She's Leaving Home Read online

“I’d rather you didn’t smoke,” said the professor.

  “I’d rather you just shut up,” said Carmichael.

  Thirty-three

  The graying light revealed flat, dull land. The roads were straight and the hedges were even. Small pockets of fog loomed in fields filled with flocks of lapwings and geese.

  And then the sea was ahead of them: a gray line beyond the dark fields. They pulled up a hundred yards away from the house, a small white two-storey cottage at the end of a thin strip of village lying along the coast. The road lay between the houses and a shingle beach; a few black-hulled fishing boats were pulled up on the stones alongside tar-painted sheds.

  “That’s her car,” said Briggs. A new Hillman Minx, parked a few yards away from the house.

  He opened the driver’s door and got out.

  “Are they still there?”

  “I’m not sure.” He walked hesitantly towards the house. The air blowing off the North Sea was bitterly cold. His long gray hair flew about his face.

  “Shut the door. It’s freezing,” complained Carmichael.

  Breen leaned over the driver seat and pulled the door to.

  Briggs returned to the car, opened it again and leaned in, brushing his hair back. “I think they’re in there. The curtains are drawn but there’s a light on. Shall I knock?”

  “No,” said Breen.

  “Why not?”

  “Get in and shut the fucking door,” said Carmichael.

  Briggs sat back in the driver’s seat. “There’s no need for language like that.”

  “Sit down,” said Breen, “and don’t do anything.”

  “I need to know if she’s OK.”

  Breen picked up the radio and searched the frequencies but he could hear nothing. There was a red phone booth about fifty yards past the house. “Stay here.”

  “I want to die,” said Carmichael.

  After he’d phoned the local police, he returned to the car and waited. Wind hummed in the telephone wires. Clouds scudded low across the sky.

  They sat and waited. “My God, you stink,” said Briggs, winding down the window.

  “I can’t help it.”

  “That’s enough,” Breen hissed at Briggs. “Keep your voice down.”

  After around twenty minutes, a police car approached quietly from behind them, lights off.

  “You the ones from London?” whispered the senior officer, a thin-faced sergeant with pointed sideburns. He leaned down into the open window of the car. A couple of gangly constables got out and stood behind him.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got a warrant?”

  “No time,” said Breen.

  The sun was peering over the horizon, turning the white cottages along the seafront a rich red. Seagulls whirled in the graying sky above; more sat on the beach, pointing beak-first into the sharp wind.

  “How many in there?” asked the policeman.

  “Possibly two men and two women. One is a police officer who may be being held against her will.”

  The sergeant nodded thoughtfully. “I got two men,” he said. “We could send for more, only there aren’t too many of us on duty in these parts this time of day.”

  Breen considered for a second. “Two should be OK,” he said.

  Carmichael leaned forward. “Is there a toilet round here?” he called through the open window.

  “Public toilet down there,” said the sergeant.

  Carmichael opened the door and stood, bent from the waist, holding his stomach.

  “It’ll be closed now, course,” the sergeant said.

  “Of course,” said Carmichael. He got back into the backseat and lay down again.

  “He OK?” said the policeman.

  “He’s sick.”

  The officer nodded again. “So just two of you then?”

  “One,” said Breen. “He’s a civilian.” He nodded towards Briggs, who scowled back. “Shall we go then?”

  Breen got out of the car and walked towards the house, aware of the sound of each footfall. There were two sash windows on the ground floor, one on either side of a front door over which straggled a weedy, blackspot-covered rose. The garden had a large abstract granite sculpture in it that looked a little like a Henry Moore; old pieces of driftwood were strewn around the gravel that surrounded it.

  Between the Briggses’ cottage and its neighbor was a small, thin alleyway. The mast of a sailing boat lay down the length of it, varnish peeling. Breen walked as silently as he could along it; behind the house he found a small concrete yard, full of old paint cans, a rusting bicycle and a pile of firewood. A low flint wall separated the yard from the pathway. Behind, another line of houses backed on to them.

  Breen tiptoed back round to where the sergeant was standing.

  “Two men at the back?” the sergeant whispered. Breen nodded.

  A brown-feathered gull sat on the chimney above them, eyeing the two policemen as they moved down the alleyway to cover the rear of the house.

  Breen went up to the door, looked over to the sergeant, who nodded; then he knocked loudly on the door with his fist. “Open up,” he shouted. “Police.”

  Nothing.

  “Sam? I know you’re in there. Open up.”

  There was a clattering sound; someone moving behind the door. “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Sam. Cathal Breen. Open up.”

  “Mr. Breen?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am glad it is you, at least.” It was Mr. Ezeoke’s voice. He sounded tired.

  “We’ve got you surrounded, Sam. There’s no way out. Where is Constable Tozer?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Don’t be stupid, Sam.”

  There was a weariness to his voice when he said, “It is too late to tell me not to be stupid.”

  “Where is Constable Tozer?”

  “She is here. She is safe.”

  Breen was filled by a sudden sense of lightness. Everything could be OK. Until he heard Ezeoke say that, he had not been aware of how tense he had been for the last fourteen hours.

  “Let her out, Sam.”

  “She is asleep now.”

  “Wake her up, then.”

  “I can’t. I’ve given her a pill, Mr. Breen. If I give her back to you, will you let me go?” Breen’s heart started thumping again. His respite had been short-lived.

  “You killed two people. You need to come out.”

  No answer.

  “What did you give her?”

  “I will kill myself first.”

  “What drugs did you give her?”

  “Nitrazepam.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A sedative to make her sleep. She will not be harmed by it.”

  “Is that how you got her here?”

  Ezeoke sighed. “She was following us.”

  “You forced her?”

  “There was a small struggle, but she was not hurt.”

  “Is that what you did to Morwenna Sullivan?”

  A pause. “I did not mean to kill the girl. It was a mistake. She made too much noise. People would have heard.”

  “You strangled her.”

  “I did not mean to kill her. All I wanted to do was to keep her until her father gave me the money that he stole off me. But she shouted. She screamed and shouted.”

  Fierce, her friend had called her.

  “What money, Sam?”

  “The money he stole from me. Money to buy guns.”

  “So he knew you had his daughter. She was a hostage.”

  “I lost my daughter because his daughter perverted her.”

  “But he didn’t go to the police because…”

  “Because he’d stolen our money.”

  There was a longer pause. There was a rattling and two barrels of a shotgun pointed out from the letter box. Breen stepped quickly aside, and moved behind the granite sculpture. The sergeant scrabbled his way back down the short path to the road, shouting, “Jesus! He’s got a
bloody gun.” He started gabbling into his lapel radio.

  “Let the girl go, Sam,” said Breen from behind the cold gray stone.

  “Go away.”

  “We can’t go away, Sam.”

  One barrel of the gun exploded into the air, sending the gulls on the beach squawking suddenly into the air.

  “Fucking hell,” said the sergeant, bent over double, scuttling down the street away to the police car. The barrel moved sideways along the small slot of the letter box towards Breen. He closed his eyes, then heard the sound of the barrels withdrawing from the letter box, followed by the sound of the shotgun being reloaded. He took his chance and ran.

  One of the policemen from behind the house came hurtling down the alleyway.

  “He’s a nigger. He’s got a gun. Nobody said,” he complained.

  “Did you see him?” asked Breen.

  “I poked my head up and he was there in the kitchen. He pointed the fucker right at me. Nobody bloody said.”

  “Why didn’t you say he had a gun?” hissed the sergeant, still crouched below the low wall.

  “I didn’t know he had,” said Breen.

  He walked back to the police car where Briggs was still sitting, and yanked open the door.

  “Do you keep guns in the house?” he demanded.

  Briggs said, “Is she OK?”

  “Tell me about the guns. How many?”

  “Three. Duck guns,” he said. “My wife. Is she OK?”

  “Christ,” said Breen. He put his head in his hands.

  Five minutes passed. “How long before any more police get here?” said Breen.

  “Twenty minutes,” said the sergeant.

  “The longer he’s in there, the harder it will be to get him out.”

  “Not exactly simple right now,” said the sergeant.

  On the far side of the Briggses’ house, an elderly man appeared in a red woolen dressing gown. A woman peered out from behind him with a small Yorkshire terrier in her arms. She wore large Wellingtons under her pink dressing gown. “Get back inside,” Breen shouted.

  “Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” called the old man, wandering towards them.

  “Go back,” shouted the sergeant.

  The man paused. “Good grief. Is that Chris Briggs in the police car?” the man said. “What’s going on, Christopher?”

  Bending low, Breen ran towards them. Putting his arms around the old man, he pulled him back, away from the house.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “There’s a man with a gun. Go back inside and shut your doors,” Breen said.

  The man seemed to take orders well. He turned and walked back, taking his wife and their dog with him. Their house was two doors along from the Briggses’, a bigger cottage, but with paint peeling from the woodwork.

  The sergeant came up. “Colonel? Do you have a gun?” The man hesitated.

  “Of course he has,” said his wife. “Haven’t you, dear?”

  It turned out the colonel was a retired military man who kept a revolver in a cigar box. He returned with the box and opened it; the gun was covered by a handkerchief. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? About the gun. Only I never bothered getting a license,” he said, unwrapping it.

  “Course not, sir,” said the sergeant.

  It was an elderly Webley service revolver. There were a few rounds lying in the box around it. The sergeant released the cylinder latch and pushed four bullets into the chambers.

  “It’s been a little while since I used it,” said the old man.

  Breen returned to the far side of the house. The barrels of the shotgun had been withdrawn from the door. There was no sign of any movement.

  A moth flew into Breen’s face, startling him. He brushed it away. Briggs got out of the car. “What’s going on?”

  “Get back in the car.”

  “What about my wife? Is she OK? Maybe if I spoke to her?”

  “Get back in the car.”

  “Frances?” shouted the man. “Are you in there?”

  The shotgun emerged from the letter box a second time. “Jesus Christ,” said Briggs. Revolver in hand, the sergeant pulled the professor back towards the police car.

  “Sam?”

  “Go away, Mr. Breen.”

  “Do you have Mrs. Briggs in there?”

  The barrels poked out of the door again. “Yes.”

  “Have you drugged her too?”

  “No. Mrs. Briggs came willingly.”

  “That’s a lie,” shouted Professor Briggs.

  At that moment there was a sudden commotion behind the house. A man’s scream, followed by a crashing noise. “Help me!”

  In that moment the sergeant turned. The revolver’s quick pop was remarkably quiet compared to the shotgun.

  “Got the bugger,” the sergeant shouted, still pointing the gun down the alleyway.

  Breen ran towards the alley; a man was sprawled on the bare earth, facedown. Breen could see from the gray hairs on his head that it was not Ezeoke. The constable emerged from behind the house, white-faced.

  “He came right at me, Sarge. I couldn’t stop him,” he said. “Is he dead?”

  They had dragged Okonkwo into the street, away from the side of the house where he had been shot.

  He was wearing the same clothes as the day before and was bleeding thickly through them from a wound in the stomach.

  “How was I to know there was two of them in there?” protested the sergeant.

  “Sorry,” whispered Okonkwo to Breen. His head was propped against a wheel of the police car. Breen took off his jacket and put it over the man. “He is mad. I had not thought he was so mad.”

  “He was coming right at me. I thought it was the other one. It’s not my fault.”

  Okonkwo’s face looked the color of stone. “I am so sorry.”

  “What about Constable Tozer?” Breen asked.

  “What about my wife?” demanded Professor Briggs.

  “Ezeoke is mad,” said Okonkwo. “Your wife is an idiot, Mr. Briggs.” His breath was shallow. “She thinks Ezeoke is a god. A revolutionary god. He can do no wrong.”

  “Shut up,” said Professor Briggs.

  “You should have told me where he was yesterday,” said Breen.

  “I’m sorry. I thought I should help him.”

  Blood was bubbling from his mouth now. Okonkwo did not seem to notice. “I think we will lose the war. What do you think, Mr. Breen?”

  Okonkwo’s skin had turned gray.

  “What war? What’s he on about?”

  Okonkwo closed his eyes. Breen leaned closer.

  “What is the layout of the house?” he asked. “Where is Tozer?”

  Okonkwo didn’t answer. His breathing slowed. His hand was opening and closing slowly.

  “We have to know. Where are they?”

  The sound of sirens came from across the marshland, louder and louder, until their wailing filled the air around them.

  By the time they had arrived, Okonkwo had stopped breathing altogether.

  The policemen complained of the cold. They stamped their feet. “We could take him.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, I don’t think.”

  “You’re the copper from London. What’s up with your mate?”

  “He’s got food poisoning.”

  From inside the house, Ezeoke shouted, “What is happening?”

  “Eddie Okonkwo is dead,” said Breen.

  Ezeoke didn’t answer.

  “What’s he going to do?” The local inspector had brought guns. Police crowded round the house with .303s. They were excited. Things like this happened once in a local policeman’s life.

  “Shoot the cunt, I say,” said one lanky policeman.

  Some police were pushing inquisitive locals down the street. There was an inevitability to what was about to happen now.

  He thought of Okonkwo and Ezeoke, men filled with a fervor for politics
. The world was suddenly full of people like them, shouting for change, willing to see blood spilled. The kind of men who didn’t run from knives but towards them; who were sure about what the world was and what it should be. Breen could never be like that. For him, the world was a place seen from a distance, a curious puzzle. He thought of Tozer, comatose in the room just a few yards away. He could fight for her, he knew, but never for a country or an idea. Maybe it was just a lack of passion; a lack of imagination. But he only wanted to save one person.

  He thought of his dead father and the woman his father had lost. He felt he had never known him as well as he did now. They were not so different.

  “Sergeant?”

  Breen walked over to the local inspector. He was a round man with a moustache and a mournful expression on his face. He shook hands with Breen. “Nasty old day,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Professor Briggs says you know the man with the gun.”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  He nodded. “Go and talk to him.”

  “Why, sir?”

  The inspector looked at him. “Just go and talk. You’ll know the kind of thing to say.”

  “Yes, sir.” He knew what would happen now. Darkness filled his chest.

  It had started to drizzle. The ambulance man had tried to give him his jacket back but he hadn’t wanted to wear it; it had Okonkwo’s blood congealed on the cloth by the vents.

  He looked out towards the gray light on the eastern horizon. A pair of fishing trawlers was setting out from some nearby port. They looked small against the big sea. Waves slapped onto the shingle, out of sight, below the cottage.

  “Go careful. Keep him talking as long as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.

  “Good luck.”

  Constables with rifles were surrounding the house.

  He walked slowly down the short path towards the shotgun. As soon as he could, he tucked himself back behind the sculpture.

  “Sam,” he called. “You there?”

  No answer.

  “Did you hear? Eddie is dead. He was shot. They thought he was you.”

  “You killed him. You English people.”

  “You’ll die too.”

  “Why should I care?”

  “It’s pointless, Sam. There’s nothing to be gained. Please.”

  No answer. Breen heard a noise behind him and turned. A policeman with a gun was crouching just behind the wall, pointing his rifle past Breen. Breen shivered. There was no shelter. His white shirt stuck to his skin.