A Song for the Brokenhearted

by William Shaw

  ‘Pretty quiet, I suppose?’ he said. People round here would still be broke after Christmas.

  ‘Quiet, my arse,’ said the sergeant. ‘Spent half the morning filling in the Occurrence Book. Six common assaults and two wilful damages last night.’

  There was muttering. ‘Where you been living? Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘What?’ Breen looked around him and noticed the other men had marks on their faces too; scratches and cuts. One had a blackened eye.

  ‘Bloody Scotland Yard everywhere yesterday, that’s what’s going on. Looking for them bastards that nailed that Drug Squad copper. They came through here last night on batting practice, stirring up seven kinds of shit.’

  Breen said, ‘Where?’

  ‘The Rochester Castle. Broke all sorts of heads. Drug Squad are putting it about they’re offering a monkey to anyone with information on what happened to their feller. Now every snitch in London is trying to get lucky. So some fibber said it was the Dalston firm’s business.’

  ‘Five hundred quid’s just petty cash to the Drug Squad,’ said the copper with the sticking plaster.

  ‘Nobody talked to us, course. They just steamed in, closed the doors of the pub and started interrogating the regulars then and there. I mean, Christ. Shut this young guy’s fingers in a door when he gave them lip. First we heard there was trouble was a car drove past here, chucked a brick in the window, last night. Next thing it was like Gallipoli round here.’

  ‘OK for them. They bugger off back to Scotland Yard, leaving us to clear up the mess. We’re not going to hear the last of it, neither.’

  ‘There was bother all over the place, I heard. Not just our division.’

  ‘Stupid buggers. We know what’s going on round here. We got our snitches. We’d have known if it was one of our lot killed that copper. Certain.’

  More muttering. ‘They’re just kids throwing stones at a wasps’ nest.’

  A thin, dark-eyed man belched loudly.

  ‘You know what it’s like round here, Paddy. You need the goodwill of the people. This area is dangerous. Everyone knows that.’

  Breen nodded.

  ‘So have they got anyone yet?’

  People shook their heads. ‘Not from round here, anyway.’

  ‘I mean. Stands to reason they’re angry. Specially after what they did to Sergeant Milkwood.’

  People muttered. Shook their heads.

  ‘What?’ said Breen.

  ‘A mate of mine who works in the Flying Squad heard they pulled his nails out.’

  The dark-eyed man said, ‘Shut up. Never?’

  ‘They’re keeping the lid on it, but there’s all sorts of talk, isn’t there?’

  ‘Don’t go listening to talk,’ said the duty sergeant. ‘That’s what got us into this crap in the first place.’

  The room went quiet for a moment.

  ‘When you going back to work, Paddy?’

  ‘I can’t move my arm too well yet. Doctor says it’ll be a few weeks.’

  ‘Lucky you use the other one to wank with, then.’

  Even Breen joined in the laughter. Stupidity. It dispelled the sense of fear that had settled on the small room, thinking about their tortured colleague. And for a second, it distracted Breen from thinking about Helen.

  This time Carmichael picked up straight away. ‘What’s the news about Milkwood?’

  Carmichael took a long time to answer. ‘Not great.’

  ‘Jesus. They tortured him. I read it in the paper. Coppers are saying they pulled his nails out. Any idea who it was?’

  ‘I can’t talk now. It’s crazy here.’

  ‘What’s going on? The papers were saying it could be a gang thing.’

  ‘Remember those photographs I showed you? That guy who had been tortured? We’re working our way through every criminal who has a known associate who’s holed up in Spain. Turns out there’s a few. And it’s not like they’re the sort of people who take kindly to being questioned. Couple of constables got themselves beaten bloody in Camberwell just for asking. Listen, Paddy. I have to run. There’s a meeting at the pathologist’s office.’

  ‘What if I was to come and… help out?’

  A pause. Breen could hear the sound of a telex machine chomping away at a line of paper somewhere in the background. Eventually Carmichael said, ‘Paddy. Put your feet up, God’s sake.’

  Only after he had put the phone down did Breen remember the piece of paper the woman at the cinema had given him. The telephone number. But when he called Carmichael’s number back, it rang and rang and rang, unanswered.

  Later, he tried the farm again. On a weekday evening, he knew they would be sitting round the dining table in the kitchen.

  ‘Hello, Cathal. It is lovely to hear from you.’ He had been itching to get away from the farm, but it was reassuring now to hear Helen’s mother’s voice. She was one of the few people to call him by his proper name now his dad was gone.

  ‘How is Helen?’ she asked before the conversation went anywhere else. The long-distance line crackled and echoed.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said.

  ‘How is Helen?’ she asked again.

  It took him a second. Why would he know? ‘I was about to ask the same.’

  Now there was a long pause.

  Mrs Tozer said, ‘She is staying with you, is she not?’

  Breen said, ‘No.’

  Another voiceless five seconds. Then: ‘There must be a mistake,’ she said. ‘She told us she was going to stay with you for a couple of weeks.’

  Breen gripped the phone harder, shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard anything from her.’

  ‘She said you’d called and asked her to come and look after you.’

  ‘When did she leave?’

  ‘Tuesday, early.’ Breen imagined Mrs Tozer in the hallway of the old farmhouse, holding the phone, a frown on her old face. He could hear a farm dog barking in the background.

  ‘And she said she was coming to stay with me?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ she said.

  ‘Did she say why she was coming to see me?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Tozer. ‘I thought she was coming to look after you.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’s OK, Mrs Tozer,’ said Breen.

  ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I must have made a mistake, then. I’m sure she’s fine.’

  Breen stood holding the phone for a minute after she’d replaced the receiver, unsure whether he’d understood what had just happened.

  Helen had told her family she was coming to visit him. But she had not arrived. Had something happened to her on the way? The thought made his stomach lurch. He should have asked her what train she had caught.

  The high-pitched warning tone coming from his handset startled him. He banged it down hard onto the cradle.

  TWELVE

  Saturday’s pavements were crammed with people trying to get to the shops before they closed for the afternoon. He walked cautiously, trying to avoid women bustling along with their wicker shopping trolleys. He was just letting himself back in when he heard a call from the steps above him.

  ‘Wait a sec. I’ve got something for you.’

  A young woman with fair hair stood on the steps holding a shallow dish. He recognised her; she lived upstairs. Before Christmas, a couple had moved into the flat above Breen. They were young and with-it. They held parties. They bought furniture from the new Habitat shop on Tottenham Court Road.

  They had got off to a bad start, playing their music too loud, parking their car in front of his window. But then they’d discovered he was a policeman and things had improved, from his point of view at least.

  She smiled. ‘I saw you were back,’ she said, clacking down the stairs in sandals. ‘Brought you this.’

  When she reached the bottom of the steps he could see there was something dark and oblong on the dish.

  ‘It’s supposed to be a meat loaf,’ she said. ‘I made it myself.’
<
br />   She and the man she lived with were slumming it, moving in around here. He was in advertising, apparently. He wore suede Chelsea boots and yellow shirts with long lapels.

  ‘We heard you’d been… wounded,’ she said.

  She was wearing blue dungarees that had white paint on them; it was hiding a bulge. She was pregnant, he realised.

  ‘You were in hospital,’ she said, looking behind him at his flat. ‘It must have been awful. Have you just come back?’

  They would have heard about the shooting, he supposed. Word got around. They probably thought it frightfully exciting, living above someone like him. They’d have told all their rich hippie friends about it. Now she wanted all the grisly details, he guessed.

  ‘I made it myself,’ she said again, sounding less certain of herself when he didn’t speak. ‘I’m not much of a cook. It’s a little burnt on the outside. But there’s an egg in the middle.’

  Eventually he reached out and took the meat loaf from her. She stood there a few seconds longer, as if waiting for him to say something. He didn’t.

  ‘Bring the dish back any time,’ she said. ‘Just knock.’

  He closed the door on her and looked at the meat loaf. She was right. It was burnt. He could see where she’d tried to scrape away the worst bits.

  The hours dragged. At midday, he took the meat loaf out of the fridge and tried a slice.

  The end was too black and dry, so he put that into the dustbin and cut another slice. He cut another one and there was the egg she had talked about.

  Yellow dot in a white circle. A boiled egg.

  He felt nauseous. He went to the phone and dialled.

  ‘Is Sergeant Carmichael there?’

  ‘Not at his desk right now,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Get him to call Cathal Breen when he gets back.’ He spelled out the name automatically.

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Breen.

  ‘Well, either it is or it isn’t,’ said the man irritatedly.

  He threw the meat loaf into the dustbin. The doctor had told him to try and move his arm a little each day so after he’d washed up the dish he stood in the kitchen swinging his hand backwards and forwards.

  The day stretched out long ahead of him. He felt useless. He wanted to ring the farm and ask if there was any news of Helen, but if there wasn’t, he’d only be alarming them more.

  Carmichael didn’t call back until gone two.

  ‘I’ve got one minute, Paddy,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘OK. I’ve got a question. Was there anything strange about Milkwood’s body?’ he asked.

  Carmichael hesitated. ‘What have you heard? We’re not allowed to give out any details.’

  Breen said, ‘I know this sounds weird, but I’ve got to ask. I told you I heard a rumour they pulled out fingernails. Was there anything else… funny about it?’

  Carmichael said, ‘Funny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The whole thing was weird, if you ask me,’ Carmichael said.

  ‘What kind of weird?’

  Carmichael lowered his voice. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘There was something… up his arse.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Please, Paddy. Leave it alone.’

  A loud buzzing in his head. The image of Tozer’s dead sister, naked in the copse. ‘I know this is going to sound strange. But was it an egg?’

  A pause. Breen could almost hear the gasp. ‘Who the bloody hell told you that?’

  It was strange how physically the body reacted, sometimes. Blood rushed to his head. He felt as if he was far above, looking down on himself, so perilously far above that he felt weak. He dropped into his father’s old armchair, the telephone cord stretching across the room.

  ‘Paddy? What’s going on?’

  Breen said, ‘I think you better stop trying to round up gangsters in London. It’s not them.’

  ‘What do you know?’ demanded Carmichael.

  He lay his head on his knees, phone still clamped to his ear.

  ‘Give me ten minutes,’ said Breen. ‘I’ll call you back.’

  ‘No,’ Carmichael was saying, ‘stay on the line,’ as Breen stood, strode across the room and put his finger down on the cradle, cutting the call.

  The spiral cord tangled and twisted. Breen held the end nearest the telephone up and watched the handset spin, as the kinks in the wire unwound. When it had slowed and he had caught his breath, Breen put the handset to his ear and dialled the farm.

  Old man Tozer picked up the phone before Breen had heard it ring, which was unusual in itself.

  ‘Hel?’ he said.

  ‘No. Sorry. It’s me. Cathal,’ said Breen.

  ‘Paddy?’ Old man Tozer hardly ever touched the phone. ‘You heard anything from our Hel?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Another voice in the background: Mrs Tozer. She took the phone from her husband.

  ‘What’s going on, Mrs Tozer?’ said Breen.

  ‘We’ve still not heard anything from Helen. Though I’m sure everything’s fine,’ she said.

  ‘She left the farm shortly after me. And you’ve not heard from her since?’

  ‘You know what she’s like, Cathal.’ But he could hear the anxiety in her voice.

  ‘And you have no idea where she may have gone?’

  ‘Like I said last time, she said she was coming to visit you.’

  ‘Is Hibou there? Let me speak to her.’

  He could hear Mrs Tozer shuffling away, opening a door, calling Hibou’s name. She would be out somewhere on the farm.

  It was at least two minutes before the girl came to the phone; she was panting. ‘Paddy? What is it?’

  ‘What is going on?’

  ‘I don’t know, Paddy. She just upped and went.’ She whispered into the phone, as if she didn’t want the Tozers to hear what she was saying. ‘They’re really upset. It’s like it’s happening all over again. You know. Like Helen’s sister. Her dad’s been going down to the spinney, poking around in there like he’s looking for her. It’s weird.’

  ‘And you have no idea at all where she’s gone?’

  Hibou was quiet.

  ‘You know something? If you do, it’s vital you tell me.’

  ‘Thing is, I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a promise.’

  ‘No, Hibou. You have to. This is really, really important. Whatever she made you promise, believe me, you have to tell me.’

  Hibou said, ‘Sorry, Paddy. I can’t. She’s the one who looked after me back in London. The only one.’

  Breen held his breath for a minute. Closed his eyes.

  ‘I have to go, Paddy. I’m cleaning the milking machine.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ve got to go. Honest.’

  ‘Are Mr and Mrs Tozer with you?’

  ‘No. They’ve gone into the kitchen.’

  ‘Listen to me. Remember I told you I didn’t love her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were right. I wasn’t telling you the truth. Of course I do.’

  ‘Knew it,’ Hibou said.

  ‘And I think she’s in real trouble. Really, really serious trouble. She may have done something… stupid. I’m the only person who can help her. Honestly. You have to believe me. But I need to know where she was going.’

  ‘She never said that,’ said Hibou. ‘Just said she was going and she’d be in touch.’

  ‘If she didn’t say where, what did she say, then?’

  Hibou sighed, then said, ‘She made me promise to look after the farm on my own for a few days. She didn’t know how long she was going to be. She said she was going to do something–’ she lowered her voice–‘bad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She didn’t say exactly.’ She whispered, ‘Something bad. Something that would make you an
gry with her. So she had to do it on her own.’

  Breen felt panic.

  ‘Paddy? You still there?’

  ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘She must have said something.’

  ‘Don’t shout at me.’

  Had he been shouting? ‘I’m sorry. I just really need to know where she is.’

  ‘That’s all she said. I promise. Sorry.’

  Breen shut his eyes tight. His head was buzzing. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. And she put the phone down without saying anything else.

  The phone started ringing the moment Breen put it down. It would be Carmichael, Breen knew, desperate to find out what he knew about Milkwood’s murder.

  He didn’t answer for a while. Just sat there listening to the phone ringing and ringing, head in his hands, thinking of what to do. Then he picked up the phone.

  ‘I need to talk to you, John,’ he said. ‘In private.’

  THIRTEEN

  Breen made it to Joe’s All Night Bagel Shop just before the rain started. There was a new sign up: ‘Buy Our Bagels. We Knead the Dough.’

  A young woman with thick, pale arms beneath her rolled-up sleeves was frying onions behind the counter. It was Joe’s daughter.

  ‘You look rubbish,’ she said. ‘Have you lost weight?’

  ‘I’ve been off sick,’ said Breen.

  ‘Something serious?’

  Breen said, ‘Not really. How’s your dad?’

  ‘Not too good,’ she said, pushing the browning onions around the pan. Joe had had a stroke in November. He sat at home now talking angrily in sentences no one could understand.

  Breen ordered a coffee though they only served instant. She took the pan off the heat and opened the big tin and spooned the brown powder into a cup.

  ‘I thought you hated this place,’ said Breen.

  ‘I do,’ she said, putting the mug under the urn. ‘It’s a dump. I’d sell up if it was just me.’

  ‘It’s not so bad.’

  ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘You been seeing that girl, I heard. The policewoman.’

  Breen shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s working out.’