The Kings of London Page 8

  Breen said, ‘I don’t know. You just talk, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m just scared I’ll do something wrong,’ said Jones.

  Breen moved to the sink and started washing his hands.

  ‘Like what?’

  Jones turned and did up his flies, not answering. There were splashes on his trousers.

  Breen looked for the towel. It was lying on the floor, grey with grease and dirt. He wiped his hands on his trousers instead.

  Jones said, ‘My dad used to whack my mum. Fucking bastard.’

  The door barged open. A copper, still in uniform, lurched in. ‘Jonesy!’ he shouted.

  ‘What about you? Have you hit your wife?’

  Jones ignored the newcomer. ‘God, no. I would never do that.’

  ‘But you’re frightened you will?’

  Jones’s eyes seemed to lose their focus for a second. ‘Frightened? I’m not frightened of bloody anything.’ And he pushed out of the door, ahead of Breen, without washing his hands.

  Breen sat down between Marilyn and Bailey. ‘Are you getting the cooperation you need from Rhodri Pugh’s men?’ Bailey asked.

  Breen looked across the table. Jones was sitting next to Danny, shouting something in his ear, as if their conversation in the toilets had never happened. He turned back to Bailey and said, ‘The trouble is, we still know almost nothing about the man. I’ve tried everything. All the people I can find, which isn’t many. But nobody’s seen anything of him these last few months. It’s as if he had already disappeared.’

  ‘Keep at it,’ said Bailey. ‘You’ll find something.’

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ Marilyn was saying. ‘Just saying what I think.’

  Bailey took a sip from his pint of beer. Breen tried to remember if he had ever seen Bailey drunk.

  ‘What are you two conniving about?’ Tozer barged in next to Breen with a rum and black in her hand, pushing Marilyn to one side.

  Marilyn protested, ‘Hey. I was sitting next to Paddy.’

  ‘Want another?’ Jones said, holding up his empty glass.

  ‘Don’t mind,’ said Danny.

  ‘Steady on, Jonesy.’

  When he’d gone, Breen said to Marilyn, ‘He ever talk to you about his dad?’

  ‘Oh God. Jones? Was he talking about his dad?’ She was holding her glass, heavily smudged with lipstick.

  ‘Yes. Just now, in the toilet.’

  Marilyn scowled. ‘Never shut him up now. He does it every time he’s on the sauce. Starts talking about his dad. Gets all wound up.’

  ‘What’s up with his dad?’

  ‘Jonesy fucking hates him, that’s all.’

  ‘Language, please.’

  Tozer said, ‘His dad put his mother in hospital a few times. Gets drunk. Comes home. You know how it goes. Had a go at Jonesy a few times when he was a nipper too, I think.’

  ‘He told you that?’ said Breen.

  ‘More or less.’

  Marilyn said, ‘I reckon it’s why he’s so shit scared of having a kid himself.’

  ‘Is he?’ said Breen.

  ‘Oh, Paddy! Can’t you tell? Poor lad goes white every time anyone mentions the baby.’

  Jones was coming back from the bar, pints in hand. Tozer changed the subject quickly by saying to Bailey, ‘So, sir. Happy Birthday. You planning your retirement?’

  Conversation faltered. People turned to Inspector Bailey to hear what he would say. And though Bailey was laughing at her question, there was such a look of sadness in his eyes that Breen felt like giving Tozer a sharp kick under the table. What do people like Bailey do when they retire? They die, mostly. Or start gardening.

  And London was surrounded by a belt of semis with gardens that spoke of the horror of it.

  Breen couldn’t sleep.

  Beer and remorse. He was not good with alcohol.

  After Bailey had left, and full of more lager than he was used to, he had realised how soon Tozer would be gone. Then he had asked her if she wanted to come home with him after the pub. Like they had done last time.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she’d said, placing her hand on his.

  She had probably been right, but he was annoyed all the same about the way her hand had lain on top of his. It wasn’t her sympathy he wanted.

  There were plenty of other girls. She had said that too.

  ‘Try asking someone else out. Go on. I dare you.’

  He could have said he didn’t want to ask just anyone. Instead he’d said, ‘I just don’t meet them.’

  It was true. Years of looking after his dad meant he had fallen out of the habit of meeting women.

  ‘Try harder,’ she’d said.

  He needed new habits. New places to go to. He was a man who seemed easier to hate than to love, as the growing pile of death threats in his drawer showed.

  Now he was awake and it was two o’clock in the morning, so he made mint tea and drank it and put on one of his father’s records, enjoying the simple misery of Kathleen Ferrier’s ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’. The swell of her voice. The crackle of the needle. His father had listened to music with a seriousness that Breen had never understood, sitting in an armchair, head on hands, only listening, never doing anything else. It was never a background for him. He was never a man for the carelessly played radio. Or the carelessly played anything else, for that matter.

  Breen sat in that same armchair his father had sat in, writing notes. Making two piles. Two bodies, both in destroyed houses. One had been silent for two months, because he was a man of no importance. The other was equally silent so far, but for different reasons.

  Francis Pugh must have had friends of some kind. But Breen had yet to meet them.

  Bailey had laughed the previous night when Tozer had talked of retirement. He was not laughing the next morning.

  He was furious, hands quivering, a flicker of spittle on his lips.

  ‘Who did this?’ the man who barely ever raised his voice shouted at the men in the CID room. Blood pulsed at the vein in his neck.

  They sat at their desks. Nobody answered.

  ‘Marilyn, Constable Tozer,’ said Bailey. ‘Leave the room please.’ The women filed out silently, Tozer looking backwards over her shoulder as she left.

  ‘Jones? What have you got to say?’

  Jones had a packet of aspirin in one hand. ‘Nothing, sir. He must have fallen over in the cell.’

  Bailey closed his eyes. ‘Your name is on the arrest sheet, Jones. I’m holding you personally responsible.’

  Bailey had left to catch the last train home at ten o’clock. Jones was trying to persuade everyone to play a drinking game called Fuzzy Duck when Breen said he was going home too.

  ‘We came across him outside the pub, sir. He was drunk. A woman said he had been molesting her. We thought it would be safer for him to spend a night inside, that’s all, sir.’

  ‘That’s what you say, Jones.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Bailey said, ‘You were sober though?’

  Jones cocked his head to one side. ‘No, sir, not exactly.’

  ‘But you felt sober enough to lock a man up for being drunk.’

  ‘He was assaulting a woman, sir.’

  ‘And you have her witness statement?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir. She went off while we were pulling him in. He was drunk, sir. We thought he needed to sleep it off.’

  ‘And gave him a couple of whacks to make sure he learned his lesson?’

  ‘He was fine when we locked him up. Swear to God.’

  Breen watched the veins on the inspector’s neck pulse. ‘The man has a broken rib and he may lose the sight in one eye. I’ve ordered Wellington to examine him, Constable Jones. If he finds injuries that are not consistent with your explanation I shall kick you off the team.’

  Jones said evenly, ‘Ask the duty sergeant, sir. He’ll back us up. He was fine when I brought him in. Just a bit tipsy, that’s all.’ Wellington was on the coppers’ side. He
wouldn’t rock the boat.

  Bailey stood there glaring at Jones for a second longer, then said, ‘You don’t fool me. I know what goes on.’ And he walked to his office and pulled the door to.

  ‘Stupid twat,’ said Jones, a little too loudly. ‘Sooner he goes…’

  A couple of minutes later Marilyn was at the door. ‘Safe to come back in?’ she asked.

  ‘Storm’s over,’ said Jones. ‘I thought the boss was going to blow a gasket. I mean it was just a bit of argy-bargy. We didn’t really hurt him.’

  Breen said, ‘So what happened?’

  Jones said, ‘And don’t you bloody start.’

  ‘Who was it beat him up?’

  Jones thumped his desk hard and said, ‘Paddy. Don’t bloody start. Christ sake. Whose bloody side are you on?’

  ELEVEN

  ‘It doesn’t really make sense, though, does it?’ Tozer was saying as they walked across Battersea Park.

  ‘Women are better at looking after children.’

  ‘Says who?’ says Tozer. ‘I’m OK with kids. But I can do other stuff too. In the police, men get to do all the proper work and women constables are only supposed to talk to children. Or women. It’s as if that’s too embarrassing for the men. It’s daft.’

  ‘Because you’re better at it,’ said Breen again.

  ‘What? And you’re better at talking to men?’ she snorted. It was a cold day. The park was deserted. Breen wanted to find a way to apologise for asking her back to his place last night, though if he tried she’d probably only find some new way to take offence. Instead he said, ‘I’m not sticking up for how it is. I didn’t make the world.’

  Tozer said, ‘Besides, you go green whenever you see dead bodies.’

  The woman whose name Tarpey had given him had insisted they meet at Battersea Funfair rather than at her house. Mrs Hemmings did not want to have to explain to her husband why the police were visiting her. She was waiting on the steps by the entrance with her two boys, the older dressed in a grey flannel school uniform, the younger yanking on her arm. The coloured lights on the first letter above the turnstiles were not working so the sign read: ‘UNFAIR’.

  She looked around twenty-five and was very pretty, in a classy, moneyed kind of way.

  Breen and Tozer walked across the tarmac to meet her. ‘There you go,’ said Tozer. ‘I thought you said you never got to meet any women.’

  ‘She’s married,’ said Breen.

  ‘Didn’t stop her before. You could be in with a chance, Paddy.’

  ‘Shut up. She’ll hear you.’

  Mrs Hemmings wore a dark-green dress and Jackie Kennedy dark glasses even though the sun was already losing its strength. ‘You’re late,’ she said when Breen held out his hand to shake.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Mr Tarpey promised you would keep this confidential.’

  Breen said, ‘Did he?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here unless he had,’ she said.

  Breen paid for the tickets and led them through the turnstile into the park. On a winter weekday the funfair looked bleakly empty. Half the rides were shut.

  ‘Can we have candyfloss?’ said the youngest of the boys.

  ‘Go with this nice lady,’ said Mrs Hemmings. ‘So I can have a good chat with this gentleman.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said the little one. ‘She doesn’t look nice.’

  Tozer glared briefly at Breen, then put on as much of a smile as she could manage and looked down at the two children. ‘Do you want to go on a roundabout?’

  ‘I won’t give you any sweets if you don’t,’ said Mrs Hemmings.

  ‘Don’t care. Don’t want none.’

  ‘Don’t be common,’ said Mrs Hemmings. ‘ “I don’t want any.” Run along now.’

  Tozer pulled the younger one away and the older boy, knees red below his grey shorts, followed.

  ‘You know why I want to talk to you?’ said Breen.

  ‘About poor Frankie. Mr Tarpey warned me,’ said Mrs Hemmings.

  The sign on the Dolphinarium read ‘Closed until March’.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ Breen asked.

  They walked ten yards behind Tozer, who now had a child clinging on to each arm and was walking towards the the queue for the merry-go-round.

  ‘I hadn’t seen him since December last year. It was a fling, that’s all. No harm done.’ They were by the fruit machines. She reached into her handbag and pulled out her purse.

  ‘How long did your affair last, Mrs Hemmings?’

  ‘Call me Laura. I hate being called Mrs. Two, three months. Tarpey tells me that was about average. I was offended by that. Nobody wants to be average, do they? Not that I minded. It was fun. He was fun.’

  ‘When did you meet him?’

  She delved in her purse, pulled out a silver coin and placed it into a one-armed bandit.

  ‘It was at a party. He was there with another girl. No, I don’t remember her name, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’d hope she wouldn’t remember mine, either.’

  The merry-go-round had stopped. Both children ran towards the horses and Tozer followed, lifting them both onto the ride.

  ‘He had loads of girls. He was single. And lovely, really. Loved life. I was just one of the unlucky ones who got pregnant.’

  ‘Others got pregnant too?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Did he dump you after he found out?’

  She pulled the handle. The reels spun.

  ‘Yes. But he always said he would dump me. That was part of the attraction. No commitments. I wasn’t the only one. He always had two or three of us on the go.’

  The reels stopped. Cherry, Lemon, Bell. She tugged the handle again.

  ‘He was completely harmless.’ Apple, Cherry, Bar. ‘And he was very entertaining in bed. He knew exactly what buttons to press. Am I embarrassing you, Sergeant?’

  ‘Are you trying to?’

  She laughed and tugged the handle again.

  ‘The thing about Frankie was you never really knew him, really. He never let you in. Sometimes I used to think the poor boy just needs a good cuddle, but he doesn’t know how to do that. Quite cold at heart, really. But you took him on his own terms. He drank, of course. But doesn’t everyone? Oscar!’ she suddenly shouted. ‘Don’t try and get off. It’s still going around. What is that idiotic woman doing?’

  Breen looked. The older child was trying to get off the merry-go-round and Tozer was yelling something at him. A bell rang and the merry-go-round slowed.

  ‘She’s not very good, is she?’ Mrs Hemmings looked back at the fruit machine. Orange, Cherry, Orange. Then turned back to the roundabout. It had finally stopped. The younger child was getting off. He was crying.

  Breen said, ‘Did you meet any of his friends?’

  The rollercoaster hurtled past. His question was drowned out by the sound of rattling wood.

  ‘What?’ she shouted.

  He repeated it.

  ‘He knew lots of people. Loads of artists. He was very passionate about art. Dreadful bores, most of them. But I don’t think he had friends, exactly.’ She watched Tozer trying to guide the two children to another ride. ‘He was a bit lonely, I think, really. No one really kept pace with him, do you know what I mean?’

  The two kids were dragging Tozer towards another ride: ‘JET FIGHTERS’.

  ‘What about places? Was there anywhere special he took you?’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘Hotel rooms, mostly. He liked checking into hotels in the middle of the day with no baggage. He used to enjoy it that people thought I must be some smart whore he’d picked up. He found that kind of thing funny.’

  ‘Did he use prostitutes, do you think?’

  ‘Perhaps. I doubt it though.’

  Breen stepped around a large muddy puddle full of litter. His brogues needed cleaning again. ‘Were any of them jealous?’

  ‘Jealous enough to kill him?’

  ‘Yes.’ The rollercoas
ter rumbled round again. ‘Almost certainly. I mean, he always said he wasn’t interested in anything more than a roll in the hay, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. People get their feelings hurt.’

  ‘What about when you found you were pregnant?’

  ‘He wasn’t interested in children either. And neither was I, of course.’ Her eyes flicked towards her sons. ‘He had moved on by then. He did it very graciously. Afterwards he sent me a Get Well Soon card. That was a nice touch, I thought.’

  Breen said, ‘You didn’t see any more of Frankie? Or hear anything?’

  ‘He stopped turning up to parties. He used to be at all the best ones. But he just wasn’t there anymore. Bored, I expect. I can’t say I blame him. London is becoming very dull and self-righteous these days.’

  ‘Whose parties?’

  ‘God. You know. Just parties. Let me think. The last one was a party at Annabel’s. You know, the nightclub? Super place. My husband refuses to go. He’s so dull.’

  ‘Who were his friends? I need names.’

  ‘Like I said. He didn’t really have friends, exactly. There was a wall around him.’

  ‘His circle, then.’

  ‘I suppose so. As long as you didn’t say you got them from me.’ She dug in her handbag and pulled out a small address book. Flicking through it she read two or three names. Breen noted them down.

  ‘Robert Fraser,’ she said eventually. ‘He admired him a lot. I didn’t like him much.’

  ‘Fraser. He runs an art gallery?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Selling pretentious rubbish. Frankie fell for all that stuff. I was surprised, really. But he was terribly modern.’ She said the word as if it were an insult, then laughed.

  ‘Do you have a number for him?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Can you try and find one? Let him know I’d like to speak to him. Was there anyone else?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was only with him for a short time, you understand.’

  ‘But you stopped seeing him around?’

  ‘The scene has been so dull. I’m not really interested any more. I blame that awful woman Vanessa Redgrave and all her communist pals. Everything is so bloody worthy now. If they care so much about the starving children in Africa, why don’t they go there and bloody feed them?’