The Kings of London

by William Shaw

  ‘What did you make of him?’

  ‘He called me a fraud. He said, “You pretend to like this art rubbish and they fall for it.” Typical of the English at their most venal. They only understand money. They don’t understand what’s happening in the world. That everything is changing. That people are waking up. Everywhere apart from England.’

  Breen said, ‘What’s it like, taking heroin?’

  ‘Try it and see,’ said Fraser.

  ‘Do you lose interest in women? When you’re on drugs.’

  Fraser said, ‘I’ve never really had that much interest in women.’

  ‘In sex then?’

  Fraser suddenly looked sad. ‘Maybe that’s the real attraction. Sex is everywhere, these days, isn’t it? The permissive society means sex is a chore, almost. I wonder if that’s one of the things that makes dope so attractive. It makes sex less important.’

  Breen said, ‘I thought you take drugs to feel more.’

  Fraser laughed. ‘Lots of people think that. Even the people who take drugs. Doors of perception and all that. That’s why everybody’s so interested. But it turns out they’re quite wrong. I thought so myself for a while. I’m sad to say it’s precisely the opposite.’

  The man was still strumming away on the guitar, the same riffs over and over again.

  ‘Your hands are shaking,’ said Fraser.

  Breen looked down at his hands. He was right.

  ‘You should see a doctor about that,’ he said.

  Breen placed his hands firmly on his thighs so that Fraser wouldn’t be able to see them move.

  Afterwards, Breen walked northwards. There was a small delicatessen open in Duke Street. Smoked mackerel hung in the window, shiny and orange. Since the fire he had not been eating properly. His appetite had gone. He went in and bought one for his supper, walked out with it wrapped in paper.

  Back at home he took a ten-pound note from the tin cash box and bought a fire extinguisher and asked for the change in florins. He fed these into the electric meter.

  That night he slept in the armchair again. He woke, covered in sweat, imagining that the place was burning again. It was just the heat from the electric fire.

  On Sunday morning he spent three hours alone in the CID room going through notes from the door-to-doors. He used the phone in the office to call up Stoke Newington CID, but no one picked up.

  In the afternoon he was back home, sponging the soot off the ceiling with turpentine when Tozer called up. ‘I was just speaking to my mother. She was asking after you. She wanted to know, are you OK? You know, with the fire and everything.’

  ‘So it’s not you asking. It’s your mother?’

  ‘Of course I’m asking too,’ she said.

  ‘I’m OK. I’m cleaning the place up a bit. What are you doing?’

  The line was silent for a while, then she said. ‘I’ve been practising the guitar. I should come over and give you a concert of my one good chord.’

  Breen stretched the phone cord over to his father’s old chair and sat down. ‘The place stinks,’ he said. ‘I’ve been cleaning the smoke off the ceiling. I’d say come and give me a hand, but I’m almost finished.’

  ‘I was going to go back to the squat this evening to ask for some tips, anyway. They do a thing they called an Arts Lab there on Sundays.’

  Breen said, ‘What is it you are after in that place?’

  ‘Guitar lessons,’ she said.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Maybe I fancy men with long hair and beards.’

  Another pause. ‘I think I should go and see Shirley Prosser,’ said Breen. ‘Find out if she knows what’s going on.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you leave that to Stoke Newington?’ she said.

  ‘You think I should just sit here and wait for Prosser to try it again? Will you come with me?’

  She was calling from the women’s section house phone. Breen could hear the sound of someone in the background saying, ‘How long you going to be, Hel?’ It was Sunday. There would be a queue for the phone.

  ‘See you Monday then, Paddy.’

  And he went back to sponging off the dark, thick residue left by the fire. A curiously satisfying, mindless occupation.

  He woke at three in the morning, thinking he had heard someone outside the front door. Heart banging, he went to the kitchen, took a meat knife from the drawer and went back to the front door, the knife in his right hand.

  Quietly he slid back the bolt, then yanked the new door open.

  Blackness and silence. A prickling of stars. Nobody there.

  Just his imagination.

  SIXTEEN

  The door to the flats above the record shop was to the right of the glass. There was no name on either of the two bells so Breen rang them both. No one answered.

  ‘Damn,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t we go and ask in the record shop?’ said Tozer.

  There was a young man with long sideboards working behind the counter at Jumbo Records. Button-down shirt. Behind him were three turntables. ‘Shirley and the boy? They should be back any minute. She takes him out for a walk round this time.’

  ‘We can wait,’ said Tozer.

  She started leafing through the records. The man was playing singles; black music mostly. ‘Girls, you can’t do what the guys do, no, and still be a lady,’ sang Tozer along to the record.

  There were two listening booths at the back of the shop. Through the glass in the door Breen could see a young woman nodding her head along to a different rhythm, cigarette hanging from her lips.

  ‘You friends of Shirl’s?’ said the man, as he slipped a single back inside its sleeve.

  ‘No,’ said Tozer.

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen simultaneously.

  The man looked from one to the other suspiciously. ‘Oh. You police again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen.

  ‘Again?’ said Tozer.

  ‘Stoke Newington would have been here,’ said Breen.

  The man chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘She doesn’t know where he is, you know? She told you lot that already last time. She just wants you to leave her alone. She’s not having a good time.’

  ‘We know,’ said Tozer. ‘It’s OK. We want to help.’

  ‘She doesn’t know where he is, you said. Her husband, you mean?’ said Breen.

  The man didn’t answer.

  ‘Does he ever come here?’ asked Breen.

  ‘I’m not saying nothing else. Not my business to say.’

  He put on another record and shook his head to the music. It was loud and rhythmic and was giving Breen a headache. Another black woman singing over the top of brass and a piano.

  ‘Who’s this you’re playing?’ Tozer asked the man. He gave a woman’s name. Breen had never heard of her.

  The record shop owner wiped another record with a cloth.‘You like it?’

  Tozer smiled. ‘It’s all right.’

  The man shrugged again.

  ‘Got any Canned Heat?’

  ‘I bet you’re more rock than soul, aren’t you?’

  Tozer nodded.

  The young man shrugged and smiled at her. ‘Thought so.’ He pointed towards a record rack. ‘Under C. I prefer soul, mostly.’

  Breen followed Tozer across the shop. ‘You know that man Robert Fraser?’ he asked as she flipped through the racks.

  ‘The Robert Fraser Gallery?’ said Tozer.

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen.

  ‘God, yeah. He’s part of the inner circle. One of the groovy people.’

  ‘Groovy? He’s my age.’

  ‘Still groovy, in spite of even that. Knows everybody. The Beatles and the Stones. Anita Pallenberg. Peter Blake. Yoko Ono. Richard Hamilton. He’s like the cool art god.’

  Sometimes she sounded like a teenager. ‘Really?’ said Breen. Carmichael had sounded contemptuous when he talked about him. Tozer sounded awestruck.

  ‘I went for dinner with him the other night,’ said Breen. ‘We went t
o a macrobiotic restaurant. Went to his flat at the weekend.’

  Tozer said, ‘You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?’

  ‘Me knowing Robert Fraser?’

  ‘No. You going to a macrobiotic restaurant.’

  Breen waded through the 33s filed under T. There were no records, just the sleeves. Bands’ names were becoming more strange and poetic. Ten Years After, Them, Tomorrow, Traffic, Tyrannosaurus Rex. Looking at them all made him feel like a man cast overboard, the ship sailing on away from him. He picked up a record at random. Turn Around, Look at Me by the Vogues.

  ‘Is this any good?’ he asked.

  The man wrinkled his nose. ‘You might like it.’

  ‘He means no,’ said Tozer.

  The boy laughed, grinned at Tozer. She smiled back.

  ‘What about this?’ Breen picked up another sleeve. A picture of a yellow banana and the name Andy Warhol.

  ‘You wouldn’t like that either,’ said Tozer.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Breen.

  Tozer shrugged. ‘I just know.’

  It was as if they were both in on the same joke. Breen hesitated. He was thinking maybe he should buy it just to prove them wrong. That’s when he noticed the record shop man looking up at the window outside.

  Breen turned and followed his gaze. Shirley Prosser was there in the same black coat they’d seen her in that last time, on the previous Saturday. Holding the boy’s hand, she gave the man behind the counter a little wave and a smile, then started delving in her handbag for her front-door key.

  Breen put the disc sleeve back in the rack and made for the front door. ‘Mrs Prosser?’ he called.

  The boy leaned against the shop’s glass. His legs were crooked. His left knee pointed inwards and he seemed to walk on the toe of his shoe. The left hand too was twisted inwards. He smiled lopsidedly at the record shop man who waved back at him.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, frowning. The thin lines on Shirley Prosser’s face didn’t stop her from looking surprisingly young. He had expected her to be older.

  ‘I’m Cathal Breen. I used to work with your husband,’ he said. ‘Can we have a word?’

  ‘Breen? Paddy Breen?’

  He stopped himself from correcting his name.

  Tozer emerged from the shop. Mrs Prosser looked from one to the other.

  ‘What is it about? I’ve already talked to the other lot.’

  Breen said, ‘I’m worried about him. Can we talk inside?’

  The boy said something. The consonants were not clear. To Breen’s ears the sound was as much animal as human. ‘It’s OK, Charlie. You go on up.’

  Again, the boy spoke. A long-drawn-out sound that was almost a wail.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll be up in a second and make lunch. Go on.’ She twisted the Yale in the lock and the boy stumbled past, swinging his bad leg around in an arc as he walked. She watched him lurch along the corridor and then walk up the stairs, one at a time.

  ‘Well?’ she said when he was out of earshot.

  ‘Maybe we should come in?’ said Breen.

  She looked at the ground a second, then said, ‘Charlie understands everything you say, you know?’

  Breen said, ‘I thought…’

  ‘Just because you may not be able to understand him doesn’t mean he can’t hear you. He wanted to know why you’re worried about his father.’

  Breen said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think…’

  ‘Hi. I’m Helen,’ said Tozer. ‘You want me to go upstairs and look after him while you chat?’

  ‘I don’t want to chat,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘I want you to go away. I don’t want any of this. I just want to be left on my own.’

  ‘Do you know where he is, Shirley?’ asked Breen.

  ‘He’s got a bedsit, I think. I’m not sure where. You’re the one who got him sacked, aren’t you?’

  Breen said, ‘He wasn’t sacked. He resigned.’

  She wrinkled her forehead. ‘Same difference.’

  ‘I think your husband tried to kill me last week,’ Breen said. He watched her eyes grow big.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ she said.

  ‘Did the policemen from Stoke Newington not tell you why they were looking for him?’

  ‘No. I just thought… I assumed they were looking for him, because…’ She stopped, looked around nervously.

  ‘I need to know where he is, Shirley. I think he’ll try it again.’

  ‘Maybe you should come up,’ she said.

  Charlie was lying crookedly on the floor with a pile of Matchbox toys. A small metal plane in one hand, he eyed Breen as he walked in the living room.

  ‘Is that a Spitfire?’ asked Tozer.

  The boy smiled a big toothy smile at her and said something.

  ‘A Hurricane?’

  The boy shook his head again.

  ‘That’s the only planes I know.’

  ‘’Bish,’ he said. Or something close to it.

  ‘I know,’ said Tozer. ‘I am rubbish.’

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘I’m just making you some beans.’

  ‘I like beans,’ said the boy. Breen heard it clearly this time. She closed the door behind them and said, ‘Why do you think it was him?’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t be that stupid.’

  ‘Because I’ve been receiving death threats at work. It has to be somebody who knows where I work. Because he hates my guts.’

  She looked shocked. He shouldn’t have told her, he thought. It was unprofessional to share what he couldn’t prove, and besides, she probably had enough to worry about already. Shirley Prosser shook her head, turned the electric hob on and and waited for it to be warm enough for her to light a cigarette on. ‘They just said they wanted to talk to him.’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder why they were so interested?’

  ‘Why would I know?’ she said, still looking at the cooker.

  Breen asked, ‘So, what did you tell them?’

  ‘Like I’m saying to you. I said I didn’t know where he was. Which is the truth. I don’t want to, either. He moved last week. He didn’t give me his new address.’ She took a cotton hanky from her handbag and wiped her nose.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why? Why? Why?’ she said, suddenly loud. ‘I don’t know. Why would he not tell me where he lives? I’m the mother of his child. Maybe because I wouldn’t tell him where I lived. I didn’t want him to know. He had a temper. You know that.’ She smiled lopsidedly.

  Breen nodded. ‘He hurt you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said, unpacking a nylon shopping bag. He found himself looking at the curve of her calves as she stretched to put a bag of flour on a high shelf. There was a small ladder in her black tights.

  He looked away quickly as she turned and asked, ‘So you don’t have any idea where he is?’

  She was at least ten years younger than Prosser, he realised. A little bit younger than Breen maybe. Tiredness made her look older, but there was a softness to her face still. Big dark eyes and thin lips.

  ‘He sends me a postal order every week. Not once a month, though.’ She laughed and wiped her nose a second time. ‘That would make it too easy. If I had a month’s money I could rent somewhere decent.’

  The kitchen was small. A small cooker. A Formica table. There was a high-backed chair with a cushion tied to one arm with a scarf and another strapped to the back with a belt, positioned where Charlie’s head would be when he sat down to eat.

  ‘He’s just lost the job he loved. He’s never been anything other than a copper.’ She leaned down to the hob, cigarette in mouth. Hair flopped down in front of her eyes. She swept the fringe out of her eyes and picked a can of beans from a cupboard. ‘He never liked you much, I remember. He talked about you all the time. He thought you weren’t up to the job.’

  Breen said, ‘You said the police had come looking for him, but you didn’t ask why.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So it wasn’t a surpris
e that they might be wanting to question him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nope. He never told me what he was up to.’

  She started pulling open drawers, clattering cutlery. ‘Bloody can opener. I can never find it.’

  She found it in the sink and dug it into the can.

  ‘Tell me about the money he sends you.’

  ‘He’s been doing it since we broke up. A bit here and there. I’m never sure it’s because he cares for Charlie or he’s trying to impress me.’

  ‘Where did you imagine the money was coming from?’ Breen asked.

  She slipped with the can opener and the half-opened can tumbled onto the floor. They both leaned quickly to pick it up, almost banging heads. He grabbed it first and handed it to her, hands touching briefly. A few beans had spilt onto the floor.

  ‘His wages. Stuff like that. You say he tried to kill you? How?’

  ‘A burning rag through my letterbox.’

  ‘God. That’s mad.’ She frowned.

  ‘Did you tell the other policemen about the money?’

  She shook her head and said, ‘Will you have to tell them?’

  ‘At some point, yes.’

  When she poured the beans into a small enamel pan, Breen saw her hands trembling and the shake of the end of her cigarette that sent small grey specs into the pan of beans. ‘I mean,’ she said. ‘What if it wasn’t just wages?’

  ‘Do you think it was more than just his wages?’

  ‘God. Will I have to pay it back?’

  ‘It depends where the money was coming from.’

  ‘Christ.’

  She moved to the cupboard and pulled out a loaf of bread. ‘I can’t give it back. I need it for Charlie.’ She picked up the loaf and started carving it, the knife passing slowly back and forth.

  ‘Why did you leave him?’

  ‘I was young when I married him. Nineteen. I’ll be honest with you. The only person holding us together was Charlie. That wasn’t enough.’

  ‘Did Prosser mistreat you badly?’

  ‘Mistreat?’ The smile stayed on her face.

  ‘Physically, I mean.’

  She turned her back again to stir the pan. ‘He used to call you the Bloody Paddy. Of all people, then, you ought to know what Prossie’s like when he doesn’t get his way.’

  ‘He did, then?’