Coffin's Ghost (12 page)

Say it with flowers, that was Stella.

An ignoble thought, he told himself. Then with a wry smile: Not my season for being noble.

‘But Barrow Street again.’

Although there was no identification in the handbag on the victim in the car park, a passport as well as an airline ticket had been found tucked inside her jacket.

Henriette Duval, and an address in Versailles.

With a telephone number scribbled in pencil on a piece of paper.

When the police, in the shape of DS Davley, rang that number, Mary Arden answered. Both parties recognized each other’s voice. Tony Davley had not enjoyed the conversation. Handing over the death sentence is never agreeable.

‘And the Serena Seddon Refuge again,’ continued Coffin, without pleasure. ‘We do seem to get too much of it, and how are they taking it?’

‘Mary Arden is calm but frozen, and the rest . . .’ Phoebe gave a shrug. ‘Wild hysteria. Quite enjoyed, I think. Especially when the TV van plus camera arrived. The boy Billy is a
natural performer, they say. He’s loving it all. Evelyn is the only normal one, but she escapes to home and husband Peter and dog Humphrey.’

‘Peter Jones? I think I know him. He works in the theatre, sir,’ said Archie Young, thinking it was time he reminded them of his existence. ‘Haven’t met the dog.’

‘I know hirn. Dog too,’ said Coffin. ‘Nice man, bit lame in one leg.’ He drank some coffee and studied the other two who were sitting there, drinking his coffee, which he had offered them on politically correct grounds, because the whole force was having a low-drinking, no-smoking, keep-fit drive.

Politically correct rubbish, he thought, just meanness on my part, and got out the bottle of Famous Grouse.

‘Add it to the coffee.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ Archie Young accepted cheerfully. ‘Seems hard on good whisky.’ But he took a good swig.

Phoebe Astley said nothing, but smiled and took the same, her usual technique learnt from an Empress of Austria who had wept but taken what was on offer. Half a kingdom, in her case.

The pair of them looked cheerful and unembarrassed, their only worries professional.

– Join the embarrassed majority, he wanted to say. Surely you have something you are not proud of? But what had they to be embarrassed about? Archie Young lived a straightforward family life, while Phoebe, unmarried, did what she liked and kept quiet about it.

‘I’d like to talk to Mary Arden myself,’ said Coffin. ‘She may know more than she is telling.’

He had a transcript of the answerphone message in front of him. ‘I don’t like this reference to the police. Does she know who is meant?’

‘She says not.’

Coffin considered. ‘Worth pushing her a bit.’ He turned to Phoebe Astley. ‘What do you know? Any views?’

‘Young Ronnie Ryman-Lawson was one of them,’ said Phoebe, with some reluctance since he was a protege of hers. ‘But there may have been others.’

‘What’s known about Ryman-Lawson?’

‘He’s a graduate, came in after a good degree. London University.’

Coffin looked at her with a raised eyebrow. ‘You knew him?’

‘I gave a talk at his college, King’s, it was, on the modern policing. He came up and spoke to me, he seemed intelligent, I thought he’d do better with us than with the Met.’

‘And has he?’

‘He’s earned himself a bit of a reputation as a roughish customer,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I think he just wants to show a graduate can be as tough as any other. He may have overdone it a bit.’

‘Anything else?’ Coffin pressed her.

Damn you, she thought. Can you read my mind? Even more reluctantly: ‘He’s been a bit broad-minded about some of his friends.’

Archie Young shifted in his seat, but did not speak. Leave it to Phoebe. She knew as much as he did about Ryman-Lawson and possibly just a touch more.

‘How broad-minded?’

‘Got a bit friendly with Mack Mercer and Tolly Lightgate. I believe he got to know their women too.’ Put it tactfully, she told herself. It was going to sting however she told it. ‘We have a case against Mercer for drugs, intimidation of witnesses. There might be a murder charge . . .’

‘Why didn’t I know about this?’

Why not, indeed.

‘You were ill at the time, sir.’ Phoebe was now glad of her whisky in the coffee and took a quick swig. She had known all this had to come out, but it was quicker than she had expected. Damn Coffin.

‘Ryman-Lawson explained, admitted it was unwise, took some leave and came back to work. Knowing that he had put his promotion on hold. No one is suggesting he knew anything about the murder.’

Coffin felt sympathy for Phoebe but not the young man. He had been in and out of trouble often enough himself not to be a judge. Knowing Phoebe, he felt sure that Ryman-Lawson
might or might not be handsome, but he was sure to be intelligent and easy-mannered.

Archie Young felt it was time to speak. He drained his coffee cup, letting the whisky sting his oesophagus and appreciating its impact on his brain chemistry.

‘We have two deaths to deal with here. One, the shooting of Henriette Duval, is certainly murder and it seems very likely that the unlucky woman whose limbs were found in Barrow Street was also murdered. When we find the torso we should be able to establish whether this is so. Both deaths have one thing in common: Barrow Street and the Serena Seddon Refuge.’

He waited for the Chief Commander to speak.

‘I don’t like coincidence in a murder case. Somewhere in this there is a connection. It’s for us to find it.’

Archie Young chanced it: ‘The connection is the Serena Seddon Refuge.’ He had learnt that it never harmed you to state the obvious. You could then pause and wait for someone to fall in any hole there was. A lot of his success had been based on this principle.

Coffin worked in a different way; he fell into holes but climbed out of them.

He felt he was in a big hole just at the moment from which he would dig himself out by telling Stella about Anna. Being Stella she would gracefully, gently, forgive him.

Or she would slap his face, pack her clothes and move out. Taking the dog with her.

You couldn’t tell which.

‘We have to think about the so-far unnamed owner of the limbs: dead, where and why and by whom. Why cut off the limbs?’

‘Sex,’ said Phoebe at once. ‘It’s a sexual killing.’

‘Yes. I think you are right. Then there is Henriette Duval, Etta . . .’

‘It looks as though the shot came from the block of empty flats bordering the car park. It’s being searched.’

‘Be lucky if they find the gun.’ This was Coffin, in whose experience gun killers usually held on to the weapon, ditching it later. ‘Or the shell or a bullet.’

‘Unlikely . . . he or she will have taken it with him or her.’

‘No woman fired that shot,’ said Archie.

‘Don’t you be sexist.’ Phoebe shook her head at him. ‘Women can shoot. I’m a pretty good shot.’

‘Are you putting yourself forward? There was a mention of the police in the telephone call from Etta.’

‘That’s a joke, I hope, Archie,’ said Phoebe savagely.

Coffin intervened. ‘Of course it is. Come on, Archie, say you are sorry.’

‘Sorry. I apologize.’ He blamed the whisky. ‘Silly, not even funny. Of course, women can be good shots, very good. I am not good myself.’ He was being modest. He could shoot well.

Phoebe accepted the apology.

‘Then there is Alice, stepdaughter of Robbie Gilchrist.’

‘She’ll turn up,’ said Phoebe.

‘Yes, I think so, but let’s carry her name forward.’

Since she is the daughter of a friend of your wife’s we will do so, thought Phoebe. Also we are getting together quite a little file on Freedom and Gilchrist. Pretty free and easy in the sexual interests . . . Anything but horse, one officer had joked, and only that is out on account of height.

‘It might be a group,’ she admitted. ‘Perhaps all three are part of a group. Alice, Gilchrist and Freedom.’

‘What makes them a group?’

‘Something they are, something they know, someone they know,’ ventured Phoebe.

‘Work on that. Try to find out what they have in common.’

‘Apart from Barrow Street?’

Coffin was silent. As far as he was aware, he had never known Henriette Duval, Etta, but she might have known him. ‘Yes, apart from Barrow Street.’

‘What about Robbie Gilchrist, did they all know him?’

‘Try and find out.’

‘He knows George Freedom,’ said Phoebe suddenly. ‘Friends. It bonds them.’

Coffin nodded at Phoebe Astley. ‘It’s for you, Phoebe.’

Phoebe took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think I am the one to handle it on account of Ryman-Lawson.’

‘I think it’s why: you will know where to pinch him.’

Oh, lovely, Phoebe thought. She felt she knew what was going to come next.

It came.

‘And you won’t be on your own. I shall be there.’

‘We’re going to have to knock on a lot of doors,’ said Phoebe gloomily. She liked nice, straightforward cases, perplexing and difficult in their own way, but with nothing personal about them. This case was highly personal.

‘Agreed. Take whosoever you want, first clearing with Archie, of course.’

Archie Young nodded his head. So he had been noticed. It was nice to know he was really there and not floating in outer space. He sneezed twice, carnations always did that to him.

Tony Davley got the news when she returned to the office which she shared with four other young detectives of mixed sex, very mixed in one case, but all powerfully ambitious. They watched each other like cats watching a mouse.

Phoebe Astley put her head round the door. ‘You there, Davley? I want you in my office. Come now.’ She disappeared.

Tony stood up and gathered herself and what she needed together; this was promotion material. She knew it.

‘Or you might go straight down the drain,’ said Bob Pierce, the most mixed up and the nicest one there. He was gloomy today, the man he loved (at the moment) was being difficult and even in this liberated Second City the affair had to be conducted with caution. I could go for the Chief Commander, he told himself, especially now he looks a bit haggard. I always love a face with lines.

‘I won’t go down. But bless you for thinking of it, Bob.’ Tony patted him on the shoulder as she left. He was a character she liked. He was a kind of innocent in his way and how he would hate her for saying that.

Coffin thought about Stella and the flowers and decided
to go home early. And then he would face confession to Stella.

In the end, it wasn’t so early because his chief secretary, Gillian, came in with the crisis news.

Fire down below,’ she announced cheerfully.

‘And where is that?’

‘Where it usually is: in the money bags. Accounts say every unit is overspent.’

‘Money, money, money,’ said Coffin sadly. It would have been savagely if he could have mustered the energy. Suddenly he could. ‘Damn the lot of them. From the Home Secretary downwards.’

She planted a file, stuffed full of important papers, with estimates, figures and calculations. Forms to fill in, forms that had been filled in and some that looked as if the dog had had a go at them.

‘Some of the chaps aren’t so good at doing their figures.’

‘It’ll be Christmas in the Workhouse,’ said Coffin, going back to his sad voice.

‘No, it won’t. It can be sorted. You can do it.’

She and the accountancy unit had been trying since before he was stabbed to get him to deal with what they could see was brewing, but Coffin, usually so meticulous and efficient, had not given it much attention.

Now they had him.

‘Let Mr Giles come in and go over the figures with you. He’s great with figures, he makes them do what he wants.’

All Bert Giles said when he came into the office was: ‘All it needs is a few cuts here and there.’

‘Like cutting throats,’ said Coffin.

Giles ignored this. ‘I’ve made a few suggestions.’

This is the real business, life as lived, thought Coffin. Solving crimes, keeping the peace, that’s the fancy stuff.

He sighed and got down to it.

‘They won’t really notice,’ said Giles as he departed, all comfortably tidied up.

‘Don’t you believe it.’

So he was late back home and Stella was not there.

So not confession night tonight.

He stood for a moment on the threshold of his home. Always enjoyed that moment; when the peace and gentle dignity of where he lived spread itself around him.

He hung up his coat, and patted Gus the dog who had followed him silently up the stairs. The answerphone in the sitting room on the desk he shared with Stella informed him there was a message, but he decided to have something to eat first.

He made himself a sandwich with some smoked salmon that Stella was no doubt saving for some other function, which seemed to take the taste away. Then he sat working till Gus put the dog’s case for walkies very forcibly upon which they went out together to walk in the little garden, once part of the churchyard and still having an immemorial feeling.

When he got back Stella was there, finishing up the smoked salmon. She was eating it with toast, lemon, and a glass of white wine. A tacit rebuke to his sandwich.

‘Glad you found the smoked S. I left it for you.’

She wanted to talk, not to him, at him. He didn’t mind this since it meant she was in a vibrant, cheerful mood.

‘Did you like the flowers?’

‘I did.’ They made Archie sneeze, but better not say that. ‘They are lovely.’

‘It’s so tricky with flowers, isn’t it? You don’t want to be like a funeral. Go for smell, I thought, that’s why I chose roses and carnations.’ She frowned. ‘Although I am never quite sure about carnations. Pinks, yes; carnations . . . a little vulgar?’

‘Never.’

‘Oh, good,’ She finished her smoked salmon, wiping her fingers delicately on a white linen napkin.

‘That’s a nice bit of dialogue you wrote there.’

It was a game Stella played, making life a scene in a play. Rarely a cross noisy one, rather a sophisticated one of easy manners. Occasionally she was Lady Macbeth, sometimes Clytemnestra, and sometimes, but only for her husband’s good, another Portia. Generally speaking, she preferred to be a well-dressed lady in what used to be called a drawing-room
comedy with a nice line in witty dialogue. All keeping the hand in, she used to say, you never know what parts I might be called upon to play.