Play With Fire Page 11

  He turned the page again. ‘Thursday, seven p.m. Vincent Price.’

  ‘There you go. Always pays in single pound notes.’

  ‘Nine p.m. Mr Smith.’

  ‘I know. So predictable. Shall we walk? I’ve been sitting still all morning while people like you paint me. I get stiff.’

  They stood and walked back in the direction of Baker Street, towards the police station. The pavements were crowded with tourists. Americans seemed to be everywhere, these days, talking loudly, cameras around their necks.

  ‘So on the Friday, did the men who had made appointments arrive?’

  ‘Why? Because if they turned up, they probably didn’t do it?’

  ‘I’m asking.’ He was always cautious of giving witnesses too much detail; she was right, though. Only the murderer would have known that Lena Bobienski was dead.

  ‘The first appointment arrived.’

  ‘Mr Smith?’ Breen read from the diary.

  ‘Yes. His real name was Leonard as far as I know. But I left after that. There wasn’t much point staying on if she wasn’t there.’

  He looked down. The next appointment was for a man named Jones.

  ‘Smith. Jones, you know how it is,’ she said. The 11 p.m. slot was taken by a man known as Spanky.

  ‘So you don’t know if either of these men came to see her?’

  She shook her head. There was an old man with a white scarf around his neck, crooning ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’ on the street corner outside the post office. Breen pulled out a sixpence and dropped it in the man’s hat.

  ‘What was driving her to do what she did?’

  ‘Driving her to do it? Nice girls don’t fuck for money?’

  She said the word deliberately loudly. The busker stopped mid-line, wolf-whistled, then picked his tune back up. ‘Men always think that. They think there must be some dark reason for a woman to go on the game.’ She walked on. ‘They can’t think a woman would do anything because she just wants to make cash from gullible men.’

  ‘What about Lena?’

  ‘She earned a lot of money. She was the most successful girl I’ve ever worked with. Ever. But maybe you’re right. There was something dark in there, but I could never really put my finger on what.’

  ‘We’re going to have to eliminate all the men in this book,’ said Breen. ‘You’re going to have to go in to Lena’s flat, the day after tomorrow, just like you always did.’

  It would be best not to tell her that they would also be monitoring the calls at the exchange.

  ‘Are you paying me for this? I’ve lost my job, you know.’

  ‘No. I am hoping you’ll do it because you want to find out who killed your employer.’

  She sighed. ‘It’s not my business any more. I don’t want to get mixed up in it.’

  ‘Well in that case, I’ll arrest you now.’

  ‘It’s not exactly a choice, is it?’

  At the police station steps, he stopped. ‘Will you come in? I’ll get someone to go through this diary with you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if I recognise one or two of your colleagues. And not from them arresting me, either.’

  They went past the front desk and into the main corridor. Mint came clattering down the stairs. ‘Sarge. About the flower shop—’

  ‘Not now, Constable. This is Mrs Caulk, Constable Mint.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mint, realising who Breen meant. ‘You found her. Is she under arrest?’

  Mrs Caulk looked him up and down. ‘What a very nice young man,’ she said.

  ‘He’s married,’ said Breen.

  ‘They usually are.’

  Breen handed Mint her desk diary and said, ‘Come with me.’

  There was a small room on the ground floor that they sometimes used for interviews. He looked in. It was empty, though it stank of sweat and cigarettes. Mrs Caulk wrinkled her nose as she entered.

  ‘Constable Mint. Mrs Caulk is a suspect, but we have no grounds on which to arrest her at this time.’

  ‘Well, that’s a mercy,’ said Mrs Caulk.

  ‘I’d like you to fetch Mrs Caulk here a nice cup of tea—’

  ‘Just one sugar,’ she interrupted. ‘Tiny bit of milk. Do you have any biscuits?’

  ‘… then come back here and go through her diary with her, and make a note of every name in there. Description, habits, any clues as to what they did for a living, or where they lived, married, single. She’s going to give us enough so we can find every man in the book, right?’

  ‘Oh Christ. We’re going to be all bloody night,’ said Mrs Caulk.

  Mint flicked through the diary. ‘What, sir? All that’s in here?’

  Breen pointed at Mrs Caulk’s head. ‘The best bits are in there.’

  ‘Just me, Sarge?’ he said.

  ‘Just you, Constable. Big job. You ever heard of a jeweller called Andrew Grima, Mint?’

  ‘No, Sarge.’

  Mrs Caulk sat down at the chair and took out her packet of No. 6’s. ‘And bring me an ashtray, will you, lovely?’

  ‘One thing. The man who bought the ring. What name did he give again?’

  ‘Just Ronnie.’

  ‘No last name?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Mint?’ he said. ‘Can you have it on my desk, first thing in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ he said.

  ‘Mrs Caulk. You’re not planning on going anywhere over the next couple of weeks, are you?’

  ‘My villa in the South of France.’

  ‘Not funny,’ said Breen. ‘We will need you around.’

  ‘So. Will I be getting protection or not? What with me giving you all this information?’

  ‘I somehow doubt you need it.’

  She snorted and rolled her eyes, but she remained seated in the interview room. All the same, he waited until Mint had returned with a mug of tea and an ashtray before he left her, just in case she changed her mind.

  FOURTEEN

  He walked all the way to Piccadilly whistling the tune the accordionist had played. It was summer. He had found the maid. He was feeling good.

  It turned out there were several jewellers in Jermyn Street but Grima’s was easy to find. The others were discreet and Dickensian. The shop was in a modern concrete building, one of those that had taken advantage of what the Nazis had destroyed. The frontage was deliberately at odds with its neighbours, and was covered in huge, raw chunks of cut slate that left small windows into which you could peer to see the trays of gaudy rings.

  Breen, who had never worn such things himself, looked. This was jewellery for the international jet set, all gold, diamonds and big colourful stones, sculpted into ostentatious swirls and asymmetrical shapes. They were large and contemporary.

  The man behind the counter was dressed in a flowered shirt with long lapels and wore a silver chain around his neck. ‘In May, you say?’

  Breen said, ‘Yes. The ring was given as a gift on 16 May. I think it was bought sometime in the previous week.’

  ‘And you only have the name Ronnie?’ The man returned with an invoice book and flicked through the pages. ‘Oh yes. Poor Ronald.’

  ‘You remember him?’

  ‘Oh goodness, yes. And he chose two rings. One very ordinary and one quite nice one. And he asked for two receipts. Let me get the copies.’

  He disappeared through a door next to a perspex spiral staircase and returned a minute later with two sheets of paper. They were carbon duplicates. One was made out to a Ronald Russell at an address in Upper Addison Gardens, Shepherd’s Bush; the other was left blank.

  ‘Why two receipts?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  One was made out for seven guineas, the other for sixty. ‘One was bought for his wife?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the young man.

  ‘And the other one wasn’t?’

  ‘It happens from time to time. A man with a guilty conscience. One for the glamour girl, another for the little lady. A rat
her simple ten-pound ring with a tourmaline setting, very sweet actually, and this somewhat more gorgeous one with tanzanite and diamonds for –’ he lowered his voice – ‘his mistress, one presumes. I remember he asked specifically for separate receipts. Tsk, tsk, tsk.’ The shop assistant grinned. ‘Not that I would know anything about that sort of behaviour.’

  ‘Do you have a picture of the rings, or anything that I can use to identify them?’

  The man smiled. ‘I’ll show you the ring itself, if you like.’ He took a set of keys from a drawer and went to the front of the shop, opening the back of the glass window display.

  He pulled out a box. The setting was a curved triangle of some purple stone that glittered in the light; one side was crusted with tiny diamonds.

  ‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’ said the man. ‘Absolutely exquisite, don’t you think?’

  ‘This is a copy?’

  ‘No. This was a one-off. It’s the exact same ring.’ The man curled his lips. ‘She brought it in two weeks ago. That’s why I remembered. We gave her the refund, of course. She had her receipt, after all.’ He laughed. Breen’s eye lit on another, simpler ring. A twist of gold, with two green gems, one at each end. ‘Poor Ronald. I think she rather took him for a ride.’

  ‘Ronald’s fine,’ said Breen. ‘She’s the one you should feel sorry for.’

  And the man’s face fell as Breen picked up the ring he had spotted and held it up to the light. ‘Tourmaline,’ said the shop assistant. ‘A bit like the other one he purchased, as a matter of fact. Pretty, isn’t it?’ he said, a little less certainly than before.

  Rather than catch the bus, he took the long way back, detouring through Soho, fingering the box in the pocket of his lightweight summer mac.

  He had never bought anything like it before; he had never had anybody to buy something like this for.

  He felt young; and the whole city around felt young. Taxis were honking their horns as smooth young men on mopeds weaved around them shouting insults back at the drivers.

  This is where he and Carmichael had spent their teenage years, sneaking to Moka on Frith Street and drinking so much espresso they didn’t sleep for twenty-four hours, or searching for Dizzy Gillespie discs in Berwick Street.

  In Soho Square he went into a phone box and started flicking through the telephone directory. He was there: Mr & Mrs R. Russell. Notting Hill. Why not? he thought.

  A woman answered. A thin, posh voice. ‘Yes, this is Mrs Russell.’

  ‘Is Mr Russell at home?’

  ‘He’s not back from work yet. He’ll be en route, I hope. I’m expecting him at six-thirty. Should I mention who called?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Breen, smiling to himself. ‘I want to surprise him.’

  ‘Are you a friend?’ she was asking as he put down the phone.

  He pushed the door open. The roses in Soho Square were pale and heavily scented, sweetening the exhaust-fumed air.

  But instead of leaving the box, he let the door close, and dialled another number. ‘Guess where I am?’ he said.

  Sergeant John Carmichael said, ‘Hackney Hospital. In the maternity ward.’

  ‘Bit early for that, John. Soho Square. Fancy a drink?’

  When they were younger, Soho was full of gangsters, foreigners and film stars. The movie companies had their offices here. One summer night they had slept on the grass here under their coats, and woken to find the American film star Barbara Payton, sitting a bench ten yards away, drunk and shivering. She said she had been at a party and now she wanted to go home but she’d lost her handbag. Carmichael had wrapped his overcoat around her and together they put her in a taxi, gave the driver a pound, and told him to take her to Claridge’s, where she said she was staying. She told Carmichael he was adorable. The coat had been Carmichael’s pride and joy, cashmere, Italian-tailored; when Breen and Carmichael went to the hotel to get it back the next day, the manager insisted there was no guest called Barbara Payton and threw them both out.

  ‘Never too early for that, Paddy. The York Minster?’

  ‘I was thinking The Louise.’

  ‘Slumming it with the rest of us?’

  Soho still seemed like the centre of the world, to Cathal Breen. The women here were beautiful. Long dresses were back in. Miniskirts were out. The cooler girls stalked the streets in long flowing garments, dark glasses poised at the ends of their noses.

  The shops had closed by the time he passed through the less glamorous location of Great Titchfield Street, and the restaurants were opening.

  The Louise had only been open half an hour by the time he arrived but it was already packed with men from the afternoon shift. They drank before returning home to their wives and families, or to their section houses, in which drink was not allowed. It was a coppers’ pub; if you didn’t like that, you didn’t come in.

  When he’d first moved to D Division, Breen had come here all the time; it’s what coppers did. When his father had become ill he’d spent his free time looking after him and he’d lost the habit of drinking in pubs.

  He hadn’t missed it. The truth was, The Louise was a dump. The gloss-paint walls made them easier to wipe clean, but they made the place feel too bright. Hung crookedly above the optics, there was an old picture of the Queen, taken around the time of her coronation, and below it a sign that read: We do NOT take cheques.

  Breen looked around. Jenks was at the bar, talking loudly with a couple of constables. He had changed out of his uniform and was dressed in a check sports jacket that looked a size too big for him.

  As Breen approached, he held up an empty glass. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said. ‘Pint of best.’

  You didn’t come to The Louise except to drink, so he ordered a lager and took out a cigarette. Breen was a careful man. He smoked five a day; he checked the nicks he made with his thumbnail on his packet. This would be number four.

  ‘I’ll have one, too,’ said Jenks, reaching to take one of Breen’s cigarettes. ‘Got your man yet?’

  ‘Early days,’ said Breen.

  The barman put down Jenks’s beer, splashing some onto the bar. The copper picked the glass up carefully and sucked a quick inch from the top. ‘Empty the piss sack,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ said Breen.

  Breen followed the older constable to the toilets. Despite the sign that said No Cigarette Butts, the white trough was always full of dog-ends that flowed down to the end and blocked the drain. Yellow liquid threatened to lap over the edge onto the floor.

  There was a constable already there, splashing noisily.

  ‘Right, Jenksy?’ another man called.

  Jenks unzipped his fly and started urinating next to him. Breen stood by the sink, waiting. When the other policeman had gone, Breen said, ‘What was it you couldn’t tell me, back in the CID office?’

  ‘You guessed, then?’

  ‘Even a shit copper like you would have an idea who was going in and out of a knocking shop.’

  Jenks snorted. ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘What then?’ said Breen. ‘Were you using the knocking shop yourself?’

  ‘What would a handsome man like me be needing a tom for? No.’ With his head, he beckoned Breen over. Breen edged closer. ‘We got told to look the other way. Told to avoid patrols down that street. Big hush-hush.’

  ‘To not police Harewood Avenue at all?’

  ‘Leave it off the beat after dark. That’s right.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Don’t know. All I was told was to keep shtum.’

  The door banged open. ‘Oi, oi,’ said a constable. ‘What are you doing, Jenksy? Showing Paddy the size of your doo-dah?’

  ‘Jealous, aren’t you, Paddy?’ said Jenks.

  The man stood the other side of Breen. Jenks had finally finished and was buttoning up his flies. Breen followed him as he moved to the tiny sink. ‘Who told you to look the other way?’ Breen said quietly.

  Jenks jerked his eyes towards the constable at the urinal. He didn�
��t want to talk when there was someone else in the room. When he’d finished washing, Jenks wiped his hand on the grubby towel hanging on the wall. Breen waited for the other man to leave.

  ‘This isn’t Hampstead Heath bogs, Jenksy.’

  ‘Fuck right off,’ said Jenks.

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ said the man.

  When he’d gone, Breen asked, ‘Who warned you off?’

  ‘Your boss.’

  ‘Creamer?’

  ‘No. Higher.’

  ‘McPhail?’

  The door slammed open again and the noise of pub chatter filled the small Gents’ toilet. Another copper came in, weaving his way across the concrete floor. Before Jenks turned to leave he gave Breen the slightest of nods.

  When Breen emerged back into the public bar, Carmichael was there, a pint of lager in one hand and a cigarillo in the other.

  ‘Paddy fucking Breen,’ he shouted.

  People were crowded round Carmichael; they didn’t see so much of him now he was in C1, the Serious Crime Squad at Scotland Yard. He still came back every now and then to catch up on the gossip.

  ‘Old times’ sake,’ said Carmichael, grinning. Until last autumn, before he’d left to join the Drug Squad, he had worked in D Division with Breen. This had been his local. He had continued coming here long after Breen had stopped. ‘Another?’

  ‘Jesus, John. You look terrible,’ said Breen.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Carmichael. ‘You’re no less ugly, neither. How’s Hel?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Breen. ‘Thriving.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be? What about Amy?’

  His face softened. ‘Not so great. We argue all the time.’

  ‘Nothing changed, then.’

  Amy complained that Carmichael was always too busy with work and was threatening to chuck him because of it.

  ‘She’s nuts. She’s always filming stuff. She ever show you it? The other day I watched about an hour of it. Felt longer. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it, really. But she was so, you know, intense about it. You’re on this prostitute case?’

  ‘How do you hear that?’ said Breen.

  ‘I hear everything, me,’ said Carmichael, and belched gently. ‘Any joy?’