She's Leaving Home

by William Shaw

  Later, Breen was drinking instant coffee in the canteen and smoking cigarette number three when Marilyn came up and sat down next to him with a cup of tea and a piece of shortcake. “I’m sorry about that mix-up with the drawing, Paddy.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She was wearing a tartan polyester dress with a bow at the neckline. Breen noticed she wasn’t wearing the ring her boyfriend had given her.

  “So what happened? You just tried to have a word with her and she buggered off?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s a mad cow. Bailey will sack her. You should tell him. What were you having a word with her about anyway?”

  “It was personal.”

  “Personal? What? Bloody hell. You and her?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Thank God. I thought for a minute…”

  “No.”

  Marilyn dunked her shortbread into her tea and then sucked at it for a little while. “You and her. I think you fancy her.”

  “No I don’t,” he said.

  “You got to watch things, Paddy. Your dad just died. It’s a classic. You’re vulnerable.”

  “Give over, Marilyn. I don’t fancy her.”

  “I’d keep well away, Paddy. She’s a weirdo. You can see it a mile off.”

  It was late afternoon now. Some people seemed to live in the canteen. There was an elderly officer who always seemed to be sitting by one of the windows doing The Times crossword, sucking on a Bic. Breen had no idea what he did. Some of the cleaning staff had arrived and were having a tea before their shift started.

  She unwrapped another biscuit and dunked it in her tea. “You ever want a change, Paddy?”

  “Change?”

  “I was thinking of jacking it in and going to college.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve had enough of it, you know?”

  “They’re only playing, you know. They’re not serious. It’s just banter.”

  She took a sugar cube, held it in her tea until it had turned brown and then popped it into her mouth. “I’m bored, too, be honest.”

  “Bored? What are you going to do?”

  She smiled. “You’ll laugh.”

  “No I won’t.”

  She fiddled with the sleeve of her dress. “I was thinking of studying sociology.”

  Breen was surprised. “Sociology? Where did that come from?”

  “I’ve always been interested in that stuff. Émile Durkheim. Karl Marx.” She licked her finger and dipped it in the biscuit crumbs on the wrapper, then sucked the end of her finger. In his mind, he had not left space in Marilyn’s life for anything beyond her feckless boyfriend and her police work. “Everything can’t just go on the way it is. Don’t you want things to change?”

  “Change?”

  “Yes. You know.”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Me too. I don’t just want to be a typist all my life.”

  Breen nodded.

  She smiled at him. “Sure you don’t want to go out for a drink, Paddy? Nothing else. Just a drink? Big John and some of the boys are going out tonight. They’re all excited about having nicked a pop star.”

  It was almost clocking-off time. He didn’t want to, but perhaps he should. Maybe Carmichael was right. He should get out among the men more.

  He was about to say yes and go for a quick half with them and Marilyn when Tozer walked into the canteen.

  She came straight up to Breen as if nothing at all had happened and said, “Do you want anything from the counter?”

  “We’re fine, thank you very much,” said Marilyn. “And where have you bloody been?”

  Tozer ignored her, came back a minute later with a cheese sandwich and a mug of tea, and sat down in a chair next to Marilyn.

  “How’s it going?”

  Marilyn said, “Fine till a minute ago. You can’t just bugger off and leave a senior officer behind when you’re supposed to be accompanying him, you know.”

  Tozer shrugged. Breen looked at Tozer’s sandwich. It had been on the counter too long and its white crust corners, cut on the diagonal, were beginning to curl at the edges. Tozer picked up the stale sandwich all the same and took a large bite out of it.

  “So,” Breen said. “Where have you been all day?”

  Tozer looked him in the eye. “Oh, here and there,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs.

  “For God’s sake,” said Marilyn.

  “Oh,” Tozer said, after she’d swallowed her first bite. “You might want this.” She opened up her handbag and pulled out an open notebook, handing it to Breen. On the page was written in red pen, in her curling, girlish hand: Morwenna Jane Sullivan. Address, Verden an der Aller, Germany, 13 June 1951.

  Miss Pattison had called.

  She had shown the photo of the dead girl to a few select fans. Within a day a girl coming to pick up a competition prize had said she recognized her. She hadn’t known her well; she had only met her twice outside EMI. According to Miss Pattison, all she told her was that she thought her name was Morwenna but she was definitely a Gemini, which she remembered because she was a Gemini too.

  “Miss Pattison said the police would want to talk to her but the girl said she wasn’t interested in that and disappeared.”

  “What was the fan’s name?”

  “You see, she put her name down in the competition entry as Miss P. Lane. Only there’s no P. Lanes in the fan club. And then I figured it out. Penny Lane. Get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “Oh for God’s sake, sir, haven’t you even heard of ‘Penny Lane’?”

  “Course I have. Just pulling your leg.”

  “Very amusing.”

  “What about that drink then, Paddy?” said Marilyn. “Later?”

  “Another time maybe. What about Morwenna?”

  “I was just going to say. No Penny Lanes, but I searched through every single file and I found eighteen bloody Morwennas. Who’d have thought? I’d never even heard that name. I mean, who calls a girl Morwenna? But only one Gemini. Bingo. Verden an der Aller. You think her family’s in Germany?”

  Marilyn stood, took her mug back to the counter and left the canteen without saying another word.

  “Military, more likely,” said Breen. “Stationed out there when she was born. What about the girl who recognized her? Do you have an address for her?”

  “Went there. Turned out the address was that squat in Hamilton Terrace, you know?” A group of students had taken over a huge empty Regency house in one of the posher roads in St. John’s Wood a few months earlier; there had been a flurry of complaints at the time but they had died down. Breen was surprised to learn that the students were still there. “I did knock but I spoke to this guy who said she didn’t live there anymore. He would, though, wouldn’t he?”

  Breen nodded.

  “I got a photograph of her, mind.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a small black-and-white photograph. Three girls standing in line, each holding a copy of a single in front of them, smiling shyly into the camera. “Miss Pattison took it. For the newsletter she sends out. Our Penny Lane’s the one on the left.” A girl with long mousy hair, standing in a sheepskin coat, holding the record to her bosom.

  “She’s OK once you get to know her, Miss Pattison.”

  “Right.” Breen looked at the photograph.

  “See?”

  “See what?”

  She frowned. “You thought I was just a nutter, didn’t you?”

  “I never said that,” said Breen. “That wasn’t what I was trying to say at all.”

  She looked away. “I’m still bloody starving. Haven’t eaten since that bit of cake and I never finished that. Are there any more sandwiches left?”

  “You just had one.”

  “So?”

  “Let me get you one,” said Breen, standing. And then said, “Tozer?”

  “What?”

  “That was good, what you did
.”

  “I know.” She grinned. Then: “Ask if they’ve got any pickle, can you?”

  The woman at the serving counter glared at him when he made it to the front of the queue with his tray. “Don’t know what you’re looking so flipping happy about,” she said to Breen, wiping greasy hands on her nylon apron.

  Back at his desk he called the Ministry of Defence; the woman in the records office said she’d do her best. He was making a note of the conversation in his notebook when Marilyn passed close to his desk and whispered, “Only saying. She’s on the pill. It’s common knowledge. You know what that means.”

  “What?”

  “Helen Tozer. She’s an S-L-A-G.”

  Marilyn raised her eyebrows meaningfully and then turned her back.

  Thirteen

  Breen opened the front door. “Sorry,” he said. “The place is a bit of a mess. I’ve been meaning to give it a clean.”

  “You live here on your own?” Tozer had offered to give him a ride home. When she had pulled up outside, he had invited her in for a coffee.

  “I moved out when my dad got ill. He needed looking after.”

  She nodded. “Carmichael thinks that’s what sent you doolally, your dad dying.” He noticed she was wearing mascara. When had she put that on? When she was in the car, waiting for him to bring his briefcase downstairs from the office? If so, what did it mean when a girl got made-up? Did it mean she was interested in you?

  “Doolally, he said?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I didn’t know you knew Carmichael?”

  “We go out for a drink with the lads sometimes. How come you never go?”

  He picked up a pile of newspapers from the armchair and stuffed them into a bin. “I haven’t had much time. I was looking after my dad.”

  He stood there pursing his lips for a second before he said, “So. Do you want a cup of coffee? It’s real.” He bought his coffee beans from a Turkish shop at Dalston Junction and ground them himself.

  “Friday night. I was hoping for something stronger. Got anything?”

  “Stronger? Sorry, no.”

  Standing in the middle of the carpet was a dining chair. Surrounding it were circles of paper, with big words picked out in colored pen, or pencil drawings. There were dozens of them. Some were names of people: Miss Shankley. Samuel Ezeoke. Some were words: “Locks.” “Lighter Fuel.” “Kynaston Tech.” He’d done another drawing of the dead girl’s body from memory in blue ink.

  She picked up one of the pieces of paper. It was a map he’d been drawing of Cora Mansions. “What’s all this?”

  “Don’t move it,” he said, too loudly. “I’m still working on it.” He yanked it away from her and replaced it on the carpet.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I was curious, that’s all.”

  She found the ink drawing of the naked girl. Her behind pointing upwards. The plump curves looked suddenly prurient.

  “I am just trying to think things through.”

  “With all this?”

  “It’s about trying to see the connections.”

  “It’s very good,” she said. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  “I was going to go to art school, only my dad didn’t think much of that. So I joined the police instead, only he didn’t think much of that either.”

  “So.” She pointed to the map. “You still think whoever did it is from round there? Even after Mr. Rider?”

  “Yes,” he said, placing his foot over the writing on one of the sheets of paper and hoping she hadn’t spotted it.

  Without asking, she sat in the chair and gazed around her. There must have been a hundred different pieces of paper around the room, some in pencil, some in blue ink, others in green or red. He realized how mad it must look. What had he been thinking, inviting her in?

  “Why don’t we go out for a drink instead?” he said. “Just leave that stuff and we could go out?”

  “Super idea. I could do with a drink after today.”

  “Pubs round here are pretty rough.”

  “I’ll feel right at home then,” she said, standing up.

  When her back was to him, he reached down and picked up the sheet of paper on which he’d written her sister’s name, crunching it up into a ball and slipping it into his pocket.

  Walking down Stoke Newington High Street, she said, “You asked me if I’d ever seen a dead body.”

  “Yes.”

  “You think I lied to you about that?”

  “Did you?”

  “I never lied. They never let me see my sister, after they found her. They said it would upset me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Breen.

  “’S OK. I don’t mind.”

  A car drove past at speed. There was a puddle by the gutter; Breen grabbed Tozer’s arm and pulled her back from the edge of the pavement just before the wheel hit the water, splashing it in an arc onto the slabs where she would have been walking.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You can let go now.”

  He released her arm.

  They had stopped outside a small shop selling doll parts. A hundred different eyes peered out from a green baize board, some large, some small, some blue, some gray. There were plump porcelain arms and odd, pot-bellied body shapes to attach them to. A row of pouting, empty-eyed heads sat along the top of a small shelf. “She just didn’t come home from school one day and that was that.”

  Breen nodded. They opened the door into the lounge bar of the Red Lion, on the bend of the street. A few codgers stared at Tozer and shifted on their bar stools. Conversation faltered. Women rarely came in this pub, even in the lounge bar. The room was dark, a fug of smoke drifting at eye level. The sound of the click of snooker balls came from the public bar behind the frosted glass.

  He returned with a double rum and black for her and a pint for himself. Though the other customers had started talking again, they still craned their necks to peer at them.

  “Do you like London, sir?” she asked, head cocked on one side.

  “Don’t call me sir,” he said. “I mean,” he added. “We’re not at the station now.”

  “OK. Do you like London…” She smiled and paused. “I don’t like ‘Cathal.’ Mind if I call you Paddy?”

  “You wouldn’t be the first. Nobody ever called me Cathal except my dad.” His mother had given him the name, his father said; his father had worried that it would make him stand out.

  “It’s a funny name.”

  “My father didn’t think so.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  He took out a cigarette and offered her one. “Doesn’t matter.” He felt foolish now, bristling over a name he’d hated all through growing up. She took one of his cigarettes and he lit them both.

  “Well, Cathal?” she asked. “Do you like London?”

  “I’ve never lived anywhere else. What about you? Do you miss the countryside?”

  She smiled. “You should try it.”

  He shook his head. “Wouldn’t know what to do there,” he said.

  “No. I don’t think you would.” She picked up her rum and black and the beer mat was stuck to the bottom of it: A Double Diamond Works Wonders. She peeled it off, put it back onto the table and took a large gulp from her glass. “Cheers,” she said.

  “Cheers.”

  She took another sip from hers, then said, “Right then. I’ll tell you all about it all. But I don’t want you telling anyone else, OK? You tell Bailey and he’ll take me right off, and you know it. Only thing his lot think us women police are good for is putting parking tickets on cars.”

  Breen looked at her. She looked good with a bit of makeup on. “If I think anyone has a problem that might affect the investigation, I’m supposed to let him know.”

  She looked down at her drink and said quietly, “You’re the one who went doolally, not me.”

  Breen smiled. “Bailey knows about that.”

  She looked up at him. “Does he kn
ow about you chucking up when you saw the body?”

  He took a sip of his beer. “OK.”

  “Promise you won’t say?”

  “Promise.” He wondered if he was making a mistake.

  She paused, took a third gulp. “Where should I start?”

  “Anywhere.”

  She fiddled with the winder of her watch for a couple of seconds then spoke again. “It was the same as how it always starts. Alex didn’t come home one night.” She paused and twisted the winder some more. “Dad was furious the first night. He was convinced she had run off with one of the boys from the Tech.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Sixteen. The boys were always sniffing around her. She was gorgeous, Alexandra was, in an aloof kind of way. Always boys around her. Had Mum’s looks. I take after Dad.” She smiled. “And she loved it all, of course, all the attention, though she never showed it. I was older, and I would have jumped for any of them, but she was always offhand. Which they all loved, of course. I could never be that casual around boys. One time two boys asked her out, to go to the local barn dance. She said yes to them both. She didn’t care that they were furious with her. And fair play, she danced with them both. And told both of them to buy me drinks and all. Just to show she had the power and I had not. Sorry. I’m going off, aren’t I?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s all part of it.”

  “I like to talk about her. I never can when I’m at home. Nobody mentions her no more.”

  “You really have barn dances?”

  “God, yes. All the time. Accordion players and set dances and the lot. Do you dance?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about Irish dancing?”

  “Not on your life. How old were you when this happened?”

  “Eighteen years and six days when she disappeared. I was studying agriculture at the local tech. It was just after my birthday. I was going to be a farm girl. Can you imagine that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Poor Dad had wanted a son to take over the place. He ended up with me and Alex. After that Mum couldn’t have any more. I was the elder so I was going to do what he wanted. She was the beautiful one who always had it easy. It’s like that with the second child, isn’t it? The first one has to figure everything out for themselves. The second one dances along afterwards. Not that I minded, really. Not much, anyway. She was the beautiful one.”