Tozer chewed her lip. “Yes. And?”
“Is it why you have a go at senior officers like Carmichael, even though you’re only two years out of Hendon?”
“He called the victim ‘a naked bird.’” She took a makeup compact out of her bag; he watched her checking her eyes, one by one.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she answered.
“No. Really. It’s just…”
“Just what? Is it I’m just probationary again?”
“No. But it could complicate things.”
“My sister is a complication?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“You had no right,” she said quietly.
“Yes, I did.”
“You went poking into my life.”
“I had to. You weren’t telling me about it. If it’s going to affect your ability to take a rational view of this case, I need to know.”
“Are you saying I’m irrational?”
“Maybe.”
“And you’re the really rational one?”
“That’s not the point.”
She stood up suddenly, snapping the compact shut. The pigeon, startled, flew off. “So what is the fucking point?”
He sat, shocked, as she turned away from him. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t answer, just walked down the wooden stairs onto the grass of the park and away through the drizzle.
“Tozer,” shouted Breen after her, standing, but she had disappeared down a curve in the path. “Constable Tozer,” he shouted again.
He picked up the two empty mugs and took them back to the cafe, then walked back to where Tozer had parked the car. The police car had gone.
He stood there, in the drizzle, waiting for her to return. He moved to the shelter of the porch of a nearby house, but the wind still blew the water into his clothes. After five minutes, with the rain starting to soak through his mac, it was clear she wasn’t going to come back.
The road was quiet. By the time he’d trudged to Maida Vale, water trickling into his shoes and he was soaked through. His brogues continued to fill with water as he walked. To try to hail a taxi he had to stand on the edge of the pavement in the downpour, holding his hand out as the cars splashed past.
Twelve
Been swimming?” said Marilyn.
“Give over.” He undid his shoelaces, peeled off his socks and draped them over the radiator.
“Protocol is protocol. I should have been told.” He could hear Bailey talking on the phone from his room.
“Have you seen Tozer?”
“This is not the first time this has happened,” Bailey was saying.
“No. Why? Have you lost her?”
“There is a right way to do that and a wrong way.” When Bailey lost his temper he spoke in clipped phrases. “That’s not an excuse. If I started ordering your officers around there would be anarchy. We have procedures. We have ways of doing things.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Marilyn.
The office was still, people listening. Jones sat in front of a typewriter, forefingers poised over the untouched keys. Marilyn stood in the middle of the room, a mug of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“What’s going on?” asked Breen.
“This is chaos. This kind of thing will make us a laughingstock.”
Marilyn made a face. “Some raid going on in Montagu Square,” she said. “I just put the call in to him now from New Scotland Yard. By the sound of it, the boss hadn’t had a whiff of it.”
“He’d only do his nut about it because they weren’t doing the paperwork proper,” said Prosser.
Jones’s phone rang; he picked it up.
“Did you know anything about this?” Breen asked Marilyn.
“Not a peep,” Marilyn said. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Are you trying to suggest that there would have been a security risk if you’d told me about it? Are you?”
“You’re not serious? You’re having me on?” said Jones down the phone.
“What’s going on?”
Jones put the receiver down with a whoop. “Fuck-ing hell,” he said. “You’ll never guess.”
“What?”
“You’ll never guess who Pilcher’s mob are just pulling into Paddington Green.”
“Who?”
“Only John Lennon and his Nip bird.”
“Pilch? John Lennon?”
“What for?”
“Drugs. They just raided John Lennon for drugs. They’re on the way there now. That’s why the boss has his knickers twisted.”
“Drugs?”
“John fucking Lennon and that Yoko Boko bird.”
“Yoko Boko? What the fuck’s that?”
“Pilch has only gone and done it now. Like to hear him singing now.”
“Help! I need somebody. Help,” sang Prosser.
Big laugh.
“I’m down. I’m really down. I’m going down…”
More hilarity. Some of the younger officers were practically crying now.
Jones banged his desk and joined in, singing, “All you need is love.”
“What the hell’s that, Jones?” said Prosser.
“It’s a Beatles song, isn’t it?”
“Yeah but it ain’t funny, you moron.”
Jones looked stung.
Marilyn handed Breen a large brown envelope. “It’s the artist’s drawing of the girl,” she said. More quietly, she added, “If you want, we could go for a drink later. Some of the boys are going out.”
“I don’t think they want to go out for a drink with me that much.”
“We could go somewhere else then.”
“Oi, oi,” said Jones. “I thought you had a boyfriend, Marilyn.”
“I was just trying to cheer him up.”
“I know how you could put a smile on my face, Marilyn,” said one of the other men.
“You lot disgust me.”
The Evening News and the Evening Standard wouldn’t print a photograph of a dead body, but they would print a likeness. His best bet now to identify the girl was to ask the public. He had booked a police artist to create an image of the victim, but when he took the pastel drawing out of the envelope he stopped for a second and frowned.
He didn’t recognize the woman in the drawing at all. She was pale, bony, thin-faced, and seemed much older than the dead woman he’d seen at the scene of the crime. For a minute he stared at it, not sure if his brain was playing tricks on him.
“This isn’t her,” he said eventually.
“Let’s see,” said Marilyn. She held the drawing in one hand and Breen’s photo of the dead girl, the one he’d been using to show members of the public, in the other. “Not really. Is it?”
“Not in a million miles.”
“Has she, you know, changed? It’s been a couple of days now.”
“She’s in the fridge. Bodies don’t change. Not for a while at least.”
“I see what you mean.” She looked from one picture to the next.
“It’s like he’s drawn someone completely different.” The woman had a thin, aquiline nose.
Marilyn went back to her desk, picked up the phone and started making calls.
Breen went back to his desk and sat down. It was getting dark already. The days were getting shorter. He opened his drawer and picked out his pencils, then the pencil sharpener which he had inherited with the desk. It had been at the bottom of his filing cabinet, one of those large ones with a handle. Now he clamped it to the edge of the surface and started sharpening his pencils, one by one. It was satisfying, leaving each with a shining point. On an impulse he leaned forward and smelled the pencil sharpener. A sudden rich aroma of dry cedarwood.
“What are you doing?” said Jones.
Breen looked up sheepisly. “I was smelling the shavings.”
Jones looked at him. “Bloody hell.” He went back to his work. “Smelling the bloody shavings.”
“You’ll never believe it,” Marilyn called across the room. “He’s only gone and drawn the wrong body.” Heads looked up from their desks. “Two unidentifieds down at the university morgue. One numbered 97617, the other numbered 97611. Only, the last number looks just like a seven so they pulled out the wrong one for him. Weren’t his fault.”