And the long hiss afterwards as the needle spun around in the groove.
He was out of cigarettes.
Fourteen
Monday morning, Jones came in a little after a quarter to nine with a black eye, skin around it yellow and purple. “Bloody hell,” said Prosser.
He smiled sheepishly. “I walked into a door.”
“That’s a terrible thing to call your missus,” said Carmichael, looking back down at his paper.
Breen’s phone rang.
“I walked into a door.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Hello?”
“I walked into an effing door, right?” Jones carefully hung his jacket on a wire coat hanger, then put the hanger on the hat stand.
Breen tried to hear the voice on the other end of the line. It was the woman from the Ministry of Defence.
“Keep your ginger hair on. You walked into a door.”
“Thank you.”
Breen cupped his hand over the receiver. “Quiet,” he shouted.
The voices stopped for a few seconds at least. Breen picked up a pencil and said, “Fire away.”
Jones sat down at his desk and carefully placed a sheet of carbon paper between two forms.
“A door with a skirt on.”
“Will you just shut up!” Jones shouted, red-faced.
Breen wrote down: “Major Sullivan. Seventh Armored Signal Regiment.”
“Where’s he stationed?”
“He’s retired,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “He retired right after that posting in Germany, as a matter of fact. I’ve got an address, though, if you want it.”
Bailey stuck his head round the door. “What are you lot all doing sat on your behinds?” he said.
When he’d gone, Carmichael pulled a face and repeated Bailey’s words in his Kenneth Williams voice. Nobody laughed. It was one of those mornings.
Breen looked at the address he’d written down.
“Cornwall?” said Jones. “Can’t you just phone them?”
“It’s been a week. I want to know why they haven’t reported their daughter missing. I think we should talk to them, face-to-face.”
“Can’t you let the wurzels in Devon and Cornwall do it for you?”
“I think we should go,” he said.
Jones scratched the side of his face thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t take two of us, though, would it?”
Breen was relieved. “It’s OK.”
“Cornwall?” said Tozer. “That’s where she came from?”
There was no mention of their brittle parting on Friday night. It was as if it had not happened. “Liskeard. Is that far from where you live?” he asked.
“Not that near. ’Bout an hour and a half away.”
“If I can clear it with Bailey for you to come, will you drive me there?”
“You serious?” she said.
The next morning she examined a Ford Zephyr that he had booked out for the journey. It had seen better days. “I’ve driven combines that go faster,” she said.
It was early but they wanted to get out of London before the morning traffic was too bad. Tozer swore constantly as she crunched through the gears as they drove out along to the Great West Road. New cars parked outside new factories and offices. Union Jacks flip-flapping lazily. Neat lawns in front of the offices. They hit traffic at Gillette Corner and crawled for almost an hour towards the new section of the M4. Near London Airport they were stationary again as the planes flew overhead.
“What’s that one?”
“It’s a Britannia,” said Breen.
“And that one?”
“It’s a Comet.”
“What about that?”
“It’s a Britannia too. No, sorry, a Constellation.”
“I never met a man who didn’t know the names of planes. You been in a plane?” asked Tozer.
“No.”
“But you know what their names are.”
“Not all of them.”
“I think that’s fab.”
“That’s a Comet. BOAC.”
“We went on holiday to Sardinia. The Pineta Beach Hotel. I don’t know what plane it was, though. It was the summer after Alex was killed. Mum wanted to do something to cheer us all up so we went on a package. Dead modern. Dad got food poisoning and Mum got heatstroke on the miniature golf course. Don’t laugh. It’s true. I swear it. I spent my time on my own by the pool being chatted up by Eyeties.”
A gang of seven or eight greasers roared past the stationary traffic, weaving between cars, hair sweeping backward in the wind.
“I didn’t mind, actually. One of them was all right. He was very strong and brown. He got me drunk one night on the beach and tried to feel my bosoms. And worse. I may have been drunk but I gave him such a slap…”
The traffic was moving again. “Was this before or after you started going out with the detective sergeant?”
“During. I wrote postcards home to my policeman every day. I think I used up every card they had in the hotel.”
Slowly at first, but gradually speeding up, the cars and lorries around them began to hurtle westwards.
“I got drunk a lot that holiday. All three of us did. That’s all we did, really. Dad almost drowned in the pool one day he was so drunk. He’s not used to it. Doesn’t drink much normally. A bottle of Bass with Sunday dinner.”
Tozer weaved from the left lane to the right again, working her way through the speeding traffic. The motorway verge blurred. As she indicated to pull out to overtake a gravel lorry in front, Breen said, “Do you always drive like this?”
“I’m only going sixty.” She moved lanes again, accelerating past the lorry and moving back into the left lane ahead of it. Breen’s good hand dug into the leather of the seat. He tried to look at the speedometer but her hands were in the way.
“When the holiday ended we were relieved, I think. We all felt uncomfortable pretending that everything was OK. Back to mud and cowpats, getting up at five in the morning for the milking. We felt guilty for trying to have fun. My mum said, ‘I don’t think we’ll be going again.’” She laughed. “That’s the Tozer family motto. ‘I don’t think we’ll be doing that again.’ Is there anything wrong with my driving?”
“Nothing.”
“You seem to be really tense.”
He looked at her. “I’m fine.” The motorway ended at Maidenhead and they carried on along the A4. On the slower roads, he relaxed a little.
While she was filling up the car at a service station in Reading, Breen went to the gents to splash water on his face. There was no towel to dry himself on, so he pressed his skin against the sleeve of his gray jacket.
“Were you close to your dad?” she asked, when they were driving again.
He peered at a map. “I think it should be signposted for the A33 at the next roundabout.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Your dad? Were you close?”
“He was not an easy man to be close with. But I was, yes.” If she’d asked that when he was alive he would have answered differently. Now he was gone he realized how close he had been.
In Dorset, they stopped at a village shop and bought fresh rolls and a quarter-pound of cheddar which they shared sitting in a car park, washing it down with swigs of lemonade.
“The boys at the station say you’ve changed.”
“Do they?”
“Jones says you and Carmichael used to be best mates.”
“We are best mates. Still.”
“He said you and Carmichael once got mad with Bailey and put a bit of bicycle inner tube over the exhaust pipe of his car.”
“That was Carmichael, mostly.”