She's Leaving Home

by William Shaw

  Breen pushed past the other two and knelt down. A crowd of shocked pedestrians stood on the pavement watching, doing nothing. The driver of a Peugeot 204 pulled up in the middle of the traffic said in a loud voice, “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Where did the car hit you?”

  “Leg.”

  He took her hand. “Can you squeeze my hand?”

  “Get off her,” screamed Penny Lane, kneeling down beside him, trying to push him away.

  “It’s all right,” said a woman’s voice. “He knows what he’s doing. She needs looking after.” Breen looked up. Constable Tozer had followed and was leaning down beside them.

  “Can you wiggle your toes?” Breen asked.

  The girl did, but burst out crying from the pain. She clenched Breen’s hand hard. Mascara dribbled down the side of her face.

  Tozer always seemed to have a handkerchief on her. She handed it to the girl, who took it with her free hand and scrunched it into her eyes.

  “Get an ambulance,” said Breen to the man in the Peugeot. “I think she’s broken her leg.”

  The man, who wore a sports coat and a tweed cap, hesitated a second, about to object, then walked off. Traffic was backing up on the main road now, horns starting to sound. Someone offered a coat. They laid it over the girl.

  “Don’t worry,” said Tozer, kneeling down beside her. “It’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t worry, Carol,” repeated the other girl. Short curly hair, face rounder than Penny’s.

  “Why did you run?” Breen asked the girl who’d just spoken. “I only wanted a chat.”

  “My bloody leg,” whispered the injured girl, through pale lips.

  “’Cause you’re police. Obviously.”

  Breen nodded.

  “Hospital’s only just over the road,” said Tozer. “Ambulance will be here any sec. Detective Sergeant Breen here knows the place well. He’s in there so often they give him Green Shield Stamps. Swears by it.”

  “Back again? You’re a liability, you are.”

  Breen recognized the nurse who had been there when they had set his shoulder.

  “Not me this time.” He thumbed backwards towards the side room where the injured girl was being treated.

  “What’s she mean?” asked the girl with the short curly hair.

  “Detective Sergeant Breen was recently injured in the line of duty,” said Tozer.

  “Serves him bloody right.”

  “You didn’t have to run. He only wanted to ask you a question.”

  “He didn’t have to chase us. Are we in trouble?” The girls huddled together, leaning against each other.

  “No.”

  “Don’t say anything, Fi.”

  The injured girl was being examined by a doctor while they waited outside, sitting on hard plastic seats.

  “What was the question?”

  “Shut up,” said the other girl.

  “Who’s your favorite Beatle?” said Tozer. She took out a packet of Polos.

  “You chased us to ask us that?”

  “Go on. Who’s your favorite?” She unwrapped the mints and offered them to the girls. They both shook their heads.

  “I wouldn’t tell her. She’s a copper.”

  Tozer laughed. “Don’t tell me then.”

  “George,” said Penny Lane.

  “Mine too,” said Tozer.

  “Really?”

  “You like George?”

  “Yes. Detective Sergeant Breen here is a Paul McCartney man. Mint, sir?”

  “Never,” said the curly-haired one, who seemed to be called Fi.

  “No. I really do like George.”

  “Fibber.”

  “Test me.”

  The girl bit her nails for a second, then asked, “What was the first song George ever wrote for the Beatles?”

  “‘Don’t Bother Me.’ It was on With the Beatles.”

  A pause, then the girl with short hair whispered something in the other’s ear.

  “Come on. I’m waiting.”

  More whispering, until: “Who played banjo on the soundtrack disc he’s just released?”

  “Peter Tork from the Monkees. Rubbish, in’t it?”

  “Yeah.” The girls both laughed.

  The short-haired one said, “I been to George Harrison’s place.”

  “You never. Inside?”

  “Have so. He invited us in one time when we were outside and it was weeing down. He’s nice. He made us tea.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Fabulous. He had a chair that hung from the ceiling.”

  “You lucky cow.”

  The girl smiled. She nodded at Breen. “He really a Paul McCartney fan?” she asked.

  Breen shrugged. Tozer wrinkled her nose. “Not really, no.”

  “Thought not. He’s a square.”

  “Hear that, sir? You’re a square.”

  Breen said, “You quite done now?” But he was smiling at her when he said it.

  “You won that ‘Hey Jude’ competition that the Beatles Fan Club ran,” Tozer said to the girl with the long hair. “Penny Lane.”

  The girl’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know that?”

  Tozer pulled out the photograph of the three winners again. “Miss Pattison gave me this. I tried to find you at the address you gave. That squat. But the people there said you don’t live there anymore.”

  The girl wrinkled her nose. “That dump was horrible. The toilets don’t work.” Then, “Oh my Christ. This is about Morwenna, isn’t it?”

  Breen reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo of Morwenna Sullivan. “You recognized this picture when you visited the Beatles Fan Club, didn’t you?”

  The girl took the picture and stared at it, then looked at him suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

  Breen turned to the other short-cropped girl, Fi.

  “What about you? Did you know her?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  They were suddenly quiet again. Nurses walked briskly past in sensible shoes on the work-gray lino.

  “You see,” said Breen, “Morwenna was murdered last month. Possibly by her own father. We don’t know why. We’re trying to find out. If you can tell us anything at all, it would be really helpful.”

  “God.”

  “God.”

  And they held each other’s hands, squeezing them tight.

  Eventually the one who’d called herself Penny Lane said, “Well, we knew her, yes. But not that well.”

  “She was just around a couple of times.”

  “Quite a few times.”

  “When you said she was around,” said Breen, “around where?”

  “The Apple shop mostly. And EMI sometimes.”

  “The Apple shop?”

  “The boutique. In Baker Street,” said Tozer. “You know. That shop with the big wizardy mural thing on the corner of Paddington Street. Went bust after six months.”

  “We all got some clothes when it went bust. Did you?”

  “No,” said Tozer. “I was on bloody duty that day.”

  “It was a bit of a riot, wasn’t it?”

  “What did you get?” Tozer asked.

  “I got a shirt. It was a men’s shirt. Don’t really fit me. I give it me brother but he says it’s too like what a wog would wear for him.”

  Breen said, “What about the girl?”

  “She was just around. That’s all.”

  One girl said, “She was a George girl, wasn’t she? I saw her outside George’s a couple of times, I think. You should ask Carol. She’s the number one George girl. She knows all the George fans.”

  “Isn’t the girl who was knocked over just now Carol?”

  “That’s Carol-John. She means Carol-George.”

  “Everyone’s got their own Beatle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s Sue-Paul and Sue-John, for instance. She’s Sue-John”—the short-haired one pointed to h
er friend—“because she’s a John girl.”

  The girl nodded solemnly.

  “Carol-George. Haven’t seen her for a bit.”

  “Where’s the best place to find her?”

  “Where do you think?” she asked.

  “Kinfauns?” said Tozer.

  The girls nodded.

  “She’s always there. A bit weird if you ask me. She never goes anywhere else,” said Sue-John.

  “She’s a bit weird? What about you? You sleep outside John and Yoko’s flat.”

  “Not every night, though.” She pulled out a packet of Juicy Fruit and offered one to Tozer. She took one. “You want one?”

  “Who’s Kinfaun?” asked Breen.

  The girls burst out laughing.

  “Kinfauns. It’s the name of a house.”

  “George and Pattie’s house.”

  “Pattie?”

  “George’s girlfriend.”

  Breen shook his head. “So, what? You just wait outside their houses?”

  The girl nodded. “Or the recording studio, yes.”

  “Why?”

  The girls looked at him like he was from Mars.

  “Because they’re the Beatles.”

  A nurse emerged from the room where they were putting a plaster cast on the broken leg of the injured girl. “You lot still here?” she said.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s not going anywhere today. Do you have her parents’ telephone number?”

  Breen asked, “How do I find out where George’s house is?”

  “I thought you were a policeman. You knew everything. Bet she knows where George’s house is.” She nodded at Tozer.

  Tozer looked at the ground like a bad schoolgirl. “I might do.”

  The other girls laughed. “See?”

  Tozer took out a packet of Bensons.

  “Can I have one?” said the short-haired girl.

  “Me too,” said the other, taking her chewing gum out of her mouth and attaching it to the underside of her chair.

  “Do you want to go in now?” the nurse asked the two girls.

  They left the girls with their injured friend. The lift was at the end of the corridor.

  Breen and Tozer stood by it, waiting for the doors to open. Once the lift came close, only to disappear down to the basement.

  “Let’s take the stairs.”

  “I’m in no hurry to get back to the nick,” said Tozer.

  When the lift finally arrived and the doors opened, Frances Briggs was standing there, clutching an expensive-looking handbag in one hand and examining her face in a makeup mirror that she held in the other. “Well, if it’s not the detective. Going down?”

  They stepped into the lift. “Back with us so soon?”

  “Just delivering a patient.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope?”

  “Nothing serious.”

  “And will you be coming to our shindig on Saturday, darling?”

  “Well…”

  “Oh, don’t be shy.”

  “I’m not sure if you really need any more single men, by the sound of it.”

  “Well then, bring a friend.” She looked from Tozer back to Breen.

  It was only when they got out onto the Marylebone Road, where a horse-drawn dray was patiently trotting slowly along, forcing the traffic to crawl slowly behind it, that Tozer asked, “What was that lah-di-dah in the lift saying?” They walked across the road, making their way between the honking cars.

  “Would you like to come with me?” Breen asked.

  “Is there a party? How super. I’m game for any shindig, darling.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Don’t be shy, darling.”

  He stopped, mid-traffic. “Do you want to go?”

  “Are you asking?” she said.

  “It would be useful,” he said, thinking that might be an encouragement.

  “Useful?” She frowned. “You want me to go to a party? To be useful?”

  “It’s Ezeoke’s party. I’m only going because of the case.”

  “Useful?”

  Why did he find it so difficult to come out with it and ask her to the party? “I haven’t been to a lot of parties in the last few years.”

  “You surprise me,” she said, walking on ahead.

  Had he always been so bad at this? he wondered as he walked back across the road to the police station.

  Twenty-four

  In Hammersmith, Breen tiptoed through the mud to the wooden shed at the back of a building site. He wished he had worn different shoes.

  “Come in,” said a voice when he knocked on the door.

  The foreman sat behind a desk in a wooden hut crammed with filing cabinets and map chests. The makeshift room was heated to a fug by a pale green paraffin stove.

  “God there,” said the man. “You look the very spit of him.”

  Breen wiped his shoes on a newspaper on the floor. His father had always insisted he had his mother’s looks.

  John Nolan wore a brown jacket over blue overalls; he stood and came towards Breen to take his hand and shake it. “I’m very pleased to meet the son of Tomas Breen.” A rough hand, like his father’s used to be before the old skin softened. “Take a seat. Just move them papers.”

  Breen sat on the wooden chair opposite the desk.

  “It is terrible news. I would have liked to come to the funeral if you’d have told me.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have called you before.”

  “I understand, of course. You had things you had to do.”

  That felt like a reproach.

  “But he was a great man. Very, very respected.” John Nolan opened the drawer of a filing cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Bell’s and two glasses.

  “Was he?”

  “Naturally. Doing what he did for us, you understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nolan offered a cigarette. “Your father was the man who gave me my first job in the building trade here in England. He gave a great many of us our first job. I hadn’t seen him for years. I wish I had kept in touch with him, but when he retired it was as if he disappeared.”

  The man was awkward now; he fiddled with a yellow pencil, flicking it from hand to hand. “And educated, so. He could quote from every one of the works of Shakespeare, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  He poured two glasses and gave one to Breen, then raised it solemnly. “Tomas Breen. A great man,” he said, chinking his glass against Breen’s, then downing it in one.

  Breen did the same; the alcohol scalded his throat.

  “I am a Kerry man myself. To men like me who came over here, it was a pleasure to find an Irishman who knew the way things worked. He took us under his wing. He knew how to look after us. We all knew Tomas Breen. There’s not a ganger in London who wouldn’t have spoken respectfully of him.”

  At home, Breen’s father had been quietly dismissive of the Irishmen he worked with. They arrived by the boatload, desperate and uneducated, carrying dreams of sending fortunes home. Many of the gangers treated them badly, keeping them in beer but paying them a pittance. The English hated them and put up cards in their windows: No Blacks, No Irish. “Ignorant bogtrotters” his father called them, but Breen never knew whether this was part of wanting to put his son off a manual trade. His father had imagined Cathal as a doctor, a scientist or an academic of some sort.

  “You must be feeling the loss still.”

  “I am,” said Breen.

  “He would have been proud of you,” said the foreman. “You being a policeman.”

  “You would think so,” said Breen.

  Nolan looked around fifty, his skin darkened from the work outdoors. “He was, I am sure of it. He raised you on his own, did he not? A remarkable thing.”

  “He did. My mother died when I was young.”

  “Of course. We knew that, but he didn’t talk about it a great deal. That was a terrible loss to him. And he too proud to ac
cept help from the Church.”

  Somewhere outside a piledriver started its regular thumping.

  “My father didn’t think much of the Church.”

  “No, he did not,” the foreman said. “But I’m sure St. Peter will forgive him that on account of his goodness. He had reason, naturally.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nolan looked wary. “On account of what happened to him and your mother.”

  Breen frowned. “What was that?”

  The foreman paused. He picked up the glasses and put them back in the cabinet, unwashed. “It’s of no importance. You said on the phone you were trying to find the identity of a missing man.”

  Breen took out a notebook. Nolan crossed to a gray filing cabinet, pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Breen.

  “It’s a worksheet. If you’re a foreman you fill one in for each week. Payday on Friday.”

  Breen looked at the name on the top of the sheet. Patrick Donahoe. The worksheet consisted of seven boxes, one for each day of the week. The sheet was headed, “Week commencing September 30, 1968.” The boxes marked Monday and Tuesday were ticked but all the rest were blank.

  “I asked around like I said I would. It’s a small world. You only have to be in London a couple of years and you know everyone on the building sites. That’s the name I came up with.”

  “Where was he working?”

  “Paddington. Not so far from where your man was found.” He pointed to the worksheet. “As you can see, he didn’t come in on the Wednesday. They thought it must be because he had a sore head. It was his birthday, you see, on the Tuesday.”

  There was a calendar on the wall advertising a plant-hire company. A topless girl sat uncomfortably astride a blue moped in November’s picture. Somebody had circled her nipples with a pen.

  “But he didn’t come in on the Thursday either and they haven’t seen him since?”

  “That’s right. And he’s never been in to collect his wages.”

  “Do you have any record of an address for him?”

  “I do. He was a first cousin of the foreman there from back home. They had took him on here as a favor to his father.”

  “Have they contacted his father to ask if he’s been in touch?”

  “Naturally. And no. I’m afraid he has not.”