by William Shaw
The front-room curtain twitched and the woman peered out, waiting for them to leave. ‘Get off!’ She banged on the glass. ‘Or I’ll call the police.’
Breen said, ‘Let’s take a look at the town and come back later.’
‘Can we find somewhere warm?’ said Tozer.
To the east, the seafront was a wide curve of yellow sand. They walked along the road alongside the beach, past the big amusement park with the sign that read ‘DREAMLAND’. The rollercoaster rising slowly, all giggles and shouts. Then the sudden descent of underdressed teenage girls screaming into the wind as it clattered round the wooden tracks. Beyond it was a parade of shops. They found a cafe in an arcade, filled with the clatter of pinball machines and the wail of pop music. A couple of lads were sitting drinking tea at a yellow Formica table. Both had identical short hair and long sideboards. Trousers that ended an inch above their boots. One of them wore braces over a check shirt, sleeves rolled up despite the cold.
‘What you looking at?’ he said.
Breen ordered two hot chocolates and sipped his, slowly looking out of the window at the wind whipping foam off the cold sand.
‘It’s a bit like Torquay,’ said Tozer. ‘Only worse.’ She dug around in her bag for a cigarette, pulling out the novel she’d been reading on the train. ‘Why would she have come to a dump like this? I mean… It would be OK in summer.’
‘She’s frightened of something.’ Breen picked up the book. Valley of the Dolls. ‘Any good?’ he asked.
‘Not really. Only bought it because all the girls in the section house are reading it. It’s about sex and drugs,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘But mostly sex.’
She found the packet of cigarettes and lit one.
‘When you went to the doctor yesterday,’ said Breen, ‘and Jonesy… said he thought you were pregnant.’
Tozer’s face stiffened. ‘What?’
‘I was thinking: what if you were? I mean, we did it, didn’t we?’
‘It? What’s “it”?’
‘You know. And we were both a bit drunk.’
‘Made love?’ she said.
The two bootboys looked interested for the first time.
‘Yes.’
‘So you thought I was pregnant too?’
Breen glared back at the two lads until they looked away, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t know what I thought,’ said Breen. ‘That’s the point.’
‘I bloody hate that,’ said Tozer. ‘All you lot talking about me behind my back.’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ protested Breen.
‘Precisely. Maybe you bloody should have,’ said Tozer. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘I’ll come too,’ said Breen.
She stood. ‘I want to be on my own for ten minutes, OK?’ said Tozer. ‘Stretch my legs.’
‘Right,’ said Breen, sitting back down again.
The two bootboys had their heads together, whispering, glancing at Breen. A third lad came in and joined them briefly to cadge a cigarette. He was dressed similarly, though his trousers were turned up even higher, showing a pair of red socks above a pair of second-hand army boots. Comical and scary at the same time.
Since when did every young working-class man have to belong to a tribe? Breen finished his sickly hot chocolate and went to play at one of the pinball machines. It was called ‘Football Fun’ and Breen didn’t have much idea what he was doing with the flippers. Five balls disappeared down the hole in no time. He put in another shilling and tried it again, learning to press the flippers just as the balls were about to land on them, sending the ball bearing careening back up the machine into the bumpers. On his third shilling he realised there was a girl standing behind him.
This time he kept the first ball bouncing up in the machine for at least a minute before it disappeared between the flippers.
‘You’re useless,’ said the girl. She looked about twelve. Dumpy, greasy hair, jeans and a baggy red jumper, smoking a cigarette and chewing gum at the same time.
‘No I’m not,’ said Breen.
‘Give me your next ball and I’ll get you a replay.’
‘Get your own machine,’ said Breen, and released another ball. The silver ball sailed up, hit one of the bumpers and spat straight back towards him before he could reach it with his flippers, disappearing back into the machine.
‘Completely crap,’ said the girl to herself. Then, louder: ‘Never done it before, have you?’
Breen said, ‘Go on then. Show me how it’s done if you think you’re better.’ And he let her have his next ball.
She took a puff of her cigarette and handed him the stub. ‘You can have the rest if you like,’ she said.
He looked at the fag-end in his hand and said, ‘Thanks.’
‘’s OK.’ As soon as he was sure she was concentrating on the machine, he dropped the cigarette end on the floor.
Her focus was totally on the ball, watching it zing around the machine. Click, bleep, ching, bleep. GOAL. GOAL. GOAL. A pink bubble of gum escaped her lips. He watched the bubble growing as her fingers twitched on either side of the machine, lights flashing, numbers clicking round on the dials.
‘Fanny’s got a new boyfriend.’
Breen looked around. The two bootboys were looking at them, laughing.
‘Flap off,’ said the girl.
‘Oi, mister! We’ll tell her brother you’re trying to cop off with Fanny.’
‘My name’s not Fanny,’ said the girl.
‘Yes it is, Fanny. Fanny Flap-Off.’
‘Watch it, mister. Her brother’s a wrestler. He’s fought Mick McManus. He’ll come and rip your ears off.’
‘How old are you?’ Breen asked the girl they were calling Fanny.
‘I’m fourteen,’ said the girl. She was still concentrating on the machine.
‘I bet you’re here every day, aren’t you?’
‘See? He’s trying to pick you up, Fanny.’
‘Most days.’
‘I’m looking for someone. Have you seen a spastic boy around town this last week or so?’
She turned her head. ‘Them two –’ she jerked it at the two boys – ‘they’re spazzers.’ A moment’s lack of concentration. The ball spun and was gone. Game over. ‘You bloody messed up my bloody game,’ she said.
‘You chucking him already, Fanny?’
‘Lover’s tiff.’
‘It was my game, if you remember,’ said Breen.
‘Got another shilling, mister?’ asked the girl. ‘I’ll play doubles with you.’
‘Oooh. Playing doubles with Fanny now. Know what that means?’
‘Flap off, you morons.’ She stuck her tongue behind her bottom gums.
Breen said, ‘The boy’s about ten years old. You’d know him if you saw him.’
‘Give me a shilling and I’ll tell you.’
Breen handed over a shilling. ‘Well?’ he said.
She pushed him aside, took the shilling, put it in the machine again and started to play. ‘No. Never seen him. You his dad?’
‘No.’
‘Why you looking for him then?’ And she pressed the button marked ‘Single Play’ and was lost in the machine again.
‘Yeah. Why you looking for a spaz, anyway?’
Breen turned. It was one of the boys.
‘This dump is dead in winter. Nobody comes here in their right mind. Only spazzers. Shouldn’t be hard to find him.’
The other one – check shirt and braces – said, ‘He walk like this?’ And started to hobble round, toe of right boot on the floor, dragging it behind him. He stuck his tongue behind his lower lip and opened his eyes wide.
‘Why?’ said Breen.
The other one was doubled up. ‘Is that your dad when he’s on the whisky?’ He laughed. He began flapping his limbs about too.
‘Only there’s a lad like that I seen walking on the beach with his mam just now.’
He pointed north, out to sea.
Outside, a gust of wind sent an old newspaper page flying up above his head. It circled, then hung in the air before another blasted it away over the roofs. Breen clutched at the collar of his coat and wished he’d brought a scarf.
He walked across the sand. It was damp from the rain. The beach was wide and empty. When had he last walked on a beach? His father had taken him to Brighton once. They had stood on the shingle in bare feet eating ice creams and looking at the crashing waves. He had wanted to swim, but his father had forgotten to bring any trunks. ‘Go in in your pants,’ said his father in his thick Kerry brogue. ‘Nobody will mind.’
Breen had sat throwing stones, ashamed his country-born father would even suggest such a thing.
The wind tasted of salt. Beyond the tideline the sand changed from from irregular mounds to smooth, dark ripples. There were few footprints. It was too cold for most walkers.
Large indentations made by heavy boots. Smaller ones nearby – a woman’s presumably. Then another woman’s, with a dog’s paw prints alongside. Had that been the woman he had just seen out walking her dog?
He made his way closer to the light line of spume.
He didn’t find them until he reached the water’s edge, but the prints were clear. A woman walking next to a boy. His right foot dragged, creating a pattern that looked like a line of shallow ‘m’s. The pair had been walking east, away from the boarding house. The waves of the incoming tide were already rippling over the marks on the flat sand.
He scanned the beach, but the only people he could see were an old couple walking hand in hand towards the Harbour Arm. Looking back towards the town, he scanned the pavements for any sign of Tozer.
A wave splashed against his feet. Cold water filled his left shoe.
‘Damn,’ he said loudly.
Where would you go in a seaside town if you had little money and a boy you had to look after all day? The footsteps were leading towards the old town.
Breen found the library in a red-brick building in the old streets.
The librarian was in her mid-sixties, hair pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head. She held a red biro in one hand and said, in a hushed voice, ‘I don’t let them in here. They came once.’
‘Why not?’
‘They made too much noise.’
An elderly man brought a pair of books and placed them on the desk in front of her. The librarian pulled the cards out of the books, stamped them, then handed them back.
Breen said, ‘Too much noise?’
‘Well, I suppose you have to feel sorry for him. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know how to talk quietly,’ she said. ‘But you can’t have it, can you?’
Her pink lipstick had leaked into the creases around her mouth. ‘He should be in a home, really. It’s not fair on the poor lad.’ She strode away from the desk, calling loudly, ‘Closing in five minutes.’
Breen turned to go. ‘I seen him a couple of times,’ said the elderly man.
‘The boy?’
‘That woman’s a cow,’ said the man, nodding at the librarian.
‘I heard you,’ said the librarian. ‘I’m not having that in my library.’
‘Poor lad,’ said the man. ‘He was no trouble.’
‘You know him?’ said Breen.
‘No talking.’
‘It’s not your ruddy library anyway,’ said the man.
‘I can ban you too, you know.’
‘Hard to miss him, really.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Matinee at two,’ he said. ‘It’s warm in there. He’s there some days with his mum.’
Breen looked at his watch. It was twenty to two now. ‘Where’s the cinema?’ he asked.
‘Shh,’ said the librarian.
Carry On Up the Khyber and King Kong Escapes. Double bill. ‘Enlist in a World of Laughter’, said the poster. Cheap British pap padded out with some dubbed Japanese flick. Now they were putting films on TV on Saturday afternoons, cinemas were dying on their feet.
Breen stood in the lobby behind a pillar, watching the audience file in. As a boy, he had sneaked coins out of his father’s milk-money tin to watch thrillers in the Hammersmith Odeon. It was a brash, loud place, compared to the infuriating quietness of the house he shared with his father. He’d loved it. His father had been disappointed by a boy who showed little interest in books.
The two skinheads came past, all smiles. ‘You found him?’
‘No,’ said Breen.
‘We saw that cripple just now. He was in the queue outside. We told his ma you was looking for him. Should have seen the look she give us. Do we get a reward or something?’
But Breen was already pushing past them. A mum was making her way slowly through the swing door with two small children, each sucking on a lollipop. He had to wait while the boys dawdled in the doorway before he could make it outside. There was a box office in the wall of the cinema. The queue was about twenty people long, but by the time he reached it there was no sign of Shirley or Charlie.
Breen started to run. Which way though? How fast could Charlie Prosser move with his gammy leg? He reached the end of the street, but there was no sign of them, so he turned and ran back the other way.
The small streets of the old fishing town confused him. Which was south?
Dodging between pedestrians, he tripped over a wicker shopping trolley, sending cans rolling into the road. ‘Watch where you’re ruddy going!’ a woman shouted.
A couple of boys came clattering down the pavement on roller skates, forcing Breen into the road. A car honked.
Round the corner.
Look left and right. No sign. And where was bloody Tozer when he needed her?
Breen stood there, panting.
And noticed heads turning up ahead. People laughing.
Breen ran towards them.
He could see from twenty yards away that Charlie was on the ground – panting, eyes wild. He must have tripped. ‘Shirley!’ shouted Breen.
She didn’t turn; she was lifting her son. ‘Help!’ she shouted.
‘Shirley!’
People stood around, not knowing what to do.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Oh,’ said Shirley Prosser. ‘It’s you. I thought…’
Charlie was crying, trying not to, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Who did you think I was?’
‘How was I to bloody know?’ said Shirley.
The crowd of shoppers paused, stared a little more, muttered, then moved on.
And suddenly Tozer was there too, arm around Charlie. ‘You OK? I saw you running. You can’t half shift.’
‘Where were you?’ said Breen. He hadn’t seen her appearing out of the crowd.
‘I was looking for you, weren’t I? Say sorry to Charlie, Paddy,’ said Tozer. ‘You frightened him.’
‘What?’ said Breen. ‘I needed you and you disappeared.’
‘No need to be shirty. Say sorry. He thought you were someone bad, didn’t you, Charlie? That’s why they ran. He was scared.’
Breen looked from Tozer to Charlie. ‘Sorry, Charlie. It was a misunderstanding. I just need to talk to your mother, that’s all.’
Charlie shook his head from side to side, a gob of dribble on his chin.
‘He doesn’t like you,’ his mother said. She stood there, arms folded, looking at Breen suspiciously, still not convinced. ‘What do you need to talk to me about?’ She was different. Stiffer. More cautious.
‘I meant it. I’m sorry we gave you a fright,’ said Breen.
Shirley nodded. Her skin was grey; she was thinner than she had been last time he had seen her. Her hair was greasy and unwashed.
‘You found out where I was?’
‘Yes. Helen did.’
‘Why?’
‘You were going to the cinema, weren’t you?’
Charlie glared.
‘So why doesn’t Helen here take you to see the film? That way I can talk to your mum.’
Charlie looked at Tozer suspiciously.
‘I’d like that, Charlie,’ Tozer said. ‘And you could get your breath back.’
‘What about?’ said Shirley.
Breen paused. A plastic windmill fluttered in the wind outside a newsagent. Here on the street, with her son next to her, he couldn’t explain why he thought her brother was dead. ‘Something important,’ said Breen.
Shirley bit her lip. ‘OK. Fancy that, Charlie? Going to the flicks with Helen? It might be nice, mightn’t it?’ She leaned forward and kissed her son gently on the forehead. ‘I’m sorry, lovely. Didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Get off,’ Charlie mumbled. ‘Not scared,’ he said.
After Tozer and Charlie had disappeared into the auditorium, he and Shirley found a bench in the foyer. There were sweet wrappers all over the floor. A dollop of dropped ice cream.
‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ said Breen. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’
She nodded.
‘It’s probably not the right time to say it, but I enjoyed going out with you. It was good.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
They sat awkwardly, side by side. ‘You should have got in touch with me, at least. Let me know where you were. I’ve been worried.’
She gave a small, sad laugh. ‘You’ve been worried? I’m sorry! I’ve been scared out of my wits.’
‘Because you know who killed him?’
She shook her head. No words.
‘No idea at all?’
‘The other police asked me that. Over and over,’ she said.
‘No suspicion of anyone?’
She looked at him fiercely. ‘What about you, Paddy? Did you kill him?’
Breen shook his head. ‘No. God, no. I was with you when he was shot.’
She nodded again, as if she accepted this.
‘I want to find out who did. After he left the police he didn’t tell anyone where he went. Why was he hiding? Was he scared of something?’
She looked away.
‘I think he must have been frightened,’ she said. ‘If you’re a policeman, no one can touch you. But once you’re on your own, it’s different.’
Breen frowned. Leaving the police meant that Prosser had no longer been safe. So had he, in some way, been responsible for Prosser’s death by forcing him to leave the police force? Did she hold him responsible for that?
