Play With Fire

by William Shaw

‘If they had printed it, McPhail wouldn’t have been so calm about it. You’d lose your job. Like I said, you’re lucky.’

  Mint’s eyes widened, as if he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  ‘It’s my fault. I’m sorry,’ said Breen.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Yesterday I thought it was a straight cover-up. I was frustrated. Today, I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to think this may not be as simple as trying to hide one copper’s bad behaviour.’

  Mint squinted, as if the light was suddenly too bright in the room. ‘Did they tell you to tell me this?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people in charge. They did, didn’t they?’

  ‘Which people in charge?’

  ‘McPhail. To put me off trying to tell the truth. You saw her flat. You told me.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Breen. Mint was young, idealistic. ‘Just listen to me, OK? Thing is, C1 didn’t know anything about what had happened there.’

  ‘But someone went there and cleaned the place out. For a reason.’

  ‘Yes.’ That was what was worrying him too. If it wasn’t C1 who had searched the flat, then who was it? Was it McPhail himself? He watched Mint, chewing on a nail.

  ‘Will they figure out it’s me? Who went to the papers.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘There are policemen who do far worse. You hear about it every day. There are dishonest people. Coppers who blackmail people into confessing so they can finger someone for a crime. They get away with it. I was trying to be honest.’

  ‘I know you were. But there’s no point being right if you can’t do anything about it. If Creamer asks if it was you who talked to the press, deny it.’

  ‘That would be lying.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘I can’t lie,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you can. Think about your children. You’d lose your job, your flat, everything.’

  ‘I can’t lie,’ Mint said again.

  At 6.30 the front doorbell rang. Mint leaped up to answer it, scattering the contents of Breen’s sandwich all over the white, feather-strewn carpet. Breen said, ‘Too early. It’s probably the WPC.’

  Florence Caulk had disappeared, so he had put in a request for a woman officer to come and answer the phone instead. The men would be expecting a woman’s voice. But when the uniformed policewoman arrived at the flat door panting and exclaimed, ‘Bloody lift in’t working,’ the first thing Mint said was, ‘Her accent’s all wrong.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my accent?’ said the WPC. She was an East Ender, somewhere in her forties, one of the tough old women who’d been at the job half their lives.

  Mint was right. ‘Try and sound a bit less… London,’ suggested Breen.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, looking round at all the feathers. ‘What happened here? Someone murdered a chicken?’

  They sat looking at the black telephone on Bobienski’s small table. When it finally rang twenty minutes later, she picked it up. ‘Hello? Can I help you?’ she said, all Queen’s English.

  The caller rang off.

  ‘Any name?’

  The WPC shook her head.

  ‘Give it a minute to see if he phones again.’

  They waited. The Beatles grinned down from the wall. There were no books; the only magazines were ones for young girls, with stories about horses and pop stars and princes. The adverts were for spot cream and an advice column: ‘Dear Cathy and Claire. How do I kiss my boyfriend?’

  If he and Helen had a girl, would she want to read things like this?

  Eventually Breen picked up the other handset, the ivory-coloured one, and dialled the GPO to find if the operator had had time to discover the number, but the call had been too brief. ‘Sorry, mate. Only got to the first couple of switches. Somewhere in Hampstead. You’ll have to keep them on the phone for longer.’

  The first appointment had been for 7.00. Breen sent Mint downstairs at five to and they waited for the bell to ring.

  Mr J rang the doorbell one minute after the hour. Breen whistled down the stairs to Mint, who opened the front door.

  Breen could hear them arguing as Mint marched the man upstairs.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ said the man. ‘I protest.’

  He was shocked by the state of the room he entered, and by the presence of another man.

  ‘What’s happening? Am I being arrested?’

  The man had dark hair, with a high widow’s peak and a thin moustache. He was old enough to be Lena Bobienski’s father. There was a passable resemblance to Vincent Price.

  ‘Name,’ demanded Breen. He said he worked for Cunard, in their accounting department. He told his wife he played poker on Thursday nights.

  At nine, the Chartered Surveyor appeared and tried to back out of the front door, but Mint was faster and managed to force the door shut. By the time Breen made it down the stairs, he had him in an armlock, head down on the doormat.

  ‘Dirty bugger,’ muttered the WPC, when they brought him back into the flat.

  Between appointments, Breen read the newspaper he’d bought. At Headingley, Sobers had bowled Boycott out for 12. In Australia, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, was seriously ill in hospital after a drug overdose. Jagger was there to make a film about a gangster called Ned Kelly. Breen remembered what John had said: They love all that.

  At eleven one of the residents was just going out, so the new arrival managed to get into the building without ringing the bell and made it all the way up the stairs, Mint tiptoeing behind.

  ‘Julie darling?’ he announced himself as he reached the first landing.

  The door to the flat was ajar; a man in a pale mackintosh entered the room, looking around. ‘Joo-lie?’ Mint closed it behind him.

  ‘Police,’ said Breen.

  ‘Oh my,’ said the man, eyes big.

  ‘You’re right. I’m not bloody Joo-lie,’ said the WPC.

  Bites-His-Nails turned out to be a second violin in the London Philharmonic. He had come from the Albert Hall where he’d been playing Beethoven and Britten and he promised he had never done anything like this ever before. Had he ever seen any other men at Miss Bobienski’s flat? Did he have any idea who would have a grudge against her? Did he know anything about the whereabouts of Mrs Caulk? Like both the others, the answers were no.

  The musician sat on Miss Bobienski’s pink couch weeping into a handkerchief. The shock was genuine, but Breen was not sure if he was crying because he had been caught, or crying because Julie Teenager was dead. He was probably not sure himself.

  Breen had asked the other men about the driver. Between sobs, the musician said, ‘Yes. Julie said she could send a car to pick me up from the Albert Hall. There was an extra charge. I never used it, though.’

  The others were the same. Yes, they had been offered the service but no, they had never used it.

  The gold ring was on his finger, as Mrs Caulk had said it would be. ‘Do you have children of your own?’ asked the WPC.

  He stopped crying and began to look scared. Mentally, Breen crossed him off the list, as he had done the last two men. Though it was useful, ruling these men out, Breen was learning little from them.

  Helen lay on his bed, hands behind her head. She had woken when he had got home and come in to join him. She was sleeping badly. ‘I feel like I’m going to explode,’ she said.

  Breen’s hand was on her belly.

  ‘Boom. Like an H-bomb.’

  Helen was becoming a mother; he had never known his own mother; she had died when he was small. He moved his hand to the side, then back again.

  ‘I can’t feel it,’ he said.

  ‘There. Didn’t you feel that? You must be able to. It was a George Best. It’s so strange. Like an intruder, poking around inside me.’

  She was naked, except for a pair of knickers. The thinness of her legs looked even more absurd now with her swelling belly. She seemed to find it easy, being undressed in front of hi
m. Maybe it was growing up with a sister. Breen was never so at ease with himself, especially now with his scars.

  He thought of the ring he had bought, lying in his sock drawer. He told himself that he was waiting for the right moment to give it to her, but he knew he was also putting off giving it to her in case she laughed at him. He wanted more than ever to make some declaration of faithfulness. He would devote himself to her and to the baby. ‘This flat’s going to feel small,’ he said.

  She picked his hand off her, and sat up on her elbows. ‘So, found any murderers yet?’

  ‘No. This time I think your hippie pal Felix may have been right about something though.’

  ‘Not my pal. About her having some important customer?’

  ‘So you overheard most of what he said then, in the cafe?’

  ‘Yeah, I got the gist of it. That sort are always looking for conspiracies,’ said Helen. ‘They love them.’

  ‘Like Elfie.’

  ‘I know, I know. But maybe they’re right, sometimes. Serious, though.’ She shifted, trying to get comfortable. ‘Your woman was a kinky prostitute. What are the odds some big shot was doing it with her. Bet you a million. You can imagine it, can’t you? Some letch who likes little girls.’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ said Breen.

  ‘What if the murderer is someone clever enough to make it look like it’s just a spur-of-the-moment thing? What about McPhail himself? God there.’ She stood and started pacing around his small bedroom.

  Breen smiled. ‘Seriously? McPhail? I don’t think so.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘You know. Ex-army. Stiff back.’

  ‘It’s always the stuck-up ones who grab your arse when you’re in the lift.’

  Breen shook his head.

  She crossed her arms in front of her breasts. ‘Don’t laugh, Cathal. I know you think it’s just mucking around, but has anybody ever grabbed your arse in the lift?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘This is stupid. It’s not going to be McPhail.’

  ‘And you’ve got no idea of who the policeman is?’

  ‘No. Something else. We’re not the only ones. Someone else has been searching her flat.’

  ‘Oh my God. See what you mean. Conspiracy.’

  ‘I’m not joking. I thought it was Scotland Yard, but I’m pretty sure it’s not.’

  ‘That’s kind of weird. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You think it’s whoever killed her? Trying to cover it all up?’

  She sat back on the bed, pulling her knees up to her chin. He walked to his sock drawer and pulled it open. The ring box was there, amongst the neat rows of grey socks.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said, changing the subject, as if she was bored of it already. And she got up, still naked, and went to the kitchen to put bread under the grill.

  When she woke later in the night, he was sitting in the living room with the lights on, on a chair in the middle of the carpet. In a circle, he had arranged pieces of paper around him, labelled from A to L. There were two others. On one was the name Haas, on the other Mrs Caulk. He had put crosses through A, F and J. He had struck out Mr E too, the man who Mrs Caulk had called ‘Leonard’, who had arrived at the flat on the Friday following Bobienski’s murder. On Ronald Russell’s he had written ‘alibi’, but on Mrs Caulk’s there was a large question mark.

  Breen heard Helen pouring a glass of water in the kitchen, then she padded back out into the living room, squinting in the light before heading back to her room, saying nothing.

  One of the men represented by an unknown letter was almost certainly a policeman.

  He picked up the papers one by one, and examined them. Then he wrapped them into a large ball and dropped them into the waste basket. Mrs Caulk would turn up tomorrow. Things would start to make sense soon.

  TWENTY

  On Friday Miss Rasper put through a phone call from a man who wouldn’t give his name. ‘Very hush-hush.’ She winked. She appeared to have forgiven him for yesterday’s treatment of Mint.

  The moment she connected him, the voice at the other end of the line said, ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’

  It took him a couple of seconds to recognise who it was. ‘It’s Felix, isn’t it? The man from OZ.’

  ‘But I was, wasn’t I? There was something going on.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Remember how I reckoned there was someone very special on Julie Teenager’s list of clients? And I was bloody right. Because I just heard that someone went and slapped a D-Notice on the Mirror when they said they were going to print something about Julie Teenager having it off with a copper, only they had to pull it at the last minute.’

  Breen pushed his chair back. ‘You’re wrong. It isn’t a D-Notice. They wouldn’t slap a D-Notice on something like that. That’s a request not to publish because of an issue of national security. We coppers can’t just slap them out because of something we don’t like people reading.’

  ‘Just saying what I heard,’ said the man on the other end of the phone. ‘So there was something going on. Knew it, knew it, knew it. I have a scoop. Who is it?’

  ‘Felix. I really wouldn’t if I were you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there will be consequences if you do.’ He looked over at Mint. Mint would end up taking the blame if anything did come out.

  ‘Tsk. Are you threatening me?’

  ‘No. Not me personally, but I’m sure Vice Squad will if I ask nicely.’

  ‘Temper, temper. We’re the alternative press. We’re not part of the D-Notice system.’

  ‘Is that what they’re really saying? That it’s a D-Notice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just don’t print anything yet, will you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He couldn’t say ‘Because if you do, my earnest young colleague will almost certainly be sacked’. Instead, he said, ‘Listen. If you hold on to the story, I’ll try and find you something good you can publish, OK?’

  ‘OZ getting into bed with the fuzz? Not likely. That’s not how we work.’

  ‘Just don’t print it, please, Felix. I’ll see what I can do.’

  Breen put down the phone, pulled out his notebook and flicked through it.

  When he called the number he’d found, a woman at the Sunday Times answered. ‘Ronald Russell? I’ll see if he’s at his desk. Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen.’

  Russell talked quietly, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear his conversation. ‘Well, did you speak to my brother-in-law?’

  ‘He confirmed he was with you over that weekend. We’re getting him to make a statement.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him…?’

  ‘I was discreet.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Russell. ‘I very much appreciate that. So I’m in the clear?’

  ‘You have an alibi. I wouldn’t say you were in the clear.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now I want you to help me,’ said Breen. ‘Do you have any colleagues who work at the Mirror?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  Naturally, thought Breen. ‘They were going to print an article on Miss Bobienski’s clients but they pulled it at the last minute. The Metropolitan Police asked them not to.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  ‘But I also heard a rumour that someone put a D-Notice on the story.’

  ‘Why the hell…?’

  ‘Exactly. It doesn’t seem that likely. But there are other things about this that aren’t that likely either. Perhaps you could call your colleagues there and find out for me if it’s true or not?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll ask around.’

  ‘One more thing. Julie Teenager had a driver to pick up clients. Did you ever use him?’

  ‘A driver? No. I never heard anything about that.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Why on earth would they
put a D-Notice on a story about a prostitute?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  The day was a slow one; the investigation was losing its focus. Ruling out suspects was not the same as finding the killer.

  ‘So,’ said Creamer, later, as Mint and Breen stood in his office, ‘you had one principal witness, who’s also a suspect, and somehow she’s disappeared.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen. ‘That’s right.’

  It was Friday. Creamer liked everything tidy before the weekend. He looked from one face to the other, hoping that someone would say something positive. ‘I can’t say I’m not disappointed,’ he said in the end.

  But she wasn’t missing for much longer. At four Mint picked up the phone. Breen watched his eyes widen, his face whiten.

  He scribbled something on a pad, put down the phone and said, ‘They found Mrs Caulk.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘River police. They just called.’ He stared at his phone.

  ‘Oh Christ. Dead?’

  He nodded, looking horrified.

  ‘Where?’ Breen remembered how she had asked him for protection. At the time he had thought her overdramatic, self-centred.

  ‘I spoke to her,’ said Mint. ‘And now she’s dead.’

  East India Docks had been the first of them to shut down. Just two years later, it looked like something left over from the war. Buddleias had sprouted in brick crevices of the warehouses. The windows were black. Moss was sprouting around the old shiny cobbles. Some of the cranes had been removed for scrap, but a few remained, rusting cables dangling in the air. The men who worked here, whose fathers had worked here, were on the dole now. No amount of strikes had saved them. They were planning on closing all the docks eventually and moving the ships downriver to Tilbury. The area which had been so full of noise and smell when he was a boy was silent. St Katharine’s, Surrey Docks and London Dock had closed last year. The whole East End was dying. Already it seemed like a place of ghosts.

  A group of men were peering over the end of one pier. Breen drove the car towards them. As he approached, a man in overalls ran over, waving his hands for them to halt.

  They got out and Breen saw why they had been told to stop. Someone had rigged a cable from an old diesel winch that they’d managed to get working. But the winding-engine was thirty yards away and the steel rope lay in a long line between the engine and the drop into the water. The motor was running, but the cable was still slack. Breen followed it across the dockside to where it disappeared over the end of the pier.