“That’s nice, isn’t it?” she said, still cranking the Roneo. “I heard you had her going round asking questions with you.”
“Her is standing right here,” said Tozer.
Breen looked from Tozer and back to Marilyn again, aware that he was being drawn into something that could only end badly.
“I always end up making the tea for you lot,” Marilyn said. “Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because I don’t even want tea.”
Marilyn paused her cranking and glared at Tozer.
“So, I’ll make it, then?” said Breen eventually. Both the women stared at him.
In the kitchen down the corridor, he rummaged through the cupboards looking for the tea bags. “Has Wellington been in touch?” he called to Marilyn.
Marilyn left the Roneo and came and leaned against the doorway, watching him. “He called an hour ago. He said it was what you thought it was. He wouldn’t tell me what, though. Said it wasn’t my business.”
Breen opened a tin but it was full of Nescafe.
“In the box on the left,” she said. Breen found the wooden box and pulled open the top, then looked for cups to put the tea bags in. Marilyn let him rummage a little while longer, then said, “Top cupboard,” over her shoulder, returning to the office.
Breen brought two cups back into the office, spilling tea on his trousers as he walked. He placed them on Marilyn’s desk, wiping the liquid off the material.
“Where’s mine then?” said Tozer.
“The plonk has Breen making her tea now,” Jones jeered.
“You said you didn’t want one,” protested Breen.
“That was when she wanted me to make them.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Marilyn said.
“It was a joke. Just a joke.”
“Don’t be so pathetic.” She turned her back on Tozer. “So what was Wellington on about then?”
Breen had never known Marilyn be so rude. He couldn’t understand it. “Constable Tozer here, who you think so little of, discovered a stain on the dress,” he said, finding himself sticking up for her a second time in one day.
Tozer stopped smiling and shook her head. “Don’t, sir.”
“And correctly identified it as sperm.”
“Sir,” hissed Tozer, tugging at his sleeve.
“It was in those dustbins, the ones you suggested we shouldn’t bother going through, Jones.”
“But, sir…”
“What’s that?” said Jones. “What did she find on the dress?”
“I suppose the question you’d have to ask is how come she knew what it was,” said Marilyn, picking up her cup of tea. “I mean…”
“Ooooh,” said Jones, standing and rubbing his hands together. All eyes were now on Tozer.
“See?” Tozer reddened.
“A man’s you-know-what?”
“You’d probably need to see a lot of that stuff to know what it looked like.”
“You dirty bitch.”
The woman constable glared at Breen. “Thanks very much, sir.”
“Where did you see that, Tozer?” Whistles and catcalls. Tozer ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.
“Tou-chy,” said Jones.
“I’d heard she was a bit of a slag.”
Breen stood there looking around the room, at all the grinning faces. “Give the girl a bloody chance,” he said.
“I don’t think Constable Tozer is going to make it in CID, somehow,” said Marilyn, smiling, back on the Roneo machine. Click-whirr. Click-whirr.
“She was trying to help solve a murder.”
Jones lit a cigarette and said, “So it looks like someone in the blocks then? In Cora Mansions?”
Breen walked to the door, opening it and holding it open, waiting to see if Tozer was coming back. “You’d ruled that out, if you remember,” he said. “You changed your mind, then?”
“Maybe I was wrong. We’re all wrong sometimes.”
Breen turned and nodded. “What beats me is why someone who lives in the block would dump a body there,” he said. “I mean, everybody who lives there would have known that the locks on the shed doors were fixed, surely?”
He looked back down the corridor. No sign of Tozer. She had disappeared.
“Maybe they were just trying to put the body in one of the sheds and were disturbed?” said Jones.
“Maybe.”
“Oh. Forgot to say. I found the girl who discovered the body.” Jones stood up and walked over to where Breen was standing and handed him a piece of paper with an address on it and a phone number.
“I’ll do it.” Breen read the address: a house on Abbey Road.
“Look out for the woman of the house; she’s a posh gob. She said I’d called at an inconvenient time and should have made an appointment.”
“Got any Sellotape, Marilyn?” called Breen. He let the door swing shut.
Without pausing from turning the handle of the copying machine, she said, “Bottom drawer, left-hand side.” Blue-printed sheets fell out of the Roneo into a growing pile.
Marilyn stopped for breath. The noise stopped. She reached out for a packet of No. 6’s on the top of the cabinet and lit one. “My boyfriend came by and bought me this.” Holding out her right hand, cigarette between the fingers, she showed off a small diamond ring.
Breen said, “That’s nice.”
“I think it’s hideous,” said Marilyn, frowning, holding the ring up to her face. “I’m never sure what to think when he buys me jewelry. He’s up to no good. You think I should chuck him, Paddy?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Marilyn wrinkled her nose and turned away. Breen began sticking pieces of paper to the wall to form a large rectangle. Fetching a pencil from his desk, he started drawing a rough picture of Cora Mansions on the paper.
“Look at the famous Irish artist,” said Jones. “Leonard O’Davinci. Get it? Leonard O’Davinci?”
When he’d finished, Breen got out his notebook and started flicking through it. “Who have we got alibis for?” he said.
Jones was interested now. He pulled out his own notebook and started reeling off names. There were thirty-eight flats in the block, seven of which were unoccupied. Breen found a green pen and used it to cross out all of the names they could eliminate.
“I mean, firstly, are we sure it’s the dead girl’s dress?” said Breen.
“It’s a dress. And she was starkers,” said Jones.
By the end of it there were eight names on the list. Five of them were on the side of the flats which would have been closest to the rubbish chute under which the dress had been found. Three had not been in when police called. Two were men who lived alone and who had not been able to provide alibis. Mr. Rider was one of them. Breen circled his name.
“What about the bag?” said Jones. “You said the dress was in a bag.”
Breen opened his briefcase and pulled out the bag. It was an ordinary brown paper bag with pale blue stripes printed on it; there was no name anywhere.
“What if I was to go round the shops with it and check which ones use bags like that? I mean, they’re all paper bags, but they’re all a bit different. You never know.”
“Nice idea,” said Breen.
Jones nodded.
Prosser was sitting opposite Jones, eyeing them. “Nice idea,” he said, imitating Breen’s voice.
Jones blushed like a schoolboy caught out talking to a girl by his mates. “Just a thought, that’s all.”
Bailey had heard the sound of voices and went to the open door of his office. “Have you seen Carmichael anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“And you? Everything OK?” He stood in his doorway holding a small metal watering can.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” said Bailey, looking at them all, frowning, then turning his back on them.
Marilyn came up and said to Breen, “Your girlfriend is crying in the ladies’ toilets.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
On the ground floor, where the women’s toilets were, Breen stood outside the door. “Tozer?” he called. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have told them.”
A sergeant in uniform came out of the gents next door to it, wiping his hands on his blue serge trousers.
“Helen?”
The sergeant looked at Breen with a knowing smile and winked at him. “Girl trouble.”