The Kings of London

by William Shaw

  ‘That wasn’t why I left him.’

  ‘And Charlie?’

  ‘No. Never Charlie. Mike isn’t like that.’ She picked out some beans on a spoon and put them in her mouth to see how hot they were. ‘I always used to wonder what you were like, Mike used to go on about you that much,’ she said. ‘He hated you.’ She smiled down at the pan of beans. Then the smile went. ‘I don’t want them to take Charlie away,’ she said.

  Breen nodded.

  ‘Lunchtime, Charlie. It’ll get cold.’

  ‘The toast is burning,’ said Breen.

  ‘Bugger,’ she said, yanking it out from under the grill. ‘I hate this cooker. I’ve had so much bad luck.’

  ‘Did you ever think that he had more money than a policeman should have?’

  She laughed. ‘How much money should a policeman have? He was just trying to get back with me. Get back with Charlie.’

  ‘Why won’t he give you his address?’

  She scraped the burnt bits off the toast and ladled beans onto it. ‘I don’t know. Maybe if he’s the person who attacked you, he wants to hide.’

  ‘And you don’t have any idea where he could be?’

  Tozer appeared in the doorway with Charlie.

  ‘Y’OK?’ Charlie mumbled.

  Shirley said quietly, ‘Before I knew him he lived in Elephant. That’s where his family’s from. You could try there.’

  She helped Charlie into his chair, tying a scarf loosely around his head so he could keep it steady while she fed him. Even so, when he began eating noisily, beans flew from his chin as his head jerked from side to side as he chewed.

  ‘Well?’ said Tozer. ‘Told you I was OK with kids. Just the posh ones I can’t stick.’ She strode ahead towards the car, reaching into her coat pocket for her packet of gum. ‘Anyway. So?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  They got into the car. ‘You look rubbish, Paddy. Have you been sleeping OK? Are you eating?’

  ‘Did the boy say anything?’

  ‘I asked if he’d seen his daddy. He said he took him to the zoo.’

  ‘You can understand what he’s saying?’

  ‘Some. Mostly.’

  Breen said, ‘What day of the week was that?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure. About a week ago I think. She’s taken Charlie out of school, you know? She’s looking after him all on her own.’ She rolled the gum between her finger and thumb until it was like a small swiss roll, then popped it into her mouth and started chewing slowly. ‘She’s quite a woman. Doing that on her own.’

  Breen thought for a minute. ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘You should hear what all the police wives call her.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I bet half of them would love to do the same. Leave their husbands.’

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, getting out of the car.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I forgot to ask her something.’

  Shirley Prosser stood at the top of the stairs. ‘What now?’ she said.

  ‘I was thinking. It must be tough here, stuck on your own.’

  She folded her arms. ‘And?’

  Breen wondered how stupid this was going to sound. Very stupid probably. ‘I was wondering if you wanted to come out for dinner.’

  The first thing Shirley Prosser did was laugh. Then she clapped one hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.’

  ‘No. Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked.’

  Charlie was behind her now, propping himself up against the wall.

  ‘No. I was just surprised, that’s all. I’m not used to anyone asking me. Why do you want to do a thing like that?’

  Breen hesitated. ‘I just thought you’d like it. A chance to get out. Have a bite to eat.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks. But I don’t think so. I’d have to bring Charlie. I can’t leave him on his own.’

  ‘Right,’ said Breen. Was that an excuse? Trying not to be rude. He turned to go. Then paused. ‘I could ask Helen to look after him, if you like?’

  Shirley’s smile disappeared.

  ‘It’s OK. It was just an idea,’ Breen said.

  ‘I could do tomorrow,’ she said.

  Back in the car, Tozer said, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ asked Breen.

  ‘Are you trying to ask me out again?’

  ‘No. The opposite.’ He put his hands on the ignition key. ‘I just asked Shirley out.’

  Her mouth fell open. ‘You never?’

  ‘I did. Yes.’

  She frowned. ‘But I mean. She’s married.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Breen, starting the engine.

  ‘To a man who is probably trying to kill you.’

  ‘I just felt sorry for her. Besides, maybe I can find out about Prosser. If we talk.’

  Tozer snorted.

  ‘It was you who said that I should start asking women out,’ said Breen.

  ‘I know, I know. But I didn’t actually mean her,’ she said. ‘God’s sake, Paddy. Did she turn you down flat?’

  He smiled. ‘No, actually.’

  She looked at him. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Really?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Don’t act so surprised.’ When he had pulled out into traffic, he said, ‘Actually, I was thinking you could look after Charlie while I was out.’

  ‘You did what?’ she said.

  They paused at traffic lights.

  ‘No bloody way,’ said Tozer.

  Leaning against a wall, a thin old man squeezing lush, rich, gypsy music out of a red accordion. Streams of notes full of swell and emotion. People walked past his open instrument case without stopping.

  ‘Come on. Who else is there?’

  The lights changed and the music was gone.

  ‘I should babysit so you can go out with another woman?’

  ‘What? Are you jealous?’

  She said, ‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous.’

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘If you think I’m going to spend one of my last nights in London looking after that boy, you’ve another think coming.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The doctor was fat. He was wedged into his chair. Flesh rolled over his shirt collar and he wore trousers tailored to arrive above his belly. He had the look of someone seen in a fairground mirror.

  His surgery was thick with cigarette smoke. ‘I don’t discuss my patients with the police,’ he said. ‘Even my former patients.’

  ‘Francis Pugh is dead,’ said Breen.

  ‘My duty of confidentiality is still alive and kicking, however.’ A smile. ‘Is that all?’

  Breen had tracked down Dr Milwall through Francis Pugh’s bank statements. Breen had noticed that there had been payments to a second doctor which had stopped earlier in the year.

  Breen tried a different approach. ‘I suppose Mr Tarpey ordered you not to speak to me.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from Mr bloody Tarpey,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Really?’ said Breen.

  ‘Certainly bloody not.’

  ‘But he did tell you not to.’

  Dr Milwall broke into a big grin. ‘He may have tried.’ He giggled like a naughty schoolboy. ‘Jumped-up twerp,’ he said. ‘Awful little Welsh grammar school boy. Thinks he can tell everyone what to do just because he’s pals with the minister.’ Another smile. ‘Right. One question. Then out.’

  Just the mention of Tarpey had done it; a common enemy.

  ‘Tell me about when you prescribed heroin to Francis Pugh.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Smile vanished. Jaw clenched.

  ‘You prescribed him heroin, I presume. You were his doctor.’

  ‘I did no such bloody thing,’ said Milwall loudly. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely bloody not. And if you so much as suggest I did
I’ll bloody sue you.’

  ‘But you knew he was a heroin addict?’

  The doctor said, ‘You’re trying to trick me, now.’ The outline of a chin was in there somewhere, beneath the flesh.

  Breen sat down in the chair opposite the doctor. ‘I just want to know why he died. Don’t you?’ He tried another tack. ‘Why’s Tarpey so worried about you talking to me, anyway?’

  ‘There you go, you see?’

  ‘Skeletons in the closet?’

  ‘Of course.’ He pressed a bell on his desk and asked his secretary to bring Pugh’s notes. A brittle, thin woman who offered tea and looked offended when Breen said no.

  ‘Francis came to me in…’ He looked at the notes. ‘In January this year, it was, and asked me to prescribe diamorphine to him. He said he had picked up a habit, as if it was something you caught, like a common cold. Sad, really. Always liked Frankie, but always a bit of a rascal. And now he’s gone. Got mixed up in something. But heigh-ho.’ There was a stuffed pug sitting on a walnut sideboard. It seemed to be looking directly at Breen.

  ‘But you never supplied him with… diamorphine?’

  ‘Heroin. No. Absolutely not. Like I said. I told Frankie I don’t do that kind of thing. God. This isn’t some opium den. This is a respectable practice.’

  Unsettled by the pug’s glassy stare, Breen said, ‘I thought doctors could prescribe heroin.’

  ‘Since April we’re not allowed to any more. The law’s changed. You’ll know all about that. Good man, Jim Callaghan. New laws to keep out all the wogs and now another to lock up all the hopheads. Now all registered addicts are supposed to go to the special clinics. Best place for them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you prescribe him heroin, then?’

  ‘Learned my lesson there yonks ago. Let one addict have heroin and they tell all their junkie chums. In no time everyone thinks you’re a drug doctor. They’ll all come running to you. Scares the horses, having that sort in the waiting room. No good for the reputation. It was different ten years ago. Then, addicts were usually sweet little housewives who’d got a little too used to taking something for their nerves. Now it’s all beatniks and Yankee draft dodgers.’

  Milwall opened his desk, picked up a toothpick and started to dig around in his mouth. He paused, pulled out the pick and examined it.

  ‘If you want to know, I was rather upset Frankie had got mixed up with that lot, but it was his own choice.’

  Breen looked behind the doctor, out past his dirty window at the houses opposite. ‘Was Francis upset when you told him you wouldn’t prescribe it for him?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Not in the slightest. I gave him the name of a lady doctor who would accommodate him. And that was the last time he came to see me. It’s a well-known fact that there are half a dozen practitioners in London who have been dishing out the stuff as if it’s sherbert. However, she would have only been able to do so for a few weeks. Then the law changed.’

  The doctor took a packet of cigarettes out of his desk and lit one.

  ‘So you can no longer get heroin from GPs?’

  ‘Only from GPs at the new drug treatment clinics. They wean the addicts off the drugs with substitutes. It’s the only way to stop this ridiculous epidemic. Cut off supply. Monitor the addicts. Bring them off drugs.’ The doctor looked at his gold watch and thrummed the fingers of his right hand on the desk. ‘Mark my words, this way, in a year or so this whole addiction problem will be over and we can concentrate on sick people.’

  ‘Did he tell you about how he’d become addicted?’ asked Breen.

  ‘He was the experimental type, if you know what I mean. Very Rive Gauche. Ridiculous, of course, but these things happen.’

  ‘They’ve never happened to me,’ said Breen.

  Milwall sighed. ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  A red light came on on his desk.

  ‘Is that all?’ He lit his cigarette.

  ‘He wasn’t registered as a drug addict at any time?’

  ‘Well, it would have been a little embarrassing if he was, really, wouldn’t it? His father being on the Home Office Committee on Drug Dependence.’

  Breen said nothing.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ Milwall laughed.

  ‘So if no other doctor was supplying him with heroin he must have been buying his drugs elsewhere?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said the doctor impatiently. ‘That’s your department now. Drugs are no longer a medical issue. They are a criminal matter.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Breen, still firmly in his chair. ‘Does taking heroin leave you with sores on your arms and legs?’

  ‘Injecting anything repeatedly will leave marks, especially if you don’t do it hygienically. Abcesses can develop.’

  ‘You inject heroin in your legs? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Presumably after you have used up all the veins in your arms, yes.’

  ‘Used up?’

  ‘The veins collapse. Simple as that. Frightful business.’

  ‘So you would have to be a serious addict for that to happen.’

  ‘I would imagine. No sympathy at all for them from this quarter. Have you finished, Sergeant?’

  ‘And people die after taking drugs?’

  ‘Apparently, sometimes.’

  ‘What would the signs be?’

  ‘I’m not a pathologist, Sergeant. I’m a general practitioner. I’ve given you enough time, now, Sergeant.’

  ‘So plenty of other drug addicts will probably be doing the same now, buying drugs from dealers?’

  ‘As I say, that it is no longer a problem for the medical profession. It’s a problem for you bloody lot,’ he said, squeezing himself out of his chair and waddling to to the door. ‘And of course, I have full confidence in the police to make sure that the problem is eliminated, yes?’

  From the angle Breen was at as he looked back to close the door, the glass-eyed pug on the sideboard seemed to be grinning at him.

  Chink, chink, chink. Chink, chink, chink. Outside the College Hospital, a man dressed as Santa Claus was shaking a collecting box for Dogs for the Blind. Breen noticed that under his red Santa cloak his trousers ended an inch above his shoes and that his socks were odd.

  Grief hid in doorways, leaping out at Breen when he least expected. Odd socks. The sight of the elderly man’s mismatched legs. Like his father’s, he thought.

  When Breen pushed open the door into Wellington’s office it banged into something. A chair. A group of students sat around Wellington’s desk, exercise books open on their laps. They were sitting on metal chairs, so crammed into the room that they were blocking the doorway.

  ‘Busy, Sergeant,’ called Wellington. ‘Come back in half an hour.’

  The room smelt of new paint.

  ‘Just a quick question,’ said Breen through the crack in the door. ‘Have you had the pathology report back yet?’

  Wellington looked over the top of his glasses at Breen. There was large glass jar on his desk with a long piece of flesh floating around in it. ‘Can’t you see I’m teaching now?’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Breen. ‘Then I’ll leave.’

  ‘No. I’ll chase it.’

  ‘How does a heroin overdose kill someone?’

  ‘Class?’ A well-if-I-must voice. ‘Overdose of opiates. Speculate on what condition would cause death.’

  A young man in a pair of jeans and a denim jacket raised his hand and said, ‘Heart attack.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said Wellington. ‘Diamorphine is used to treat pain from heart attacks. Why would it cause them? Next?’

  The boy looked stung. ‘Hypotension,’ said another.

  ‘Don’t be dim,’ said Wellington.

  The students were all in their early teens and twenties; apart from a single girl sitting at the far corner of the room, they were all boys. They were medical students training to follow in Wellington’s footsteps. Some had ashtrays balanced precariously on their knees.

  ‘You,’ said We
llington, pointing at a young man in a brown cardigan.

  ‘Um. Respiratory failure?’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  The boy beamed.

  ‘Why?’ said Wellington.

  ‘Diamorphine can suppress the lung function.’

  ‘Excellent. Will that be all, Sergeant?’

  All eyes were on Breen. ‘And how would you know? I mean, how would you know someone had respiratory failure?’

  Wellington sighed. ‘Anyone?’

  The same boy raised his hand. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Carbon dioxide in the blood?’

  Another student: ‘Can I guess? Bloodshot eyes?’

  ‘Not a bad guess,’ said Wellington.

  Breen said, ‘The same as Francis Pugh?’

  ‘Exactly. Now, boys,’ he said, ‘We were dealing with the putrefaction of wounds.’

  ‘What if Francis Pugh overdosed?’

  Wellington frowned. ‘Possibly. Not likely though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well… context is crucial. He’s a minister’s son, for God’s sake. And there were no signs of drug abuse. Whoever killed him was clearly obsessive. When we get the results we’ll know.’

  ‘Francis Pugh was a heroin addict.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘People who use heroin have scars on their arms and legs. The skin had been stripped from his arms and legs. And they drained his blood. Could it have been that someone wanted to disguise that he had died from a heroin overdose?’

  Wellington opened and closed his mouth.

  ‘So it could?’

  There was murmuring in the class.

  ‘Silence!’ shouted Wellington. ‘Well, nobody bloody told me he was a heroin addict,’ he said. ‘If they had, then I would have obviously suggested that. And any result will obviously show up in the toxicology analysis. Is that all?’

  The chattering stopped. A biro rolled off the edge of one of the chairs and clattered onto the floor. A student tittered.

  ‘I am teaching a class right now, Sergeant. I will gladly discuss your theories when I am finished. Please let me continue.’

  Breen shut the door behind him and left.

  Santa Claus was still shaking his tin. Breen moved to the edge of the pavement to avoid him.

  In the last years Breen had found it hard to keep up with the laundry. Sometimes he had knelt at his father’s pale feet, struggling to dress him.