by William Shaw
He offered her a cigarette. She took one and put it behind her ear. “I’ll have it when I finish my sweet,” she said. He lit his and kept the matches out to light hers with when she was ready.
“What about all those girls who used to come in and look after your dad for you?”
“You can’t exactly ask a girl who you pay to wipe your dad’s arse out for a date, can you?”
“I bet you’d like a girlfriend though.”
“I thought you were spoken for,” said Breen.
She laughed. “I’m serious.” When she finished her sweet, she took the cigarette from behind her ear and he struck a match for her.
“I like it on my own,” said Breen. “I’m used to it.”
She inhaled and held the smoke in for a second, one hand on her large belly. After she blew it back out, she said, “That’s what my dad says. He’s rubbish at lying too.”
A red light on her machine came on, and she stood up to add more powder from the cup.
“Let me have your shirts to iron,” she said. “You’ll never manage that on your own with your bad arm.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ve got enough to be doing.”
“Suit yourself.”
That afternoon he played some of his father’s 78s on the radiogram. When his clothes were safely in the dryer he had gone to the school shop up the road and bought a new pack of pencils and a sketch pad. He opened it now, put the small photograph of his mother in front of him and started trying to sketch her. As the pencil moved over the paper, he sat in his father’s old chair listening to John McCormack sing “Kathleen Mavourneen,” his rich, vibrant, ridiculous tenor singing, “Then why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?” He knew every absurd phrase and swoop. His father had played them occasionally. It was the closest he’d ever got to indulging himself in emotion.
And the long hiss afterwards as the needle spun around in the groove.
He was out of cigarettes.
Fourteen
Monday morning, Jones came in a little after a quarter to nine with a black eye, skin around it yellow and purple. “Bloody hell,” said Prosser.
He smiled sheepishly. “I walked into a door.”
“That’s a terrible thing to call your missus,” said Carmichael, looking back down at his paper.
Breen’s phone rang.
“I walked into a door.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Hello?”
“I walked into an effing door, right?” Jones carefully hung his jacket on a wire coat hanger, then put the hanger on the hat stand.
Breen tried to hear the voice on the other end of the line. It was the woman from the Ministry of Defence.
“Keep your ginger hair on. You walked into a door.”
“Thank you.”
Breen cupped his hand over the receiver. “Quiet,” he shouted.
The voices stopped for a few seconds at least. Breen picked up a pencil and said, “Fire away.”
Jones sat down at his desk and carefully placed a sheet of carbon paper between two forms.
“A door with a skirt on.”
“Will you just shut up!” Jones shouted, red-faced.
Breen wrote down: “Major Sullivan. Seventh Armored Signal Regiment.”
“Where’s he stationed?”
“He’s retired,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “He retired right after that posting in Germany, as a matter of fact. I’ve got an address, though, if you want it.”
Bailey stuck his head round the door. “What are you lot all doing sat on your behinds?” he said.
When he’d gone, Carmichael pulled a face and repeated Bailey’s words in his Kenneth Williams voice. Nobody laughed. It was one of those mornings.
Breen looked at the address he’d written down.
“Cornwall?” said Jones. “Can’t you just phone them?”
“It’s been a week. I want to know why they haven’t reported their daughter missing. I think we should talk to them, face-to-face.”
“Can’t you let the wurzels in Devon and Cornwall do it for you?”
“I think we should go,” he said.
Jones scratched the side of his face thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t take two of us, though, would it?”
Breen was relieved. “It’s OK.”
“Cornwall?” said Tozer. “That’s where she came from?”
There was no mention of their brittle parting on Friday night. It was as if it had not happened. “Liskeard. Is that far from where you live?” he asked.
“Not that near. ’Bout an hour and a half away.”
“If I can clear it with Bailey for you to come, will you drive me there?”
“You serious?” she said.
The next morning she examined a Ford Zephyr that he had booked out for the journey. It had seen better days. “I’ve driven combines that go faster,” she said.
It was early but they wanted to get out of London before the morning traffic was too bad. Tozer swore constantly as she crunched through the gears as they drove out along to the Great West Road. New cars parked outside new factories and offices. Union Jacks flip-flapping lazily. Neat lawns in front of the offices. They hit traffic at Gillette Corner and crawled for almost an hour towards the new section of the M4. Near London Airport they were stationary again as the planes flew overhead.
“What’s that one?”
“It’s a Britannia,” said Breen.
“And that one?”
“It’s a Comet.”
“What about that?”
“It’s a Britannia too. No, sorry, a Constellation.”
“I never met a man who didn’t know the names of planes. You been in a plane?” asked Tozer.
“No.”
“But you know what their names are.”
“Not all of them.”
“I think that’s fab.”
“That’s a Comet. BOAC.”
“We went on holiday to Sardinia. The Pineta Beach Hotel. I don’t know what plane it was, though. It was the summer after Alex was killed. Mum wanted to do something to cheer us all up so we went on a package. Dead modern. Dad got food poisoning and Mum got heatstroke on the miniature golf course. Don’t laugh. It’s true. I swear it. I spent my time on my own by the pool being chatted up by Eyeties.”
A gang of seven or eight greasers roared past the stationary traffic, weaving between cars, hair sweeping backward in the wind.
“I didn’t mind, actually. One of them was all right. He was very strong and brown. He got me drunk one night on the beach and tried to feel my bosoms. And worse. I may have been drunk but I gave him such a slap…”
The traffic was moving again. “Was this before or after you started going out with the detective sergeant?”
“During. I wrote postcards home to my policeman every day. I think I used up every card they had in the hotel.”
Slowly at first, but gradually speeding up, the cars and lorries around them began to hurtle westwards.
“I got drunk a lot that holiday. All three of us did. That’s all we did, really. Dad almost drowned in the pool one day he was so drunk. He’s not used to it. Doesn’t drink much normally. A bottle of Bass with Sunday dinner.”
Tozer weaved from the left lane to the right again, working her way through the speeding traffic. The motorway verge blurred. As she indicated to pull out to overtake a gravel lorry in front, Breen said, “Do you always drive like this?”
“I’m only going sixty.” She moved lanes again, accelerating past the lorry and moving back into the left lane ahead of it. Breen’s good hand dug into the leather of the seat. He tried to look at the speedometer but her hands were in the way.
“When the holiday ended we were relieved, I think. We all felt uncomfortable pretending that everything was OK. Back to mud and cowpats, getting up at five in the morning for the milking. We felt guilty for trying to have fun. My mum said, ‘I don’t think we’ll be going again.’” She laughed. “That’s the Tozer f
amily motto. ‘I don’t think we’ll be doing that again.’ Is there anything wrong with my driving?”
“Nothing.”
“You seem to be really tense.”
He looked at her. “I’m fine.” The motorway ended at Maidenhead and they carried on along the A4. On the slower roads, he relaxed a little.
While she was filling up the car at a service station in Reading, Breen went to the gents to splash water on his face. There was no towel to dry himself on, so he pressed his skin against the sleeve of his gray jacket.
“Were you close to your dad?” she asked, when they were driving again.
He peered at a map. “I think it should be signposted for the A33 at the next roundabout.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Your dad? Were you close?”
“He was not an easy man to be close with. But I was, yes.” If she’d asked that when he was alive he would have answered differently. Now he was gone he realized how close he had been.
In Dorset, they stopped at a village shop and bought fresh rolls and a quarter-pound of cheddar which they shared sitting in a car park, washing it down with swigs of lemonade.
“The boys at the station say you’ve changed.”
“Do they?”
“Jones says you and Carmichael used to be best mates.”
“We are best mates. Still.”
“He said you and Carmichael once got mad with Bailey and put a bit of bicycle inner tube over the exhaust pipe of his car.”
“That was Carmichael, mostly.”
She laughed. “Why?”
“You know, police practical jokes.”
“Did it work?”
“It was like his car farted all down the street.”
“Fab!” She laughed.
She lifted the bottle of lemonade and took a swig from it, then held it out to him. He looked at her backwash of breadcrumbs floating in the clear liquid and said, “You finish it.”
“You sure?” she said. “Thanks.”
By two in the afternoon they were at Honiton, where an overturned horsebox had blocked the road, and they sat in traffic for twenty minutes before turning off down a small lane. Breen tried to follow the small yellow lines on the map but he was soon lost.
“This road isn’t even on the map,” he said. The lanes were deep and dark, cut into the hilly landscape, huge hedges rising on either side so he couldn’t see the lie of the land. They became like tunnels, burrowing underground, roofed by branches of oak and hawthorn. After what seemed like hours of driving around they found a signpost to Exeter and followed it back to the main road.
It was past four by the time they reached Exeter. “What shall we do? It’ll be another hour at least before we get to Liskeard,” said Tozer.
Breen felt exhausted from the long journey and his stomach rumbled with hunger, but he said, “Let’s go on. We’ll find a motel somewhere afterwards.”
“I told you already, I’m not that kind of girl, sir.”
“What?”
“You said let’s go and find a room and I said I’m not that kind of girl.”
“No. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know. That was a joke. Sir.”
“Right.” He nodded. She was teasing him, at least.
The countryside turned wilder after Exeter. They crawled up onto the moor in the gray evening light. Tozer drove determinedly, peering over the steering wheel into the darkening landscape. She seemed to know her way around these roads, navigating confidently over the narrow bridges and ever-curving bends, slowing to avoid the occasional sheep. Now the hills were covered in dark brown bracken, turning black in the evening light, and stunted trees, silhouettes, bent into the shape of the wind. Gray stone walls climbed high up steep slopes around them.
It had been dark for over an hour by the time they reached Liskeard. It was a market town, the buildings low and small. There was a hard, worn look about the place. Tozer stopped by a large corner pub, where two old boys in threadbare tweed jackets and woolen caps stood by an alleyway.
Tozer got out. “Can you tell me where Fonthill House is?”
“Fonthill House?”
One took off his cap and scratched at his scalp. “That up Shute Hill?”
“Mebbe,” said the other.
“It’s a Major and Mrs. Sullivan,” said Breen from the open car window.
Another man emerged from the gloom. “Here, these two want to find a place called Fonthill House. A Major and Mrs.…”
“Sullivan,” said Breen.
“Aye, I know them,” said the third man. “He’s that one on the Bodmin Road. Blow-ins. I did some grass mowing for him Michaelmas gone. Wouldn’t make that mistake again.”
“Why not?”
“Skinflint said I’d not done it proper.”
“Never.”
“Cheeky bugger.”
“Where’s that?” said Tozer. For the first time Tozer’s accent sounded almost cosmopolitan.
The gents all offered various directions up the lanes, pointing out of town.
Fifteen
It was a huge gray-rendered Victorian house, a squat toad of a building that lurked behind a high granite wall. They drove in through the rusted gate down a narrow driveway choked with leggy rhododendron and laurels.
In the headlights, the garden wore a tired look. Leaves piled where the breeze had taken them. Grand cedars and Corsican pines had struggled against the wind for a century. In front of the house, in the center of a circular driveway, stood a large iron fountain. The pond around it was thick with overgrowth.
Gabled windows looked out from a slated roof. Attached to one chimney, a long scaffolding pole, on which a television aerial waved gently in the wind. On the ground floor, huge sash windows looked out over lawns that dipped away from the house. A soaked wicker chair sat alone, facing away from the house, looking out across the valley behind.
They pulled up alongside a brand-new maroon Jaguar, tires crunching on gravel. Next to the new car, the house looked ramshackle and unkempt. It felt absurd to be here, to be a detective announcing a death at a country house. It was something out of a slim paperback. There was a single light on the ground floor. Breen thought he saw a shape peering out at them as they parked. Almost as soon as he tugged on the wire pull of the bell at the wooden porch, another light came on in the hallway and the large front door opened.
The woman was in her early forties, fair-haired, slim and beautiful. She was dressed in slacks, a black polo neck and a wide-lapelled flowery jacket that looked like it must have been bought at Biba or some other trendy London boutique. There was a large bronze bangle on her left wrist. “Yes?” she said, frowning.
“My name is Detective Sergeant Breen. This is Constable Tozer.”
“And?”
“Are you Mrs. Julia Sullivan? Married to Major Mallory Sullivan?”
“Why?”
An elderly golden retriever limped to the door, barked once hoarsely, then seemed to lose interest, wandering away.
“Could we come in? We have something important we wish to discuss.” He knew how pompous he must be sounding. But it was easier to begin that way.
“Mal?” she called. “We have visitors.” There was wine on her breath.
A man appeared in a doorway, frowning. “What kind of time is this?”
Breen saw the likeness immediately. The dead girl’s round face, her thick eyebrows, her solidity. She had none of her mother’s lean beauty.
“Behave, Mal,” she said, quietly.
“Well?”
“It’s about your daughter.”
“Yes? What’s she done now?” said the major. Breen could now imagine the girl’s dead face as something not dead. Her face was his face. His angry scowl could have been hers.
“Mal, for God’s sake,” said Mrs. Sullivan, still quietly.
“Shoplifting or—”
“I’m afraid we think she’s dead,” interrupted Breen.
Gravity seemed to swell. The woman said, “God,” but so quietly Breen could barely hear her.
By her side, the major stood stiffly, a puzzled look on his face.
“I’m afraid she was murdered.”
Major Sullivan reached for his wife’s hand but she slapped it away, wrapping her arms around herself. “Come in,” she said.
They walked into the living room. A room with a fire dying in the grate. She walked straight to the sideboard, took a glass and poured herself a large whisky.
Breen assumed she was going to gulp it down to steady her nerves. Instead she turned and jerked the whole glass into her husband’s face. “Idiot,” she said.
He stood there, stunned, blinking against the pain in his eyes.
“This is all your fault.”
Whisky dripped from his face onto his shirt.
“That’s hardly fair,” he said, like a schoolboy complaining about a detention.
“None of it’s bloody fair,” she said, and she went to the sideboard and poured herself another glass without asking if anyone else wanted one.
“Tea would be an idea, perhaps,” Tozer said. “Where is the kitchen? Come and sit down, Mrs. Sullivan.”
“Tea?” said the major, still blinking. “Yes.” And Breen followed him across the hallway, through the dining room and into a kitchen at the back of the house where the washing-up was still stacked in a wooden drainer and where four empty beer bottles stood on the pine table.
He watched the major fill the kettle from a tap with a bit of pink rubber fastened to it to stop it splashing, and place it on the range. “It’s an awful shock, you know,” he said.
“Of course.”
“What did she mean, it’s all your fault?”
“I don’t really know. She’s like this when she’s upset, you see.”
The major opened a series of terracotta pots, searching for tea. He was apparently not familiar with the kitchen.
“When did you last hear from your daughter?”
“Months, really, I suppose.”
He had found the one with the tea. Breen watched his hands shaking as he spooned it into a large white teapot.
“Can I ask why you were not in touch with her?”