Early on Friday Breen called Carmichael at Scotland Yard, but he didn’t pick up. He would be busy. With nothing to do, Breen bathed, taking care to keep the bandage dry, then took the bus to an exhibition at the big new art gallery on the South Bank.
He never had the time to do this normally. Now he had nothing but time. Breen spent an hour walking around low sculptures of flat, industrial sheets of metal, some brightly coloured, welded at all angles. They had installed a few on the Hayward Gallery’s concrete roof. Under a grey London sky, he walked around them, listening to an American in pale slacks talking loudly to his pretty, much younger girlfriend. ‘Don’t you see? This is sculpture that’s about being alive. Alive to yourself.’
Breen looked at the sculpture and tried to understand what the American meant. The girl sucked on her hair but didn’t seem any more moved than Breen by the works, though he wasn’t sure whether this was the sculptor’s fault or his own. Instead of trying to fathom the minimalist sculptures, he kept imagining Milkwood’s pale naked body, lying in the woods. Or the photographs of the dead hippie he had seen on Milkwood’s desk. And of Tozer’s sister.
Nagging at his brain was the thought that he had somehow been responsible for what had happened to Milkwood. If he hadn’t come to London asking after him, perhaps he would still be alive. There was little logic to the thought, but it had buzzed in his head all through the night.
‘I think it’s boring,’ the seen-it-all girl was saying.
He decided he agreed with her. Like the concrete building itself, the art seemed joyless, disconnected from the chaos of the city around it.
He needed a coffee. There was no cafe in the new gallery, so Breen walked down a bleak concrete walkway to the South Bank Centre. The tide was low, the Thames reassuringly greasy and loaded with silt.
He sat down and lit a cigarette; his first of the day. He savoured the harsh taste of nicotine and coffee, still relishing the novelty of being back in London.
An elderly woman with a fox-fur stole sat down at the table next to Breen, filling in crossword clues with a fountain pen. She worked fast, as if this was something she did every day. In a matter of minutes she had finished it. She placed her pen back in her handbag and lifted the paper to read it. It took Breen a second or so to notice the front page.
DEAD POLICEMAN
WAS TORTURED
Two lines. Beneath that: ‘London gang connection’.
And another second for the penny to drop.
Breen stood. ‘Excuse me. I need to look at your paper.’
The woman looked him up and down and then said, ‘Get your own.’
‘It’s important,’ said Breen.
The woman raised the angle of her head a little, ignoring him.
Breen looked around for anyone else reading a newspaper. Upstairs, an orchestra was rehearsing for a concert. The sounds of strings leaked out of the large hall whenever someone opened the doors. The cafe was all but deserted.
‘Could you keep an eye on my coffee?’
The woman didn’t answer. Breen ran out of the building, trying to find a newspaper vendor. It wasn’t until he was almost at Waterloo Station that he found one, standing with papers under his arm.
He walked back towards the Festival Hall reading the newspaper. ‘Sources at Scotland Yard point to the probable involvement of London gang members in the gruesome killing.’ The newspaper’s crime correspondent had written a column titled ‘New Gang Threat?’: ‘London police may have arrested the leaders of the notorious Kray twins’ gang, and the Richardson Gang are on the run, but sources within the Metropolitan Police suggest that a more ruthless generation may be taking their place.’
Breen arrived back at the Festival Hall to find the woman with the fox fur gone. His undrunk coffee had been cleared away.
Back at home, he called Carmichael’s desk at Scotland Yard, but there was no answer. Then he tried the section house. A man on the phone said he was at work, so he tried his office again, but there was still no one picking up. Then, even though it wasn’t evening yet, he phoned the farm, but no one answered there either.
He felt unsettled. He did not like not knowing what was going on.
He walked to Abney Park Cemetery, looking at gravestones and angels with broken wings. On the way back he looked in at the Stoke Newington Police Station.
‘Aye, aye. Bloody Paddy Breen. Back again like a bad rash on the bollocks.’
Though years ago he had worked with him, Breen was struggling to remember the name of the old copper at the front desk, so he just said, ‘Morning, Sarge.’
‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’
Breen closed the big blue front door behind him. ‘Just thought I’d pop in and say hello.’
‘What do you think this place is? A ruddy social club?’
‘Might as well be, for all the work you do.’
The dirty old Victorian building was close to his flat. Rat-infested and freezing in winter, it had been the first station he had worked in and he had loved it here. Today, it looked worse than usual. One of the ground-floor windows had been broken recently. Someone had tried to tape a piece of cardboard over it.
‘You’re the one who’s pulled sick leave, what I hear,’ the sergeant was saying.
He missed the familiar banter. Men who insulted each other in place of having to say anything more familiar.
The sergeant lifted the hinge on the desk and beckoned him in. ‘Anyway, what’s this we hear about you getting yourself shot, you stupid pillock? Criminals these days. Can’t even shoot a gun proper.’
Another younger copper emerged from the office behind the sergeant’s cubbyhole. He had a plaster above his eye, probably from a fight.
‘Fetch Paddy Breen a cup of tea. No, you never liked tea, did you? Fetch him a cup of coffee if we’ve got one.’
‘Don’t bother. Your coffee’s worse than your tea.’
‘Ooh. Bloody Paddy Breen has gone all West End on us. Spending too long in the Eyetie caffs.’
Breen joined the sergeant in the small space behind the desk. The man was sitting on a stool next to a paraffin heater that blared heat upwards but seemed to make no difference to the chill in the small room.
‘You’re off a while, I suppose,’ said the sergeant.
‘Six weeks,’ said Breen. ‘Maybe longer.’
‘I was bloody shot. Couple of inches lower and I’d have died. What’s jammy about that?’
A short moment of embarrassed silence. A couple of frowns. Realising that there had been too much anger in his voice, Breen forced a smile. ‘Still, you should have seen the other man.’
This time, a big laugh from the other two coppers. Breen turned away and closed his eyes. Behind lids, he saw the dead man, head like half an orange, flat on the tarmac. Bile rose in his stomach. Deep breath. Get a hold on yourself.
Other policemen crowded in. N Division had always been a rough patch; so were its coppers. Brawny, broken-nosed men who gave as good as they got. A couple of ex-dockers, tattoos out of sight under their sleeves. One with a bandaged hand, Breen noticed.
Cigarettes were passed around. Somebody found a tin of biscuits that one of the local shops had dropped by a couple of days before. The gloss paint on the walls dripped condensation. Idly, Breen riffled through the shoebox under the counter, full of lost belongings that members of the public had handed in. A wallet, probably empty; a watch with a broken strap; a sorrowful-looking knitted gollywog.
‘Pretty quiet, I suppose?’ he said. People round here would still be broke after Christmas.
‘Quiet, my arse,’ said the sergeant. ‘Spent half the morning filling in the Occurrence Book. Six common assaults and two wilful damages last night.’
There was muttering. ‘Where you been living? Haven’t you heard?’
‘What?’ Breen looked around him and noticed the other men had marks on their faces too; scratches and cuts. One had a blackened eye.
‘Bloody Scotland Yard everywhere yesterday, that’s what’s going on. Looking for them bastards that nailed that Drug Squad copper. They came through here last night on batting practice, stirring up seven kinds of shit.’
Breen said, ‘Where?’
‘The Rochester Castle. Broke all sorts of heads. Drug Squad are putting it about they’re offering a monkey to anyone with information on what happened to their feller. Now every snitch in London is trying to get lucky. So some fibber said it was the Dalston firm’s business.’
‘Five hundred quid’s just petty cash to the Drug Squad,’ said the copper with the sticking plaster.
‘Nobody talked to us, course. They just steamed in, closed the doors of the pub and started interrogating the regulars then and there. I mean, Christ. Shut this young guy’s fingers in a door when he gave them lip. First we heard there was trouble was a car drove past here, chucked a brick in the window, last night. Next thing it was like Gallipoli round here.’
‘OK for them. They bugger off back to Scotland Yard, leaving us to clear up the mess. We’re not going to hear the last of it, neither.’
‘There was bother all over the place, I heard. Not just our division.’
‘Stupid buggers. We know what’s going on round here. We got our snitches. We’d have known if it was one of our lot killed that copper. Certain.’
More muttering. ‘They’re just kids throwing stones at a wasps’ nest.’
A thin, dark-eyed man belched loudly.
‘You know what it’s like round here, Paddy. You need the goodwill of the people. This area is dangerous. Everyone knows that.’
Breen nodded.
‘So have they got anyone yet?’
People shook their heads. ‘Not from round here, anyway.’
‘I mean. Stands to reason they’re angry. Specially after what they did to Sergeant Milkwood.’
People muttered. Shook their heads.
‘What?’ said Breen.
‘A mate of mine who works in the Flying Squad heard they pulled his nails out.’
The dark-eyed man said, ‘Shut up. Never?’
‘They’re keeping the lid on it, but there’s all sorts of talk, isn’t there?’
‘Don’t go listening to talk,’ said the duty sergeant. ‘That’s what got us into this crap in the first place.’
The room went quiet for a moment.
‘When you going back to work, Paddy?’
‘I can’t move my arm too well yet. Doctor says it’ll be a few weeks.’
‘Lucky you use the other one to wank with, then.’
Even Breen joined in the laughter. Stupidity. It dispelled the sense of fear that had settled on the small room, thinking about their tortured colleague. And for a second, it distracted Breen from thinking about Helen.
This time Carmichael picked up straight away. ‘What’s the news about Milkwood?’
Carmichael took a long time to answer. ‘Not great.’
‘Jesus. They tortured him. I read it in the paper. Coppers are saying they pulled his nails out. Any idea who it was?’
‘I can’t talk now. It’s crazy here.’
‘What’s going on? The papers were saying it could be a gang thing.’
‘Remember those photographs I showed you? That guy who had been tortured? We’re working our way through every criminal who has a known associate who’s holed up in Spain. Turns out there’s a few. And it’s not like they’re the sort of people who take kindly to being questioned. Couple of constables got themselves beaten bloody in Camberwell just for asking. Listen, Paddy. I have to run. There’s a meeting at the pathologist’s office.’
‘What if I was to come and… help out?’
A pause. Breen could hear the sound of a telex machine chomping away at a line of paper somewhere in the background. Eventually Carmichael said, ‘Paddy. Put your feet up, God’s sake.’
Only after he had put the phone down did Breen remember the piece of paper the woman at the cinema had given him. The telephone number. But when he called Carmichael’s number back, it rang and rang and rang, unanswered.
Later, he tried the farm again. On a weekday evening, he knew they would be sitting round the dining table in the kitchen.
‘Hello, Cathal. It is lovely to hear from you.’ He had been itching to get away from the farm, but it was reassuring now to hear Helen’s mother’s voice. She was one of the few people to call him by his proper name now his dad was gone.
‘How is Helen?’ she asked before the conversation went anywhere else. The long-distance line crackled and echoed.
‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘How is Helen?’ she asked again.
It took him a second. Why would he know? ‘I was about to ask the same.’
Now there was a long pause.
Mrs Tozer said, ‘She is staying with you, is she not?’
Breen said, ‘No.’
Another voiceless five seconds. Then: ‘There must be a mistake,’ she said. ‘She told us she was going to stay with you for a couple of weeks.’
Breen gripped the phone harder, shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard anything from her.’
‘She said you’d called and asked her to come and look after you.’
‘When did she leave?’
‘Tuesday, early.’ Breen imagined Mrs Tozer in the hallway of the old farmhouse, holding the phone, a frown on her old face. He could hear a farm dog barking in the background.
‘And she said she was coming to stay with me?’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said.
‘Did she say why she was coming to see me?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Tozer. ‘I thought she was coming to look after you.’
‘Well, I’m sure she’s OK, Mrs Tozer,’ said Breen.
‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I must have made a mistake, then. I’m sure she’s fine.’
Breen stood holding the phone for a minute after she’d replaced the receiver, unsure whether he’d understood what had just happened.
Helen had told her family she was coming to visit him. But she had not arrived. Had something happened to her on the way? The thought made his stomach lurch. He should have asked her what train she had caught.
The high-pitched warning tone coming from his handset startled him. He banged it down hard onto the cradle.