She's Leaving Home (11 page)

T
he room was too small. The one they normally used for questioning was being decorated so they were using a storeroom on the second floor instead. Each time anyone came in, Breen had to shuffle his chair out of the way. With filing cabinets lined up along the far wall, there was little standing room.

“You said to nab him if he made a move,” said Jones.

The room was bright. One of the two neon strips above their heads buzzed. It had a dark blueish patch near one end of the tube and would occasionally flicker off and on.

When Breen had interviewed Rider in his flat he had been full of the quiet confidence of his years. Early sixties, roughly. Retired on sick pay. Now he looked smaller, jacketless, dressed in shirtsleeves and tie. He was bleeding from a cut on his upper lip.

“He was rude,” said Mr. Rider. He looked confused and frightened. “I was just walking on Primrose Hill. I’ve not done anything wrong.”

“Has he said anything yet?”

“Only that he shouldn’t be here,” said Jones.

“It’s a mistake,” said Mr. Rider. “You’ve made a very serious mistake.”

“Why is he bleeding?”

“Nobody is telling me why I am here. You’ve no right to bring me here without asking me.” Mr. Rider’s voice had a reedy, wheedling tone. There was a patch of sweat under his right armpit.

“Did Constable Jones explain that we were asking you to come to the police station for questioning?”

“He just grabbed me and marched me to the police car. In front of the whole world.”

“Why is he bleeding? Tozer? Can you get some cotton wool from First Aid?”

“He didn’t give any reason at all.”

“He banged his head getting into the car, Paddy. That’s all. Just a bump.”

“He shoved me. He deliberately pushed me.” Rider’s voice sounded curiously childlike. Breen looked at the man’s hands. They were trembling.

Breen looked away at Jones; Jones shrugged as if to say, “So what?” “We have a warrant to search your flat,” said Breen.

“Search it for what?”

“Would you mind giving Constable Jones the keys?”

“I’m not giving that thug anything. He hurt me.”

“If you don’t give the keys to us, I’m afraid he’ll have to break the door down. As I said, we have a warrant, so he is allowed to do that. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

“I’ve done nothing wrong!” the man screamed, his voice suddenly loud. “This is all a mistake.”

Jones held out his hand. “Just give me the keys, if you don’t mind.”

From the corridor outside came the sound of laughter. “I should let you know, I’m in the Conservative Club and I happen to be very good friends with my MP.”

“If we’re making a mistake,” said Breen, “you’ve got nothing at all to worry about.”

“Why would I trust you with my keys? You’re a thug.”

“Go, then,” said Breen to Jones.

“No!” screeched Rider. “Wait.”

“Keep your ruddy hair on,” said Jones.

Rider seemed to be thinking, weighing up the situation. Eventually he dug in his pockets and handed the keys over; just two keys on a single ring. “Top one’s a bit sticky,” he said. “You have to pull the door towards you. I expect the place to be tidy when you’ve finished.”

Rider seemed to relax a little when Jones had left the room. He was replaced by Tozer who arrived with a wad of cotton wool and a small bowl of water. She dunked the wool into the water, but Rider snapped, “I’ll do it myself, thank you very much.”

“Suit yourself,” she said.

“Do I really have to be here?”

“It would be useful if you could answer a few questions,” said Breen. “If, for any reason, this results in a trial, it’s always to your advantage to have cooperated with the police.”

“Trial?” said Mr. Rider. “But I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions.” The ache had not gone down in his shoulder. If anything, it was worse.

“I suppose I can spare a few minutes,” Mr. Rider said. He padded the cut on his lip, then dropped the cotton wool. It fell into the bowl of water, turning it a thin pink.

“We found a dress,” said Breen. “A black dress. It was discarded in one of the bins at Cora Mansions.”

The statement had an immediate effect on the man. His eyes widened and the florid color seemed to vanish from his face. “I beg your pardon?”

“You put it there.”

“No I didn’t,” he said.

Breen felt his skin prickle. The man was lying. The sudden change in his demeanor at the mention of the dress. The flat denial. The heaviness that had been building all day vanished. The old excitement he used to feel broke surface.

“Why did you throw it away?”

“I didn’t,” he insisted. “This is absurd.” His voice was trembling.

Breen leaned forward, interested. He had found it hard to imagine Rider as a killer, but they were on to something now.

“Take your time. Tell us about it when you’re ready.”

Tozer seemed to have picked up something too. Standing behind Rider, she focused entirely on the man, eyes on the back of his head.

“I haven’t got anything to tell.”

Breen looked at his watch and made a note of the time on the pad in front of him.

“What is going on?” said Rider. “Please.”

“A girl’s dress,” Breen said.

“A girl?” said Rider.

“That’s right.”

“A girl?”

“A girl who you assaulted.”

“Assaulted?”

“Possibly raped.”

A second’s stillness in the room. Everything stopped while the man seemed to be trying to understand what Breen was saying. “No,” he said, frowning, examining Breen’s face. “No. My God. No.”

The man had looked frightened before; now he looked doubly so. “You think it was the dead girl’s? Oh my Lord.”

“We found sperm on the dress.”

For a second the man looked like he was about to choke; where before his skin had been almost white, now it flushed red.

“Tell us about what happened. Did you mean to kill her, or was it an accident?”

For a long time Rider looked straight down at the table, shaking. Then he leaned forward across to Breen and whispered something in his ear. He said it so quietly Breen couldn’t make it out.

“Sorry?”

Rider leaned forward again. It took a while for Breen to understand what he’d said: “It was not the girl’s dress.”

And as he sat back, big tears began to drip down Mr. Rider’s cheeks.

Breen’s brief moment of confidence that he might have understood what had happened to the dead girl vanished.

He said to Tozer, “Go and get a glass of water for Mr. Rider.”

“But—”

“Now,” said Breen quietly. “Please.”

To his relief, she did what she was told without any more objections. With Tozer gone, the sound of Rider’s embarrassed sobs seemed to fill the room. Sucking in air, blowing it out again.

“Tell me about the dress,” said Breen.

The man shook his head rapidly from side to side.

“We can clear this all up if you just tell me.”

“No,” he said. “I. Can’t.”

“Try.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I have not done anything wrong.” He was trying to get control of himself but the sobs kept rising. “It was my wife’s dress,” he said suddenly between gulps of air.

“But she’s dead, your wife?”

Rider nodded. “Tumor. Two years ago. I moved to Cora Mansions to try and start again, but somehow I can’t.”

Now Breen remembered the black-and-white photo of the woman in the living room. It had been set between two candles. A shrine of sorts.

“Sometimes I pretend…”

“I’m sorry,” said Breen.

“It’s funny. We used to row all the time when she was alive. Now she’s gone I can’t cope without her. I miss her so much.”

Breen found his handkerchief and handed it across the small table.

Still staring at the table, he whispered, “Sometimes I imagine. And then I’m awfully ashamed of myself.”

“That’s why you threw the dress away?”

Instead of answering, the man began to cry again. Breen stood and watched his shoulders rising and falling. All his fault. Just because everything appeared to fit together didn’t mean it did.

When Tozer came back into the room, banging the door into Breen’s chair, Rider was wiping his face with Breen’s handkerchief.

“Constable Tozer can arrange a ride home for you, if you like,” said Breen.

“What?” said Tozer.

The man stood, wiped his eyes one last time with Breen’s handkerchief, then shook his head. “I’d rather not arrive back in a police car, if you don’t mind. It was bad enough going in one coming here. They were all watching me. I won’t be able to look people in the eye.”

“We could drop you somewhere?”

Rider shook his head. Breen led him down the stairs and out of the police station. From the steps he watched him walking fast, taking small steps, eager to get as far away as he could. He turned right at the end of the building and disappeared from sight.

“What happened in there?” said Tozer. “Why’s he going home?”

“I’m a bloody fool,” said Breen.

On Friday morning he woke absurdly early again.

It was dark. He made himself a coffee and took it into his father’s room, sitting on his father’s empty bed. He thought of Rider, alone, with his wife’s dress. A life skewed by absence.

There was a tiny photograph of his mother on the bedside table, not much bigger than a postage stamp in a small silver frame. A smiling, wild-haired woman sitting on a stone wall somewhere, presumably in Ireland. This was the only likeness of her he had; because she had died when he was so young, he had no memories of her.

His father, as his mind unraveled, had gradually lost her too. She had been unremembered by him, bit by bit, until there was nothing of her left. In his last days, Breen had seen his father lift the photograph up and examine it, close to his eyes, as if trying to peer inside it to recover what had gone. Mr. Rider, on the other hand, could not forget his wife.

Policemen usually married young; that way you could apply for a police flat. Like Prosser and Jones. Breen had only had girlfriends before his father had moved in. After he lived with his dad, it was harder to find the opportunity to date. But there had never been anyone whom he could imagine missing as much as Rider missed his wife, or his father had missed his mother.

At the police station, as he walked in, the desk sergeant looked at his watch and said, “Blimey, Paddy, you’re up with the birdies again.”

He switched on the light in the CID room and took four sheets of paper from Marilyn’s desk and Sellotaped them together. Propping up an
A–Z
against his in-tray, he drew a map of the streets around Garden Road. He made steady strokes with the pencil, pausing occasionally to check his work across the map. When he’d finished, he went back to Marilyn’s desk and picked up four more sheets and drew a second map of the streets around Carlton Vale where the man had been found burned to death.

Marilyn came in at a little after 8:30. “Do you sleep here now? Cup of tea?”

Breen shook his head without looking up. Writing on bits of paper and arranging them on his desk, looking for obscure signs, for overlooked facts. With Rider he had been too eager to believe in the easy connection between a dress and the murder.

She brought him a cup anyway. “What’s with all these drawings and diagrams? I’m going to have to order more paper if you carry on like this. You OK, Paddy? You look done in.”

Breen didn’t answer. He picked out his first cigarette of the day. It was early, for him, but he felt the need. As he pulled it out, he noticed there were only four cigarettes in the pack of ten. That was odd. He had only bought the packet yesterday morning. He thought back and tried to remember if he had offered anyone else a cigarette during the day.

“Houston calling Apollo?”

“Sorry. Can you call the social services, Marilyn? Check we’ve got a list of all the hostels here?” He passed her the second map he’d drawn.

“Is this for the dosser? The burned guy?”

“Yes.”

She took the map off him. “You probably won’t find out who he was, you know,” she said.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Why him?”

“It’s our job, isn’t it?” he said, but when he glanced up at her she was looking at him with a disbelieving air.

At nine he lit the cigarette he’d taken out of the packet and took a long pull, feeling the nicotine calm him. Then he called Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. “Do you have any record of an incident involving a girl called Alexandra Tozer?” he asked a woman down a line so poor and crackly that he had to spell out the name twice. They promised they would call back.

Jones came in late with a hangover. “Started the weekend early, Jonesy?” said Marilyn.

“Lightweight,” said Prosser.

“I don’t know how you do it.” Jones grinned. “And you were on brandy too.”

“Like I said, lightweight.”

Bailey emerged from his office. “Constable Jones. What time do you call this?”

“Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”

“Bad news about Sergeant Breen’s case, eh, sir?” said Prosser. “Turns out he was chasing the wrong suspect.”

“So it seems. Will there be any fallout?” asked Bailey.

Breen shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Quite sure.” The man would be too embarrassed by what he’d done to make a complaint.

“That’s something.” Bailey nodded and returned to his room.

“Imagine tickling the pickle like that, on your dead wife’s dress,” said Jones. “That’s sick.”

“Feel big, do you, beating up old men?”

“He fell.” Jones smiled. “Not my fault.”

“You shouldn’t have treated him like that,” said Breen. “It was cruel. If I catch you doing something like that I’ll report you.”

“He’s an old wanker.”

“Language,” said Marilyn. Prosser looked straight at Breen and slowly shook his head.

Breen’s phone rang.

“Actually, I think what that old man did is quite romantic, in a way,” Marilyn said as she picked up the handset.

At ten he found Tozer in the canteen talking to two policewomen from A4, the women’s branch.