife.

“Another thing,” Breen said quietly. “Where did the major get his money from?”

“What money?”

“They were in debt. But he’s got a brand-new Jag.”

Sharman nodded. “Good point.” He picked up a silver salt pot from the table and turned it upside down so that salt poured out onto the wood. “Very good point. So where do you think she’s gone?”

“Assuming it was her who killed him…”

“Yes.”

“Maybe to London,” said Tozer. “That’s where her daughter’s body is.”

“What you still doing down here if she’s up in London, then?”

“Our car got wrecked. You remember?” The kettle started to whistle.

“Let’s say, for a moment, that she killed him because something you said made her realize he’d killed their daughter.”

“Brilliant work, Sherlock,” said Tozer, lighting a cigarette.

“Only like I said, Major Sullivan wasn’t in London the day she was killed,” said Breen.

“I got a feeling, though,” said Sharman.

Tozer said, “That’s what makes you so great at catching murderers, then.”

“Don’t be hard on us poor country boys, Helen. You used to be part of the gang too.”

Breen had been enjoying witnessing Tozer’s spikiness directed at someone else, but the longer it went on, the more he felt like an eavesdropper at a lovers’ quarrel. He shut his eyes and rubbed his temple.

“Is he all right? He looks a bit peaky. Don’t you think?”

“He’s fine,” said Tozer. “Are you done now?”

After his car had gone up the track to the main road, tires crunching on gravel, Tozer said, “I think he still fancies me, don’t you, sir?”

Breen just said, “He was right, wasn’t he? I shouldn’t have stayed here.”

Tozer pulled on a pair of boots and went to find her father.

The house was empty. Breen picked up the phone and called the station. The ordinary daily noise of the office in the background made him want to be there.

“Bailey’s had Devon and Cornwall on the blower complaining about you for not letting them know what you were doing down there,” said Marilyn.

“Is he there now?”

“No.” Even the familiar sound of one-fingered typing in the background sounded sweet to Breen. He thought of the thick-smoked air of the office and the dark floorboards.

“What’s going on, Paddy?”

“We’ll be back Monday morning. Can you get us train tickets for the weekend?”

“Us?”

“Yes. Constable Tozer and me.”

“Thought you had a car?”

“It got smashed up.”

“Prosser said you’ve been letting her drive. Did she do it?”

“It was nothing to do with her. We were rammed.”

“You’re getting a reputation as a man who breaks things, Paddy. Bailey is going to kick up a stink about paying for a hotel for those extra days.”

“He doesn’t have to. We’re not staying in a hotel.”

“Where are you staying then?”

“I’m staying at the Tozers’ farm.”

“At Helen Tozer’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Pause.

“I’m just staying here. That’s all. It’s convenient.”

“What you do is your own business, Paddy. Why would I care?”

“What’s the news?”

“Nothing much. Uniform are up in arms because leave is canceled this weekend.”

“Why?”

“On account of the Vietnam demonstration at the American Embassy coming up next weekend. You getting anywhere with the dead girl?”

“I’m not sure.”

“So did Tozer invite you to stay at hers? I mean, there’s got to be plenty of B and Bs. It’s famous for them.”

“We’re in separate rooms if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she snapped.

He dialed again, this time the number of the solicitor whose name he’d found amongst the Sullivans’ letters. Afterwards he searched in his pocket for a couple of shillings to put in the tin marked
Phone
.

At the top of the farm, he found a path that led up over the hill, away from the estuary. Helen hadn’t returned from going to meet her father so he had gone for a walk alone.

The earth was red and wet. It clung to his boots and doubled their weight. There were still blackberries in the hedgerows but when he reached out, plucked a fat one and put it in his mouth, it was bitter so he spat it out.

It felt good to stretch his legs, though. The slope steepened and the path became slippery.

At the top of the next ridge he hoisted himself up to sit on a gate to get his breath back and looked down towards the farm. He could see the path they must have walked along last night, on their way back from dinner, and the flat dark water of the estuary. The cows were lined up across the green of the field. He could now see Helen behind them, shooing the last ones into the yard for milking, her father lagging behind them.

He looked back up the path, wondering if he should continue. That was when he noticed the rabbit, just a few yards away, squatting down in a clump of long grass at the side of the hedge.

He sat still, not wanting to disturb the animal, wondering how long it would be before it saw him, or smelled him. It didn’t move. He remembered how his father talked of snaring rabbits as a child in Ireland. Breen could not remember the details, only that you had to set the trap exactly right. In the couple of years before he had stopped making much sense, he had talked a lot about his childhood in Ireland.

Breen realized his behind was aching from sitting so still, and stepped down. Undisturbed by the sudden noise, the rabbit still sat there motionless. Breen tiptoed closer until he was standing right next to it, close enough to see the thick discharge from its closed, reddened eyes and its slow, labored breathing. The creature didn’t seem to see or hear him; it just sat, ears pinned back against its body, waiting to die.

“You should have taken a rock and killed it,” said Helen, sitting in the kitchen, a cup of tea in her hand. “It would have been a kindness.”

“Myxomatosis,” growled her father. “Keeps them down. Best thing that happened round here.”

“Dad,” chided Helen.

When he’d gone back out to the yard, she said, “When we were little girls the fields around here used to be full of rabbits like that…dying. It was horrible. Hundreds of them, there were. Alex sneaked one up to her bedroom once and tried to care for it under her bed, but it died, of course. Dad said she could have caught something from it.”

The solicitor turned out to be an old friend of Julia Sullivan’s. His office was in Exeter in a Georgian house on the edge of a small green, with a brass plate on the door worn from polishing, and a dark entrance hall lined with oil paintings.

They had borrowed the Tozers’ rusting Morris Oxford to drive up there. The leather seats were dry and cracked. It smelled of sheepdogs and there were stacks of yellow receipts stuffed into the glovebox. Smoke poured from its exhaust.

“I won’t shed a tear,” said the solicitor. “I always thought he was a blackguard.”

His name was Percy Manville and he must have been at least sixty years old. He sounded out every consonant. “The Metropolitan Police? How very grand,” he said.

He was a neat, thin man with a trimmed moustache who wore a gray suit and waistcoat with a gold watch chain. “Mallory Sullivan was a spendthrift who squandered all of Julia’s inheritance on cars, gambling and idiotic investments.”