Breen was about to intervene, to tell the officer that he could vouch for these men, when Tozer gave a small high-pitched yelp. “Get off!” She slapped the young man’s hand away for the tenth time.
“Stand back!” the policeman shouted, pulling his truncheon out. “Get your hands off the woman.” The other policeman was back inside the car now, on the radio, calling for support.
“For God’s sake,” said Tozer. “It’s OK. I can handle him myself. He’s just a kid.”
But the policeman’s face was already reddening as he held up his truncheon. “Get away from her.”
The young black man’s face hardened; he cocked his head back, eyes narrowing.
Breen saw Ezeoke step between them, fired up with patriotism, beer and song. “Leave him alone,” he blurted, feet planted firmly apart.
“Don’t, Sam,” shouted Ezinwa.
“Don’t be stupid, Sam,” said Okonkwo.
The policeman put his face right up to Ezeoke’s. “Get out of my way, nigger.”
“Leave us alone, white man,” Ezeoke shouted back, raising a fist and shaking it in his face.
“Just try it,” taunted the policeman.
Ezeoke was quivering with rage, eyes wide. For the first time the young policeman suddenly looked uncertain of himself, scared even. Before he could land a first blow, Breen pushed between Ezeoke and the copper, sending Ezeoke staggering backwards towards his wife. He held up his warrant card a foot in front of the policeman’s face.
“It’s OK,” he said. “Calm down. Everything’s OK. He’s just a bit drunk, that’s all.”
Okonkwo was ushering the young men off the street back into the nightclub as the sound of a police siren approached from the south.
“Do as the man says,” said Breen. “Go home, everyone.”
Some descended back into the club to collect their coats and bags. Others drifted away into the night. The policeman stood by his car, glaring at them as they dispersed.
The other police car pulled up behind, light flashing, policemen piling out of it.
“I was fine,” said Tozer. “Honestly. Big bunch of boys, you are. Do we have to go home now?”
“We could get a taxi. I’ll drop you off,” said Breen.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” said Tozer.
“Come on,” said Breen. “Everything’s closed now.”
“I can give her a lift,” said the young man. “On my motorbike.”
“Get lost,” said Tozer. “I’m walking. On my own.”
“In your bare feet?” said Breen.
As his wife pulled him away up the street Ezeoke turned and said: “I did not ask for your help, Mr. Breen. I can fight my own fight.”
Mrs. Ezeoke tugged at his arm. “Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up, you stupid man.”
Twenty-six
It was a bad-tempered week. On Monday, Prosser called in sick. Breen wrote up a report about the fire investigation suggesting that the dead man was probably a laborer called Patrick Donahoe and handed it in to Bailey. On Tuesday morning, Bailey stuck his head round the office door.
“Where’s Prosser?” he asked.
“Sick still,” said Marilyn, giving him a glare.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Cold.”
“I’m disappointed rather than surprised,” said Bailey, retreating behind his door.
At lunchtime Breen went down to Woolworths and bought the new double disc The Beatles and an LP by the Modern Jazz Quartet that the man behind the counter said he should try.
“Who are they for?” said Marilyn when he was looking at the covers on his desk.
“Me,” said Breen. He put the discs down on the floor by the side of his desk.
“I just didn’t think you were into that stuff.”
Carmichael was in court, but he came in just after lunch and said, “Where’s Prosser?”
“Off sick still,” said Marilyn.
“You seen him, Jonesy?”
“No. He hasn’t been outside his front door since the weekend.”
Breen spent the early afternoon going through the report from the Devon and Cornwall police. Jones said, “What’s this I hear about you and Tozer going to a darkie club at the weekend?”
Almost immediately, Marilyn dropped a pile of suspension files on the floor, sending papers everywhere. When Breen went over and knelt down beside her, picking up pieces of paper, Marilyn snapped. “I can manage on my own.”
He went back to his desk and studied the photograph of Julia Sullivan’s body, trying to see clues in it about what it was that made her kill her husband. When he looked up, Marilyn was holding a piece of paper out in front of him to be signed.
“What’s this?”
“Form you got to fill in about the car. The one you and laughing girl wrote off in Cornwall.”
“Do I have to do it now?”
“You should have done it last week.” She dropped it on his desk. “What’s that about you and Tozer being at a nightclub together?”
He picked up the sheet of paper. “You couldn’t do it, could you, Marilyn?”
“You bloody do it yourself for a change.” And she turned round, shoes clattering on the bare floorboards, stamping off through the doors out to the ladies’ toilet.
Breen looked up, puzzled. “What’s got into her?”
Jones put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone he was talking into and said, “Probably, like the rest of us, she’s finally figured out that you’re a cunt.”
Around two, Breen caught the Circle Line down to Notting Hill Gate and walked back to the police flats.
He searched the doorbells. He found, written on a green label, Mr. amp; Mrs. Prosser. He hadn’t changed the names since his wife moved out.
He pressed the button but no one answered. Stepping back, he looked at the windows, trying to work out which flat was Prosser’s.
He went back and rang Prosser’s bell again. This time he held his finger on the buzzer until it started to ache. It must have been a minute before he spotted a face peeking from behind a net curtain on the second floor. It was there just for a second and then it was gone.
Police flats, two to a floor. He rang all the doorbells until someone buzzed him in, then he walked up the stairs and banged on the second-floor door. There was no answer. “Michael. I know you’re in there,” he called.
He knocked again.
“Michael Prosser, it’s Paddy Breen. Open the door.”
He banged louder.
“I haven’t told anybody about what you did,” Breen said. “But I will if you don’t talk to me.”
He sat down in the hallway, back to the door.
“I’m not going until you let me in. Anyone who sees me is going to ask me what I’m doing here. They’re already wondering why you haven’t made it in to work this week.”
A couple of seconds later he heard the bolt on the door being drawn. Prosser hadn’t shaved and he was wearing a cardigan over a string vest that hung down over his narrow shoulders. “You better come in then,” he said.
The flat was a mess. There were dirty plates and mugs on the living-room floor and piles of clothes pushed into the corners of the room. The ashtray hadn’t been emptied in a while and gray ash and stubs were overflowing onto a small glass coffee table. Empty bottles of Pale Ale were lined up on the windowsill.
Breen stood by the front door.
“Everything OK, Paddy?” Prosser looked at him curiously, rubbing his unshaven chin with his fingertips.
“Jones caught the guy you were in the shop with that night you were stabbed.”
Prosser nodded. “I heard,” he said. “I heard you let him go too.”
“I did.”
“I suppose I should be grateful for that.”
“You should,” said Breen. The walls of the room were bare except for a painting-by-numbers picture of a galleon and a photo of a boy, about four years old, on the mantelpiece.
“They thought I was a bastard for letting you get cut up and now they think I’m worse for letting the Chinese guy go.”
Prosser nodded. “And you haven’t grassed?”