She's Leaving Home (34 page)

“I liked it.”

“It makes me feel sad. It sounds like they’re falling apart. Shall I turn it over?”

When she was back, he said, “What did you mean when you said you’d never make a copper?”

She leaned over and felt for her packet of cigarettes. He looked at the long line of vertebrae twisting down to her buttocks as she padded her palm around the floor under the bed looking for the matches. The beauty of her bone beneath the skin.

“Want one?”

He shook his head. He had smoked his five cigarettes for the day.

“I’ve decided I’m leaving the police,” she said. “I don’t fit in.”

“Of course you do,” he said, though he didn’t really believe it. She didn’t fit in. That was what he loved about her. It was what she stood for: the importance of not having to fit in.

“You look shocked,” she said.

“I am.”

“I’m sorry about that time at Paddington in the rain. I felt really bad, leaving you there. I was acting like a big kid.”

“Yes,” he said. “You were.” She hit him on the arm.

“I’m going back to the farm,” she said. “I’m going to look after it for my dad. Mum says he’s getting worse. He can’t cope anymore.”

He sat up and looked at her. He had only just slept with her for the first time and now she was going away. “I thought you didn’t want to live there anymore. I thought you couldn’t stand living there.”

“I didn’t. I don’t. But I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”

Breen was silent. The music next door seemed too loud now.

“It’s what I know. I can make a go of it, I think. Do things differently.”

He wondered at her ability to be one thing one minute, another the next. “Why?”

“I used to think I had to save the world to make up for what happened to my sister. I don’t really think that anymore. The world carries on without me. And people get killed all the time, don’t they? Besides. I don’t think my mum can cope anymore with Dad.”

She got up, naked, and said, “I’m just going to the toilet.”

He lay in bed, breathing in the scent she left behind. She came back a few minutes later with a bottle of Scotch she had found in his kitchen and poured two small glasses. He brushed his hand over her face, past the plaster on her forehead.

“I don’t have to save anyone anymore. Just myself. I’ll leave saving people to you,” she said.

His clothes were folded neatly by the bed. Hers were scattered across the floor.

“Don’t you want to find her killer anymore?”

“Course I do. But I realized that we may never find out who he is. That’s the reality, isn’t it? It’s too long now. And it’s so horrible it makes me cry, but I’ve got to live with that. We don’t always know, do we? Even when we do. Even when we arrest people. Or shoot them. It’s a lot messier than we like to say.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say, “But what about me?” Instead he said, “I was thinking I was going to take a holiday. A long one. I’ve got leave owing.”

“You?”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t think you knew how.”

She was teasing him, but it was probably what she thought as well, he realized. “I’m going to go to Ireland,” he announced. “I’ve got some money in the bank from my father. I thought I could go and find out where he was from.”

She nodded. “That’s good,” she said. “You should do that.”

“I was thinking, you could come too,” he said.

She licked the rim of her whisky glass. “I’ve heard it’s like Devon only wetter.”

“Probably.”

“I don’t think I’d like it then. I don’t think so, Cathal. You go.”

He tried not to show his disappointment. She was young. Uncommitted. Maybe this was the way it was now with girls.

“When are you going back home?” he asked.

“Gave in my notice today. Four weeks,” she said.

He tried to imagine her bringing in the cows day after day, but couldn’t see her in that role. He tried to imagine himself down there with her, but that was no better.

“If you don’t fit in, what makes you think I do?” he asked.

“You? You fit in fine,” she said.

It was just a careless comment, but he was stung by it. He chewed it over for a while. It was fine for her to change her mind from one day to the next, but he was set in stone. He was about to ask what she had meant by it, and perhaps start some childish argument of the kind that lovers might have, but they were not lovers, they had just had sex because they were two people who had gone through something terrifying together. He had wanted more, but he realized this was all there was. And when he turned to her, she was asleep, mouth open, eyes closed.

He lay there awhile, watching her naked chest rise and fall, feeling a weight pressing down on him. The bed was too small for the both of them. He tried to sleep, but he couldn’t.

From 1966–7, tens of thousands of Igbos died in pogroms in the Muslim north of Nigeria.

Britain had ruled the vast ethnically diverse country, with its arbitrarily drawn borders, using the age-old principle of divide and rule. The hasty exit of the British in 1960 left a country primed for civil war. Six years later, with an inexperienced government descending into increasingly fractious regional disputes, a group of bright-eyed young army officers stepped in with a cack-handed, stupid military coup. The fact that most of them were Igbo triggered long-held resentments and the bloodletting began.

Responding with equal parts hubris and genuine fear of obliteration, Igbo leaders founded Biafra in May 1967. Civil war was now inevitable. Britain followed the oil, as it always does, backing Federal Nigeria in the hope of securing access to the riches in the Niger delta. Cabinet papers of the time reveal the stark cynicism of British policy. Commonwealth Minister George Thomas wrote in August: “The sole immediate British interest is to bring the economy back to a condition in which our substantial trade and investment can be further developed.” Officially, Britain turned a blind eye to the Federal state’s blockade of Biafra, fumbling the opportunity to broker peace talks. By the time the war ended in 1970, as many as three million had died, mostly of disease and starvation. Up to a million were children.

The year 1968 saw another post-Imperial car crash: the arrival in Britain of tens of thousands of Kenyan Asians, disenfranchised by the government of Jomo Kenyatta. With racist sentiment being stoked by the press, the British government hastily cobbled together the Commonwealth Immigration Act, withdrawing the right of entry of Commonwealth passport holders without British ancestry—a coy way of restricting non-white immigrants. Two months later, in April, Enoch Powell exploited the growing racism with his poisonous “Rivers of Blood” speech, giving voice to fears that “within ten to fifteen years the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

In September 1973, Detective Sergeant Norman Clement “Nobby” Pilcher was convicted on a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice after it became clear that he was extorting money from victims he had framed for drug offenses. In a five-year career on the Drug Squad, Pilcher was responsible for arresting Donovan, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, George Harrison and John Lennon. His appetite for busting rock stars led to
Oz
magazine calling him “Groupie Pilcher.” Pilcher was given four years by Justice Melford Stevenson who told him, “You poisoned the wells of criminal justice and you set about it deliberately.”

Twelve years of heartfelt thank-yous must go to Roz Brody, Mike Holmes, Janet King and Chris Sansom for their enduring support, encouragement, insight and wisdom. Several police officers were generous with advice: Jancis and David Robinson, Tanya Murray, as well as Sioban Clarke of the Metropolitan Women Police Association. My fellow members of All Saints School Enugu Alumni 1966 remain an inspiration. Finally, thanks to those who commented so perceptively on the manuscript. They include Joshua Kendall, Jane McMorrow, Jeff Noon, Hellie Ogden, Paul Quinn, Rose Tomaszewska, Nick de Somogyi, my editor at Quercus, Jon Riley, and my agent, Karolina Sutton.

William Shaw is an award-winning pop-culture journalist who writes for the
London Times
, the
Independent
, and the
Telegraph
, as well as for the
New York Times
,
Details
, and
GQ
. He lives in Sussex, England.

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