Coffin's Ghost

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘No, but I believe my mother is.’

  His mother’s career and continued vitality, her various lives, yes it could only be witchcraft.

  ‘Does that mean you are a warlock?’ asked Stella.

  ‘No,’ Coffin said solemnly. ‘It does not descend in the male line.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Let me know when the model girls roll in. I’ll enjoy that part.’

  ‘Not real models, of course. Wire frames, I think, very minimal. I’ll do the commentary.’

  ‘Have you got the time?’

  ‘Oh, I won’t be there myself. Not in person. I will be on tape.’

  No models, no Stella, almost a non-fashion show. ‘I suppose the clothes will be there?’

  Suddenly, Stella stopped talking about clothes.

  ‘So it wasn’t Robbie’s stepdaughter who was shot dead?’

  ‘Oh, you know that, do you?’

  ‘Of course, he rang me. He asked my advice . . . if you’d help and so on. He’s worried about the girl all the same. Still worried.’

  ‘Was all this on the phone?’

  ‘No, I had a drink with him and Georgie Freedom later . . . business.’ She paused. ‘Robbie confided in me that his wife thought Alice might have gone off with Georgie. Nonsense, of course.’

  ‘Has anyone asked him?’

  ‘Robbie did. Georgie just laughed. Said he didn’t find girls that age attractive. That might be true or might not be – I’d call George’s taste fairly catholic. He does have a pull in the theatre and that might attract Alice.’

  ‘You don’t seem to trust your friends too much.’

  ‘Freedom and Gilchrist are business, that’s all. And I don’t like Freedom too much. You know that.’

  ‘Let’s hope the girl turns up.’

  He knew that Phoebe, and probably Archie Young too, would like to get Freedom for something. He was on their list of most desirable catches.

  ‘Robbie saw the limbs . . . not Alice, a much older woman. A whore, I think. The legs give it away.’

  ‘That’s hard.’

  ‘It’s what Robbie said, the way he described them. It’s likely, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t say.’ Or didn’t want to. If this was Anna, then she had gone a long way down hill. The hellish thing was it might be true.

  ‘The legs and arms must mean something . . .’

  ‘A thoroughly unpleasing killer,’ said Coffin.

  ‘But until you get the head and torso you don’t know how she died. Or why.’

  ‘The informed opinion is a sexual crime.’

  ‘Well, that yes, but there must be something else. Why the steps of the house in Barrow Street?’

  She stood up. ‘I’ll go and make some coffee.’

  He opened his mouth to start telling her about Anna all those years ago when he was living in Barrow Street, then he looked in her eyes.

  – She knows, she knows everything, she probably knows who did the killing.

  There was a pause. ‘Wait,’ he said.

  She did so, hand on the door, poised, waiting. Certainly a pose from some drama, possibly a Hitchcock thriller this time. ‘Well?’

  ‘The house looks nice and clean,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Yes, Arthur and Co. have been in. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes, for the moment. Shall I carry the coffee.’

  Stella gave him an assessing look. ‘No, you sit there and go on thinking. It’s what you do best.’

  And that was certainly a joke at his expense.

  While he was waiting for Stella he took the message waiting for him. He recognized Albert Touchey’s voice.

  ‘Hi there, you evasive chap. I need to talk to you. Get in touch, will you?’

  There was a pause during which he could hear Albie breathing. Then:

  ‘If I don’t hear, I might drop in later this evening after I have called on my ma; she lives round the corner from St Luke’s in Despenser Street.’

  7

  Stella came back into the room with the tray of coffee. She said cheerfully: ‘One thing I did learn all those years when I was on tour, was how to make a decent cup of coffee.’ She put the tray down and then she looked at him. ‘What was the message about?’

  ‘Albert Touchey . . . might drop in later. Wants to talk about something.’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s after me putting on the show in the prison for Christmas . . . I’ll do it for him and his ma, she’s such a love.’

  She handed over the coffee. ‘Well?’

  ‘Can’t keep anything from you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to, would you?’

  Coffin thought about it. ‘Sometimes.’

  Stella smiled.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘You should have said that first.’

  But she wasn’t going to let him off. She wanted the story even if she knew it.

  ‘When we moved here, and I was settling into the job.’

  ‘Moaning a good deal.’

  ‘Did I?’ He hadn’t showed it, surely. He was quite hurt.

  ‘And kicking the door down.’

  ‘But you were in the States.’

  ‘The noise travelled,’ she said dryly.

  ‘I thought I didn’t show it.’ He drank some coffee which was hot and strong, so perhaps Stella had learnt how to make coffee on tour as well as how to manage an audience and learn different lines every week for not much money.

  ‘She was a young journalist. She was called Anna Michael, but she told me her real name was Joanna Carmichael, the other was her working name for the paper. I don’t know if this was true, never been sure how much truth she told . . . I suppose I was flattered.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ said Stella with some amusement, and, he feared, not much sympathy. Not to be expected, no doubt, she had had troubles of her own at the time and probably managed them better than he had managed his. What had it been about? – Do you know, he said to himself, I didn’t really listen to her, so full of myself.

  ‘She was attractive,’ he said defensively.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what do you know? What have you heard?’ And from where?

  ‘Oh, you know what the theatre is like . . . word gets round. And after all, she was a journalist.’

  So you knew that all the time, Coffin thought.

  ‘She talked herself. Of course she did. What a fool I was not to think of it.’

  Stella nodded.

  ‘I ended it. Why? Two reasons: I realized what a fool I was being, and how much you meant to me. A third reason, our tastes were dissimilar. Mastigophily, Philip Larkin called it to Amis,’ he added gloomily. ‘I didn’t go for it.’

  Then Stella said: ‘I had a little adventure myself in New York.’

  ‘Confession time, eh?’ He finished his coffee. ‘Don’t tell me too much about it.’

  Stella, who had never intended to, moved on:

  ‘So you think it is Anna who has been killed? Why not start looking for her? She may turn up lively and living in Manchester.’

  ‘I did start some enquiries . . .’ He shook his head. ‘No trace.’ He had not tried very hard on what seemed the good principle of out of sight, out of mind. But Anna seemed to be one of those characters who won’t stay out of mind.

  Stella looked serious. ‘I hope it wasn’t her, because if so she had gone right down and down.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t like me to be a part of that.’

  I didn’t do this the right way, he thought. I should have handled it lightly, found some jokes, made Stella laugh.

  ‘I don’t think I would blame you . . . or not very much . . . what was that thing you said she went in for?’

  ‘Mastigophily . . . Larkin claimed it was a taste for being whipped . . . or whipping someone or both. I don’t think he thought it a good idea for himself.’

  Stella said gravely: ‘I can think of better ways to get pleasure.’

  Coffin said huskily: ‘Darling Stella
.’ The gods had been kind, he had got it right after all.

  ‘By chance,’ said Stella, ‘I have a bottle of champagne in my bag. I left it at the bottom of the stairs. It ought to go in the fridge . . .’

  He stood, it was good to be moving. ‘Which bag is it?’

  ‘The big white one with two handles, the Vuitton.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Stella came up to him and took his hands in hers. She ran her fingers gently up and down his, softly stroking them. She said nothing.

  He ran down the stairs, followed by the dog, who, for some reason, was growling quietly.

  As Coffin came near the front door, he heard the noises. First a voice, a muffled shout. Then another voice, another man, screaming in anger.

  The heavy front door to St Luke’s was always difficult to open, it took time to work the keys. Even then the heavy old door, as old as the tower and warped and stiff with age, stuck. The security light, heat sensitive, was out again, damn it. So the images on the CCTV screen were blurred.

  As he pulled he was listening.

  He knew enough about fights to pick out the sounds: one body struggling with another. Gasps as blows struck home. A thud as one body fell.

  Followed by the sound of more blows, or they might be kicks.

  All the noises were scrambled together, hard to sort out even to his experienced ear.

  Then silence.

  Stella was behind him on the stairs. She called out to him just as he got the door open: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Stay there.’ It was a command.

  ‘Come back, you fool. You’ve been stabbed once already.’

  Twice, said Coffin’s internal voice, which spoke whether he wanted it to or not.

  Gus was already through the door and barking loudly. Then he too went quiet, sniffing at a figure lying on the paving stones around the tower. He raised his head and howled. Gus did not like blood.

  Nor did he like what he saw. A man was drawing away, walking backwards, eyes on the body on the ground. The man’s face and eyes seemed veiled. Gus liked to see a human animal’s face, not unknowable. Also he picked up a smell that he seemed to know.

  Over his shoulder Coffin called to Stella: ‘Call Security, tell them to get an ambulance.’

  A security guard was coming round the corner of the building from the direction of the theatre complex. Coffin shouted at him to go after the masked man.

  ‘Get after him.’

  There was something familiar about the covered man, but he couldn’t pin it down.

  The figure on the ground started to pull itself up, and stood there, rocking, swaying.

  ‘Careful, Albie,’ said Coffin, moving forward quickly to his friend.

  Albie raised his head, the blood running down his face, he seemed neither to see nor hear. Then he slumped and slid to the ground again. This time face down.

  Coffin was kneeling by the man on the ground, turning his face towards him, when the bullet hit.

  It was not going to be a love scene after all.

  ‘You bloody fool,’ said Stella fondly. ‘You might have been killed.’

  ‘Not a fool, it’s my job.’ He ran his hand through Gus’s fur. ‘Anyway, Gus was nearer death than me. He deflected the bullet by leaping around and barking.’

  ‘Yes, brave boy . . . Did they catch the man?’

  ‘No, the silly buggers let him get away.’ Irritably, he added: ‘We really ought to have higher-grade security men here.’

  ‘We do the best we can, the theatre is always hard up . . . I suppose the theatre is bound to attract louts and vandals.’

  ‘That was no lout,’ said Coffin grimly.

  Stella studied his face, but decided to approach what she wanted to know in another way. ‘How is Albie?’

  ‘Still unconscious. I’ll go to the hospital later.’

  I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He reached out his hand to take hers. ‘Bless you. Not quite the way I wanted the day to end.’

  ‘Hasn’t ended yet.

  ‘I suppose this chap, whoever he was, was after you?’

  Coffin hung on to her hand. ‘I don’t know, Stella. Too early to know.’

  Archie Young on the telephone had said laconically: ‘Plenty after you, sir. Any names to suggest?’ No answer there, and none expected.

  Outside, forensics were searching for the bullet which had passed through Gus’s fur, hit Albie at an angle, then passed on.

  It was a shame that Gus could not speak. He had been slightly singed by the bullet and would have said something sulphuric.

  ‘But by God, I’ll find out.’

  The hospital ward, intensive care, was busy and cluttered with equipment: plugged into patients, hanging over patients, draining into patients, draining out.

  It couldn’t be called noisy, but peaceful it was not. But of course, they didn’t want to encourage the residents to die. Privacy comes expensive, but a few beds had screens around them.

  Behind them they had left their tower home with increased security and a guard on the door, with Gus happily asleep on their bed.

  The bed, thought Stella, who had a sense of joy inside her in spite of the worry over Albie. Bed and lovemaking do truly help. I am glad it happened.

  The very shock and sadness of what had happened had wiped out everything except pleasure in being alive and with each other. Nothing else managed such a feat.

  Out of pain, joy.

  Of course, in the morning, all the pain for Albie came back, but between the two of them there was a kind of peace.

  ‘About what I was saying last night,’ began Coffin as he poured some coffee.

  ‘Forget it,’ she had said.

  Stella now touched her husband’s arm. ‘Is Albie behind one of those’ – she sought for a word – ‘sort of shelters?’

  ‘No, you only get one of those if you’re really on the edge . . .’ He nodded towards the end of the ward by a window. ‘That’s Albie, I can see his face.’

  The shape of it, he meant, and that was a guess because the features were masked in bandages which seemed, at this distance, to be yellowish rather than blankly white. Soaked in something, perhaps.

  A uniformed police constable sat on guard a tactful distance away. He stood up when he saw the Chief Commander.

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought these.’ Stella indicated the bunch of roses she held.

  ‘No, he might come round and see them.’

  A pretty young nurse came up to them. She had soft brown eyes in a golden face.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mr Touchey,’ said Coffin.

  ‘I know.’ She had a nice smile too. ‘Chief Commander Coffin, isn’t it?’

  Coffin nodded.

  ‘And Miss Pinero?’

  Stella said, ‘I think the roses were a mistake.’

  ‘No . . . he can smell them. The sense of smell is very sensitive even in a state of deep unconsciousness.’ She was leading them forward. ‘At least I think so . . .’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘You will have to ask the doctor,’ she said tactfully. ‘But he is stable.’

  That dread word, Coffin thought, the preamble to a gentle sliding away.

  She was drawing up a chair. ‘You’ll need one more. I’ll get one. If you want to see Mr Fairlie . . . he’ll be along soon. And Mr Touchey might be able to listen to you . . . I wouldn’t be surprised.’ She held out her hand: ‘Let me take those, Miss Pinero, I’ll get them put in water.’ As she went off she said: ‘My sister is one of yours, Chief Commander: Sergeant Carmel Edwards, Ditton Street.’

  Stella rolled her eyes at Coffin. ‘She wouldn’t make a bad detective herself. Do you know her sister?’

  ‘Know the name.’

  He could see a tall, thin, tired-looking man wearing a pale-blue shirt with no tie approaching. Mr Fairlie, I presume? You had to be a distinguished surgeon to look so tired and dress so casual. What had happened to the consultant from the past in a long white coat, cold and a
controlled expression? Gone with the snows of yesteryear.

  Gone too the remoteness from the nursing staff. Mr Fairlie put his arm round his pretty, dark nurse, told her to hurry back with the flowers, because he would need her help.

  A consultant needing help from a nurse? Depends on the nature of the help, Coffin thought cynically.

  Stella seemed to pick up his thoughts because she frowned, a particularly effective theatrical frown that she had perfected in The Importance of Being Earnest. (‘I started out as Gwendoline,’ said Stella, ‘now I am her Ladyship.’)

  Mr Fairlie took Coffin’s hand, murmured something polite. Coffin flinched at his grip, which was at once neat and powerful.

  ‘Mr Touchey . . . Albie . . . well, we both know him, don’t we?’ and he gave Coffin a gentle smile. Clever fellow, was Stella’s thought. ‘Albie Touchey is a well-known local figure. As you are yourself, Chief Commander.’ Was there a hint of a bow? ‘He is still deeply unconscious.’

  ‘He is going to come round?’

  Mr Fairlie did not answer Coffin directly. ‘We are investigating the head injury . . . a scan . . . the neurologist is going to investigate.’

  ‘Do you mean open up?’

  ‘I mustn’t say what Dr Paston thinks of doing, but he will certainly want to do an X-ray or two . . . Then he may decide to operate.’

  By now they were at the bedside and the nurse had returned with the flowers. She still wore her pleasant smile which she donated to everyone, not forgetting the young police constable who dared not, in Coffin’s presence, allow himself to smile back.

  Coffin watched as Fairlie made a swift check of Albie, who showed no signs of consciousness. His lips moved, his eyelids fluttered, once he opened them wide to stare forward but without comprehension.

  And then, for a second, before the eyelids went down, there was just a flash of the old Albie. The blue eyes had that hint of amusement with which they usually regarded Coffin.

  Coffin stepped forward. ‘Albie, old thing . . . Coffin here.’ But Albie had gone again. But at least he had been there, was still there, even if locked up.

  Mr Fairlie shook his head. ‘He may have heard you, probably did, but don’t expect an answer just yet.’