by William Shaw
“Major Sullivan comes to London, kills his daughter. You have evidence to prove he was here around the time she died.”
“Before.”
“Around. His wife killed him because he killed her daughter. She killed herself because she killed her husband. Three cases solved. You just won the treble.”
They were sitting around Carmichael’s desk. Marilyn had said she was on strike, so Jones had lost the toss and had to go out to buy the digestives.
“But what’s his motive?”
Carmichael went on, “Like I said, you don’t need one. He’s dead. We only need to prove motive if we’re prosecuting them for murder. Which we’re not on account of you can’t prosecute a dead murderer. Finito. Va bene.”
“Aren’t you even slightly curious about why he killed her? I mean, what had she done that was so bad that it made him want to strangle her?”
“I’m curious about things that matter.”
“Who’s stolen my stapler?” said Prosser.
“You should be glad. A man who almost certainly killed his daughter is dead.”
“So what did I say that made her turn round and kill him?”
“Who gives a stick? She’s dead too. Listen. Of course I’m curious. I’m also curious about what Marilyn looks like without her jumper on, but it doesn’t keep me awake at night. Some things don’t bear thinking about.”
“It keeps Jones awake at night,” said Prosser.
Marilyn pretended not to hear.
“You’re not going to get on if you get bogged down in cases like that. We’ve got work to get on with and it doesn’t get done by thinking about stuff that doesn’t matter.”
“You? Work?” said Prosser. “Pull the other one.”
Prosser whistled the first four notes to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Jones, arriving with the digestives, chimed in with an imitation guitar. “Wah wah wah.” Prosser pointed a finger at Jones and pretended to shoot him, then replaced his finger in the imaginary holster.
“I’ve promised myself I’ll just have one,” said Marilyn. “I’m on a diet.”
“You’re not having none,” said Carmichael. “You didn’t go and get them.”
“You never go and get them and that don’t stop you scoffing half the packet.”
“I never.”
“You do.”
“I do not.”
“Shut up,” said Breen. “Please.”
Everybody looked at him. He looked around, all of them staring at him. As calmly as he could, Breen stood up and took his coat off the hook.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” he said.
“Paddy? You OK?”
“Where is he going?” said Bailey, emerging from his office.
Nobody answered him.
“Biscuit, sir?” said Marilyn, holding out the packet.
There was a newspaper shop on the corner of Portman Square. Breen went in to buy a new notebook. He had never gone through so many. His office drawers were stuffed full of them.
A Number 13 bus to Golders Green rounded the corner just as he was coming out, so he ran after it and caught it at the Great Portland Street stop, flashing his warrant card to the conductor as he boarded. Struggling to get it back into his pocket as he lowered himself onto his seat, he almost lost his balance and ended up in the lap of a plump woman with a feather hat.
He rode the bus up until St. John’s Wood station and then got out and walked west to Abbey Road and then down to Cora Mansions.
He had been away a week, but the flats looked much the same. Miss Shankley was pegging out her washing on her rear balcony. She looked down at him.
“You got him then? And he’s dead now, isn’t he? So what are you still doing around here, then?”
He looked around him at the London skyline of chimney tops and cranes. “Just tying up a few loose ends.”
“Loose ends?”
“Yes.” He pulled out the photograph of the major, standing next to his wife. “Did you ever see him around here?”
“He the man who did it? Quite a handsome man, wasn’t he, really?”
“Would you recognize him if you’d seen him?”
“I don’t think I’ve seen him before. What sort of man kills his own child? You can’t rely on anything anymore. The world is full of all sorts.” She nodded her head towards a figure on the stairs.
At the end of the walkway he turned and saw Mr. Rider approaching, a small briefcase in hand. Seeing Miss Shankley and Breen talking about him, he hurried on away.
“Mr. Rider?” called Breen after him.
He caught up with him on the fourth-floor walkway.
“What do you want now?” he said.
“I just want to see if you recognize this man.”
“They all talk about me, you know.”
Breen took out the photograph of the major.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Mr. Rider. “I read it in the papers.”
“Yes.”
“Lucky bugger.”
“But you don’t recognize him?”
“People are laughing at me. Sniggering like schoolchildren behind their backs.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“No. Now please leave me alone.”
The rest of the afternoon Breen spent buttonholing anyone on the streets. People shook heads. Tutted. Nobody recognized the major.
The next day at University College Hospital, Prosser and Breen watched as Wellington prodded charred flesh.
“Any other clues?” asked Breen.
“He’s still dead, I can tell you that.”
Skin on the torso had been roasted till it was black, tightening around his body to become almost shiny. Extremities had been burned clean away. Lipless, his teeth seemed unnaturally white. His left arm and other bones sat in a pile at the other end of the slab. The dead girl, Morwenna Sullivan, would be taken away to be cremated soon, thought Breen. No friends or relatives had come forward to reclaim her body. The man in the fire was the same; nobody had noticed he was missing either.
“I’m not sure what else you want me to find, Paddy.”
“I was just thinking maybe he was worth a second look.”
“This is pointless, Paddy,” said Prosser. “Wellington’s got better things to do.”
“Not much else to go on. The fire must have been hot. These bones”—Wellington pointed to his exposed upper arm—“where they were exposed by burning, have fractured in the heat. Are you sure you don’t need a bowl, Paddy?”
“No. I’m OK.”
“Apparently you had a little vacation with a lady officer.”
Prosser snorted.
“I wouldn’t call it a vacation, exactly.”
“Quite the talk of the station. Have you seen much of her since you’ve been back?”
“Can we just hurry it up?”
“Whatever you say.” The pathologist picked up a fragment of bone. “I can’t find any evidence of trauma that would indicate that he was killed first and put in the fire second. Not that he’s exactly a perfect specimen.”
“Too damaged by the fire to be sure?”
“Yes. But then we found this melted into the skin of his lower abdomen.” He held up a twisted bottle, melted in the heat; a swirl of opaque glass, shattered at the neck, fused with pieces of ash and stone.
“He’s a no-fixter, right, most like?” said Prosser.
“My guess is he was probably roaring. Covered himself in newspaper in there to keep warm. And it did keep him warm, after a fashion. There was a can of lighter fuel on the floor too. He’d probably squirted it at the fire to get it going.”
“What about the clothes?”
“Ah yes. Oxides of calcium and silicon. Lots below the knee.”
“What’s that?”
“Concrete dust to you. His trousers were thick with it.”
“Builder maybe?”
“I’d say so.”
“Height?”
>
“Hard to be exact. Five foot six to five foot eight, I’d say,” said Wellington. “He’s in bits. It’ll take a while.”
“Age?”
“Thirties. Maybe twenties. What are you going to ask next? Eye color?”
The man had no eyes left.
“Not much to go on, Dr. Wellington?” said Prosser.
“No.”
“Breen’s probably wasting his time on this one. What you reckon?”
“That’s your call, Sergeant.”
“Poor bastard,” said Prosser. “It shouldn’t happen to anyone, should it?”
“Amen,” said Wellington.
They left Wellington putting the pieces of the man back into plastic bags. As they walked along the dark corridor to the stairs, Prosser said, “Don’t get me wrong, I respect you not giving up on this one.”
“And?” said Breen.
Prosser put his hands in his pockets. “Don’t be like that, Paddy. I’m just offering a word of advice. I’ve been around. You know. I’ve been on D longer than you. I’m a survivor. I know the way things work. Don’t waste your effort on jobs that nobody’s going to thank you for.”
Breen nodded. These were the silent rules Prosser understood. Not the regulations that Bailey always tried to enforce, but the rules by which things really worked. A nod and a wink. The regular you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours that Breen never felt part of. It was why he never trusted Prosser, and why Prosser didn’t like him. But there was no point in rubbing Prosser up the wrong way. “How’s that murder in Kensal Town?” he asked.
“Open and shut. We got the husband. You OK to walk back to the station? Only, I have something I have to do.”
“Constable Tozer OK?”
“She’s keen, I’ll say that. Bit mouthy. She’ll be one of the boys in no time at all.”
Breen doubted it. He still hadn’t called her. He hesitated, then said, “I was thinking maybe of going up to St. John’s Wood High Street one day, to have a look around at Martin and Dawes. Where you were stabbed. You want to come sometime? I could do with a lift.”
Prosser shook his head angrily, looked away. “There you go again,” he muttered.
“What?”
“You’re wasting your effort. It’s my case. I’m looking after it.”
“I thought if I was there I might notice something I hadn’t on the night. I was tired. Or I might remember something.”
“I remember you legging it clear enough.”
“I want to have a word with the shopkeeper too. He might have heard something.”
“What are you trying to do, Paddy? Piss me off? I thought we were just starting to get along again.”
“I just thought I might—”
Prosser stopped suddenly in the corridor. “Look. You made a cock of it that night and I almost got killed. You made a cock of it arresting the wrong bloke in the murder of that girl by Abbey Road. You made a cock of it down in Cornwall by all accounts. Don’t you start making a cock of my cases too, OK?”
And he poked Breen hard in the chest.
“OK?”
Breen stood in the lobby looking out through the swing doors. Rain was falling hard outside. Prosser had driven off with his raincoat. As he waited for the rain to ease off, he noticed a man he recognized standing in a corridor to his left.
“Mr. Ezeoke,” he called.
Ezeoke’s head turned. He frowned, as if at first the surgeon did not recognize him. He was in conversation with a dark-haired woman of about thirty who wore a lime-green minidress and a gold necklace. Ezeoke towered over her.
“Detective Sergeant Breen,” Breen said, holding out his good hand to Ezeoke in case Ezeoke did not remember him.
“You look pale, Mr. Breen. Is there anything the matter with you?”
The woman smiled. “A detective, Sam? You’ve not been doing anything you shouldn’t?”
“Always,” said Ezeoke.
Breen turned to the woman. “Mr. Ezeoke was helping me with an investigation.”
Ezeoke smiled. “Where is your eager young assistant today? Have you had any luck tracking down the killer of that poor girl?”
The woman said, “A killer? Sam, what are you involved in now?”
“We think her father may have killed her,” said Breen. “Mr. and Mrs. Ezeoke’s house is close to where the body was found,” he said to the woman.
“My God. Why didn’t you tell me about this, Sam?”
The surgeon looked down at his feet and nodded his head. “Her father? How terrible.”
“Yes.”
“Have you arrested him?”
An orderly walked past, pushing an empty trolley. “Unfortunately he is dead too. He was killed by his wife.”
“How terribly Shakespearean,” murmured the woman.
Ezeoke looked past Breen. “I am glad of that. All the same, you must be pleased to have solved the crime.”
“I’m not sure I have.”
Ezeoke smiled. “Does that bother you, that you are not sure?”
“Of course.”
“Really? Perhaps it should not. There are many crimes that go unpunished. Why should another one make a difference? You can only do what you can do. I am a doctor. I cannot save everyone.”
“Of course it makes a difference,” said Breen.
“Behave, Samuel,” said the woman.
“Forgive me if I seem hardened. Or cynical even. I am an African. There are many, many crimes against Africans that have gone unpunished. Crimes that are happening right now. Do you care about those too? Or just the ones that happen in your own jurisdiction?”
“The officer is just trying to do his job. Samuel is a revolutionary.” She smiled. “He loves to get on his high horse about African politics—don’t you?”
“I am sorry,” said Ezeoke. “It was not a fair question. You must forgive me.”
“And how is your war?” asked Breen. “I read an article saying that the government troops were making advances.”
“The Federal army have been conducting a major offensive, but their gains are only temporary. Their lines of supply are very vulnerable to attack. We will see them beaten back soon.”
“The Federal troops are committing atrocities, Mr. Breen,” said the woman. “Children are being starved to death. Tens and tens of thousands. It is mass murder. If you’re interested, you should come to our fund-raiser. We should invite him, Sam.” She reached into her shoulder bag.
“My good friend Mrs. Briggs helps me fund-raise,” said Ezeoke.
She handed Breen a gilt-edged card. In copperplate script, it read: The Pan-African Committee for a Free Biafra invite you to a Dinner Dance. Donations will be accepted. There was an address of a club in Soho.
“Mrs. Briggs. You were dining with Mr. Ezeoke on the Sunday night?”
“How did you know that?”
“Because I told him,” said Ezeoke. “In case he suspected me of the crime. After all, I am a black man. Who knows what atrocities I am capable of? Mr. Breen is a policeman, Frances. Which means he couldn’t possibly make a donation.”
“Well, he should come anyway,” said the woman. “Support the cause. We’ll make a revolutionary out of him yet.”
Ezeoke smiled. “Mrs. Briggs is an enthusiastic supporter of Biafra. She wants to convert you too.”
“Are you married, Mr. Breen?” asked the woman. “Do please bring your wife. Or a girl. We have an awful lot of men but not enough women. There will be dancing. Not just boring British dancing. African dancing. It’s very exciting.”
“Come, Mr. Breen. You would be welcome,” said Ezeoke.
“By the way, have you had any more problems with your neighbors?” Breen asked.
“I have not invited them, if that’s what you mean, though I’m sure Mrs. Briggs would like to. She would invite the whole world.”
Breen returned from work one evening to find that the drain outside his front door had blocked, filling the space at the bottom of the stairs
down to his flat with rainwater. It had seeped in through the door, ruining the brown carpet in his hallway.
He spent the evening moving furniture and pulling the sodden carpet up off its tacks and stacking it outside. A box of his father’s books had been sitting in the hallway since he had moved in. Those at the bottom were sodden. A copy of Keats’s Complete Poems with his mother’s name written on the front page in a fine cursive. A thick-looking James Joyce. He put them in the dustbin outside. It felt good to be doing something physical.
He looked around the flat and realized that he had done nothing to the place for years. Perhaps it was time to redecorate, anyway. He should rip out the old brown carpet and maybe paint the floorboards. Bring a bit of color into the place. Some modern furniture. Start over again.
Later that evening he watched television, eating tinned spaghetti and sardines from a tray on his lap.
He slept well too, dreamlessly, and woke so late he had to run for the bus.
Bailey was standing there in the middle of the office, looking at his watch as he walked in. “Glad you could join us, Breen. Anyone seen Prosser? This isn’t a holiday camp.”
“Package for you, Paddy,” interrupted Marilyn.
The package was covered in eight 4d stamps and done up so well with Sellotape that he had to go and find a pair of scissors to open it. It was from Detective Sergeant Block of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary: a report of their findings into the murder of Major Sullivan and the suicide of his wife. There was a thick bundle of Roneoed documents, photographs, carbon copies and transcriptions. As far as Breen could see it was thorough and efficient.
Breen read the covering letter. The shotgun Julia Sullivan had killed herself with was the same one that had killed the major. There was no doubt at all that she had been the killer. “Given the fact of her husband’s presence in London close to where Morwenna Sullivan’s body was discovered, confirmed by the Road Traffic Violation Notice issued on 10/13/68 at 4:30 p.m. [8849/88/1168], we believe it highly likely, without wishing to prejudice the investigation by the Metropolitan Police, that Major Mallory Sullivan was responsible for the death of his own daughter.”