A Coffin for Charley (9 page)

‘And who's that?'

‘I had to do a bit of research there. He's a social worker, helped in Annie's case as a youngster. I think he's in love with her. That's her house. He calls on her.'

‘You
are
doing our work for us,' said Coffin.

A day begun without joy does not always improve. This day did not.

In the late afternoon of the misty day, Stella, parking her car in the underground car park near the theatre complex, became aware of the figure in the gloom.

The basement was badly lit and she had long meant to complain to Letty who she believed owned the place. Letty had various bits of property around the district, more than she would admit to.

Her stalker. Tall, thin, in a long dark coat and soft hat. A spectre, a monster.

She didn't have to pass the figure to get out. There was a flight of steps just at hand. She could turn and run.

But a nervous fascination seemed to put a brake on her legs. If she moved them it would be like walking through sand. So she stood where she was.

So did the man. In the dim light she saw he was holding a large white sheet of cardboard or something. Big black letters staggered across it.

I LOVE YOU. I WANT TO BE YOU.

She felt as if he had said he wanted to eat her. Stella turned and ran. As she ran she believed she could smell the man, smell his clothes, sour and stuffy as if he was made up of them and they only got into the air when he put them on.

Letty was in the forecourt when she got there and gripped her by the arm.

‘He's back there,' Stella was shivering. Her brave resolution to get him torn away from her was dragging skin and blood with it.

‘I'll go and get him,' said Letty. ‘I'm not afraid.'

‘I am, you might get killed.' Stella hung on to Letty and made her go into St Luke's Mansions with her. She had
taken on an assailant once, had no choice really, it was that or be raped, but once was enough. She knew now you never got over it.

She didn't take in Letty's white face, being too engrossed with her own state. They each had a strong drink and then another.

When John Coffin came in they told him about the episode and he went to the telephone to send a blast down the line. Where was the watch over Stella?'

A major bank raid had drawn all local patrol cars off, he was told.

Annie sat over some coffee, she was tired, it had been a wearing day. She felt she had made no progress.

Didi was late. All this auditioning was a waste of time, but if it made her happy that was something. She was happy these days.

She poured herself some more coffee. Didi was very edgy about Caroline these days, with her question about the man in the upper flat.

I'd better explain things to her. Tell her that the man is one of those people that have agoraphobia. Can't bear to go out. Have to stay shut up.

Like in a cupboard.

Didi was still late. Too late.

Where the river runs

‘Good,' said the killer. ‘You've got it absolutely right. You've got a real feel for it.' He stood back from the wall, it was dripping wet anyway and he hated getting rain on his clothes. He could see she was flattered.

‘Well, I'm new to it. Never done it before.'

‘I couldn't have done it better myself.'

‘Technically it's difficult, isn't it?'

‘Technically it's very difficult. These physical things always are, of course.'

‘Mm.'

‘You've got to think of it in terms of comedy, farce even. You've got to get everything in the right place at the right time or it won't work. Not the way it should. Smooth, easy. But natural, nothing forced.'

‘Play it for real.'

‘That's right. Good girl. You've got it.'

She shivered. ‘It's cold here.'

‘We're
in situ.
Always better to get the place correct.'

‘Does the river come into it? I don't remember the river.'

‘We have to think of it as a symbol … The river is time, isn't it? Running backwards and forwards. That's how it is.'

‘But the river flows one way.'

‘The Thames is tidal,' he reminded her. ‘It ebbs and flows, back and forth.'

She was prepared to be awkward; her mood was always prickly when she was cold. Everyone who knew her knew that much, but he didn't know her well enough. Some things about her he had observed well, how she walked, how she wore her clothes, her legs, good, her hands, not so good, he always noticed hands; these things he had taken in, but not the way her moods swung.

‘Time doesn't go backwards, though.' She was shivering. And the mud was marking her new shoes of suede, nearly suede, almost suede. After all, you wouldn't wear the skin of dead animals, would you? She looked down at the pale stone-coloured sandals and the stain on the toes sharpened her tongue. ‘Bloody cold.'

‘We think of the past,' he said gently.

‘I'm cold.' It was cold and she wasn't dressed for cold weather. Not only were her shoes suffering but mud was spotting her nylons. He felt sorry for her.

Poor child, he felt sorry for her. Better get on with it.

‘Shall we try again? Are you ready? Just lean your neck forward for me.' He stopped. ‘You don't mind?'

‘I think I do a little bit.'

‘I can understand it. It's tricky, difficult the first time, but I'll go carefully.'

‘I know you will.'

‘Gentle. Think of it as making love.'

She giggled. ‘Don't say that. My sister would die.'

‘Then don't think about her.' There was a small pause while he fiddled with a machine.

‘What are you doing? You're not taping this, are you? I don't like the idea of that. I mean, I'm not ready for that.'

‘No, I promise, just the last bit. For technical reasons. Timing, you know.' He bent down again. Better get the sound level right. ‘Just a small adjustment. I've got it. Say Eddie.'

She hesitated. ‘Eddie, is that it?'

‘Just say it.'

‘Eddie … Eddie.'

She said nothing further. All that was necessary had been said.

Better not to think of the river

Annie sat waiting for her sister to come home. Didi was already late, seriously late. She did stay out late and her sister recognized her right to do this. There were no strict rules in that house, she had been out herself earlier that evening after all. With the life they both led there could not be timetables. But Didi was a considerate girl who told Annie if she was going to be very late, or else telephoned to let her know.

She had a strong suspicion that Didi was out with Eddie Creeley, one of the enemy. Perhaps at the moment
the
enemy. In her mind, Eddie seemed omnipresent; he might be with Didi, or he might be the figure seen earlier that night lurking in the shadows down the street. Annie knew it was mad and could not be fact and there might not be
anyone there at all, just shadows in her mind (and goodness knows, there was reason for that), but sometimes the Creeleys seemed to her to have the power to be everywhere and to inhabit several bodies each.

But after all, it might just have been her own shadow against the street light.

Didi, where are you?

Annie watched the last television programme on the BBC and then switched to the all night channel. She sat there looking at an old film of Bob Hope without a muscle in her face moving, the laughs just wouldn't come.

She got up, took three deep breaths, then screamed. Not loudly but with a quiet strength. One of the psychologists she had seen, and plenty had had their hands on her, had said to her: Let it out. Scream. As loud as you like.

Annie had followed the advice in a modified, Annie kind of way. She very rarely followed advice in the way it was offered: it didn't seem to suit her body somehow. In the same way she never finished a bottle of medicine. In fact, usually she never took a dose. She had her own ways of effecting a cure for whatever ailed her. Not exactly faith cures but something very like it. She would say a little prayer to whichever god attracted her at the moment: Jehovah, Zeus, Buddha or even the anonymous just addressed as Thou.

The three quiet screams let out something inside her, never mind what, and did not disturb the neighbours who were old and slept badly but saw most things, as Annie knew to her cost.

After her three shouts, Annie went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. Hot tea always helped. It was a family tradition, indeed a national one, that hot tea was a help in time of crisis.

The kettle began to steam while she watched.
Heavens, I'm not keeping a prison here.
She warmed the pot, another myth probably but not one she was going to discard, you never knew.
Why shouldn't the girl be late home?

But Annie knew, none better, the dangers that night and
darkness could bring. There were some things that even hot tea could not assuage.

She drew back the blind to look at the day. A full moon sailed high but it was blotted every so often by thick clouds, the air was wet.

Didi doesn't like the rain. And I bet she'd got on those pale shoes that show every mark. I told her when she bought them that they would show every mark.

On that moonlit night so long ago Annie herself had been wearing bedroom slippers. Her parents had not looked out of the window to see her, so that they had known nothing until morning. They knew she had been in the garden because of the mud on her slippers and pyjamas. She got a beating for that. ‘Naughty girl, naughty girl.'

Annie kept quiet about what she had seen for several days after that, nor was she believed at first when she spoke. ‘Little girls shouldn't tell fibs.' They believed me in the end, she said grimly to herself.

She left the kitchen to go to the room in the front, taking her cup of tea with her. She might see Didi just opening the gate. If she went to the gate, then she might see Didi just turning the corner of the road, hurrying home.

Surely she would not be on her own? He was bound to see her home. Even that rotten Creeley boy would see Didi home. Eddie Creeley, I hate you.

As she stood there, her daughter crept into the room. ‘Why are you still up, Mummy, and not in bed?' She managed to make it sound like a reproach. She was sometimes more in charge of her mother than Annie was of her. She dropped her voice a tone. ‘Naughty Mummy.'

Annie put her arm round the child's shoulders, thin bony shoulders they were, but giving promise of growth. Wings might sprout from those shoulders and let her flutter away. Annie herself had thought as a child that she could fly.

‘Looking for Didi, still out. She's the naughty one.'

‘I heard you call out.'

‘You might have done. Just one of my shouts. You ought to try one yourself. Shall we shout together?'

‘I don't think so, thank you, Mummy.'

She was a quiet child who gave the impression that she found her mother a puzzle. Annie was not surprised, she found herself a puzzle.

‘Back to bed, love.' She hoisted the child on her shoulder and took her upstairs, her long legs in trousers making nothing of the steep stairs. She was not a strongly maternal type, although a loving parent. She had to be mother and father both and somehow the father had the best of it. ‘Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.'

Her daughter gave her a wary, sceptical, but friendly look as of one who had never found that particular bit of whimsy amusing yet could see her mother enjoyed saying it: the two loved each other.

Annie tucked the child comfortably in the blankets, they never used duvets, but the full outfit of sheet and blankets with an eiderdown in winter. ‘Close your eyes and go back to sleep.'

The child dropped her eyelids obediently but with every intention of staying awake. She took a quick look.

‘Quite closed,' said Annie.

She watched from the door with amusement, guessing her daughter's intention but knowing that sleep would win. Soon, she saw the light, regular breathing.

I never was a child like you, my dear, life caught up with me too soon, but you I will protect. I may not be the best of mothers or the most normal of mothers but I will see you get what is rightly yours. Be a child.

She left all the lights on to welcome Didi when she came in, then lay down, fully dressed in trousers and sweater, on her bed.

It was morning when she awoke; she knew at once that Didi had not come back. Her room was empty, clothes thrown around just as she had left it yesterday, the bed untouched.

The sun was shining, the dampness drying from the air, she had slept longer than she had known.

Downstairs she faced her choice; she could telephone the police, she could get in touch with Alex Edwards, her social
worker friend who knew the ropes and would be glad to help, too glad she thought sometimes, but you had to trust him. A creep, she sometimes castigated him inside herself, but a nice creep.

Or she could leave it, do nothing.

The dirty empty teacup and pot in the kitchen sink had to be washed before they could be used again. Once more to the ancient remedy, hot sweet tea but nothing to eat.

She was drinking it when she heard the newspapers drop through the letter-box. In pursuit of her new aim to be an educated woman, and at the same time prove she was more of a man than her husband (who read the
Sun,
if he read at all), she took
The Times
and the
Independent.

As she picked up the papers, the doorbell rang.

She had the door open before she knew she had touched it. On the step was the street's community policeman, she didn't know his name but she knew his face.

‘Didi,' she said. ‘You've come about Didi.'

He picked up the milk which was sitting on the step. ‘Can I come in? Here's the milk, want it in the kitchen?' He was on his way there with Annie following. ‘No, not Didi. Nothing about her, she's your sister? No, it's the old couple next door, they say that they've seen lights at night in that flat of yours upstairs and they think you've got squatters.'