She's Leaving Home

by William Shaw

  “Cathal. What kind of a name is that?” she asked.

  “Irish,” he said. “My parents came over before the war. What about you?”

  “My parents?” asked the woman, turning towards him, a puzzled look on her face.

  “No, your name.”

  “Tozer,” she said, looking ahead again. “Helen Tozer. Pleased to meet you.”

  The traffic started to move again. He hoped she wasn’t going to talk this much all the time.

  “The girls say you went mental a couple of days back, is that true?”

  He looked at her. “Mental?”

  “Sorry, sir. I mean…You did something, and Prosser ended up getting stabbed.”

  “You know Prosser?”

  “God, yeah. We all know Prossie. He lives in police flats near the women’s section house. Since his wife walked out on him he’s always hanging round.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Not much.”

  “I went mental? Is that what they say?”

  “Yep.”

  He watched a crocodile of schoolchildren in blazers and caps walking up the pavement.

  “I’m just saying, you know,” said Tozer. The traffic cleared. She accelerated past a man on a motorbike.

  “Do you have to drive so fast?” said Breen.

  “They said Prossie went into a shop on his own where there was a robbery taking place.”

  He still had to write the report for Bailey. Martin & Dawes. The modern men’s outfitters. By the time he arrived, Prosser’s car was already there and the back door to the shop was wide open; Prosser was inside. The thieves had been calmly loading rails of clothes into the back of a parked van.

  “Chinks with knives, they said. Bloody hell. I hate knives,” said Tozer.

  Two Chinese men; one kitchen knife, eight-inch blade. He was on the car radio outside calling for backup when Prosser had emerged a minute later, covered in his own blood. The thieves had made it out of the front of the shop, abandoning the van. Pure fury in Prosser’s eyes as he looked at Breen.

  “Personally, I wouldn’t say it was your fault, exactly,” she said. “If he’d done it according to the book, he shouldn’t have gone in there until you got there.”

  “Bully for you. Slow down.”

  “Like I said, just saying.” She swung a quick right and pulled up by the murder scene. “This where she was found, then?”

  He sat in the car, looking ahead.

  “Sir?”

  “Near the end of the sheds over there.”

  She was silent for a while. “You would have thought somebody would have noticed their daughter had gone missing,” she said eventually. “I mean.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Breen, looking out of the car window. Rain had started to spatter against it.

  “Be honest, sir, I think we’re wasting our time around here. Like Jones said this morning. Body was just dumped, wasn’t it? Whoever put it here could have come from miles off.”

  “You think that?”

  “I mean, I know it’s not my place, sir. Only I can’t help—”

  “If the body was dumped, why here?”

  Tozer frowned. “Just chance, I reckon. Someone was looking for a badly lit spot. That’s my point. There’s no reason to restrict our search to this area.”

  “Tozer, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve been in CID half an hour…”

  “Sorry, sir.” She stared at the steering wheel.

  “Look. See these shed doors?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Until last Friday, all the locks were broken. The doors were all open. They’d been that way for a month or more. Anyone walking past would have been able to see that. But they were fixed two days before the murder. I’m guessing whoever dumped her was expecting to be able to leave her in one of these sheds for a few hours, maybe a day, until they could take her somewhere else. It would have to be someone local to have noticed that the doors were all open. And then they got here and found they’d all been locked…”

  “…And panicked and dumped the body under a mattress?”

  “Yes. Which means the murderer could be someone who walks down this road a lot. Probably every day. OK?”

  “Right.” She nodded, and looked up and down the street with renewed interest. “Wow. So it could be someone living in any of these houses?”

  “Possibly.”

  At that moment the door of the shabby Victorian house next to the lock-ups opened, and a large black man emerged, pausing on the doorstep to look up and down the street. You couldn’t fail to notice him. Blacks were not common around this neighborhood; besides, he was dressed conspicuously, in a beige linen Nehru jacket, whose thin vicar-ish collar circled his large neck. It was the sort of suit that you saw African leaders wearing in the newspapers; businesslike, but deliberately un-British. The man, carrying a fat brown leather briefcase, checked his watch and then surveyed the street again.

  Breen opened the car door and called after him, “Sir?” The black man appeared not to hear at first, or maybe pretended not to. Breen shouted louder. “Hey! Sir!”

  The man turned, slowly, with great deliberateness towards Breen. He was a large man; his chest strained at the linen of his suit. “Yes?”

  “Detective Sergeant Breen,” he called. “I’m investigating the death of a young woman whose body was found close to your front door.”

  The man stood at the top of his front steps and looked back down at Breen. He smiled. “You need to speak to me now?”

  “It is a murder we’re talking about,” said Breen.

  A taxi was driving slowly towards them, “For Hire” lit in orange on its roof, checking house numbers.

  “Of course, of course,” said the man, nodding. “But I am late for an appointment now. Would it be possible to arrange a time?” He spoke in the kind of accent that one only acquires in an English public school. “Shall we say, eleven a.m. tomorrow?”

  “First things first. What’s your name?” said Tozer, pulling her pencil out from the elastic around her notebook. Breen looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  “Samuel Ezeoke,” said the man. “And yours is?”

  “How do you spell that?”

  The man said slowly, “E-Z-E-O-K-E. Pronounced Ez-ay-oak-ay. My first name is Samuel. S-A-M-U-E-L,” spelling it out as if to a child.

  “Can I have your employer’s address?” asked Constable Tozer.

  “My employer’s address?” said Ezeoke, eyes wide.

  “So he can vouch for you.”

  “Because I’m an African?” Ezeoke reached into his jacket pocket and removed a small silver case from which he pulled a single business card.

  As she read the card, Tozer colored.

  Back in the car, thin-lipped, Tozer muttered, “How was I to know he was a bloody surgeon?”

  Breen sat in the passenger seat, flicking through the pages of an A–Z. “What were you doing back there? You’re not supposed to be doing the questioning.”

  “Thought I was helping,” she muttered.

  “Well, you weren’t.” He looked at her.

  She was chewing her lip, looking miserable. He sighed. He did not know how to handle women.

  The rest of the morning they spent driving around the local streets, peering into backyards and alleyways. She was talking again.

  “My old boss says they’re going to start a big investigation of CID for being bent,” said Tozer.

  “They’ve been saying that for years,” said Breen, looking out of the passenger window.

  “Are they bent?”

  “Some.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said. He turned away from the window and looked at her. She was so fresh-faced and eager it hurt.

  “Is that the tree you fell out of, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t look that big,” she said.

  He reached in his pocket and took out the orange bottle of painkillers
the hospital had given him.

  “Don’t you want some water with them?”

  “I’m OK,” he said, though bitterness lingered in his mouth after he’d swallowed.

  “The police doctor said you were sick when you saw the body. Is that right?”

  “Have you ever seen a dead body?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. Seen loads of dead animals in my time on the farm. Millions of them.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “I think I’d be all right if I saw one,” the woman said. “Not that I think it’s wrong for you to throw up. Everybody should be upset, the way I see it. Sir?” She interrupted her own flow. “That’s EMI Studios, isn’t it?”

  “Do you ever stop talking?”

  “Sorry. If other people don’t talk much I end up just filling the space. Loads of girls hang out there, though, don’t they? Hoping to see the stars. Do you think she could have been one of them?”

  “You don’t think we might have considered that?” he said.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Why did her eagerness irritate him so much? There was nothing wrong with being enthusiastic.

  She said, “Mind you, that don’t mean she wasn’t one of them.”

  “No. You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been thinking that.”

  “You hungry?” she said, changing the subject again before he could begin to explain why. “I could murder a lardy cake.” She gazed at the window of a bakery window they were driving past.

  He wondered how much more of this he could stand. Maybe he could persuade Jones to drive him. Jones wouldn’t like it, but Bailey might be pleased if he tried to make an effort with Jones. And at least they understood each other.

  A little after midday they walked over to the canteen at St. John’s Wood Police Station, where the officers who were still going door to door were taking a break. Breen lit cigarette number two.

  “It’s yummy, sir. Sure you don’t want a bite?” She held out her cake. It was thick and rich, dripping with grease.

  “No, thank you.”

  As they sat on metal chairs drinking tea from enamel mugs, a young red-faced copper approached them. “Sir?”

  Breen recognized him as one of the men he’d spoken to yesterday. He was clutching a mug in one hand and a dirty, crumpled brown-paper bag in the other.

  “I was looking for you yesterday, only I heard you fell out of a tree, sir,” he said with a smirk.

  “Well?”

  “’Cause I found this, sir. In one of the bins you asked me to look through.”

  Breen unwrapped the top of the bag and pulled out a black cotton evening dress.

  Breen and Tozer looked at the dress, then at each other.

  “Which bin?” asked Breen.

  The flat had two refuse chutes that dropped rubbish down into bins below.

  “The far one, sir. Not the one by where the girl was found, know what I mean?”

  Breen handed the dress to Tozer and struggled to pull out a notebook from his jacket pocket. Holding it with his sore arm, he flicked through until he found a drawing he’d made of the flats with all the occupants marked on it.

  “Why would anybody throw this away?” said Tozer. “I mean, it’s in good nick.”

  “Why is it so clean?” said Breen. “If it was in the bins?”

  “It was in that bag I just give you, sir.”

  Breen put down the bag. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I stuck my own prints all over it?”

  “I do something wrong, sir?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Bourne and Hollingsworth. Oxford Street.” Tozer was reading the dress’s label. “Size fourteen.”

  “What?”

  “Wellington’s report said she was seven stone ten, didn’t it? Might be a bit big for her.”

  “When did you read Wellington’s report?”

  “This morning, before you got in.”

  “Why?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” She fingered the hem. “I had always imagined the girl as a Carnaby Street type. But then she was naked, wasn’t she? So how would I know? Still. This dress doesn’t even look like it’s been worn, hardly. Why would anybody just chuck it away?”

  She laid the rumpled dress out on the worn top of one of the tables and then stood back suddenly. “Oh,” she said.

  In the middle of the dress, just below the seam that joined the top to the skirt, was a stain; a small pale blot.

  She leaned forward and peered.

  “What?” Breen asked.

  She picked up the dress and examined it closely. Then put it back down and leaned over towards him, whispering, “Do you think it’s…you know?”

  He picked up the dress and looked at the stain.

  “You know.” Then even quieter: “Spunk, sir.”

  He blinked at her. He must have been looking shocked that a girl would have used the word, because she said, “No need to be like that, sir. We have that stuff in Devon too.”

  Eight

  In his small office in the hospital basement, Wellington was delighted by the find. “A-ha,” he said.

  “‘A-ha’ what?”

  “Another Onan shall new crimes invent, and noble seed in selfish joys be spent.” He sat behind the desk and pulled the dress towards him, holding a small magnifier to his eye.

  “I was wondering if it was sperm.”

  “Yes, yes. Women present, Paddy. But yes. Sperm.”

  “You think it may be?”

  “I’ll be sure whether in two hours. I’ll do an acid phosphatase test. You realize that if this is the victim’s dress, this may be an indication of some particular deviance? An inability to penetrate?”

  Wellington raised the dress to his nose and sniffed it.

  In the car, hands on the wheel, Tozer said, “He seemed happy.”

  “Yes. You did well, Constable.”

  “Thank you, sir. Where next?”

  “Soho,” said Breen, settling back into his seat.

  Without looking, she reached her left hand behind her and felt for her handbag. “There’s a packet of Juicy Fruit in there,” she said, dumping it on his lap. “Could you pass me some? Have some yourself, if you like.”

  He looked at her like she was mad. “I’m not going rooting in your handbag.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  He pushed the bag over to her. She dug around with one hand while driving with the other. He was thinking, why shouldn’t a woman her age know what sperm looked like? It was 1968, after all. If she had been coy about it, like women were supposed to be, it might have gone unnoticed. He wasn’t sure if he was disturbed by this, or fascinated.

  “You’re quiet, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She parked the car in Soho Square. “Wait here. I’ll be back in an hour,” he said.

  “What am I supposed to do for an hour?”

  “I don’t know. Do some shopping?”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?” she said.

  In the square a group of people in their twenties and thirties were giving away pale blue bits of paper. A young man with a beard and a duffel coat stood with a sign that read Free your mind. A girl in a headscarf and a badge with a red clenched fist handed one of the leaflets to Breen. “You should come,” she said, and smiled.

  He read it: “ANTIUNIVERSITY of London. Courses: Future of Capitalism. Black Power. Counterculture. Revolution. Imperialism. Faculty includes Allen Ginsberg, Stokely Carmichael, C. L. R. James, R. D. Laing, Jeff Nuttall. No formal requirements. £8 10/- for each course.” He handed it back. “Not me. I’m too stuck in the mud for a revolution,” he said.

  She shrugged and took it back from him, holding it out for the next passerby.

  Detective Sergeant Carmichael was waiting for him in Pollo’s, sitting on the red-and-black-striped vinyl banquette seats. Pollo’s had always been one of Breen’s favorites. An Italian. Italiano. Gaggia coffee machine, the works. Proof, against all
the evidence of his Irish ancestry, that Catholics could have class.

  “You’re late,” said Carmichael. “He’s only gone and left now.”

  “Who?”

  “The man I invited you to meet.”

  “Sorry. Had to drop by to see Wellington. Who were you fixing me up with, anyway?”

  “Pilch.”

  “Pilch? Drug Squad Pilch?”

  “I was putting in a word for you, believe it or not,” said Carmichael.

  “A word for me? Why?”

  “Because D Division is a mess. Everybody knows it. Especially CID. It’s going to blow up, sooner or later. Bailey doesn’t run it, Prosser does. He has all the ranks running around after him. And call a spade a spade, he really don’t like you much. You’d be better off out.”

  “Drug Squad? Not my thing.”

  “He’s a coming man, mark my words. On the up-and-up. And let’s face it, you need some help right now. You should get off murder anyway.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Breen.

  “Murder is murder. But drugs is going to be big, I tell you.”

  “So you say.”

  “Stands to reason. We’re on the tip of the iceberg. Come aboard, Paddy. Ship’s about to sail. Murder is just the same old same old. And I’m on vice. That’s even worse. Vice is done for. This is the permissive society. When there’s people starkers on stage up the Shaftesbury Theatre singing about the age of the Hairy-Arse, who needs to pay for it anymore? Did you go? No? I did. God, there’s some ugly bloody women in that. I felt like shouting, ‘For God’s sake put your clothes back on.’ In a couple of years we’ll be like Sweden, I tell you. The point is, nobody even has to pay for it these days. These young girls, nowadays they’ll fuck anybody. Drugs though. Nobby Pilcher’s got it right. Growth industry. I’m serious, Paddy. You need to get out of D Div.”

  The restaurant had filled. All the tables were taken. A queue formed outside on Old Compton Street.

  Soho was changing; it was full of advertising men and filmmakers who didn’t wear jackets and drank wine with their meals. Grown men wore flared trousers and scent. They carried notebooks and diaries with them wherever they went. They slouched. They smoked cigars.

  “And I’ll stick up for you, you know that. But…”