The Kings of London Read online

  ‘Want me to have a go?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He thumped again.

  ‘Only saying,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s just the cat?’

  ‘How many weeks you think the letters have been piling up?’

  ‘God.’

  He pushed his shoulder against the door and felt a sting of pain down his arm. He gave the door one last thump and heard the jamb start to splinter. A second thump and the wood started to shift. A third and it finally swung open.

  The house smelt thick and sweet, the stench of putrefying meat. They went in cautiously. Breen took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his nose, but it didn’t do much to stop the smell.

  The ground floor was three rooms and a kitchen.

  ‘Posh,’ said Tozer. ‘Downstairs lav.’

  But apart from the rotting cat and the pile of letters there was nothing out of the ordinary there.

  Breen led the way up the stairs. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a study, all empty. The main bed was neatly made. There was an electric alarm clock by the bed and a book of naval history sat on the bedside table, a leather bookmark poking out of it. Not a single picture on the walls save for a pair of Churchill crown coins mounted in blue velvet. A couple of incongruous horse brasses.

  Breen exhaled. ‘I thought…’

  ‘So did I. You wouldn’t have thought a dead cat could make such a stink.’

  ‘Central heating,’ said Breen. ‘That will do it, with a dead animal, I suppose.’

  ‘All mod cons,’ said Tozer.

  They opened the cupboards. Breen took a chair and stood under the loft hatch, peering around. Flies in every window buzzing to get out, but nothing else.

  He was relieved and simultaneously disappointed.

  Tozer put it into words. ‘But if he’s not here, where the bogging hell is he?’

  The low hum of electricity filled the study. The slick new electric typewriter was switched off but an adding machine had been left on. A fancy German model with grey and red keys. There was a large white planning chest. When Breen opened it up it was full of drawings of flats and high-rises. Breen leafed through them. There were maps of roads too. Big curving roads on stilts that were bedded deep into the ground. One drawer was full of stationery. Breen took a couple of unused notebooks out of it.

  Downstairs, Tozer had opened the picture window to let the flies and the stink of dead cat out.

  ‘He lived here alone, then?’

  There was a silver-framed picture on the sideboard in the living room. Breen recognised Shirley Prosser in it, though she was only a girl, standing in front of a car with her parents. She was pretty, confident, untroubled. There was a younger boy standing next to her, solemn-faced and tall. Breen guessed it must be Knight. He slid the photo out of the frame.

  There were a few maggots still writhing on the cat, but mostly it had been picked dry, ribs showing beneath fur. Tozer found a tea towel in the kitchen and placed it over the remains.

  ‘How awful. Poor little cat.’

  ‘I thought you were a farmer’s girl. Used to dead animals.’

  ‘Don’t mean people should leave them to starve. Whoever did that should be put away.’

  ‘I somehow think he’s beyond that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tozer. ‘I got you.’

  Breen went to the hallway, picked up the post and took it into the kitchen.

  ‘You think he’s dead too?’

  There was a single dirty cornflake bowl in the sink, a spoon and an empty mug. It was the only thing out of place in the entire house. He had had breakfast and left, leaving the washing-up until he came home. Except he hadn’t.

  He opened a cutlery drawer, found a sharp knife and set about slicing open the pile of letters.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He tore open a letter and slipped out the contents. ‘Why don’t you go and knock on the neighbours’ doors and ask if they know anything about him and where he is?’

  ‘Scotland Yard are going to be hopping if they find out we’ve been through it all first.’

  She watched him making piles on the table. Bank statements. Bills. Personal correspondence. ‘I’ll go then,’ she said.

  The December days were short. It was dark outside by the time she returned.

  ‘Next-door neighbours say they haven’t seen him for weeks. Apparently they didn’t see much of him, best of times. Didn’t say boo to a goose.’

  The bank statements looked very ordinary. Much like his own. The personal letters were dull, mostly cheerily stiff news from ex-army friends Knight had done National Service with. There was a single postcard from his sister Shirley, passing him her address above the record shop: ‘Been trying to call. Where are you, Johnny? I’d come and visit but you know what Charlie’s like with buses. Everything OK??? Miss you. Big sis.’

  He took a cigarette, notched the packet and lit it. There was no ashtray so he put the dead match back in the box. She sat on the kitchen table kicking her legs backwards and forwards like a bored child as he patiently copied details from all of the letters into the notebooks he had taken from Knight’s drawer.

  ‘So,’ she said.

  Breen ignored her, still writing.

  ‘I wonder how bored I’m going to be back on the farm. Scale of one to ten. A ten, I reckon.’

  ‘Can I just finish this?’

  ‘Sor-ry,’ she said. ‘Only it’s supposed to be my day off, remember? Not the best day out with a boy I’ve had.’

  ‘I’ll be done in a minute.’ He looked at a company name on a letterhead. The company Johnny Knight had been working with at the time he disappeared. Noted the date.

  ‘You just take me out to a dead cat’s house.’

  ‘On the way back she said, ‘Are you limping?’

  ‘I think I’ve done something to my foot.’ His right foot hurt when he put weight on it.

  ‘What? Kicking in that door?’

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ he said.

  ‘Christ, Paddy. You really think this one is dead?’ She was smoking a cigarette in the darkness. The red end glowed as she walked.

  ‘Maybe. I think so.’

  ‘I mean… This is something, isn’t it? So someone’s gone and killed Michael Prosser and maybe his brother-in-law too? What’s it about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell Scotland Yard about this. I mean, it’s got to be connected,’ she said.

  He reached into his pocket and handed her the address book he had taken from Shirley Prosser. ‘You tell them. Call them up tomorrow. Give them this and tell them you had a hunch.’

  She snorted. ‘They’re not going to believe me,’ she said. ‘ I’m just a Temporary DC.’

  ‘I can’t tell them, can I?’

  ‘I’m a girl, so I couldn’t be expected to do any of this on my own. God’s sake.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter if they believe you or not. Say you came down here on your day off…’

  She dropped her cigarette and paused to grind it into the pavement.

  ‘That’s why you asked me along, isn’t it? Because if you found anything you wouldn’t be able to tell anyone.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just wanted company. Honestly.’

  ‘Say what you like about Carmichael,’ she said, ‘but at least he takes me out for a Chinese meal.’

  By the time they got to the station his foot was hurting like hell. He went to the men’s toilets and rolled up his trouser leg and pulled down his sock. There was blood, plenty of it. His big toe looked pink and swollen.

  TWENTY-THREE

  He was exhausted by the time he made it home. He ran a bath and lay in it, hoping that warm water would soothe the swelling in his foot.

  His body lay pale in the warm water.

  Once he’d been muscular and lean. Sitting at a desk all day meant his body was softer now, less well defined. Like life, really. He picked up the soap and washed until the water was milky and he could no lon
ger see his limbs.

  From above, the thumping of rock music started again.

  In the morning, taking the milk bottle off the step, he noticed the black car sitting in front of his window. Breen tried to ignore it. It was just a car. Other tenants had come and gone.

  He limped back down the steps. This morning he cooked himself porridge, adding a pinch of salt. He stewed some hard plums that would never ripen. Bowl in hand, he pinned two sheets of paper to the back of the bedroom door, one with Michael Prosser’s name on it, the other with Johnny Knight’s. Under Michael Prosser he wrote, ‘Shot.’ On Knight’s page he wrote a large question mark.

  He took a roll of old wallpaper and sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and transcribed lists from the notebooks onto the paper. Addresses of people who’d written to Knight. Dates when the letters had been sent. He was just trying to put the dates into some kind of order when the doorbell rang.

  It was the postman with a box, wrapped up in brown paper. ‘Bloody Christmas. Does my back in,’ he said as he handed it over.

  Back inside, Breen opened the parcel. A bottle of single malt whisky with a note written in neat italic. ‘Rhodri Pugh asked me to send you this, with sincere thanks for all your work.’ It was signed, ‘Oliver Tarpey.’

  Breen considered pouring it straight down the sink, but didn’t.

  He crunched up the notepaper and threw it into the bin, then went to staring at the figures he’d written on the wallpaper, lists of numbers and addresses, willing them to reveal something, but they didn’t.

  Walking was good. It loosened up his bruised foot. And it felt good to get away from the black car and the rock music.

  His father had liked to walk. Some Sundays they had packed cheese sandwiches and caught trains to Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Surrey, his father holding an Ordnance Survey map in one hand and a stick to push back brambles in the other, Cathal trailing yards behind, claiming his legs were tired. Always seeming to be disappointed by the English countryside, his father muttered about the way the farmers here kept their cattle, or the way the fields were too flat.

  Breen walked down to Kingsland Basin and on to the Regent’s Canal heading west. The path was narrow and muddy. At times it seemed to disappear entirely into dead weeds. There had been boats working the canal when he had been a child, dark-skinned men at the tiller, but they were all gone now. But at Camden Lock a few canal boats sat on the black water, smoke rising from chimneys. He hadn’t realised people still lived on the water. But when he saw the people in them they were long-haired and bearded. One boat was painted with mad swirls in red and green.

  The old buildings alongside the canal were dirty and rotten. A few machine shops, a laundry, a garage. Bricks with failing mortar. Gutters hanging off walls. Slime from where the water dripped down the render.

  All the pale concrete the GLC were laying down didn’t seem enough to hide the wreckage of the city.

  A mile later he emerged into Regent’s Park near the zoo and continued over towards Francis Pugh’s house. A pointless itch he couldn’t resist scratching. He walked up and down the street a couple of times, looking around, waiting for something to strike him. Winter had made the site where his house had stood look desolate.

  Dead men were forgotten. London was obsessed with what was happening.

  He noticed the next-door neighbour’s curtains move. The elderly actor who had lived next door to Pugh was peering out at him. Breen waved at the man, and he retreated letting the curtains fall back, as if embarrassed to be mistaken for a nosy parker.

  He should go home, Breen thought. He should take advantage of the time and redecorate his flat. Or maybe move out and find somewhere new. Somewhere bright and fresh, like Johnny Knight’s house.

  He found himself walking down the old man’s footpath, knocking on his door. ‘Is it the policeman again?’ he said. ‘Come inside. It’s so cold out there.’

  Even inside, he was wearing an overcoat. His glasses were smeary with grease. ‘Have you found the man who killed Mr Pugh?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Breen said, avoiding explanation. ‘I wanted to ask about the squatters behind his house.’

  ‘Awful,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t mind the noise. I don’t sleep much anyway. It’s just the general lowering of the tone. And they dress so very badly. It’s as if they’re contemptuous of quality,’ he said. The living room was warmed by an electric fire in the fireplace. Breen looked at the crack in the wall; it looked bigger than he remembered it.

  ‘Noise?’

  ‘They play guitars. They chant oriental mumbo-jumbo at all hours. Absurd. I mean they’re not Hindus, are they? They’re English. They really shouldn’t be there, should they? Your lot were going to evict them and then nothing happened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The squatters. They were supposed to be evicted back in July, so the bailiffs said. And then nothing at all. It’s all going to the dogs.’

  ‘Do you know who owns the house?’ said Breen.

  ‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘Do you have any cigarettes, dear? I’m right out.’

  Breen had only smoked two from his packet, but he gave the man the whole box.

  ‘You’re a godsend,’ he said. ‘An angel of mercy.’

  Back out on the road he wished he had not given the whole packet away.

  He was standing at the corner, where Marlborough Place met Abbey Road, hands in his pockets, when he saw the girl he had seen at the squat walk past. The one who called herself Hibou, according to Tozer. The one he had spied on in the garden. She was wearing a long Afghan coat and a knitted hat.

  He wondered if he should talk to her. He could easily catch up. She was moving slowly. In a world of her own. He started following her.

  She loped south, steadily, hair swinging with each step. At almost six foot tall, she was easy to follow. Breen stayed a decent distance behind.

  At Hall Road she turned west, past the red-brick mansion houses. It was a quiet street, so Breen dropped even further behind. She stopped to lean down and stroke a tabby cat, but only for a second, as if she could not spare the time.

  At Maida Vale she turned south again and, as the pavements became busier, Breen risked walking ten yards behind, though she didn’t stop to look behind her.

  She reached a bus stop and stood there, waiting, occasionally checking her watch. Breen stood a little way off until the bus came, then boarded it only as it was about to move off.

  She took a seat upstairs, so Breen stood at the front of the lower level looking backwards so he could see when she descended again. It meant he was facing all the passengers. ‘Buy Kellogg’s Sugar-Sweet Cereals Today!’ read the advert above their heads. As the bus turned into Euston Road, Breen flashed his warrant card at the bus conductor, who nodded back at him.

  She got off at Warren Street and walked to University College Hospital. He followed, still a few paces behind, to the Out-Patients department. The rows of chairs were filling with young people, some long-haired. Some looked as if they must be sleeping in squats, like Hibou. Some looked anxious. None were talking to each other.

  The young woman spoke to a nurse on a desk for a minute. As she turned away, Breen lowered his head and pretended to tie a shoelace. By the time he straightened up again, she was sitting a few rows in front, her back towards him. Breen wished he had brought a paper or a book. Something to hide behind, at least.

  Breen watched. One by one, the nurse called out names and the people disappeared into a room to the left of the desk. One by one they emerged after a couple of minutes, clutching small white paper bags. Eventually the nurse called, ‘Miss Curtis?’ Hibou stood and walked into the consulting room.

  When she was safely inside, door closed behind her, Breen marched over to the nurse’s station. ‘Miss Curtis?’ he asked, holding up his warrant card for her to see. The nurse looked wary. ‘The woman who just went in?’

  ‘Yes?�
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  ‘What’s her first name?’

  The nurse said, ‘You can’t just walk in like this… These people are patients. It’s confidential. If they see the police just barging in here, what do you think—’

  ‘It’s important,’ said Breen.

  ‘No.’

  Her phone rang. Her eyes were turned away only for a second, but for long enough to get a good look at the ledger. When she saw what he was looking at she slammed it shut.

  ‘You are not allowed to see that,’ the nurse said shrilly.

  ‘OK,’ said Breen. ‘I was just asking.’

  Hibou wasn’t in the consulting room long. She emerged and when she saw Breen still standing in front of the nurse’s station, her eyes widened. She must have recognised him from the day he and Jones had tried to talk to the people at the squat.

  She turned and walked away rapidly. Approaching the exit, she broke into a trot.

  Outside the hospital, it was already growing dark. He felt a little better. He had enjoyed the chase, however pointless. Breen reached into his mackintosh, took out a notebook and wrote: ‘Curtis?’ He had not been able to see the name properly. But he had seen her date of birth. He wrote ‘17/1/52’. He did the maths and realised with a shock that Hibou was only sixteen years old.

  He remembered the way he had looked at the curve of her breast. She was a child, he thought. Half his age. Someone who should still be at school.

  He returned the notebook to his pocket. That was worst of it in some ways. They had taken so many of his notebooks. He was worried he was missing something. Facts needed context. They were useless on their own.

  On the long walk home he stopped in at Connor’s Hardware and bought a pack of five reporter’s notebooks.

  He woke early on Tuesday and spent an hour at his kitchen table with a mug of coffee trying to recreate the notes they had taken. Pointless, really.

  Before breakfast he did press-ups in the living room. He had never taken much exercise before, but maybe now was the time to start. He felt pale and flabby, and the winter had barely started. After fifteen press-ups, he flopped down onto the living-room carpet, panting.