She's Leaving Home (24 page)

“Relax,” said Carmichael. “It’s a bit of fun, that’s all.”

Jones switched off the siren. “That’s better.”

They swung right into Wardour Street and then cut back to the bottom of Berwick Street where the market was just packing up. Jones pulled up behind another police car.

“Come on,” said Carmichael.

Breen got out, clammy from the speed. The air was heavy with the scent of discarded meat and vegetables from the market. A man was hoicking unsold sacks of potatoes back into a Morris van. Another was stacking up cages full of budgerigars. A radio playing pop music full blast was blaring from another stall.

It was a narrow shop, unoccupied, windows blacked out what had once been a cobbler’s. Some street trader used it now for storing his groceries. Cardboard boxes of tinned tomatoes were piled against the wall. There were stairs at the back. A uniformed policeman was sitting on the bare stairs, smoking a cigarette. “Is this one of the fellers?” he asked.

“This is him.”

“Enjoy yourself,” said the copper, shifting to one side to let the others pass him on the stairs. “Give the bugger what he asked for.”

Breen pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. “Ta-da!” said Jones, like he was presenting an act on a stage.

A small room, probably a bedroom once. The pink-rose wallpaper was old and stained. Pinned to the wall was a picture of Jayne Mansfield sitting on a bed in a white fur bikini.

Tied to a chair was a Chinese man. Breen recognized him straightaway. He was the man who had threatened Prosser and him with a knife at the clothes shop; the man who Breen had run from. The Chinaman was bleeding from his lip and there was an ugly cut under his right eye. Snot and blood bubbled from his nose and had stained his light blue shirt and brown nylon trousers.

“We saved his legs for you,” said Carmichael, holding up a cricket bat. “On account of you won’t have to run so fast next time if you break his.”

Breen looked back at Carmichael, and Jones, hopping up and down behind him like a child.

“Joke. Seriously, though. Don’t hit him too hard. Just a bit of fun.”

“How did you find him?”

“Fridays this Chink runs a clothes stall in Berwick Street outside. You know that shopkeeper from St. John’s Wood High Street? He was down here this morning and spotted this bloke selling Italian suits of his. They’ve still got the bloody labels in and all. Martin and Dawes. He called you up this morning, only you weren’t in. Don’t know where he got your number from. Anyway, Marilyn took the call and passed it on to Jonesy here. Bingo. Picked him up a couple of hours ago. What’s up between you and Marilyn, by the way? She called you a miserable piece of shit. I thought she always had a thing for you. This is the fellow, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s him,” said Breen.

“Go on then, give him one,” Carmichael said, pushing the end of the bat into his belly. “They should learn you can’t go round threatening coppers with knives.”

Breen kept his hands by his side. “Where’s Prosser?”

“Tried to reach him but I think he’s off with his son somewhere. He takes time off on the sly. Everybody knows, but it’s OK. Don’t you worry, he’ll have his turn.”

Carmichael prodded him again with the cricket bat. “Go on. Take it.”

Breen grasped the bat, but didn’t move. “Give me ten minutes alone with him.”

“What’s wrong with you?” said Jones. “You windy?”

The Chinese man didn’t even look scared, he just looked tired. Above his temple, there was blood caked in his black hair. His brown nylon trousers were torn at one knee, and there was something unpleasant about the way the little finger on his left hand was twisted. He looked Breen in the eye sadly.

Breen tried to remember him with the knife in his hand, threatening Prosser. He tried to replay the scene in his head. Him bursting into the back of the shop; Prosser standing there with the Chinese man; the Chinese man wielding the knife. “Give me ten minutes,” he said again, weighing the bat in his hand.

“Can’t we watch?” said Jones, disappointed. “I found him, after all.”

“Come on.” Carmichael tugged his arm. “Leave Paddy alone.”

They left the room and closed the door behind him. Breen stood there holding the bat, looking at the Chinaman. The man looked at him resignedly, knowing what to expect.

“Let’s talk,” said Breen, putting down the bat against the wall.

The man looked warily at Breen for a second, then shook his head. “No talk.”

“Yes talk,” said Breen.

“Go hit me. I don’t mind. You can hit me. I am not afraid.”

“No,” said Breen. “I don’t want to hit you.”

Breen sat down on the floor, his back against the floral wallpaper. The Chinaman looked puzzled.

“I want you to start telling me what really happened the night I found you filching coats in St. John’s Wood High Street.”

“You were afraid.” The man giggled. “You very afraid. You run away.”

“That’s true. What else?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want to know what was going on.”

The man shook his head, becoming agitated now. “Hit me. It’s OK.”

Breen shook his head. “I’m not going to hit you.”

“I was stealing clothes. I’m a bad man.” The man smiled. “You and Sergeant Prosser caught me.”

There was a singing in Breen’s ears. “So you know Detective Sergeant Prosser, then?”

“I don’t know anything. I was just a stupid Chinaman. I got out my knife. ‘Come near and I kill you.’ You run away like a little rabbit.” He giggled again. “That’s all. Cross my heart.”

“You’re not a very good liar,” said Breen. “Why was the back door open? The door to the shop. There was no sign of a break-in. Who opened it for you?”

“You must hit me, please.” The man was starting to sound increasingly desperate.

Breen stood and walked over to him. He laid the cricket bat on the floor and started to untie the sash cord that bound the man’s wrists.

Breen stepped out into the busy street still holding the cricket bat. A pair of kids were sitting on an old armchair that someone had chucked out, listening to a transistor radio. Louis Armstrong sang “What a Wonderful World.” The copper put out his cigarette on the pavement and smiled. “All done in there?”

Leaning against the police car, Carmichael said, “Shall we fetch him and take him down the station, or are we going to wait for Prosser to have his turn?”

“What’s left of him,” smirked Jones.

A white-haired man dressed in black, with a sandwich board that read
Repent ye evil doers for the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand,
joined the crowd that stood watching the policemen.

“I let him go,” said Breen.

“You let him go?”

“Out the back. He’s long gone now.”

Carmichael opened his mouth wide. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. A blast of music came from an open window from one of the flats above them.

Jones said, “You absolute blinking tosser.”

“Can you drop me back at the station now, or shall I make my own way?”

“I got him in for you and Prosser. I got him in.”

“Paddy. That man, he’s the worst sort,” said Carmichael woundedly. “He stabbed a copper. And you let him go.”

“Prosser’ll be bloody mad with you. He stabbed Prosser in the arm and you let him bloody go.”

“I expect he will be mad with me, yes.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” said Jones. “You’re ridiculous, you fucking Irish arse.”

Carmichael looked puzzled and said, “What’s going on, Paddy? What are you doing?”

The small crowd pressed round the group of policemen, curious to know what so many of them were doing here in their street. Carmichael stood, frowning.

Jones said, “You’ve really lost it,” and pushed angrily through the crowd, back to the police car.

T
ozer had suggested they have a drink before the party. “Dutch courage. Where shall we meet?”

Breen had opted for the York Minster in Dean Street, a known hangout for writers, artists and painters. It was a smug little bar that celebrated its own eccentricity; there were cartoons of French politicians on the wall, and the barmen refused to serve beer in anything other than half-pint glasses, all of which made it the sort of pub where the police would never drink. Which was why Breen chose it. He didn’t want to be in a police pub this weekend, around policemen talking police gossip.

Tozer was not there when he arrived, so he took a stool by the bar, within earshot of a fat man who was talking to half a dozen listeners who laughed at all his jokes. A couple of elderly queens played chess in the corner, ignoring the noise, each with their elbows on the table in front of them.

It was a Saturday night. The pub was full, the air so rich already you could hardly see from one side of the small room to the other. He caught snatches of conversation. A man in a tweed jacket with arm patches telling another man, “In the next ten years we’re going to see worldwide mass starvation. Believe you me.” “Judy Garland,” said a short fellow with a quiff. “So drunk she couldn’t get her coat on.” A man holding hands with a young woman who wore a blue felt hat said, “What about Kettner’s?” She pulled her hand away and said, “You know I hate Kettner’s.”

Tozer arrived at 8:30 and said, “Double brandy. Sorry I’m late. Why are you only drinking a half?”

Breen had never noticed her wearing full makeup before. Blue eye shadow and pinkish lipstick. She had dressed for the occasion, wearing a knee-length green frock and heels that Breen thought looked too feminine on her, though he said, “You look nice.”

“Do I? I feel ridiculous. I never wear dresses. I didn’t know what the code was for a shindig. The girls made me buy it today. You look nice yourself. That shirt suits you. It makes you look younger.”

The blue shirt he’d bought from Martin & Dawes. He should buy more new clothes, he thought.

The pub was crowded, so Breen offered her his stool to sit on. She shook her head and stood. She leaned over towards him so he could hear above the noise and said, “There was talk this morning at the section house. About you.”

“My ears were burning,” he said.

“They were saying you’d gone mental again yesterday.”

Breen nodded.

“Why are you smiling? It’s serious.”

“I’m not smiling. I know it’s serious. I can’t help it.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Jones had arrested this guy for a robbery, but he hadn’t charged him yet. I let him go.”

“So he was innocent?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“I was doing Prosser a favor.”

“By letting the guy who stabbed him go?”

Breen paused. “Sort of.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Can we leave it just for now? I don’t want to say. Not yet.”

“You still don’t trust me, do you?”

She was wearing earrings too. Small silver birds that hung from each ear.

“I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“You think everything is about you just being a policewoman, don’t you?”

“You’re not going to tell me why you let that guy who stabbed Prosser go, are you?”

“No.” He paid for her drink and another half-pint.

“Well, you keep it all to yourself, then,” she said. “Keep it all bottled up in there.”

“I will.”

“One day you’ll go really mental. Really, really mental. You’ll explode.”

“Are you Sigmund Freud now?”

“It’s no wonder you don’t have any mates.”

“I do have mates.”

She laughed. “Who exactly?”

“Carmichael for one.”

“I see more of him than you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“None of your beeswax. So when did you last meet up with your great friend outside of work?”

He tried to remember. “The last few months have been different.”

She made a face.

He said, “And I’m out with you, aren’t I?”

“Aren’t I the lucky one?” She took too big a gulp of brandy and then burst out coughing until Breen slapped her on the back. “Went down the wrong way,” she said when she’d got her breath back.

“Maybe this party isn’t such a good idea.”

“Sorry, Paddy. I’m in a bad mood. All day shopping for clothes in Oxford Street. Give us another brandy and I’ll be nicer. What’s that white stuff they’re drinking? Maybe I’ll try that.”

He turned back to the bar, trying to attract the attention of the barman who was filling a tray with glasses of Pernod.

She made a face after the first sip, but after the second she decided she liked it.

The basement of the St. Moritz was already full by the time they arrived. The crowd was mostly black, but there were a few white people there. There was loud African music, full of drums and spiky guitar lines. A long table down one side of the room was piled high with food that included a big bowl of rice with unfamiliar looking meat in it and a large pot of dark brown stew. Breen peered in. “Groundnut stew,” said a voice next to him. “It’s very spicy. Very delicious.”

Breen recognized Mrs. Ezeoke; she held out her hand to him.

“I didn’t know Sam had invited you,” she said. She was wearing a loud pink-and-gold floor-length African dress with a matching cloth headwrap.

“He didn’t. Mrs. Briggs invited us.”

Breen noticed how Mrs. Ezeoke’s smile disappeared at the mention of her name. “Are you a friend of hers?”

“No. We just met her at the hospital…She gave us tickets.”

At the end of the table was a large silver bowl, full of coins and notes. A sign read:
Donations
.

“And you have brought your policewoman friend. How nice.” Mrs. Ezeoke held out her hand to Tozer. The African woman wore a thick bangle on her wrist. It looked huge next to her small hand. “You look very pretty, my dear,” she said to Tozer.

“I love your bracelet,” Tozer said, fingering the metal. It was a heavy piece of patterned bronze. Breen wondered how drunk she was already.

“Thank you.”

“And your dress is fabulous,” Tozer went on. “A British woman would never dare wear anything so gorgeous. Where did you get it?”

Mrs. Ezeoke’s smile remained fixed. “I think you have met Mr. Okonkwo?” she said.

Breen recognized him as the man they’d met at the Ezeokes’ house; older than the Ezeokes, a short, wiry man holding a plate of food.

“Ah, the detective. We meet again. Did you find your murderer?” He laughed.

Mrs. Ezeoke was not the only woman there in traditional dress. Every black woman in the small club was wearing voluminous bright clothes and elaborately folded headdresses. A few were dancing together, holding one hand up in the air, shuffling their feet around in circles.

A young black man in a suit approached. “You are much too thin. Eat, eat. We have plenty of food. You need African food,” he said to Tozer. “Have you ever eaten jollof?”

Tozer laughed. “I need a drink first.”

Okonkwo said to Breen, “Do you think it strange to see us dancing while our brothers are fighting a war?”

“What are you raising money for?”

“We must convince the politicians and the journalists of our cause. We must let them know about the crimes being committed by the Federals and by the British. Money helps change minds.”

“British crimes?”

Okonkwo smiled. “Don’t look so shocked. Even the British are capable of crimes. Our Biafran people are being systematically starved to death by an army that your government is supporting. Even in the Second World War the women and the children were spared. Not in our war. You are supplying an army that is creating a total blockade. It is indiscriminate warfare. Their original intention was to kill us all. Now they have found a way to do it with the world’s approval.”

There were banners on the wall:
God bless Biafra—Free Biafra—Biafra ga adi ndu!!—Biafra win de war!!
Balloons hung from the ceiling.

“But I am sure you are a good man,” grinned Okonkwo. “You would not support this. Your government keeps you ignorant. Nobody in Britain has heard about how tens of thousands of our Igbo people have been slaughtered in the north by the Moslems, urged on by the Federals. And when people are ignorant, a word is worth a thousand guns.” He paused and looked at the dancers. “Although not everyone agrees. They would rather just have the guns.”

Breen spotted Ezeoke on the dance floor, in the middle of a circle of women, dancing with one hand on his belly and the other in the air.

“I am sorry. You are a policeman. You are not interested in politics. Come and sit with me while I eat,” said Okonkwo. He took a chair against the side of the room. Breen looked around for Tozer, but she was still talking to the young African man, so he found a seat beside Okonkwo under a large handmade red, black and green flag, fixed to the wall with drawing pins.

“I do not enjoy parties anymore,” said Okonkwo. “I am too old. The music is too loud and you can never hear people speak properly.”

It was hot. Condensation ran down the walls. Behind the bar a middle-aged woman hoicked the tops off bottles of beer and laid them out on the counter.

“And tonight is to raise money for the Pan-African Committee for a Free Biafra?”

“It was Mrs. Briggs’s idea. She believes that all causes must throw parties.”

“She is on the committee?”

“She is a friend of Ezeoke’s. Her husband is the Senior Registrar at the hospital. She is the Secretary, of course. I am the Chair and Sam is the Treasurer. It helps to have someone respectable on board.” He smiled. “And she is in love with Sam, of course.”

Breen looked around for Frances Briggs. She had been standing by the entrance, welcoming guests, but now she was on the dance floor with the others.

“You are an art dealer, I seem to remember,” said Breen.

“Art, artifacts, antiques. I sell the culture of Africans to Europeans. It is very fashionable. And to men like Sam Ezeoke, who want to become more African.” He laughed.

“How could Ezeoke be more African?”

“You see? It works.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am sorry. I am teasing you. You did not know that Ezeoke was raised in Britain? That is why he is my best customer. I sell him African paintings and African masks so he can become more African.” Okonkwo was picking at his plate of food, taking delicate mouthfuls.

Tozer came by with two bottles of beer and handed one to Breen. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “My admirer over there bought it.” She turned and waved to the young man in the suit. Breen raised a hand in thanks.

“How come Ezeoke was raised in England?”

“He was adopted. His father was a chief, a friend of the British Colonial Governor. He died before Ezeoke was born, and his mother, thinking she was doing her child a service, asked the Governor to adopt him. So he did. They took him to England to civilize him. He went to Rugby and Cambridge. We grew up hunting snakes and birds,” Okonkwo said. “He hunted foxes. Why do you think he is the most successful man amongst us? You English adore a black man who talks the Queen’s English. They wouldn’t let an ordinary African man become a consultant in your hospitals.”

“He doesn’t talk about it.”

“He does not advertise it. He did not have a happy childhood. He once told me he did not even know he was black until his parents sent him to an English boarding school. Can you imagine not knowing what you are? That is why he is desperate to be African. Can you blame him?”

“How terrible.”

Okonkwo looked at Breen. “You have sympathy for a man who feels out of place?”

“I suppose I do,” said Breen. He watched Ezeoke, bending at the knees, descending lower and lower as the others danced around him.

“He is a great man. This committee would be nowhere without him. He has given more to the cause than any of us. Of course, he was much richer than any of us to start with.” He laughed again. “But perhaps he won’t be soon. He sold his house for the cause, you know. I don’t think his wife has quite recovered from it.”

“I wondered. When we visited them they had far more packing cases than seemed to fit into the house.”

“I shall have to be careful of you. You are a very observant young man.”

Breen looked across the room. Mrs. Ezeoke was standing by the food table still, watching her husband buying drinks for a large crowd, passing the bottles around to eager young men. Her arms were folded, a look of intense disapproval on her face. “Mrs. Ezeoke. She was born in Biafra?”

Okonkwo smiled. “Oh yes. She is African. One hundred percent. Sam wanted to be African, so he went and got an African wife. My niece, you know.”

“She is very beautiful.”

“Isn’t she? The most beautiful girl in the world,” said Okonkwo.

Now Tozer was on the dance floor, led there by the young man she had been speaking to earlier. The young man’s face remained serious as he danced, his motions much less effusive than Ezeoke’s; Tozer danced around him like a teenager on
Ready Steady Go
. Ezeoke was wiping the sweat from his forehead, grinning, as five women danced around him. One of them was Frances Briggs, who danced closer than the others, pushing her body against his.

“See. Now he is a very modern African,” Okonkwo said drily.

Breen looked around to find Mrs. Ezeoke. She was leaning against the wall, glowering at her husband as he danced with Mrs. Briggs and the other women. Breen looked from one to the other: Frances Briggs flirting with Sam Ezeoke while his wife watched. Ezeoke saw them looking at him and broke away from the dance floor, pushing through the tightly packed crowd. He leaned down towards Breen. “Your girlfriend is a good dancer,” he shouted.

Breen said, “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Ezeoke reached down and took Breen’s arm. “Why are you talking to this old man? You don’t come to parties to talk. Come and dance with her.” He took Breen’s left arm and yanked him up, away from Okonkwo.

Tozer was grinning broadly, sweating on the dance floor. “I didn’t think you could dance,” she said. The brass and drums were deafening. Compared to this, Irish dancing at the Garryowen looked like croquet.