The Kings of London (6 page)

Monday was wet. Rain swilled rubbish down the gutters to block the drains. It was a mistake catching the bus this morning instead of the Underground. Roads flooded. Traffic crawled down Hackney Road.

The weekend had turned up nothing much. Most people in the street knew Francis Pugh by sight. Not one of them knew him in person. The Chief Inspector had visited his father; Bailey had been given an appointment to discuss the case with him later today.

A team of policemen had spent Sunday picking through the rubble, making a small pile of possessions. Records, a nail-clipper, a set of croquet mallets, some saucepans. Breen asked if they had found an address book, or anything that might tell them who Pugh’s friends were, but nothing useful had been retrieved. Now the rain was turning the site to mud.

Nobody seemed to know who the victim’s friends had been. Nobody had come forward to offer any useful information at all. Breen was in the dark.

When he finally got off a bus on Wigmore Street, a paving stone rocked under his feet, sending a spray of water across his legs and into the shoes of a pretty girl in a lime-green miniskirt. She glared at him before strutting off eastwards.

Breen ducked into the doorway of a Radio Rentals shop for shelter. The sign in the window said: ‘Watch both channels every evening. And in COLOUR.’

By the time he made it into the CID office he was dripping and late. His bones felt cold.

‘Hello, Paddy. Someone don’t like you,’ said Constable Jones. He was there with Constable Tozer who was gnawing on a Chelsea bun.

‘What?’

‘A little love letter.’ Jones nodded towards Breen’s typewriter. There was a piece of paper in it.

‘Read it,’ said Tozer, watching him closely. ‘It’s not very pretty.’

Breen shook the rain from his hair and walked towards his desk. Typed in capitals:

Breen looked at it for a second, then pulled it out of the machine. The letters had been thumped into the paper. ‘Who saw this?’

‘Marilyn. When she came in,’ said Jones. ‘She told me about it.’

Breen looked at the typewriter. The caps lock was still on. ‘She tell anyone else?’ he asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Jones. His navy tie, sticking out of his knitted jumper, was stained with that morning’s egg. He was wearing an ‘I’m Backing Britain’ badge.

‘Can I ask you a favour?’

‘Course.’

‘Don’t mention this to anyone, OK?’

Jones frowned. ‘But…’

Breen asked, ‘Can you do that?’ It was not easy asking favours of Jones. Breen didn’t like him: his cockiness, his eagerness to get into fights, his ill-matched clothes.

Tozer looked cautiously at Breen. Jones smiled, embarrassed. ‘I mean, no one likes you that much. But I don’t know no one who could be bothered to actually hate you,’ he said.

‘It’s just a joke, I expect.’

‘Funny joke,’ said Tozer.

Breen said, ‘All I’m saying is, can we not talk about it?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Jones, and went and sat at his desk.

Breen opened his drawer and picked out a brown envelope and added it to the last one he’d received:

‘Christ,’ said Tozer, quietly. ‘When did you get that?’

‘Shh,’ said Breen. Inspector Bailey was making one of his rare forays outside his office. He looked at Tozer, paused, raised an eyebrow.

‘My car’s outside,’ he said to Breen. ‘Downstairs in five minutes.’

Breen placed the letters back in the drawer together and closed it, then called the police surgeon to ask when the post-mortem on the victim would be completed.

Breen sat in the back of Bailey’s Cortina. A uniformed copper who looked even older than the inspector was driving.

‘I have met Rhodri Pugh on occasion’ Bailey said. ‘He is on the Home Affairs Select Committee. A decent enough fellow, considering…’

Considering.

‘It is advisable for the police not to become too involved in politics, whatever we may think privately. We are public servants.’

Considering he was a Labour politician, he meant. Bailey was from Harold Macmillan’s generation. The straight-backed men. To them, Harold Wilson and his Party were a conniving bunch of Bolsheviks. But he would do whatever they required.

‘However, this lot seem to be behind the police. At least the working classes understand the need for law and order.’

‘Is he aware the body was mutilated?’ Breen asked him.

‘I believe so. He identified his son’s body on Saturday after they’d pulled it out of the building, and he had a meeting with the Chief Inspector yesterday. I understand it was distressing. The body was a bit of a mess. And incinerated, I believe. I was briefed by the Inspector
earlier this morning. He stressed how important this case was. That we should above all respect the wishes of the family.’

Breen understood. The police were not natural Labour fans, but the new Home Secretary was a populist. In the year he’d been in office he had been eager to show himself a law-and-order man, pushing through anti-immigration legislation, toughening his department’s stance on cannabis and other drugs. Law-and-order men were always popular with the top brass. He was one of us.

‘The wishes of the family?’ said Breen, smiling slightly.

‘His mother died of cancer two years ago. No brothers or sisters.’

‘So the minister is the family?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

‘I see.’

Bailey sighed. ‘Don’t pretend you’re somehow above all this, Paddy. Cynicism is not a sign of intelligence. They are our masters. We are there to serve them.’

They pulled up outside an office in Petty France. ‘Thirty minutes,’ Bailey told the driver, who grunted and reached for a packed lunch, wrapped in brown paper. A uniformed officer gave Bailey a little salute as they walked in through the door.

They waited in the lobby of the government office, sitting in straight-backed leather chairs as men in suits came and went. Young civil servants with Eton accents talked loudly and importantly as they marched through the lobby, bundles of paper under their arms.

After about twenty minutes a tall man in a pinstriped suit with wide lapels appeared. ‘Inspector Bailey?’ he said.

Bailey said, ‘And you are?’

‘My name is Tarpey. I am a colleague of Mr Pugh’s. As this is a personal matter, Mr Pugh thinks it best that we meet somewhere… less formal.’

And before either of them had a chance to answer, he marched out of the building. Bailey and Breen followed behind.

The restaurant was a short walk away, on the corner of Buckingham Gate. The minister, a round-faced man with wire glasses, was sitting in a booth with a coffee pot and a toast rack in front of him, next to a pile of ministerial documents he was looking at.

‘Inspector Bailey,’ announced Tarpey.

The man looked up from his papers. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Inspector. Please, sit down.’ He spoke in a Welsh accent.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss, sir,’ said Bailey, taking the seat opposite. Breen was not offered a chair. He wondered if he should pull one up from another table.

Apart from Rhodri Pugh, the restaurant was empty, tables all set for lunch. The minister looked pale and tired. ‘I thought it best I should contact you to offer my full cooperation with the investigation,’ he said.

Breen recognised him vaguely from the news, but he seemed older in real life. His eyes were rheumy, perhaps from tears. His son was dead, but he was back at work. Things must go on.

‘Very thoughtful, sir,’ said Bailey. ‘We will do all in our power to apprehend the responsible person. Or persons.’

‘Persons?’ said Pugh. ‘More than one, you think?’

‘Too early to say, sir.’

‘Right.’

The restaurant was dark, lit by lamps around the walls. ‘Coffee?’ he offered.

‘Thank you,’ said Bailey.

Tarpey, who had sat next to Pugh in the booth, now leaned forward and poured Bailey a cup. The milk jug looked tiny in his big, bony hands.

Rhodri Pugh cleared his throat and said, ‘See, I was not very close to my son.’ He talked in a quiet voice; a man who was used to silencing a room by whispering rather than shouting.

‘My son…’ he said. His eyes teared up a little. ‘He was a bright boy. I think we probably failed him.’

‘Sir?’ said Bailey.

Tarpey remained palely expressionless. Breen wondered if he was a civil servant of some kind. Or a Party worker. As the minister talked, the man glanced at Breen, still standing, looked him in the eye, gave him a small smile.

‘A bit of a black sheep, really,’ Pugh was saying. ‘Somewhat of a disappointment, I suppose. When I was younger I worked as an electrician. You had to have a trade. My son had nothing like that to give him the discipline one needs. My fault, I suppose. Had it too easy.’

A ‘disappointment’, thought Breen. A hard thing to say about your own son.

‘Did he work?’ asked Bailey.

‘Not real work. He had an allowance. His mother arranged it before she died. He got by on that, mostly.’

‘A man of independent means,’ said Bailey.

‘Poisoned chalice,’ said the minister. ‘I wish she’d never given him money. He’d have had to work then. A man should work. If he doesn’t work, he’s nothing.’

‘You said he was a disappointment,’ interrupted Breen. ‘In what way?’

Bailey turned to Breen and frowned, then turned back to Rhodri Pugh. ‘Can I introduce Sergeant Breen, sir? He is in charge of the day-to-day details of the inquiry.’

The man looked up at Breen for the first time. ‘The Chief Inspector said you were in charge of the inquiry, Inspector Bailey,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Bailey. ‘Sergeant Breen is an experienced investigating officer, however. He will be handling operational matters.’

A pause. ‘I see.’ The minister looked back at Breen. ‘Our party has fought to give every man the right to work. I am a man that understands the value of hard work and honesty. But perhaps I got it wrong. I was too dedicated to my own work to spare the time to pass on those values to him. As a result, he became a bohemian. ‘A spender rather than an honest earner.’

‘You weren’t close to him?’

‘Hardly knew him at all this last two or three years, if truth be told.’ He looked down at his rack of untouched toast. ‘We fell out when his mother became ill, I’m afraid. I saw him at the funeral. That was the last time.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You understand, however, Sergeant, I would not want any of this discussed in the newspapers?’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Bailey. ‘I have explained that to Sergeant Breen.’

The Welshman nodded sadly. ‘Good. It would be better that way.’

‘Why are you concerned about that?’ asked Breen.

Bailey turned and glowered again.

But the minister smiled sadly. ‘With a violent death there is always risk of prurient interest,’ he said. ‘I am aware of my son’s condition when you found him. I was shocked…’ He petered out. For a while there was silence. Bailey lowered his head so as not to look the man in the eye if he began to cry.

Tarpey said, ‘Perhaps I could fetch you a glass of water, sir?’

Tarpey’s accent was Welsh too, Breen realised. Not a civil servant then; another Labour Party man. Someone from back home. A fixer.

Finding his voice again, the minister ignored him. ‘See, there are people who would be very happy to damage this government and wouldn’t care about facts. I am anxious that a personal matter should not be allowed to undermine the foundations of authority. You see that, don’t you, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Breen.

‘Thank you.’ Pugh pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. Bailey reached for a matchbox and struck one. Pugh leaned forward and let him light the cigarette.

‘Could you perhaps give the names of anyone who knew him?’ said Breen, digging in his jacket for a notebook.

The minister closed his eyes and sighed. ‘As I was saying, we didn’t know him at all, really, his mother and myself. Not for a few years. He didn’t like us much, I think. We’re working-class people. Proud of it. My son grew up here in London, for the most part. He didn’t even have a Welsh accent. Spoke like an Englishman.’

There was silence. A clattering of cutlery from the kitchen. The minister puffed on his cigarette a couple of times, then said, ‘Of course we will do what we can to help catch the maniac who did this. I have asked my colleague, Mr Tarpey, to prepare a list.’

‘Very good of you, sir,’ said Bailey.

‘Very eager to help.’ He turned to Tarpey. ‘Tarpey’s a good man. Please contact him at any time of day or night if you have any questions at all.’

Tarpey gave a slight nod.

‘I need to know what Francis was like, growing up. His friends. What he liked to do.’

‘Why would you need to know that?’ said the minister.

‘He may have known his killer.’

The minister looked at his watch. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was very likely,’ he said.

‘I need to know what kind of person he was.’

‘Just a normal boy, at first.’

The Labour Party was full of self-made men. Trade unionists and Party men who had been born into working-class families, who had made the most of what the war had offered them. Breen wondered what it had been like to be the child of one of these high achievers, men who had crossed the English class lines.

‘When did the family move to London?’

Pugh pushed his hair back over his scalp impatiently. ‘When I first became a shadow minister in 1960. Tarpey can tell you all of this.’

Breen persisted. ‘Did your son like it?’

The minister frowned. Breen could tell he was weighing up whether to answer or not.

‘His mother said he was a sensitive boy. I wouldn’t know what that means, myself. Our generation never had the luxury of being sensitive. But Francis hated it here at first. There was some bullying at school on account of his accent. So he lost that, quick enough. But by the time he left school I’d almost say he liked it too much. No inclination to go home.’

‘And university?’

The minister picked up his pen and said, ‘He went to study architecture. Dropped out in his first year. My fault too, maybe. His mother thought so. I persuaded him he should do something practical.’