“Thank you,” she said. “You can let go now.”
He released her arm.
They had stopped outside a small shop selling doll parts. A hundred different eyes peered out from a green baize board, some large, some small, some blue, some gray. There were plump porcelain arms and odd, pot-bellied body shapes to attach them to. A row of pouting, empty-eyed heads sat along the top of a small shelf. “She just didn’t come home from school one day and that was that.”
Breen nodded. They opened the door into the lounge bar of the Red Lion, on the bend of the street. A few codgers stared at Tozer and shifted on their bar stools. Conversation faltered. Women rarely came in this pub, even in the lounge bar. The room was dark, a fug of smoke drifting at eye level. The sound of the click of snooker balls came from the public bar behind the frosted glass.
He returned with a double rum and black for her and a pint for himself. Though the other customers had started talking again, they still craned their necks to peer at them.
“Do you like London, sir?” she asked, head cocked on one side.
“Don’t call me sir,” he said. “I mean,” he added. “We’re not at the station now.”
“OK. Do you like London…” She smiled and paused. “I don’t like ‘Cathal.’ Mind if I call you Paddy?”
“You wouldn’t be the first. Nobody ever called me Cathal except my dad.” His mother had given him the name, his father said; his father had worried that it would make him stand out.
“It’s a funny name.”
“My father didn’t think so.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
He took out a cigarette and offered her one. “Doesn’t matter.” He felt foolish now, bristling over a name he’d hated all through growing up. She took one of his cigarettes and he lit them both.
“Well, Cathal?” she asked. “Do you like London?”
“I’ve never lived anywhere else. What about you? Do you miss the countryside?”
She smiled. “You should try it.”
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t know what to do there,” he said.
“No. I don’t think you would.” She picked up her rum and black and the beer mat was stuck to the bottom of it: A Double Diamond Works Wonders. She peeled it off, put it back onto the table and took a large gulp from her glass. “Cheers,” she said.
“Cheers.”
She took another sip from hers, then said, “Right then. I’ll tell you all about it all. But I don’t want you telling anyone else, OK? You tell Bailey and he’ll take me right off, and you know it. Only thing his lot think us women police are good for is putting parking tickets on cars.”
Breen looked at her. She looked good with a bit of makeup on. “If I think anyone has a problem that might affect the investigation, I’m supposed to let him know.”
She looked down at her drink and said quietly, “You’re the one who went doolally, not me.”
Breen smiled. “Bailey knows about that.”
She looked up at him. “Does he know about you chucking up when you saw the body?”
He took a sip of his beer. “OK.”
“Promise you won’t say?”
“Promise.” He wondered if he was making a mistake.
She paused, took a third gulp. “Where should I start?”
“Anywhere.”
She fiddled with the winder of her watch for a couple of seconds then spoke again. “It was the same as how it always starts. Alex didn’t come home one night.” She paused and twisted the winder some more. “Dad was furious the first night. He was convinced she had run off with one of the boys from the Tech.”
“How old was she?”
“Sixteen. The boys were always sniffing around her. She was gorgeous, Alexandra was, in an aloof kind of way. Always boys around her. Had Mum’s looks. I take after Dad.” She smiled. “And she loved it all, of course, all the attention, though she never showed it. I was older, and I would have jumped for any of them, but she was always offhand. Which they all loved, of course. I could never be that casual around boys. One time two boys asked her out, to go to the local barn dance. She said yes to them both. She didn’t care that they were furious with her. And fair play, she danced with them both. And told both of them to buy me drinks and all. Just to show she had the power and I had not. Sorry. I’m going off, aren’t I?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all part of it.”
“I like to talk about her. I never can when I’m at home. Nobody mentions her no more.”
“You really have barn dances?”
“God, yes. All the time. Accordion players and set dances and the lot. Do you dance?”
“Not really.”
“What about Irish dancing?”
“Not on your life. How old were you when this happened?”
“Eighteen years and six days when she disappeared. I was studying agriculture at the local tech. It was just after my birthday. I was going to be a farm girl. Can you imagine that?”
He shook his head.
“Poor Dad had wanted a son to take over the place. He ended up with me and Alex. After that Mum couldn’t have any more. I was the elder so I was going to do what he wanted. She was the beautiful one who always had it easy. It’s like that with the second child, isn’t it? The first one has to figure everything out for themselves. The second one dances along afterwards. Not that I minded, really. Not much, anyway. She was the beautiful one.”
She pulled out a cigarette from her handbag and offered one to Breen. Breen shook his head.
“It was a Tuesday. Dad drove round Newton Abbot going into all the scrumpy bars, of which there are a few, let me tell you, pulling out the boys and accusing them of running off with his daughter. You should meet my dad. He’s sort of big. Ever drunk scrumpy?”
Breen shook his head again.
“I wouldn’t. It’s piss.” She finished the glass. “Mind if I give you the money to get another?” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ll get it.”
“Can you see if they got any crisps?” she called.
The middle-aged, bleach-haired barmaid was at the off-sales counter, handing over lemonade and a packet of cigarettes to a scabby-headed boy. “They for your dad?” she said, handing him the cigarettes.
“Who do you think they’re for?”
“They better chuffing be,” said the barmaid. “I’ll give you a slap if I see you smoking them.”
She returned to the main bar and served Breen. “Three and six. You’re from round here, in’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Copper, in’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. I know all the coppers round here.”
“What? All of them?” Tozer called out. “You must be a bit of a live wire then.”
A few of the customers laughed. “She bloody is, an’ all.”
“Oi, shut up or you’re banned, the lot of you,” said the barmaid with a grin. “You live by the station, don’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Thought so. My sister used to look after your dad.”
He tried to remember the name of the pale girl who used to clean for him back when he worked at the local station, but he couldn’t. “How is she?”
“She’s marrying an accountant.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
“Sorry to hear about your dad too. My sister liked him. She said your dad used to recite poetry to her.”
Where other memories had vanished, his father had been left with odd chunks of the poems he must have learned as a child. Unexpected, haunting lines that occasionally fell from his mouth like reproaches: “The Light of Lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.”
“He’s in a better place now,” said the barmaid, and turned to pull another pint with arms that looked used to heavy work.
When Breen came back with the drink and the crisps, Tozer opened the packet, dug around for the blue twist of salt and poured it over them. She munched a few in silence.
“Your father sounds like he could be a scary fellow, then,” said Breen.
“Oh, my dad ain’t really scary. He’s a lamb. It’s just he is tall and he does carry a shotgun round with him, but that’s only to knock the crows off the hurdles.” She closed her eyes as if seeing something more clearly in her mind. “He used to be a very careful man. We had the best-kept cows in South Devon. He was always winning prizes at the County Show. We got a whole wall full of rosettes. Best Guernsey Cow in Milk. Best Guernsey Group of Three. You know? Champion Local Dairy Animal. Now he just goes through the motions. It’s not the same.”