The Kings of London

by William Shaw

  Inspector Bailey arrived just after half past eight; mackintosh, tweed hat and a rolled umbrella. He looked disappointedly around the almost empty office and at the three photographs laid out on Breen’s desk and grunted, then closed his office door behind him, as he always did.

  Sergeant Prosser’s leaving party had been a big night. Longest serving officer in D Division, CID. Reputation for banging up hard ones. Liked to do things the old-fashioned way, avoiding paperwork.

  Good riddance to bad rubbish, as far as Breen was concerned.

  A voice said, ‘Oh my God. I feel like crap. Does my mouth still smell of brandy?’

  Marilyn, the office secretary, hair teased up with spray, was standing by her desk, hands cupped over her nose, trying to smell her own mouth. She reached in a drawer and pulled out a packet of Disprin. ‘Want some, Paddy?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘There’s going to be some heads, today,’ she said.

  Breen liked Marilyn. It wasn’t easy to be a woman in this office, but she had arrived a couple of years ago and set about firmly organising the men, turning their unmethodical piles of paper into neat, alphabetically organised files. ‘Should have seen the state of some of them, going home.’

  She disappeared down the corridor into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water.

  Prosser’s resignation had been a surprise to most people in CID. A big crowd had turned out and stayed until the small hours drinking pints and brandies. Men huddled in corners. But why’s he really going? He’s a copper’s copper. One of the best. Plus, Prosser’s got a crippled kiddie to support. Loved the job. Makes no sense at all.

  ‘How many tickets do you want for the Ball?’ Marilyn said.

  Breen groaned. ‘God. Is it that time already?’ D Div Christmas Ball. Dress suits, rum punch and Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen at the Cumberland Hotel. Breen said, ‘I better take one, then.’ All proceeds to the Orphan’s Fund.

  ‘Just one? Aww,’ Marilyn said. ‘No one you want to invite?’ She was standing over him clutching a wad of pale tickets.

  ‘One, please.’

  Marilyn came closer again. Voice lowered. ‘Not asking that WPC Tozer?’ The woman he had slept with. One night only.

  Breen looked at her. Did she know? It didn’t take much for a rumour to do the rounds. ‘Do you think I should?’

  Marilyn said, ‘God, no, sir. She’s not your type.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Bit of a handful. Goes with a lot of men.’

  Breen blinked. ‘You shouldn’t spread rumours.’

  ‘Who says it’s a rumour? There must be some girl, Paddy. Someone suitable. Nobody comes to the Christmas Ball on their own. Come with me if you like.’

  ‘Thought you had a boyfriend already, Marilyn.’ Danny Carr. A short, Brylcreem-haired boy who sat around all day doing sweet Fanny Adams.

  ‘Just pulling your leg, Paddy,’ she said. ‘Useless prannock was so drunk last night he chucked up in my handbag.’

  Marilyn was always threatening to drop Danny, but never did. He’d been out of work since early summer.

  ‘Marilyn, where do you keep the 728s?’

  She lifted her handbag and sniffed at it. ‘I cleaned it out with Vim twice when we got in and it still stinks. What do you want a 728 for?’

  ‘Annual leave.’

  Marilyn blinked. ‘You’re going on holiday?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What? Proper holiday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never go on holiday. Well-known fact.’

  ‘That was before my dad died,’ said Breen. ‘Now I can. I decided last night. It would do me good, I think. Help me get on top of things again.’

  Marilyn was still peering into her bag. ‘Good for you, Paddy.’

  Caring for his father had meant he had rarely gone out with other coppers in the evening and never left London for long.

  ‘I was going to ask for the week starting December the ninth.’

  She looked up from the handbag. ‘Blimey, Paddy. You’ll be lucky.’

  ‘I’m due at least two weeks.’

  ‘This time of year? What do you want to take a holiday in December for?’

  Breen said, ‘My dad left me some money. I thought I might use some of it to go and see where he grew up. Never been. I want to try something new.’

  ‘No harm in asking, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Paddy. What’s that smell? Is that your socks?’

  ‘What smell?’

  Marilyn sniffed the air. ‘Can’t you smell it?’

  ‘It’s your handbag, I expect.’

  She tried her bag again. ‘You hear the news this morning?’ she said. ‘Ruddy great gas explosion up in NW8. Blew a house to bits.’

  She was right, though, thought Breen. Something did smell.

  ‘Happening all the time now, isn’t it? Gas leaks. Bloody Gas Board, you ask me. Bunch of useless…’ Back in May the side of one of London’s huge new tower blocks collapsed after a gas explosion on the eighteenth floor. In all the papers. Four people crushed to death. Marilyn dropped a piece of paper on his desk. ‘Holiday form,’ she said, with a wink. ‘Might as well give it a try.’

  He looked at it. A Roneo’d sheet of yellow paper. Length of leave requested. Special circumstances. He placed it into his in-tray.

  The photographs of the dead man still lay on his desk. These people who come to London, build its homes and power its factories, and leave so little trace of themselves. His father had been one of them.

  It had felt good to try, at least. But he knew he would get no further with this, so it was time to let it go.

  He opened the bottom drawer to put the photographs away there once and for all. That’s when the stench filled his nostrils.

  ‘Jesus.’

  Somebody had defecated in the draw of his desk. Not a cat or a dog. It was human excrement. The shit lay, a pale, moist curl, staining the pale-blue police manual it sat on. Someone must have squatted down, trousers around their ankles, drawer open.

  Breen blinked a couple of times and slammed the door shut.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Marilyn.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Breen. And instead of putting them away in the stink-filled drawer, he returned the photographs of the burnt man to his in-tray.

  FOUR

  Dust still hung over NW8. It had fallen molecule thin on the bonnets of cars and the leaves of shrubs. It lay palely on the tops of things, other surfaces dark. Dust shadows. It had fallen on the piles of brick and broken glass, on a pair of spectacles that sat on the lawn and on a pot of geraniums that stood by what had once been a front door.

  A woman police constable walked carefully towards the ruined house. In each hand she held a mug of tea. Her flat shoes printed the dust with small, careful steps. Shreds of paper decorated the trees.

  The streets around were quiet. Somewhere a radio sang:

  I love Jennifer Eccles,

  I know that she loves me.

  A cold, dull London morning now the rain had stopped. A black cat padded across the street in front of her and stopped to look around, trying to figure out what was wrong, then slunk under an Austin.

  I know that she loves me.

  The stink of burnt wood and plaster was stronger, the closer the policewoman walked. Two bored coppers stood at the door, watching her approach.

  On the door, in fact. It had been blown flat, a scorched copy of The Times still poking through the letterbox. The two policemen perched on the wood, like a raft, to avoid getting their polished boots any dirtier.

  ‘Plonk sighted. Six o’clock.’

  ‘Uglier every year.’

  ‘Don’t bloody spill it, love. Won’t be any left.’

  ‘’k sake, woman.’

  But they didn’t make a move towards her.

  ‘You got sugar?’

  She said nothing, but handed them the tea.

  ‘What about biscuits?’

  ‘Get lost.’

  �
�Only asking.’

  ‘God, I fancy a biscuit.’

  ‘They find anyone in there?’ she asked.

  ‘You spilt half of it.’

  ‘Go back for biscuits, will you? I been here an hour. I didn’t have my breakfast ’cause of this.’

  ‘Get them yourself. What do you think I am? Your mum?’

  One face of the house had been blown completely away. Above, loose timbers jutted from the roof. It must have been a big house. Posh.

  ‘Still a big crowd?’

  ‘Only about fifty. Mostly just wanting to know when they can get back into their houses.’

  They turned at the sound of a van, loud in the empty street. On its side: the words ‘GAS SERVICE’.

  The man behind the wheel looked pale and nervous. He shut off the engine, wound down the window and said, ‘Are my fellows still in there?’

  ‘How long before we can go in?’

  ‘Not my department,’ said the man from the Gas Board, getting out of the car. He wore black-rimmed glasses, a khaki warehouse coat and had a small Hitlerish moustache. Pipe bowl sticking out of the top of his coat pocket. He joined the two men and the woman on the door, looking into the remains of the house.

  ‘Bloody Nora. Hell of a bang, weren’t it?’ said the Gas Board man, looking around him.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked the woman constable.

  Halfway down the street was a man with long hair dressed in an army surplus store greatcoat, bending over a Hanimex, methodically taking photographs. How had he got there? People were getting panicky about their plumbing. People remembered the photographs of flats crumpled like cards in one of the brand-new blocks. And now this. Explosion Levels Maida Vale House.

  ‘Oi! Do you have permission for that?’

  It was so quiet in the street you could hear every snap of the shutter, even though he had to be twenty-five yards away. The thinner of the two coppers bent to put his tea down carefully on the edge of the door, then started to make his way through the rubble.

  ‘The public ain’t allowed…’

  The photographer calmly took another frame, then another.

  Past the rubble, the copper broke into a trot. Finally the photographer swept the long hair out of his eyes, turned and ran swiftly away down the street, disappearing around a corner back towards the barricades.

  ‘Cheeky arse.’

  ‘How come he got through?’ said the gas man. ‘I had a nightmare getting past your men. Your lot don’t know what you’re bloody doing, ask me.’

  ‘No harm done,’ said the woman. ‘He’s only taking photographs. Besides, there’ll be a nice picture of you in tonight’s papers.’

  ‘We should have bloody nicked him.’

  ‘Will there?’ said the gas man, standing a little straighter. ‘Do you reckon?’

  One of the policemen tipped up the dregs of his cup and reached into his jacket pocket for a pack of ciggies.

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of lighting that,’ said the gas man.

  The copper hesitated, then pulled a cigarette out of the packet. ‘You’d smell if there was still gas.’

  ‘Oh you would, would you?’

  ‘Course you would,’ said the constable, pulling out the Swan Vestas.

  ‘Give me a minute to get to a safe distance then,’ said the gas man. But he didn’t move.

  The copper pulled out a match. ‘You’re jokin’ me?’

  The man in the beige coat said, ‘Wait till I’m two hundred yards away and then you’re welcome to find out whether I am.’

  The copper pursed his lips, sighed, put the fag back in the packet and said, ‘I’m bloody gasping.’

  ‘We shut off the valve at the top of the street, but a bang like that could have fractured the main. Happened all the time during the war.’

  ‘But gas? You’d smell it.’

  ‘Gets down in the ground. That’s the trouble,’ said the gas man.

  From inside the ruined building came the sound of banging. One of the firemen, making the place safe before they could enter.

  ‘My bloody boots will be wrecked,’ said one of the bobbies.

  There was a loud shout, followed by a rumble, then the sound of falling bricks. Another wave of dust blew out of the door.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  Then a gust of laughter.

  ‘You clumsy bloody divvy.’

  The gas man was pale. ‘What the hell are they playing at in there?’

  ‘You’re shaking. You should try a cigarette.’

  ‘Listen,’ said the policewoman.

  ‘What?’

  They listened. After the crash of falling masonry, the house had fallen silent again.

  ‘They stopped laughing,’ she said.

  And they had. All at once the laughter and swearing from inside the house had ended.

  A fireman emerged, the blue of his serge almost totally obliterated by dust. He looked at the two policemen. ‘Something you should see,’ he said. ‘Something bloody… weird.’

  The crow’s feet on either side of his eyes cracked the dust on his face. The woman noticed his hands were trembling.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  He looked at her angrily. ‘Course I am.’

  ‘Christ sake, woman,’ said one of the coppers, like it was her fault for asking.

  FIVE

  ‘You all right?’ Sergeant Breen asked Temporary Detective Constable Tozer, shouting above the noise of the siren.

  ‘Me? I’m fine,’ she shouted back. They were in Delta Mike Five, the old Wolesley radio car whose gearbox crunched every time Breen put it into second.

  He hesitated before saying, ‘I meant to call you.’

  ‘Course you did,’ said Tozer.

  ‘No. Really.’

  She looked out of the window. Awkwardly thin, early twenties, in clothes that never seemed to fit quite right. Lank hair cut to a bob. ‘I wasn’t by the phone, waiting for it to ring, if that’s what you were wondering.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She dipped into her handbag. ‘I suppose you told all the lads,’ she said.

  ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘That’s something, anyway,’ she said. ‘Want a fag?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Were you avoiding me?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Busy, that’s all.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘I been busy too. Getting ready to go home.’

  Tozer had handed in her notice. She was leaving too. She had joined CID from the Women’s Section as a probationer, hoping to do more than just interview women and children, or direct traffic, which was all you were supposed to do as a WPC. But it wasn’t much different in CID either.

  ‘I mean,’ said Tozer. ‘It was just a bit of fun, wasn’t it, you and me?’ Then, ‘Christ. Must have rattled a few windows.’

  Breen had pulled up outside the house on Marlborough Place. Or what was left of it. A grand, three-storey Victorian mansion, half of it completely blown away.

  The Gas Board were still not allowing people back into their houses. They crowded behind the line of policemen, craning necks. A couple of press men with twin-lens reflex cameras complained about the way they were being treated. Breen recognised one from the local Chronicle. ‘Oi, guv. What’s going on? Get us in there, can’t you?’

  Things like this never happened around here. After the firemen had discovered the body news had spread fast.

  ‘I was expecting to see you last night,’ Breen said. ‘At Prosser’s leaving do.’

  ‘Didn’t fancy it much, be honest,’ Tozer said. ‘Don’t even know why Prosser’s leaving. Many there?’

  ‘Everyone,’ he said.

  ‘Rats from the sinking ship,’ she said.

  Breen approached one of the three constables standing on the door. Two men, one woman. ‘They found a body, they said. Where is it?’

  ‘In the kitchen. What’s left of it.’

  A fireman came out of the buildin
g. ‘Got a cigarette?’ he asked, brushing down his sleeves.

  ‘I said no bloody smoking,’ said the gas man.

  ‘Give it a rest. That guy’s smoking over there. ‘If he can, I can.’ He pointed to a press man hovering at the front gate.

  Tozer pulled a packet out of her handbag and offered him one. ‘You a copper?’ asked the fireman.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘For the next four weeks.’ She wasn’t cut out for the force, they said. Breen wanted to tell her that he’d miss her, but he hadn’t found the right opportunity. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Why isn’t you in uniform then?’ asked the fireman.

  ‘Didn’t match my nail varnish,’ Tozer said. The fireman looked down at her hand. She wasn’t wearing any.

  ‘Safe to go in?’ asked Breen.

  ‘Fire’s all extinguished. But, ask me, whole lot could go any sec,’ said the fireman. He took a long pull on the cigarette Tozer had given him.

  ‘We need to see the body before they pull the place down,’ said Breen.

  ‘I could tell you all you need to know,’ said the fireman. ‘Some bastard sliced him up like a Sunday roast. Sorry, miss,’ he said to Tozer.

  ‘Who knows about that?’ said Breen.

  ‘Just us firemen.’

  ‘Keep it to yourselves, OK? How do you know it wasn’t just the blast?’

  ‘During the war I seen all sorts of things happen in explosions. Never one skin a man, though.’ The fireman turned to Tozer. ‘What about after this, you and me and some of the lads—’

  ‘Skinned?’ said Breen.

  ‘Like a ruddy banana. Not all of him, mind. What about a coffee bar or something, love?’

  ‘Don’t really think so,’ Tozer said.

  ‘Pardon me,’ said the fireman. Then to Breen. ‘Only asking out of politeness. She’s got a face like bag of spanners, anyway.’

  ‘You haven’t been able to get the body out?’

  ‘Not our job, mate. Too risky in the circumstances.’

  Breen said, ‘I want to see him for myself before anything else falls on him.’

  ‘Only I’m not supposed to let anyone in,’ said the fireman.

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ said Breen.

  The fireman hesitated. ‘Your funeral, mate. They’re bringing a ’dozer to pull the lot down. It’ll be here any minute.’