The Kings of London Read online

  ‘That’s going to take a while, going through the books,’ Deason said. ‘He hid it well.’

  ‘That would have been Johnny Knight. Making the figures look good,’ said Breen. ‘Any news about Cox?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Deason. ‘We got the airports and ports covered. He’s vanished. You any ideas?’

  Breen wondered if he had escaped. Were he and Shirley in this together? The thought made him nauseous.

  ‘No,’ said Breen. ‘Nothing.’

  In the afternoon he went to visit Marilyn. She had been transferred to Paddington Green where she was working out her notice.

  Nobody knew where she was. He wandered through the big old station, knocking on doors, poking his head around them, looking for her. He found her, eventually, in a small office at the back of the station.

  ‘I came to see how you are. If you’re OK.’

  She thumped a pile of files down onto her desk and said, ‘What do you care?’

  She looked different. ‘You’ve had a haircut,’ he said. It was short.

  She put one hand up and touched it. ‘It’s supposed to be Mia Farrow,’ she said.

  ‘I just wanted to ask if there’s anything I can do.’

  She closed her eyes and said, ‘Just go away.’

  ‘What happened to your boyfriend?’

  ‘They let him go. Don’t know where he is. Don’t care. I’m giving up on men.’

  ‘I just wanted to say, if you want your old job back, I can put in a word.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she said, turning away. ‘I’m busy.’

  She opened a folder and poured the contents into a bin.

  The night was silent. The flat above had been cowed into submission. He should have been able to sleep now, but instead he lay awake, aware of the silence.

  Saturday was worse. The whole cul-de-sac seemed unnaturally empty and still. He did his shopping quickly in case the phone rang. The moment he was back he called Scotland Yard.

  ‘Calm down, Breen. We’ll call you.’

  He soaked the bandage on his head with a sponge, then gingerly took the dressing off the scab, scowling at himself in the bathroom mirror. The man upstairs had stopped parking his car in front of Breen’s window. Now the silence was starting to irritate him as much as the noise had. He imagined the man in his socks, tiptoeing around the flat.

  In the end he decided to take his mind off waiting. He wanted to finish clearing out his father’s room. It would give him something else to think about.

  Though he had already taken most of his father’s clothes and books to the Salvation Army, a few belongings remained. There wasn’t much. On the small iron mantel of the fireplace, an ugly carriage clock he had been given as a thank-you from one of the building firms he had worked for. A small lamp with a red-fringed shade which had come from his father’s house. Plays and poetry, mostly by Irish writers. In the small bedside cabinet a penknife which he had always carried with him. His mother’s ring, which Breen took, wrapped in cotton wool and placed in the drawer of his dresser.

  There was a rag-and-bone man who came past on Sundays, cart pulled by a horse. He was putting things in a cardboard box when the phone rang.

  Breen dropped the carriage clock, breaking the glass, scrabbling for the phone.

  ‘We thought you’d want to know. We found the car,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Deason? Is that you?’

  ‘Stay where you are. We’ll come and pick you up.’

  ‘Not him though?’

  ‘No. Not him. Arsenal. That’s not so far from you, is it?’

  A flicker of paranoia. Had Cox been coming for him? The car arrived five minutes later, blue light flashing, a constable driving.

  The man from upstairs watching from the window.

  The Bristol 404 was parked in a side street just off the Hornsey Road. Locals came out of their front doors into the cold afternoon air to mutter and nudge each other and to watch the coppers as they searched the car and questioned people. The police had broken into a sidelight window but there was nothing inside. Sergeant Deason was looking at a map of the area.

  ‘Nice car,’ he said to Breen.

  ‘How long has it been there?’

  ‘A couple of days,’ said Deason. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Maybe three.’

  The driving gloves were on the steering wheel, just as he had seen them before. ‘You asked his wife if she knows why he’d be coming here?’ Breen asked him.

  Deason nodded. ‘She had no idea. We’ve sent a car for her.’

  It was cold. A pale frost had formed on the Bristol’s windscreen.

  ‘He might have just dumped it. Swapped it for something less conspicuous.’

  Breen left Deason and the car, walking around the streets to try and get a feel for the neighbourhood. What would have brought Cox here? Had there been another car parked somewhere? He doubted it. He would have taken the driving gloves.

  Or someone to pick him up? Possible. But why would they have met here? There was a small furniture factory close to where the car had been found. Run-down Victorian houses. Hopscotch in chalk on the pavements. Also in chalk: ‘KILL ALL THE NIGGS’. There were new tower blocks to the east, still unoccupied. Huge, ugly things, black outlines in the sky.

  A huge roar came from the east.

  ‘Highbury,’ said a constable. ‘Arsenal playing Sheffield.’

  Breen looked at his watch. The football must have just started. How long would the match last? The streets were empty now. When the match finished they would be packed.

  ‘Is there a phone anywhere?’ he asked the sergeant.

  ‘Main road,’ said the copper.

  He walked to the road and dialled John Nolan’s number.

  ‘Cathal? Coming around for lunch again this Sunday?’

  ‘Harry Cox was bent,’ Breen said. ‘On the take. Double-counting for materials.’

  ‘No surprise. They’re all bent, far as I’m concerned,’ said Nolan. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not so bad,’ said Breen. ‘Not so good either. I’m surprised how much I’m missing my father. We didn’t even like each other that much.’

  Another roar from the crowd. Nolan said, ‘Sorry? I couldn’t hear you. There’s an awful noise on the line.’

  ‘Cox has done a runner. Any idea where he’s gone?’

  ‘Barely knew the man, Cathal. Are you OK? Christmas on your own. It’s hard.’

  ‘They found his car on Hornsey Road,’ said Breen.

  A pause. ‘Where, exactly?’ Nolan pronounced the last word as if it had an extra syllable.

  ‘Annette Road. By Tollington Road.’

  ‘The Citizen Estate,’ said Nolan. ‘We built that one. Four fucking big boxes. Been empty all this time. Nobody wants high rise since Ronan Point.’ Ronan Point. Those twenty-two storeys of tower block that had partially collapsed in that gas explosion last May. ‘Can’t say I blame them,’ Nolan said. ‘So now the council are stripping out all the gas fittings and replacing them with the electric to say the place is safe.’

  In the phone box, Breen turned, trying to see the tower blocks he had been looking at earlier. ‘And Morton, Stiles and Prentice are doing the work?’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ Nolan said. ‘Tying a pretty bow on a pig.’

  ‘So Harry Cox would know the place?’

  ‘Sure of it,’ said Nolan.

  Breen put the phone down, then went back to the sergeant and pointed to the tower blocks. Four large dark rectangles. Ugly, black-windowed and dead.

  ‘In there?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Breen. ‘His company built the place.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be very smart, would it? Leave your car right next to where you’re hiding.’

  ‘He’s desperate’ said Breen. ‘Smart has nothing to do with it.’

  There was a caretaker’s hut. Deason pressed the ‘In case of emergency’ button and eventually a jobsworth appeared with bunches of keys. He had beer on his breath. />
  ‘Have you seen anybody in any of the buildings?’

  The man took offence. ‘No. ’Cause there isn’t nobody there.’

  ‘So you say,’ said Breen.

  ‘You telling me I don’t know my job?’

  The sergeant looked at the buildings. ‘How many floors?’

  ‘Nineteen. All of them.’

  ‘I’ve only got three men. This could take us the whole bollocking day,’ said Deason.

  ‘Any chance we can get more local men on this?’ said Breen.

  ‘With the footie? You have to be pulling my leg.’

  They stood on raw earth by the side of the empty buildings.

  ‘How long they been finished?’ Deason asked the caretaker.

  ‘The last one, three months. No bugger wants them now,’ he said. ‘Scared to move in. They’re having to strengthen them all. Bloody mess.’

  Breen craned his neck back. Dark clouds moved across the top of them, making the buildings seem to topple slowly backwards.

  The four buildings were identical. Anyone’s guess which he might be in, if he was in any.

  ‘Lifts working?’ said the copper.

  The caretaker shook his head. ‘No electric,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck that for a game of whatsit,’ Deason said.

  Another tidal roar from the stadium.

  ‘You wait here. I’ll go up,’ said Breen.

  Deason looked uncertain. ‘We reckon he’s a killer.’

  ‘If he’s up there, he’s seen the police cars. He’ll try to disappear unless we nail him now. Once the match is finished we’ll have no chance catching him.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Breen had been right. A plodder.

  Breen craned his neck upwards. This is where the rich had decided poor people should live. ‘I’ll take one of your men. One young enough to climb eighteen flights of stairs. The rest stay here to make sure he doesn’t run.’

  Deason nodded. ‘I got all night,’ he said. He shouted to a constable, told him to accompany Breen up the towers.

  There was a torch in Deason’s car. Breen borrowed another one from the caretaker.

  ‘Which one first?’ said the caretaker.

  ‘Eeny meeny,’ said the constable.

  ‘That one,’ said Breen, pointing. ‘What about the doors to the flats?’

  ‘All unlocked inside,’ said the caretaker. ‘Just the main doors.’

  The constable walked with a stoop. Six foot six or more. Huge. Didn’t seem to tire though. Breen’s legs were singing with pain by the tenth floor of the first tower. There were two staircases, presumably for safety. They split up and took a staircase each, meeting on each floor as they arrived. Looking into each flat, then spiralling on up the concrete stairs. Precisely seventeen steps for each floor.

  Four o’clock and the light was almost gone. They had borrowed a torch but hadn’t switched it on yet. By the time they reached the top of the first tower Breen was panting for breath.

  On the landing outside the lift Breen opened a metal window and looked out. Sunlight in a pale-yellow line below a grey sky. The floodlights shone over Highbury stadium.

  ‘Fag?’ said the lanky policeman, taking one out. He talked slowly, smiled a lot. His hair was longer than it should have been, curling over the top of his ears. The sort of copper Tozer would have gone for.

  Breen shook his head. ‘I don’t think my lungs are up to it.’ He could make out the outline of King’s Cross station on the skyline to the south.

  ‘Tell you what, though. Bit bloody high up here. I wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I’d prefer it if there was a lift,’ said Breen.

  ‘Vertigo,’ said the copper. ‘Got it terrible.’

  ‘Six foot something and you’re scared of heights?’ said Breen.

  ‘Further to fall,’ said the copper, dropping a half-smoked ciggie onto bare concrete. ‘Race you down then.’

  And he set off, bootnails clacking on the concrete stairs.

  At the eighth floor of the second tower they paused for breath again.

  ‘Almost halfway now,’ said the constable.

  Breen was conscious of the fact that the constable was now always first up the stairs to the next floor. Breen arrived, panting for breath, to find the policeman already searching the rooms.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll make all four,’ said Breen. ‘My chest is going to explode.’

  He looked down at the ground below. No more police had arrived yet to assist them.

  ‘Come on,’ the constable said, but Breen didn’t move for another minute. They had stopped trying to take the steps two at a time. Now it was just one foot after another.

  Breen looked in each flat. They were bare. All identical. Plain walls waiting to be decorated. A bath. A toilet. A kitchen sink.

  It was not so much a building as a manifesto: ‘Everyone will be given an opportunity, and that opportunity will be the same shape and colour as everyone else’s.’

  Except for those who lived in posh houses in Hampstead. Who steal from everyone else’s opportunity, who buy art and hang it on their walls.

  Breen and the constable rested in one of the flats. Another fag break. The copper stood, first with his back to the wall, then edged forward slowly towards the windows. Cautiously, as if the floor were going to give way beneath him.

  It was dark now. They looked out at the other three blocks, black against the dark blue of the winter evening.

  ‘There!’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thought I saw a light.’ He pointed upwards at one of the two blocks they had not been in yet.

  Breen peered up. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘Maybe it was just the reflection of my fag.’

  Breen peered and saw nothing. ‘Reflections don’t work like that. You’re looking up.’

  ‘Maybe I was imagining it. Let’s go.’

  ‘No,’ said Breen, and continued looking. Maybe because it was easier than pounding on up the stairs. He stared into the blackness until he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. But there was nothing there. It could have been a reflection of an aeroplane, or just imagination.

  After a few minutes he gave up. They went on up to the top, searching each room.

  By the third block, Breen was exhausted. He had to pause on every landing, legs cramping, waiting in the darkness as the copper looked around with his torch.

  ‘I think my battery’s going,’ said Breen. The constable’s torch seemed much brighter than his own.

  ‘He’s not going to be here, is he?’ said the copper.

  Fifteenth floor.

  ‘I wonder who’s winning?’ said the copper. ‘Hope it’s Sheffield. Bloody hate Arsenal. I hope they’re having the shite kicked out of them.’

  Sixteenth floor.

  ‘I mean, we don’t know for sure he’s anywhere near here. They reckon Ronnie Biggs is in Australia, don’t they?’

  Seventeenth floor.

  ‘Do you reckon we’ll be finished by five? I’m supposed to be going to the dog track this evening with the wife.’

  Eighteenth floor. Even the lanky copper was panting now.

  Breen noticed that the young man took a few seconds longer inside the top flat than he had on all the others.

  ‘Constable?’

  ‘Sir. I think you should come in here. I’ve found something.’

  The policeman shone his torch around the room. A blanket. Two empty tins of mulligatawny soup. No sign of a fire. He would have had to eat them cold. A pile of cigarettes stubbed out on the floor. Some cigars too. Four Gordon’s gin bottles, three empty, one half full.

  ‘How do we know it’s him?’ whispered the copper. ‘I mean, we can’t be a hundred per cent, can we?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Breen. A smell of cigarettes still in the air.

  Breen opened the window. Wind pushed back at him. There was rain coming. The weather was getting wilder.

  ‘He was here!’ Breen shouted down. But i
t was dark and it was a long way down. The roar of the city was too loud for him to know if they’d heard. He could see Deason’s car but no sign of the sergeant himself. And no other officers yet.

  ‘Here!’ he shouted. But no one seemed to hear him.

  The match would be finishing any minute. The streets would be thronged with people. It would be difficult to drive any vehicle through them, even a police car.

  ‘Stay by the doors!’ he called again. But he couldn’t see anyone below.

  If Cox hadn’t made it out of the building already, somehow. Was there some service exit only he knew? He was an architect, after all. He would have seen them coming, seen the torchlight.

  They had checked each floor, though, as they had gone up, and there were two staircases. Could he have somehow remained hidden and descended after they had passed?

  It was hard to know. The two men were exhausted now from climbing. They could have made a mistake.

  He ran his torch around the flat. Into the bath. Into the empty kitchen. No sign. He had been here, and not long ago.

  ‘Roof?’ said the policeman.

  ‘Christ!’ said Breen.

  They both dashed back out of the room.

  ‘You stay here,’ shouted the copper.

  ‘Let me go,’ said Breen.

  ‘You’re tired. I’ll go – keep an eye. He might be using the roof as a way to get to the other staircase and get down.’

  The stairs continued up another floor onto the roof. The constable dashed up them, banging back the door at the top.

  Breen waited in the corridor, heart thumping.

  Without the other copper there he realised how little light his own torch was giving off. Nearly dead. He switched it off to preserve the batteries.

  Pure darkness. With the flat doors closed there were no windows onto the connecting corridor. The shapes of the building disappeared into nothingness. Breen pressed against the wall to reassure himself it was there.

  ‘All right?’ he shouted.

  The constable would be searching the roof. But how long did it take?

  ‘Any sign of him?’