The Kings of London Read online

  The party carried on late into the morning. Maybe two or three o’clock. There had been dancing in the room above his head. Thumping on the floorboards. Cheers. Loud singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

  It was dark when Breen woke.

  Welcome to 1969.

  Seven in the morning. Cold and dark. It didn’t feel like a good one. He turned up the wireless, loud as it would go, in the hope that they would hear it above. The race was on to get the first supersonic airliner into the air.

  He did sit-ups. He had made a resolution to himself at midnight. He would get fitter this year.

  After twenty-three, his stomach hurt too much. He rolled over onto his front to try some press-ups. That was when he noticed a small piece of paper on the floor just under the bookshelf. A rectangle, maybe two inches by three. He stood and scooped it up. It was a handwritten address. He looked at it, eyes wide.

  Unbelievable.

  The name said Harry Cox, but the careful italic handwriting was his father’s.

  For a mad second, tired from lack of sleep, he wondered how it could be there. His father had come back from the dead somehow to leave him a note?

  Dad?

  His eyes went to the corridor, the room where his father had lived. He spilt coffee down his dressing gown, onto the carpet. Impossible. Unreal.

  Ghosts.

  Then he remembered the card from John Nolan.

  They were men of a similar age, raised in the same country schools. Everybody’s handwriting was the same in those days. The piece of paper must have been tucked inside there and fallen out the day before when he opened it.

  Calmer now, he turned the paper over. ‘This is where he lives,’ written in the same fine hand. The address was Heathside in Hampstead.

  Breen sat finishing his coffee, waiting for the shakes to subside. It was New Year’s Day. There would be few buses running today. Taxis scarce. He would walk. Only seven or eight miles. He ate biscuits and cheddar with a second coffee and planned his route on an A–Z.

  Harry Cox. He had mentioned Prosser’s name at the party at Kasmin’s gallery. But Prosser was not one of his Met Rugby Club contacts. The connection was through Knight. Breen was sure of it now.

  Clissold Park was dark and wet, water slushing under his feet on the pavements. The streets were quieter than he had ever seen them at this time of day.

  As he pressed towards Finsbury Park, London was waking to a grey New Year’s Day morning. He had the feeling that his presence was bringing the city to life as he moved through it. Children waking early behind closed doors. Lights came on in living rooms.

  On the Seven Sisters Road a beardy tramp sat next to a brazier drinking brandy. ‘Happy Christmas,’ said the man, watery-eyed from drink.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ said Breen.

  The Holloway Road was full of rubbish, sodden by the drizzle, the shops all bolted and shuttered. He trudged onwards, climbing up the slow hill towards Highgate.

  He found a petrol station open near Whittington Park and bought a packet of cigarettes from a man in blue overalls, huddled by a paraffin heater. He never usually smoked this early in the morning but nicotine might clear his head.

  The Holloway Road was so quiet he could hear his own footsteps. This was a London he had never visited. A dead zone. Only the occasional car swishing up the wet tarmac.

  Marching now, body warming against the cold.

  As he moved westwards towards Dartmouth Park, he noticed how the middle classes didn’t have lace on the windows. They dared you to look in to see what they had.

  They were switching on lights. Some still had Christmas trees in the windows so you could see how well they had decorated them.

  He had been walking an hour and a half now. He felt he was getting closer. A feeling that each step was making sense of the world.

  Breen stepped rapidly into the gateway of a garden. A child on a new bike was hurtling down the pavement towards him, chased by an anxious parent. A sudden interruption in the calm of the dead morning.

  ‘Stop him!’ the father cried. But it was too late. The boy was already far ahead.

  ‘You stupid, stupid child,’ shouted the chasing father. Breen looked down the hill after them, but they had rounded a corner. He walked on.

  The pavements started to fill with men in tweeds with dogs, women in stout footwear. New Year’s Day walks. He must be getting near to the Heath.

  It was a big house, just off the Heath. A holly tree in the driveway, still covered in red berries. Two cars parked on the gravel outside. Breen was not a car person. Carmichael loved cars; he dreamed of a Lotus Cortina. Fast, masculine and flashy. Breen had never been bothered. But this time Breen noticed the cars.

  Breen thought of the rollercoaster ride he’d seen at Margate. The slow rise to the top and then the crashing descent.

  The man at Jumbo Records had mentioned a man in a Bristol. They were not common cars. Carmichael would know about them. There was one parked here, a big shiny grey slug on the gravel.

  Breen walked up to the car, peered into the driver’s window. Leather seats. Walnut fascia punctured by dials and a car radio. A pair of kid driving gloves dangling over the steering wheel. A man’s car.

  ‘Hey, you.’ A voice came from the direction of the house. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  Breen looked. Damn. Harry Cox, slacks and white shirt, was standing at the front door. Way out of his area, Breen had no right to be here.

  ‘It’s that bloody policeman, isn’t it?’

  Though it was only ten in the morning, Cox held a cut-glass tumbler with some kind of spirit in it. A puzzled look on his face. He looked from left to right behind Breen to see if there was anyone else there with him.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Cox said. A twitch of his pale eyebrows. ‘I told Inspector Creamer about you. He said you were suspended. He’ll have you bloody cashiered.’

  ‘I think we need to have a chat,’ said Breen.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you. I’m going to phone your boss. Are you mad? Just coming up here to me and my family. This is a bloody outrage.’

  ‘Shirley Prosser,’ said Breen. Just her name.

  Cox hesitated long enough.

  ‘You know her, don’t you?’ Until then he had not realised it. She had said she didn’t know him. She had lied.

  ‘What do you want?’ He looked around. ‘Just you? No other police?’

  ‘Just me.’

  Quieter now. ‘Is it money?’ A slight sneer to the voice.

  ‘I’m not like Sergeant Prosser, if that’s what you mean. I just want to talk.’

  Cox said, ‘You’re right. We should talk,’ He looked behind him for a moment. ‘I’m not having you come in the house,’ he said. ‘My family are here. Come around the side.’

  Cox was the sort of man who had a tradesman’s entrance. He closed the front door quietly behind him. Breen followed him to the side of the house, past a grey wooden door, down an alleyway.

  If Shirley had lied about Cox, what else had she lied about?

  At the other end of the path he found himself standing in front of a huge, carefully clipped garden. A lawn mown in stripes. Not a weed in it. Neat beds, full of brown perennials waiting their turn. A child’s swing hung from the branch of a huge cedar tree.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Breen said and turned.

  Just in time to see Cox swinging a spade at his head.

  He had been an idiot.

  He wasn’t aware of the spade hitting him, just that he had lost consciousness for a second. He came to on the ground, struggling on hands and knees. He started crawling. There was blood on his face.

  Cox was coming to hit him again. All the energy in his fat frame was straining upwards ready to bring the spade down on him. Luckily the alleyway was narrow. There was not much room to swing the tool in. It clanged off the wall and cracked half-heartedly into Breen’s shoulder.

  He was on all fours now. If he could stand, he coul
d run, Breen thought sluggishly. If he didn’t run, Cox would kill him.

  He had killed before. He was sure of it now. But Cox was raising the spade a third time, ready to smash it down onto him.

  And Breen saw movement at the end of the alleyway.

  Outlined by the light at the end of the pathway, a girl in a blue best dress, blue ribbons in her hair, mouth wide.

  Almost ridiculously English. A daddy’s girl, all made from sugar and spice.

  ‘Daddy?’

  A second’s hesitation. Enough for Breen to recover a little.

  She was staring at a man on his knees, blood coming from the wound on Breen’s head. Her father, open-mouthed, holding a spade.

  The girl started bawling.

  He shouldn’t have come here alone. He shouldn’t have come here at all. He should have run the moment he saw the Bristol.

  As he was sluggishly struggling to his knees, the girl still screaming, a woman appeared. She was in her forties, elegant even in a striped apron, a smudge of flour on her chin.

  Breen finally made it to his feet. Looked quickly behind him. Harry had run. Disappeared. Gate wide open behind him.

  ‘Where’s Harry?’ Breen shouted. He was standing now, swaying.

  The woman – Cox’s wife? – was open-mouthed. Dumbstruck and horrified. A stranger in her garden, screaming at her, head covered in blood.

  ‘Where did he go?’ shouted Breen.

  She found her voice. ‘Help, help, help!’

  Breen wiped the wetness from his eyes. He stumbled back down the alleyway to the driveway in time to see the Bristol disappearing through the gate, spitting gravel behind it.

  The woman had followed him and was standing behind him screaming, ‘Get out! Get out of here.’

  She had picked up the discarded spade and was waving it at him.

  ‘Where’s the phone?’ he shouted.

  Another child, a boy this time, in corduroy shorts and a blazer, appeared at the front door.

  Breen pushed past him.

  ‘Get out of my house!’ screamed the woman. She looked terrified.

  Breen looked around for the telephone, but it wasn’t in the hallway.

  ‘Phone,’ he said again.

  The woman just stood there, horrified.

  ‘I’m a policeman. Where’s the phone?’

  But the woman was beyond speaking. He ran down the corridor into the kitchen. A big room. Pots of peeled vegetables on the hob. The smell of pork. Spices.

  No phone though. From there into the living room. Huge. Harry Cox’s taste in art came home with him. A big Patrick Caulfield painting above the fireplace. A neat Christmas tree with electric lights. The startled little girl and boy looking at him, eyes like pennies.

  And a cream-coloured telephone on a small regency table.

  He picked it up and dialled. ‘CID duty officer,’ he said to the woman who answered the phone. She put him through to another extension. A phone somewhere in Scotland Yard, ringing.

  Mrs Cox was in the living room now. ‘Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’ she said.

  Receiver still ringing in his ear, Breen said, ‘What’s the registration of the Bristol? The number plate?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The number plate,’ he shouted. The boy in shorts started to cry.

  ‘XKX 754 F,’ the girl in the blue dress said.

  ‘Write it down. Give it to me on a bit of paper.’

  Shocked, she did exactly what he asked.

  ‘Please. What are you doing?’ the mother said.

  A voice answered the phone. ‘CID?’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen, D Division. Take this down. I have a suspect for the murder of former Detective Sergeant Michael Prosser. His name is Harold Cox.’

  When he put the phone down there was a sticky red handprint on the ivory-coloured handset.

  Afterwards, having held his head under the cold tap, watching the red circle down the plug hole, he held a tea towel that he’d taken from the kitchen to his head, waiting for the police cars to arrive.

  Mrs Cox was in shock. She didn’t know what to do. She had guests to entertain.

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone to fetch his mother?’ she said. ‘She comes to us for lunch.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Breen. He looked at the tea towel. His head was still bleeding, but slower now.

  The boy was still crying. ‘Daddy promised to help me with my aeroplane.’

  ‘Go away,’ shouted Mrs Cox.

  The boy cried louder. Sobbing. Gulping air. His sister, blue ribbons swinging in the air, punched him hard on the arm. ‘Shut up,’ she screamed. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’

  The boy cried louder still.

  Breen stood in the hallway, waiting. Dozens of Christmas cards, hung on loops of string.

  Mrs Cox didn’t know what to do. The table was half laid for lunch. A Labrador scritched at the door waiting to be let out.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she said, unsure of what else to do.

  Breen shook his head. ‘Have you ever heard your husband talking about a man called Michael Prosser?’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. The crying boy came and wiped his nose on her apron. She pushed him away. ‘That’s horrid,’ she said.

  ‘What about Shirley Prosser?’

  ‘Shirley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think there was a woman called Shirley called a few times. He said it was work. Or was it Sally? I’m not sure. Something like that.’

  Breen fingered a notebook in his pocket. ‘Shirley or Sally? Which?’

  ‘What’s this about a murder?’ she said. ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘Which name? You have to remember.’

  ‘I can’t bloody remember,’ she shouted, too loudly. ‘For Christ’s sake. I don’t understand.’ Then: ‘Sorry. I really don’t know. I have a lot to do today.’

  The men would arrive soon and start searching the house, looking for anything that could connect Harry Cox to Michael Prosser, turning this nice family house upside down.

  They would not be long. The streets would be empty of traffic today.

  In the oven, something neglected was starting to burn.

  After having his head bandaged at the hospital, there was an hour of questions and explanations at New Scotland Yard. Finally, a police car dropped him back home in Stoke Newington.

  The man from upstairs was just letting himself in with a pint of milk. ‘Was that a police car I saw dropping you off?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen.

  The man smiled. ‘You been up to no good?’

  ‘Kind of,’ said Breen.

  ‘Bloody hell. What happened to your head?’

  Inside, he took off his suit. It was ruined. The knees were torn and the blood had dried into the jacket. He rolled it up and put it in a paper bag, ready to put into a bin.

  He looked at the bottle of whisky that Oliver Tarpey had bought him and decided he should open it. He took the bottle and a glass to the bathroom, ran the bath and lay in it, exhausted.

  His brain was fizzing. He needed to calm down. To stop. To relax.

  The hot had run out too early. He wondered if he should go to the kitchen and boil a kettle, but he didn’t. He just lay in the cooling water.

  He had thought he had it all figured out. He had felt so clever after confronting Tarpey.

  Now he was much less sure of himself. He started to shiver in the cold bath.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  On Thursday Breen put on a suit, covered his bandage with a cloth cap of his father’s and travelled to work as if it were a normal day.

  He took the tube. No jesters or buskers. Everything was perfectly ordinary. The same fug of cigarette smoke in the compartment. The same puddles on the pavement. The same worn stone steps up to the front of the police station.

  Inside, on the first floor, Marilyn was not at her desk. Another woman, much older, was sitting the
re. The office looked oddly different. Breen noticed Carmichael’s old pictures of film stars had finally been taken down.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. The woman at Marilyn’s desk had a cream cardigan on and wore her hair in a bun.

  ‘Where’s Marilyn?’

  ‘She no longer works in this particular office,’ said the woman.

  ‘And you do instead?’

  ‘I am Inspector Creamer’s assistant,’ she said, looking up at him.

  ‘Good. I want to see Inspector Creamer.’

  She smiled. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen. I work here.’

  ‘Do you?’ she looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry. I’m new.’ She banged a staple into the corner of a sheaf of papers. ‘I think he’s busy, but I’ll check,’ she said, and dialled the phone even though Creamer was only fifteen feet away in his office.

  Jones was head down at his desk, as if pretending not to have noticed Breen was in. The balding man who had taken over Breen’s desk looked over the top of his typewriter at him.

  It was different, but the same.

  ‘He’ll see you now,’ chirped the woman, smiling.

  Creamer’s top button was undone. He looked hot, or flustered, or both. There was a sheet of paper crumpled up into a ball on the blotting paper in front of him. ‘Breen. How’s your head? Took a nasty knock then?’

  Without being asked, Breen sat down opposite him.

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me what’s going on? Scotland Yard want to interview me about Harry Cox.’

  Breen ignored the question. ‘Do you know where Cox is?’ he asked.

  Creamer squinted. ‘That’s what Scotland Yard wanted to know.’ He looked nervous. ‘Christ’s sake, please, tell me. What has happened?’

  For the next ten minutes, Breen talked and Creamer listened. He started from Sergeant Prosser being caught out for taking money to help local gangs rob shops. He moved on to how a body had been discovered in a burnt-out empty house, how Prosser had discouraged him from investigating the case. He talked about how he’d discovered Prosser was bent and how he’d forced him to resign. From there he talked about Prosser’s disappearance and then his murder. Then about discovering Johnny Knight’s house empty. And the links between Prosser, Cox and Knight. He explained how Harry Cox had come to be a suspect in the Prosser murder case and how he was also apparently connected to the death of Michael Prosser’s brother-in-law.