She's Leaving Home Read online

  Breen nodded.

  Prosser picked up the empty cigarette packet and shook it again. “What’s Bailey been saying? About me not being in?”

  “Not that much.”

  “And what about the others? Have they been wondering why I’m not in?”

  “You’re ill, that’s what they’re saying.”

  “I really appreciate this, Paddy. I don’t deserve it. You’re a good mate. I behaved really badly. A disgrace. Know what I mean? But I can make it right. What if I told people that Jones had got the wrong guy? That’s why you let him go? What if I told them you fought the Chink too, as well as me, only it was just me that got injured? You could be a hero.”

  Breen looked at him and said, “We don’t have to tell them anything. You just have to go into the office tomorrow and tell Bailey you’re throwing in the towel.”

  Prosser frowned. “Sorry?”

  “You tell him you’re leaving.”

  “Me? Resigning?”

  Breen nodded.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quitting the job?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why?”

  “Because otherwise I’ll ring the bell.”

  Sitting on the sofa looking up at Breen, Prosser, the big hard London lad, seemed like he was about to cry. “Paddy. I’ve been almost twenty years on the force. What else am I going to do? I’d lose my flat and everything. And my kid. His mum relies on me. I got obligations. I really need the money.”

  “You’ll lose your pension too if I tell them what really happened. And they’ll put you away. That would be worse.”

  He crunched the cigarette packet in one hand. “It’s my life, Paddy. It’s my fucking life.”

  “I won’t tell anyone. Think what would happen if the press found out. They’re just waiting for something like this. Corrupt coppers. They’d have a field day. It’s best if you go quietly.”

  Breen stood up. He wanted to get back to the station.

  “Paddy. We can talk. I’m really sorry for what I did to you.”

  Breen didn’t look back at Prosser, just headed for the front door.

  “You’re a bastard, Paddy Breen.”

  “By tomorrow. Or I’ll go to Bailey.”

  Prosser lurched up off the sofa and grabbed Breen’s arm, bunching his other fingers.

  “Just try it,” said Breen.

  “I might,” said Prosser. He stood there for a second with his fist held in the air. “All this doesn’t change the fact that you were windy, Paddy. You should have seen the look on your face. When he pulled the knife on you you were dirtying your ruddy pants. You’re a fucking coward, Paddy Breen. A lousy Mick coward.”

  Breen let himself out and walked away, relieved to be out of the place, keen to put some distance between himself and Prosser. After the hum of dirty laundry and stale cigarette smoke, it was good to get some fresh air in his lungs.

  It was a short walk to Pembridge House. Three Victorian houses had been joined together to create the women’s section house. Behind the big front door there was a row of pegs and underneath each one hung a wooden tag with the resident’s name on both sides, green on one, yellow on the other. He tried the door at the bottom of the stairs but it was locked.

  “Can I help you?” called a middle-aged woman from the living room. “Men aren’t allowed upstairs.”

  “I’m looking for Helen Tozer.”

  The woman came to the door and scanned the tags. Tozer was in. “And who are you?”

  Ten minutes later Tozer emerged down the stairs.

  “You took your time,” said Breen.

  “What’s got into you? I had to choose the right clothes. I mean, for God’s sake. What if George is actually there? The girls made me buy this on Saturday. What do you think?”

  A striped frock with two pockets at the front.

  “You look nice,” he said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I feel a bit daft in it, to be honest,” she said.

  Twenty-seven

  Tentatively, they walked past rhododendrons, up Claremont Drive, past the gates with the painted notice: Private. “You sure?” said Breen.

  “Positive.”

  An elderly-looking man in a tweed jacket was piling leaves onto a smoking fire in one of the gardens. He looked at them suspiciously.

  “It doesn’t look like where a pop star would live.”

  “And how would you know?”

  The driveway curved round past small recently built bungalows until it reached a last one.

  “There,” she said. “I told you so.”

  But for the swimming pool and the hippie paintings on the wall, it would have been like any other new suburban bungalow. It was an ugly building, plain and oddly proportioned; it looked as if it had perhaps borrowed its window frames from another house, or maybe the pitched roof was just too big. It seemed an unlikely home for a member of the world’s most famous pop group.

  The murals were florid and ugly. Bulbous swirls of pink and orange covered the bland walls, wiggles morphed into flames or faces, flowers and zigzags crawled over the plaster. In a few afternoons of stoned brushwork, people had attempted to prove that the person who lived here was not a stockbroker or a retired dentist like the neighbors.

  “This is really George’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are all the fans, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There were no girls outside; it looked like the bungalow was empty inside too. Breen and Tozer sat on a low wall that had the words MICK AND MARIANNE WERE HERE written on it in bright yellow paint.

  “I’ve never been around that many colored people in my life,” said Tozer. “You danced. I never thought I’d see that, either.”

  “If you can call it dancing.”

  “It was fun. I enjoyed myself.”

  A petrol engine spluttered into life in a nearby garden.

  “That man you danced with…” said Breen.

  “He said he wanted to marry me and take me back to Biafra when they’d won the war.”

  “You liked him,” said Breen.

  “You jealous?” Tozer grinned.

  “No.”

  “He was a bit fast, you know what I mean?” she said. “Only I never been to an African party before. It’s an experience, isn’t it? Where I grew up there ain’t nobody dark. So I thought…”

  “When in Rome?”

  “I suppose.”

  A hedge trimmer started gnawing the branches of a cypress hedge that bordered Harrison’s garden.

  “Did you mind?”

  “Why should I?”

  “He said Ezeoke is having an affair with a white woman.”

  “Mrs. Briggs?”

  She nodded. “All that Africa stuff he goes on about all the time. Apparently everybody knows.”

  “Yes,” said Breen.

  “My guy at the party said he wanted to try an affair with a white woman too. I told him he’d have to find another bloody one, then. I’m hungry,” said Tozer. “I didn’t have any lunch.”

  “You reckon anyone’s going to turn up?” asked Breen.

  “I don’t know.” Tozer lit a cigarette and said, “My mum asked after you. She always does, regular as clockwork. ‘How’s that nice policeman?’ she says. I told her you were improving.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. You’re loosening up. Letting your hair down. You danced on Saturday.”

  “You call that dancing?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Not so good,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “How is your other investigation going? The guy in the fire.”

  He told her about the meeting with the foreman; about how it was probably the body of a young Irishman who had got drunk on his birthday.

  “That’s so sad,” she said.

>   “The foreman used to work with my dad,” said Breen. “I found his name from one of his address books.”

  “Your dad was a builder?”

  “Yes. And he knew my dad well, it turns out.” Breen told Tozer the story the man had told him, about his father and mother leaving Ireland.

  Tozer sat on the wall, swinging her legs, smoking a cigarette. “And you never knew that. About your mum and dad eloping?”

  “No. I suppose he must have been ashamed.”

  “He shouldn’t have been.”

  “It was different then, though.”

  “That’s amazing. You only just found that out.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “I suppose…I resent the fact that he never told me about it.” He looked around at the bungalows with their neat lawns and hedges, wondering what the neighbors thought of having a Beatle living here.

  “You should feel good. You came from love. That’s important,” she said.

  A man in blue overalls appeared around the edge of the cypress hedge, holding the trimmer. He looked at the pair of them for a minute then bent down and tugged on the starting cord. It burst into life straightaway and he started cutting back the branches on George Harrison’s side.

  “My family have been on the same farm for generations,” said Tozer. “At least he got away. He gave that to you. I think it’s why you’re quite good.”

  “What?” The sound of the trimmer was deafening.

  “You don’t fit in anywhere, do you? That’s why you’re good at what you do. You don’t carry any weight with you. ’Scuse me,” she shouted at the gardener, but the man didn’t hear.

  Tozer stood and waved at him. This time he stopped and switched off the engine.

  “That’s better,” said Tozer.

  “You’re a bit old, aren’t you?” said the man.

  “What do you mean, old?” Tozer said.

  “It’s teenagers usually, hanging out around here.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Tozer.

  “We’re police,” said Breen.

  The man looked her up and down. “You don’t look like police.”

  “We were looking for a girl called Carol,” said Breen.

  The man pulled a tin from his overalls and dug inside for a packet of tobacco. “Carol-George?”

  “That’s the one.”

  He looked at his watch. “She comes after school. She should be here any minute.” And he started up the trimmer again.

  He was right. Not long after, she came walking down the driveway, dressed in a sheepskin coat and a pink crocheted hat. She was tall, almost scarily thin, with a long pale face framed by dark hair.

  She frowned when she saw them there. “Who are you? Are you reporters? He doesn’t like reporters.”

  “You waiting for George?”

  “Free world.” The girl took off her hat. Her hair fell in front of her eyes; she took a strand, put it in her mouth and started sucking on it.

  Tozer said, “Pattie and George not in?”

  “No.”

  “They away?”

  She shook her head. “Not sure when they’re back.”

  “So you just stay here?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I like it here.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Nothing much. What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing,” said Tozer.

  “Don’t your parents worry?” said Breen.

  The girl snorted. “What’s it to do with them?”

  “You’re Carol, aren’t you?” he said.

  She frowned. “Are you the policeman who was asking about Wenna?”

  “Morwenna?”

  “You showed some girls a photograph of Wenna and said she was dead.” Her expression didn’t change. “Is she dead?”

  Tozer dug out the photograph of the young girl standing in the doorway of the tree house; the place where her mother had killed herself.

  The girl nodded. “Wenna, we called her. She really is dead then?”

  “Yes. She is.”

  The girl nodded. “I heard that.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Breen.

  The girl said, “I feel I ought to cry, but nothing’s coming out.”

  “That’s fine,” said Breen. “I know that feeling. It’ll come out when it needs to.”

  “Don’t think it will,” said Carol.

  Breen sat on the wall. “What was she like?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know.”

  The girl nodded again, somberly. “She was all right,” she said. “She hated her dad. She was like the girl in ‘She’s Leaving Home.’”

  “What?” said Breen.

  “The song on Sergeant Pepper’s,” said Tozer.

  “I was thinking of buying that,” said Breen.

  “Really?” said Tozer.

  “Maybe. What about the girl?”

  “Her mum was OK, she said. But her dad was really strict. She hated him. He hated her too, she said.”

  “She told you this?”

  She nodded again. “Yes. A lot of us scruffs have had trouble with our parents. She went the whole way, though. She ran off.”

  Tozer sat down on the wall and patted it. “To meet a man from the motor trade?”

  The girl sat down beside them. “I don’t think so, no. I never saw her go out with any blokes.”

  Breen must have looked puzzled because Tozer said, “It’s in the song. She runs off to have it off with a man from the motor trade. Detective Sergeant Breen here’s mother did much the same.”

  “Did you like her?” asked Breen. “Morwenna?”

  “Course. She was one of us. We’re all friends. OK, sometimes we get a little bitchy amongst ourselves, but we’re all the same really. We’re a gang.”

  “Did she spend a lot of time here?”

  “What do you mean by a lot? As much as me? No one spends as much time here as me.” She laughed, brushing hair away from her eyes. “But at the beginning she was down here loads.”

  “When was that?”

  “It was just when ‘Hello, Goodbye’ came out.”

  “What?” said Breen.

  “That would be November,” said Tozer. “A year ago.”

  “She was here almost every day around then. Haven’t seen her for weeks. Months, really. Not since around the time Paul called it off with Jane Asher.”

  “That was June,” said Tozer.

  “Did you used to go to EMI Studios when they were recording the last disc?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You never saw her there then?”

  “That’s where I must have seen her last, I think. Outside of there. But then she drifted off.”

  Tozer said, “You were there in October when they were finishing the record?”

  “A few times, yes.”

  “But you never saw her then?”

  The girl shook her head. A flock of starlings swooped overhead. Simultaneously, the three looked up at the chattering bubble of birds. When they had gone, Breen asked, “How would you describe her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, to someone who’d never met her before?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Think of one word,” asked Breen. “One word that says who she was.”

  “Fierce.”

  “Fierce?”

  “She was fierce, you know? She didn’t let anybody treat her like a child. She even had a go at George once.”

  “What did he do wrong?” asked Tozer.

  “See them roses?”

  A line of rose bushes, neatly pruned after flowering.

  “One of the girls picked one of them. You wouldn’t have thought there was much harm in it, only he saw her. Grabbed her arm and gave her a mouthful. He’s really proud of his roses, you know.”

  “George Harrison?” said Tozer.

  “Yes. He is. You’d be surprised.”

  “I am.”


  “Wenna went right up to him. She was quite tall, really. Put her face right up to his. She told him that men should never hurt women. You should have seen him apologizing. He was totally remorseful. It was amazing. We’re all in awe of them, you know. They’re our idols. But she wouldn’t have it, him being so angry with her. He told Wenna she was totally right. Know what he did? He cut a rose and gave it to the girl and then gave another one to Wenna.”

  They heard a car coming down the driveway.

  “That him?” A Mercedes drove past slowly, the driver eyeing them.

  The girl shook her head. “No. He’s driving a mini right now. You’d know it if you saw it. It’s all painted up.”

  “Like his house?” asked Breen.

  “Kind of. I don’t think he’s coming today, though.”

  “Why are you still waiting, then?”

  “Just in case, I suppose. I like it here. I spend a lot of time here. It’s like home to me. Better than, as a matter of fact. She didn’t come back so much after that. After that row with George. I think it upset her.”

  “For having a go at George?”

  “No. Not that. We said she shouldn’t cry because he probably respected her even more now. But later, when she and her mate were staying over on my floor, they talked about how she always used to row with her dad. That’s why she left home. I just don’t think she liked it here so much after that.”

  “Did she ever talk about her father using violence against her?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember. She said he had a right temper. I remember that. You think it was him that did it?”

  Tozer looked like a teenager herself, in her plain sleeveless dress. “I do. He can’t make up his mind.”

  Breen said, “We don’t think anything, right now.”

  “We’ve got him in London the day before she dies,” said Tozer.