by William Shaw
Two days later, on Thursday, when Elfie finally brought the baby home, Klaus sent someone from the agency to pick up his MG Magnette and his stereo.
‘Tell him he’s a bastard,’ said Helen, as the young lad tasked with unplugging the hi-fi pulled up speaker wires from under the carpet.
‘Don’t say that,’ said Elfie. ‘He’s Jimi’s daddy. He’s just going through a hard time right now.’
Helen rolled her eyes, but said nothing. In the end, Elfie had named the baby after Jimi Hendrix, though he looked nothing like him. Despite his tubby face and bald head, he still looked the spit of his absent father.
Helen watched from the window as the lad drove the car away. Elfie lay on the living-room floor, with her baby boy next to her on a pink blanket, a gift from her parents. Elfie’s mother had turned out to be a writer of romantic novels who lived in a massive mansion in the North-West of England, and had been convinced the baby would be a girl. She was coming to visit at the weekend.
That morning, the news of spy exchange between the Krogers and Gerald Brooke broke in the morning papers. The radio reported that rumours were spreading that Brooke would be released today. In the House of Commons, politicians were tub-thumping, demanding an emergency debate about why the Prime Minister had caved in to Soviet pressure.
‘I was thinking. We should all move into a big house in the countryside together. Paddy could paint. Helen and me could look after each other’s babies…’
‘God, no,’ said Helen. ‘I like it here.’
Elfie put her finger in Jimi’s little hand and the fingers closed around it. ‘Say what you like, I still think Brian Jones was murdered.’
Helen glanced at Breen, but he said nothing, so she got up and went to Elfie’s kitchen to make tea. Breen followed her.
Yesterday, the Shepherd’s Bush Police had come to the flat and interviewed them for over an hour; he had found it surprisingly easy to lie to them. He was a copper. Why wouldn’t they believe him? Helen had nodded, and told them that everything had happened exactly as Sergeant Breen had said.
‘We’re going to have to talk about it at some point,’ he said quietly. ‘Just because you got away with it doesn’t mean I don’t know.’
‘I got away with it?’
‘Don’t pretend to me it wasn’t you who suggested it to Mrs Russell. I know you did. It was your idea, wasn’t it? The whisky, the pills, the bath.’
‘You two OK in there?’ Elfie called.
‘Fine,’ Breen shouted back. ‘We’ll be out in a minute.’
Helen nodded. ‘Mrs Russell thinks it’s all her fault. At the back of her mind, I think she knew all the time. She has to live with that.’
Helen found a tin of biscuits, took off the lid.
‘I won’t lie to you, Cathal. This is who I am. I wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it myself if I’d had to. He had got away with two murders. No… three, with the caretaker. I know what it’s like when someone has got away with murder.’
‘You didn’t know he’d got away with it. I could have proved it. You didn’t give me the chance.’
‘It was him I didn’t give the chance to. Not you.’
She took a biscuit and bit on it, then offered the tin to Breen. He shook his head. From the living room came the sound of cooing.
‘So. What now, Cathal?’ she asked. ‘You and me?’
‘I need time, that’s all.’
‘I know. You’re a good man. But sometimes I wonder if you’re cut out to be a copper at all. Ow!’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just a twinge.’ She rubbed the bottom of her belly. ‘If you want, I’ll move out. Whatever you want. I mean it.’
‘Doorbell,’ shouted Elfie from the other room.
Helen left the kitchen to go and answer the door, leaving Breen on his own. He heard the door opening, closing again.
‘Who are they from?’ Elfie was saying.
It was a bunch of gladioli for Elfie. The note said: ‘Congratulations on the baby. John C.’ John Carmichael had sent flowers.
‘Flowers?’ said Helen. ‘Really?’
‘What’s wrong with flowers?’ Elfie stood and took them into the kitchen to put them into the sink. She didn’t know what Carmichael had done. ‘I think they’re lovely.’
‘Don’t judge everyone by your own standards, Cathal,’ said Helen quietly, when Elfie was out of earshot. He had told her all about John Carmichael and Julie Teenager. ‘What he did was shit. But he’s your oldest friend in the world.’
‘What standards exactly?’ said Breen. John Carmichael was a policeman who had lied to protect himself; Breen wasn’t so different from him, not any more at least. He had no right to judge him now.
‘Don’t be bitter, Cathal. Please. It doesn’t suit you. I’m sorry for what I did to you, but you know, in the circumstances, I’d do it again. It’s who I am.’
‘Is that your phone?’ called Elfie from the kitchen.
From downstairs, through the floorboards, Breen heard a faint trilling.
‘Leave it,’ said Helen, looking at him sadly. ‘Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll take that stupid ring and wear it. Or move out. It’s your choice, Cathal.’
Breen couldn’t just let a telephone ring. He was out of the front door and down the steps, unlocking the door to their flat.
‘I didn’t expect to ever be saying this to a Met Police officer, but well done,’ said a voice, when he picked up the phone.
‘Mr Sand? I would have thought you’d have been busy with Gerald Brooke.’
‘I’m at the airport now, as it happens. We’re expecting the plane from Moscow at any minute. Fortunately for Anglo-Soviet relations, you were wrong. It wasn’t Lyagushin after all.’
‘Fortunately for you. Unfortunately for Ronald Russell.’
‘He was a killer. And he worked for the Soviets, Sergeant Breen. Remember that.’ A tannoy announcement obliterated everything for a second. Then Sand was saying, ‘Lyagushin is being called home, unsurprisingly. That’s the end of that. Anyway, I just wanted you to know. I’ve called up your Superintendent and asked him to go lightly on you for trying to talk to the press. If he disciplines you, it’s not down to us.’
‘Why? Why would you do that?’
‘We’re not bad people, Sergeant. Despite what you think. We just have a job to do. As do you. And I know you were just doing what you thought best.’
‘Am I supposed to say thank you?’
‘You are. I know you don’t think a great deal of us.’
‘You got your man back, anyway.’
‘Brooke wasn’t our man. Never was. Whatever Ronald Russell said. The whole thing was just putting lipstick on a pig. The Soviets outmanoeuvred us on this one.’
Another spy would replace Lyagushin, presumably.
‘One other thing you might want to know. Bobienski’s brother?’
‘Stefan? The one who survived the gulags?’
‘Yes, Stefan. Only we believe he didn’t survive. Our people in Warsaw say it was all a fiction. The Polish security services, the UB, probably just pretended he was alive in order to blackmail Lena. They sent the photographs and wrote the letters. It’s likely they were all forgeries. Of course she’d have never known. But with her parents dead, she must have so badly wanted him to be alive.’
‘That’s awful.’
Breen didn’t hear Sand’s reply. Another tannoy announcement blared down the line.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, I like the way you handled yourself. No hard feelings? And one last thing. Your father was Irish, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see, I only ask because there’s quite a bit starting up in Ireland right now. I think it’s going to be interesting. Early days yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a fairly big situation. I’ve been saying that for a while; nobody has been listening so far, but we’re going to need men there. Maybe you should come and work for u
s. I think you’d be a good fit. We need men like you. Resourceful. People who give a damn. None of the old public school queers and poets. They’d stand out a mile over there.’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Breen. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘I understand if you’re a bit raw right now. But maybe in about six months if things don’t settle down there.’
‘No,’ said Breen again. ‘Not ever.’
‘Of course. Shame.’ Somewhere in the background, a jet roared, taking off for a place far away. ‘I sincerely hope our paths cross again, however troublesome you’ve been,’ said Sand. ‘Have to go now,’ he added.
Breen put down the phone and went back upstairs.
‘Who was it?’ Helen was in Elfie’s living room, still clutching the tin of biscuits.
‘No one, really,’ said Breen.
And then Breen realised there were biscuits all over the floor, scattering everywhere, breaking into fragments, and Helen had dropped down onto the blankets and throws that covered Elfie’s huge sofa.
‘Ow!’ she said for the second time, hand under her belly, looking up at him, eyes suddenly uncertain. ‘Cathal?’
In the ambulance, which smelt of disinfectant and plastic, he sat squeezing her hand as they jostled through the Hackney traffic, thinking how strange it was that she could have ended a life, but now she was bringing one into being. Wondering if he knew her at all.
And, lying on the narrow bed next to where he sat hunched, she looked back at him. He tried to remember if he had ever seen her looking this scared before, in all they’d gone through together. Just the one time, when he was hanging from the window at the back of the house in Upper Addison Gardens. So he squeezed her hand a little harder, and she did the same back, and the ambulance’s bell filled the air around them with noise.
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THANKS
Numerous theories have been put forward to suggest whether Brian Jones was murdered, and how or why. The finger tends to point at Frank Thorogood, who’s mentioned glancingly in this book as the sometime boyfriend of Kay Fitzpatrick and the man who did ‘odd jobs for Brian Jones’. I, like Cathal Breen, tend to believe the guitarist’s death is more likely to have been, as the initial inquest stated all along, a sad accident. Those who follow the tortuous details of the case might recognise the character of Kay Fitzpatrick as having similarities to Brian Jones’s driver Joan Fitzsimons, who was assaulted, blinded and left for dead on a Sussex beach – though they will also spot that I have taken liberties with the date and place of the attack. In the case of the real Joan Fitzsimons, her boyfriend Michael Ziyadeh was convicted of the horrendous attack and sent to Broadmoor before being deported.
In the run-up to the Gerald Brooke spy exchange, the Sunday Times did indeed print an article which insinuated, incorrectly, that Brooke may have been a bona fide British spy.
Massive thanks to Christopher Sandford, Paul Trynka and Chris Sansom for their help with background. All errors that remain are my own making. Nick de Somogyi P. D. Viner and Erinna Mettler get thanks too. And love and huge gratitude for being in it for the long haul to Roz Brody, Mike Holmes, Jan King and Chris Sansom; their comments were, as always, invaluable. Thanks to the inspirational Jon Riley and the riverrun team; in particular to Rose Tomaszewska for such great notes. Thanks to Jane McMorrow, obviously. And finally thanks to the amazing community of crime writers who offer their support and advice so freely.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Shaw is an award-winning pop-culture journalist who has written for the UK’s Observer and Independent as well as the New York Times. He is the author of two novels set in contemporary Kent, Salt Lane and The Birdwatcher, and four novels featuring Detectives Breen and Tozer set in 1960s London. His books have been nominated for the Barry and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Historical Dagger awards. Shaw lives in Sussex, England.
ALSO BY WILLIAM SHAW
Salt Lane
The Birdwatcher
Breen & Tozer
A Song for the Brokenhearted
The Kings of London
She’s Leaving Home
Nonfiction
Westside