Joe Coffin Season One

by Ken Preston

  Coffin dragged Stut to his feet. Already a large pool of blood had gathered on the wet tarmac, mingling with the puddles of rainwater. Stut was floppy in his arms.

  “Come on, pull yourself together,” Coffin said, manhandling him onto the back of the Fat Boy.

  “I’m cold, Joe, so fucking cold,” Stut said, his voice slurred slightly.

  The fire escape door swung open, rebounding off the wall with a loud clang. Velvina was at the front, her hair in wild disarray, blood seeping through her clothes where Stut had shot her. She bared her teeth and snarled, reminding Coffin for a split second of a wolf, ready to tear him apart.

  Addison and Clevon were right behind her, jostling to get through the doorway.

  Coffin climbed on the bike and gunned it into life.

  “Wrap your arms around me and hold on tight!”

  Stut had only just grabbed onto Coffin before they were moving, and Coffin tore past the three vampires, arms stretched out to grab them, fingers brushing at Coffin’s shoulder, before he was out on the main road.

  Coffin put his head down and opened up the throttle. They sped down the road, droplets of blood flying from his amputated finger in the wind.

  marge

  Nick looked up and down the towpath, still holding onto the Jessica Rabbit umbrella. To his left was a tunnel. A tiny sign on the brickwork above the arch said it was the Erdington No. 7 Tunnel. As a child, Nick had played here with his friends, and explored that tunnel with torches. It led to an abandoned iron foundry, where goods were loaded and unloaded. The canal opened out into a canal basin wide enough for boats to turn around, and the tunnel was the only exit.

  In the opposite direction, the canal snaked out of Birmingham, joining up with many other canal routes along the way. From this point here, the Birmingham waterway was connected to the rest of the country. A person could steer a narrowboat, or walk or cycle along the towpath, and go as far as London, or Manchester, or further up into Scotland, or down to Cornwall.

  A thought had begun to form in Nick’s mind.

  Was it possible that the Birmingham Vampire was hiding out in a narrowboat?

  It seemed ridiculous, and yet standing here, by the canal and not far from the site where Julie Carter had been abducted, it also seemed entirely plausible. Frank Carter had found his niece’s shoe far into the park, near the woodland. And the drag marks in the wet grass suggested that Julie had been snatched by the road, but then dragged through the park.

  Down the footpath, through the trees, and onto a narrowboat waiting here, perhaps?

  Had Emma been thinking the same thing? She had come down here to investigate, and the Birmingham Vampire had discovered her, and then what? Killed her and dumped her body in the canal? Pulled her onto the boat with himself and Julie? But where had he got the boat from? Had he simply stolen an empty barge moored by the canal side, or had he discovered one that was being used, and murdered the occupants?

  Nick had already sent police officers to investigate the disused foundry, but Nick suspected that if he was right, the Birmingham Vampire would have taken the opposite route, and getting as far away as possible, before he was discovered.

  But did he have Emma with him?

  Nick took his mobile out and speed dialled Emma’s number.

  “Come on, Ems,” he whispered, as he waited for the connection to be made. “Answer this time, please.”

  The ringing tone started up. Nick automatically counted off the number of times it rang out. At the fifth one, it cut into her recorded message, the one he’d been getting all day.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Emma Wylde, hotshot reporter for the Birmingham Herald. Leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon—”

  Nick cut the connection.

  “Hey, you!” he shouted at an absurdly young looking policeman, standing nearby and appearing to be at a complete loss for something to do. “Give me your torch.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Nick snatched the torch off him and headed down the towpath, away from the tunnel.

  * * *

  Abel shoved Emma through the cabin door, and she fell onto the blood soaked table. She slid off the sticky surface, and onto the cushioned bench, and then off that and onto the floor, where she lay on her side, her cheek against the moist carpet. Julie’s body was thrown in after Emma and landed with a sickening thump on the table. One arm hung over the edge, her hand only inches from Emma’s face, blood dripping slowly from the fingers.

  Abel slammed the cabin door shut, leaving her alone with the young woman’s body, and Michael. The vampire hadn’t bothered tying her up again. Was that because he knew he’d crushed her spirit, that she had no fight left in her?

  Emma squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the tears. She’d had to do something, they couldn’t just sit in the narrowboat cabin, waiting for that psychotic freak to get wherever he was taking them, and then murder them. If they had stayed where they were, and waited long enough, Julie would have been dead, anyway.

  So why did Emma feel so desperately guilty, and responsible for the young woman’s death?

  But it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? Whatever reason he had for keeping Emma alive, it wasn’t going to be for long. And then what? Would she stay dead, or would she come back as a vampire?

  The table creaked above her as Michael climbed on top of Julie’s body. He had woken up during all the excitement. Emma could hear him pawing at Julie’s body, and then her stomach turned over as she heard licking and sucking noises.

  Emma twisted her head away, trying to block out the disgusting noises. Her head throbbed, and her whole body ached from being trussed up like a Christmas turkey. The Birmingham Vampire hadn’t bothered tying her up again. Maybe he could see that Emma had lost all her fight. She was too tired to carry on.

  All she wanted was to fall asleep, and then wake up at home, in bed next to Nick, and realise that this had all been a vivid nightmare.

  The throbbing in her head took on a rhythmic, insistent note, burrowing deeper into her brain. It was almost like an alarm clock, buzzing her awake in the morning. An alarm clock, or ... a mobile phone.

  Emma opened her eyes. Michael was still sucking at Julie’s dead body on the table above her. The mobile was on silent, just buzzing repetitively, demanding to be answered. It sounded like it was coming from under the seating, running alongside the cabin. Her face resting against the sticky carpet, Emma could see under the bench where bulging, black plastic bags had been stuffed out of the way.

  But she couldn’t see the mobile.

  The buzzing stopped.

  The service would have gone into voice mail by now. But whose phone was it? There was the possibility that it might be Emma’s mobile. It could have fallen out of her pocket when she was dumped down here. But equally, it might be Julie’s, or it could belong to whoever owned the narrowboat.

  And if that was the case, and access to the phone was through a PIN number, it was useless to her.

  Slowly, quietly, Emma stretched out an arm, her fingers tracking their way through the carpet sodden with blood. Michael stopped slurping at the dead body, and Emma went rigid, holding her breath. A moment later, he began his feeding again.

  The urge to cry almost overpowered her, but Emma knew she had to fight it. Once she started crying, she would give up the fight, and she might as well just offer herself up to the vampire. She began extending her arm again until her fingers encountered one of the plastic bags.

  Could the mobile have slid under one of these bags? She pushed at it, but it was heavier than she expected, and whatever was inside had a solid, but slightly spongy feel to it. Emma tried pushing at it again. It moved slightly. Her fingers curled around the edges as she tried to get a better grip on the plastic, and she tore a hole through it.

  A dead, bloodshot eye stared through the ragged hole at Emma. Unable to contain herself any longer, she started wailing.

  This was the perfect nightmare, and she was never going to
wake up.

  Michael stopped feeding, and leant over the table, and stared at Emma. Smeared in blood and dirt, his hair sticking out, and his eyes dark and lacking in life, he looked like a demon from hell. After gazing quizzically at Emma, he returned to licking the bloody corpse.

  Emma stifled her cries. Fixing her gaze on a point just to the side of the black plastic bag, so that she could still see it, but didn’t have to look directly at that dead eye staring back at her, Emma pushed at the bag again. The head moved, shifted slightly to the side, and then rolled over, and rested against another black plastic bag, containing who knew what gory body part.

  But there, on the floor, was her mobile phone.

  With trembling fingers, Emma slid it across the floor and under the table. She picked it up and hugged it to her chest, like a talisman, and waited, convinced that Michael would suddenly reach down and snatch it from her. Or that Abel would crash through the cabin door, and sink his teeth into her neck, ripping at her jugular, before she had a chance to use the phone.

  The narrowboat engine rumbled steadily away, the boat moving slowly forward. Emma realised she was holding her breath and gasped.

  She was shaking badly, and her fingers wouldn’t work properly, but she managed to activate the phone and wake it up. The glow from the screen was startlingly bright, and Emma had to squint, and clapped a hand over the phone.

  Had Michael noticed anything?

  No, Emma could hear him fumbling with Julie’s body, the rip of fabric, more slurping noises, and grunts of pleasure.

  She uncovered the phone, but shielded it with her palm, so that the glow of the screen didn’t illuminate the boat’s cabin. There was a missed call from Nick. Her finger hovered over the ‘Return Call’ icon.

  No, not Nick. He had no idea what he was up against. He would bring a team of police officers with him, and they would be too noisy, too demanding. They would deal with the situation like it was a regular hostage scenario, and they would try to negotiate. And they would fail.

  Emma flipped open her phone book and scrolled through until she found Coffin’s number. He knew what he was up against.

  Joe Coffin would know what to do.

  she isn't ordering pizza

  Coffin had no choice but to get Stut to a hospital. As he lost blood through the bullet wound in his leg, his grip on Coffin began lessening. By the time they pulled up outside the emergency department, he was barely hanging on.

  Coffin pulled him off the bike and helped him in through the sliding double doors. The woman on reception saw them, her eyes widening, and she picked up a telephone and spoke briefly into the handset. The waiting area was quiet. There was an old man cradling an untidily bandaged hand in his lap, sitting with his wife, another man sat slumped in a corner, and a young Asian couple with their daughter, who was running around chattering. When she saw Coffin and Stut, she froze, and then ran back to her parents, wide eyed.

  A male nurse ran to meet them from around the desk. He grabbed hold of Stut, looping his arm around his shoulders whilst Coffin continued supporting him on his other side.

  “This way, let’s get him onto a bed,” he said.

  They half walked, half dragged, Stut through into the treatment area, leaving a thin trail of blood on the floor behind them. They were met by another nurse, pushing a bed, and they eased Stut onto it. A young doctor approached them, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves. He glanced at Coffin and then bent down to examine the bloody wound.

  “How long ago did this happen?” he said.

  Stut’s eyes were fluttering open and closed. His face was white, he looked dead already.

  “About fifteen minutes, maybe longer,” Coffin said. He held his hand in his pocket, where nobody could see the trauma to his finger. Warm blood soaked into the material against his leg.

  “This is a gunshot wound,” the doctor said, glancing at the female nurse. “We’ll need to get him into theatre, give him a blood transfusion, get that bullet out.”

  They were still walking as he talked. The female nurse left them. Coffin watched her as she hurried over to the nurse’s station and leant over the desk and spoke to the ward clerk. She nodded and picked up the telephone.

  Coffin had a good idea that she wasn’t ordering pizza. If he didn’t get out of here soon, the police would arrive and start asking questions, and it wouldn’t take long at all before someone realised this was Joe Coffin they were talking to, and didn’t he just get out of jail a few days back, and wasn’t he around at that service station on the M6 when that poor man was assaulted and his car stolen?

  Coffin turned around to leave.

  “Hey, where are you going?” the male nurse said. “Take a seat in that cubicle, we need to check you over, you’re covered in blood.”

  “I’m fine,” Coffin said. “The blood’s all his.”

  “Even so,” the nurse said, leading Coffin to an empty cubicle, with a bed and a chair, and the curtain pulled to the side. “Sit down here, and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Coffin sat down and watched the nurse hurry away. In the cubicle next door, someone was retching. A nurse was walking by, pushing a trolley with a silver tray containing white bandages and instruments. Someone called her name, and she turned, and then hurried away, leaving the trolley where it was.

  Coffin stood up, glanced right and left. The waiting room had been quiet, but in here they were busy. Telephones ringing, nurses and doctors rushing around, carrying case notes, X-rays, dealing with patients or concerned relatives.

  Big as he was, no one was looking at Coffin. In two quick steps he was at the trolley. He picked up a roll of bandage and a roll of micropore, hiding them in his fist. He walked over to the ward clerk at the desk.

  “I need the toilet,” he said.

  She pointed to her left, at a pair of blue doors, one marked Male, the other Female.

  Inside, Coffin locked himself into a cubicle and examined his mutilated finger. It had been bitten off at the first knuckle, and he could see the pale nub of bone in the red flesh. The bleeding had slowed down a little, and now that the adrenalin had worn off, he was aware that it hurt like a bastard.

  Coffin unrolled the bandage and wrapped it around his finger. He wound the micropore around the bandage, as tight as he could, to act as a tourniquet, and stop the bleeding. The finished dressing didn’t look pretty, but he was sure it would do the job.

  When he stepped out of the toilet, he saw two policemen standing at the station, talking to the ward clerk. They had their backs to him, but they weren’t far away. To get out through the waiting area and collect his bike, Coffin would have to walk right past them.

  Not good.

  Coffin turned the opposite way and walked down past the row of cubicles and pushed through a set of double doors. A corridor, a blue sign on the wall opposite, pointing to the X-ray department. He headed down it, past a porter pushing a patient in a wheelchair, a young woman in theatre blues running by them both, an older man in a suit and tie, with a clipboard, talking to a ward clerk.

  No one looked at Coffin.

  He shouldered his way through a set of double doors, his finger throbbing and hot, and entered another waiting area, packed with dull faced patients, slumped in metal framed chairs bolted to the floor. Hanging from the ceiling was a blue sign saying, ‘Exit’, and pointing down another corridor.

  Coffin walked through the waiting room. One or two heads looked up at him, eyes widening at the sight of this huge man, face disfigured with scars and T-shirt smeared with blood. No one had paid much attention to him in the emergency department, but now he was out of an environment where seeing a man covered in blood wasn’t that unusual, Coffin wondered if he was going to draw more attention to himself.

  Nothing he could do about that at the moment. Outside the X-ray department, Coffin found the main corridor. He stood back as a porter pushed an old woman in a bed by him. The porter was tall and fat and had to hunch over the rail at the end of the bed to p
ush it. Coffin fell in step behind him, following him down the corridor to the main exit.

  Once outside he would have to double back down to emergency, where he could collect his Fat Boy. As long as there were no cops keeping a lookout over it.

  Coffin was walking past the WHSmith when his mobile started buzzing. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen.

  Emma.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Coffin placed his other hand over his ear. The voice on the other end of the phone was barely audible.

  “You’ll have to speak up, I can’t hear you.”

  “Joe, he’s got me.”

  Her voice was coming through a little stronger now, but still quiet. Coffin thought he could hear an engine in the background.

  “Where are you, Emma?”

  “I’m ... oh God, Joe, he killed her, and ...”

  There was a pause, Emma’s silence filled with the faint sound of that engine, rumbling on in the background.

  “I’m on the canal, on a barge. I think he’s taking me back to the house.”

  Coffin didn’t need to ask which house.

  “Oh, fuck,” she hissed. “He’s stopped the boat, I think he’s coming down here. Joe, help me, help—”

  The connection was cut, Emma’s voice and the noise of that engine replaced by silence.

  “I’m coming for you, Emma,” Coffin said.

  Outside, the air felt cool and fresh on Coffin’s face. His T-shirt was stuck to his torso with dried blood, and he was exhausted, and emotionally spent after everything he had seen. All Coffin wanted to do was clean himself up, and maybe climb on his bike and ride out of here, somewhere far away.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  Joe Coffin wasn’t the kind of man to leave a job unfinished.

  And nothing about this situation was finished yet. Far from it.

  Coffin had to cut through borders of shrubs between car parks to get back to the emergency department. His Harley was where he had left it, and no one was standing guard over it. Unfortunately the police car was parked beside it, and in full view of the waiting room and the reception desk. If the cops were in there, and they happened to be looking outside, they would see him straight away.