The Kings of London (20 page)

He was exhausted by the time he made it home. He ran a bath and lay in it, hoping that warm water would soothe the swelling in his foot.

His body lay pale in the warm water.

Once he’d been muscular and lean. Sitting at a desk all day meant his body was softer now, less well defined. Like life, really. He picked up the soap and washed until the water was milky and he could no longer see his limbs.

From above, the thumping of rock music started again.

In the morning, taking the milk bottle off the step, he noticed the black car sitting in front of his window. Breen tried to ignore it. It was just a car. Other tenants had come and gone.

He limped back down the steps. This morning he cooked himself porridge, adding a pinch of salt. He stewed some hard plums that would never ripen. Bowl in hand, he pinned two sheets of paper to the back of the bedroom door, one with Michael Prosser’s name on it, the other with Johnny Knight’s. Under Michael Prosser he wrote, ‘Shot.’ On Knight’s page he wrote a large question mark.

He took a roll of old wallpaper and sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and transcribed lists from the notebooks onto the paper. Addresses of people who’d written to Knight. Dates when the letters had been sent. He was just trying to put the dates into some kind of order when the doorbell rang.

It was the postman with a box, wrapped up in brown paper. ‘Bloody Christmas. Does my back in,’ he said as he handed it over.

Back inside, Breen opened the parcel. A bottle of single malt whisky with a note written in neat italic. ‘Rhodri Pugh asked me to send you this, with sincere thanks for all your work.’ It was signed, ‘Oliver Tarpey.’

Breen considered pouring it straight down the sink, but didn’t.

He crunched up the notepaper and threw it into the bin, then went to staring at the figures he’d written on the wallpaper, lists of numbers and addresses, willing them to reveal something, but they didn’t.

Walking was good. It loosened up his bruised foot. And it felt good to get away from the black car and the rock music.

His father had liked to walk. Some Sundays they had packed cheese sandwiches and caught trains to Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Surrey, his father holding an Ordnance Survey map in one hand and a stick to push back brambles in the other, Cathal trailing yards behind, claiming his legs were tired. Always seeming to be disappointed by the English countryside, his father muttered about the way the farmers here kept their cattle, or the way the fields were too flat.

Breen walked down to Kingsland Basin and on to the Regent’s Canal heading west. The path was narrow and muddy. At times it seemed to disappear entirely into dead weeds. There had been boats working the canal when he had been a child, dark-skinned men at the tiller, but they were all gone now. But at Camden Lock a few canal boats sat on the black water, smoke rising from chimneys. He hadn’t realised people still lived on the water. But when he saw the people in them they were long-haired and bearded. One boat was painted with mad swirls in red and green.

The old buildings alongside the canal were dirty and rotten. A few machine shops, a laundry, a garage. Bricks with failing mortar. Gutters hanging off walls. Slime from where the water dripped down the render.

All the pale concrete the GLC were laying down didn’t seem enough to hide the wreckage of the city.

A mile later he emerged into Regent’s Park near the zoo and continued over towards Francis Pugh’s house. A pointless itch he couldn’t resist scratching. He walked up and down the street a couple of times, looking around, waiting for something to strike him. Winter had made the site where his house had stood look desolate.

Dead men were forgotten. London was obsessed with what was happening.

He noticed the next-door neighbour’s curtains move. The elderly actor who had lived next door to Pugh was peering out at him. Breen waved at the man, and he retreated letting the curtains fall back, as if embarrassed to be mistaken for a nosy parker.

He should go home, Breen thought. He should take advantage of the time and redecorate his flat. Or maybe move out and find somewhere new. Somewhere bright and fresh, like Johnny Knight’s house.

He found himself walking down the old man’s footpath, knocking on his door. ‘Is it the policeman again?’ he said. ‘Come inside. It’s so cold out there.’

Even inside, he was wearing an overcoat. His glasses were smeary with grease. ‘Have you found the man who killed Mr Pugh?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Breen said, avoiding explanation. ‘I wanted to ask about the squatters behind his house.’

‘Awful,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t mind the noise. I don’t sleep much anyway. It’s just the general lowering of the tone. And they dress so very badly. It’s as if they’re contemptuous of quality,’ he said. The living room was warmed by an electric fire in the fireplace. Breen looked at the crack in the wall; it looked bigger than he remembered it.

‘Noise?’

‘They play guitars. They chant oriental mumbo-jumbo at all hours. Absurd. I mean they’re not Hindus, are they? They’re English. They really shouldn’t be there, should they? Your lot were going to evict them and then nothing happened.’

‘What?’

‘The squatters. They were supposed to be evicted back in July, so the bailiffs said. And then nothing at all. It’s all going to the dogs.’

‘Do you know who owns the house?’ said Breen.

‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘Do you have any cigarettes, dear? I’m right out.’

Breen had only smoked two from his packet, but he gave the man the whole box.

‘You’re a godsend,’ he said. ‘An angel of mercy.’

Back out on the road he wished he had not given the whole packet away.

He was standing at the corner, where Marlborough Place met Abbey Road, hands in his pockets, when he saw the girl he had seen at the squat walk past. The one who called herself Hibou, according to Tozer. The one he had spied on in the garden. She was wearing a long Afghan coat and a knitted hat.

He wondered if he should talk to her. He could easily catch up. She was moving slowly. In a world of her own. He started following her.

She loped south, steadily, hair swinging with each step. At almost six foot tall, she was easy to follow. Breen stayed a decent distance behind.

At Hall Road she turned west, past the red-brick mansion houses. It was a quiet street, so Breen dropped even further behind. She stopped to lean down and stroke a tabby cat, but only for a second, as if she could not spare the time.

At Maida Vale she turned south again and, as the pavements became busier, Breen risked walking ten yards behind, though she didn’t stop to look behind her.

She reached a bus stop and stood there, waiting, occasionally checking her watch. Breen stood a little way off until the bus came, then boarded it only as it was about to move off.

She took a seat upstairs, so Breen stood at the front of the lower level looking backwards so he could see when she descended again.
It meant he was facing all the passengers. ‘Buy Kellogg’s Sugar-Sweet Cereals Today!’ read the advert above their heads. As the bus turned into Euston Road, Breen flashed his warrant card at the bus conductor, who nodded back at him.

She got off at Warren Street and walked to University College Hospital. He followed, still a few paces behind, to the Out-Patients department. The rows of chairs were filling with young people, some long-haired. Some looked as if they must be sleeping in squats, like Hibou. Some looked anxious. None were talking to each other.

The young woman spoke to a nurse on a desk for a minute. As she turned away, Breen lowered his head and pretended to tie a shoelace. By the time he straightened up again, she was sitting a few rows in front, her back towards him. Breen wished he had brought a paper or a book. Something to hide behind, at least.

Breen watched. One by one, the nurse called out names and the people disappeared into a room to the left of the desk. One by one they emerged after a couple of minutes, clutching small white paper bags. Eventually the nurse called, ‘Miss Curtis?’ Hibou stood and walked into the consulting room.

When she was safely inside, door closed behind her, Breen marched over to the nurse’s station. ‘Miss Curtis?’ he asked, holding up his warrant card for her to see. The nurse looked wary. ‘The woman who just went in?’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s her first name?’

The nurse said, ‘You can’t just walk in like this… These people are patients. It’s confidential. If they see the police just barging in here, what do you think—’

‘It’s important,’ said Breen.

‘No.’

Her phone rang. Her eyes were turned away only for a second, but for long enough to get a good look at the ledger. When she saw what he was looking at she slammed it shut.

‘You are not allowed to see that,’ the nurse said shrilly.

‘OK,’ said Breen. ‘I was just asking.’

Hibou wasn’t in the consulting room long. She emerged and when she saw Breen still standing in front of the nurse’s station, her eyes widened. She must have recognised him from the day he and Jones had tried to talk to the people at the squat.

She turned and walked away rapidly. Approaching the exit, she broke into a trot.

Outside the hospital, it was already growing dark. He felt a little better. He had enjoyed the chase, however pointless. Breen reached into his mackintosh, took out a notebook and wrote: ‘Curtis?’ He had not been able to see the name properly. But he had seen her date of birth. He wrote ‘17/1/52’. He did the maths and realised with a shock that Hibou was only sixteen years old.

He remembered the way he had looked at the curve of her breast. She was a child, he thought. Half his age. Someone who should still be at school.

He returned the notebook to his pocket. That was worst of it in some ways. They had taken so many of his notebooks. He was worried he was missing something. Facts needed context. They were useless on their own.

On the long walk home he stopped in at Connor’s Hardware and bought a pack of five reporter’s notebooks.

He woke early on Tuesday and spent an hour at his kitchen table with a mug of coffee trying to recreate the notes they had taken. Pointless, really.

Before breakfast he did press-ups in the living room. He had never taken much exercise before, but maybe now was the time to start. He felt pale and flabby, and the winter had barely started. After fifteen press-ups, he flopped down onto the living-room carpet, panting.

His father had had a builder’s arms. Thick and muscular. Liverspotted from working outdoors. Maybe he should get a bicycle, he
thought, still prostrate on the floor. That’s when he noticed the balls of dust. He had used a dustpan and brush to clear up after the fire, but the carpet under his bookshelf was still filthy. How long had it been like that?

He spent the next half-hour hoovering the house. His Hoover was one of those with a light at the front. After the living room he had to empty the bag, dropping the dust into the bin outside. When he clanged the bin lid back on, the curtains upstairs opened. A man’s face peered out, pointed at his watch.

Breen checked his wrist. It was still only 7.30 in the morning. Breen smiled back at him. A small wave.

Cleaning under his father’s bed, the machine clunked into something. Kneeling down he saw something reflecting in the Hoover’s light. An ancient biscuit tin. He hooked it out with one of his father’s old walking sticks. The red Huntley & Palmers tin was crammed with old notes: ten-shillings, pounds, fivers and even a few tenners. He counted the money out on the kitchen table. It came to three hundred and eleven pounds.

As his father’s brain had gone he had become a hoarder. He had tucked this stash away for years and forgotten about it. Breen put the tin in the kitchen cupboard, behind cans of tomatoes.

Bored. Nothing to do.

How could people bear not working? The empty hours. The lack of purpose. The sheer blandness of the everyday. He missed his job. It was what he did. What he was.

He thought of Danny, Marilyn’s feckless boyfriend. Danny hadn’t worked in months. Spent his day sitting around her flat and still expected her to cook for him in the evenings. He thought of Shirley. Where had she gone? She had no way of contacting him, he realised.

He went back to the kitchen table and found the photograph of Johnny Knight and his sister that he’d taken from the house full of flies. He stared at them both. On the fresh page of a notebook, he started
to sketch him. Added a moustache. Changed the length of his hair. Turned another page. Did it over again. And again. He drew Shirley. More vivid than her brother. Hair up and hair down. Profile and then from an angle, with bare shoulders and a small smile on her face.

Then, from memory, he drew the man from the burnt house. His memory of the photographs that had been taken from his in-tray along with everything else. The exposed teeth. The curve of the hairless head. The blackened skin.

Drawing was strange. Sometimes the pencil breathed life into a picture without you even realising it. He tore out the page and held it up, his head on one side. Not bad.

He pinned it next to Pugh’s print. The dots. If he had a house like Johnny Knight’s, all glass and cool white paint, the Bridget Riley print would look right in it. Here it just looked stupid.

That afternoon, kicking his heels, he went up to the library and asked if they knew of any life-drawing classes. He considered borrowing some books, but he didn’t. Unlike his father, he had never enjoyed reading.

He walked round Abney Park Cemetery for a while as the winter light thinned. Then along to Clissold Park. He didn’t want to go home. Home reminded him there was nothing to do. Why hadn’t Scotland Yard been in touch? They had not returned to check his alibi: did they have another suspect in the Prosser murder? Were they getting anywhere? Or were they just dragging their feet, waiting for Christmas?

When he got back to the cul-de-sac he could hear his phone ringing inside the flat. It took him a while to get the keys from his trouser pocket, and then the lock in his new front door wouldn’t open. When he finally got in, he snatched up the telephone. ‘Cathal Breen,’ he said.