Gus met Nell in the courtyard of the Theatre Workshop. Behind them the builders were busily constructing what would be the main auditorium inside the old St Luke’s Church itself. At the moment most of the workforce were sitting in the sun having their midmorning snack. His own class was assembling in cheerful groups, several ladies of the Friends of St Luke’s Theatre were having a consultation about a flower display, and Stella was conducting a small row with the works foreman. Nell was just walking peacefully back from an exercise session designed to loosen up her throat and chest muscles to help her strengthen her voice. She was humming quietly to herself on one low note as instructed. A couple of others of the cast were with her, also humming.
An audience had thus assembled itself for the scene.
Nell saw Gus coming towards her and tried to disappear into the crowd of ladies doing the flowers, but he saw her. ‘Nell, I want you.’ He grabbed her arm.
‘All right, all right. Don’t shout.’
‘I’m not shouting.’ Nor was he. but a perfectly produced voice was audible all around the arena. Spectators afterwards said it felt like an arena.
‘I’ve just heard what happened yesterday. On top of all the other things I’ve been hearing about.’
‘Oh, you have, have you? Nothing to do with you, Gus, so clear off.’
‘I think it is something to do with me.’
‘Is it you doing it all, Gus? Is that what you’re saying? Some obscene spite campaign? I have wondered about that.’ She wrenched her arm away. ‘Not a nice man, are you, Gus?’
He went quite white, a member of the audience reported later to husband and child in the safety of her own house, and his eyes went red. Yes, I swear it. Red with rage.
‘You are a rotten mother and a bitch to boot. That child is not safe in your care.’
‘He’s not safe anywhere near you, you mean. Tom’s been safe enough with me all this time. I brought him up, remember? It’s only now you appear on the scene he starts to be in danger.’
Gus said through his teeth, but every word perfectly audible: ‘I’ll kill you, Casey.’
Nell recovered her poise: ‘You want to watch that temper of yours, Gus,’ she said coldly. ‘It’s got you in trouble before, remember?’
Then the pair of them moved out of earshot. Nell Casey stalking ahead with Gus running after her, they were still quarrelling when they moved out of view, but nothing could be heard.
Their audience returned quietly to their own lives, but every moment had been savoured.
‘Bad scene,’ said Stella soberly. She was beginning to wonder what she had done in bringing these two together in her Festival. She crossed her fingers. Theatre people are always superstitious, as behoves those in such a chancy craft, and she was no exception.
*
Several days passed in relative quiet. As quiet as anything ever was in John Coffin’s life.
Driver Tremble was still in hospital. They had kept him in over the weekend, and on Monday and Tuesday (March 13, he registered the date with superstitious gloom) he had had two more short interviews conducted by DI Young, with each party getting more and more irritated with the other, as Tremble continued to look dazed and unable to remember exactly what had happened on that night, and Young to feel more and more doubting.
But Young knew he was getting closer, he could read Tremble’s eyes and see the look behind them. Quite soon, Tremble would break and tell all.
Archie Young reported as much to Superintendent Lane, who in turn informed Coffin.
At the same time a check was going on of all known paedophiles in the district, of which there were more than Coffin cared for, both male and female.
Years in his job had informed him of the sexual aberrations of both sexes, he was too sophisticated to be surprised at anything, but the pursuit and abuse of children by women still saddened him.
‘I would like to say I don’t understand it,’ he said to the woman detective as she came to him with the special report he had asked for. ‘But I suppose I do. In a way.’
‘For generations,’ said Sergeant Alison Jenkins, who had done a special course at Cambridge for this work, ‘women have known how to soothe babies by stroking or sucking their genitals. In some women it just develops from there.’ She sounded more tolerant than she really was.
‘But this woman—’ he picked up a case history—‘she beats all.’
‘Well, she’s one we don’t have to worry about,’ said Alison Jenkins. ‘She’s inside and will be for quite a bit.’ She gathered up her papers. ‘I think there is an active group of paedophiles operating from a papershop in Magdalen Road and I think our man Duerden may have been in touch. My contact there was distinctly shifty about him. Wouldn’t say yes, but wouldn’t say no.’
‘But no leads as to where Duerden is now?’
‘No. My contact implied that there were no addresses and no dates to be had. Duerden, if he was in touch, was handling himself cagily, I’d say. Keeping all information about his movements to himself.’
‘Moved away? Out of the district?’ said Coffin hopefully.
She shook her head. ‘Can’t say. But my contact is nervy.’
I’m nervy myself, thought Coffin morosely.
‘Who is your contact?’
‘I’d rather not say, sir.’
‘Trustworthy?’
‘As far as I know, sir,’ she said cautiously.
‘Would Duerden have been using one of his known aliases?’
She shrugged. ‘My contact did admit to two new characters in touch with their group. He may have been one of those two. The names used were Deacon and York.’
‘Mean anything to you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Not yet. But I’m working on it. Sometimes takes a bit of time to build up an identity profile.’
Coffin considered. ‘Let me know when you get anything. Personally.’
‘Will do, sir.’
‘Any of them likely to have been playing games with the Casey child?’
‘Not for their pleasure,’ said Alison. ‘Not their style. In their way they are straight.’
‘Pleasure,’ said Coffin angrily. ‘Who said anything about pleasure?’
Somewhere in the jungle of his territory some creature, probably humanoid, abnormal and dangerous, was moving. He could sense it.
She had something else to add: ‘Another activity started up that may or may not have something to do with the papershop group. A couple, man and woman, have been going into school playgrounds, talking to the children. They say they are searching for kids for a play they are putting on. In two instances they have taken photographs and got addresses before being chased off by the school staff’
‘Pity.’
She shrugged. ‘Had a car handy. Just got in and sped off.’
‘No one got the number?’
‘No.’
‘Have those children been accosted at home?’
‘Not as yet, and the parents have been warned.’
‘Good.’
But he didn’t like the theatre motif appearing.
On the evening of the third day after this, it was a Friday afternoon, Tom and Sylvie were playing in the garden at The Albion.
Sylvie sat knitting in the sun, keeping a wary eye upon Tom. She had picked up the suspicion that hung over her, and didn’t want to get into further trouble.
A car passed slowly in the road outside, drove on, then turned and came back.
Sylvie noticed the manoeuvre and turned to study the car. A dark maroon car, she did not recognize the make but they were all Japanese anyway. The car moved away.
The Albion stood at the apex of a triangle of land, its garden bounded on two sides by road. The maroon car drove slowly round the block and came up on the other side of the garden. The side where Tom was playing.
Sylvie sat down and resumed her knitting. It was a complicated pattern which occasionally demanded all her attention, but she could see Tom at play by the laurel
bushes. There he was, that was his head.
When she looked up again, he was gone.
CHAPTER 9
March 16
In a case like this one, the last person to see the missing person inevitably comes in for some suspicion. Thus the weeping Sylvie was questioned and questioned again. She was interviewed first in the flat in The Albion, in the presence of Nell Casey, and then taken down to the police station and interviewed again. Nell did not go on this expedition but a policewoman stayed with her at home. Nell seemed stunned by what had happened. ‘I can’t tell you anything,’ she kept saying. ‘I can’t understand it.’
Paul Lane, on the direct instruction of the Chief Commander, John Coffin, had taken charge at once himself, he had his sergeant with him and WPC Mary Barclay was present. The interview room in the new police centre hard by the Spinnergate Tube station had already achieved the slightly battered air which comes so easily to rooms through which any number of people pass. Archie Young was still engaged in the coach case and the death of Jim Lollard, but he knew that Tom was missing. The news had spread fast. There was something about the disappearance of a child missing that everyone found painful.
Sylvie had stopped crying by the time of the second interview, but she looked white and frightened.
‘I was knitting. I had my head down only for a minute and then he was gone. It was the car. I know it was the car.’
‘Describe the car again.’
‘A dark car. Maroon or deep brown. Even black. No, it was dark red, I think it was dark red. It came round once and I was suspicious. Then it went away, so I thought I had been wrong. Imagining things …’
‘But the car came back?’
‘Yes, down the road on the other side of the garden … I didn’t know it could circle round the back of The Albion.’
‘You weren’t looking when Tom went?’
‘No. I was listening, but not looking. Not just at that very minute.’
‘So you didn’t see the actual abduction?’
‘No, no,’ she cried out. ‘I saw nothing.’
‘Did the boy call out?’
She hesitated. ‘No, he didn’t cry out … That’s strange, isn’t it? He must have known the person who took him.’
‘That could be the case,’ said Superintendent Paul Lane. ‘What about the car? Did you see who was driving?’
‘No. It was speeding down the road. Oh, so fast.’
‘And you didn’t get the number?’
She shook her head dumbly. The tears started to flow again. Sylvie was a pretty, slender girl, who was usually attractive and appealing, but now her eyes were swollen and her face was puffy. ‘Poor Tom, poor Tom. He’s a dear little boy.’
‘You liked him?’
‘Of course, very much, everyone does.’
‘How do you get on with his mother?’
‘Well, well,’ said Sylvie. ‘I like her too.’
‘No quarrels?’
‘Sometimes she has been cross with me,’ said Sylvie with reluctance. ‘But we have never quarrelled and she knows I am doing my best.’
They let her rest then.
‘Strange how that girl’s always the one around when things happen to the boy. The dog, the telephone summons supposedly from the mother. A lot of it we only have her word for.’
‘Wonder if she’s got a boyfriend?’ said Mary Barclay.
‘You think she’s in it with an accomplice?’
‘Could be.’
‘And we forget about William Duerden?’ asked the Sergeant.
‘No, by God we don’t,’ said Paul Lane in a voice louder than he knew. ‘We keep on looking for him and we get the hooks into the papershop lot. Magdalen Road, isn’t it? We’ve had trouble with the man who owns it before. And we try to pick up the couple who have been hanging around schools. They used a car, remember?’
‘No, not forget.’ Mary Barclay, put in her contribution. ‘Just bear all possibilities in mind.’
‘I go along with that,’ said Paul Lane.
‘And the motive for the girl?’ pressed the Sergeant, who had liked the look of Sylvie.
‘Money, a ransom,’ suggested Mary Barclay.
‘I don’t believe Casey’s got any money.’ Lane looked sceptical.
‘She could probably raise it.’
Actresses could do anything.
When they carried the report of the interview to John Coffin himself, he said: ‘I wonder why the girl took the job as minder to the boy. Her father’s a rich man, she’s got a Baccalauréate, she could aim higher. I think we need to know more about that young woman and her motivation in life. She may love Tom, anyone would, he’s a nice kid, but I wouldn’t call her a natural child-carer.’
‘But don’t forget Duerden,’ he ended. ‘I still want him.’
Duerden was still there in the undergrowth, but in the case of the disappearance of a child, all things had to be considered. You had to suspect the family.
In a case like this one, the mother inevitably comes in for some suspicion. Thus Nell Casey was questioned at the same time as Sylvie without being allowed to speak to the girl.
Nell had been working, involved in a pre-rehearsal at a church hall the other side of Spinnergate which, in spite of Stella’s best efforts to keep it all under one roof, had been dragged into use as rehearsal room; Nell had been in company with several others of the cast, all engaged in going over some moves with the producer of French without Tears. Then she had taken a taxi to St Martin’s Lane to try on a wig.
‘I didn’t see anything, I was working. I thought Sylvie was in charge. I thought Tom was safe.’
She was angry. ‘You knew Tom was under threat. You ought to have had a watch on him. What about the other things—the dog, the plaster hand, the blood on his shirt? What are you doing about them? They must tell you something.’
The answer was: Not very much. ‘We’re working on them,’ said Mary Barclay. If they caught someone, then these articles might be valuable evidence in court, but until then they were just so many strands blowing in the wind.
And meant to be so, Mary Barclay thought, this plotter was clever and devious.
She had been under the eyes of her producer and three members of the cast of the play for the early part of the afternoon, and later, even in the taxi, she had had the designer of the set with her. The wig had to be just right, she explained tearfully.
This first questioning was done by Mary Barclay. The second was tougher.
‘I want to go now,’ Nell said. ‘I want to go home. And I want to see Sylvie. Where is she?’
‘Superintendent Lane wants to ask you a few questions first,’ Mary Barclay said.
‘You’re asking me exactly the same things as she did,’ said Nell angrily some time later. ‘There isn’t anything more I can say. Find the boy, find Tom.’
‘We will do,’ said Paul Lane. ‘We’ll find him for you.’ He wished he believed it.
‘I want to see Sylvie and I want to see John Coffin.’
‘You can’t go to him,’ said the Superintendent shortly. ‘I am in charge.’
‘You suspect me, don’t you? Somehow you blame me. I can see it in your face.’
‘It’s routine to question the family,’ said Paul Lane.
John Coffin himself came into the room just as Nell was leaving; he spoke to her briefly. He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Get hold of Hamilton, Gus Hamilton, the actor.’ Lane nodded. His wife went to the theatre regularly, he knew the name. ‘See what he has to offer.’
‘Will he have anything?’
‘Try it,’ said Coffin briefly.
Anyone other than the family who had shown an interest in the child was also bound to be under suspicion. Thus it was inevitable that Gus’s name should come up.
As it happened, he did not have to be sought out, he pushed himself into the picture as soon as he heard the news about Tom.
The news did not reach him quickly; he was one of the last to hear. Or so h
e claimed.
He was told as he walked into the Theatre Workshop the day after Tom had been abducted, which was a Saturday, March 17, to find a group of students for his class talking about it.
One of the girls, a tall, thin red-haired girl who said she admired Nell Casey more than any actress in the world except Stella Pinero and Meryl Streep, was in tears. She was being consoled by a thick-set young man who also admired Nell but meant to keep in well with Gus whom he recognized as a future ikon in the theatre, a role he was planning for himself say a decade after Gus. Olivier was dead, there was a vacancy at the top, someone would fill it, why not Fred Caspar?
‘Calm down, Flick, the kid’ll turn up, you’ll see.’
‘But I saw the car. At least, I think I did; I was walking down the road as it sped off.’ She pressed her hands together. Even at a moment of genuine emotion she had to play the scene, give a performance.
‘What’s all this?’ Gus had a headache, he’d been drinking the night before, and was in no very good mood, ‘Get in line, Felicity, exercises first.’ He had found his class a stiff, unsupple group of youngsters and was intent on loosening them up. He amused himself inventing devilish routines for them. ‘Walk like a duck, Felicity, walk like a duck.’
Felicity looked agitated and began to wonder if she could mime tail feathers. ‘It’s the boy, Tom,’ she said to put off the moment when she must waddle. ‘He’s been stolen.’
Gus didn’t say anything at first and his expression did not change but his stocky figure seemed to harden as if he had braced all his muscles. He walked the length of the room in silence while they all watched, then he turned and came back.
‘You saw this happen?’
‘I saw the car. They say he was taken in a car,’ said Felicity in a shaky voice … God, I’m beginning to quack like a duck, she thought.
‘Why didn’t you stop it?’
‘She couldn’t help it,’ put in Fred. Although he was violently jealous of Flick who might just conceivably (although how could that be?) have a talent superior to his own, he found her very attractive.
‘I didn’t know then that Tom had been taken. I only heard about that later and realized I had seen the car.’
Coffin on Murder Street Page 10
