by William Shaw
“Old man, you are too old to fight but not too old to be polite. Don’t make a pig of yourself eating all the biscuits,” said Mrs. Ezeoke.
Breen tried to remember anything he had read about the war. It was confused, in his mind, with Vietnam. Facts came only in fragments. Hostilities had started last year. Part of Nigeria had seceded but he could not remember why, or which side had the upper hand.
“It would have been better if your government had recognized our country, of course,” said Mr. Ezeoke. “It would have been over in a few weeks if you had, and fewer people would have had to die. But you chose not to and supported the genocide instead. Because you’re still imperialists who want our oil. You’ll regret that. When we win, the countries who supported us will be the ones we let buy our oil.”
His wife clucked her tongue. “Mechie onu. These police officers have not come here to hear your political opinions. They are looking for a murderer.”
“I am sorry.” He smiled at Breen. “My wife is right. I wish I could help you more.”
Breen showed them the photo of the dead girl. Mrs. Ezeoke sat on the arm of her husband’s chair and looked at it with him. He furrowed his brow, then shook his head. “I’m sorry,” said Sam Ezeoke. “I wish I could say I recognized her.”
His wife tutted. “She is young. How terrible.”
They were sitting around a small, ornately carved African table, geometric patterns carved into the dark wood. An immense glass ashtray sat in the middle of it.
“I’ve got a question,” Breen said. “Had you noticed that the doors of the sheds next to where the body was found were open?”
“My God yes,” said Mrs. Ezeoke, leaning forward on the sofa. “The doors were banging all night. Every night. My husband almost got into a fight with one of the residents there when he complained because we could not sleep.”
The surgeon chuckled. “It was not that vulgar, Ezi. I was most polite.”
Breen pulled out his notebook and flicked through the pages. “Would that have been with a Mrs.…” He found the name. “Miss Shankley?”
“I didn’t ask her name,” said Ezeoke. “I don’t think she was interested in mine either. Though of course I could have spelled it out for her if she asked.” He giggled. “She told me to go home.” The giggles turned to laughter.
His wife scowled and muttered, “This is not a joke, nna.”
“Of course it is a joke. You cannot expect me to take people like her seriously.”
The doorbell rang. Mr. Ezeoke excused himself and went to answer it. Breen and Tozer could hear him speaking loudly to someone in the hallway.
“I am sorry about my husband,” said the woman. “He is all talk. He would not admit it but he was very offended by the woman he spoke to in those flats. Very upset. She was very rude to him.” She smoothed down her skirt and said more quietly, “I think she would not be rude to him if she was in hospital and her life depended on his work.”
Breen stood to go, and as he did so Ezeoke entered the room with another older gray-haired man.
“Are you going?”
“We’ll leave you. You have guests.”
“This is my good friend Eddie Okonkwo. A staunch supporter of the Biafran cause. Eddie, this policeman is a fan of the Uli school of art.”
“Are you? I have more in my shop,” said the wiry man, holding out his hand to shake. “You must come and visit me.”
“Well…”
“If you like African art, I sell it.” He pulled out a business card and handed it to Breen. Afro Art Boutique. Fine African Antiques and Art. E. Okonkwo. Notting Hill 4732. An address on Portobello Road. “I am very fashionable,” said Okonkwo with a smile. “All the in people come to my shop. Brian Jones. Terence Donovan. Susannah York. You know Susannah York? She is very, very beautiful.”
“Brian Jones?” said Tozer.
“Of course,” said Okonkwo. “My Ashanti stools are very popular. You should come before I have to put the prices up.” He laughed.
“Eddie. Must you turn everything into commerce?” said Ezeoke.
“Just one question. Where were you on Sunday evening?” Breen asked Ezeoke.
“I had dinner in town with a colleague and came back here around eleven.”
“And your wife can confirm that?”
“Naturally.”
“You were here alone until midnight, nna. I was with my uncle.”
“Of course. I forgot,” said Ezeoke.
“My uncle gets homesick. I have to go and cook Biafran chop for him.”
“It’s true. She does. She is the best cook in London,” said Okonkwo.
“You’re…?”
“Yes. I am her uncle,” beamed Okonkwo.
“And your colleague will be happy to confirm you were having dinner with him? Can you give me his name?”
“Her name. Mrs. Frances Briggs. Her husband is Senior Registrar at my hospital.”
Breen noticed Mrs. Ezeoke run her tongue around the inside of her upper lip.
They shook hands on the doorstep. The rain had eased off.
“That was strange,” said Tozer.
“Was it?” said Breen.
“Didn’t you think? All that African stuff.”
Breen shrugged.
“Don’t you think they must feel so out of place in England?”
“If they do, I sympathize.”
“And him going on about how rubbish the British are for supporting the other side, but he’s happy enough to come here and live off us.”
“He’s a surgeon. He probably pays more tax in a year than a copper would in a lifetime. He’s not exactly living off us.”
“You know what I mean,” Tozer said.
They walked down Garden Road to where their car was parked.
Straightaway, Jones appeared out of the alleyway from Cora Mansions. He was out of breath. “Paddy,” he said. “Been looking for you everywhere. I think we’ve got him.”
“What?” Breen and Tozer followed him past the sheds into the courtyard.
“The murderer.”
“Bloody hell,” said Tozer.
Miss Shankley was there at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in her housecoat as always, arms crossed, cigarette in her fist.
“Carters,” said Jones. He was excited, unable to stand still, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“What d’you mean?” said Tozer.
“Come out of the way.” Breen took his arm to pull him out of earshot of Miss Shankley. She craned her neck towards them, still trying to hear.
“You know I said I’d go and ask about the bag?” said Jones. “Struck lucky. Fifth shop I went into, the guy said it wasn’t his, but he knew where it was from. Carters hardware in St. John’s Wood High Street. I talked to the bloke who owns it. He says he buys them special thickness for tools, on account of them being so heavy.”
“Good work,” said Breen.
“Thanks.” A smile. “I got him to check his books, and you’ll never guess who’s got an account with him.”
“Go on.”
“Your Mr. Rider.”
“God,” said Tozer.
“Plus—and you’ll like this—plus, I asked Miss Shankley there, Rider doesn’t have one of the sheds.” Miss Shankley caught the sound of her name and smiled. “So he probably wouldn’t have known the doors had even been fixed. So maybe he was trying to stuff her into one of the sheds after all. Shall we bring him in?”
“This is it, then,” said Tozer.
“We arrest him, right?” said Jones.
Breen turned to Tozer. “Tell Marilyn we need a search warrant for his flat. Give her the address. Is he in?”
Breen could see Miss Shankley following his gaze upwards to the top floor.
“No. He goes out for a walk every morning, apparently.”
“Who said that?”
“His neighbor. He goes out every morning, regular. Back at one for lunch.”
Breen looked at his watch.
“Get one on the front and one on the back, just in case he’s back early. Keep it discreet.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“To talk to the nanny.”
“Haven’t we got enough?”
“Maybe,” said Breen.
Tozer nodded. “Cautious, isn’t he?” she said to Jones.
Jones snorted. “I’ll say he bloody is.”
“If he comes back,” said Breen, “ask him to come to the station to answer some questions. If he refuses, pull him in.”
“It was my idea,” said Jones to Tozer. “You know, to go and check on the bags.”
“Super,” said Tozer.
They were both excited; Breen should have been too. Heading the squad that caught the murderer would do something to clear his slate. And even though he’d initially neglected to search the bins, Jones could now claim his part in the result. But Breen still felt the same pressing anxiety he felt from yesterday, the same leadenness.
“Maybe we’ll go to the pub after, yeah?” Jones said to Tozer. “Celebrate. Us CID boys will show you how it’s done.”
“What’s going on?” called Miss Shankley from the bottom of the stairs. “You should be telling us.”
“Oh God,” said Tozer when they had walked round the corner. “See the way Jones was looking at me? Now they all think they can buy me a drink and then you know what. And he’s married, isn’t he?”
“And that’s my fault?”
“Yes. It is, matter of fact.”
Ten
Mrs. Broughton wore a collared blue dress with buttons at the front and a mid-length pleated skirt. Her black hair was held firmly in place by a layer of spray.
“She is a very silly girl indeed,” she said.
A Wedgwood teapot sat on the coffee table in front of her. There was a scent of geraniums in the air from a row of plants on the windowsill. She, Breen and Tozer all had cups full of tea in front of them. The silly girl, whose name turned out to be Joan, sat uncomfortably on the piano stool, fidgeting. She was dressed in her nanny’s uniform: a black woolen jacket and a gray skirt. Her cheeks were flushed.
“Why she didn’t think it important to tell me that my children had seen a dead woman I can’t think.”
The girl sat silently. Outside in the hallway a grandfather clock that had probably been in the family for generations ticked through each heavy second.
“I am sending her home to her parents. I have told the agency that I shall not be using them again. She is not suitable.”
“Have you been here long?” Breen asked the girl.
“She has been here almost two months,” answered Mrs. Broughton. She sat on the floral print couch, one arm lying across its back. “I suppose I’ll have to pay her till the end of the week. It’s very inconvenient.”
Breen observed the girl chewing slowly on the inside of her lip. He looked at her hands. Her nails were short and bitten. Unhappiness in the young is never well concealed.
“My husband has a senior position in the Foreign Office,” Mrs. Broughton said. “He would loathe it if there were a whiff of scandal about this. There is no reason for this to be in the newspapers, is there, officer?”
“I doubt they’d be particularly interested.”
“One small mercy, I suppose.”
“May we speak to Joan alone?” asked Breen.
“Alone? We are in loco parentis, for now at least. I think we should be there.”
“I’d prefer to talk to her on her own. There will be a woman constable present.”
A pause. A small smile. “Well, I suppose so.” But she showed no sign of finishing her tea and leaving the room.
“Perhaps we might talk to you in your room,” Breen said to the nanny.
The girl nodded silently, looking at her feet, then stood.
“She’ll show you the way,” said Mrs. Broughton, leaning forward to open a silver cigarette box that lay next to the teapot. “Please don’t leave without seeing me first, officer.”
Up the stairs in gilded frames hung dark portraits and joyless, damp-looking landscapes. The opposite of Ezeoke’s paintings.
The girl lived at the top of the house in a room whose ceiling was so low Breen could not stand up straight. Around the walls were Sellotaped pictures of pop stars and models cut from magazines. Breen recognized only Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. There was a red Dansette on the shelves and an untidy pile of singles on the floor. A crochet hook and some wool sat on a chair. A spider plant that was badly in need of water. A small chest of drawers with clothes half pulled out. A small brown leather suitcase, half packed.
“Going home then?” said Breen.
“So I hear,” said the girl. She walked to the wall and started carefully peeling off the photos.
“Mind if I sit down?”
The girl nodded slightly. There was only one chair, so Breen sat on it.
“I’ll take the bed then, shall I?” said Tozer. The metal bed squeaked as she sat down.
The girl’s eyes were red; she rubbed the sleeve of her woolen jacket across them to dry them. Tozer pulled a hanky out of her sleeve and offered it to her.
“I’m sorry. I meant to call the police. Only I was worried what she’d say.”
“Why?”
She said nothing, lips scrunched up, and reached for another photo. A pop group clustered round a drum kit that had The Small Faces painted on it.
“It’s OK. We won’t tell her,” said Tozer.
The girl paused in her packing. “’Cause Alasdair had to have a wee-wee in an alleyway, ’cause I was talking to some boys in the playground and didn’t take them to the toilet when we were still in the park,” she blurted. “And we were almost home but he was desperate.”
“Alasdair?”
“Their son. I look after him.”
“And Mrs. Broughton wouldn’t have liked the idea of her son…?”
The girl shook her head. “And now she’s calling me deceitful ’cause I didn’t tell her. And a liar. And she’s the one who said she was going to pay me four pounds a week and she only pays me three pounds ten.”
Tozer stood and put her arm around the girl. “If I were you, I’d be glad to be out of here.”
The girl shucked the constable’s arm off her shoulders, continued in her work. “They’ll tell the agency, and all. And I won’t get another job now.”
“There are other jobs,” said Tozer.
The girl nodded. “I hate this place anyway. London’s a dump. Everybody says it’s cool but it isn’t. This room smells and Mr. Broughton is a letch. He tries to see me when I’m in the shower.”
“Never,” said Tozer.
“He does. I’ve seen him. You can see out of the kids’ bedroom right into the bathroom if you leave the window open. And you have to if you’re having a shower because it gets all steamy. I’ve seen him in there, peeking through the curtains.”
“What? Peeping Tom?”
She nodded and giggled. “And he has wandering hands, know what I mean? When she isn’t looking.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Tozer.
The girl grinned, half embarrassed.
“What does he do?”
“Puts his hand on my bum.”
“What a perver.”
“I know.”
“A groper.”
The girl laughed out loud this time.
“You’re best off out of it.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me,” said Breen, interrupting. “What do you remember of when you first saw the body?”
“I didn’t see much. Just her face. She had creepy eyes.”
“Did you recognize her?”
She shook her head.
“The rest of her was covered by the mattress?”
“Yes. You could have only noticed her if you were crouching down. Or if you were a little boy.”
“Did you see anyone there?”
“No. No one.”
“So. Why did you run awa
y?”
“I don’t know. I was scared. And I didn’t want to get caught up. I was late. Mrs. Broughton would have killed me if I was late. She doesn’t like me very much.”
“Unlike Mr. Broughton,” said Tozer.
The girl laughed again, losing a little shyness each time.
“Do you ever talk to the girls who wait over the road?” Breen said.
“Sometimes. They don’t like me much, though.”
“Why not?”
“They’re real cliquey. I’m not one of them, am I?”
“What do you mean?”
She bit the inside of her lip. “They’re a bunch of loonies, if you ask me. Some of them sleep outside at night. And the clothes. They look awful, if you ask me. They’re all super-rich but they wear these dirty clothes. They give me the creeps.”
“You ever seen the Beatles there yourself?” asked Tozer.
The girl shook her head. “Mrs. Broughton don’t like me going over there. She saw me there once and gave me a real talking-to. She complains to the council about them. Says they’re spoiling it all round here.”
Breen pulled out the photograph of the dead girl. “Could you look at it for me?”
She looked and shrugged. “No. Not seen her before. Not until Monday, anyway. Is she dead in the photo?” She stared at it, fascinated. Then she handed it back and continued putting away her belongings.
She now had a pile of all the photographs she had put on the walls. She laid them carefully inside the lid of her suitcase. Then she unplugged her Dansette and fastened the lid with a click. “How old was she?” she asked.
“Around sixteen, seventeen, we think.”
“You haven’t found out who she is, then?”
“No. Not yet. But we’re close.”
“Same age as me,” said the girl. “Scary, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Tozer. “It is.”
“Was she hurt bad? You know. Before she died.”
“I don’t think so,” said Tozer.
“I dreamed about her,” said the girl. “Couple of times.”
“Oh yes?” said Tozer.