She's Leaving Home

by William Shaw

  “You never mentioned you had a daughter the same age as the dead girl.”

  “I do not speak about her much now. It makes me too sad. It makes him too angry.”

  “Did your husband ever meet your daughter’s lover?”

  “My daughter was careful to keep her away from us. She knew her father would not forgive her. I know he met the girl’s father once.”

  “When?”

  “After he sent Ijeoma to Africa. He went to clear her belongings out of her flat and the other girl’s father was there too, doing the same. Moving his girl’s things.”

  “Did he talk about him?”

  “Why do you need to know this?”

  “Please.”

  “Yes. They had a lot in common. They both wanted to save their daughters. This other man, he was a military man. Sam liked him. Said he was on our side. He supported Biafra. He wanted to help. They were both men.”

  Breen and Tozer looked at each other.

  “When will your husband come home?”

  “Tomorrow.” She looked around the room. “Could I get you some more Coca-Cola? Or perhaps some cake?”

  Breen shook his head.

  Mrs. Ezeoke stood suddenly. “Excuse me,” she said, leaving the room. They heard her bustling in the hallway outside. She returned with a pale blue envelope.

  She handed it to Breen. It was an airmail letter addressed to Ijeoma Ezeoke. There was a stamp on it, but the address was not filled in. On the back was the sender’s return address: Morwenna Sullivan, 118c Edgware Road, London. In big letters on the front, underlined, Strictly Private!!!!

  “She came here?” said Breen.

  “I did not see her,” said Mrs. Ezeoke. “She left the letter in our letter box to post to my daughter with a note asking us to post it to her. I did not post it. I thought it was best if Ijeoma forgot about her.”

  They sat in silence for a minute while the darkness outside pressed in at the room.

  In the car: “Ivory Coast. That sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?”

  Breen said, “It does.”

  Breen opened the letter. It was dated August 17, 1968.

  Darling, darling Izzie,

  I miss you so much. I cry every night and every day. I hate your father for what he has done. Both our dads are EVIL. I hate everybody. I love only you.

  Please don’t worry. I know what you are like. Everything is going to be FAB. I’m moving out of the flat to a squat to save £££ and I’m going to get a job as a shop girl or a secretary or even a DANCER so I can earn even more £££. (I told you my mummy was a MODEL—if she can do it so can I!!!!)

  I asked my dad for money but of course he’s useless LIKE ALL DADS. (If you’ve opened this Mr. Samuel Ezeoke then know that I HATE YOU (sorry Izzie darling but it’s true)).

  Don’t worry. I am going to come and save you. I promise. We can live in a mud hut together. I have worked it out. There are cargo ships from Liverpool that take passengers to Aberjan (sp???) for only £45 (I called up the Embassy and a Nice Girl told me).

  My love for you is bigger than the planet. I promise. All we need is ♥! You are always my SUPER FAB GIRL 4 ever.

  There were hundreds of little “x”s covering the entire bottom of the thin blue airmail paper.

  “You think it was him, then? I do.”

  “I don’t know if he killed the girl. But the murder victim was found right next to his house. And he knew the major.”

  “And now we know that Morwenna knew where the Ezeokes lived.”

  “And he’s been keeping it from us. He has to be able to tell us something.”

  “I think it was him.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Helen.”

  “Yeah, but I still think it was him.”

  Twenty-nine

  He went to bed exhausted and slept dreamlessly. A thick, honeyed sleep that was hard to emerge from when the time came.

  Tozer’s knocking woke him eventually. He fumbled in the dark for the flex to his bedside light. The brightness of the light stung his eyes.

  “You said you’d be ready,” she shouted through the letter box.

  Half asleep, he struggled to remember why Tozer was there. He had overslept. The travel clock by his bed said it was already past seven in the morning. He remembered how, last night, he had phoned Bailey at home to tell him about Ezeoke; that he intended to bring him in for questioning. With Bailey’s blessing, he had called the police at London Airport to request their assistance.

  He shaved while Tozer put toast under the grill, then struggled into his clothes, Tozer helping him yank a shirt past his shoulder. “Is that all the butter you got?” she complained.

  At 8:20 the winter sun was starting to light up the buildings around them.

  “I’ll drive,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  The roads were surprisingly empty but for bread wagons, newspaper lorries and the occasional red GPO van. Breen felt nervous but he no longer had Tozer’s driving to blame for it. He would have felt happier if he could have called up control to ask them to check that the London Airport police had received their instructions from last night’s shift, but it was not a radio car, so he could only hope.

  “You OK, Paddy?”

  “I think it’s him,” he said as they sped up the Great West Road, past dark rows of offices and factories.

  “And I thought you weren’t one to jump to conclusions.”

  There were roadworks on the A40 and the traffic moved slowly, single file, behind a bus that stopped every couple of hundred yards to pick up people who were on the early shift.

  Once they were past Gillette Corner the traffic moved more quickly. They parked outside Terminal 1. The policeman on duty there, a sergeant, strode over straightaway. “You going to be long?”

  “We called up last night. We’re picking up someone for questioning from the ten-forty flight from Brussels.”

  “That space is for emergencies only.”

  “Where can we stop, then?”

  “Car park.” He pointed towards a concrete building.

  The car park faced the main terminal building. The attendant came out of his hut wearing mittens, and took an age to issue a ticket. “Don’t matter if you’re police or not. You got to have a ticket.”

  When they returned to the terminal on foot the same policeman was still there. He looked at his watch. “Ten forty? Cut that a bit fine, didn’t you?”

  “So we should hurry.”

  The sergeant spoke into his walkie-talkie and then said, “Come with me then. Gate Number Seven. Don’t worry. They’re expecting you. We do this all the time.”

  The policeman led them into the terminal and through a small anonymous door to the left hand of the check-in desks, where weary businessmen queued with briefcases and children clambered over mountains of luggage. They passed down a narrow corridor, past a row of interview rooms and through a locked door into the back of a duty-free shop, squeezing between a queue of passengers clutching large packs of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes and bottles of Johnnie Walker.

  “Can we hurry?” said Breen.

  “Not supposed to run,” said the policeman. “This way.”

  They were in a public corridor now, passengers coming the other way, lugging carrier bags, holdalls and kids.

  Tozer broke into a trot.

  “You’re not supposed to run,” said the policeman again, panting, but Tozer was too far ahead, flat shoes clacking on the lino.

  Ahead was Gate No. 7. A man stood there in a blue BOAC uniform; he waved Breen and Tozer on, down the concrete staircase, to the door that opened out onto the runways.

  After the brightness of the inside of the terminal, the world outside was abruptly cold and dark. A couple of lights shone onto the gangway. The passengers were already pouring out of the Britannia and up into the main building.

  “Where are the other police?”

  “They’re on their way,” said the sergeant, gasping for air.

>   “But they’re already getting off the plane,” said Breen.

  “Any sign of him?” Policemen started to arrive. “Who are we looking for?”

  “The plane got in early. They didn’t let us know,” complained the sergeant. “Don’t worry. Chances are, he’s still onboard. Is he important?”

  Businessmen clutching leather briefcases, yawning, families tugging fractious children, an elderly lady carrying a cat in a basket, all moved slowly down the staircase, single file.

  A jet roared into the black sky.

  The stream of passengers soon slowed to a trickle. The cabin crew started to emerge.

  “You sure he’s on this plane?” the sergeant asked.

  Breen grabbed a startled air stewardess. “Was there a black man on this plane? A large man, about forty years old?”

  She said, “In First. We let First Class off before the rest. He’s already gone, I think.—Hey? Did that big black man get off already?” she asked a colleague.

  “He’ll be heading for immigration,” said Tozer.

  As Breen started to run back towards the main building he heard the sergeant saying, “E-Z-E—oh, bugger it. Black bloke,” into his walkie-talkie. He looked over his shoulder and saw Tozer running behind him.

  They ran back up the stairs they’d descended only a few minutes earlier and were suddenly in amongst the throng of passengers arriving at the airport from around the world. Tozer barged ahead. “This way,” she shouted. “Passports.”

  They ran fast now, following the line of passengers. “Police!” shouted Tozer. “Make way.”

  Breen dashed after Tozer, who seemed to know her way around airports, following the signs for Passports. Ahead, a long queue of people craned their necks towards a row of desks. Breen pulled out his warrant card, ready to flash it.

  “Excuse me,” he said, moving through the crowd.

  A large woman in a white hat said, “Wait your turn like anyone else.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Police.”

  “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wait your turn.”

  Breen apologized again and firmly pushed past her.

  “Absolute cheek.”

  Breen spotted him. Dressed in a gray business suit, Ezeoke stood in front of one of the desks, holding out his passport, smiling to the young man sitting behind it.

  Breen pushed on through the crowd of waiting people.

  “Oi, who you shoving?” someone shouted.

  In that moment Ezeoke looked up to see what the fuss was about and spotted Breen. The big man’s first expression was puzzlement, as if he was trying to remember where he knew him from. His second was a frown, as if he were processing the new information. He turned back to the young man at the desk who was holding out his passport, smiled back at him, took the passport and set off briskly.

  “Police,” called Breen loudly, holding up his warrant card.

  People looked round.

  “Let us through.”

  Reluctantly people pushed their bags aside as Breen and Tozer barged through.

  The man on the immigration desk looked startled as they held up their cards. “Can you get them to close the customs doors?” Tozer shouted.

  Breen didn’t understand airports. He wasn’t sure what she was asking. The young man on the immigration desk looked equally confused. “I could ask.”

  She pushed past an Indian man and his family and ran into the clear space behind, Breen following.

  Looking down the corridor lined with gaudy photographs of Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard, Breen could see no sign of Ezeoke. They both started to run again in the direction they had seen him disappear into—following signs that read Baggage Reclaim.

  They were in a corridor that somehow seemed to be suspended above the tarmac. Windows to the left-hand side looked out over runways and planes, where passengers streamed downstairs into waiting buses.

  They rounded a corner and before he knew what was happening, Breen went flying into a mop bucket that a cleaner had left by the side of the wall, falling awkwardly. He came down on his bad side. Pain exploded through his shoulder.

  He looked up. The cleaner was standing there, mop in hand, an angry look on his face.

  Tozer had stopped, looking back at him, then down the corridor where they had been heading before he fell. “Go on,” Breen shouted. “Catch him.”

  Tozer hesitated, then something caught her eye out of the window. “Bloody hell. How did he get there?”

  Breen struggled to his feet, shoulder throbbing.

  She was gazing out of the window at the airport outside. He looked too. There, running steadily across the tarmac between the planes, Samuel Ezeoke, briefcase still in hand, weaving his dogged way between the queues of waiting passengers. They watched him pass a Lockheed Constellation that was taxiing slowly onto the runway. For a while he disappeared behind a BP petrol tanker, then appeared again, still running into the far distance.

  They sat in the small office that served as the police’s Airport HQ while the inspector talked on the phone.

  “If they’d been here on time, as agreed, we would have been at the gate to apprehend the gentleman,” he was saying.

  “You had his name and the flight he was on,” snapped Tozer.

  The inspector looked at the woman police constable disapprovingly.

  On the wall above a set of filing cabinets was a framed picture of the Leeds United squad from last year’s season. It was signed by a few of them. Breen recognized Norman Hunter, Jack Charlton and Don Revie’s signatures; he couldn’t make out the rest.

  “You don’t get many coons running around London Airport runways,” the inspector was saying. “Even you should spot him easy.”

  He put the phone down, shook his head. “We have work enough to do without having to run around looking for someone you chased out onto the runway. For God’s sake.”

  “If they’d been there on time we wouldn’t have been chasing him,” muttered Tozer. “It was him. It proves it. He ran. And we lost him.”

  The inspector caught Breen looking at the poster. “You a United fan?”

  Breen shook his head. His father had always been Manchester United. He rubbed his shoulder. It ached.

  “Nor me, really. I’m Crystal Palace, but I got them when they came through from an away match in Amsterdam. Not bad, eh? I got Sonny and Cher the other day. Lovely couple.”

  “He could be dangerous. It’s possible he’s killed a woman.”

  “We’re professionals here.”

  “Right,” said Tozer.

  “Can we help look for him?” said Breen.

  “You two stay put. We had to stop all flights from Terminal 1 because he got away. Do you have any idea how much money that costs? We’re here to ensure the smooth running of the airport, not to turn it into a circus. You two stay right here. We’ll get him. You’ll see.”

  He pointed to a map of the three terminals. “This is the future of transport, right here. And it’s just beginning. Air travel is within the reach of ordinary men and women. Spain. Greece. Soon they’ll have passenger planes that can travel faster than the speed of sound. Getting to New York will be like getting on a bus to Reading.”

  The phone rang. “That’ll probably be him caught now, you’ll see.” The inspector picked up the phone and said, “Yes?”

  Tozer said to Breen as the inspector answered the phone, “I hate Leeds United. What’s your team?”

  “I don’t really have a team.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Christ almighty,” said the inspector. “Oh, good God. Christ al-bloody-mighty.” Tozer and Breen stopped their conversation. “What with? Oh God. Did you get an ambulance? I see. I’ll be right there.”

  Thirty

  The policeman lay in a wide culvert by the side of the road, legs sprawled upwards, head down in the ditch. A swallow tattoo showed on the exposed flesh of his arm. Drizzle covered the serge o
f his uniform in a light sheen. It looked like there had been a struggle, but not a very long one. There was a large dark stain on his tunic where the knife had punctured his heart.

  A couple of other officers stood in the misty light, looking down at their fallen colleague. One eye gazed skywards, the other was covered by his helmet, knocked askew.

  Nearby a blackbird flew down into the culvert and pecked among the weeds.

  “It was his birthday yesterday,” said one of the coppers.

  “That’s right.”

  The inspector looked furiously at Breen. “He was a good man.”

  His voice was drowned by the roar of an airliner passing what felt like only a few feet above their heads. Breen turned in time to see the wheels bouncing down onto the tarmac beyond them, sending up a blurt of black smoke. The runway shimmered with the heat haze of the plane’s jet engines’ deafening reverse thrust. He watched the plane sway and shudder as it slowed.

  Low-ranking policemen wandered around the scene, uncertain of procedure. An ambulance arrived, but the body had not yet been photographed, so the crew waited inside the vehicle looking bored.

  Unperturbed, the blackbird continued foraging at the weeds close to the dead man.

  They crossed London, siren nee-nawing. Breen marveled at his own calm as he weaved through the traffic.

  By the time they arrived at the Ezeokes’ house there were two police cars already outside. Breen got out and tapped at the window of one of them. “Anyone been in?”

  “There’s a copper in there now with her. Our orders was just to wait here and keep an eye out for a big black bloke. There’s a couple of officers around the back and all.”

  Breen left them and walked up the steps and rang the bell. He heard it echo through the house.

  He banged on the door. It was opened by a policeman. Mrs. Ezeoke was there by his side, trembling slightly, but straight-backed. “My husband told me you would come back,” she said.

  “He’s here?”

  “He telephoned. Half an hour ago. Before your colleagues arrived.”