William Shaw - She's leaving home

“How are you doing?” he said to Prosser.

The office was suddenly quiet. Prosser was the longest serving of the CID Sergeants at Marylebone. Early forties. Tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. Just split up from his wife. Unlike Breen or Carmichael, he still lived in one of the police flats off Pembridge Square and spent his evenings playing declaration whist or pool at the table with the younger officers at the section house across the road. They all loved him. One of the lads.

“Me?” said Prosser, walking over to drop a folder on Jones’s desk. “I’m fine. It’s you we’ve got to worry about, is what I’m hearing.”

Marilyn looked up from her desk and broke the silence. “Meeting at nine sharp on the St. John’s Wood murder. Papers got wind of it last night,” she said.

Jones whispered something to Prosser, and Prosser looked at Breen and laughed.

“Carmichael,” Bailey said, emerging from his office. “I need a word.”

“Right away, sir.”

Breen crossed the room to his desk; there was a metal fire bucket standing on it. Inside was a note that read In case you feel a bit queasy . The note had been written on a sheet of Izal toilet paper, scrawled in pencil above where it read Now Wash Your Hands Please . Next to the bucket lay Dr. Wellington’s report.

Breen looked up at Prosser and Jones. Jones was trying not to laugh; Prosser just smiled. Turning to the report, Breen pulled out two black-and-white ten-by-eights of the dead woman’s face. Frizzy-haired, eyes closed, about sixteen or seventeen years old, maybe older, with square cheekbones that cut across her otherwise round, soft face. She had the flaccid look the dead have.

He was reading Wellington’s one-page report when Carmichael came back and sat at his desk.

“What did Bailey want?” asked Prosser.

“He wanted to know how I was so successful with the women.”

Marilyn snorted.

“Your wife especially, Jones.”

“Really funny.”

“He wanted to know why I drive a brand-new Lotus Cortina and you only have a clapped-out Morris.”

“You haven’t got a Lotus Cortina,” said Jones.

“No, but I’m going to, one of these days.”

“Seriously.”

“He’s getting his knickers in a twist about me doing stuff with the Drug Squad.”

Breen looked up. “When did you start working with the Drug Squad?”

“It’s not official, like. I just been giving them a bit of help. You know. And Bailey don’t like it unless he’s had the forms in triplicate.”

Bailey appeared at the door of his office. He glared at Breen, then said, “Right, Breen, Jones. What have we got?” The team crowded into Bailey’s office.

What have we got? Facts that were too sparse to suggest any sense of direction. The policemen had returned from their search yesterday with a pair of knickers; they were large, white and matronly, and from the state of them had obviously been lying on the ground for far longer than the dead woman. Nothing else had been found.

The victim remained unidentified. The door-to-door inquiries had come up with two individuals-in addition to Mr. Rider-who suggested that the dead body was a prostitute. This, Breen considered, was a possibility. Streetwalkers used Hall Road, only five minutes’ walk away, but Carmichael said that nobody had reported any prostitutes missing.

What the body was doing out there in the open was a mystery. It was a halfhearted place to leave a corpse, barely concealed in such a public place. It suggested a lack of planning by the person, or people, who’d murdered her. The murder had been badly thought through. Or at least, the disposal of the body had been.

“No decent leads, really. It’s enough to make you sick,” said Jones. People snickered.

“Enough of that,” said Bailey.

“Ha-very-ha,” said Carmichael.

“I said. Enough.”

A woman police officer entered the room. Everyone stopped for a second and looked at her. Though there was a women’s unit at Marylebone, they were only on admin tasks and social work. If a crime involved a kid you’d ask one of them in. Apart from that, they never came into the CID office.

The woman blushed. She was gawky-looking; a thin, angular face, and dark hair cut into a lank bob.

Bailey scowled and said, “You’re early. I’ll be with you in a minute, Miss…?”

“Tozer, sir.”

“We’re wasting our time there,” said Jones. “Going over the same ground. She was dumped, Wellington said.”

“Breen?” said Bailey.

“I don’t agree. Until we know where else to look, it’s our best bet.”

“Waste of time, I say.”

“What about the woman who discovered the body?” asked Bailey.

“It wasn’t a woman. It was a girl. A nanny. No name yet. We’re looking.”

The one thing the door-to-door inquiries had established beyond doubt was that the orange mattress that had lain over her had been there before she had been dumped. Several people had noticed it, lying against the wall on top of the pile of rubbish.

Breen picked up the forensics report and started to summarize it for everyone in the room. In it, Wellington said pretty much what he’d said the day before yesterday to Breen. She had been strangled. He estimated that she had died between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the previous day-around fifteen hours before she was discovered. The fact that blood had settled on one side suggested she was not dumped until at least two hours after she was killed, which meant that she had not been dumped until 8 p.m. at the earliest on the previous day, by which time the alley would have been dark.

“Nobody’s going to dump a naked bird in broad daylight,” said Carmichael.

“She’s not just a naked bird,” blurted the woman constable. A broad West Country accent made her voice sound doubly out of place.

Everyone stared.

“No, you’re right. She’s a naked dead bird,” said Carmichael. People laughed. Tozer colored but didn’t lift her glare from Carmichael’s face.

“That’s sufficient, thank you,” said Bailey. “Wait outside please, Constable, until we’re ready.”

The woman left. Breen picked up from where he’d left off. There were no obvious signs of penetration, though Wellington hadn’t ruled out a sexual assault. He looked at the woman constable through the glass. She was standing outside, looking at her feet, embarrassed.

“Missing persons?” asked Bailey.

Jones answered. “No one there matching the victim’s description in the last two weeks.”

“A pretty, young, naked woman stirs the prurient instinct. With that kind of attention it is useful to make progress fast. OK, everyone. Back to work,” said Bailey with a sigh. “And Breen?”

“Yes, sir?”

“That woman constable outside has applied to join CID.”

There was an immediate hush in the room.

“Like it or not, she’s been made a TDC,” said Bailey. Temporary Detective Constable. She was a probationer.

“You’re joking?” said Carmichael.

“It is not my doing, you can be quite sure of that.”

“Hell’s teeth.”

“She will be on the murder squad with you and Jones, Breen.”

“Oooh,” came the catcalls. “Breen has got a girlfriend.”

“What?” said Carmichael. “We’ve got to work with a bloody plonk?”

“I should imagine Breen needs all the help he can get.”

“But she’s a woman, sir,” continued Carmichael.

“Well spotted, Carmichael.”

“So’s Breen,” said Jones.

“That will be all, thank you,” said Bailey, closing the door behind him.

It was a new Cortina, F reg, pale blue with a white door, the letters POLICE picked out in black on the side.