She's Leaving Home (21 page)

Breen nodded. These were the silent rules Prosser understood. Not the regulations that Bailey always tried to enforce, but the rules by which things really worked. A nod and a wink. The regular you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours that Breen never felt part of. It was why he never trusted Prosser, and why Prosser didn’t like him. But there was no point in rubbing Prosser up the wrong way. “How’s that murder in Kensal Town?” he asked.

“Open and shut. We got the husband. You OK to walk back to the station? Only, I have something I have to do.”

“Constable Tozer OK?”

“She’s keen, I’ll say that. Bit mouthy. She’ll be one of the boys in no time at all.”

Breen doubted it. He still hadn’t called her. He hesitated, then said, “I was thinking maybe of going up to St. John’s Wood High Street one day, to have a look around at Martin and Dawes. Where you were stabbed. You want to come sometime? I could do with a lift.”

Prosser shook his head angrily, looked away. “There you go again,” he muttered.

“What?”

“You’re wasting your effort. It’s my case. I’m looking after it.”

“I thought if I was there I might notice something I hadn’t on the night. I was tired. Or I might remember something.”

“I remember you legging it clear enough.”

“I want to have a word with the shopkeeper too. He might have heard something.”

“What are you trying to do, Paddy? Piss me off? I thought we were just starting to get along again.”

“I just thought I might—”

Prosser stopped suddenly in the corridor. “Look. You made a cock of it that night and I almost got killed. You made a cock of it arresting the wrong bloke in the murder of that girl by Abbey Road. You made a cock of it down in Cornwall by all accounts. Don’t you start making a cock of my cases too, OK?”

And he poked Breen hard in the chest.

“OK?”

Breen stood in the lobby looking out through the swing doors. Rain was falling hard outside. Prosser had driven off with his raincoat. As he waited for the rain to ease off, he noticed a man he recognized standing in a corridor to his left.

“Mr. Ezeoke,” he called.

Ezeoke’s head turned. He frowned, as if at first the surgeon did not recognize him. He was in conversation with a dark-haired woman of about thirty who wore a lime-green minidress and a gold necklace. Ezeoke towered over her.

“Detective Sergeant Breen,” Breen said, holding out his good hand to Ezeoke in case Ezeoke did not remember him.

“You look pale, Mr. Breen. Is there anything the matter with you?”

The woman smiled. “A detective, Sam? You’ve not been doing anything you shouldn’t?”

“Always,” said Ezeoke.

Breen turned to the woman. “Mr. Ezeoke was helping me with an investigation.”

Ezeoke smiled. “Where is your eager young assistant today? Have you had any luck tracking down the killer of that poor girl?”

The woman said, “A killer? Sam, what are you involved in now?”

“We think her father may have killed her,” said Breen. “Mr. and Mrs. Ezeoke’s house is close to where the body was found,” he said to the woman.

“My God. Why didn’t you tell me about this, Sam?”

The surgeon looked down at his feet and nodded his head. “Her father? How terrible.”

“Yes.”

“Have you arrested him?”

An orderly walked past, pushing an empty trolley. “Unfortunately he is dead too. He was killed by his wife.”

“How terribly Shakespearean,” murmured the woman.

Ezeoke looked past Breen. “I am glad of that. All the same, you must be pleased to have solved the crime.”

“I’m not sure I have.”

Ezeoke smiled. “Does that bother you, that you are not sure?”

“Of course.”

“Really? Perhaps it should not. There are many crimes that go unpunished. Why should another one make a difference? You can only do what you can do. I am a doctor. I cannot save everyone.”

“Of course it makes a difference,” said Breen.

“Behave, Samuel,” said the woman.

“Forgive me if I seem hardened. Or cynical even. I am an African. There are many, many crimes against Africans that have gone unpunished. Crimes that are happening right now. Do you care about those too? Or just the ones that happen in your own jurisdiction?”

“The officer is just trying to do his job. Samuel is a revolutionary.” She smiled. “He loves to get on his high horse about African politics—don’t you?”

“I am sorry,” said Ezeoke. “It was not a fair question. You must forgive me.”

“And how is your war?” asked Breen. “I read an article saying that the government troops were making advances.”

“The Federal army have been conducting a major offensive, but their gains are only temporary. Their lines of supply are very vulnerable to attack. We will see them beaten back soon.”

“The Federal troops are committing atrocities, Mr. Breen,” said the woman. “Children are being starved to death. Tens and tens of thousands. It is mass murder. If you’re interested, you should come to our fund-raiser. We should invite him, Sam.” She reached into her shoulder bag.

“My good friend Mrs. Briggs helps me fund-raise,” said Ezeoke.

She handed Breen a gilt-edged card. In copperplate script, it read:
The Pan-African Committee for a Free Biafra invite you to a Dinner Dance. Donations will be accepted
. There was an address of a club in Soho.

“Mrs. Briggs. You were dining with Mr. Ezeoke on the Sunday night?”

“How did you know that?”

“Because I told him,” said Ezeoke. “In case he suspected me of the crime. After all, I am a black man. Who knows what atrocities I am capable of? Mr. Breen is a policeman, Frances. Which means he couldn’t possibly make a donation.”

“Well, he should come anyway,” said the woman. “Support the cause. We’ll make a revolutionary out of him yet.”

Ezeoke smiled. “Mrs. Briggs is an enthusiastic supporter of Biafra. She wants to convert you too.”

“Are you married, Mr. Breen?” asked the woman. “Do please bring your wife. Or a girl. We have an awful lot of men but not enough women. There will be dancing. Not just boring British dancing. African dancing. It’s very exciting.”

“Come, Mr. Breen. You would be welcome,” said Ezeoke.

“By the way, have you had any more problems with your neighbors?” Breen asked.

“I have not invited them, if that’s what you mean, though I’m sure Mrs. Briggs would like to. She would invite the whole world.”

Breen returned from work one evening to find that the drain outside his front door had blocked, filling the space at the bottom of the stairs down to his flat with rainwater. It had seeped in through the door, ruining the brown carpet in his hallway.

He spent the evening moving furniture and pulling the sodden carpet up off its tacks and stacking it outside. A box of his father’s books had been sitting in the hallway since he had moved in. Those at the bottom were sodden. A copy of Keats’s
Complete Poems
with his mother’s name written on the front page in a fine cursive. A thick-looking James Joyce. He put them in the dustbin outside. It felt good to be doing something physical.

He looked around the flat and realized that he had done nothing to the place for years. Perhaps it was time to redecorate, anyway. He should rip out the old brown carpet and maybe paint the floorboards. Bring a bit of color into the place. Some modern furniture. Start over again.

Later that evening he watched television, eating tinned spaghetti and sardines from a tray on his lap.

He slept well too, dreamlessly, and woke so late he had to run for the bus.

Bailey was standing there in the middle of the office, looking at his watch as he walked in. “Glad you could join us, Breen. Anyone seen Prosser? This isn’t a holiday camp.”

“Package for you, Paddy,” interrupted Marilyn.

The package was covered in eight 4d stamps and done up so well with Sellotape that he had to go and find a pair of scissors to open it. It was from Detective Sergeant Block of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary: a report of their findings into the murder of Major Sullivan and the suicide of his wife. There was a thick bundle of Roneoed documents, photographs, carbon copies and transcriptions. As far as Breen could see it was thorough and efficient.

Breen read the covering letter. The shotgun Julia Sullivan had killed herself with was the same one that had killed the major. There was no doubt at all that she had been the killer. “Given the fact of her husband’s presence in London close to where Morwenna Sullivan’s body was discovered, confirmed by the Road Traffic Violation Notice issued on 10/13/68 at 4:30 p.m. [8849/88/1168], we believe it highly likely, without wishing to prejudice the investigation by the Metropolitan Police, that Major Mallory Sullivan was responsible for the death of his own daughter.”

A photograph of the traffic notice was there in the bundle of papers. Breen leafed through them. There were copies of the major’s bank statements, which showed considerable sums of money entering and leaving his account, but no explanation of what it was the major had done for a living.

He pulled out the photograph of Julia Sullivan’s body, lying on the floor of the tree house. Labeled “886M/88/1168,” it was overexposed, the flash too bright for the small cabin. The white of her skin was snow-like, the blood merely a thin gray. Her head, or what was left of it, was propped against the wooden wall. Her legs lay awkwardly, one tucked under the other. A half-eaten loaf of bread and two bottles of vodka lay on the floor beside her, alongside a pile of unopened packets of Rich Tea biscuits.

And all around the walls of the tree house were photographs. Breen opened his drawer and pulled out a large, old-fashioned magnifying glass. They appeared to be photographs of children, dozens of them, held up by drawing pins. A boy and a girl. Almost certainly her son and daughter, both dead under awful circumstances, both of whom she had outlived, but not by very much.

Tommy Nutter Suits from £12 19s. 6d
.
Drip-dry shirts in stock. Lurex—The Latest Top Gear 59 shillings
. The shop window was crowded with signs, handwritten on white card.

Breen stood outside, looking in. There was a plain blue shirt with a button-down collar. It was not his usual style, but maybe he should start to move a little more with the times. He went inside to see if they had it in his size.

“Got it in a fifteen-and-a-half. That do?” said the man in the shop. He was smartly dressed in a pinstripe suit with wide lapels and flares, and a pink shirt with a high collar.

“Are you Martin or Dawes?” asked Breen.

“Both,” said the man. Parted neatly on the side, his hair was slicked down with Brylcreem.

“What?”

“Martin Dawes. I just thought it sounded better if I was two people. Martin and Dawes. That’s me.”

Breen pulled out his wallet and pulled out two pound notes and his warrant card.

The shopkeeper took a look at it and said, “What? You expecting a discount?”

“You were broken into on a Monday night a while back?”

“‘Broken into’ makes it sound like they had to try.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said to the other coppers. They didn’t break in. Someone opened the doors.”

Breen remembered wondering why the shop’s back door was open, yet apparently undamaged.
Ask about the doors
.

“Have you got the buggers, then?”

“Not yet.”

The man nodded. “Well, there’s a surprise. I stopped by Hoxton Street market on Saturday. There was a guy selling my suits there. Cocky bastards, they hadn’t even bothered to take my labels out. Why should they? None of your lot are going to do nothing about it. You want a tie with that?”

“Did you call us to let us know? We would have pulled him in.”

The man laughed and set to wrapping the shirt. “Course you would. Tell you what, though. One of your lot did OK. He stood up to them. Got himself stabbed, I heard. Hold on. That wasn’t you, was it?”

“No. It wasn’t me,” said Breen.

“At least he put up a fight. Other guy ran off. Typical. I don’t know why we bother paying our taxes.”

Breen took his change and picked up his shirt. “So you’ve not met him at all then, the copper who was stabbed? He hasn’t been in here since?”

He shook his head. “I’d shake his hand and tell him thanks for trying, at least. Unlike the rest of you. Couple of uniform blokes came in the day afterwards. That’s the last I’ve heard of until you turned up.”

“No phone calls or anything?”

“Not a dickie.”

Breen wrote down his name and a phone number. “Let us know if you see any more of your suits going on sale, will you?”

The man ignored the card, leaving it on the counter.

“Got a nice V-neck jumper that will go a treat with that shirt if you like,” he said.

He took stairs two at a time now. Panting, hand on the brass railing, he met Constable Tozer on the way down. She was carrying a mug full of tea in one hand and a rock cake in the other.

“Hello,” they both said.

“How’ve you been?” he asked, getting his breath.

“OK. Busy. You know.”

“You’ve cut your hair.” It was shorter than before. The sides now barely covered her ears, giving her an even more tomboyish look than usual.

She moved her head to the left, then the right to give him a proper view. “The girls say I look like a feller.”

“I like it,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You still at Harrow Road?”

“All done there now. How’s the shoulder? Getting better?”

“Pretty much.” Stilted conversation. The familiarity they had had when they were away together had gone.

“You going to court tomorrow to watch Pilcher?”

“What’s that?”

“The John Lennon thing. He’s up for sentencing for that drug raid.”

“Are you going?”

“Might do. Bunk off. Never know, might get an autograph.”

“Mind you don’t get into trouble.”

“I don’t care.” She grinned. “All the hippies are saying Pilcher probably planted the drugs anyway, and it’s not too unlikely, let’s face it. It’s sick.”

A throng of uniformed men came barging down the stairs. “Oi, oi, Helen,” one of them said. “Coming round my place later?”