by William Shaw
“Am I?” He paused.
“Clearly. You’re the troubled one.”
She didn’t seem to mind his awkwardness. He asked, “Who is your sister Alexandra’s favorite Beatle?”
She went quiet.
“Your sister, Alexandra?”
Tozer looked away and said, “Oh God. She was Lennon all the way. Even had the hat, didn’t you notice?”
“No,” said Breen. For the second time he noted the tense: “was.”
The smell of old cabbages hung in the air in the old market. They walked around for a while in silence. Eventually Breen said, “When we saw the dead girl, you told me you’d never seen a dead body before.”
“I hadn’t,” Tozer said. She looked at him curiously, then walked on.
They drifted slowly back towards the car. On King Street two men stood in the side doorway of a shop that had been converted into a hippie nightclub. It announced itself in painted letters on the door: Middle Earth. The men were clutching electric guitars; one had long shoulder-length hair and an Afghan, the other big corkscrews of hair, pale blue circular glasses and a gold-braided military jacket a horseman in the Light Brigade might have worn.
One of the guitar cases was painted as a Union Jack. If it was supposed to be ironic, the irony was lost on Breen. To be English and young is to be superior. Britannia waives the rules. At the best of times, Breen had felt alien in this country. Faced by this, doubly so. These people were only a few years younger than Breen, but they lived in a different world. Men of Breen’s generation had grown up wanting to wear better suits than their fathers. This lot didn’t want suits. They weren’t looking for careers, weren’t waiting to enter the world of middle age. Gazing at Breen they seemed to say, “Everything you stand for is ridiculous.” Even though Breen wasn’t sure he had ever stood for very much at all. Maybe that was what fired their contempt.
The shop’s glass was covered in gaudy posters for groups with names like the Pink Floyd, the Nice and the Pretty Things, hiding whatever lay behind. The two hippies didn’t take their eyes off Breen and Tozer as they walked past. Peace and love be fucked.
England dividing itself on new lines.
Later, they stopped at the station to check in to see if Wellington had been in touch.
Marilyn was turning the handle of the Roneo machine with a bored look on her face.
She looked from Tozer to Breen and back again. “You two a team now?” she said to Breen.
“She’s just a probationer.”
“Put the kettle on then, love,” said Marilyn to Tozer. “I’m parched.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” said Tozer. “Put it on yourself.”
“That’s nice, isn’t it?” she said, still cranking the Roneo. “I heard you had her going round asking questions with you.”
“Her is standing right here,” said Tozer.
Breen looked from Tozer and back to Marilyn again, aware that he was being drawn into something that could only end badly.
“I always end up making the tea for you lot,” Marilyn said. “Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because I don’t even want tea.”
Marilyn paused her cranking and glared at Tozer.
“So, I’ll make it, then?” said Breen eventually. Both the women stared at him.
In the kitchen down the corridor, he rummaged through the cupboards looking for the tea bags. “Has Wellington been in touch?” he called to Marilyn.
Marilyn left the Roneo and came and leaned against the doorway, watching him. “He called an hour ago. He said it was what you thought it was. He wouldn’t tell me what, though. Said it wasn’t my business.”
Breen opened a tin but it was full of Nescafé.
“In the box on the left,” she said. Breen found the wooden box and pulled open the top, then looked for cups to put the tea bags in. Marilyn let him rummage a little while longer, then said, “Top cupboard,” over her shoulder, returning to the office.
Breen brought two cups back into the office, spilling tea on his trousers as he walked. He placed them on Marilyn’s desk, wiping the liquid off the material.
“Where’s mine then?” said Tozer.
“The plonk has Breen making her tea now,” Jones jeered.
“You said you didn’t want one,” protested Breen.
“That was when she wanted me to make them.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Marilyn said.
“It was a joke. Just a joke.”
“Don’t be so pathetic.” She turned her back on Tozer. “So what was Wellington on about then?”
Breen had never known Marilyn be so rude. He couldn’t understand it. “Constable Tozer here, who you think so little of, discovered a stain on the dress,” he said, finding himself sticking up for her a second time in one day.
Tozer stopped smiling and shook her head. “Don’t, sir.”
“And correctly identified it as sperm.”
“Sir,” hissed Tozer, tugging at his sleeve.
“It was in those dustbins, the ones you suggested we shouldn’t bother going through, Jones.”
“But, sir…”
“What’s that?” said Jones. “What did she find on the dress?”
“I suppose the question you’d have to ask is how come she knew what it was,” said Marilyn, picking up her cup of tea. “I mean…”
“Ooooh,” said Jones, standing and rubbing his hands together. All eyes were now on Tozer.
“See?” Tozer reddened.
“A man’s you-know-what?”
“You’d probably need to see a lot of that stuff to know what it looked like.”
“You dirty bitch.”
The woman constable glared at Breen. “Thanks very much, sir.”
“Where did you see that, Tozer?” Whistles and catcalls. Tozer ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.
“Tou-chy,” said Jones.
“I’d heard she was a bit of a slag.”
Breen stood there looking around the room, at all the grinning faces. “Give the girl a bloody chance,” he said.
“I don’t think Constable Tozer is going to make it in CID, somehow,” said Marilyn, smiling, back on the Roneo machine. Click-whirr. Click-whirr.
“She was trying to help solve a murder.”
Jones lit a cigarette and said, “So it looks like someone in the blocks then? In Cora Mansions?”
Breen walked to the door, opening it and holding it open, waiting to see if Tozer was coming back. “You’d ruled that out, if you remember,” he said. “You changed your mind, then?”
“Maybe I was wrong. We’re all wrong sometimes.”
Breen turned and nodded. “What beats me is why someone who lives in the block would dump a body there,” he said. “I mean, everybody who lives there would have known that the locks on the shed doors were fixed, surely?”
He looked back down the corridor. No sign of Tozer. She had disappeared.
“Maybe they were just trying to put the body in one of the sheds and were disturbed?” said Jones.
“Maybe.”
“Oh. Forgot to say. I found the girl who discovered the body.” Jones stood up and walked over to where Breen was standing and handed him a piece of paper with an address on it and a phone number.
“I’ll do it.” Breen read the address: a house on Abbey Road.
“Look out for the woman of the house; she’s a posh gob. She said I’d called at an inconvenient time and should have made an appointment.”
“Got any Sellotape, Marilyn?” called Breen. He let the door swing shut.
Without pausing from turning the handle of the copying machine, she said, “Bottom drawer, left-hand side.” Blue-printed sheets fell out of the Roneo into a growing pile.
Marilyn stopped for breath. The noise stopped. She reached out for a packet of No. 6’s on the top of the cabinet and lit one. “My boyfriend came by and bought me this.” Holding out her right hand, cigarette between the fingers, she showed off a small diamond rin
g.
Breen said, “That’s nice.”
“I think it’s hideous,” said Marilyn, frowning, holding the ring up to her face. “I’m never sure what to think when he buys me jewelry. He’s up to no good. You think I should chuck him, Paddy?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Marilyn wrinkled her nose and turned away. Breen began sticking pieces of paper to the wall to form a large rectangle. Fetching a pencil from his desk, he started drawing a rough picture of Cora Mansions on the paper.
“Look at the famous Irish artist,” said Jones. “Leonard O’Davinci. Get it? Leonard O’Davinci?”
When he’d finished, Breen got out his notebook and started flicking through it. “Who have we got alibis for?” he said.
Jones was interested now. He pulled out his own notebook and started reeling off names. There were thirty-eight flats in the block, seven of which were unoccupied. Breen found a green pen and used it to cross out all of the names they could eliminate.
“I mean, firstly, are we sure it’s the dead girl’s dress?” said Breen.
“It’s a dress. And she was starkers,” said Jones.
By the end of it there were eight names on the list. Five of them were on the side of the flats which would have been closest to the rubbish chute under which the dress had been found. Three had not been in when police called. Two were men who lived alone and who had not been able to provide alibis. Mr. Rider was one of them. Breen circled his name.
“What about the bag?” said Jones. “You said the dress was in a bag.”
Breen opened his briefcase and pulled out the bag. It was an ordinary brown paper bag with pale blue stripes printed on it; there was no name anywhere.
“What if I was to go round the shops with it and check which ones use bags like that? I mean, they’re all paper bags, but they’re all a bit different. You never know.”
“Nice idea,” said Breen.
Jones nodded.
Prosser was sitting opposite Jones, eyeing them. “Nice idea,” he said, imitating Breen’s voice.
Jones blushed like a schoolboy caught out talking to a girl by his mates. “Just a thought, that’s all.”
Bailey had heard the sound of voices and went to the open door of his office. “Have you seen Carmichael anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“And you? Everything OK?” He stood in his doorway holding a small metal watering can.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” said Bailey, looking at them all, frowning, then turning his back on them.
Marilyn came up and said to Breen, “Your girlfriend is crying in the ladies’ toilets.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
On the ground floor, where the women’s toilets were, Breen stood outside the door. “Tozer?” he called. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have told them.”
A sergeant in uniform came out of the gents next door to it, wiping his hands on his blue serge trousers.
“Helen?”
The sergeant looked at Breen with a knowing smile and winked at him. “Girl trouble.”
“Mind your own bloody business,” Breen snapped.
“Pardon me for speaking.”
Breen waited until he’d disappeared down the corridor, laughing, then said, “You in there?”
No answer. He sighed.
“I’m sorry. I was only trying to stick up for you.”
A voice from inside the toilets. “Mr. Popularity Contest sticking up for me is all I fucking need.”
Nine
Door-to-doors eliminated two more of the flats early the next morning; one was a single woman who had been out playing cards at a friend’s house. The other was a young girl who had been visiting in-laws while her husband worked shifts.
Miss Shankley was there at her front door, arms folded, as Breen walked past. “You stole my ladder.”
“I’m sorry. I had meant to bring it back. Only.” He raised his sore arm.
“I heard,” she said. “Well, it’s gone now. Someone filched it, didn’t they?”
He took out his wallet and counted out three pound notes. “Will that cover a new one?”
“But then I’ve got all the bother of getting it. What are you lot doing back here? I thought you’d finished.”
“Just routine,” said Breen.
Miss Shankley looked at him. “You think it’s one of us, don’t you? You think it’s one of the people here.”
Breen didn’t answer.
“I’m a woman living here on my own. If there’s some murderer living in our block you should tell us. I heard you’re looking for a sex pervert.”
“Who told you that?”
“I heard, that’s all.” You could never trust other coppers to keep their mouths shut.
At eleven, he and Tozer stood outside Mr. Ezeoke’s house, Breen with a raincoat held up over his head. He felt weary.
“I mean, why couldn’t you pretend that it was you that knew what it was? Nobody would have blinked if it was a feller said it.”
“I was just trying to give credit where it’s due.”
“Well. Thanks a bunch. Sir.”
It was one of the things that had buzzed around his mind: how exactly she had known. Distracting thoughts. They were not the only ones though. Several times he had switched on the light, picked up the notebook he had left by the side of the bed and stared at the pages he had written after visiting the Fan Club.
Samuel Ezeoke opened the front door and beckoned them into a large hallway. Cardboard boxes were stacked against one wall. “Ezinwa?” he called out up the dark wood stairs. “We have guests. Let me take your coats. Please excuse the mess. We have only been in this house a short time and we are still unpacking.” His accent seemed more English than Breen’s or Tozer’s.
Breen stamped to get the drips off him.
“So tell me why you need to speak to me,” said the man.
“We still haven’t identified the victim, so we’re talking to people again to try and see if there’s some detail that they may have overlooked.”
A stern-looking woman emerged down the stairs, dressed in a long skirt and white blouse with her hair tucked under a brightly colored headscarf. She was tall and slender.
“Ezi, they want to ask again about the killing of that poor girl.” He turned to the two policemen. “This is my wife, Ezinwa.”
His wife’s face softened. “Such a terrible thing to happen. I talked to a policeman the day before yesterday but I am afraid I was not able to be very useful. We have only lived in this neighborhood a short time.” Unlike her husband, who spoke perfect English, hers was strongly accented.
Breen had grown up in an England of cautious floral prints. The Ezeokes’ living room was a long way from that: loud and unfamiliar. It housed the biggest Pye TV Breen had ever seen and a walnut veneer music center with a stack of LPs leaning up against it. The one at the front had a bright yellow cover: Dancing Time No. 5 Commander in Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe and his Nigerian Sound Makers. Large, dark wood sculptures sat on the mantelpiece. On the wall, a huge mask, wood stained white, eyes dark holes, raffia hanging from the bottom of it. Vibrant modern paintings hung unevenly on the wall. One, on the wall opposite the front window, showed a row of exaggeratedly curvaceous woman dancers, lines flying away from them in all directions. Two or three paintings were still leaning against the walls, ready to be hung; Breen remembered the Ezeokes had only moved into the house two or three weeks earlier. A gold-framed black-and-white photograph of a round-faced, bearded man in a pressed suit, sitting in front of a flag, hung slightly crookedly in an alcove. Above hung a huge ceremonial horsehair fly whisk. The place was crammed. It was like they owned more things than could possibly fit into a room this size.
“Please. Would you like a refreshment? Tea, coffee, Coca-Cola?” asked Mrs. Ezeoke. She towered over Constable Tozer. Despite the African-ness of her looks, her hair tied up in a headscarf that knotted at the back above the neck, her lon
g-limbed grace, she seemed determined to sound as English as any of them.
“Now,” said Mr. Ezeoke. “You are having some difficulties uncovering the identity of the dead girl?”
Tozer bristled. “I wouldn’t describe them as difficulties.”
Ezeoke smiled. “I apologize. My wife tells me I often speak out of turn.”
“These are extraordinary paintings, Mr. Ezeoke,” said Breen, gazing around him.
“You like them?” beamed the man.
They were thick with color; strong black lines formed shapes that suggested large-bottomed women, pounding food in pots, or dancing. “They are by great Biafran artists. This one is by Uche Okeke and this,” he pointed to a smaller white canvas, “is by Chike Aniakor. Have you heard of them perhaps?”
Breen shook his head. “I’m sorry…”
“You will.” Ezeoke laughed loudly. “One day these canvases will be worth many thousands of pounds.”
Breen stared at the paintings’ clashing colors.
“You are from Biafra?” He tried to picture the country on a map of Africa but he had no idea where it was; he knew he had heard the name a lot in the news over the last year.
“Yes,” he answered. “I am proud to say I am.” His wife came in with a tray of drinks and a plate of biscuits, laid out on a paper doily.
“Eat, please.” She smiled. “My husband grew up here in England. But he is becoming more African than I am.”
“My wife, on the other hand, has gone native here. Please take one,” he said. “I cannot have one until you do.” Ezeoke laughed again.
Breen took a Chocolate Bourbon, Tozer a Chocolate Finger; Ezeoke leaned forward and took three pink wafer biscuits in his large hands.
“Biafra. It’s at war, I think?” said Breen.
“Of course,” said the surgeon. “My country is fighting a war of independence. Right now I can’t even travel home to see my relations. It’s a tragedy.”
“It must be hard for you.”
Their host could not answer immediately; he had put one of the pink wafers in his mouth and was chewing it. Crumbs fell from his lips. He picked up a glass of lemonade that his wife had poured for him and swilled down the biscuit. When he had managed to swallow it down, he said, “The British made lines on a map that have no relevance to a modern Africa, and for that we are paying with our lives. I am too old to fight, myself, but yes, many of my relatives are engaged in the struggle back home.”
