The Kings of London (24 page)

‘Paddy? Where did you go to?’

‘I’m not supposed to be in the office. I had to get out. Is Tozer back?’

‘Not a whiff of her. She should have been in yonks ago. If she’s going to be out all morning she should bloody call, shouldn’t she?’ Marilyn lowered her voice. ‘I spoke to Bailey’s wife. She cried and everything. What happened, Paddy? Bloody hell.’

‘Maybe you should ask Jones about that.’

‘I know he’s a bit difficult, Bailey, but he’s a good man. No one here seems that bothered about it, though.’ She was whispering now. ‘It’s almost as if they’re glad it happened. And that bloke who died. I mean… Right here. Where I work. That shakes you up a bit.’

A schoolboy in cap and shorts, knees red from the cold, was being dragged along the pavement by a heavily pregnant woman. He was scuffing his shoes, snivelling about something. Breen watched the woman struggling with the child and with the weight in her belly.

‘I mean,’ Marilyn was saying, ‘everyone knows we rough people up a bit. It’s only to be expected…’

It would be typical of Tozer to have kept it to herself. Breen thought about being a father. What it would be like to be a father? His own father. Distant. Well-meaning. Stuffy. A formal handshake at the school gates in front of all the giggling boys. The smell of shaving soap.

She would probably want an abortion, he supposed. Like Pugh’s women. They were legal now, after all. How did it work? How did they kill it? Men knew so little. He imagined shiny surgical instruments. Huge syringes sucking blood and membrane. He was engulfed by a very Catholic sense of horror that he did not even know he was capable of until that moment.

‘Paddy?’ said Marilyn. ‘You still there? I worry about you, Paddy. Are you coping on your own? You didn’t look so good this morning.’

But the pips went.

‘No more change,’ said Breen, though he still had more in his pocket.

After he’d replaced the receiver he watched the pregnant woman and her boy through the dirty glass of the phone box. They were standing on the edge of the pavement, still searching for a gap in the morning traffic.

He watched them cross the road, the mother still pulling the boy along behind her. When they reached the opposite pavement he spotted Tozer, just a few yards away from them, striding towards the police station.

He called her name across the busy road.

She paused. Looked around a second, then walked on, as if thinking she must have imagined it.

Breen ran into the road. A man on a motorbike swerved, swearing at him. A coach, coming slowly the other way, blocked his view of her. By the time it had gone she had disappeared.

He stood on the pavement, looking left and right. She finally emerged from a newsagent, unwrapping a new packet of Juicy Fruit.

‘Paddy?’ She smiled. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I think I figured out what happened to Johnny Knight,’ he said.

‘Come to the canteen,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you a coffee. You look frozen.’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m not supposed to be there. I need to talk. You got a minute?’

‘I’m doing naff all,’ she said. ‘They don’t give me anything worth doing.’

They walked to Manchester Square, grey but for the lights from the modern office block on the north-east corner.

‘See that?’ She nodded towards the north-west side of the square. ‘That’s the Beatles’ record company.’ There was a commissionaire standing on the door to shoo out any fans who tried to get in. ‘I used to dream of seeing that,’ she said.

Moving through the square, they headed towards a large red house at the north side of the square, a dusty public art gallery that had survived from the last century. All the time he’d worked in Marylebone, Breen had never even realised it was here. They found the warmest room, huge, with faded red silk wallpaper and dozens of paintings in curly gilt frames. Heat pouring from the big cast-iron radiators.

‘What?’ said Tozer.

It took a while for Breen to stop shivering. ‘You remember when we broke into Johnny Knight’s house?’

He held up a notebook and pointed to a date in it – ‘11 September 1968’ – and a note: ‘Second class’.

‘See?’

She looked at him. ‘No.’

He rubbed his stiff fingers on the metal of the radiator. ‘It was the oldest postmark on the letters.’

‘So?’

‘The eleventh is two days before my father died. Don’t you get it?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t see what this has got to do with your father, Paddy.’

He was not explaining things properly. He tried again. ‘The oldest letter tells us when Johnny Knight was last at his house.’

‘I’m lost, Paddy.’

A woman attendant came into the gallery and glared at them, then sat in a small wooden chair against the opposite wall.

‘If a second-class letter was posted on the eleventh, it would have arrived on the thirteenth, right? The day my father died.’

Breen’s fingers were aching now. He pulled them away and blew on them.

‘So Johnny Knight didn’t come home on the thirteenth?’

‘That’s it.’

The woman opposite them reached below and pulled knitting out of a bag.

‘The dead man in Carlton Vale,’ said Breen.

It took three or four seconds. ‘God,’ said Tozer. The burnt man.

The woman with the knitting tutted. Her needles started to flick from side to side. Click-clack, click-clack.

‘But that’s just coincidence. I mean… You can’t know it was Johnny Knight. He just disappeared on the same day.’

A party of schoolchildren burst into the room in blazers and grey cloth caps, nattering to each other.

‘No talking.’ The teacher, a thin woman in tweed, scolded her charges. They fell silent. ‘
The Laughing Cavalier
by Frans Hals,’ she announced. ‘See how his eyes follow you around the room?’

‘Three things,’ Breen told Tozer. ‘One. Wellington said there was concrete dust on the man’s trousers. I’d always assumed he was a labourer. But quantity surveyors work on building sites, don’t they?’

‘Miss?’ said one of the children. ‘That man in the picture is wearing a dress.’

‘Silence,’ ordered the teacher.

‘Two,’ said Breen. ‘I was put on the case with Prosser. But Prosser warned me off it. He told me not to waste my time on it. Whenever I tried to investigate it he nudged me away.’

‘Everyone told you to let it go, Paddy. Not just Prosser. We were worried you were going mental about the case ’cause of your dad.’

The schoolchildren were sitting cross-legged on the floor with their exercise books and pencils now.

‘I know, and that’s true, but Prosser was really angry. And then there’s the third thing. If you were a copper and you killed someone, what would be the easiest way to get rid of a body?’

‘Bloody hell.’

The schoolchildren looked up. One pointed at Tozer and said, ‘Miss, she did a bad word.’

‘I said, silence!’

Tozer hunched across and whispered, ‘You think he killed Johnny Knight on D Division turf so he could make sure the investigation got nowhere?’

Breen nodded.

Tozer reached into her handbag and scrambled around for a packet of cigarettes. ‘You have a light?’

Breen shook his head.

‘This is mad,’ said Tozer. ‘So Prosser killed him and burned him so bad maybe no one would know. And we were working alongside him all that time?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a theory, that’s all.’

Tozer held up a cigarette and said to the teacher, ‘Excuse me? Do you have a light?’

The teacher frowned and said, ‘Absolutely not. One minute to finish your drawings.’ The sound of pencils.

Tozer called to the attendant across the heads of the children. ‘How about you?’

The attendant scowled. ‘No smoking,’ she said.

‘Jesus.’

Breen watched one of the boys scritching the pencil across the page, angrily crossing out his drawing. He had loved drawing as a boy. He
had spent hours sketching comics in his room, or doing portraits of his friends in return for sweets.

‘Stand,’ ordered the teacher. The children stood. ‘Follow me.’

And they were gone. The room was quiet again, except for the clicking of the attendant’s needles.

‘What are we going to do about it?’ said Tozer.

Breen liked the ‘we’. ‘I had been going to tell Bailey. That way, at least, there would have been a record. But he’s just been taken to hospital. He had a heart attack this morning.’

‘Christ. He ok?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Great timing,’ she said.

‘As usual.’

Tozer said, ‘Bailey wouldn’t have done anything, mind. He wouldn’t touch anything that made the police look bad.’

‘I think you underestimate him.’

‘It’s kind of beside the point, now, anyway.’

‘From the letters we found at the house, Johnny Knight had worked for Morton, Stiles and Prentice. I know the man he was working for,’ said Breen. ‘I met him at a party once.’

‘You go to parties?’

‘I was thinking of going to talk to him.’

‘This is all for Scotland Yard. You’ve got to tell them.’

‘I know. I’m going to,’ he said.

He read the black-and-gilt painted label on a frame.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
. Jesus lying on straw. The shepherds around him, big-eyed and awestruck. A baby and a mother.

Tozer said, ‘Something else. I think I know where Shirley Prosser is.’

‘How?’

‘I thought you’d be interested,’ she said. ‘I was thinking, What if Charlie has to see a doctor on account of his spastic thing? So I checked the numbers from that address book you gave me. And I was right.’

‘God,’ said Breen. ‘That’s why you went to see a doctor this morning?’

‘How did you know?’ she said.

‘Marilyn said. I thought…’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No. Go on. You’re looking weird.’

Breen said, ‘Jones thought you were pregnant.’

‘What?’

‘That’s why you were at the doctor.’

Tozer’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God. They said that? I’m so embarrassed. Just Jones?’

‘Marilyn was there too. I shouldn’t have said anything to you about it.’

‘And so you thought…?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘Jesus, Paddy. I mean. Bloody hell! How humiliating. Everybody talking about me like that.’

Breen apologised again.

‘That’s horrible.’

Tozer squinted back at him for a second, then explained. Two days ago Shirley Prosser had rung up her old doctor to ask to transfer to a new GP. ‘The doctor hadn’t wanted to tell me at first, but I told his secretary it was a murder investigation. It is, isn’t it?’

Breen nodded. Was he actually disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant? He had the obscure feeling that something had been taken from him that he hadn’t known he’d even had.

‘So she gave me her new GP’s address,’ said Tozer.

‘Did you call him?’

She shook her head. ‘I was worried about scaring Shirley off. If she knows we’re looking for her, she might scarper again.’

‘You shouldn’t leave, you know,’ he said. ‘You’re too good at this.’

She smiled. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Where is it? The place where she’s gone.’

‘Margate. That’s Kent, isn’t it? I was thinking I could give the local coppers a call. They could get the address off the GP, without letting her know. They won’t have to know what it’s about. I’ll just say it’s a routine family thing. Women Police stuff. Policemen would never ask what. They hate Women Police work.’

‘Good,’ said Breen. ‘Really good.’

‘I’ve never been to Margate. I hear it’s nice. What are you looking at?’

He was looking at the painting. Sentimental crap, really. Old men looking weepy and awestruck at the baby. He looked closer.

‘The brushwork,’ he said. ‘It’s amazing.’ And now he looked closer, he realised it was. Gorgeous. Uninhibited. Free strokes of a hand that worked on this, what, four hundred years ago?

She squinted at it. ‘That sheep looks like a Cheviot to me,’ she leaned forward. ‘I always fancied Cheviots. Well? What about it then? I got the day off on Saturday. We could go. Both of us.’

Click-clack, click-clack, went the knitting needles.

‘Saturday is the Christmas Ball,’ he said.

‘Well, I wasn’t thinking of staying overnight,’ she said, grinning. ‘I’m not that kind of girl.’

The sign was working again now, though jerkily. Breen could hear the machinery creaking.

Breen walked past the big revolving triangle, through the revolving door, into the lobby of New Scotland Yard. He never liked this place. It made him feel anxious just being here. The front desk was run by three women wearing telephone headsets who sat in a line at a desk, all staring at him as he approached.

Unsure of which of them he was supposed to be talking to, he picked one and said, ‘I need to see Detective Sergeant Deason, CID.’

The woman ignored him. The one on her left picked up a telephone and dialled. ‘Name?’

Breen waited, standing by the desk. Men, some in uniform, others in plain clothes, emerged from lifts, walking with a sense of purpose, talking loudly, laughing. Breen checked his watch.

‘Will he be long?’ he asked.

‘Don’t know,’ said the receptionist.

He took out a cigarette. Put it back in the packet. Bent down, tied his shoelaces a little tighter. As he was bending, someone thumped him on the back.

‘Paddy? You finally coming to join us here?’ Big John Carmichael, slim panatella in hand, with another member of the Drug Squad. ‘I just heard about Bailey. Bloody hell.’

Breen, smiled, straightened up, shook Carmichael’s hand. ‘I don’t think he’ll be coming back in a hurry.’

‘Poor bastard.’

‘You never liked him in the first place.’

Carmichael’s companion headed towards the lift, leaving the two of them together.

‘I never said that, Paddy. Jesus. Can’t I just feel sorry for him? You heard the latest? Rumour is, they already marked Creamer down as your new boss. From Maida Vale.’

Breen said, ‘Inspector Creamer?’ A Rotarian. Probably a Freemason too. Liked a tidy desk. There were stories he liked to make his bobbies Turtle Wax his car during their shifts.

‘You’re best out of it,’ said Carmichael. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

Breen explained, without saying too much, that he had come to meet the detective in charge of Prosser’s murder. He had what he thought was new evidence.

Breen said, ‘While you’re there I have something for you, John. A squat in Abbey Gardens. I think maybe it was them who got the drugs to Francis Pugh. I think they may be selling on prescriptions there.’

‘Pugh. The dead bloke?’

‘Something else. The squat was about to be evicted in the summer. Guess what? Out of the blue, the eviction was called off.’

‘You need to go a bit slower, Paddy. You’re talking too fast.’

‘I just think somebody is pulling strings, somehow. There’s more to it…’

A long pull on the mini-cigar. Carmichael, oldest friend and play-ground pal, said nothing, just watched Breen with a frown on his face.

Breen said, ‘So you’ll check into the house? Just take a look? You know what to look for. I can’t do this myself. I’m suspended.’

Carmichael curled his lip. He looked older, thought Breen. His face fatter than it had been, eyes redder. Maybe it was just seeing him in daylight. Maybe the pints and chasers for lunch.

Carmichael carefully stubbed out the panatella in an ashtray on a stand by the lift doors and put the unsmoked half back in the tin. ‘I
can’t make any promises, Paddy. I’m the new boy in the Drug Squad. I have to check with my superiors first.’

‘But it’s worth a look, isn’t it?’

Carmichael said, ‘You should be putting your feet up. This isn’t even your responsibility anymore. What you doing for Christmas anyway?’

Before Breen had a chance to answer, the receptionist called out loudly, ‘Breen? Someone from Detective Sergeant Deason’s team will see you now. Third floor, turn left out of the lift.’

‘Do you know Deason?’ Breen asked.

Carmichael shook his head. ‘Never heard of him. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine, John. Fine.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. One day we’ll catch up properly, yes?’

‘Yes. We should do that.’

Carmichael turned up the collar of his coat. ‘What about you and me go out one evening? Find a couple of birds. Not that scrawny one, Tozer. Some really nice ones. I know a couple.’

‘I thought you liked Tozer?’

‘Deal then? You and me? Night on the town?’

Neither of them named a date though.

‘I have to go,’ Breen said, and walked quickly away from his friend.

Deason’s desk was in a large open-plan room. Breen sat on a plastic chair, opposite a police constable with a notebook. It turned out that Deason was away. He had been off sick for a week. ‘Hong Kong flu,’ said the constable. ‘Loads of us have had it. Going down like bloody skittles.’

The constable held a cigarette and a pencil in the same hand, alternately making notes and smoking. Breen kept thinking he was going to poke the pencil into his eye every time he took a pull. ‘So you’re saying you think Shirley Knight’s brother-in-law disappeared the same day as this body appeared on your turf?’

Breen nodded. ‘So who’s running the investigation while Sergeant Deason’s absent?’

The constable ignored him. ‘And you’re guessing that Sergeant Prosser had something to do with it?’

‘Yes,’ said Breen. ‘It’s a guess.’

The constable said, ‘What if the dead body’s not him? You checked?’

‘You need to find Johnny Knight’s dental records. You need to request our police surgeon to do that. I can’t. I’m suspended. The sooner you do that, the sooner we can rule that out.’

The constable nodded. Pursed his lips. ‘You are admitting you broke into a house without a warrant while you were supposed to be suspended?’

The constable was pudgy and expressionless. He took another puff from his cigarette.

‘I don’t like sitting on my hands,’ said Breen.

‘I wouldn’t mind sitting on my hands for a bit. Chance would be a bloody fine thing round here. We’re rushed off our feet. Shouldn’t have been doing that, though.’ The constable leaned across the desk and winked. ‘Tell you what, though, I won’t tell if you won’t,’ he said, and burst out laughing.

Breen said, ‘So what are you going to do?’

The constable smiled. ‘We’ll look into it.’

‘Today?’

‘Right away. Leave it to us.’ Breen watched him open a drawer and put the sheet of paper he’d been writing on into it. ‘Don’t you worry. Go back and put your feet up, lucky bugger.’

The lift squealed as it descended, but nobody seemed to notice how bad the noise was.

Breen woke up and wrote the details of his nightmare in his police notebook. This time the naked women had knives.

Breen hated knives. He had seen men sliced up after fights so badly their organs showed, vague and pale beneath the skin. He had seen the
blood pumping out of men on pub floors. Once, not so long ago, a Chinese burglar he’d disturbed had pulled a huge kitchen knife on him and Breen had turned and fled, hiding outside, shaking like a baby. ‘Breen is windy,’ people had said.

The details of the dream evaporated as he wrote them down. He couldn’t remember if he’d escaped or not.

He caught the bus out west. Morton, Stiles & Prentice’s offices were just north of Oxford Street. A sleek, newly built modern block.

There was a Christmas tree in reception. Beneath, neatly wrapped, were piles of boxes, all the same size, all neatly wrapped in red foil paper.

‘Who are they for?’ asked Breen.

‘No one. They’re all empty.’

‘What’s the point of that?’ asked Breen.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ said the woman on the reception desk. In her late twenties, she sat beneath an enormous beehive hairdo.

‘No,’ said Breen. He handed over his warrant card. The reception room was surrounded by big glass walls. An enormous orange lampshade hung from a wire in the middle of the lobby.

‘Oooh,’ said the woman. ‘I hope Mr Cox hasn’t been naughty.’

‘I hope so too,’ said Breen. The woman’s eyes grew bigger.

She dialled a number and spoke for a minute. ‘He can spare ten minutes in about an hour,’ said the Beehive.

If he’d been doing a legitimate investigation, Breen would have insisted on seeing him now. But he was chancing it just coming here. So he looked at his watch and said, ‘OK.’ Nothing better to do.

He had done what he was supposed to do: told Scotland Yard what he knew. Or rather, what he thought he knew.

He killed time walking up and down Oxford Street, dawdling by shop windows. He had been a teenager in the 1950s. In those days there had been nothing in shops. Now they were full of the latest fads and fashions. Eight-track cassette player for Dad. Airfix model
aeroplanes for boys. Miners, the make-up for girls. So much stuff. Down past Gamages. Outside, a couple of coppers were stopping the traffic while a team of men from the council climbed the lamp posts to fix the Christmas lights. A big model railway train in the department store window weaving in and out of tunnels in some imaginary Alpine scene.

The wind was bitter. After half an hour wandering the streets he returned to the lobby. The Beehive regarded him with a curious look. ‘You’re early, Sergeant,’ she said.

There was a coffee table with magazines and newspapers.
Architects’ Journal
. A copy of
Nova
with a woman showing bare breasts through a gauze top. He picked it up and looked at it until he realised that Beehive Woman was looking at him with a small smirk on her face.

Breen turned the magazine over.

A minute later her phone rang. ‘He’ll see you now,’ she said.

Harry Cox had an office on the third floor; the desk was a little too large for it. A bookshelf full of bound copies of
Architectural Review
. Today Harry Cox wore a blue suit with a bright orange tie.

‘Do I know you?’ said the man nervously. He seemed to be trying to place Breen. ‘You’re with the police?’

‘I met you at a party, once,’ said Breen. ‘At Kasmin’s gallery. You bought a picture.’

There was a Roy Lichtenstein print on the office wall and opposite, on a wall that was almost too small to hold it, one of the geometric paintings he had seen at Kasmin’s.

‘The art critic.’ Harry Cox smiled, leaning forward to shake Breen’s hand, confident now he knew they knew each other. Everything would be fine. ‘I remember. Which force are you from? Remind me?’

‘Marylebone CID.’ Breen sat down in a modern plastic chair. ‘Have you bought any more art?’

‘Just starting out.’ He laughed. ‘I remember now. You’re a pal of Robert Fraser’s, aren’t you? He thought highly of your opinions. Hope
you don’t mind me saying, but his stuff’s a little too out there for me.’ He opened a drawer, pulled out a cigar box on his desk, and held it out. ‘I invited you to the rugby. Couldn’t you make it?’

‘Sorry,’ said Breen.

Harry Cox waved his hand. ‘I have bought a few pictures. You should see my collection. You’ll probably think it’s rubbish. Interested to know what you think. See if I was right buying them. Perhaps you should come round to my place. Do you like that fellow Hockney? I’m extremely keen. Are you? Lovely sense of colour. Really fresh. Ever met him? Just back from a spell in Los Angeles. I would like to meet him if you ever—’

Breen interrupted. ‘Do you know a quantity surveyor called Johnny Knight?’

Cox’s head twitched sideways, just a fraction of an inch. ‘What is this about?’

‘Mr Knight has gone missing. We are anxious to talk to him.’

Harry Cox blinked. ‘Knight? Yes. He has done work for us over the years. Why? Is anything wrong?’

Breen said, ‘I’m not sure. Is there?’

‘I can’t say I’ve seen him for a while,’ said Cox. He snapped the cigar box shut.

‘How long ago is that?’ asked Breen.

Cox picked up his red telephone. ‘Look through my diary, dear,’ he told a secretary, ‘and find out when I last saw John Knight.’ He put down the phone and said, ‘Why are you here, Sergeant?’

‘What work does Mr Knight do for you?’

‘We employ him sometimes. He’s an independent quantity surveyor.’

‘What was the last job he did?’

‘He’s worked on the West Cross Route of Ringway One. The road project.’

‘The Westway?’

Cox nodded.

‘Big project,’ said Breen.

‘Immense.’ Cox grinned. ‘Tremendously exciting. It’s a large project and obviously we need good oversight on it. The materials bill alone runs into hundreds of thousands.’

‘And Knight would be in charge of that money?’

‘Lord, no.’ Another smile. Cox felt more confident on this ground. ‘He’s just an abacus-wallah. We need people to estimate how much material is needed for any project. And to supervise its delivery. Don’t get me wrong, he’s very good. An über-abacus-wallah, if you like. But he’s a cog in the machine.’ Then, ‘Please tell me why you’re here, Sergeant. You’re making me nervous.’

‘Do you know any reason why Johnny Knight would be in any trouble?’ said Breen.

The smile dropped. ‘Please. As a friend. What’s all this about? Has Johnny Knight been doing something he shouldn’t? This is a serious business. We have significant government contracts. We can’t afford any scandal. If anything was to damage our reputation…’

‘Do you have any reason to know why he would have gone abroad or left home?’

‘Christ. Has he?’

‘He appears to have been missing from his house since mid-September.’

The phone rang. A woman’s voice crackled on the line. Cox nodded. He replaced the receiver and said, ‘Well, as it happens, I was right. Mr Knight hasn’t worked with us since September. That was the last time I saw him, according to my secretary.’ He frowned. ‘Apparently he hasn’t cashed his last pay cheque, either.’

‘And you don’t know of anyone who would have wished him any harm?’

‘Harm?’ said Cox. ‘What sort of harm? Please don’t keep me in the dark like this. It’s not fair.’

Breen opened his notebook.

‘No. No idea at all,’ said Cox. ‘Marylebone, you said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ said Cox, ‘but your boss just had the misfortune of a heart attack, is that right?’

Breen stopped writing. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Like I say, I’m friends with loads of coppers. Rugby. Remember?’

‘I do.’

‘My company donated their services to building a new club room at Imber Court, the Police Rugby Club. I’ve stayed friends with the committee ever since.’