Coffin on Murder Street

by Gwendoline Butler

Dear Nelly—he raised his eyebrows a little at that, but went on reading—I’m glad I’ve got you to write to. No one else around. This is my address as of now and you can write there but I don’t know how long I will be here. But I will also tell you where to write so I can have news of Tommy. I always want news and I know you will write.

  ‘And I do write,’ said Nell, as he looked up with a question in his eye.

  ‘Even now? About this business?’

  ‘Later I will,’ said Nell. ‘Of course, but not in the middle.’

  ‘Supposing she gets to know?’

  ‘She won’t.’ It was spoken with conviction. Nell knew. ‘You’d better read on.’

  You can guess how grateful I am that you are looking after Tommy. If he wants to call you mamma, better let him. Whatever I am going to be to him, it won’t be a regular mother and he deserves better than that. The best. I’ve done what seems best, the attorney who looked after my case says he has done it right. You are to have him, but not adopted, the attorney says it would be too hard to get the papers through, there are so many legal complications since you are, you not a US citizen. But you’re to look after him. That’s what I want.

  Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? If I hadn’t recognized you and spoken to you in that coffee shop that day and showed you about Tommy, he’d have been in a home by now, poor little bastard.

  The next letter had the address of a women’s prison in New Jersey and the contents were more of the same.

  ‘What did she do?’ asked Coffin.

  ‘Ran away from her husband and then killed her father. Don’t ask me to go into that, it’s not fancy.’

  Coffin read three more letters. They all expressed love and confidence in Nell’s care for Tom. Hard to think of him as Tommy. Young as he was, the diminutive did not suit him.

  Nell looked at him. ‘There you are. Do you think the woman who wrote those letters is likely to be the sort of girl that can be responsible for anything? A poor, beaten-up kid with no friends. No enemies either, as far as I know. Not this side of the Atlantic anyway.’

  ‘How did this woman kill her father?’

  ‘Stabbed him’ said Nell, ‘and I would have done the same. Only sooner.’

  ‘Are you telling me that Tom is the product of incest?’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything.’ She turned her head away. ‘We have a life behind us,’ said Nell fiercely. ‘As well as a life ahead.’

  He was conscious of searing anger inside her.

  CHAPTER 15

  March 22–March 23

  ‘I too have a life ahead of me,’ said Stella Pinero when she heard of this interview, or as much as Coffin thought right to tell her. ‘I have a Festival to run and a substitute to find for Nell, who is obviously going to drop out of French Without Tears.’ She sounded more cheerful than might have been expected, although the gossip service having worked with its usual speed, she knew all about Nell’s interview and the presence of Mary Barclay. She didn’t grudge Mary Barclay her part, she was a professional, thus in the circumstances the right person to accompany John Coffin, but she herself might have been a more valuable source of information on Nell and Tom. Still, it was up to him. If he didn’t ask, he wouldn’t hear. Was there a faint edge of malice inside her as she thought that? The answer was yes, and she found it satisfying. ‘I’ve interviewed a nice little actress. Just out of RADA with all sorts of medals and prizes, but the best thing is she’s a local girl, lives just down the road and she started off in the Drama Department of our local University.’ Stella sounded pleased with herself. ‘I might get some money out of them for that.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so mercenary,’ said Coffin.

  ‘You do know it. Always have been as far as business went, you have to be. Every penny counts in this business. Ask your sister.’

  ‘Ah yes, I will,’ said Coffin guiltily: he had had no word from Letty that might mean anything, and from her words Stella was still in a state of innocence about any possible bankruptcy.

  The two of them had met on the way to work, Coffin going towards his car, and Stella Pinero towards her office in the Theatre Workshop. It was still just a wooden shack with an electric heater, a fan for hot weather and a desk with two telephones, but she enjoyed exercising her powers.

  ‘Where is Nell?’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing you are supposed to know.’

  He accepted the rebuke. Stella isn’t liking me this morning, he acknowledged. It might be nothing personal; she had these days when she hated the police and disliked him for being part of it. It was an entirely understandable attitude and he accepted it.

  ‘I know she went home. I meant here and now, this morning.’

  ‘As far as I know, she is behind locked doors in The Albion.’

  ‘How did Sylvie do?’

  Stella allowed herself a small smile. ‘At a conservative estimate she tried on about thirteen outfits, all rejected; wrong shape, wrong colour, and bought one small cotton vest to wear with her jeans. It cost a fortune. Had the right label, though.’

  ‘She’s with Nell?’

  ‘With her, of course. She won’t go anywhere until she knows about Tom. What ever you think, those two loved the boy.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  Love isn’t always everything and can sometimes show itself in harsh and terrible ways.

  For a few paces their paths lay together. Tiddles, who had come down the staircase with Coffin, paused to look at them, gave a swish of his tail and paced off round the corner. Dog not out today, poor soul, his gait said, I’ll do dog for us both.

  ‘I wonder what she’s doing up there behind those locked doors?’ said Stella.

  Coffin shook his head. But, in truth, he knew. She was telephoning the Incident Room every hour to know what was the latest news about Tom. She wanted to know about the car, about the shoe—were there fingerprints on it, and about the bloody shirt. Everything. They told her what they could, repeating themselves patiently.

  All that day, while Coffin worked on letters and reports, occasionally thinking of William Duerden, even of Jim Lollard, with all the time that undercurrent of anxiety about Tom, she went on telephoning.

  ‘No, nothing new to report,’ the Incident Room would say politely.

  Once Mary Barclay took the call, meaning to be kind, and asking if Nell would like her to come into The Albion, but Nell just gave a little scream, might have been of rage, might have been of fear, and put the receiver down.

  She telephoned several times more.

  Then silence.

  *

  But by then on that Friday in March, the investigation had taken another direction.

  Nell Casey was not forgotten, but they had news about the Papershop Group, which Was what they were calling it now.

  As always, the patient keeping of records and the matching up of details of persons, names, addresses, car registration numbers and the movements of interesting parties had produced a pattern.

  A pattern was something to be treasured in an investigation. The pattern was an intellectual perception, but it formed different shapes in each investigating officer’s mind.

  Archie Young saw it as an S, a big curling S. He rationalized this by saying to himself: Well, it started on the corner of Sweetings Lane, didn’t it?

  The owner of the papershop in Magdalen Street by Sweetings Lane had been finally brought to a few reluctant admissions. He did not incriminate himself, nothing as hasty as that, but he did admit to knowing a few people whose tastes might be described, as Young did, as ‘bloody perverted’.

  Slowly, the police extracted several names and addresses. Some of the names were a surprise, some they knew to be false, but even a lie can be used to lead to the truth.

  Take the name Peter Painter, giving an imaginary address in Sydney Street. It did not take a great leap of the imagination to think this character might be the same man who had been convicted of harassing a child and who was then calling him
self Sydney Peters who lived in Melbourne Street. He was known to be an Australian. People did give themselves away.

  Other names they knew already and could have supplied the addresses themselves. Names well known to them and on a list. On several lists up and down the country probably.

  It was hard to say if William Duerden was among these people, under some other name. The papershop owner admitted to at least one new member whom he had not seen lately and who had never had much to say for himself. With even more than his usual reluctance, the man owned that he knew the name of William Duerden who had paid to have his name on one of their postal lists.

  ‘A corresponding member,’ said the man, his eyes behind his spectacles looked pale blue and watery.

  Archie Young knew what this meant, those receiving photographs and videos, and he ground his teeth angrily. He was likely to have to see a lot of his dentist if this case went on long.

  It was possible that this group had been dispersed by the fire, but the pattern began to hint otherwise. Instead, it led to new territory.

  If names and addresses were carefully fudged or false, there was one thing that could not so easily be altered: most of the group that called at the papershop came by car.

  True, these cars were parked at a discreet distance from the shop itself. But the police had long been keeping a tally of car numbers, as a matter of routine. There was a list, now in circulation.

  The papershop was shuttered, although the owner still lived in what was left of the flat above, but he was not doing any business. He had checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice.

  But in an adjoining district, a sharp-eyed and observant police constable had noticed one of the number plates on his list. He noticed it more than once, not always in the same place.

  Then he began to observe other interestingly numbered cars also appearing. He too made a list. Certain numbers, not all of them on the first list, but new, kept appearing.

  He passed this information on and other officers started to compile other lists.

  A group of streets and alleys on the other side of Spinnergate seemed to be the favoured sites. They were marked on a map with red dots which, when joined, snaked across the area in a rough S.

  Dates and times of day, when placed on a graph by the omniscient computer, zigzagged up and down in a regular pattern which signified a habit. These shapes too could be called an S.

  There was an attraction sited somewhere in this network of roads which was called the Group. Their habit was creating the pattern.

  Hidden in the area was a place, a house or a shop which they had to find.

  Inspector Archie Young, who had a tender heart behind his carefully machined exterior, wanted to bash on ahead with all the forces available and take the area apart. He had a disagreement with Superintendent Paul Lane who was for moving more slowly. When Young got home that night, he told his wife how he felt; she was also a policewoman but in a totally different line of work and intellectually a bit above him. She advised him to keep his powder dry and conserve his energies to convince the Chief Commander himself.

  ‘He’ll be on your side.’

  ‘Can’t go over the Super’s head.’ He and Paul Lane were on good terms and drank together, but occasionally, as now, the difference in rank showed. ‘He’s a good judge of a situation.’

  ‘Still, you think he’s wrong.’

  ‘I think Duerden is in there somewhere and that he may have the child with him. Or they may have the child, the lot that used the papershop.’ That was what he could not bear to think about.

  Marg Young went to the kitchen to produce the pudding. She was a good cook but with not much time to perform culinary miracles, and her mother had made the apple pie. There were three more like it in the freezer. Such little secrets were kept from Archie Young.

  He cut himself a good slice and poured on the cream. Food soothed him and changed his mood more than alcohol or sex, although he never admitted to this. He kept that secret, his wife kept others, it was the answer to their happy marriage. ‘This is tasty. You are a good cook.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ He was putting on weight with her mother’s good cooking but now was not the time to tell him. ‘You’d better press for what you think is right, as it’s so important. And if you are right enough, then you’ll get your own way.’

  ‘That’s psychic,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘You have to be sometimes. If it’s so important, and it is, and all you’ve really got is this hunch, then play that card.’ She served herself a modest piece of pie, since she too had a weight problem and skirts were short and tight that season. ‘You’re seeing The Man himself, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow. We have orders to keep in regular touch with reports.’

  ‘Say your piece then.’

  He did, meeting the Chief Commander in Coffin’s office by arrangement, but in company with Superintendent Paul Lane, whose silent, cautious presence was damping. Bad mood there, he thought, not without sympathy. He knew that Paul Lane resented the Chief’s interest in this case. Not for the first time, either. It was not agreeable to resent someone whom you liked and respected, he was caught in the same position himself. Only I’ve got two of them, he told himself. The Super and the Chief himself. Both of them. There was also a third, his wife, whose keen, critical mind he found alarming sometimes. Good in bed, but out of it, you had to watch your step. He did so.

  Media interest in Tom’s disappearance had diminished in the last few days. No news might be good news but it did not fill the papers.

  Young was disconcerted to find that John Coffin was not offering total support to him. He was surprised at the pain he felt.

  ‘I don’t think we ought to hang about.’

  Paul Lane moved irritably in his chair, but he kept quiet.

  ‘That’s your view?’ Coffin looked from Young to Lane and then back again, reading the difference between them.

  ‘Sure of it, sir,’ said Young in an eager voice. ‘There’s the pattern. It has to mean something.’

  ‘It’s not that I dispute that idea,’ grunted Lane. ‘But the way of going about it. Slow, quiet, that’s best.’

  ‘We haven’t got the time.’ Young was blunt. ‘Not in my view.’

  For a moment no one spoke, while Coffin shifted the papers on his desk. He had another missive from Harry Guffin to attend to, a letter which might, in its way, be just as important as Tom.

  ‘I agree with both of you,’ he said. ‘And with neither.’

  Young let out a sharp little puff of irritable air through his teeth, not a whistle, more a quiet, involuntary hiss. The fact that he then tried to swallow it only made it worse.

  Coffin laughed. ‘Yes, Archie, I know how you feel. I don’t blame you. I recognize that the papershop regulars have probably established a new pad somewhere north of Spinnergate. But I’m not sure if it brings us any nearer finding the boy. I see that differently.’

  Archie Young went red, but he said nothing.

  ‘Leave all the reports with me and I will think about it.’ He looked at the clock. Twelve-thirty on a Saturday in spring, but crime was no respecter of day or season and knew no weekends. ‘But I’m going to leave the decision of how you go on to you now, Paul. It’s your territory.’

  Another pause. The Superintendent cleared his throat. ‘All right, have it your way, Archie. We go ahead.’

  Coffin saw them to the door. Quite unconsciously he held the door in a courtly manner, as instructed last night by the Feather Street lady who was directing The Circle. ‘You’re a butler,’ she had said in a firm way. ‘Hold the door like a butler. Be courteous.’ His body had learnt the lesson.

  As Paul Lane and Archie Young left, Lane said: ‘I hate it when he has that lordly way with him.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean anything.’ Young had rather admired it, but well knowing his own manner would not allow of it. You needed to be six foot or over, and thinnish round the waist. He drew his own wa
ist in; he was, alas, putting on the inches.

  ‘And I hate it when he starts plucking ideas out of the air, which is what he is doing now. I can feel it. There’s something ticking away inside him and it’s going to be a nuisance to us, you wait and see.’

  Coffin went back to his letters, one of which was from his sister Letty and was marginally more optimistic, bankruptcy might not be just round the corner, but she would not be over for some time and it might mean summoning a family conference. Must be for moral support, mused Coffin, she knew he had no money to speak of, and half-brother Will in Scotland would not part with a brass bawbee.

  But at the back of his mind was the lost boy.

  What he had in mind was what he called the charivari. The carnival, the procession of idiot events: the murdered toy dog, the bloody handprint on the boy’s shirt, the telephone call that took Sylvie and Tom away to a non-appointment. The shoe. Do not forget the shoe, which belonged to Nell. What did the shoe mean, if anything?

  They were taunts, teases, torments aimed at Nell Casey. They were hung round Nell’s head like a crown of thistles.

  These ploys were not the style of the dreary pederasts of the Papershop Group. Nor of William Duerden, by all accounts an ignorant chancer.

  They had more the mark of the imaginative zeal of Jim Lollard, the self-destructor of Murder Street. But he was dead.

  And who had burned the papershop on the corner of Magdalen Street and Sweetings Lane? No news of the arsonist, he noted grimly, that one had got clean away.

  That evening, restless and feeling rootless in this city that he loved, he took one of his walks. Almost without conscious planning (only probably deep down inside, he knew exactly where he was going and why) he made his way to Regina Street, otherwise Murder Street.

  He could see why it evoked unease: it was an awkward and unpleasing row of houses. Nothing there on which the eye could rest with comfort, each house seemed to quarrel with its neighbour.

  But, he had to admit, all seemed quiet tonight. Lights shone behind curtained windows, he could hear the television sending out the noise of instructed laughter. There was a child crying, but it was a quiet noise and soon ceased.