Play With Fire

by William Shaw

  Breen put his hand over the receiver. ‘A murder,’ he said.

  On the pad he always kept near the phone, Breen scribbled down the address.

  He covered the phone again. ‘I can stay if you like. Someone else could do it.’

  ‘No,’ said Helen. ‘You go.’

  ‘Tied up, I’m afraid,’ Creamer was saying. ‘Prior obligation. But I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ It would be something at the golf course, or a Rotary thing. ‘Say the word and I’ll have a car on its way.’

  Breen put the phone down and said, ‘I can still cancel if you like.’

  ‘Who?’ Helen laid her book on her chest and reached for another cigarette.

  He knew what she meant. ‘A woman,’ he said. ‘Young.’ As if that would excuse him leaving her on his day off.

  She nodded; she, of all people, would understand. The murder of a young woman. ‘Other details?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

  Only last year, Helen had been a probationer in CID. She had wanted to stay on, but it hadn’t worked out.

  ‘Can’t be helped.’

  ‘No. Fine. You go.’

  He picked out a blue, flat-end, knitted tie and leaned in to the mirror in his bedroom to adjust it. When he made it back into the small living room in his summer suit and brogues, her nose was stuck back into her book, so close that he couldn’t see her face.

  ‘Bye, then,’ he said when he heard the car arrive outside. She didn’t answer.

  The young driver was having difficulty trying to turn the large Zephyr in the small Stoke Newington cul-de-sac. It didn’t help that Elfie’s boyfriend’s black MG was parked at an angle, one wheel on the pavement, boot jutting out over the cobbles. Breen got in.

  ‘Sergeant Cathal Breen?’ the driver said, flustered.

  ‘It’s pronounced Ca-hal.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Most people just called him Paddy, anyway. A few children were attempting cricket on the wide pavements of Kingsland Road, but mostly the streets were empty. The shops and cinemas were all shut. Only the parks were open.

  They turned into Old Street, heading towards Clerkenwell.

  ‘It’s Mint, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He should have made an excuse and stayed with Helen. Creamer could have found someone else. He looked at the driver clutching the wheel, a thin gold ring on the third finger of his left hand.

  ‘Married, Mint?’

  ‘I am, actually. Three years.’ His hair was thick and wiry, parted on one side. Breen noticed a small gold crucifix in his lapel too.

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Two.’

  He could only be about 22 or 23; but coppers married young.

  ‘What are they doing today?’

  ‘Sunday lunch at the church, sir.’

  ‘Church?’

  ‘Sir.’ Mint had the keenness of a man who had just transferred to CID. ‘You’re not supposed to call me “sir”, you know,’ said Breen.

  ‘Sorry… Sarge.’

  He drove badly, startled by other drivers, braking too hard, gripping the wheel so that his knuckles whitened.

  From the outside, it was one of the smarter houses in Harewood Avenue; five storeys tall, brick and painted pale-cream stucco. Other buildings looked shabbier. Soon they would pull these old terraces down and replace them with newer, smarter buildings.

  There were two police cars outside, and the usual small crowd of onlookers were craning to see past the constable at the front door who was muttering at them.

  ‘Top floor,’ he told Breen. The sun was already high; the constable held a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his neck.

  ‘Doctor here yet?’

  The constable shook his head. ‘Have to take the stairs. Lift isn’t working.’

  ‘Want me to stay with the car?’ asked Mint.

  ‘What good are you there?’ said Breen. ‘Follow me.’

  Mint brightened. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Breen paused. ‘Keep your eyes open. Make notes. Lots and lots of notes. Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to.’

  The stairs were built around the lift shaft. Breen took them in twos, all the way, Mint trotting behind him.

  On the top landing, two beat coppers, one comically tall, the other squat, were peering up a ladder. Next to them was an elderly man in a brown housecoat who wore wire-frame glasses. As he reached the top landing he saw the legs of a fourth man on the ladder.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said.

  ‘That CID?’ called the man down the ladder.

  ‘Where’s the victim?’

  ‘Up here. Bloody hell.’

  ‘Do we know who she is?’

  ‘Flat six,’ said the man in the brown housecoat quietly. ‘Miss Bobienski.’

  Breen asked the man to spell it, and wrote it in his notebook.

  ‘Russian?’

  ‘Polish.’

  ‘You found her?’

  The man in the brown housecoat nodded. ‘Rats,’ he said. ‘I heard them upstairs. Went to put poison down. Saw her there. Horrible. Poor woman.’

  He was the building’s caretaker, Breen guessed. He looked at the door behind him. There was a number eight on the door. Flat 6 would be the floor below.

  The head of the policeman who had been up the ladder emerged from the rectangle opening. ‘I mean. Bloody hell,’ he said.

  ‘Go on,’ said the tall copper, yanking the torch out of the other copper’s hand. ‘My turn.’

  ‘Get out of it,’ Breen ordered. ‘Now.’

  Grumbling, the policeman stood aside. ‘Has anyone else been up there?’ Breen asked the caretaker.

  ‘Just me and them guys.’

  ‘Did either of you disturb the body?’

  ‘Not likely,’ the policeman said.

  The caretaker shook his head. ‘Excuse me, please. No smoking on the landing.’ He was looking at the shorter of the coppers who was pulling out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Hellfire,’ muttered the constable. ‘What is this? Buckingham Palace?’

  ‘House rule,’ said the caretaker. He spoke in a slight European accent. German perhaps?

  Breen took the torch from the disgruntled policeman and went up the ladder himself.

  The first thing he noticed was that it was a high loft with room enough to stand in; there were boxes stacked neatly towards the eaves and a pile of old metal bedsteads leaned against one of the chimney breasts. A wooden walkway made from old doors laid across the rafters ran from the hatch towards the lift mechanism which protruded through the floor.

  He shone the torch at it, knowing that what he was about to see would not be pleasant.

  She was lying, her back arched, over some machinery at the top of the lift, so that her head tipped backwards towards Breen.

  Her teeth, slightly parted, were white in the torchlight. The eyes were gone; dark red hollows were all that remained. Her lips too. The rats had chewed away the soft tissue from between her nose and the top of her chin.

  FIVE

  Breen closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again. He could look at this stuff; it was his job.

  He moved the torch down again, playing the light onto the boards between the opening and the lift. He thought for a minute, staring at the dead woman, then called down, ‘Is there any other way to get into the loft, apart from this hatch?’

  ‘No,’ said the caretaker.

  ‘So if anyone needed to work on the lift they’d have to come up through here.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Mint?’

  ‘Sir?’

  He climbed down the ladder and handed the torch to him. ‘Your turn. Just look. Tell me what you see.’

  Mint turned his head from side to side. ‘Me?’

  ‘Up you go.’

  Mint scrambled up the rungs.

  ‘Have a good look around,’ said Breen. ‘Take your
time.’

  Apart from the scratching of Breen’s pencil on his notebook, there was silence for a while. The tall constable peered over. ‘Are you drawing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen, not looking up.

  ‘Is that her?’ the copper asked.

  From memory, he was sketching what remained of her face; the angle of her head.

  ‘Jesus fuck,’ said the constable.

  ‘Told you,’ said the one who had been up the ladder. ‘No eyes.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we take a closer look at the body?’ called Mint from above.

  ‘Not till the photographer’s been. I don’t want to disturb anything until it’s recorded.’

  ‘She’s beyond help, either way,’ said the policeman, peering at Breen’s notebook. ‘Not bad, though. The drawing I mean. If I could draw like that I wouldn’t be doing this. I’d be selling it along Green Park.’

  Mint finally descended the ladder, his face white.

  ‘Oi, smiler!’ one of the coppers said to the caretaker. ‘Fetch a bucket. I think junior here’s about to bring up his breakfast.’

  ‘Will you be OK?’ asked Breen.

  Mint nodded, but said nothing. With his pencil and notebook in his right hand he reached up and fingered the crucifix on his lapel. You always remembered the ones like this. However hard you tried, you’d never get them out of your mind. They would be with you all your life.

  ‘What did you notice?’ asked Breen.

  ‘Notice? She was…’ He tailed off.

  ‘Dead?’ whispered one of the local coppers, with a quiet snigger.

  ‘Hush,’ snapped Breen.

  ‘’Scuse me for breathing,’ muttered the man.

  ‘A young woman has been killed.’

  ‘Sorry, guv.’

  ‘Mint?’

  ‘Um. I couldn’t really see, Sarge.’

  ‘How do you think she ended up there?’

  Mint frowned. ‘I guess somebody put her there.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Carried her, I suppose?’

  ‘Go up. Look again. Tell me what you see.’

  Mint took a breath. He was heading back up the ladder, shakily this time, just as the pathologist arrived, panting. It was Wellington; he recognised Breen and scowled. ‘Where is it?’ he said.

  ‘She. In the loft,’ said Breen, pointing upwards.

  ‘Let me at her, then.’ Wellington was dressed in a dark wool suit, too heavy for the weather. ‘I’ve a lunch at two.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to go near her until the photographer’s been,’ said Breen.

  ‘Naturally, but the sooner I get at her the better,’ said Wellington.

  ‘I need a photograph of the scene. He’s on his way.’

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ said the doctor.

  Mint came halfway down the ladder, eyes wide.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She must have been put on top of the lift on another floor.’

  ‘Good,’ said Breen. ‘What made you think that?’

  He came back down and dug into his jacket for his notebook. ‘There would have been steps in the dust if somebody had taken her up there this way.’

  ‘Write it down, then.’

  ‘What is this? Sunday school?’ Wellington took a pipe out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.

  ‘No smoking on the landing,’ said the caretaker.

  ‘I’ll smoke where I bloody like.’ Wellington shook a box of matches. ‘Just let me get on with my job, Paddy.’

  ‘When did the lift stop working?’ Breen asked the caretaker.

  ‘Friday morning, probably,’ he said.

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘I don’t use it. But I clean it in the mornings. It wasn’t functioning.’

  ‘She’s probably been dead three days, Wellington. Another hour won’t hurt.’

  ‘Not her I was thinking about. Another hour? Bloody hell, Paddy.’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ Breen said to the caretaker.

  The caretaker eyed Wellington holding a match above the bowl of his pipe but said nothing. He nodded towards Flat 7 on the other side of the landing.

  ‘Come with me,’ Breen said to Mint.

  It wasn’t a flat, it was a bed-sitting room, with an old sofa covered in blankets next to a gas fire and facing an old black-and-white TV. There was a curtain across the room, blocking most of the light from the windows; Breen guessed the man’s bed was on the other side of it. Bookshelves were filled with boxes of all sizes – old cardboard shoeboxes, wooden cigar boxes, biscuit tins, tobacco tins – all full of doorknobs, sash weights, screws, hinges and the other paraphernalia of an odd-jobs man. His name was Benjamin Haas, he said, and he had worked here since shortly after the war.

  ‘She was a working girl,’ he said, shrugging. He filled a kettle from the sink and put it on a small gas hob.

  ‘A prostitute?’

  ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘A hard-working girl.’ He had a mid-European accent. ‘Always paid her rent. Always polite.’

  ‘Friends, relations?’

  ‘Only a maid.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘I know only her first name, Florence. Maybe that’s her real name. Maybe it isn’t. It is not my job to ask.’

  ‘So you don’t have an address for her?’ Spooning tea into a large brown pot, Haas shook his head.

  ‘What about the lift. What was wrong with it?’

  ‘The electric motor is finished. The repair man coming. But he doesn’t come yet.’

  ‘It was definitely out of action on Friday morning, you say.’

  The body was on top of a lift in an open shaft; it would have been visible if the elevator car had descended.

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend? Husband?’

  Again, he shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Pimp?’

  ‘No no no. She wasn’t one of those girls. You don’t understand.’

  ‘What about any arguments? Any falling out? Did you have any problems with her?’

  ‘Only pop music. She plays pop music a lot. And loud. Terrible music.’ He smiled. ‘Bang bang bang. Yeah yeah yeah.’

  Breen looked around the room. There were dusty hardback books piled on the floor.

  ‘You live here on your own?’

  He put a tray on a stool; the teapot, three white mugs, a box of sugar cubes and a half-pint bottle of milk. Then he waved his arm around the room and smiled. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘You liked Miss –’ Breen checked the name in his notebook – ‘Bobienski, though.’

  ‘She is half my age. Was,’ said Haas.

  ‘Are you Polish, too?’

  ‘Austrian,’ said Haas. ‘As a rule, I dislike the Poles. After all, they, as a rule, dislike Jews, so I dislike them, but I liked her. She was different. She had… Charakter.’

  ‘Character.’

  ‘Yes.’ He poured three cups of tea.

  ‘Had she been here long?’

  ‘Only two years.’ The man rubbed his lips and then scratched at his arm.

  Mint, who had been silent all this time, leaned forward and took his tea. Breen left his. ‘She was a prostitute,’ Breen said.

  ‘We do what we have to do,’ said Haas. He waved his hand around him. ‘In Austria, I used to be a cello player in the Philharmonic Orchestra. Now I fix taps that drip.’

  ‘You maintained the lift?’

  ‘That… no. Too kompliziert.’

  ‘Did she have regular customers?’

  ‘Of course. She was a pretty girl.’

  ‘Would you recognise them?’

  ‘Men do not visit prostitutes in order to be recognised. In the evenings, I stay in my room and listen to the radio.’

  Breen wondered if the guardedness of his answers came from being an outsider, from speaking a second language, or something more.

  ‘Did she pay her rent on time?’

  ‘I am just the caretaker. But I have never heard any comp
laints from the landlord.’

  ‘You might tell him that it’s an offence under the Sexual Offences Act to let out premises as a brothel.’

  Haas shrugged. ‘So? Maybe close down all the hotels here also.’

  ‘Who else lives in the building?’

  Four of the flats were empty, said the caretaker. One was awaiting a new tenant. One contained an elderly couple who had been away on holiday since the end of June. One of the basement flats housed a French family who returned home every summer. The husband worked in a restaurant. The other was being used to store furniture. ‘On the first floor there are four students, from the University of London. Below that, Mr Payne,’ he said.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Old man,’ said Haas. ‘He is retired.’

  Breen turned to Mint on the sofa next to him. ‘Do you have any questions?’

  ‘Me?’ Mint sat clutching his tea, blushing under his thick dark hair.

  ‘For example, when Haas last saw Miss…’

  ‘Bobienski,’ said the caretaker. ‘On Thursday. Her pipes were making noises. She asked me to fix them.’

  ‘Were you aware of men coming to visit that evening. On Thursday?’ asked Breen.

  ‘As I say, I make it my job not to be aware of these things,’ he said.

  Mint finally opened his mouth to speak. ‘So can you account for your movements between Thursday night and…’

  ‘Saturday morning?’ suggested Breen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mint. ‘Can you account for your movements between Thursday night and Saturday morning?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Haas. ‘I was here. I went to the shops to buy food and some hardware. I came home. I listened to the radio. They played organ music by Couperin.’

  ‘And Saturday?’

  ‘They played Handel, I think.’

  ‘No,’ said Mint. ‘In the morning?’

  ‘Maybe I went to Bloom’s. For lunch.’

  Breen said, ‘Blooms? In Whitechapel? That’s the other side of London. Just for lunch?’

  ‘I like the food. It’s what my mother used to make.’ It was a kosher restaurant; all the Brick Lane Jews ate there.

  ‘Who did you eat with?’ said Mint.

  ‘Alone.’ He shrugged.

  Breen said, ‘You went all the way to the East End to eat a meal on your own?’

  ‘It is a very nice meal,’ said Haas simply.

  ‘So you have no alibi?’ said Mint.