She's Leaving Home (33 page)

The policemen complained of the cold. They stamped their feet. “We could take him.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I don’t think.”

“You’re the copper from London. What’s up with your mate?”

“He’s got food poisoning.”

From inside the house, Ezeoke shouted, “What is happening?”

“Eddie Okonkwo is dead,” said Breen.

Ezeoke didn’t answer.

“What’s he going to do?” The local inspector had brought guns. Police crowded round the house with .303s. They were excited. Things like this happened once in a local policeman’s life.

“Shoot the cunt, I say,” said one lanky policeman.

Some police were pushing inquisitive locals down the street. There was an inevitability to what was about to happen now.

He thought of Okonkwo and Ezeoke, men filled with a fervor for politics. The world was suddenly full of people like them, shouting for change, willing to see blood spilled. The kind of men who didn’t run from knives but towards them; who were sure about what the world was and what it should be. Breen could never be like that. For him, the world was a place seen from a distance, a curious puzzle. He thought of Tozer, comatose in the room just a few yards away. He could fight for her, he knew, but never for a country or an idea. Maybe it was just a lack of passion; a lack of imagination. But he only wanted to save one person.

He thought of his dead father and the woman his father had lost. He felt he had never known him as well as he did now. They were not so different.

“Sergeant?”

Breen walked over to the local inspector. He was a round man with a moustache and a mournful expression on his face. He shook hands with Breen. “Nasty old day,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Professor Briggs says you know the man with the gun.”

“That’s right, sir.”

He nodded. “Go and talk to him.”

“Why, sir?”

The inspector looked at him. “Just go and talk. You’ll know the kind of thing to say.”

“Yes, sir.” He knew what would happen now. Darkness filled his chest.

It had started to drizzle. The ambulance man had tried to give him his jacket back but he hadn’t wanted to wear it; it had Okonkwo’s blood congealed on the cloth by the vents.

He looked out towards the gray light on the eastern horizon. A pair of fishing trawlers was setting out from some nearby port. They looked small against the big sea. Waves slapped onto the shingle, out of sight, below the cottage.

“Go careful. Keep him talking as long as you can.”

“Yes, sir.

“Good luck.”

Constables with rifles were surrounding the house.

He walked slowly down the short path towards the shotgun. As soon as he could, he tucked himself back behind the sculpture.

“Sam,” he called. “You there?”

No answer.

“Did you hear? Eddie is dead. He was shot. They thought he was you.”

“You killed him. You English people.”

“You’ll die too.”

“Why should I care?”

“It’s pointless, Sam. There’s nothing to be gained. Please.”

No answer. Breen heard a noise behind him and turned. A policeman with a gun was crouching just behind the wall, pointing his rifle past Breen. Breen shivered. There was no shelter. His white shirt stuck to his skin.

“Please, Sam. Send out the women at least.”

“If they are harmed, it will be your fault. You killed Eddie Okonkwo. You shot him like a dog.”

“You killed Morwenna Sullivan. That was your fault.”

“It was her father’s fault. He stole our money. He promised me guns. He was a liar and a thief. It was him I wanted to hurt.”

The police had stopped moving now. They were all in position, he assumed.

“So you kidnapped Morwenna?”

“Our entire country is being held as a hostage. Hundreds are dying every day.” Breen was shivering uncontrollably now, his jaw juddering with the cold. “He took our money. I am tired of talking, Mr. Breen. All I want is to go home to Africa. All I want is to go home.”

“You can’t go home, Sam. You don’t have a home anymore.”

“I have to.”

Breen thought he could bear it no longer. Rain trickled from his hair into his eyes. This was taking too long.

“Your daughter loved her,” said Breen.

“That is not love,” shouted Ezeoke.

A gust of wind rattled the windows of the house, sending raindrops flying down the collar of Breen’s shirt.

And then the shooting started, and the screaming. Wild, lurid, loud, pained screaming. Seabirds flew up from the shoreline. Breen crouched down below as the bullets flew, shattering wood and glass, smacking into brickwork. Dust sprayed all over him, sticking to his dampened shirt. His eyes stung. Glass sprayed out onto the gravel behind him. The smell of cordite stained the air.

All that was left was the sound of a woman still screaming, pausing briefly for breath, and then screaming again.

T
he terrible screaming gradually faded in volume and then stopped. As he crouched by the sculpture, he heard wood splintering; the sound of men breaking down the front door.

Breen could not see. Only by keeping his eyes closed could he stop the excruciating pain of the brick dust in his eyes. He took in the world in brief blinks, each one feeling like sandpaper was passing across his corneas. His ears still rang from the gunshots, but he heard well enough to make out the sound of policemen breaking down the front door, tramping inside and shouting. “Keep Briggs out of here. His wife is dead.”

A hand touched him. “You all right, chum?”

Painfully he looked. A young police constable was standing over him. “Who was screaming?” Breen asked.

“Don’t know. It’s a bloody mess in there.”

Breen stood and looked around. He stumbled through the broken door of the cottage. In a series of blinks he viewed the living room. The walls were cratered by gunshots, and glass and splintered wood from the window lay across the floor. He noticed Ezeoke first. The man was slumped against an ottoman, blood soaking through his trousers from a wound somewhere in his leg. His hands had been cuffed. He had a dazed look on his face, as if he was just waking from a sleep.

Mrs. Briggs was just behind him, sprawled across the small living-room floor. She was dressed in a black polo neck and a miniskirt and, yes, she was dead. A bullet had smashed part of her jaw away. White teeth protruded through a bloody mess. Her top was spattered with blood.

“Where’s Constable Tozer?” he croaked.

No one answered.

Louder. “Where’s Constable Tozer?”

He pushed through them into a dining room at the back of the little house. Unlike the front room, this was completely untouched, six chairs tucked neatly in around a dark mahogany table, dried flowers in a vase on the sideboard. A painting of a man on a horse. The room looked bizarrely normal, unaffected by the catastrophe that had just taken place.

The sergeant was in the kitchen at the back of the house talking on his radio. “Leg wound. He’ll live.”

It was as wrecked as the living room. He looked at Breen and said, “Nothing like this has ever happened round here,” making it sound like an accusation.

Police had smashed down a stable door at the back to break in; windows had been shattered by the gunfire. The remains of a hasty breakfast of cornflakes and toast lay on a pine table.

“Where’s Constable Tozer?”

The sergeant didn’t seem to hear him; he was talking to his lapel radio again.

Breen returned to the living room. Two ambulance men were crouching over Ezeoke, who lay, eyes shut, on the floor now. They had torn away his trousers and were pressing gauze onto a wound just below his blood-soaked underpants. His skin looked gray.

“Fuck you,” he said to no one in particular.

Breen noticed a small, narrow staircase at the back of the room. To reach it he had to pick past Mrs. Briggs’s body, eyes wide, looking up at him as he stepped over her.

He found Tozer upstairs in the back bedroom, fully dressed in her uniform, lying on top of the covers of a single bed, a tartan blanket over her. Her hands and ankles were tied with cord to the side of the metal bed, her eyes shut, her mouth slightly open. He leaned over her and put his face next to hers.

She was warm. He felt her soft breath on his unshaven face. He stood there leaning over her for some time, feeling her breathe in and out, grateful, occasionally running the sleeve of his shirt across his eyes. Groans and complaints rose from below as they lifted Ezeoke onto a stretcher. He stayed with her, his face against the warmth of her skin, until the inspector appeared at the door.

“She alive?” he said.

Breen jumped back, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

“She’s OK, I think,” he said.

As two coppers lifted her awkwardly down the stairs, still unconscious, Breen found the bathroom and started to rinse his eyes, splashing ice-cold water up onto his face from the basin.

They had given Ezeoke a painkiller and handcuffed him to the small bed in the ambulance.

“Shame they stopped hanging people, in my opinion,” said the ambulance man.

Breen and a constable sat opposite, jerking from side to side as the ambulance navigated the narrow Suffolk lanes. Ezeoke’s rage at the world seemed to shine from him, even in semi-consciousness. Breen’s failure had been not to recognize that anger. Ezeoke had kept it half-hidden inside him. Perhaps it was the immigrant’s trick. The ability to exist in two places at once. Two halves of a mind, each not recognizing the state of the other. His father had learned to hide so much of himself. Breen was only now learning how much he had kept secret.

Ezeoke opened his eyes. “You,” he said.

“Mrs. Briggs is dead,” said Breen.

Ezeoke nodded. “She wanted to go to Africa with me. To fight.”

There was a notice that said
No Smoking,
but the young constable ignored it.

“Jesus,” said the copper. “It shakes you up a bit, doesn’t it? Did you see her?”

Ezeoke’s right hand was handcuffed to the side of the bed he lay on. They had dressed the wound on his leg.

“Did you really ever intend to make it back to Africa?” said Breen.

“Of course,” said Ezeoke, though his eyes flickered with what looked to Breen like doubt and he turned his head away from them.

“I don’t think you’d have lasted five minutes,” said Breen.

“You’re a liar.”

The ambulance’s bell rang briefly, clearing cars away ahead.

“Did I kill any of your police?” Ezeoke said, when the noise stopped.

“No.”

“A pity,” said Ezeoke. “I should have killed you all. You English.”

“Fuck’s he on about?” said the young policeman sitting next to Breen, blowing out cigarette smoke. Breen noticed the young man’s hand was shaking.

When Tozer returned to Marylebone Police Station, two days later, the coppers lined the corridors and clapped her.

“Oi, oi. Sleeping Beauty’s back.”

“Well done, love,” said Carmichael.

“I heard you had a spot of bother too,” she said, kissing the big man on the cheek. “They said you were on the bog the entire time.”

“Shut up.” Carmichael grinned like an idiot.

“Aye, aye.”

“Think he fancies you, darling.”

“Who said that?”

Somebody started singing, “For she’s a jolly good fellow.”

“Save it for the pub,” said Tozer.

“I don’t know why you’re making all this fuss for someone who got themselves caught,” said Marilyn. The song petered out.

The office quickly returned to normal. Marilyn made tea. Breen went back to his desk to do paperwork.

Tozer followed him to his desk. “I called you yesterday,” she said.

“I was out,” said Breen, “helping out at Joe’s over the weekend. He’s had a stroke. A bunch of us are keeping the place open.” He had visited Joe in hospital; he had spent an hour listening to the slurred words before Joe had fallen asleep, exhausted from the effort of trying to make sense of the strange words and growls that tumbled from his lopsided mouth. He’d looked frightened and thin.

“That’s sad. Is he OK?”

“Not too good.” It was too early to tell whether he would get better, the doctors said. “What about you?”

“I’m OK.”

She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Bailey came out of his office and opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it, and walked on. When he was out of earshot, Tozer said, “On the news they said it was a gunfight. They said Ezeoke killed Mrs. Briggs.”

“I know. It wasn’t really like that.”

“Nobody will tell me what really happened.”

Breen stood and walked round to her side of the desk.

“They said Ezeoke was shooting at you.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

“Why?”

“I think he felt he had nowhere left to go.”

“Tell me, then. I need to know what happened. It’s like being in a dream, still. Only the opposite. I’m asleep and all this stuff that makes no sense going on around me.”

He sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know where to start.”

“I need to know. It’s driving me bloody nuts.”

Tozer stole an ashtray from Prosser’s empty desk and came back, holding it in her left hand.

“I went to find you,” he said. “But you were gone.”

“I was outside Okonkwo’s for about five minutes and she turned up. I didn’t know whether to run and find you or what. Only, right away, Okonkwo came out and Ezeoke was with him.”

“He was in the shop when we were there.”

“I suppose. The moment they were gone I went up and got the car and followed. I couldn’t stop to phone.” She talked quietly so her voice could not be heard by the others in the office. “He pulled into a breaker’s yard near Walthamstow. I waited a while, then followed him in. Bloody stupid. I’ll never make a copper. Not that it matters anymore. He was waiting for me inside the gates.”

“What do you mean, you’ll never make a copper? You did great.”

“He stabbed me with a needle full of something. When I woke up we were in that car I’d been following. That Mrs. Briggs was driving. What did happen to her?”

“A police bullet. Got her in the face. Carotid artery. They said Ezeoke shot her but they’re just covering their backs. It was never a shotgun. I saw it. It was a bullet wound.”

“It’s so strange to have slept while all that was going on around you.”

“I was scared for you,” he said. “I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.”

She looked away. “I can’t say I’m sorry, whoever did it,” Tozer said. “She was a cow.”

In the house, she said, Frances Briggs had held Tozer’s mouth wide while Ezeoke had forced the tranquillizers down her throat. “It was horrible. I was kicking and struggling. Look.” She pulled up the sleeve of her tunic. “I kept thinking about my sister. What it must have been like for her.”

Breen nodded. There were still marks on her wrist from where the ropes had cut her. “Frances Briggs enjoyed it,” Tozer said. “I swear.”

“What was it like?”

“It was like being in this nightmare.” Every few hours she had woken and tried for as long as she could to pretend to be asleep, hoping that they would not drug her again. “They were rowing. Shouting at each other. Okonkwo wanted them to give themselves up. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“The police shot him. As he was trying to escape.”

She nodded. “One time he untied me. I’m not sure when this was. He told me to get away, but I was too tired. I couldn’t move. I kept falling asleep. And then Mrs. Briggs kept saying she had this boat and they could get away to France on it. It was crazy.”

“Why didn’t they go? They had plenty of time. They were a day ahead of us.”

“I don’t know. It was weird. Ezeoke kept delaying. Said he wanted to get some money. Said they could take their time. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“He was afraid. You know, big African man. But he’d never actually lived there or anything. He’d only been there once to bring back his African wife, you know?”

“Maybe. I think you’re right. I think he had built up this big thing about Africa in his head.” He thought of his father: a man who had never gone home.

“I think he was nuts all along, you know. Right from the start. Right from that first time we met him.”

They sat at his desk and Breen told her how he had found her missing from Portobello Road, and how it had taken so long to find her car.

“It was horrible,” he said.

“Really?” She smiled. “You and Carmichael?”

“Yes.”

“I was wrong about him,” she said.

“Yes.”

And how they had searched the neighborhood until they heard that Professor Briggs was on the move.

“Lucky,” she said.

“Lucky. We were very lucky.”

That night after the pub and the drinks and the retelling of stories and rowdy cheers, they caught a taxi to his flat and had sex in his single bed, Tozer clinging to him fiercely.

Afterwards, as she lay there, he took a towel and wrapped it around his waist, then went to the living room and put on one of the new records he’d bought, and turned the record player up, full volume, so they could hear it from the bedroom.

The record started with a roaring noise that dissolved into a thumping song with pianos and guitars stomping out a rhythm, almost childishly. They lay on the bed together, listening. It felt good to move on. A new him. Everything beginning.

“This is the one,” she said, as another track started, a single note ringing out on a piano, overlaid by a wailing guitar. “I’m not sure if that’s George or Eric,” she said, as if they were both personal friends.

“Eric?”

She stood and started to dance, naked, leaping from foot to foot. “Eric Clapton,” she shouted. “It’s incredible, great, isn’t it? So fab.”

Laughing, he watched her dancing shamelessly above him. Her skinny body jumping around the small bed next to him so the springs creaked. He hoped the neighbors could hear. Sex had never been like this before. It had always been wordless and in darkened rooms.

She dropped down onto the bed, laughing too, and pulled the sheet over her. “How long is it, since you…did it?” She laughed.

“Three years,” he said. “You?”

“Three years? That’s ridiculous.”

“And?”

“I’m not telling. Not three years, that’s for certain.”

He picked up the album’s sleeve. It was a plain white square, inscrutable and blank. It seemed to say, “Think nothing.” He was envious of Tozer’s ecstatic reaction, her thoughtless lust for the music. The distance between them remained.

“I like it,” he said. “It’s good. Even the eight minutes of noise.”

She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “To be honest,” said Tozer, “I think that one is total rubbish.”

“Really? I thought it was, you know, good.”

“I’m a bit disappointed, really,” said Tozer. “I mean, there’s good stuff on it, but it doesn’t really sound like the Beatles. Most of the time it sounds like four blokes doing weird stuff. It’s not really the Beatles anymore, know what I mean?”