A Coffin for Charley (6 page)

I am just watched. Perhaps admired, perhaps hated.

At Coffin's request she had made a list of the physical characteristics as she had had a chance to make them out. ‘Tell me all you can,' he had said. ‘Every detail helps, just jot it down.'

So she had made a list. As much for her own comfort as for his. To make the observer observed took away some fear.

So: a thin figure of medium height. A hat pulled down over the face. Dark glasses. Hands covered in gloves. Wears boots, and a wig.

A secretive man.

It came to a slim catalogue and not likely to help identify the man. She knew enough of her husband's colleagues to know that they might suggest it was all her imagination. A fantasy blown up in her mind. They would not say so directly to John Coffin, but they had their ways of showing scepticism. She wasn't sure, indeed, how much even her husband had believed her.

He must be a secret man, but someone somewhere knew him and was protecting him. That was what they always said, wasn't it? But perhaps no one knew this man's face?

I am having a hard time. I am frightened, she told herself. And that is a fact. My fear is a fact.

So she looked about her as she went out and kept an eye on the street. She spent hours at a rehearsal of a TV series in which she was involved, she visited her agent's office and signed a contract, she kept an appointment with her hairdresser in Beaumont Place.

‘You're fidgety, love,' said her hairdresser. He had known her for years, and had placed a signed photograph of her on the wall above the washbasin. He had other stage ladies there too. ‘Keep your head still or I can't get the cut right.'

‘Sorry, Kenny.' Stella took a deep breath. ‘Bit on edge.'

‘I can tell … Why not go downstairs and get some massage? Saw you on TV last night. You were lovely.'

‘Oh, good.' He was cheering her up deliberately and she knew it, but it was his pastoral skills as well as his brilliance as a cutter that kept his shop in Knightsbridge in the top league of hairdressers.

Kenny watched her walk away (without having gone downstairs to his new and expensive health and fitness salon for a soothing massage of the neck and back). He watched her passage past the hatter's window display and the jeweller's boutique and the little couture house where royalty shopped, all with their flowered window-boxes and bright front doors, and shook his head. He had known her for years.
That woman's worried.

Stella turned round to see him looking, she gave a wave, and stepped into a taxi.

‘Spinnergate,' she said. ‘And don't tell me it's too far.'

One of the disadvantages of living in the Second City was that taxi-drivers complained about taking you there. Not safe, they said, or no fares back.

But this one gave her a grin. ‘Lady, for you, anything.' He leaned out of the window. ‘Saw you in
Candida.
Great acting.'

She had recently done a back to back couple of productions of
Candida
and
A Doll's House,
first on TV and then taking them to St Luke's Theatre on a wave of public interest to boost audiences. It had worked.

‘My wife liked it too,' he shouted as he drove away.

Well, that's two of them that like me, thought Stella. Then she went home for a meeting with Letty Bingham and the rest of the committee which was setting up the Drama School, they would be discussing the constitution and the difficult matter of charitable status.

And on the mat outside her door was the cat and the cat was sitting in a wreath of white roses.

So he admires me this observer? And sends me white roses? Stella said to herself. By God, I'll get him. I don't have to be passive, I'll go after him myself.

Inevitably by this time the story that Marianna Manners
had thought she was being watched had gone the rounds and Stella was told about it by Mimsie Marker as she bought a paper from the stall by the Tube station and by the chemist when she bought some aspirin. (And if ever a woman needed it, I do.)

She had not heard about Annie Briggs's similar fears. She had hardly any knowledge of the Creeley family.

Murder is always noticed locally. People come to stare at the home of the victim, some take photographs. The media is always there, although they melt away as a new story breaks. The police take their time in measuring, photographing, and taking samples for forensic investigation.

The body of the victim seems forgotten.

Not in this case, however, since she had a beautiful and much photographed body and that body had been loved by a well-known MP.

Used, said the local feminist organization, used and abused and finally sacrificed. This group of women who had a club room in Spinnergate admired Stella Pinero, deplored her marriage to John Coffin (A policeman, just think! She was better free!) and disliked Job Titus, MP. They were pretty libertarian, this group of Feather Street ladies, and did not advocate sexual austerity for men, women or beasts; they liked sex themselves, they just hated Titus's way of going about it. They thought he was a coarse fellow.

Coffin was soon made aware that the murder of Marianna Manners was not going to be an easy one to handle. The appearance of Job Titus on various TV news flashes, of Job Titus as he left his flat to go to the House of Commons or walked his dog in the park, reminded him of this even if he had felt like forgetting. Apart from anything else, Titus was demanding police protection from the harassment of the media while issuing threats of legal action if his name was mentioned as a suspect.

Because of the sensitivity of the case, Coffin kept himself informed of all that went on in the Murder Room which had been set up in a church hall in Swinehouse on the
border of Spinnergate, close to where she had lived and been murdered in the block of flats in Alexandra Wharf, near to Napier Street where Annie Briggs lived.

There had been a good many changes in the Serious Crime Section in the last year or so as Coffin had worked through his senior police officers and weeded out the weaker members of the team by means of early retirement, sideways promotion, and in one case by death. The unit was now smaller but more efficient.

Archie Young headed all important cases, and had taken personal charge of this one. It was important for Young as well as John Coffin, he was a very ambitious man. His wife, Alison, knew this trait and used her influence on him to moderate an open show of it. She was cleverer than he was and knew that ambition had to be masked. She valued her friendship with Stella Pinero which both of them used to communicate worries about their husbands and to put a brake on the men when it seemed wise. Both of them were convinced that without their efforts their spouses would be dead of overwork.

‘She was strangled and stifled but there was no rape, no semen traces, nothing like that … All the same, the pathologist thinks there might have been some sexual satisfaction involved.'

‘Why?'

‘He thinks the killer took his time about it, that's all. Getting some kicks.'

‘How does he know? About the going slow?' It was not a picture he was going to cherish.

‘I don't know. Something to do with the bruising, the flow of blood. Or perhaps he's just guessing. Percy's good at guessing.' Professor Percy Peters had worked with them, on and off, for some years now. They knew him well enough to value his intuitions. He had been at it so long that he seemed to have developed a sympathetic link with both killer and victim.

It was that or black magic, Young said, and he was a rationalist by long habit. Inside himself, he admitted that Percy could make his flesh creep.

‘Been turning up some things about her lifestyle. She was a good dancer and an actress as well, apparently they all have to do everything now, even a bit of singing. She was unemployed a lot.'

‘Aren't they all?' Coffin had been well schooled in the politics of The Profession by his wife.

‘She took what work she could get.' He paused. ‘Did a stint at Karnival in Ladd's Alley.'

Coffin raised an eyebrow.

‘Yes, the transvestite club. No evidence that she was into that, for her it was work. Or probably.'

He said probably because, unlike Percy Peters, he was no mind-reader and how could you know what went on inside people? Maybe Marianna had found it agreeable to dress up as a man. She was a tall, muscular girl and would have looked the part.

Karnival was a club for those who wanted to dress up and dance. It also offered a cabaret.

Fun, Fizz, Frou-Frou and Frolic, it advertised.

It was well run and although probably seedy-looking in the hard light of day, in the evening managed to be most of the things it promised.

‘Ever been there, sir?'

‘Yes, once. I was watching a female impersonator. He was good, the whole act was good, even I thought he was good and I knew who and what he was.' He had had to arrest him, though, but for theft not for dressing up. ‘Of course, I think some of them get the most kick out of a man who doesn't manage to look quite like a woman. Or a woman who doesn't quite fit together as a man, however butch she is. The other sex still hanging out seems to give more of a thrill.'

‘And that's where Titus seems to have met her.'

‘Good lord!' Coffin breathed in sharply. ‘Now you have surprised me. What was he doing there?'

‘He's straight as far as we know.' And the Special Branch usually did know that sort of thing and had been approached by Young. ‘He may be a bit of a voyeur. I think he visited for the hell of it. Just to look and pry.' He
didn't like Job Titus. ‘Anyway, he picked up Marianna there. So maybe they both had something in common.'

‘A lovely man.' Coffin considered. ‘How did you get this?'

‘Judy Kinnear, Special Branch. She keeps an eye on him, just in case. I knew she'd be on to whatever there is to know, it's her job. And I've known her for years. Worked together once. Before she moved over to Special. Do you know her, sir?'

Coffin shook his head. ‘Know the name.'

‘She looks like a hard-faced bitch, but when you get to know her she's one of the best.'

‘I don't suppose Titus is a security risk?'

‘No,' said Archie Young regretfully. ‘Not much chance. He's not in the government nor likely to be. He might be a killer, though.'

‘Worth having a look round at Karnival. Marianna might have run into someone there who killed her.'

‘Or she could have met a man anywhere and taken him home. Or it might be an old friend that we know nothing about yet. Or she might have been watched and followed, as she said. If Titus didn't make that up.'

‘Interesting that he was seen talking to young Creeley.'

‘I'm told that the young Creeley is a reformed character and could never harm a woman. That's the latest word on him.'

‘The entry book is wide open,' said Coffin, ‘and we don't know the names of the runners.'

‘She auditioned for a production at the St Luke's Theatre; an amateur affair. Do you think Miss Pinero would know anything about her?'

They were all careful how they brought in Stella's name; the Chief Commander had been known to be savage, and he was not a man whose bark was worse than his bite.

‘She has nothing to do with that production,' said Coffin. ‘But I did ask her.' He added: ‘I'm worried about her.'

‘I had heard. Don't you worry, sir. We won't let anyone touch her.' If there was an ‘anyone' and it wasn't Job Titus.

Stella had said no, she had not been present when Marianna was auditioned, the producer of the play with a colleague from the Drama Department at the University had that task. A lot of hopefuls were coming to be auditioned because it was known a Drama School was being established and that this was a kind of pre-run.

The news had been on the local radio, and she herself had been interviewed on Docks TV. In a time of recession it was good news. Yes, she was able to say all the groundwork had been done, the constitution of the school settled: it was to be registered as a charity, the Rector of the University was going to be one of the trustees, and Lady Barningham, another. The school had already been accepted by the local education authorities so students would be eligible for grants. Yes, they expected some mature students also. The name was going to be the Pinero School of Dramatic Art.

Yes, they had the premises: the old Rectory of St Luke's which had housed a private secretarial school, now defunct, would be converted. Later, they would build.

‘Might be a lot later,' said Letty gloomily. She flexed her hands nervously, she had long delicate fingers which she loaded with rings. She favoured heavy smooth gold. ‘Money's tight.'

Her gloom might have been entirely due to the economy but Stella knew her sister-in-law better. ‘No news about Elissa?'

‘No, I am having an interview with Tash tomorrow and he's going to report progress but from what he said on the telephone there isn't any.'

‘I am sorry.'

‘I do miss her so, I loved her even when we quarrelled.' A tear appeared in her eyes.

‘Here.' Stella went across to the drinks table and poured out a gin. ‘Drink it up, mother's ruin but I reckon it helps.'

Letty looked at the glass. ‘Is there any ice?'

‘Oh, you Americans. Yes, I'll get some.'

She came in with a bowlful of ice lumps and some sliced lemon. ‘I'll have one with you. I don't feel too jolly myself.'

‘Your daughter? How is she?'

Stella's daughter was in The Profession but had recently married.

‘She telephoned from Edinburgh this morning to say she is expecting twins. I can't believe it. I didn't even know she was pregnant. I've only just got used to her being married.'

Letty dabbed the tears from her eyes and managed a grin. ‘Hello, Grandma.'

‘Yes. I won't be called Gran or Granny.'