by William Shaw
A pensioner, medals on his grubby jacket, said he’d seen a man in a mac running away from the scene, but when he pointed in one direction, the girl pointed the opposite way. The man said the mac was pale. There was no mention of a colour.
After the lorry had blocked his view, Breen had seen nothing at all. It had taken him long seconds to leave his seat, push out of Bloom’s front door, past the crowd at the roadside and round the vehicle.
When a local copper arrived, out of breath, he attempted to shove onlookers away, demanding that the man move his lorry so that the cars could pass.
‘I can’t drive that,’ complained the lorry driver, and he pointed to Benjamin’s body.
Benjamin’s head was under the large rear wheel, the skull broken like an egg. His body was curled behind it in the gutter, arms by his side. In a single, crooked line, blood ran out over the grey stone and mingled with discarded cigarette packets and chewing gum.
Breen felt the small piece of fish he had eaten rise in his gorge.
Around the body there was a circle of people, staring. Breen nudged a teenage boy out of the way and squatted down. He felt in Benjamin’s trouser pockets but there was nothing but loose change and keys.
Haas’s old jacket was frayed a little at the sleeve. He felt inside the outer pockets but they too were empty. Unbuttoning it, he found his wallet in the inside pocket.
If Haas had had anything useful to say, it had been obliterated under the wheel of the four-ton truck.
He stood and looked about, staring at the people around him. Was the killer still here, watching him, or had he run away?
THIRTY-SIX
He stood outside the hospital as other visitors gathered. He had been early. Now he had to wait among the gathering crowd, the box of chocolates under his arm.
The normality of it felt ridiculous; obscene. He had just seen a man crushed to death. None of the people waiting here to see their loved ones knew that. It was not their fault that they were carrying on with their lives, chatting, laughing.
He felt alien, distant. An observer.
At three the crowd of visitors began to push through the doors; he made his way up the stairs to Female Surgical. The lifts were already full.
But when he reached the ward, her bed was unoccupied; the sheets were crisp and neatly tucked, as if no one had ever lain there. The bedside table was empty.
He found a nurse. ‘Where’s Helen Tozer?’
‘They for me?’ joshed the nurse, holding her hand out for the chocolates.
‘Helen Tozer. Where is she?’
‘I was just joking around. No need to be so mardy about it.’
‘She was in this bed yesterday. Has she been moved?’
The nurse was thin, pretty, with corkscrews of fair hair escaping from under her white cap. ‘Young woman. Head wounds? Pregnant? I didn’t move her.’
Perhaps she had been admitted to the maternity ward? She returned a minute later saying, ‘No. She’s not there.’
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You can’t just lose her. Somebody must know.’
‘Keep your voice down, sir. You’re disturbing the ward.’
Patients and visitors looked at him, disapproving. He must have been shouting, he realised. He tried to lower his voice. ‘You don’t understand. She might be in some danger,’ he said.
A passing matron, broad-chested and starchy, butted in. ‘Miss Tozer? Oh no. She insisted on leaving this morning,’ she said.
Breen stopped. ‘Leaving?’
‘Yes. She went home about two hours ago. Against advice.’
‘Home? But…’
Had she gone home to find him – surprise him, maybe? But he had not been there. Instead he had been a mile south, watching Haas die. There was a payphone on each floor. He ran to the end of the ward, dug change out of his pocket and called home. The phone rang unanswered for a minute. He rang again. Still no answer.
Of course. He banged his head against the wall. She could not be at home. She would have had no way of getting in. Two days ago she had been brought from home, semi-conscious and she wouldn’t have had a key. Had she tried to get in? Was she waiting outside?
Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to go back to his flat at all. He remembered the way she had looked at him when he’d given the ring. The look of disgust on her face.
He ran back to the matron. ‘What was she like, when she left?’
‘When we told her she was in no condition to leave, she was unpleasant. We don’t like to hear bad language in our ward,’ she said.
She was still angry, then. He thought of Elfie in Maternity and turned on his heels. Helen wouldn’t have gone without talking to her, would she?
‘No running in the ward,’ shouted the matron after him.
Up in Maternity, he pushed open the door. ‘I need to speak to Elfie Silverstein,’ he said.
‘She’s feeding. It’s not convenient.’
‘I’m a policeman. It’s urgent.’
The beds were all surrounded by curtains. A reluctant nurse led Breen to Elfie’s bed. The baby was tucked under a blanket, stuck to her chest, sucking at the round warm flesh.
Breen turned his head away, embarrassed.
‘Helen persuaded me to start,’ she said. ‘I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to. She said it’s just like the calves on the farm.’ She giggled, then stopped and looked at Breen. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? What that man did to her? I didn’t realise.’
‘She was here this morning?’
‘No. Yesterday after visiting hours. In the evening. Sit down,’ she said. He looked around but there wasn’t a chair, so he perched on the edge of her bed. ‘She sneaked in last night. We had a long talk. She asked if she could borrow my clothes because the ones she had were covered in blood. Poor girl. Why didn’t you tell me about what had happened to her? I was upset.’
‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t she ask me to bring her clothes?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was a bit angry with you.’
‘Angry?’
‘She said you asked her to marry her. Did you?’
‘Sort of. I gave her a ring.’
‘She showed me it. It was horrible.’
‘Did she?’
Elfie pulled the boy out from under the blankets and turned him around, pulling down her nightie on the other side so the baby could lock on to the nipple. ‘Maybe I should go outside,’ Breen said.
‘I don’t mind, Paddy.’
‘She’s checked herself out of the hospital, but she didn’t have a key to get in. I’m worried about her. Did she say she was worried about anything?’
Elfie looked down at the boy and said, ‘Come on, little man. Come on.’ With her new baby, she seemed to be in a world of her own. ‘What did you say? Worried?’
‘There was a man she’d seen when she was looking for Kay Fitzpatrick. I think it may have been the man who attacked her. He might have come looking for her…’
Elfie frowned. ‘A man? No. I don’t think so. Ow!’ she said, looking down. ‘Not so greedy.’ She giggled. ‘Actually, she wanted to find out all about Kay. What I knew about her. I wasn’t able to say much. You shouldn’t have given her that ring. It was one of those vulgar Andrew Grima things. She’d want something much simpler.’
Breen was puzzled. ‘Why did she want to know about Kay?’
‘She said she had figured everything out,’ said Elfie. ‘You know when she gets that look?’
‘What do you mean, figured everything out? About Julie Teenager?’
‘What? Yes. I think so. She was upset.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she was angry with you about giving her the ring. I didn’t quite understand what she was saying. My head’s like cotton wool.’ She tickled the baby’s head.
‘She didn’t want to marry me?’
‘No. It wasn’t that. She felt bad about it.’
‘She did want to marry me?’
/> ‘Christ sake let me finish, Paddy. It wasn’t that. She was agitated because when she opened it, she saw what it was and she said it was Kay’s ring.’
Breen, sitting with the flowers and the chocolates on his lap, was stunned. ‘Kay’s ring. I don’t understand. She said it was Kay’s ring?’
‘I’m sorry. I was tired. I haven’t been able to sleep. There are babies crying in here all the time. I wasn’t really listening.’
‘That’s what she said? That it was Kay’s ring?’
‘Weird, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t like that Grima, either, but I thought it was quite sweet of you, too. Do you really want to marry her?’
‘Concentrate, Elfie. Kay’s ring. You sure she said that?’
‘Yes. Ninety-nine per cent. She looked at it like it was poisonous or something.’ She reached out her free hand, took his and squeezed it. ‘Are you OK?’
Breen sat there on the edge of her bed saying nothing.
She had seen the ring and she had reacted with horror. He had assumed it was because she was revolted by the prospect of marrying him, but it was simply the ring that had made her behave that way.
Something about the ring.
‘Paddy?’
It had not been about him, her revulsion; it had been because seeing the ring had allowed her to figure something out.
‘What’s wrong, Paddy?’
But if seeing the ring had made her understand something, what was it?
‘I worry about you, Paddy.’
Slowly he stood. ‘I have to go,’ he said.
Elfie was staring at him. But it was not him she should be worrying about, it was Ronald Russell. He didn’t understand what the ring had signified to Helen, but the rings had originally been bought by Russell. Whatever it was, it was about him. And now he knew where she had gone: to find him.
‘Don’t you want the chocolates for Hel?’
‘You have them.’
Breen took the stairs down, two at a time. In the lobby, a man in a brown coat blocked the door, standing on a chair, putting up a poster with drawing pins. Life is for living. Live it. Don’t be stuck on DRUGS.
‘I need to get past,’ said Breen.
‘Keep your hair on.’
‘It’s urgent.’
‘Steady,’ he shouted as Breen ran past, out into the car park, looking for a taxi.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Strictly speaking, the Sunday Times was not a Fleet Street paper. There was a sense of grit about Fleet Street; it was a village within the city, where you could smell ink in the air. In the evenings the streets were full of noise, not just from the pubs where men drank hard; soon the roar and thrum of the machines would rise from the basements of the newspaper offices. Men there strode around with a sense of importance; they were men of words forging them from the news of the day, and then from lead. It was exhilarating being there. If it wasn’t the centre of the world, it felt it was.
The Sunday Times kept itself a little apart, in a modern building on Gray’s Inn Road.
The cab pulled up outside next to a black Rolls-Royce. Over the glass doors the newspaper’s name was picked out in large letters. ‘I’m looking for Ronald Russell,’ he said.
‘Where does he work?’
‘He’s a Soviet correspondent.’
‘Foreign desk.’ She looked through a directory. ‘Mr Russell. Third floor.’ She lifted the phone and spoke into it. ‘He’ll be down,’ she said.
Breen stood in the reception area and waited. A young man rode up to the glass doors on a Vespa, camera still around his neck, jumped off the scooter, pushed open the door and ran to the lift behind the desk.
‘You can’t leave that there,’ called a man in a blue uniform, stationed by the door.
‘You move it then,’ said the photographer, doors already closing on him.
‘Cheeky git.’
Breen waited. And waited.
‘Has a young woman been here, asking for Mr Russell?’ he asked the receptionist. ‘She’s got short hair and you’d know her because she’s pregnant.’
The receptionist shook her head. ‘Don’t think so.’
A minute later, he was back. ‘May I use your phone?’
Again, she shook her head. ‘Staff only.’ He looked through the glass doors. The nearest box was on the other side of Gray’s Inn Road. He wanted to call home again, to see if Helen had somehow made it in there, but he daren’t leave the lobby in case Russell appeared.
A couple of men, both in pinstripes that had gone shiny at the knee, walked past, talking loudly. ‘Frankly, I’m with what de Gaulle used to say. If they let Britain in the Common Market the whole thing will fall apart.’ Journalists returning from lunch full of alcohol and self-importance. Even though he was a few feet away from them, Breen could smell the brandy on their breaths.
He looked around, approached the desk once more. ‘Could you call up again?’
‘I’ve got work to do, you know.’ Though she didn’t seem to be doing anything apart from reading a magazine.
‘This is important.’
‘They’ll be busy, this time of day,’ she said, but she called again. After a couple of minutes waiting, she dialled another number. When she put down the phone, she said, ‘He’s not at his desk. Maybe he’s on the way down.’
‘If he’s not coming down, I need to go up.’
‘I’m afraid not, sir.’
‘It’s a matter of great importance. I’m a policeman.’
The guard who had been on the door approached. ‘Sorry, guv. No one goes up unless they’re personally invited, copper or not.’
Something was wrong. Had Russell panicked and run from some other exit? He asked the receptionist. ‘Was it Russell you spoke to earlier on the phone?’
‘Is he causing a nuisance?’ said the guard.
‘Let her answer,’ said Breen.
‘No. Some other bloke on the foreign desk.’
‘So he may not be upstairs at all?’
‘I am just the receptionist,’ she complained.
‘Who’s his boss? I need to speak to him. It’s crucial.’
The woman said, ‘I’ll see if the foreign editor will see you. He’s busy though.’
Breen waited again, more anxious by the minute.
A little after four, a woman dressed in a brown jacket, brown skirt and brown shirt appeared at the open lift doors, glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. ‘Sergeant Breen?’ she said. ‘Mr Benson will see you now. Is it something serious?’
‘Who’s Mr Benson?’
‘The foreign editor in charge of Russell’s desk. You asked to see him.’
On the second floor there was a large room, glass on three sides so that anyone passing could see inside. ‘Is this where Mr Russell works?’ asked Breen.
‘Obviously.’
Eight desks had been pushed together to form a huge, single table. There were typewriters and telephones dotted around the edge, but for the most part the desk was covered in a sea of papers and books. The piles that spread over almost every inch were huge and precarious; sitting at one side of the desks, you would need to stand to see anyone at the other.
At one end, a small, bald man in a brown suit was squinting at a large sheet of paper that looked like an oversize newspaper page, lips moving as he skimmed across its lines of print.
‘I was looking for Ronald Russell,’ said Breen.
‘Shut up. Can’t you see I’m concentrating? Idiot.’
His pen scrawled a line across a column that Breen could see was headed: ‘Nixon begins world tour at moment of US indecision’. Breen realised that the idiot was not him, but whoever had written the article. ‘Why do they have to mention the moon landing in every bloody piece about America? It’s pure sycophancy. I’ll be glad when all this space nonsense is over.’
He was looking at a draft of something for next weekend’s paper, Breen guessed.
‘You asked about Ronald Russell,’ said the man, not taking
his eyes off the sheet of paper.
‘I need to speak to him,’ said Breen. ‘Urgently.’
‘About?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you, sir.’
‘Why not?’ The editor folded up the sheet and handed it to the woman in brown. ‘The piece about General Franco needs to go to the leader writer’s office. Run along.’
‘It relates to an investigation. Where is Mr Russell? It’s vital that I find him.’
The woman trotted dutifully off and the man swivelled round in his chair to examine Breen.
‘Off sick,’ said Benson.
Breen was instantly alarmed. ‘Nothing serious?’
‘Sadly not. Today he should have been reporting on the Kroger spy exchange. He has made himself unavailable at a most inconvenient time.’
‘The spies who are being exchanged for Gerald Brooke?’
‘The Soviets are getting their spies back. It’s obvious it’s happening sometime soon. They’ve moved Brooke from the Potma prison camp to a house in Moscow. They’re going to release him any day. It should have been Russell’s story. He’s been the one who always pestered me to let him write it. And now he’s off and I’ve had to reassign it. There are several MPs who have been on the phone all day. Both sides of the House. They’re fuming.’
‘About the exchange?’
‘They insist Brooke was a nothing. They are demanding a debate about why we are caving into the Soviets.’
‘Is he?’
‘A nothing? Course he is; Russell says he has some intelligence that says he is one of ours, but frankly I doubt it. The Prime Minister’s gone soft in the head. Is that all?’
‘And this was Russell’s story?’
‘He’s been on it for yonks. And just when it gets interesting, he calls in sick.’
‘Have you spoken to him today?’
‘No. Why should I? He’s sick. Where’s that bloody woman?’ mumbled the editor.
Breen hesitated. ‘Is he good?’
‘A journalist is only as good as his sources.’
‘Which are?’
The editor took off his glasses and squinted angrily at Breen, then said, ‘Bugger off. That’s not the kind of information we share. Least of all with the authorities.’
