by William Shaw
‘Come on then,’ said Tozer.
‘Oi!’ said the fireman. ‘Go careful. Don’t want to be hoicking out three bodies.’
‘You don’t have to come,’ said Breen to Tozer.
‘I know,’ she said.
What he should have said was, ‘You’re not supposed to come.’ If she got hurt there would be a stink. But it would be good to have her there with him.
Leaving the fireman, they went inside, walking through the empty door-frame into what was left of the hallway. An upright umbrella stand, unbothered by the debris; a large brass ceiling lamp lying on the hallway floor. They stepped past it, picking through lath and plaster. Air thick with the tang of brick powder and smoke. Breen caught his foot in something and looked down. His shoe had gone through the canvas of a painting. He tried to kick it off but stumbled, falling against the wall where the picture had hung. Plaster dust fell from the ceiling onto him. Tozer laughed.
‘It’s not funny,’ said Breen.
She reached out a hand to him and he took it, bent down, and tugged the frame off his foot. There was a ripping sound. At first he thought it was the canvas, but looking down he saw a triangle of material hanging loose from his trousers.
‘Blast,’ he said.
‘Come on. I’m sure Marilyn could mend it for you.’
‘What?’
‘Everyone knows she fancies you, Paddy.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Soft spot for her, have you?’
‘Don’t be a cow.’
‘As if.’
Towards the back the damage was worse. The rear of the house had caught fire after the explosion and still stank of smoke. The firemen had supported the door to the kitchen with a loose plank. Breen had to squeeze himself past, careful not to dislodge it.
‘Well, she’s certainly got a soft spot for you,’ said Tozer.
‘Stop it,’ he said, looking down at his jacket. There was a long smear: that would need dry cleaning too.
The kitchen had taken the worst of the blast. An entire wall had been blown away on the right side. The ceiling from the room above had given way, so that a large twisted metal bed now lay in the centre of what had been the kitchen. The room still dripped with water from the fire hoses.
Scrambling over the rubble, Breen managed a glance at his brogues. If he wasn’t careful they would be ruined.
Tozer was already next to the fallen bed. She stood on the sopping mattress, grabbing a brass bedpost to steady herself. Breen struggled his way around to join her.
The man lay awkwardly, legs trapped under a fallen beam. Propped against the remains of a chair, his head was leaning back, eyes wide open. His corneas were covered in an even sheen of dust that had continued to fall on him, long after the fire had been extinguished. It made him look blinder than he already was. Like one of those blank-eyed Roman busts in the British Museum.
The dusty body was like nothing Breen had ever seen. It was skeletal, bones poking through the skin, as if the man had been starved to death.
‘You not going to be sick or anything?’ said Tozer.
Breen approached the man, took a deep breath, then knelt down and tried to brush the dust from the side of the dead man’s face. It was crusted on by the water poured over everything by the firemen.
Breen’s squeamishness at death was a new thing; useless in his line of work. The skin had been gently fried by the heat of the fire, but not roasted, as his other body had been. But from his upper arms to his wrists the skin had been peeled away. Not carefully. Chunks of muscle had been torn off in the process, and the remains hung, loose and singed.
The dust brushed off the wounds easily. The blood underneath was dry. ‘He was dead long before the explosion,’ said Breen.
Even without the dust, his skin looked pale, his eyes sunken. Breen started picking the half-bricks and splinters off the man’s body.
‘God there. Poor bugger,’ said Tozer. She knelt down and joined in removing the debris. He was propped up in the rubble at a jaunty angle, body already stiff from rigor mortis. He seemed to be completely naked.
‘Arrogant twat,’ said Tozer. ‘It’s not like he was any oil painting, exactly.’
‘What?’ said Breen, brushing the greyness off the man’s face.
‘That fireman,’ said Tozer.
Breen hesitated. ‘Jesus,’ he said, flinching backwards.
‘What?’
‘Look at his throat.’
‘God there,’ said Tozer again.
Beneath the dead man’s chin, a long dark line. His throat had been cut.
The two stared at him for a second. The man’s legs were trapped under a charred wooden beam, but you could see the skin had been yanked off from his ankles to his knees. A young man. Handsome, possibly. It was hard to tell.
He tried to pull the beam away, but yanked his hand back instantly. The wood was still hot from the fire.
‘Where’s all the blood?’ said Tozer. ‘I mean, if somebody cut his throat you’d expect to see blood.’
Breen nodded. ‘It’s odd. Somebody cleaned him up. They must have,’ he said.
Crouching awkwardly to inspect the body was giving Breen cramp. He straightened, realising he was trembling slightly. ‘You’re very calm, looking at all this.’
‘Used to dead things, you know,’ said Tozer. ‘Seen as bad on the farm. It’s not all that I mind. It’s laughing boy outside. Glad I’m leaving the job,’ she said. ‘Be honest, I’ve had enough of it.’ Temporary Detective Constable Tozer was going back to Devon to work on the family farm. Soon she would be done with the job; done with him.
The sound of bells and sirens. More police arriving outside.
‘Know what? It’s like he’s been bled dry,’ said Tozer. ‘Like a ruddy pig.’
Breen gazed at the disorder surrounding him. ‘Look for a knife. Whatever could have been used to skin him.’
‘What? In all this?’
The roof creaked above them. A sudden trickle of broken brickwork poured down into the middle of the room. Dust filled the air.
‘We should get out,’ said Tozer. ‘They said it’s not stable.’
‘Not yet.’
Breen looked around. At a crime scene you were supposed to look for the small things that seemed out of place. Here, everything was out of place. This was a bomb site, like the ones he had played on during the war. They had scrambled over bricks, finding reminders of of life among the ruins. A doll. A chequebook. A corkscrew. The children collected them greedily. Talismans of the impermanence of their parents’ world. Evidence that when they were told that everything was going to be all right they were being lied to.
‘You OK?’ said Tozer again.
‘Yes.’
Only the gas cooker seemed to have come out unscathed, knobs still twisted fully on.
‘I’m not flipping dressed for this,’ Tozer said, hair thick with dust, tights snagged. She carried on picking away bricks from around the dead man.
‘You don’t have to be in here.’
She didn’t answer. In the remains of the study, a desk lay covered in debris. The drawers were half open, as if somebody had gone through them. He pulled out one that was full of correspondence. Taking out a pile of papers, he put it on top of the desk and looked around for something to put it on.
‘Oi, copper!’ called a voice from outside the building. ‘You OK?’
‘Fine,’ said Breen.
‘The boss says you should come out now. It’s going to go.’
‘In a minute.’
‘I’ll bloody catch it if you get squished.’
They would tear the building down. This crime scene would be gone. He had to see whatever he could, grab whatever he could.
He found another picture frame, face down, and picked it up. It would act as a tray. He placed the pile of papers on top of it and looked around some more, but it was hard to know where to start in the chaos.
‘What about upstairs?’ he said. They were ru
nning out of time.
‘What’s that you’ve got?’ asked Tozer.
‘Just some papers,’ Breen said. ‘If there’s anything you think might give us information about him, grab it.’
‘Right you are.’
Bedrooms could reveal things about a man. An unmade bed. Or a secret in a sock drawer.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Breen looked around for somewhere to put his pile of documents. The telephone table had been knocked on its side. He laid the picture frame across the fallen legs and went upstairs.
The late November light was thin. It was hard to make things out, but Breen could still see that the main bedroom was curiously undisturbed by the mayhem of the rest of the house and the street outside. The bed unslept in.
The bedroom itself was a surprise. An oriental fantasy. Moroccan lamps hung from the ceiling. Indian cotton drapes surrounded the bed. The bed showed no obvious signs of a crime of passion. On the dressing table sat statues of Indian gods, next to a cluster of cut-glass atomisers. On the walls, more paintings that looked familiar. Very modern. He thought he recognised the pale fleshy pink of one of the fashionable painters who got drunk in Soho. Others were less recognisable, but they seemed not to have been collected out of the usual sense of duty, or the urge to fill the walls with things that looked right. They had been chosen by someone who clearly loved each one and had positioned them with care.
He wondered about taking the paintings off the wall to save them. They would all be destroyed with the house. It seemed a waste. But there was no time.
He returned to the wreck of the kitchen, where Tozer was picking through the rubble.
Voices from outside: ‘Oi! Coppers. Come out now.’
‘Found anything?’
‘Not really,’ said Tozer. ‘Paddy? Come on. We should go.’
‘They’re going to bulldoze it with the body still in here?’
‘Reckon. It’s not safe to start digging around.’
‘What if we got one of the photographers outside to come in? Some sort of record, at least.’
‘I don’t know.’
He remembered the last time he had stayed too long in a burnt house.
‘What about trying to move the beam?’ he suggested.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Tozer. Then, ‘OK.’
Breen found a ripped curtain to wrap around it. Crouching in the gloom they found one end and tried to lean against it. It was wedged over the dead man’s thighs, crushing the empty skin.
No movement. They changed positions. Breen moved to the other side, ready to pull it towards him.
‘After three,’ said Tozer.
‘One. Two…’
They never got to three.
‘Is that gas?’ said Breen.
Tozer let go of the beam and sniffed.
‘I can’t smell nothing.’
Breen breathed in again. ‘Can’t you smell that?’
Tozer shook her head.
‘I’m sure I can smell something.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Tozer, scrambling away.
Breen paused.
‘What about the body?’
‘Bugger that,’ said Tozer. ‘If you can smell gas… Jesus. Don’t just stand there. We need to get out.’
His papers. Where were they?
‘Leave it,’ hissed Tozer.
‘No,’ said Breen, looking around, trying to remember where he had left them.
‘Bloody leave it.’
She was right. The fire was doused but there could still be embers.
‘Hurry.’
Reluctantly he followed her, stumbling out of the room, squeezing past the small space beside the wedged beam. He was just heading for the front door when he remembered: the papers were on the telephone table behind him.
Tozer looked back, holding her arm out towards him. He tried to follow her but couldn’t. Something held him back. What? He looked down and saw he had snagged his jacket on a shattered piece of stud-work.
‘Come on, Paddy,’ Tozer shouted.
Twisting his body to yank the cloth off, Breen was suddenly free.
‘’Bout time,’ said the fireman, as Breen reached the cold air outside.
‘He smelt gas,’ said Tozer.
‘I thought I did,’ said Breen. ‘I might have been wrong.’
‘Really?’ said the man nervously. Breen paused to squat down and examine the fallen front door. The lock was intact. No sign of forced entry. But the killer could have smashed a window and there would be no evidence of it now.
‘Don’t believe us, go in and see for yourself,’ Tozer was saying to the fireman. She picked up the handbag she’d left by the fallen door. ‘Fag?’
The fireman almost took one, then pulled his hand back at the last second.
Breen laid his pile of documents on the back seat. Tozer looked him over. ‘You OK? Your jacket’s ruined.’
She was right. The trousers could be mended, but there was a six-inch tear that started from one of his pockets through which you could see the the material beneath.
‘What’s that?’ said Tozer.
There was a sudden shout.
Breen stood up and looked. The coppers and the firemen were running down the path, away from the house.
‘Fire!’ At first Breen couldn’t see what they were talking about, but then a jet of flame burst through the fallen rubble just beyond the kitchen where they had been. It burned about four feet into the winter air, so brightly it turned the sky around it dark.
‘Blimey,’ said Tozer.
Breen’s heart started thumping. He felt sick.
They sat in the car for a while as the firemen ran around, shouting at each other and at the gas man.
‘What if we were still in there?’ Tozer said.
‘We weren’t.’
A rush of flame in the London air.
‘Pretty, in’t it?’
Breen nodded.
‘Not going to be much evidence left now, though,’ she said, watching the firemen working. ‘I mean, why’re they not using the hoses?’
‘Gas fire,’ said Breen. ‘No point.’ It would burn until they found some way of shutting off the gas.
Eventually Breen said, ‘Want a lift back to section house so you can get cleaned up?’
‘Suppose,’ said Tozer. ‘What if I drive?’
‘Not on your life,’ said Breen. Women police: not allowed behind the wheel. She rolled her eyes, stuck out her tongue at him, then looked away.
SIX
The drive back to the station took longer than it should have. The road was blocked with a queue of cement mixers. Even in the rain, the whole city seemed thick with concrete dust. They were building everywhere.
‘Young, wasn’t he?’
‘Not that young. Maybe twenty-eight,’ said Breen.
‘I meant, to be so independent.’
‘Family money, I’m guessing.’
Tozer tugged on the lever to tilt her seat back. ‘Will you let me help out on this one?’
‘Oh no,’ said Breen. ‘I’m not doing it.’
‘Who says?’
‘I was just the only one in when it came through. Everyone else was in late because of Prosser’s party. I’m handing it on. I’m going on holiday.’
He looked at her. She was offering him a stick of chewing gum even though she must know by now that he never accepted it.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
‘I mean, what are you going to do on holiday?’ said Tozer, un-wrapping a Juicy Fruit for herself. ‘Go fishing?’
‘I don’t like fishing.’
‘That’s what I mean. I’m picturing you in a pair of swimming trunks lying on the beach on the Costa del Sol.’
‘I’m going to Ireland. To see where my father came from. I’ve never been.’
The laughing stopped. ‘Right. Sorry.’
Cathal Breen’s father had been a Kerryman who had eloped to England with the love of his life, a local scho
olteacher. She died when Breen was only a few years old. A self-contained man, he had raised the boy alone, rarely talking about his home country. Breen had always been acutely aware of being Irish, being different, but his father never discussed his past. Only when he was old and losing his mind, the two of them alone together, did he start talking about Ireland again. Mostly gibberish. Names Breen didn’t recognise. Snatches of Gaelic. By the time Breen had reached the age when he wanted to know about the place his parents had grown up, his father was no longer able to tell him.
‘I’m glad,’ said Tozer. ‘It’ll be good for you.’
‘Tralee. It’s where he was from. I’ll hire a car. I was thinking of booking in to a hotel there for Christmas. Take a few walks, maybe.’
‘On your own?’
‘Yes.’
As long as he could remember, Christmas had been just him and his father, eating in silence. Ham usually. A chicken was too much for two to eat.
‘Impossible,’ said Inspector Bailey. ‘No.’
‘Sir?’
‘No.’
Breen had borrowed a jacket from Constable Jones to replace the one he’d ripped in the escape from the building. A blazer with silver buttons. He was taller than Jones, so the jacket was too small; it made Breen feel like a music hall comedian.
‘But, sir…’
Inspector Bailey’s office was a small rectangular room carved out of the main office floor. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we are down two men. Sergeant Carmichael has left us for the Drug Squad and Sergeant Prosser has resigned. For no apparent reason. No great loss, but it means we’re short two men. Request refused.’
‘I’m due almost three weeks, sir.’
Bailey’s eye twitched. ‘I have just been contacted by the Home Office. The victim at the site of the gas explosion was Francis Pugh. Had you established that yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, now you know. The son of Rhodri Pugh,’ said Bailey. When Breen didn’t respond, he added, ‘Under-Secretary of State in the Home Department.’
‘A minister?’
‘Exactly.’
Breen’s heart sank. ‘What about compassionate leave, sir? With my father dying…’
‘That was three months ago, Sergeant. No.’
