She's Leaving Home Read online

  Breen looked down at his hands. They were still trembling. The grandfather clock seemed to tick absurdly loudly.

  “Six inches to the right and they’d have smashed straight into us.” She looked up. “What was that?”

  He touched his face with his hand. “Has it stopped bleeding yet?”

  “That. What was it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “A kind of noise.”

  Breen listened. Nothing.

  “Can’t you hear it?”

  “No.”

  “Hello?” called Tozer.

  This time it was there, above their heads. A slight creaking of wood.

  “And again—listen.”

  Unmistakably, a slight banging sound.

  Breen set off up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Tozer close behind. There was a landing with carpet, a corridor with doors off it. The main bedroom was at the top of the stairs, facing the front of the house.

  Through the open door, Breen saw bedsheets pulled off the mattress onto the floor. The next thing he noticed, from where he stood at the top of the stairs, were two pallid, naked legs lying on the floor; the rest of whoever it was lay behind the bed.

  “Hello?”

  The legs were not moving. He walked slowly through the doorway and into the bedroom, more slowly still towards the farthest of the room’s twin beds, until he could peer over and see who lay there.

  It was not the major driving the car, that was certain. He lay on his front. His face, surrounded by an oval of blood, seemed to have melted into the floorboards, his head like half an orange on a plate. The shotgun must have been fired at close range. It had simply disintegrated the front of the major’s head. All that was left was the back of his skull, which had hit the ground as he fell forwards.

  “Oh,” said Tozer, hand in front of her mouth.

  He had a pajama shirt on but, for some reason, no trousers. The shirt had soaked up some of the blood from the floor, turning almost black. For a few seconds, Breen was able to remain separate from what he was seeing. The physics of the major’s position, for instance, made no sense to him; the gun had been fired at him at close range, and yet he had fallen forwards. A blast that severe would knock a man back right off his feet. But then he turned to the wallpapered wall and there was a perfect silhouette of the major’s head picked out in shot. He had been executed close to the wall, his body slamming against it so hard that he had rebounded forwards to where he now lay. Still oddly calm and no longer shaking, Breen knelt down and felt the man’s wrist. It was warm but, unsurprisingly, there was not the faintest quiver of a pulse.

  At the touch of dead flesh though, the calm deserted him. He dropped the arm back down into the congealing blood, left the room quickly and was sick in a flowerpot on the landing. Mrs. Tozer’s bacon and eggs.

  “Oh, Christ,” said Tozer, right behind him.

  When he’d finished, he sat down on the stairs. Tozer took the stair above his and put her hand on his shoulder. He could feel her shaking with shock almost as badly as he was.

  “Fine pair we make.”

  “Poor man.” He retched again.

  “It’s amazing you keep any food down at all.”

  There were small framed woodcuts on the stairs. A tree, climbing boys stealing eggs from a nest. A fish on a plate. “Shall we call…” He stopped.

  “What?”

  “That noise again,” he whispered.

  “I’m not sure.”

  He put his hand to his lips. They listened.

  “Oh my God. Do you think it’s her?”

  Another louder noise.

  A whisper: “If that was her, who was in the car?”

  He stood, took a deep breath and felt his stomach churn again. He turned to go back into the bedroom.

  There were two beds, side by side, his and hers. Hers had been slept in. By it were two black-and-white photos in frames: one of the dead girl, Morwenna, serious-faced in school uniform, the other of a boy, presumably her dead brother.

  He stopped his tiptoeing and looked around. There was a huge black-and-white photograph of Julia Sullivan on the wall opposite the bed; in it she was dressed in a large white floppy hat and a white lace dress. The lace dress was open, showing a single breast. Her dressing table was set between the beds; a large mirror with two silver candlesticks on either side. More framed photographs: a boy, beaming, clutching the tiller of a sailing dinghy; a small girl looking down from a slide. She had a Jane Austen and a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea on her bedside table; he had an Agatha Christie and an Ian Fleming.

  Again, this time unmistakably, a soft sound.

  Breen jumped. Tozer whispered, “Oh, Jesus.”

  The noise came from behind a door. You could see daylight under the bottom of it, a thin line above the bare floorboards. But halfway along, the line of light was interrupted; a dark shape on the other side.

  “Go call this in,” whispered Breen.

  “What?”

  “Please. Go. Give them the address and tell them to come quick.”

  She hesitated still.

  “Now.”

  She left. He stood looking at the door and listening to Tozer clatter down the stairs. He waited until she was safely out of the way, until he heard her speaking into the telephone, before he spoke.

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  “Open the door and come out.”

  Still no answer. But again the noise, louder this time.

  “I’m a police officer and there are more police on the way.”

  He tried to sound in control.

  “I’m coming in.”

  The handle turned easily but when he tried to push open the door it would not give. Someone was blocking it on the other side.

  Saying, “I’m not going to hurt you,” he tiptoed back to the dressing table and returned with one of the silver candlesticks.

  At the door he pushed again, hard this time. Whoever it was on the other side of the door seemed to be pushing their full weight against it.

  “Stand back,” he said, stepped back himself, then heaved his good shoulder against the door with all his strength, candlestick raised in his left hand. With all his weight behind it, the door slid open.

  There wasn’t a person in the room. It was the golden retriever. It had been shot in the side of the head, flesh and bone exposed, but was still half alive. The dog had been trying to open the door, scratching against the woodwork with a bloody paw. Pushing it back, Breen had crushed the dying dog against the side of the bath. Now it panted slowly and gently. He squatted down and stroked its matted fur.

  It took an age for more police to arrive. By the time they did, in car after car, the dog was dead.

  Eighteen

  The local CID man, Block, was showy. He had a handlebar moustache, a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, a flamboyant green cravat and he chewed gum, which he removed carefully and wrapped in a piece of silver paper.

  “We haven’t had anything this good in a long time,” he said.

  Tozer had found plasters in the bathroom cabinet and put one on Breen’s face, just by his left eye.

  “I imagined it was like this round here all the time,” said Breen.

  “Charmed, I’m sure. I mean, what are we looking at? Burglary? Doubtful. Crime of passion? Much more like it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I came to tell them their daughter was dead. Last night.”

  “Right. Right. So you said. And how did they react? Was there animosity? Anger? Remorse? What?”

  Tozer said, “If she did this half an hour ago, no, three-quarters of an hour now, she could be miles away in that Jag. You lot wouldn’t want to let a murderer get away because you were wasting time, would you?”

  “Who’s she?”

  “TDC Tozer. She’s with me. She hasn’t learned to keep her own opinions to herself.”

  Tozer glar
ed at him.

  “You local?” Block asked her.

  “No,” said Tozer.

  “It’s like he’s got no ruddy face left at all, Sarge.”

  Sergeant Block turned his back on Breen and Tozer and faced his men. “Well, it’s not a shaving accident, is it? Twelve-bore at close range. Very nasty. Very messy. OK. Think, boys. Was there another man, do you think? Any sign of a mystery lover? You say the Jaguar is missing? Find the car registration. First priority. Chop-chop.”

  “It’s not just missing. It almost killed us.”

  “It was G-reg,” said Breen.

  “Nice. Brand new?”

  “Yes. And there were two twelve-bores and a 303 in the gun cabinet in the living room last night. There’s only one gun there now,” Breen added.

  “Sarge. Don’t know if it’s important but someone’s been sick in this geranium on the landing.”

  “Make a note of it.”

  “That was me,” said Breen.

  “Dearie me. I thought you Londoners were made of sterner stuff. Has the snapper arrived yet?”

  “Look at this picture of her.” A local copper was standing in front of the big photo of Mrs. Sullivan. “Can we take it to the station for reference?”

  “She’s a bit of a looker, ain’t she, Sarge? Nice personality.”

  “Sarge? Photographer will be here direc’ly. He got held up in Exeter.”

  “Pair of nice personalities, more like.”

  “Bit on the small side for my taste, Constable. What sort of woman has a picture of herself with her mammaries sticking out in her own bedroom?”

  “The wife of a lucky man.”

  “I wouldn’t say lucky from the state of him.”

  With difficulty, Breen took out his notebook and began scribbling.

  “She used to be a model, sir, according to people in the town.”

  Block looked straight at Breen and said, “This is a Devon and Cornwall job now, Sergeant.”

  “We have an outstanding inquiry about the murder of a girl. The victim’s daughter.”

  “That’s as may be, and of course we’re always happy to help our friends in the Metropolitan Police, but the murder of Major Sullivan is our business, you understand.”

  The local constables paused, waiting for Breen’s reply.

  “Naturally,” said Breen.

  “Good. Right, boys. What have we learned? She’s a slut, gentlemen. An exhibitionist. Cherchay le homme. I’ll give you two guineas to one there’s another man involved. Can someone get that bloody dog out of here? It stinks. The dog that Sergeant Breen and his glamorous assistant here thought was the killer. ‘Help!’” squealed Block, “‘Come quick. There’s someone else in the house.’”

  “I’ll be downstairs,” said Breen.

  The house was full now, policemen crashing through every room, all keen to be in on the investigation, yanking out drawers or spilling stuff out of cupboards, then trampling through the debris.

  In the hallway, a policeman was talking on the Sullivans’ phone. “Yeah, boy. That’s right. Half his bloody head has gone. You should see it. Bloody blood everywhere. It’s like it’s been sawn right in half. Gun must have been right by his head.”

  They walked outside. Half a dozen cars were parked at all angles around the fountain now.

  “Bunch of bloody bumpkins,” said Tozer.

  The mist had closed even tighter around the house. The garden seemed to float in its own cloud.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tozer.

  “Writing everything down.” He was making notes in his book.

  “Everything?”

  “You never know what’s going to be important.”

  “Is that a drawing?” He had sketched the dead major, faceless, head down. “That’s brilliant, that is.”

  Holding the notebook away from him, he squinted at it. There was something about the randomness of the shaky, half-controlled pencil strokes that made it feel like it had been drawn by a different person.

  “Poor bugger. You don’t look brilliant either.”

  “I didn’t use to be sick when I saw dead people.”

  The warmth of the morning had been chilled by the encroaching mist.

  “Before, I could shut things out and just get on with the job. It’s like I’ve lost a skin.”

  She put her handbag down on a cast-iron table that sat next to the deck chair on the lawn. “It’s like what happened to me when Alex died,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Only in reverse. I grew another skin.”

  “I could never live in a place like this,” he said. “I need to have people around me.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” she said. “It’s a beautiful house.”

  A pair of jays chuckled in a bare ash tree.

  “What about neighbors? If there are any. They’d have noticed two gunshots.”

  “Probably not,” she said. “Specially now it’s shooting season. Everyone round these parts has a shotgun. Popping off all the time at vermin this time of year.”

  The lawn was sodden. A pile of leaves had gathered on one side, blown there by the wind. “Where do you reckon she’s gone then?”

  “She could be going to London to see her girl. I’d told her the body was at University College.”

  “You sure it’s her that killed him?”

  “We don’t know anything for sure.”

  Breen looked in his notebook and read back what he’d written: Curtains drawn. Cup of tea. Gin bottle in bin. Gordons. 2 bttls empty wine. Beaujolais. M. shot by 12-bore from less than two feet away. Dog second barrel? New car. Job? Money?

  “Maybe I should just take you home?” said Tozer.

  They walked once around the house before returning to the front door. In the hallway, another copper was on the phone. “One cheese and onion, one ham, two ham and cheese, one bacon. The one with bacon has tomato ketchup. Got any pasties? Never mind. Crisps? How much is that? You’re jokin’. I thought you had a special rate for us coppers…Yeah, that’s a bit more like it.”

  Breen peered into the living room. The place was still being unmethodically turned upside down. The drawers from the desk were wide open and there were papers all over the floor. He guessed they were trying to find some document that had the full car registration number on it. If she was still in the car, they would need to pass a description out to other forces.

  When the constable had finished ordering food, Breen finally got on the phone to Marilyn. “Tell Jones to put someone down at the morgue at University College. She may be headed there.”

  There was the sound of a siren from outside. The constable who’d been ordering the sandwiches was driving away to collect them.

  “Yee-haw,” said a lanky copper, smoking a cigarette in the living room. “Did you give him an order, lover?” he asked Tozer.

  She shook her head. “Nobody asked me.”

  “You can have a nibble of mine then.”

  “I’d rather starve.”

  Breen squatted down and started looking through the papers they had discarded on the floor.

  “Charmer. What are you doing later?”

  “Nothing that involves you.”

  “Leave her be. She’s a cow,” said an older copper.

  “I never forget a face, but I’ll make an exception for you.”

  Tozer snorted.

  Breen knelt, going through a pile of bills splayed on the floor. A local grocer had written: No credit until this bill is paid!!!! Another note from a garage said: Final demand. There was a Coutts bank statement mixed in with the pile; on 16 August the Sullivans had been overdrawn by £662 14s. 6d.

  Breen moved towards the bookshelves. More Austen. An old thumbed copy of Kennedy’s Latin Primer. The Strange Death of Liberal England. He noted a couple of titles, then spotted a leather-bound photo album, tucked beside Brewer’s Phrase & Fable.

  He sat on the sofa with the album on his knees and started turning the pages. In the first pages there were many photos o
f Julia. These weren’t snaps. They were taken in studios with expensive cameras, presumably when she was modeling, outtakes of her laughing, or having a cigarette while someone adjusted her hair. As a young woman she had been beautiful.

  These gave way to more amateurish photographs. They were of a gang of friends, raucous and daring, who enjoyed striking poses for photos on picnics and at parties. Breen recognized the types. The men from the war who had never settled back into ordinary lives. Men who drank and rode on motorbikes. Women who were attracted to their rawness. One showed Julia at a fancy dress party in a daringly brief bikini, with a papier mâché head on a plate and a knife in the other hand. Salome? In one, a woman stood at an easel, painting a portrait of Julia outside a house. In another, a man sat on a porch strumming a guitar. Another, possibly the same man, sat at a typewriter dressed only in underpants.

  Breen realized that many of the photographs appeared to have been taken at the same building, a pretty wooden Swiss-style chalet with an old-fashioned wood stove and window boxes. It was surrounded by woods. At first Breen thought the house must be somewhere abroad, but the more he looked, the more he saw the little details: a pint of milk, a copy of The Times on a dining table.

  Then Mallory began appearing as part of the gang. The first photo of him was of a younger Mallory in an old open-top MG, grinning at the camera. Another of him on a yacht, knife between his teeth. One at the chalet, dressed as a tribesman in a grass skirt, holding a spear. It was taken before his chest had turned to flab.

  A couple of pages later there was a photograph of a wedding, Julia Sullivan, unashamedly pregnant, cradling her bump with one hand and holding a posy in the other. It was a military chapel. There followed snapshots of babies: Morwenna and her brother Nicholas, dates of birth written below in a feminine hand. Then of the children growing up. A birthday party, with hats and bunting, obviously taken at the wooden chalet. Nicholas in a tin pedal car. Morwenna on a pony. By now the gang of friends had disappeared. The photographs were all of Mallory, Julia and the children.

  The photos of Morwenna showed her becoming more tomboyish as the years went past. Her hair grew shorter; she was rarely pictured in dresses or skirts. In one she solemnly held a large, dead fish by the tail.