The Kings of London

by William Shaw

‘They’ll ask you about me. The Scotland Yard men. About last night. And when we got back.’

  Tozer nodded. ‘Right,’ she said.

  Marilyn said, ‘You’ll be fine, Paddy.’

  ‘Who do you think it was?’ said Tozer.

  Breen said quietly, ‘I don’t know. He was bent. Maybe there was something going on we didn’t know about.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Tozer. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘They’ll want to ask about me and Shirley Prosser,’ he told Tozer.

  ‘What about him and Shirley Prosser?’ said Marilyn. Breen looked at his watch. It was one already. Jumbo Records would be shut by now. It was a Wednesday; half-day closing. The only way to get in touch with her would be to go there.

  ‘Who bought you those, Marilyn?’ said Tozer, suddenly louder, fingering the plastic flowers.

  ‘My boyfriend,’ said Marilyn.

  ‘I thought you were chucking him,’ said Tozer.

  Marilyn wrinkled her nose. ‘I never quite got around to it. What about Shirley Prosser?’

  ‘I really like plastic flowers,’ said Tozer. Bright yellows, greens and reds.

  ‘You don’t think they’re a bit tacky?’

  ‘They’re pop art, really, aren’t they? Why’d he give them to you?’ asked Tozer.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ said Marilyn.

  TWENTY

  The Bridget Riley print wasn’t his, but it wasn’t anybody else’s, Breen reasoned, so even though he didn’t really like it much, it remained hanging on the wall in his living room, opposite the front door. He should have handed it over to Tarpey, but Rhodri Pugh wouldn’t have been interested in it. And Tarpey just wanted to see the whole thing tidied away.

  Keeping it was a petty act of rebellion. Black dots on a white background. Unconnected events in a plain landscape. He stared at them for so long they started to play tricks on him, the shapes imprinting themselves on his eyeballs, seeming to move as he watched them, set free from the whiteness.

  It was Thursday morning. Normally he would be going to work now.

  He changed his sheets. He cleaned the kitchen cupboards, wiping the bottoms of jars and tins. He took out the boxes from under his father’s bed and started throwing out rubbish from them. There were dozens of tobacco tins he’d kept. One was full of neatly folded bills from a grocer he’d had an account with. Another was rusted shut. He put the bills into the dustbin outside in the cul-de-sac. The weather was getting even colder.

  After that, finally, it was breakfast time. He boiled water for coffee, poached an egg and ate it on a piece of toast with a thin layer of butter on, then washed the plate and pan.

  Around nine o’clock he cleaned the bathroom, then went out and bought The Times and the Daily Telegraph and looked through them. The Telegraph had a small piece about the murder of a man in south London, but it didn’t mention his name, or that he was a policeman.

  For a while he tried sketching, assembling a still life of utensils from the kitchen on a table, but had lost interest by ten. He couldn’t concentrate.

  At 10.15 he called up Tozer. ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘Paddy? What are you doing?’ There was a buzzing on the line. He could barely hear her voice.

  ‘I’m not used to staying at home,’ he said. ‘What are you working on?’

  ‘Woman raped up at the running track by the Regent’s Canal. St John’s Wood are taking me along to talk to her. I’ve got to go, right now.’

  ‘Have they interviewed you yet?’

  She said something he couldn’t hear above the buzzing.

  ‘I can’t hear,’ he said. ‘This line’s making a racket.’

  ‘They wanted to know about you. Whether you’d been acting strange or anything.’

  ‘Who was it? Sergeant Deason?’

  ‘Yes. And wanted to know everywhere you’d been.’

  ‘What about Shirley?’

  A pause. ‘Her too. What time you came back on Tuesday. They wanted to know if you were having it off with her.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told them no. You didn’t, did you? Have it off?’

  ‘For God’s sake. We just went for a walk, Helen. Did they let slip anything about her? How she was?’

  ‘No. Deason plays his cards very close to his chest.’

  A plodder, thought Breen. A one-step-at-a-time man. Sometimes that made for a good detective. Other times it made for nothing getting done. ‘I was thinking, could you get in touch with Shirley for me? Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I’ll be in touch in a couple of days.’

  ‘How will I do that? She’s not on the phone.’

  ‘You could go there.’

  ‘I’ve got to go now, Paddy. Why don’t you do it?’

  ‘I shouldn’t. We’ll both be suspects. Who do you think would want to kill Prosser?’ said Breen.

  ‘Apart from you?’

  ‘That’s not funny. What if you come with me and talk to her again. At least you’d be there too. She might tell us stuff she’s not telling Deason.’

  A pause. ‘Sure it’s not just because you want to see her?’

  ‘I feel sorry for her.’

  She was whispering so he could hardly make her out now. ‘I’ve got to go, Paddy. They’re waiting for me.’

  He heard a male voice asking. ‘Who are you talking to, Constable Tozer?’

  ‘My mum,’ she said. ‘My dad’s not well.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you now, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m at work. I’ll call you after.’

  ‘When?’

  But she’d put down the phone.

  At around midday Breen heard a van pulling up outside in the cul-de-sac. When he went out to Kingsland High Street to buy some supplies for lunch he noticed a blue Pickfords van unloading.

  The flat above him had been empty for weeks. Breen watched as two men hoicked furniture into it. When he came back from the Jewish shop with lox and herring for lunch they were trying to squeeze a huge, very modern white fibreglass armchair into the front door. Bachelor? he wondered. Youngish.

  He ate his lunch listening to the scraping and banging of furniture on the floor above. In a long damp season the day had turned out to be a bright one. If he hadn’t been waiting for Tozer’s call he would have gone out for a walk in Clissold Park.

  At three he called the office. Marilyn answered. ‘How are you, Paddy? It’s quiet here without you. Maybe I’ll come around to visit you this evening. What do you think?’

  ‘Is Tozer back?’ The buzzing was still on the line.

  ‘What do you want her for?’

  ‘There’s just something I wanted to ask her, that’s all.’

  ‘Them police asked me about you. I told them you’d never hurt a fly.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘What about if I come round, then?’

  ‘Not tonight, Marilyn. I’m not in a very good mood.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘Only a suggestion. Thought it might cheer you up a bit.’

  Breen noticed a dark shape parking outside his window. Because his flat was on the lower ground floor, his living room was half submerged underground, down a few concrete steps. He could only see the bottom half of the black car.

  ‘What about tomorrow? A few of us are meeting up for a drink after work. Just because you’re suspended don’t mean you can’t come out for a drink with us. It would be fun.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You know. Just for laughs.’

  He emerged out of the front door just as a young man with shoulder-length hair was pulling a leather suitcase out of the boot. He’d been right.

  ‘Hello,’ said Breen. ‘Are you moving in upstairs?’

  The man looked him up and down.

  ‘Only I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t leave your car there. It blocks my light,’ he said, pointing to a sign fixed to the railings which said ‘No Parking’.

  The Pickfords lorry was takin
g up most of the cul-de-sac. The car was an old black MG Magnette.

  ‘Your light?’ said the man.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you own the light?’ the man asked, suitcase in hand.

  The phone was ringing, so Breen ran down the stairs into his flat.

  It was Tozer.

  ‘What? Marilyn said you wanted me.’

  Breen said, ‘Can you make tomorrow? To see Shirley?’

  A pause. ‘OK. I’ll try,’ she said.

  Loud music suddenly started booming from above.

  ‘Hell,’ said Breen.

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘New neighbours,’ he said.

  The man must have just connected up his hi-fi. Long repetitive bass notes shaking Breen’s ceiling. A drone of electric guitars.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Breen.

  He looked around for a broom to bang the ceiling with, but then decided he should just go and ring the doorbell.

  The same man answered. He had a screwdriver in one hand and a cigarette in the other. ‘Oh. It’s you again.’

  ‘The music’s very loud.’

  ‘Not particularly,’ said the man.

  ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ said Breen.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So I’d appreciate it if you could turn it down a little,’ said Breen.

  The man stared at him for a little while and then said, ‘OK.’

  But when Breen went downstairs again, the music seemed just as loud, if not louder.

  The music carried on late. Breen switched on the TV. It was sport on ITV so he switched on to 24 Hours on the BBC. The usual panel of men was discussing current events. It took a few minutes before he realised the one speaking was Rhodri Pugh, though he had to turn up the volume so he could hear what he was saying.

  Something about Ulster. There was talk of rioting in Northern Ireland. Civil war, even. Someone or other had resigned in protest. A bishop said, ‘Of course, if you make concessions to extremists, that only tempts them to become more extreme.’

  Rhodri Pugh said, ‘The Home Office has not made concessions. We have simply made the necessary reforms to ensure that the government are acting in the interests of all the citizens of Ulster, not just the majority.’

  The men around him nodded slowly.

  Breen usually saved his last cigarette for this time of night. Five a day. Never more. He took out a cigarette but didn’t light it.

  The men talked about the Soviet Union, then they went on to talk about drugs, and about whether the new drug clinics were working. Somebody was saying that since they had stopped doctors dispensing drugs, the gangs were moving into the black market. ‘Prohibition never works,’ he said. The others tutted and shook their heads.

  The bishop was talking again now. ‘People tell me that drug-taking is an indication of a desire for a spiritual experience. I don’t believe that for a second. Drug-taking is merely the result of an inability to come to terms with the real world.’

  The music thumped down from above.

  ‘It is an aftermath of war. Parents are determined that nothing should be too good for the children of peace. They grow up in a world in which nothing is denied them, fed on the cretinous optimism of consumerdom.’ The bishop smiled, a line of white teeth above his neat dog-collar. ‘It’s such a deathly diet of good intentions…’

  The camera cut to Rhodri Pugh. A man whose son had been a heroin addict, whom Breen had discovered had died because of his addiction. Who refused to let anyone know about what had happened to his son in case his reputation was damaged.

  Rhodri Pugh’s face was blank. Utterly expressionless.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The young shopkeeper was hanging up record sleeves in the window with clothes pegs. Breen watched him for a second. Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, Rockin’ Pneumonia; Ramsey Lewis, Maiden Voyage; Sly and the Family Stone, A Whole New Thing. Carefully clipping each sleeve to the next, he didn’t even see Breen and Tozer standing there.

  ‘Maybe it takes a while, with the boy,’ said Tozer, stepping back to look up at the flat’s windows.

  Breen rang again and they waited, but no one came to the door.

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said.

  Breen took his finger off the bell.

  ‘Let’s ask him in the record shop,’ said Tozer.

  When they opened the door music flooded out onto the street.

  Since you’ve been gone – why’d you do it?

  Why’d you have to do it?

  The owner smiled at Tozer. She gave him a little wave.

  ‘Have you seen Mrs Prosser?’ Breen shouted above the noise.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ And he left the shop window and made his way past the record racks to the turntables at the back.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Breen when the man had turned down the volume.

  ‘Aretha Franklin?’ said Tozer.

  The man nodded. ‘The best,’ he said. ‘You after Shirley and the kid again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ve gone,’ he said.

  ‘Gone out?’

  ‘Gone. Skedaddled.’ Breen and Tozer exchanged looks. ‘Some time in the night, it must have been,’ the record shop owner said.

  The 45 he had been playing finished and the needle clunked back into the stand leaving the shop in sudden silence.

  ‘I usually pop in to say hello and see if she needs anything. Charlie likes to come down and have a little dance in the shop before the customers start coming in.’

  ‘He dances?’ said Breen.

  ‘He’s crazy. Falls over sometimes, but he loves it. You should see him. It’s super fab.’

  ‘Is he more rock than soul too?’ said Tozer.

  ‘Other way round,’ said the record shop man. ‘He loves James Brown. I was teaching him to do The Monkey.’

  ‘Never,’ said Tozer.

  ‘Go on,’ Breen interrupted.

  ‘So I went upstairs and the door was wide open. And they’d gone. She must have gone in a hurry ’cause she’s left loads of clothes in the wardrobe. And all the tins. Charlie is mad about baked beans. The cupboard is full of them. But she’d put a note on the kitchen table for me.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Just that she’d gone.’

  ‘Have you got it?’ asked Breen.

  He had folded the note and put it in the back pocket of his drainpipes. He fished it out. Written on the back of a brown envelope was a message written in pencil.

  SORRY GOT TO GO EMERGENCY HERE’S £6/10

  I OWE IN RENT PLEASE GIVE IT TO LANDLORD

  HE ALREADY HAS £12 DEPOSIT SO WERE SETTLED UP

  CHARLIE SAYS KEEP ON GETTING DOWN

  HE’LL MISS YOU SORRY FOR MESS X

  ‘The other police came yesterday?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘A few of them. They stayed for about an hour, talking to her. They weren’t as pretty as you,’ he said to Tozer.

  Tozer rolled her eyes. ‘God’s sake. Give over.’

  ‘Can we see the flat?’

  ‘Help yourself. It’s open.’ There was a side door into the shop from behind the counter. They walked up the narrow staircase.

  It was just as he’d said. There were skirts and dresses still neatly folded in the chest of drawers, but the toothbrushes were gone. There was a copy of the The Virgin Soldiers, a Dennis Wheatley novel and a children’s storybook on the bookshelf. Charlie had slept on a mattress on the floor next to his mother. She had not had time to even take the sheets. Above his head on the wall there was a drawing of Mowgli from The Jungle Book, carefully copied from the Disney cartoon.

  ‘Why did she scarper?’ asked Tozer. ‘The police yesterday?’

  ‘They would have told her her husband was dead.’ They would have asked her about Breen too. How long had they known each other. About the meal. About how long they’d walked for after. Each other’s alibis would have checked out, but didn’t mean that t
hey were both in the clear. A wife who hated her husband and a colleague who had forced the dead man out of the police, giving alibis for each other on the night of the murder.

  ‘And she was definitely with you all that time?’ said Tozer. ‘Only that’s one reason I can think of she’d want to run.’

  ‘What are you saying? Shirley killed him? She was with me all evening.’

  ‘Jesus. Keep your hair on. Just thinking out loud.’

  ‘No. She’s frightened of something else.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything when she was out with you?’ said Tozer.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I mean… Do you think she was scared that whoever killed her husband would come after her too?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  There was a dressing table in the bedroom. Alongside a hairbrush and a Yardley lipstick was a small blue address book. Breen flicked through it. There were only a few entries. He slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Christ. I mean… You think we should tell Bailey about this now?’

  They went back downstairs into the record shop. There were still no customers. ‘No forwarding address?’

  The man with the sideboards was nodding his head along to the music. ‘Nothing. Maybe the landlord has one, but I doubt it. I mean, it must have been some time real late they legged it, because I was in here stocktaking till gone nine.’

  The man picked out another record, slid it out of its paper sleeve and placed it on the turntable.

  ‘Did she have any regular visitors?’ Breen asked. ‘Anybody you’d recognise?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Not really. I felt sorry for her, being honest. It was just her and the kid.’ He took a cloth and carefully wiped the black disc, following the curve of the vinyl. ‘Is she in some kind of trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Breen.

  ‘You said not really. So maybe a couple of people?’ said Tozer.

  Breen pulled out a picture of Michael Prosser. ‘What about him?’

  The man shook his head. ‘That’s her husband, isn’t it?’

  Breen nodded.

  ‘Never him.’ The man paused. ‘One bloke. Came in here asking for her same as you.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Wore a hat.’