She's Leaving Home

by William Shaw

  “Yes.”

  “And you were up a tree trying to rescue a girl’s cat?”

  “That’s so sweet,” said the nurse, wielding the syringe. “Just a little prick.”

  “Is this one the last? I really should be going,” said the doctor.

  “Two more. One abscess, one chest pain. I think that’s it for tonight.”

  “I lost my balance trying to grab him,” said Breen.

  “At least you tried,” said the nurse. “That’s the main thing.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is.”

  The doctor left, clacking his heels down the corridor.

  “Do you think I could have a coffee?”

  “Sorry.” The nurse smiled. “No coffee. No, no, no. Not for you.” She put the syringe down on the trolley and picked up a clipboard.

  “Can I have some water then?”

  Again she shook her head. “Nil by mouth. You’ll probably need anesthetics, poor old you. We’ll know if we have to just as soon as they’ve taken your X-ray.”

  “And how long will that be?”

  “I really can’t say. There’s quite a queue. I think it’s great that you were helping rescue a cat.”

  “You mean other people don’t?”

  “Of course they do,” she said. “Anyone we should contact?”

  She tutted in a sympathetic manner at his reply as she left the room and he was relieved she was gone. The hubbub of the hospital, the complaining doctor, the chattering patients, the rattling of trolleys, even the careless platitudes of the nurse, were oddly lulling.

  He stood up and walked out of the side room, holding his arm to his chest. It was evening. A food trolley was doing the rounds; they were placing trays of lukewarm cottage pie and boiled vegetables on the beds of patients who were not going home for a while. Jelly and condensed milk for afters. He walked to the nurses’ station. “Is there a phone I can use?”

  The nurse pointed him down a corridor, past the double doors towards a visitors’ room, where a gray-skinned man sat in his pajamas smoking a pipe and holding the hands of a bored-looking young girl.

  It was not easy using a telephone with one hand. With the receiver wedged under his chin, he placed sixpence in the slot and dialed. When Marilyn answered he pressed Button A and heard the coin drop.

  “I heard the news,” she said. “Oh, Paddy? What are we going to do with you?”

  “The car’s in Garden Road. They brought me here in an ambulance. Can someone pick up the keys from me?”

  “Do you want me to come and drive you home?”

  “It’s all right. I might be here ages, for all I know. I have to have an X-ray but they won’t find anything. I’ll be fine.”

  “It’d be no trouble. I’d like to.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Bailey wants to know what you were doing up a tree.”

  “He’s heard, then?”

  “Everyone heard, Paddy.”

  “And everyone’s having a good laugh, I suppose?”

  “Bailey isn’t laughing exactly.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he is.”

  He finally left the hospital at a quarter to eleven at night. A taxi dropped him off at his flat, where he struggled for a bit with the key, and when he went to bed it was too painful trying to take his shirt off, so he slept in it, fitfully, unable to turn over without it hurting.

  At two he woke and thought he heard the sound of his father, struggling to make it to the toilet. He had found him once or twice on the floor, shivering with cold. Then, as he was about to get out of bed, he remembered it couldn’t have been his father and lay back to fall in and out of dreams full of monsters and men with knives.

  “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  “Get lost.”

  “Ooh. Can you find my pussy, you big strong policeman?”

  “I hear you’ve had a break in the case with your dead bird,” said Jones.

  “You heard what?”

  “A break. Get it?”

  “Opportunity Knocks for Constable Jones,” said Carmichael. “What’s new, pussycat, whoa-uh-oh-uh-oh-oh!”

  Marilyn said, “There’s a woman from Garden Road called up says you stole her ladder.” She came and stood by his desk. “You shouldn’t be at work. You hurt yourself.”

  “Just bruises,” he said. “Doctor says I’m fine.” The doctor had given him a sling and told him to take a week off, but he could not bear the idea of a week in the flat on his own. His father’s stuff all around. Besides, if he was off sick the dead woman would be passed on to another officer. Probably Prosser. So he had not put the sling back on this morning. Instead he’d folded it and placed it in the drawer among his vests.

  Prosser emerged from Bailey’s room. “Snap,” he said quietly. There would be bandages under his shirt sleeve.

  Breen’s shoulder ached dully and he had to be careful not to move too quickly. The two men stood facing each other. The walking wounded.

  “How are you doing?” he said to Prosser.

  The office was suddenly quiet. Prosser was the longest serving of the CID Sergeants at Marylebone. Early forties. Tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. Just split up from his wife. Unlike Breen or Carmichael, he still lived in one of the police flats off Pembridge Square and spent his evenings playing declaration whist or pool at the table with the younger officers at the section house across the road. They all loved him. One of the lads.

  “Me?” said Prosser, walking over to drop a folder on Jones’s desk. “I’m fine. It’s you we’ve got to worry about, is what I’m hearing.”

  Marilyn looked up from her desk and broke the silence. “Meeting at nine sharp on the St. John’s Wood murder. Papers got wind of it last night,” she said.

  Jones whispered something to Prosser, and Prosser looked at Breen and laughed.

  “Carmichael,” Bailey said, emerging from his office. “I need a word.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Breen crossed the room to his desk; there was a metal fire bucket standing on it. Inside was a note that read In case you feel a bit queasy. The note had been written on a sheet of Izal toilet paper, scrawled in pencil above where it read Now Wash Your Hands Please. Next to the bucket lay Dr. Wellington’s report.

  Breen looked up at Prosser and Jones. Jones was trying not to laugh; Prosser just smiled. Turning to the report, Breen pulled out two black-and-white ten-by-eights of the dead woman’s face. Frizzy-haired, eyes closed, about sixteen or seventeen years old, maybe older, with square cheekbones that cut across her otherwise round, soft face. She had the flaccid look the dead have.

  He was reading Wellington’s one-page report when Carmichael came back and sat at his desk.

  “What did Bailey want?” asked Prosser.

  “He wanted to know how I was so successful with the women.”

  Marilyn snorted.

  “Your wife especially, Jones.”

  “Really funny.”

  “He wanted to know why I drive a brand-new Lotus Cortina and you only have a clapped-out Morris.”

  “You haven’t got a Lotus Cortina,” said Jones.

  “No, but I’m going to, one of these days.”

  “Seriously.”

  “He’s getting his knickers in a twist about me doing stuff with the Drug Squad.”

  Breen looked up. “When did you start working with the Drug Squad?”

  “It’s not official, like. I just been giving them a bit of help. You know. And Bailey don’t like it unless he’s had the forms in triplicate.”

  Bailey appeared at the door of his office. He glared at Breen, then said, “Right, Breen, Jones. What have we got?” The team crowded into Bailey’s office.

  What have we got? Facts that were too sparse to suggest any sense of direction. The policemen had returned from their search yesterday with a pair of knickers; they were large, white and matronly, and from the state of them had obviously been lying on the ground for far longer than
the dead woman. Nothing else had been found.

  The victim remained unidentified. The door-to-door inquiries had come up with two individuals—in addition to Mr. Rider—who suggested that the dead body was a prostitute. This, Breen considered, was a possibility. Streetwalkers used Hall Road, only five minutes’ walk away, but Carmichael said that nobody had reported any prostitutes missing.

  What the body was doing out there in the open was a mystery. It was a halfhearted place to leave a corpse, barely concealed in such a public place. It suggested a lack of planning by the person, or people, who’d murdered her. The murder had been badly thought through. Or at least, the disposal of the body had been.

  “No decent leads, really. It’s enough to make you sick,” said Jones. People snickered.

  “Enough of that,” said Bailey.

  “Ha-very-ha,” said Carmichael.

  “I said. Enough.”

  A woman police officer entered the room. Everyone stopped for a second and looked at her. Though there was a women’s unit at Marylebone, they were only on admin tasks and social work. If a crime involved a kid you’d ask one of them in. Apart from that, they never came into the CID office.

  The woman blushed. She was gawky-looking; a thin, angular face, and dark hair cut into a lank bob.

  Bailey scowled and said, “You’re early. I’ll be with you in a minute, Miss…?”

  “Tozer, sir.”

  “We’re wasting our time there,” said Jones. “Going over the same ground. She was dumped, Wellington said.”

  “Breen?” said Bailey.

  “I don’t agree. Until we know where else to look, it’s our best bet.”

  “Waste of time, I say.”

  “What about the woman who discovered the body?” asked Bailey.

  “It wasn’t a woman. It was a girl. A nanny. No name yet. We’re looking.”

  The one thing the door-to-door inquiries had established beyond doubt was that the orange mattress that had lain over her had been there before she had been dumped. Several people had noticed it, lying against the wall on top of the pile of rubbish.

  Breen picked up the forensics report and started to summarize it for everyone in the room. In it, Wellington said pretty much what he’d said the day before yesterday to Breen. She had been strangled. He estimated that she had died between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the previous day—around fifteen hours before she was discovered. The fact that blood had settled on one side suggested she was not dumped until at least two hours after she was killed, which meant that she had not been dumped until 8 p.m. at the earliest on the previous day, by which time the alley would have been dark.

  “Nobody’s going to dump a naked bird in broad daylight,” said Carmichael.

  “She’s not just a naked bird,” blurted the woman constable. A broad West Country accent made her voice sound doubly out of place.

  Everyone stared.

  “No, you’re right. She’s a naked dead bird,” said Carmichael. People laughed. Tozer colored but didn’t lift her glare from Carmichael’s face.

  “That’s sufficient, thank you,” said Bailey. “Wait outside please, Constable, until we’re ready.”

  The woman left. Breen picked up from where he’d left off. There were no obvious signs of penetration, though Wellington hadn’t ruled out a sexual assault. He looked at the woman constable through the glass. She was standing outside, looking at her feet, embarrassed.

  “Missing persons?” asked Bailey.

  Jones answered. “No one there matching the victim’s description in the last two weeks.”

  “A pretty, young, naked woman stirs the prurient instinct. With that kind of attention it is useful to make progress fast. OK, everyone. Back to work,” said Bailey with a sigh. “And Breen?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “That woman constable outside has applied to join CID.”

  There was an immediate hush in the room.

  “Like it or not, she’s been made a TDC,” said Bailey. Temporary Detective Constable. She was a probationer.

  “You’re joking?” said Carmichael.

  “It is not my doing, you can be quite sure of that.”

  “Hell’s teeth.”

  “She will be on the murder squad with you and Jones, Breen.”

  “Oooh,” came the catcalls. “Breen has got a girlfriend.”

  “What?” said Carmichael. “We’ve got to work with a bloody plonk?”

  “I should imagine Breen needs all the help he can get.”

  “But she’s a woman, sir,” continued Carmichael.

  “Well spotted, Carmichael.”

  “So’s Breen,” said Jones.

  “That will be all, thank you,” said Bailey, closing the door behind him.

  Seven

  It was a new Cortina, F reg, pale blue with a white door, the letters POLICE picked out in black on the side.

  The Temporary Detective Constable got in and tossed her hat into the back of the car, not saying anything.

  “Right.” This was a new one on him.

  He opened the door, sat down and turned the engine on, then went to put the car into reverse and almost passed out from the pain of the motion. “God,” he said.

  “You all right, sir?”

  The nerves in his shoulder were screaming. His skin prickled with a sudden sweat.

  “Sir?”

  He breathed deeply and reached his good arm up to adjust the rearview mirror so he could reverse without turning his head.

  Gingerly putting the car into first, he made it out onto the street and up to the traffic lights without having to change gear again.

  “Sure you’re OK?” she said.

  “Fine.”

  “Your arm. I heard you fell out of a tree,” she said in her rural accent.

  “Yes.”

  “Bet it hurts.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A bit.”

  They didn’t talk again until they were halfway up Lisson Grove.

  “She wasn’t raped, then? The dead girl?”

  He looked at her. She was young, probably only in her early twenties. “We’re not sure yet.”

  “Got any leads?”

  “Not so far,” he said.

  She nodded, then said, “You’re still in second. You should change up.”

  He dropped his arm down to the stick and the left side of his body flooded with pain again. He wasn’t sure he could do this.

  There was a traffic jam ahead. He tried to see what was causing it, but a large bread van blocked the view.

  “They said she was naked. Did you see her?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Was she pretty?”

  He looked at her. “Not particularly, I don’t think. People look different when they’re dead.”

  Now the car was going slowly he needed to change down again. Cautiously he moved his hand down to the gears. Another sudden stab of pain. He braked to avoid hitting the car in front, stalling the engine.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He laid his head on the steering wheel of the stationary car. “I’m not sure I can drive. I can’t seem to change gear. My arm’s too sore.”

  “From when you fell…?”

  “Does everyone know about it?”

  She nodded. Somewhere behind a car horn sounded. Breen switched the hazard lights on and cars slowly started moving around them. After a while she dug in her bag. “Got an aspirin if you want,” she said.

  They had given him painkillers at the hospital, but he wasn’t due another one until lunch. “We’re going to have to go back to the station.”

  “You going to call in sick?”

  “I can’t drive.”

  Looking at him, she said. “Who’ll take over this case?”

  “Sergeant Prosser, I suppose.”

  She scowled and pulled out a packet of cigarettes from her bag, offering him one. Usually he didn’t smoke so early in the morning. He took one, though. First of the day. It would help with the pain.
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  “What if I did it?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Drive the car.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “Been driving tractors since I was eight, sir. Otherwise you’ll have to go back to the station, won’t you?”

  He nodded. If he went back now he would be sent home sick. “Women officers aren’t authorized to drive cars.”

  “Just for today. You’ll probably be all right tomorrow, won’t you?” She lit the cigarette for him, throwing the match out of the sidelight. “No one has to know.”

  Cars coming the other way stared, wondering why a police car was stopped in the middle of the road, lights flashing.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll change over just before we get there if you like.”

  The car inched forward until they reached the cause of the jam. Big new Greater London Council blocks were starting to spring up all over London; they were building new flats here too. These were small fry compared to some of them, just four stories high, and already half built. A lorry unloading bricks blocked half the road and a workman was directing cars around it, but he was doing so in a half-hearted, haphazard way, one or two vehicles at a time.

  Tozer honked the horn, but the sudden burst of noise didn’t help. The workman trying to direct the traffic panicked. He tried to make a Commer van that was coming towards them back up to let the four or five cars in front of the police car come through, but there was a big red Number 2 bus right behind the van. There was no space for it to move backwards.

  “For pity’s sake.” The policewoman wound down her window and shouted, “Oi! Get a bloody move on! Want some chewing gum, sir?”

  “No thanks.”

  A gust of wind blew a pale white curtain of concrete dust across the road into the constable’s open window. She wound it up, swearing, brushing the pale flecks from her woolen suit.

  Now a foreman had come out and was adding to the confusion by shouting at the workman directing traffic and pointing to the police car.

  “Cathal Breen,” the constable said, pronouncing the “th” in the name. “When they said your name first, I thought it sounded like you were a woman,” she said. “Kathleen. No offense meant.”

  He looked over at her. “It’s pronounced Cah-hal,” he said.