“It’s like she’d already been erased,” Breen said.
A little while later, they were in the kitchen, looking through the dresser drawers, when a shout came from the master bedroom: “Tell that girl to put the kettle on.”
Breen opened a cupboard. Yesterday it had been full of packets of Rich Tea biscuits. Now it was empty.
“She’s taken biscuits,” he said.
“What?”
“She’s taken packets of biscuits with her. Rich Tea. About a dozen.”
“So? Maybe she likes Rich Tea biscuits.”
“She could have left us some,” complained a copper.
An officer came in and looked around. “Didn’t you hear? Put the tea on. He’ll be back with the sarnies any mo, speed he was driving.”
Nobody moved. Eyes turned towards Tozer.
“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered.
“Got it,” shouted a copper, sticking his head around the hallway door. He was holding a piece of paper. “I got the registration number. Sir?”
Block bowled downstairs and snatched the piece of paper from him.
“Well, well. It looks like the Metropolitan Police aren’t useless at everything,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“One of your lot did Major Sullivan for going through a red light. Maroon Jaguar. Registration ALP 367G. Good work. Phone that in, Constable.” And he handed the piece of paper back to the constable. “Get it out on the phone, now.”
“Can I see that?” said Breen.
The constable looked at Block; the sergeant nodded. “Make sure we get it back, though.”
The Jaguar had been pulled over after passing through a red light on Edgware Road. Breen noted the name of the officer who had issued the ticket.
When Tozer emerged from the kitchen, a scowl on her face and a tray filled with cups of tea in her hands, Breen held the document up for her.
“What is it?”
“Look at the date.”
She read it. 12 October 1968. It took a little while longer before the penny dropped.
“Hell,” she said. “He was in London the day before his daughter was murdered.”
Breen nodded.
“That was a Saturday. He told us he went to London the week before, but didn’t say anything about being there on the twelfth,” said Tozer.
“No. We only asked him where he was on the Sunday.”
“She said he was back here.”
“Maybe he was. Maybe he came back. It’s a fast car. He could have driven up there and back in a day.”
“Was it him, then?” she asked.
Across the room, a voice called, “Get a move on. That tea will be cold by the time it gets to us.”
Nineteen
That evening Tozer suggested they eat out at a carvery in Newton Abbot. “Can’t stand being around my dad too long. I don’t know how my mum does it. He’s like a ghost. Mum thinks his hearing’s going, but I just think he can’t be bothered to listen anymore.”
The restaurant was mock half-timbered, with loudspeakers that wired Mantovani to every corner. The walls were covered with antique copper bed pans and horse brasses. Red-fringed lamps sat on each table. Theirs was table 11, according to the triangular plastic sign next to their cruet set.
“Mum wants me to move back. I’m not sure I could take it. I do like it here, don’t get me wrong, but I think I’d go nuts.”
The side of Breen’s head where the glass had cut him was throbbing.
“You’re quiet.”
He nodded. “I just feel tired.”
“You should see a doctor.”
“I did. He told me to rest.”
Tozer lit a cigarette, looked around for a waiter and said, “I could kill a drink.” Breen pulled the two photographs he had of Morwenna out of his wallet and looked at them.
“So,” said Tozer. “Why do you think she killed him?”
“What if it wasn’t her?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, but it were, weren’t it?”
An elderly pair of women sat silently spooning soup, one plump and the other thin, tipping their bowls away from themselves as they scooped up the last drops.
“I mean, how can you kill a man you’ve lived with all those years? Like that too. From right close to him. I’ve never seen anything so disgusting in my life. Do you want to eat a la carte, or shall we go for the buffet?”
Bored, she took the lid off the mustard pot and peered inside.
“She must have really hated him,” she said.
“If it was her…”
“Helen bloody Tozer!” Their waitress finally appeared, dressed in a black shirt with a white pinny tied round her waist. Big pink plastic earrings dangled from her ears. “Look at you.”
“Val? You work here?”
“Almost two years. Silver service and everything. Oh, God. You look fab. You’re so bloody thin. You living in London now, your mum said. What’s that like? I heard it’s full of wogs…You having starters?”
They ordered a carafe of red wine. “School friend,” Tozer said, when she’d disappeared to fetch it. “Well, not friend really. We were on the same hockey team.”
“I could tell you some stories about Helen,” the waitress said to Breen, bringing the wine back to the table. “We were mad girls, weren’t we?”
“Speak for yourself, Val.”
She poured a drop for Breen to taste, then held out her left hand. “Look at this, Hel.”
“You married? Who to?”
“Guess!”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”
“Course you do. Go on, guess.”
“Kevvo?”
“God, no. Not in a million years. He lives in a caravan now up Bovey Tracey after his mother kicked him out for stealing out of her purse. Honest.”
“Dennis?”
“Helen! Act serious.”
“Who was that boy you were caught with by your dad? Rich?”
Shaking head. “No way. Come on, Hel. It’s obvious.”
Breen noticed a large man in a dinner suit trying to get the waitress’s attention.
“Sorry. Um. I give up.”
“Graham.”
“Graham with the three fingers on one hand?”
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t he the one who used to peek over the shower stalls when we were changing for sports?”
Val laughed. “Yeah.”
“I never knew you were interested in him.”
The fat man took a knife and hit a wineglass with it three times, ping ping ping.
“I was too. Don’t you remember? I always thought he was nice.”
“I remember you saying he gave you the creeps.”
“Hel. I never did. I must have been joking. I was always nuts about him.”
“Were you?”
She pulled a purse out from her apron and opened it. “Here. That’s my little boy. Graham Junior.”
“Excuse me, miss!”
“Sorry, Hel. I’ll be right back.”
The moment she was gone Tozer rolled her eyes. “We should have gone to Torquay. Less chance of bumping into anyone I know.”
The two ladies who were eating together passed their table, returning from the carvery, one behind the other, with plates piled perilously high. Breen read the short typewritten menu the waitress had left on their table, trying to decide what to have.
She returned with a notebook and pencil and stood there, scratching her head with the blunt end. “And what about you, Hel? Any romance in the air?” she asked, looking meaningfully from Breen to Tozer and back again.
“We’re just down here on work.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Who are those photos of?”
“Just somebody,” said Breen.
“Made up your mind yet?”
When she returned with two hot plates so they could take them to the carvery, she said, “So, Hel. There’s no special man in your life, then?”
“No.”
The waitress pulled a sad face. “Don’t worry. It’ll happen. And who knows, you might strike it lucky like I did.”
“Super,” said Tozer. She stuck out her tongue when the waitress turned her back.