Coffin on Murder Street

by Gwendoline Butler

  He would still have to talk to Stella Pinero, but Lane first.

  He reached for the telephone.

  Copies of the same report had reached Superintendent Paul Lane and Inspector Archie Young on that very day and been read by them at once. Eyebrows were raised here too.

  The report was also read in the Incident Room set up by the banks of the Thames near Staines with which Paul Lane and Archie Young kept in touch by telephone and fax, but here, since they had not known Nell Casey personally, there was less comment. Anything went, was their attitude; near Heathrow as they were, they expected anything and usually got it.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ said Archie Young. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ He had seen Nell act in her television series and had admired her performance, way above what the series itself seemed to demand. Now he thought he could understand the strange force and power that had come from her. It had come out of what she had gone through, what she had made of herself. Made, was the operative word.

  He wasn’t a man who usually had a lot of sympathy for those who did not tread the usual path, it was both a strength and a deficiency in him as a detective, but he had a heart and an imagination and both were touched.

  Paul Lane walked into the Incident Room in Spinnergate they had set up to deal with Tom’s loss and which had now been expanded to deal with those allied matters of the Papershop Group and the death of Nell Casey. It was one of those cases, the most difficult and yet the most interesting, which sucked other mysteries into it, in itself both the cause and the result of them.

  Not that Paul Lane, a pragmatic man, analysed the case thus. A bugger, he called it. But he did sense that with the new information about Nell they might be on the way to solving it.

  ‘So what do you make of it?’ he said to Archie Young. ‘I see you’ve got it there in front of you.’

  ‘Dunno. Must help, but I don’t guess how.’

  ‘The Old Man wants to see us. Soonest.’

  Archie Young looked at his desk. ‘One or two things to clear up here first.’ They were still preparing a case against Mrs Brownrigg as well as one against the owner of the burnt-out papershop. The various members of the Papershop Group were also being interviewed. Slippery customers, was Archie Young’s sour thought, too well-educated and too well-informed about their rights.

  ‘He’s coming over here.’

  ‘I hear he’s got a black eye.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard that, have you?’ Lane too had picked up this item.

  ‘Well, it’s interesting.’

  A certain bustle at the door, and an undercurrent of suppressed attention among all the other workers in the busy room, announced John Coffin’s arrival. One or two of the constables stood up as he came in, others continued with what they were doing, but they all knew he was there. Mary Barclay and Alison Jenkins, who were conferring in one corner of the room, looked at him and then at each other. Neither of them had read the report on Nell Casey’s body, but they both knew something important had happened.

  Only the man who had just received on his Fax machine what looked like an urgent message ignored Coffin’s arrival. He was too busy reading what he had got there. The message said that a man dead as the result of a motorway crash outside Manchester had about him evidence suggesting he was connected with the fire at the papershop, and other more interesting material as well. He had an address on him. The young plainclothes man stood up, intending to hurry the message across to Inspector Young, but was checked by the sight of the Superintendent, the Inspector and the Big White Chief in conference. It was true about the black eye then, he thought; that’s what the dark glasses are for.

  ‘You’ve read it?’ said John Coffin. He took off his dark glasses, behind which his eye looked red and puffy rather than black. He offered no explanation, and Archie Young removed his gaze. ‘So now we know. She had the Big Operation. She was a manufactured lady. She—he—started life as a lad. Or possibly something halfway between, poor kid.’

  ‘But did it have anything to do with her killing? Can we assume that?’ said Paul Lane.

  ‘We can’t assume anything. But it fills out the picture. We know what she wanted out of life: she wanted to be a female actress with a child. And she got what she wanted.’

  ‘More than,’ said Archie Young. He felt sympathy, unexpectedly so. He was on her side.

  ‘There will be medical records,’ said Paul Lane thoughtfully.

  Archie Young said: ‘We haven’t been very lucky in the way of records so far. She covered her tracks.’

  ‘She didn’t do that on her own,’ said Lane. ‘She had help.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘The time to pinpoint is when she lived in Abbey Road behind Costelow’s,’ said Coffin. ‘It must have been then or shortly afterwards that she had the transformation. By the time she got to Drama School in ’seventy-eight, she was female.’

  ‘She was pretty young then, would any reputable doctor undertake the process at such an age?’

  ‘Well, that I don’t know, but I would guess there are centres in the Middle East where anything can be done.’

  ‘Expensive and slow,’ said Paul Lane. He said again: ‘She had help.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Coffin, ‘she had help. Someone cared. We have to look for the carer.’

  ‘Oh boy,’ said Archie Young to himself. ‘One step forward and two back.’

  ‘Any idea where to look, sir?’ Paul Lane asked Coffin.

  ‘None. Someone there all right, but I can’t put a face on him. Or her.’

  ‘What about Duerden? He has money.’ William Duerden had been a successful businessman before retiring early to pursue his own particular hobby. He also had a wife and two children. He was living proof that those of perverted tastes are as ordinary as you and I. ‘We can’t rule him out.’

  ‘So we go on looking for Duerden?’ But Lane answered himself, it was a rhetorical question. ‘Sure we do.’

  Coffin looked at his watch. ‘I’m off. Keep me informed.’

  ‘Always busy, eh sir?’ said Lane.

  ‘Yes,’ and not all of it pleasant business, Coffin thought. He had an appointment to see a lawyer about the threatened inquiry into his Force. He needed to know where he stood.

  Before he left, he said: ‘Get Hamilton and talk to him again. Find where he was the day Casey died. He’s got some interesting-looking scratches on his hands.’

  As soon as he had gone, the constable acting as receiver came across with the fax message.

  ‘Thought you should see this sooonest, sir.’ He held the fax. ‘Manchester have got this man, killed in a motorway pile-up, and he’s got arson equipment in his van.’ Then he brought out what really mattered. ‘And the address of the papershop on a bit of paper in his wallet. They give his ID as Trevor Hinton: his daughter was one of Duerden’s alleged victims. They are working on it.’

  Paul Lane groaned inside himself: one more CID Force to link up with and to handle with care. This case was like an octopus, stretching out tentacles everywhere. He supposed he ought to thank God that fifty-two police forces now used HOLMES and were linked into the same computer system.

  ‘He hadn’t got Duerden’s address on him, had he?’ he said. ‘Don’t answer.’ He turned to Archie Young. ‘One more fact to feed into the computer.’ He paused. ‘Still, it’s interesting. At least we know what the man had against the Papershop Group.’

  ‘What we’ve all got,’ said Young.

  ‘And perhaps just a little bit more.’ Paul Lane’s broad shoulders sagged a trifle as if they were bearing too much weight. He had a couple of children himself and this case saddened him above the average, he had learned over the years to keep emotions out of a case as far as possible, but sometimes emotion helped. It fuelled the engine, pushed you on when you were dead beat. This was such a case. Every man in the room would work overtime, not for the money, but because of what the case was.

  Lane straightened his shoulders. He passed a hand over h
is head in a characteristic gesture. Going bald. But going bald nicely, so his wife said.

  Archie Young said, ‘What’s the joke?’

  ‘No joke.’

  ‘I saw you smile.’

  ‘Just remembering something … Remembering to see the Chief Commander knows about the Manchester info.’

  But Coffin had his own fax and the information was there for him as soon as anybody. Embedded, as it happened, in a lot of other stuff he could have done without.

  For him the day passed with that quiet monotony of hard work and no joy that can bring depression. He fought against the depression, turning aside from the whisky that might have been his way out once, and drinking tea and coffee.

  It was a bad season. By the end of it he might no longer be head of the New City Force and Stella might no longer have a theatre. No word from Letty, who appeared to have gone to ground: a bad sign. She might be sending a signal he did not want to read.

  Something else that Stella would have to be told.

  CHAPTER 20

  March 27

  He went in search of Stella Pinero later that night and found her in her dressing-room removing her make-up. It was her practice to take over a part every so often in one of her productions, thus giving a day off to the actress concerned, and seeing for herself and from the inside how her production was working. Also, it kept the cast on their feet, since they got very little notice, if any, of when the change was going to happen.

  Stella was cleaning her face, she threw the wad of tissues into the bin and turned a cheerful smile on him. This smote Coffin to the heart, because he was going to wipe that look off.

  ‘Come in, and sit yourself down. There’s some wine over there, rather nasty stuff but it’s nicely chilled so you can hardly taste it.’ Stella had a cavalier attitude to wine. She stood up and slipped behind a screen. ‘Just let me get changed and I’ll join you.’ Over the screen, she continued to talk. ‘I’d forgotten what fun it could be acting in a good team and today it all came back. Lovely people.’

  ‘What play was it?’

  ‘Don’t you read the playcards? Or the notices I send you? John van Druten; There’s Always Juliet. Such a dear little play to do, a fourhander, which is lovely, but of course, you must move with speed and as one. Tonight we did. The audience loved us.’

  ‘Bit out of date, isn’t it?’ said Coffin morosely, the wine was both strong and horrid.

  ‘Oh no, it plays beautifully, we’ve had tremendous audience response. Van Druten is having a revival.’ She appeared round the screen in jeans and heavy silk shirt. ‘What’s the matter with you? I mean, more than usual.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I only meant I know you have a lot on your mind … We all have. Gus is going round doing an impersonation of a thundercloud ready to burst. He’s trying to be better, though, I will say that for him … Your eye looks paler, going yellow, that’s a good sign.’

  ‘Come round to Max’s. I haven’t eaten.’ And neither had cat Tiddles, shopping was imperative. ‘I must get some food for the cat.’

  ‘I can give you a tin of dogfood.’ Stella loved her old mongrel, adopted as an orphan.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Tiddles would like that,’ said Coffin doubtfully.

  ‘Can’t read, can he?’

  Privately, Coffin thought Tiddles could read, or as much as suited that intelligent animal. It was, anyway, very hard to deceive him, and not worth trying because he had his own means of fighting back. Like chewing up your letters, or opening a book and clawing the pages. The typewriter could also have a very strange effect on him that was better not dwelt upon. ‘I’ll get something fishy from Max.’

  Stella walked along beside him, talking cheerfully. Which belied the dialogue going on inside her. So the moment was approaching that she had dreaded. It was going to be goodbye and we will always be best friends. She had heard that dialogue in the past, rather too often in fact, sometimes playing one part and sometimes the other.

  So when, over a slice of rich pâté which was by no means what a lady who watched her weight ought to eat, but food does furnish the spirits, Coffin said: ‘I want to talk to you about Nell Casey, something to tell you.’ Stella felt her fears lift. She put down her fork. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

  ‘Ah.’ she said with sympathy when he had finished. ‘What a fight she must have had. She was she, no doubt about it, she was right to decide the way she did, but I bet it cost … Money as well as emotion,’ said Stella thoughtfully. ‘Poor Nell, poor girl. Oh, she would have hated us finding out in this kind of way. I mean, she might have gone public herself but she would have wanted to choose the time and place.’

  ‘You’re taking it well.’

  ‘What did you think I’d do? Throw up my hands in horror? You’re talking to a grown-up lady who knows what the real world is about. I think it would be nice if nature provided us with a kind of zip so we could change sex when we wanted. I know I’ve wanted to, more than once. Men get all the best parts as you get older.’

  ‘You’ll never get old, Stella,’ said Coffin, laughing.

  ‘Think so? But of course you don’t. That’s the kind of thing people say when they know that growing old is exactly what you’ve done already. We’ve known each other a long while, you and I, so we ought to be honest with each other.’

  ‘You’re always that, Stella.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Most of the time.’ So then he told her about Letty’s threatened bankruptcy.

  ‘Oh, I knew about that, well, more or less, I have my channels, you know. I didn’t want to worry you. As long as we can keep our apartments … I don’t own mine completely, do you?’

  ‘No, borrowed the money from Letty.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Never mind. I still own that place of mine in Greenwich. We can always share a roof.’ Of course, he might not have a job either, but he wouldn’t worry her with that now.

  Max served them the omelette they had ordered, his head raised carefully high to indicate he had not been listening and had not heard a word they had said, but he had already reported it to his wife, and caused his youngest daughter, whose innocence must be protected, to be sent to bed.

  ‘It does explain a lot about Nell,’ said Stella, ‘a kind of brittleness, and the glitter she had. It seemed artificial, and it was in a way, as I see now.’ She ate a mouthful of omelette. ‘Lovely, Max, thank you, just how I like it.’

  ‘Baveuse,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly.’ That meant runny inside? Well, Max must know. She protected her silk shirt carefully with the napkin, she didn’t want any baveuse on her shirt. ‘And it explains the way she looked, her bones, so strong and clean. A lot of great beauties are a bit androgynous, you know, and Nell was a beauty.’

  Max put down a pot of coffee and cups on the table before her, regretfully aware that he had missed something while he fetched the coffee. Stella stirred her cup, black, no sugar.

  ‘Gus knew, of course. Not with his mind perhaps, but underneath, emotionally, like an animal would. That explains why their sex life never worked. And his anger.’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t think that Gus … the scratches on his hands. You saw them?’

  ‘I saw them. I don’t know, Stella, but we will find out.’

  They sat over the coffee.

  ‘No news of Tom?’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ said Coffin, with a confidence he could not trust.

  They walked out into the night. ‘I feel better now I’ve told you,’ he said. Everything, or nearly everything.

  ‘I was jealous of that policewoman, Mary Barclay.’

  ‘Nothing there.’ He took her hand.

  Stella smiled, pressed his hand, and looked inside herself to see what she felt. But oh, I think there was, said a voice in her head, and might be again. That was how things went.

  The two walked back together to the St Luke’s complex of theatre and old church (so soon to be the new theatre) and apartments.
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  Big playbills shouted the names of Gus Hamilton and Stella Pinero and Nell Casey and little Nancy Fotheringham. A great review by Ellice Eden was splashed across the front.

  In the evening while the performance was. on these names were in lights. But now the lights were out.

  CHAPTER 21

  March 28

  Afterwards, Archie Young said this was a day that should never have happened. They should have got there first.

  Gus Hamilton was asked to go down to the New City Police Headquarters and duly went. He did not complain, for Gus he was docile. He said he had just been conducting his normal life during the days of Nell’s absence. He had been preparing for a performance, performing (two matinees, he pointed out, didn’t leave much time for anything else), teaching his drama class, and getting his hair cut. ‘Just living,’ he said. He could produce various witnesses. There was the girl he was living with at the moment, although she had been working away from London for at least one of those days. Doing a commercial, people had to live.

  He had damaged his hands pruning his roses, yes, he had a garden, and although he hated looking after it, he could not afford a gardener and the neighbours had complained that his rambler rose was invading their garden.

  He submitted to having samples of his skin and tissues taken.

  There was no further report as yet from the police forensic team on Nell, but if she had blood and skin under her nails and they matched with Hamilton, bad luck for him, thought Archie Young. But he still admired Gus as an actor. Good face on the chap too, but sulky-looking. A lot of anger there. Violence never seemed far away.

  They let Gus go home: they could check his roses later, but he wasn’t a fool; one way and another, they would appear pruned.

  The ID check on the Manchester car crash victim had confirmed the name of Trevor Hinton. One of the child victims whom Duerden was suspected of killing was Clarissa Hinton. Hinton, who had been a soldier in Ulster, had been known to be following up his own leads on Duerden.