The Kings of London (10 page)

Breen craned his head upwards. ‘We’d like to talk to you about a murder.’

‘Go on then,’ said the man.

Breen knew it was going to be like this. ‘Can we come in?’ he asked.

The man pretended to think for a moment. ‘Er…’ He frowned, pursed his lips, then said brightly, ‘No.’ Breen could hear people tittering behind him.

‘See what I mean?’ said Jones. Then shouted up, ‘Let us in, or we’ll arrest you.’

‘What for?’

‘Obstructing the police.’

‘Who’s in charge?’ said Breen.

‘We’re all in charge,’ said the man quietly.

‘Profound,’ said Jones. ‘Let us in, or else.’

‘Or else what?’ muttered Breen quietly. ‘We’ll call the police?’

‘Or else,’ replied Jones.

‘I don’t think so,’ said the man, before pulling his head back in and closing the window.

‘Bastard,’ said Jones. ‘Want me to bash in the door? I don’t mind.’

‘What’s your name?’ shouted Breen.

‘What’s yours?’ The same head reappeared.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen.’

‘I’m Jayakrishna.’

‘See?’ said Jones. ‘They don’t even tell you their proper names. Just made-up crap.’

‘Would you at least come to the door and talk, Mr Jaya…’

‘… Krishna,’ said the man. ‘I’m fine here, thanks.’ A woman squeezed her head through the window next to the man and peered down at them.

Breen said, ‘I want to ask about last Thursday night. The night of the explosion.’

‘And?’ said the man who called himself Jayakrishna.

‘Did you see or hear anything suspicious that night?’

‘A bloody big bang.’

The woman giggled. It wasn’t the one Breen had looked at from Pugh’s garden. This woman had shorter, darker hair.

‘Mind your language,’ said Jones.

‘I mind your language,’ said the man.

Another giggle.

Breen said, ‘Did you know the man who lived there?’

‘I know he has moved on to a different existence.’

Breen looked down at his shoes. His neck was aching from looking upwards. He sighed and looked up again. Jayakrishna was smiling back down at him. ‘Before that,’ Breen said.

‘No. Is that all?’

Later, as they were walking away back to Marlborough Place with Tozer, Breen said, ‘It’s this tiresome assumption that they’re enlightened, and everything from our generation is still in the Dark Ages.’

‘Maybe it is,’ said Tozer. ‘Looks like it from my point of view.’

Breen looked at her briefly, but her expression didn’t change. For a woman who wore miniskirts, got drunk and kissed coppers, she had a bleak view of the world. Not surprisingly.

Jones said, ‘Enlightened, my bum. I should come back here when it’s dark. They’d see who was enlightened then. I mean, how can they
live like that? You can smell the damp in the place. We’re building all these new homes and they chose to live in a slum.’

‘What about the schoolgirls?’ Breen asked Tozer.

‘They said they had a free period at school. Only they changed their mind sharp enough when I said I was going to call their school to check. Know what they said? They said a body had been found in the house in Marlborough Place with its knob cut off.’ Tozer offered Jones a cigarette. Breen shook his head. ‘Only saying what they said. They heard it had been cut off and stuffed up his bum.’

‘Charming,’ said Breen. ‘Where did they hear that?’

‘Outside EMI studios. That’s what all the girls who hang around outside were saying.’

‘So much for avoiding scandal,’ said Breen.

‘What?’ said Jones. ‘Did they really cut off his prick?’

‘No,’ said Breen. ‘Didn’t you read the report?’

Jones shook his head.

The longer it took to solve this, Breen thought, the more likely it was to blow up in their faces.

Tozer stopped at the corner. ‘Maybe if I go back there on my own?’

‘Go back where?’

‘To the squat. They’d probably let me in, wouldn’t they? On my own?’

‘Worth a try,’ said Breen.

‘You’re bloody joking, aren’t you?’ said Jones. Breen stopped and knelt to do up a shoelace. When Tozer was a few yards ahead, Jones hissed, ‘She can’t do undercover.’

‘It wouldn’t be undercover. She’d just be taking a look.’

‘She’s a plonk, God’s sake, Paddy.’

‘Which means they probably think she’s just as much of a joke as you do,’ said Breen. ‘So maybe they’ll actually talk to her.’

‘Don’t think I didn’t hear that,’ said Tozer.

When they arrived back at the office Oliver Tarpey was sitting at Breen’s desk. Breen raised his eyebrows at Marilyn, but she was on a
phone call. She cupped her hand over the receiver and said, ‘I told him he could wait downstairs but he said you wouldn’t mind. And I’ve got a caller for you. She won’t give her name.’

Breen strode across the office and picked up the phone on his desk. Tarpey didn’t stand, so Breen had to stand by the desk with the phone by his ear. It was Mrs Hemmings. ‘I spoke to Robert Fraser. He’s not happy, but he’ll agree to meet you. This evening.’ She gave the address of a restaurant called Seed.

‘Seed?’

‘Yes. As in Onan.’

‘What?’ said Breen.

‘In the Bible. The poor fellow who was killed for spilling his seed on the ground. Quite appropriate, in Robert’s case.’ Mrs Hemmings hung on to the phone a little longer. Eventually she said, ‘I want you to understand. I’m only doing this because it was Frankie. Whatever it was that happened, he didn’t deserve it. I know you don’t think I’m very nice. But
he
was.’ And then she put the phone down on him.

‘Afternoon,’ said Tarpey, not getting up.

One of the constables was one-finger typing in the corner. Nobody had taken down Carmichael’s pictures of Lee Marvin that were Sellotaped to the wall. The dust lay thick on top of a row of reference books and manuals. Marilyn was chattering on the phone. Through an outsider’s eyes, Breen saw, the CID room might not look impressive.

‘Do you have somewhere private we could talk?’ asked Tarpey.

Breen looked into Bailey’s small office. It was empty. Breen guessed Bailey wouldn’t mind. He opened the door. ‘Can you make a cup of tea, Marilyn?’

She had picked up the phone again. She mouthed, ‘I’m on a call.’

‘Never mind,’ said Tarpey. He picked up a pigskin briefcase and followed Breen into the small room. Tarpey looked around. ‘Violets,’ he said. ‘My mum used to keep them.’ He picked up a small metal watering can and dribbled a little water into one of the pots. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Jealous husband or a woman spurned?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Breen.

‘But it is a possibility?’

‘Of course. Will you be expecting updates like this regularly?’

‘If they’re no trouble,’ said Tarpey. He took a potted plant and sat in Bailey’s chair with it. ‘We’d really like to know.’

‘
We
?’

‘Mr Breen. I know you think I’m interfering, but Rhodri Pugh is a very decent man who clawed his way up from nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ He put the plant pot on the desk and slowly turned it around. ‘You’re a Londoner. I don’t suppose you’ve been to Wales much, have you?’

Breen shook his head. ‘Never.’

‘We’re very proud,’ said Tarpey. ‘We are proud our Member of Parliament holds office. We need people like him. He represents the legitimate aspirations of the ordinary working man. Like myself. Like you, as well, Mr Breen. Politically, we Welsh are a progressive people. In other ways we are quite traditional. Or rather, we are men of principle. Frankie was a handful. He was a Londoner, not a Welshman. Like so many of today’s younger men, he didn’t share his father’s values. He was only interested in himself, not in the greater good. I always found that very sad. That’s a personal matter, however. But, if it were to affect Mr Pugh’s reputation, especially back home, I would be concerned.’ He turned and replaced the plant on Bailey’s windowsill.

Breen sat down in the chair opposite Tarpey. ‘We’re not sure how he was killed. Suffocated, possibly. The skin was then peeled from his arms and legs. His body was then bled.’

Tarpey frowned. ‘Definitely after he died?’

‘Yes.’

He touched the tips of his long fingers together. ‘Sounds like the work of a lunatic.’

Breen said, ‘That’s what the police surgeon thinks. Some sort of ritual mutilation.’ He looked at Tarpey. A well-groomed sort. A well-
cut suit for a Labour Party man. ‘All I know is they removed the skin and the blood for a reason. I don’t know what reason.’

‘Because they were insane, presumably?’

‘Why did they leave the gas on? I think they were assuming that the explosion would mutilate Mr Pugh’s body enough so that it wouldn’t be obvious what they had done to him. So what happened to his arms and legs is important. It’s not just a random act.’

‘But that’s just a guess?’

‘If you want to put it that way,’ said Breen. ‘You realise that the longer we take to solve this, the more likely there are to be rumours about the death? They’re already starting. And in the absence of information about who he mixed with, there’s no guarantee we can make headway.’

Tarpey sighed. ‘I understand your argument. But shining a spotlight on Frankie’s… style of life. It’s a risk we can’t take.’

Breen tugged at the knee of his trousers, then looked Tarpey in the eye. ‘If you are holding back any information about Francis because you think it might harm his father’s reputation, you’re only making it more likely that this whole thing will blow up in his face.’

‘Believe me, we want this wrapped up as much as you do.’

‘I’ve spoken to his solicitor and his doctor,’ said Breen. ‘They were helpful but told me nothing that I couldn’t have guessed already.’

His doctor had been a Harley Street man. Vague, hand-wringingly sincere, uninformative. He had only been Francis Pugh’s doctor for a few months. ‘Frightfully sorry… Barely knew the man…’ Another blank.

Breen said, ‘We just don’t know enough about Francis Pugh. We have no idea of his movements in the week up to his death. None at all. We don’t know who his friends were. He was paying for everything in cash so we have no idea of where he was and who he was visiting. It’s extremely frustrating. At this stage, we have no idea why. The simplest thing for us would be for the case to be in the papers. That would give
the people who knew him, who cared about him, the chance to come forward.’

Tarpey said, ‘As his father said, that’s a very last resort. We really don’t want that to happen. We are happy to put you in touch with anyone we can. And of course I will be in regular contact myself.’ He stood, holding his hand out for Breen to shake.

‘Is that it?’ said Breen.

‘Would you like me to stay longer?’ replied Tarpey, eyebrows raised.

After Tarpey had left, Marilyn knocked on Bailey’s door. ‘You look like you swallowed a lemon. ‘Who was that woman calling earlier who wouldn’t give her name, anyway?’

Breen looked up from the notes he’d been making.

‘Just a friend of Francis Pugh’s.’

She smiled. ‘And there was I, thinking you’d got yourself a girl-friend,’ she said.

It was in the basement of an old hotel on Westbourne Terrace. Under the restaurant’s name, hand-painted, the words ‘Organic & Macrobiotic’. Breen stood looking at it for a second or two, puzzled.

He descended the stone steps and peered into the room. He could see by the light of paper lanterns that it was already half full of young people. He looked around. Nobody appeared old enough to be a gallery owner.

‘Is there a Mr Fraser here?’ he asked the young man in jeans who seemed to be in charge.

‘How would I know?’

‘A table for two, then.’

‘Sit where you like…’ The man gestured. ‘We don’t book tables.’

The tables were giant cable-reels, lying on their side. Around them were arranged giant cushions covered in Indian cloths on which the diners sat, cross-legged.

There was only one of the tables left without any diners round it, so Breen lowered himself onto one of the cushions and scanned the menu. It was less of a list of what you could buy, more of a manifesto:

The sneer of the new generation. Everything you know is wrong.

‘I’ll order when my guest is here,’ Breen said.

A young couple appeared and were about to sit themselves on the cushions opposite him.

‘I’m expecting someone to join me,’ said Breen.

‘Fine,’ said the young man, sitting down on crossed legs opposite him. The girl wore a crocheted waistcoat and sat clutching his arm. She picked up the menu, chewed her lip and said, ‘What’s buckwheat?’

There was Indian music playing softly in the background, all twangs and swoops.

The girl opposite whispered, loud enough for Breen to hear, ‘Look. It’s John.’

Her companion turned round.

‘Don’t stare,’ she hissed.

‘Where?’

‘Just coming in.’

‘That’s not him.’

‘It is. John Lennon comes in here all the time.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not him. It looks nothing like him.’

Breen looked. He had seen John Lennon once, close to after he’d been arrested for drugs. The man was right. It looked nothing like him.

Breen was hungry and wanted to eat. Sitting on the cushions, his foot had gone to sleep. He had to shift to ease the pins and needles. He looked at his watch. The couple opposite him were being served something brown and nondescript in earthenware bowls.

‘Delicious,’ the boy said to the girl, ‘isn’t it?’

Something about the food’s lifelessness reminded him of the meals of boiled cabbage and potato his father used to make before his son took over the cooking. Widowed when Breen was only five, his father had never felt at home in the kitchen.

‘Do they have salt here?’ the girl said, looking around.

‘You shouldn’t have salt with it,’ the boy answered.

‘But it’s kind of boring, to be honest.’

‘You need to rebalance your taste,’ said the boy. ‘You’re just too used to the taste of salt. You need to taste the food instead.’

‘I just prefer it saltier,’ she said.

‘Anyway, you shouldn’t add salt after it’s cooked,’ he said. ‘It’s not digestible until it’s cooked.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘What about pepper?’ She looked at Breen and winked.

The boy didn’t answer.

Breen smiled back at her, sucked down his tea and looked at his watch again, then looked around to see if he’d somehow missed Fraser coming in. Despite the hair-shirtness of the food, the restaurant was popular with the young and the beautiful.

He noticed a tall, dark-haired man in a pale-pink suit arrive. He came straight over to Breen.

‘You must be the policeman,’ he said.

‘That obvious?’ said Breen, struggling to his feet to shake his hand.

‘I k-kept you waiting deliberately,’ he said, stuttering slightly. ‘To make you feel uncomfortable.’ He wore the suit without a tie; when he undid the buttons of his jacket, Breen caught a flash of a sky-blue lining. ‘You understand, I only agreed to come because of what happened to Frankie,’ he added unsmilingly. ‘Normally, I don’t much like the company of policemen. My experience of them has not been good.’

‘So I hear.’

He sat down on a cushion. From a distance Breen had taken him for another one of the young and beautiful. He was surprised to discover, close to, that he wasn’t so young at all. He was in his mid-thirties, Breen guessed, older than he was himself. And yet he seemed not only at ease in this place, but somehow above it. People stared.

‘Was it you who put a p-policeman outside my flat?’ he said. Breen noticed how Fraser’s eyebrows went up with each stutter.

‘That was not me. Plain clothes or uniform?’

‘Plain clothes,’ he said, labouring over the words. ‘But as easy to
spot as a nun in a whorehouse. They should give policemen lessons in how to dress. Who is it, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Bloody Drug Squad, I expect.’

‘Hi, Robert,’ the waiter who had served Breen called out with a smile.

Fraser turned to the waiter and said, ‘A Heavy Special, please.’

‘Make that two,’ said Breen.

‘Are you sure, Sergeant Breen?’ asked Fraser.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Breen.

‘Good for you. Do you know about macrobiotic food?’

‘Do I look like a man who knows about macrobiotic food?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ said Fraser, grinning for the first time. ‘As I said, you look like a policeman. It’s a diet based on ancient sacred principles. The most ancient food is whole grains, you know. Avoid processed grains and sugars.’

‘About Francis Pugh…’ said Breen.

‘You’re not interested in food, then? Or the spiritual life?’

‘I’m working, right now,’ said Breen.

‘I understand you are an art collector,’ said Fraser.

Breen frowned. ‘Who told you that?’

‘A little birdie told me you’d been showing around a Bridget Riley of Frankie’s. How did you come by it?’

The woman from the gallery must have told him. ‘I found the picture in the remains of his house.’

‘Was it wrecked? He had a lot of good stuff, Frankie.’

‘Actually right now it’s hanging on the wall in my flat.’

Fraser laughed. ‘You’re an art thief? How superb. There’s hope after all.’

‘Did you sell it to him?’

‘I probably did, as a matter of fact,’ said Fraser. ‘I used to do a lot of Bridget’s work. Do you like it?’

A waiter appeared with steaming earthenware bowls. They seemed
to be full of a thin brown soup of some kind. ‘I don’t think I do, I’m afraid,’ said Breen.

Fraser sighed. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re from the I-know-what-I-like school of British taste.’

Breen looked him in the eye, then shook his head. ‘The opposite. These days I don’t know what I like, at all. I used to think I did. But, no, I don’t much like it.’

Fraser nodded, smiled, lifted the soup bowl to his lips, took a gulp and then put it down again. He wiped his chin with a paper napkin. ‘Shame you saved the wrong picture, then. Frankie had one of the best Hockneys I’ve ever sold. And a Jim Dine that was amazing. I’m pretty sure he took a Patrick Caulfield off me, though I don’t think he ever paid. But you leave all the paintings and save a lousy print. And I heard they just bulldozed the rest. Sad, really. Are you keeping it?’

‘Keeping it?’

‘I mean, I would if I were you. I doubt the family would ask for it back,’ said Fraser. ‘His dad couldn’t care less, I don’t expect. You wouldn’t be the first copper on the take and at least you’d be taking something half decent, even if you didn’t know what it was.’

‘Is that why you like art? So you can feel superior?’

‘You miss the point. I don’t have to like art to do that.’

Breen said, ‘It’s what the English middle classes do, isn’t it? Use culture to look down their noses at other people.’

‘How d-dare you. I’m not remotely middle class,’ said Fraser. ‘I went to Eton. Your trouble is the same as all of the English. Seriously. You think people like me are snobs and that art is a trick that’s being played on you. And so you can never enjoy it for what it is, which is a shame. The British are afraid to feel anything at all. We are living in a golden age of art and music but most people in this country are too small-minded to notice.’ Fraser looked around him, then lit a cigarette. ‘The only trouble with vegetarian restaurants is they don’t serve wine. Why is that? I mean, wine is vegetarian, isn’t it?’

The rest of the food arrived. More earthenware bowls full of brownish rice and another of dark mush.

Breen eyed it. He stuck a fork in and tasted a little. The woman opposite had been right. It needed salt. ‘So was Francis Pugh’s collection worth a great deal?’ said Breen.

‘In money terms? Or art terms?’

‘Either.’

‘Frankie had a good eye,’ he said.

‘Which means?’

‘He got it.’

‘Got what?’ said Breen.

‘It, of course. It.’ Fraser took a mouthful of brown rice and held it on the fork in front of him. ‘Money-wise, I think if he’d lived he’d have quadrupled what he’d paid for those paintings in ten years.’ He popped the rice into his mouth and chewed slowly. ‘More, probably. But right now, none of them are worth that much.’

‘Really?’

‘But who cares? I don’t think Frankie cared that much about the value of things. Do you like the food, Sergeant?’

Breen prodded his fork into the bowl and pulled out something pale and rubbery.

‘What is it?’

‘Tofu,’ he said. ‘Fermented bean curd. A lot of this stuff comes from Japan. We have a lot to learn from them.’

Breen nibbled on the pale white rectangle that seemed to taste of nothing. ‘Did Pugh buy anything off you in the last couple of months?’ he asked.

‘No, Frankie hadn’t bought anything off me for months. Broke, I expect.’

‘Or anyone else, that you know of?’

Fraser lifted another a forkful of rice into his mouth and shook his head.

‘When did you last see Francis?’ asked Breen.

Fraser said, ‘I expect you know the answer to this already, don’t you? The policeman outside has probably told you.’

‘That’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I last saw Frankie about three weeks ago. He came to my flat. Longer probably. Four weeks.’

That was something, at least. No one else Breen had spoken to had met him so recently. He laid down his fork. His jaw ached from chewing. ‘What was he doing at your house?’

‘He just dropped in. We had a drink.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘God. What does anyone talk about?’

Breen said, ‘The man is dead. I need to know who he is and what he does.’

‘Art, if you want to know. I’m pretty sure I told him about two artists from St Martin’s that I met. I am planning to show their work at the gallery later this month and I was probably trying to persuade him to buy something from them. He argued the work was sensationalist. I agreed, basically. Tell me something, Mr Policeman. These artists want to put the words “Shit” and “Cunt” in my gallery window. Just for a day. It’s a kind of happening. Do you think I’ll get away with it?’

‘If you don’t tell the police first,’ said Breen.

‘Exactly.’ Fraser laughed. ‘But is it art?’

Breen thought for a second. ‘If it’s on a toilet wall it’s an obscenity. If it’s in an art gallery window, then it’s art.’

‘Bingo,’ said Fraser with a smile. ‘You’re not quite as bad as you look.’

‘And did you speak to him on the phone or anything after that?’

Fraser thought for a second, then shook his head.

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. I liked him. But he’d fallen off the radar a bit, if I’m honest.’

So far, Fraser was the only person who had seen Pugh, or talked to him, in the last weeks of his life, but that was still weeks away from his murder.

‘Why?’ said Breen.

‘I haven’t the foggiest, I’m afraid.’

‘And you can confirm where you were on the evening of the twenty-eighth of November?’

Fraser put down his fork too, now. ‘I was wondering when you’d get to that. I have house guests. Too many, as it happens. They can confirm I didn’t go out and kill Frankie, if that’s what you mean.’

What little Breen had eaten sat heavily on his stomach. ‘How well would you say you knew him?’

Fraser sucked his lower lip for a second, then said, ‘I suppose I knew him as well as anybody. Not that Frankie was the kind of person who let anyone get close to him.’

‘Shy?’

‘Not really. Just p-private. The p-people who have to invent themselves often are, I find.’

His stutter had returned, Breen noticed. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘We got on because we were the same thing. P-people who are escaping what England demands they should be. From other ends of the class spectrum, p-perhaps. But though class is clearly important to you, it’s not important to me.’

The restaurant was thinning out a little. The couple opposite them stood and left.

‘So why do you think somebody killed him?’

Fraser looked Breen in the eye and said, ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t. The thing about Frankie is that nobody disliked him. Apart from his daddy, of course. Why don’t you look there? Nothing would surprise me.’

‘Did you know any of his girlfriends?’

Fraser shook his head. ‘I didn’t really think much of his camp followers, to be honest. He liked married women. That way he knew they wouldn’t try and run away with him.’

‘Jealous husbands?’

‘Possibly. He was young. And very, very good-looking. And there was no chance of him wanting to become involved. Women liked that.’

‘Really?’

‘You sound surprised. You think it’s just men who want to fuck a lot?’

Growing up in a woman-less house, his understanding of women was limited to what his father had told him about them. It turned out to have been not always accurate.

‘I could swear you’re blushing, Sergeant.’

Breen said, ‘Were there any women in particular?’

Fraser smiled. ‘Like I said. His women didn’t interest me. He knew better than to turn up at my flat with them.’ He looked around. ‘Are we finished here? I could do with a drink.’ He looked at his watch. ‘There’s an opening at Kasmin’s. Free wine. Want to come, Sergeant? As you’re an art collector now.’