“Samuel Ezeoke,” said the man. “And yours is?”
“How do you spell that?”
The man said slowly, “E-Z-E-O-K-E. Pronounced Ez-ay-oak-ay. My first name is Samuel. S-A-M-U-E-L,” spelling it out as if to a child.
“Can I have your employer’s address?” asked Constable Tozer.
“My employer’s address?” said Ezeoke, eyes wide.
“So he can vouch for you.”
“Because I’m an African?” Ezeoke reached into his jacket pocket and removed a small silver case from which he pulled a single business card.
As she read the card, Tozer colored.
Back in the car, thin-lipped, Tozer muttered, “How was I to know he was a bloody surgeon?”
Breen sat in the passenger seat, flicking through the pages of an A-Z. “What were you doing back there? You’re not supposed to be doing the questioning.”
“Thought I was helping,” she muttered.
“Well, you weren’t.” He looked at her.
She was chewing her lip, looking miserable. He sighed. He did not know how to handle women.
The rest of the morning they spent driving around the local streets, peering into backyards and alleyways. She was talking again.
“My old boss says they’re going to start a big investigation of CID for being bent,” said Tozer.
“They’ve been saying that for years,” said Breen, looking out of the passenger window.
“Are they bent?”
“Some.”
“That’s terrible,” she said. He turned away from the window and looked at her. She was so fresh-faced and eager it hurt.
“Is that the tree you fell out of, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t look that big,” she said.
He reached in his pocket and took out the orange bottle of painkillers the hospital had given him.
“Don’t you want some water with them?”
“I’m OK,” he said, though bitterness lingered in his mouth after he’d swallowed.
“The police doctor said you were sick when you saw the body. Is that right?”
“Have you ever seen a dead body?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Seen loads of dead animals in my time on the farm. Millions of them.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I think I’d be all right if I saw one,” the woman said. “Not that I think it’s wrong for you to throw up. Everybody should be upset, the way I see it. Sir?” She interrupted her own flow. “That’s EMI Studios, isn’t it?”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“Sorry. If other people don’t talk much I end up just filling the space. Loads of girls hang out there, though, don’t they? Hoping to see the stars. Do you think she could have been one of them?”
“You don’t think we might have considered that?” he said.
“Right. Sorry.”
Why did her eagerness irritate him so much? There was nothing wrong with being enthusiastic.
She said, “Mind you, that don’t mean she wasn’t one of them.”
“No. You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been thinking that.”
“You hungry?” she said, changing the subject again before he could begin to explain why. “I could murder a lardy cake.” She gazed at the window of a bakery window they were driving past.
He wondered how much more of this he could stand. Maybe he could persuade Jones to drive him. Jones wouldn’t like it, but Bailey might be pleased if he tried to make an effort with Jones. And at least they understood each other.
A little after midday they walked over to the canteen at St. John’s Wood Police Station, where the officers who were still going door to door were taking a break. Breen lit cigarette number two.
“It’s yummy, sir. Sure you don’t want a bite?” She held out her cake. It was thick and rich, dripping with grease.
“No, thank you.”
As they sat on metal chairs drinking tea from enamel mugs, a young red-faced copper approached them. “Sir?”
Breen recognized him as one of the men he’d spoken to yesterday. He was clutching a mug in one hand and a dirty, crumpled brown-paper bag in the other.
“I was looking for you yesterday, only I heard you fell out of a tree, sir,” he said with a smirk.
“Well?”
“’Cause I found this, sir. In one of the bins you asked me to look through.”
Breen unwrapped the top of the bag and pulled out a black cotton evening dress.
Breen and Tozer looked at the dress, then at each other.
“Which bin?” asked Breen.
The flat had two refuse chutes that dropped rubbish down into bins below.
“The far one, sir. Not the one by where the girl was found, know what I mean?”
Breen handed the dress to Tozer and struggled to pull out a notebook from his jacket pocket. Holding it with his sore arm, he flicked through until he found a drawing he’d made of the flats with all the occupants marked on it.
“Why would anybody throw this away?” said Tozer. “I mean, it’s in good nick.”
“Why is it so clean?” said Breen. “If it was in the bins?”
“It was in that bag I just give you, sir.”
Breen put down the bag. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I stuck my own prints all over it?”
“I do something wrong, sir?”
“Never mind.”
“Bourne and Hollingsworth. Oxford Street.” Tozer was reading the dress’s label. “Size fourteen.”
“What?”
“Wellington’s report said she was seven stone ten, didn’t it? Might be a bit big for her.”
“When did you read Wellington’s report?”
“This morning, before you got in.”
“Why?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” She fingered the hem. “I had always imagined the girl as a Carnaby Street type. But then she was naked, wasn’t she? So how would I know? Still. This dress doesn’t even look like it’s been worn, hardly. Why would anybody just chuck it away?”
She laid the rumpled dress out on the worn top of one of the tables and then stood back suddenly. “Oh,” she said.
In the middle of the dress, just below the seam that joined the top to the skirt, was a stain; a small pale blot.
She leaned forward and peered.
“What?” Breen asked.
She picked up the dress and examined it closely. Then put it back down and leaned over towards him, whispering, “Do you think it’s…you know?”
He picked up the dress and looked at the stain.
“You know.” Then even quieter: “Spunk, sir.”
He blinked at her. He must have been looking shocked that a girl would have used the word, because she said, “No need to be like that, sir. We have that stuff in Devon too.”
Eight
In his small office in the hospital basement, Wellington was delighted by the find. “A-ha,” he said.
“‘A-ha’ what?”
“Another Onan shall new crimes invent, and noble seed in selfish joys be spent.” He sat behind the desk and pulled the dress towards him, holding a small magnifier to his eye.
“I was wondering if it was sperm.”
“Yes, yes. Women present, Paddy. But yes. Sperm.”
“You think it may be?”
“I’ll be sure whether in two hours. I’ll do an acid phosphatase test. You realize that if this is the victim’s dress, this may be an indication of some particular deviance? An inability to penetrate?”
Wellington raised the dress to his nose and sniffed it.
In the car, hands on the wheel, Tozer said, “He seemed happy.”
“Yes. You did well, Constable.”
“Thank you, sir. Where next?”
“Soho,” said Breen, settling back into his seat.
Without looking, she reached her left hand behind her and felt for her handbag. “There’s a packet of Juicy Fruit in there,” she said, dumping it on his lap. “Could you pass me some? Have some yourself, if you like.”
He looked at her like she was mad. “I’m not going rooting in your handbag.”
“Right. Sorry.”
He pushed the bag over to her. She dug around with one hand while driving with the other. He was thinking, why shouldn’t a woman her age know what sperm looked like? It was 1968, after all. If she had been coy about it, like women were supposed to be, it might have gone unnoticed. He wasn’t sure if he was disturbed by this, or fascinated.