A Song for the Brokenhearted Read online

  Helen nodded towards their house and said, ‘Is that your house?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Have you always lived there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Helen smiled. ‘I’ve got a younger sister. I was just saying to my friend, I seem to remember coming to a birthday party with her once.’

  The man smiled. ‘I suppose you may have done. We have birthday parties every year for our daughters. Well… used to have.’

  ‘It must have been winter because there was snow, I think.’

  ‘What’s your sister’s name?’ asked the man. ‘Perhaps I remember her.’

  ‘Alex,’ said Helen. ‘Alexandra.’

  ‘We should go,’ said Breen, starting to feel anxious. He pulled at Helen’s coat.

  The man frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember her.’

  ‘Is your daughter OK? I’d like to say hello.’

  The man coloured. ‘She’s away,’ he said. He looked from Breen to Helen and back, squinting now. ‘Who did you say you were?’

  ‘Just a friend of your daughter’s,’ said Helen. ‘She had a younger sister, too. What if I spoke to her? It would only take five minutes.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Who are you? Have you seen my daughter?’

  Breen tugged at Helen’s sleeve. ‘Come on. Leave the man alone.’

  The man looked rattled. There was a little blob of spittle on his lip as he spoke. ‘Actually, I don’t recognise you at all. Who are you?’

  ‘I was younger.’

  ‘What’s my daughter’s name?’

  Helen opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Hibou’s father said, suddenly angry. ‘What do you think you’re doing, hanging around here?’

  They were walking away now, back towards the car. When they reached a curve in the road, the man was still standing there, briefcase in hand, glaring after them. ‘Come back here and explain yourselves,’ he was shouting.

  Helen pulled chewing gum out of her handbag and started munching on a stick of it.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ the man shouted.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ said Breen, exasperated.

  Helen didn’t answer. She just marched on ahead to the car and sat in it, waiting for him to catch her up.

  TWENTY

  Carmichael was in a suit and tie, jacket straining at the buttons. He had arranged to meet them at the Feathers in Westminster. Close to Scotland Yard, it was crammed full of coppers celebrating the guilty verdict in some court case.

  ‘Just a lemonade?’ said Carmichael. ‘You’re pulling my leg?’

  ‘I’ve got an upset stomach,’ said Helen. ‘Can’t keep nothing down.’

  ‘Miracles never stop. What’s wrong with Paddy? He looks like he’s swallowed a wasp.’

  ‘He’s just in a bate with me about something. So. Tell me about this girl you’re going out with,’ said Helen. ‘Is she nice?’

  ‘I’m not going out with her. It’s just a date. That’s all. The Rib Room.’

  ‘You sure that’s the kind of place she’d like?’

  ‘It’s posh. Best restaurant in London.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Helen.

  ‘You don’t think she’d like it? Oh, God. Here’s trouble,’ Carmichael said.

  ‘What?’ said Helen.

  ‘Pilcher is here,’ he said.

  Before he could say anything else, Pilcher was sitting down with a pint of mild at their table, in a pale brown suit, side parting carefully Brylcreemed.

  ‘Hello, Paddy. I hear you dressed up all pretty for us the other night,’ he said, smiling. ‘One of the lads saw you there. Apparently you were quite the looker.’

  Helen said, ‘Oh, here we go.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Tozer. Back so soon? Thought you’d gone to live down on the farm,’ Pilcher said in a mock-yokel accent.

  ‘Know what?’ she said. ‘You should try a bit of make-up sometime yourself. Anything to make you less ugly.’

  Pilcher mock-winced. ‘Back in the knife drawer, Miss Sharp,’ he said.

  ‘To what do we owe the displeasure?’ she said.

  ‘I just need a word with Paddy here,’ he said. ‘I want him to tell me about this Doyle bloke.’

  Breen took half an inch from his lager, then said, ‘Like Carmichael told you, I found his girlfriend. Went and talked to her. Apparently he disappeared on his way back from Morocco. She thinks he may be dead.’

  ‘And do you actually believe what this woman says?’

  Pilcher offered around his Lucky Strikes. Breen didn’t take one; Helen refused one too.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ said Breen.

  Pilcher shrugged, lit his own cigarette with a match. ‘Think about what she’s got to protect. Her boyfriend is a drug dealer. You’re a policeman. Very convenient if he just disappears, isn’t it?’

  He held the match upright until the flame burned out.

  Breen said, ‘I don’t know if Doyle is dead or not, but I believed her when she said that she thought he was.’

  Pilcher blew smoke out through his lips. ‘We knew about Doyle’s girlfriend. She’s a known liar and a drug addict.’

  ‘Known liar?’

  ‘Customs caught her at Dover last year.’ He put on a girlish voice. ‘“Oh my. I was just carrying that shoebox home as a favour to a man I met in Istanbul. I had no idea it was full of cannabis resin.” Milkwood fixed it that she got off as a favour to Doyle.’

  ‘That’s different,’ Helen said.

  ‘But it doesn’t make her the most reliable of sources. Maybe he took the money and scarpered.’

  Helen said, ‘So, let’s get this straight… The CID are looking into Milkwood’s murder. But you haven’t actually told them what Paddy says about Doyle, have you?’

  ‘Of course we will,’ said Pilcher. ‘We just haven’t yet.’

  Helen snorted. ‘You don’t like the idea of other coppers digging around in your business, do you?’

  Carmichael was talking now: ‘What if Milkwood and Doyle, together, were on to whoever had been killing drug smugglers? And that’s the reason they’re both dead. The Spanish stuff… That photograph of the dead guy that the Spanish police wanted us to identify. It squares with what she was saying.’

  Pilcher nodded. ‘Maybe.’ He turned to Breen, ‘Sonny Jim here–’ he pointed at Carmichael–‘tells me I spend too much time going after users. He says we need to tackle the suppliers. I’m all for that. But I’m more of an economist, see. If you just try and cut off the supply, you’ll only increase the price of drugs and make the trade more profitable. The best way to kill the demand is to scare the shit out of the drug addicts. Johnny feels different. But maybe he’d be happier in Customs and Excise.’

  Carmichael scowled, but didn’t answer.

  Helen said, ‘I thought you just busted pop stars ’cause you like getting your picture in the papers.’

  ‘Nice to be noticed by the grateful public,’ said Pilcher.

  ‘We need to figure out whether Doyle is one of the bodies that turned up in Spain,’ said Carmichael. ‘We can’t find dental records for him. Even if we had them, it could take weeks.’

  Pilcher sucked his lip for a while, then reached inside his wallet and pulled out a ten-bob note. ‘Here, John. Buy your friends a drink. On me.’ And he stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray and stood.

  ‘Is Pilcher always such an arse?’ said Helen when he’d gone.

  Carmichael looked at his watch. ‘Maybe I should go.’

  ‘There’s ages yet,’ said Helen.

  Breen said, ‘I can’t believe he’s still not telling CID.’

  Carmichael nodded. ‘He’s convinced they’ll steam in and start to pull in dealers, scaring the horses.’

  ‘Ask me, he doesn’t want anyone poking around and finding out how many bungs Drug Squad takes off half the dealers in London,’ said Helen.

  ‘That’s a total lie,’ said
Carmichael.

  ‘Slightly under half, then,’ said Helen.

  ‘Come on, Helen. It’s not like that,’ said Breen.

  Helen shook her head. ‘I don’t know which of you has your head further up your own arse, sometimes,’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly a secret. Every bloody hippie in London knows about it.’

  ‘So young. So cynical,’ said Carmichael.

  ‘’K sake,’ muttered Helen.

  ‘Have a drink, why don’t you?’ said Carmichael.

  ‘I’m off the booze.’

  Carmichael said, ‘Come on. Have one at least. Right now you’re as much fun as a wet toilet seat.’

  Helen made a face. ‘You should slow down a little. You don’t want your girlfriend thinking you’re a soak.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ said Carmichael, looking at his watch again.

  When he stood to leave, Helen stood too. ‘Wait,’ she said, and loosened his tie. Then she reached up and mussed his hair. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said.

  Watching them, Breen found himself feeling a little jealous of Carmichael, going out to meet a new girl. New relationships were so much less complicated.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Helen was in the spare room, fast asleep.

  He was in his bed, awake, wishing she were in here with him.

  He did not fall in love easily, he thought. It never went well. Once, three years earlier, he had fallen in love with one of the women who came and looked after his father. Her name had been Sarah and she had been round-faced and jolly. Unable to leave his failing father alone, they had spent evenings at his flat playing cards and drinking Madeira, which she loved.

  But it turned out she had been stealing cash from him. Small amounts at first, but then more. At first he hadn’t wanted to believe it was her. And when he confronted her, she denied it, though there was no other possible explanation of how the money had gone missing.

  So he had sacked her. It made him sad to think about it now. He understood so little of other people.

  There were several African-looking women in the Students’ Union canteen in Bloomsbury. He wouldn’t have recognised her from the family photographs he had seen–she had been much younger in them–but she waved at him as he walked through the glass door. He was clearly more conspicuous here as a policeman than she was as a black woman.

  Ijeoma Ezeoke sat with a half-drunk cup of black coffee in front of her. She had her mother’s height and her father’s looks. If it had been the other way around she would have been beautiful; instead she just looked big-boned. Her black hair formed a large globe around her head. She had a Bic biro stuffed into the tight Afro curls, as if her hair was simply a useful place to leave it.

  ‘You’re Detective Breen?’ she said.

  ‘Detective Sergeant,’ he said.

  ‘You’re the one who arrested my father last year?’

  He nodded warily.

  ‘No. I’m glad,’ she said. ‘He deserved it. I hope they put him away for a long time.’

  Breen introduced Helen. ‘Helen worked on the case at the time.’

  Izzie held out a hand without standing. For all her African looks, she spoke in a polite, English public school accent. Breen sat down opposite her.

  The student canteen was loud and busy. It seemed to be full of all the nations. Indian women in bright saris. Young African men in suits. Radicals in army fatigues, covered in protest badges. Ijeoma Ezeoke was dressed in a loose African-print shirt and jeans.

  ‘How are you coping?’

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry about your…’

  ‘Girlfriend. My lover,’ she said steadily.

  He nodded. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You’re a student here?’

  ‘No. I just like it here. I have rented a flat around the corner. I feel less out of place here than in the rest of London. People here don’t question who I am.’

  Breen looked around at the other students. They were talking loudly, self-confidently, sitting on the edge of tables, clutching folders covered in stickers and doodles.

  ‘How is your mother?’

  ‘I don’t see very much of her. She wants to go back home to Biafra, but the war is dragging on.’

  ‘So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’ Breen asked.

  ‘I need to know what happened to Wenna. My father refuses to see me or my mother,’ she said. ‘My mother doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Breen. Ijeoma had not been in the country when her father had killed her lover.

  ‘He’s pleaded guilty. So nothing’s going to come out in court about what happened. I feel cheated by that. I don’t know how else to find out.’

  ‘Right.’ So Breen thought back and tried to sort the details of the case in his head. It already seemed an age ago. Then he started to talk, telling her what he knew. It had been a difficult case. He had got so much wrong. But he tried as best he could to tell the young black woman how her father had killed the girl she loved.

  For the bare three or four minutes it took, Ijeoma sat perfectly still, not wiping away the tears that trickled down her cheeks. At one point, a young man in a beret and army jacket came up and said, ‘Is he bothering you, Izzie?’

  But she just shook her head, cheeks shiny with tears. The young man hesitated, then left, still looking over his shoulder at them as he walked away.

  Finally, when Breen had finished, she asked about whether her girlfriend would have suffered.

  ‘I want to be honest with you. I don’t know. The only person who could answer that is your father.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Breen said, ‘That’s all I know, I’m afraid.’

  She sat in silence for a few seconds, then said, ‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’

  Helen leaned forward and asked, ‘How are you coping?’

  ‘Coping? I’m a lesbian,’ she said. ‘I’m black. I have a thick skin.’

  ‘I know what it’s like,’ said Helen.

  ‘Really?’ said Izzie, looking her in the eye. ‘I very much doubt that.’

  Helen looked right back at her. ‘I know what it’s like when someone you love is murdered. You wake up every day with that burning in your chest. It never goes away,’ said Helen quietly. ‘But you carry on. Because people do.’

  Izzie held her hand out across the table. Helen took it.

  Breen looked away. They sat there together for a while in the bustling room, the two young women holding hands across the table.

  Eventually Breen said, ‘I wonder if you can help us.’ Izzie frowned, let go of Helen’s hand. ‘Do you know anything about Kenya?’

  ‘Why would I know anything about Kenya?’ she said. ‘Because I’m black? Because I’ve an African name? I grew up in London. My parents sent me to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I don’t know anything about Africa.’

  ‘It was just a thought.’

  Helen’s hand was still there, halfway across the Formica table. ‘Paddy’s working on a case,’ she said. ‘It involves some people who lived in Kenya in the 1950s.’

  There were two types of students at the School of Oriental and African Studies: young white people who mostly dressed scruffily in denim and T-shirts, and Asians and Africans who, on the whole, dressed more conservatively–some in suits, others in their local costumes and cloths that made them look like the kinds of dolls you’d find in a gift shop at London Airport. An Indian girl at the next table wore a sari in startling green. The black man talking to her was dressed so formally, in a white shirt and black bow tie, that you might have mistaken him for a waiter.

  ‘What about here? Are there any Kenyan students here?’ asked Breen.

  Izzie thought for a moment. ‘I know a law lecturer from Nairobi who teaches here. He says he wants to sleep with me. I told him I wasn’t interested in men, but that only made it more of a challenge to him.’

  Helen snorted. Izzie smiled at her.

  ‘
Would he talk to me?’ Breen asked.

  ‘I can ask,’ she said, standing to leave, offering a hand to shake. ‘I’ll tell him you have a pretty assistant.’

  Helen laughed.

  After she’d gone, Helen stood to leave, but Breen stayed seated for a moment longer, relishing the strangeness of the place.

  ‘You never wanted to go to university, Helen?’

  She said, ‘Never was an option, really.’

  Breen had not gone to college or university. Instead of waiting for National Service, he had signed up for the police. His father had always wanted him to have a proper education, but he doubted that this was what his father had imagined an education to be. There were posters on the wall: ‘Study Group on I Ching 2 p.m.’; ‘Bakunin vs. Marx: National Conference on Workers’ Control’.

  A couple put down their trays, sat next to him without asking, and started talking loudly. The boy had long hair and spots. He was earnestly telling the girl, ‘The Reynolds Tobacco Company has already patented the brand names of every variety of pot, no shit. Acapulco Gold. Congo Brown. They’re building vending machines. Like bubblegum. Just you wait. Capitalism cannot resist profit. In a year they’ll be selling pot like Coca-Cola.’

  The girl just drank her tea and looked bored.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Helen was lying on the living-room carpet in pants and bra, looking at her stomach. It was pale and smooth, sinking under the line of the elastic of her light blue knickers, which stretched from bony hip to bony hip. ‘I know you’re not supposed to see anything there yet,’ she said, pinching at her skin, chin on her chest. ‘But I feel like a whale.’

  Breen looked at her as casually as he could, as if it was normal to have a half-naked woman in his living room.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said. Skinny as a stick, though.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said. But at least she smiled.

  ‘Anybody call?’ he asked.

  ‘No one. So I tried phoning Carmichael. I was wondering how his date went. Don’t you want to know? Only he wasn’t there. Nobody’s telling us nothing,’ she said, sitting up. ‘Was it OK to use the phone? I’ll leave some money if you like.’