Cold Coffin (7 page)

Coffin knew them. To Phoebe Astley, he said, ‘Keep me up to date.'

‘I will, of course.'

Underneath, they were conducting a different dialogue. Coffin was saying that this was a particularly bloody murder in which he had been named and called in, and he wanted to know why.

From Phoebe, proving that great minds do not necessarily think alike, came the thought that she was irritated by this and wished he would keep out. She would call him when it was necessary.

Coffin picked up the irritation as he watched the body removed.

‘What about the MO?' he asked Phoebe. ‘Does it remind you of the Minden Street murders?'

Phoebe shrugged. ‘We don't know if she even knew where Minden Street was.'

‘Minden Street may have known where she was.' He was pacing the area where the body had rested.

Plenty of blood. Too much. Amazing the way the heart keeps pumping it out when it would be better to stop. Even if help had got there earlier, she would probably still have died.

And she had asked for him, allegedly. By name.

Coffin. Get Coffin. Sounded like a Hitchcock film.

To Phoebe he said, ‘Get the blood tested.'

Surprised, Phoebe nodded. ‘We always do, sir.'

Coffin walked round the room. The police technicians, still at work, moved aside as he came past.

It was a small museum, showing not only heads. Whole skeletons, exposed in the old-fashioned cabinets, had not been disturbed.

‘It's the heads that are important,' he said, coming back to Phoebe.

Looking at the ring of tiny skulls, Phoebe thought she had worked that out for herself.

‘Question the man Joe thoroughly. I get the feeling he may know something.'

‘That will be done, sir.'

‘I'll go to the post-mortem with you,' said Coffin. He felt he should; the dead woman had asked for him as she died. It was the least he could do for her.

‘Thanks. I hate that place.'

‘So do I.' Who didn't? As a young policeman he had attended post-mortems as duty demanded. He hated the ice cabinets, with their freight of bodies, the trays on which they emerged to lie on metal tables with drip trays underneath.

Coffin looked round for Stella, only to find that she had done a disappearing act, and not a theatrical one; she was nowhere to be seen.

She was outside in the car, reading.

‘I shall always bring a book with me when you take me out to dinner, then I can read it when you go off.'

‘You seem to have got one.'

‘I found it in the car.' She held it up:
David Copperfield
. ‘I never had you down as a Dickens reader.'

‘Oh, every one is at some point . . .' He could see this needed amplification. ‘I thought Dickens' London might help me with the Second City.'

‘And has it?'

‘Not really. Some of the characters fit in. Mimsie Marker, for instance. She'd be the rich eccentric who rescues the lost child.'

‘And you would be the poor little lost boy, I suppose?'

Coffin was quiet. Maybe yes, maybe no.

As he started the car, Phoebe went past, gave them a wave. No smile.

‘What's up with her?'

‘Oh, she's having an identity crisis. She has them at times.'

‘Sex?'

‘That too, I expect.'

As he spoke, Phoebe came back. ‘I'll see the blood is tested.' Then she said, ‘I'll go and see the cousin, Natasha Broad. Do you want to come, sir?'

‘As Dr Murray asked for me by name, I think I had better.'

‘I'll set it up and call for you, sir.'

‘Right.'

‘Better be soon, I think, don't you?'

‘Have to be. If not soon, then not at all. She has someone with her?'

‘There's a husband.'

As they drove away, Stella said, ‘Did you go and call on the Jacksons?'

‘No. There was no one left to call on.'

All dead.

Bar one. Jack. But that would be attended to. ‘Funny you should ask. I had been thinking about them, and I believe Phoebe was too.'

‘You think the same person killed Dr Murray?'

‘Could be. It's not impossible. That's why I want forensics to get a move on.'

‘You mean the way she was killed? The gunshot?'

‘Yes.' He had meant that, but in addition it came to him that there had been a smell. A sour, body smell, as if the killer had run a long way to the kill and hung about afterwards so that he had left his ghost behind.

Without meaning to, Coffin put his foot down.

‘You're driving much too fast,' reproved Stella.

It was true he had visited the house in Minden Street and seen the bodies where they lay. They had been taken by surprise: the mother had died first, the two girls afterwards, together in the same room. As he walked around it, he had wondered if the mother had brought the killer in with her.

‘Is this what you would call a serial killer?'

‘Motive is certainly obscure. At the moment.'

‘Killing for the sake of killing, then?'

‘Certainly I felt a hint of pleasure in it.'

Perhaps not in the Minden Street killings, but in the murder of Dr Murray, the careful way the heads had been laid out around her seemed as if the killer had savoured what he was doing.

If it was a he. Could be a woman.

But he thought there was some evidence of physical strength. Dr Murray was a tall, strong woman, who apparently had not struggled. Also, one of the twins, Alice, he thought, had large bruises on her upper arms, as if big strong hands had gripped her hard.

There might just be a fingerprint to be culled there. Out of the bruise. Worth thinking about.

The traffic light has changed,' said Stella gently. ‘Safe to go.'

A bruise and a smell. Not much to work on, and certainly not the sort of information to lay before Phoebe Astley.

‘Let's go for a drive,' said Coffin to Stella. ‘So I can think.'

‘You mean I'm not to talk?' Stella wound a scarf round her head.

‘Now and then.' He gave her a friendly look but said nothing else. Stella closed her eyes. It was possible she slept, but she had the distinct impression they were across the river and driving round Blackheath, then down to Greenwich where she and Coffin had first met.

She put her hand on his wrist. ‘I know where we are. And I know why: you are talking with ghosts.'

‘Perhaps we shouldn't have left, Stella.'

‘We didn't have a choice. Life picked us up and moved us on. It always does.' Then she said, ‘And now it's dropped us back.'

‘We'd better go home.'

‘And don't say that home is always where I am . . . You can write better dialogue than that.'

Coffin laughed. ‘Besides which, we would both have been homeless for about thirteen years when we were apart. Come on, I don't know what it is about St Luke's Tower with you in it, but I like it. I reckon it's as near home as you and I will ever have. We'd better get another cat. After all, we still have a dog.' Gus had been ill but had survived. As probably, Coffin felt, he always would do.

He turned the car and drove back to the Second City.

Phoebe, as ever, did not let any grass grow beneath her feet.

There was a message on the answerphone by the time they got back to St Luke's Tower, after their drive through the past and after Stella had cast a wistful look at her theatre complex, and Coffin had parked the car in the underground garage that he had had constructed, since life up above was dangerous for a Chief Commander's cars. One petrol bomb too many.

The message said that a car would be calling for him NOW to take him to 20 Nean Street, where Nat and her husband, Jason Broad, lived. Out of the shadow of her powerful cousin, she was always Nat or Natty. The change of name seemed to change her too. Or so Phoebe, who had known her briefly as a friend of a friend, thought.

Phoebe was driving the car herself. ‘Want to be introduced, or want to be anonymous?' she asked as he settled into his seat.

‘Anon would be easiest, but it's too late.'

There was a short thick-set figure, male he thought, it was just conjecture, sitting on the door step of no. 18, eating a stuffed bagel and making a messy job of it. He moved aside as they came past, giving them a bright, birdlike stare.

‘Almost human,' observed Phoebe as she pushed past.

Coffin raised an eyebrow. ‘Now, now.'

‘Joke,' she said hastily. ‘He's probably a mathematical genius busy working out the answer to quantum physics versus relativity.'

Coffin looked up and down the street, which he knew to be one of those streets in his bailiwick where a car could be stripped down of all, including the tyres, in a matter of minutes. It was now full night, so even more dangerous.

He went over to the seated figure, pushed two coins into his hand and said, ‘Same again if the car is still there and in one piece when we get back.'

Sam nodded without a word and pocketed the money.

Natty and her husband were not the only people waiting for them. There was a third person, sitting on a hard, wooden chair, looking white and tired. Coffin and Phoebe were offered similar chairs. It was one of the bleakest rooms that Coffin had seen: plain white paint, cream walls, and a scattering of rugs on a polished wooden floor. Mugs of coffee stood on a round table.

‘Dr Murray's husband,' said Phoebe. ‘He just got here.'

He came forward, held out his hand. ‘Dave Upping . . . Margaret's my wife.' Then he corrected himself. ‘Was my wife. We were married all right, but she chose to keep her single name.' He was talking nervously and too quickly, as if he wanted to get the words out before they escaped him. ‘I've been away. I work abroad a lot, I was in Paris, I'd taken the train . . . I can't believe she's gone. I want to see her.'

Coffin introduced them both. ‘Chief Inspector Astley, and I am Chief Commander Coffin. I'm sorry if we've been slow.' Upping, on the other hand, had been very fast.

Dave nodded. ‘You didn't have to introduce yourself. I've seen both of you around. I've even cut your hair once, sir, although you've forgotten.'

No answer for Coffin there, so he did not try to give one.

‘I got the message on my mobile. I was already on the way home . . . I was near Waterloo, on the Eurostar. One of your chaps met me at the station and brought me back. Kind of him. Appreciate it. But I want to know, want to see her.'

‘Glad we could do so,' said Coffin. And of course, it establishes that you were in Paris at the relevant time, and not over here killing your wife.

‘I believe I will have to identify Margaret,' he said. ‘Someone has got to.'

‘Later,' said Coffin. ‘Just a formality.'

‘How was she killed? I know she was attacked, and I know where, in that bloody museum, but how?'

‘She was shot. Probably by a handgun, but we don't have the weapon.'

Dave said in a dull voice. ‘I knew it was murder, of course, not an accident.'

Coffin thought: It's most often husbands who kill wives.

You could buy an alibi, or hire a gunman. Check. Check the man, Phoebe. She caught his look.

‘How was that?' Phoebe had been silent; now she spoke.

‘Margaret had been worried. I thought perhaps she was ill or wondered if she was. She said no.'

‘But she admitted to being worried?'

‘She didn't deny it.'

‘No clues?'

Dave shook his head.

Phoebe looked at Nat, who shook her head. ‘I don't know. I was worried myself about her, but there was nothing I could put a finger on.'

‘Right,' said Phoebe. ‘Later on we will be taking statements from you.' She looked at Natty and Jason. ‘From all of you. Just routine, something we have to do. To get places and people and times clear.' She gave one of her radiant, kind smiles that meant nothing. ‘And, also, taking a look at Dr Murray's house.' Which we will search thoroughly and ruthlessly, just to see what we can find.

‘It's my home too,' he said dully.

‘Don't worry, we shall not make a mess.'

Thus laying out, whether he knew it or not, the pattern of the next twenty-four hours. You got these jobs done at once, or their validity drained away like water from a bowl with a hole in it.

People, witnesses, could be such tellers of untruths. Rooms, objects even, did not like it, but had to be caught quickly before time altered them, corrupted their first honesty.

Natasha stretched out a hand quickly. ‘Don't worry, Dave. We'll be with you, won't we, Jason?'

‘Every step of the way,' Jason said promptly.

‘Stay here tonight with us. Don't go home until tomorrow.'

Dave smiled. ‘Thanks. I'll be better off at home. On my own.'

Phoebe produced a small plastic bag in which rested the golden ring that had rolled from Margaret Murray's pocket. She held it up so they could all see.

‘Do you recognize it?'

‘No.' Dave stared at it. ‘Looks like a wedding ring. Not Margaret's; she never wore one.'

Natasha looked it and shook her head.

‘May not be important,' said Phoebe easily. ‘We'll find out.'

The mobile phone rang in her pocket. ‘Excuse me.' She disappeared into the hall.

She was soon back and gave a nod to the Chief Commander. He tried to read her expression but failed.

‘Inspector Dover will be round with Sergeant Helen Ash to take your statements and to go over the house and so on. He will set up all the arrangements.'

Coffin gave her a small nod, which let her know they would be off for now.

When they were outside in the car, Coffin turned to her. ‘Well?'

‘You asked for the blood to be tested pronto, sir.'

‘I did.'

‘Good guess, sir. There was blood of two types: O and AB.'

‘Both pretty common.'