‘Don’t tell me the boss man always conducts the checks himself? Seems a bit personal to me. You are exposing yourself, you know. Publicity, people asking questions. Wouldn’t like it to get in the papers, would you?’
‘I don’t think the chief inspector will be long. In fact, I believe I can hear her now.’
‘Chief Inspector, eh? I do get the high-rankers, don’t I? Or is she your girlfriend?’
Phoebe was moving down the corridor with Bill Eager. He was talking with animation. ‘Am I glad to see you, I was stuck in that room wondering what was going to happen. And why. I hope you don’t mind me saying that I don’t understand what I’m doing here.’ He strode along beside her, anxious to oblige. She could sense his anxiety.
‘Just want you to tell Mr Freedom you remember him coming into the Gun Club.’
‘I remember all right.’ Interestingly, Phoebe felt that his anxiety had not diminished.
The two went into the room, Phoebe first, ushering Bill Eager after her.
George Freedom looked at both of them but showed no special interest, other than saying: ‘Now what’s he here for?’
‘Well, Mr Freedom, we thought Bill might be able to convince you that you wanted to join the Gun Club.’
She turned to Bill Eager and held out her hand. ‘Your turn, Bill, go ahead. Refresh his memory.’
Bill stared at George Freedom and then he stared at John Coffin and back to Phoebe. ‘What’s the game? That’s not Mr Freedom.’
George Freedom leaned back, clapped his hands and began to laugh. ‘Well done, well done. Couldn’t have done better myself if I had written the text.’
Bill Eager was puzzled. ‘What’s going on?’
John Coffin and Phoebe Astley withdrew to talk things over. ‘It’s fallen apart,’ said Coffin, he was angry. ‘Get hold of Tim Radley.’
Radley, his conscience which usually slept easily, was awake and irritating him so that he went on duty determined to do a good job.
He was at once sent out in a patrol car to drive down to the docks where it was expected that a cargo of dodgy beef was being loaded. Rotterdam was the port destined to receive the beef carcases. Operation BEEFSTEAK, it was called, and had been running for a week with no notable success.
‘They know they are being watched,’ said Radley to the two detectives who appeared quietly from a side alley.
A shrug. ‘Probably sold the stuff over here, you might be eating it tonight.’
The patrol car circled the dock area, pretending just to be on a routine job, then drove off. Reporting no sign of anything.
This was the sixth day of the watch. Radley had been part of the team once before, and was uneasily aware that he knew where some of the beef might be resting in frozen peace.
‘Can’t blame chaps,’ he thought.
He did not think he himself had eaten any dicey beefsteaks. He was careful where he ate.
They were considering dropping in for a quick cup of coffee in the Stormy Weather eaterie where both men were known when a call over the radio told DC Radley that he was wanted in DCI Astley’s office.
‘What have you been up to, you naughty boy?’ said his driver as he swung the wheel and reversed away from Drossers Market. ‘Nothing more than usual, I daresay. Perhaps she’s going to ask you for a date.’
Radley, who was equipped with special sensitive sex antennae, which had already told him that DCI Astley did indeed find him attractive, blushed.
He was deposited outside Headquarters and the driver promised to wait if he wasn’t too long . . . ‘seeing that you could call it an official fuck.’
‘Shut up, and watch your tongue,’ said Radley as he disappeared.
The driver blew him a kiss before backing the car into some shade.
Radley felt like a dog that might be going to get a whipping or might be offered a hot meal, it all depended. When he met Phoebe on the corridor outside the incident room, he knew the dish was cold and empty.
‘The Chief Commander wants you.’ She led the way briskly back down the corridor to the interview rooms. She threw open the door. In the room, the Chief Commander and George Freedom sat on either side of the table. Radley gave them both a quick look. He was still puzzled, unsure why he had been brought here.
In the corner of the room was Bill Eager, looking depressed. He managed to give Radley a tired smile.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Radley managed to Coffin.
‘Good morning. Now say hello to Mr Freedom.’
Radley stared. ‘Eh?’
‘Greet Mr Freedom, greet Mr Freedom,’ said Coffin.
Radley looked for help to Phoebe Astley. ‘I would if I could, ma’am,’ he said, thankful to be able to speak at all. ‘Shall I go round and call on him at home. Is he at home?’
‘He’s here,’ said John Coffin, pointing to the man at the table with him. ‘Here.’
Radley knew now he was mad. ‘That’s not my Mr Freedom,’ he said.
Is this a farce, or is this a farce? Play it for laughs.
‘Not unless he’s had a face change, sir.’ Be hung for a sheep as a lamb. ‘Lost six inches from his legs and put it on round his bottom.’
Coffin went back to his own office, having exchanged a few words with Phoebe. ‘Well, I don’t think that lad will climb to the top of his career ladder, if indeed he stays on it –’ hint of a threat there – ‘but he certainly made his point.’
‘So we have someone using Freedom’s name, pretending to be the man.’ Phoebe was thinking aloud. ‘So is he someone who knows George Freedom?’
‘That would help us find him, but possibly not. He knows who George Freedom is, but so do a lot of people.’
‘He knew who didn’t know Freedom,’ pointed out Phoebe. ‘He knew that Radley did not know him, except by name, and neither did Eager. We know he was taller and thinner than Freedom.’ Eager and Radley had together provided a description of a man nearly six feet tall, thin, with a lined face. Spectacles, and dark hair.
An image flashed through his mind of the man running away from Albie’s room at the hospital. A tall, thin man in a black hat . . .
‘One thing we can be sure of,’ said Coffin. ‘He went to all that trouble, acting a part, to get a gun, then he did the shooting all right. We have to find him.’
‘I reckon he did know Freedom and didn’t like him.’
‘Who does?’ said Coffin.
‘Think it could be a woman? One who didn’t like Freedom. And . . .’ She had been going to say, and has a grudge against you, but prudence suggested she keep quiet.
Coffin knew what she was going to say. Anna, he thought, my God, not Anna. She was tall for a woman and might now have a lined face.
It was more than ever necessary to find the missing torso and head to the limbs left outside the house in Barrow Street.
‘Phoebe, collect all the new info that I don’t know, anything extra about the two shootings and the cat and the limbs. Get them to me by this evening, I will take them home with the rest of the files to study tonight. I may pick something up that I have missed.’
At the end of the day, George Freedom went back to his flat in the building now called The Argosy in Rickards Passage where he was alone, where he knew the number to call to see the right sort of girl was sent.
Bill Eager went back to his set of rooms above the Gun Club, from which his wife had long since moved out.
Tim Radley repaired to his Victorian dwelling where he was alone, the cat being out ratting and not expected back till dawn.
Phoebe Astley was also alone, but she had dinner with DS Tony Davley in a Chinese restaurant across the river from the Second City and then went to see a film. Crime was not mentioned. Nor was sex, love or hate.
Coffin did not walk home, as so often, to give the dog a walk, or he might have been aware of a tall, thin, dark-haired figure following him at a distance.
The figure’s motives were not friendly, vicious rather, but the figure knew that this was
just a time for looking. The spectre (which Coffin might have thought it was) turned away before St Luke’s, a thought surfacing.
Inside every fat creature is that thin one trying to get out. This was something the figure knew at close hand, and how dangerous it could be.
The unknowing Coffin was in the official car in which he sat in the back and documents in thick folders were piled in beside him and on top of which sat Gus so he could look out of the window, bow his head, and wag his tail, pretending to be the Queen.
But he was thinking about the strange tall figure. He ought to have discussed the puzzle of that figure at more length with Phoebe. If he could bring himself to talk about it to her she would probably be helpful.
Sergeant Grimm was still on his travels. Home soon, though.
14
Coffin and the royal beast entered the tower of St Luke’s together. It was calm and quiet. Security was still about but being tactful.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs listening for any sound of Stella, but all was still. She was not a noisy person but somehow you always knew when she was there. Or he did.
Once again, he thought that it was empty without her. Protective urges, and more urges than that, ran through him. He stood there in the hall, bags dumped about him, dog sitting on the stair looking at him, and thought about her.
Then he heard a car draw up, the door slam and Stella talking and laughing. She was alive, bless her.
She threw open the door and dropped her own deposit of bags on the floor to line up with his.
‘That was Vi bringing me back,’ she said.
‘Good.’ He had no idea who Vi was but if she brought Stella home to him then she had a place in his own private pantheon of gods worth bothering over.
Stella studied the bags on the floor. ‘You’ve brought work back and so have I . . . discussing two new productions . . . Robbie is corning in with me. But we can work together and listen to music and have a glass of wine. After we’ve eaten.’
A vague look came into her face. ‘Except, I don’t know what we’ve got to eat.’
‘A woman’s work is never done,’ said Coffin. ‘Fear not, I ordered a meal from Max, cold, and it should be in the fridge now. And something nice for Gus.’
Gus wagged his tail. He was good on signals, this one said: Food soon, please.
‘Max delivered it himself.’
‘You let him have a key? After you know . . .’
‘I trust Max, but no, the security guard let him in.’ Otherwise the alarm system would have sprung into instant and noisy action. ‘I gave him the keys and he returned them. You have to trust your own men.’
Then he remembered one or two of his own men whom he did not trust and wished he had been less vehement.
The food produced by Max was good and the wine even better. ‘You’ve been extravagant,’ said Stella as she spooned up the syllabub.
‘Comfort food.’
‘That’s what you wanted?’
‘It’s been a bad day. Can’t pin anything on Freedom. Doesn’t look as if it was he who went to the Gun Club, just someone acting as him. Interesting in itself, but I’m not sure what it tells us.’
‘An actor?’
‘Any candidates?’
Stella shook her head. ‘If I think of any, then you will be the first to know.’
Stella made some coffee and cleared the dishes away. She could be very efficient domestically when she chose. Then both settled down with their papers.
Once more Coffin went through the list beginning with the limbs outside the Serena Seddon. There had been a handbag too. He sat back thinking, trying to remember if Anna had had a handbag like it.
Forensics had not been able to pick up anything from it, except to say that the bag was old, from the styling about ten to twelve years old, and that the newspaper cutting had no fingerprints on it.
No fingerprints on anything. They had taken prints from the hand but they were not on the record. Not a criminal, then.
Then there was the death of Etta; she had rung up to say she was frightened and she was leaving. Before she could do so, she was shot.
The women at the Serena Seddon had said that Etta was mixing in bad company and had hinted a police officer’s involvement. He thought he had a name there, or possibly two. Ryman-Lawson, who had got in with Mack Mercer and Tolly Lightgate. Tim Radley, friend of Ryman-Lawson, and Sergeant Grimm. If Etta knew that lot and the people they went with, then she was in bad company.
But had one of them killed her?
Next, Albie, who thought that he was the one that the shot was for, and Coffin thought that it was for him. Someone could have been waiting for him and mistaken Albie for him. They were much of a height.
Did he believe that? He shook his head.
One thing I do believe, he said to himself, is all that has happened is aimed at me.
Whoever is behind it wants me either out or dead. Perhaps it would be better to resign now, before gossip and public pressure force me out.
He looked at Stella sitting happily at work, and knew he did not want to leave the Second City.
She looked up. ‘I love our tower, don’t you?’
Coffin looked about him, there were times in his life when he had come close to hating the place, now it was, quite simply Home. His Home.
‘Yes. You made it what it is, Stella. I couldn’t have done it. And the theatre, all your work.’
‘Your sister put money in,’ she protested. ‘I don’t forget it.’
‘You’re a good investment,’ said Coffin fondly. ‘Letty knows where her money will earn for her. But it’s all you. The Second City owes you a lot.’
‘Hey, this is beginning to sound like an obituary.’ Stella was laughing.
‘I owe you a lot, Stella. Everything, really.’
‘It works both ways.’
Coffin continued working after Stella had gone to bed. He read through the reports once.
A figure was beginning to walk out of the pages, building itself up out of details like that Green Man of the woods who was made up of branches and leaves and twigs.
First, a misty figure that might be real and might not, then becoming more solid, first arms, then legs as well. They could move fast, those legs. Drive a car. Strong hands that could aim a gun, seize a cat, then cut off its head.
Not a nice person at all.
At last a face began to take shape. A face known in Albie’s prison.
Not the one he had expected.
It was dawn by the time he had finished, not eager to believe his own thoughts. ‘Only half an answer,’ he told himself. ‘Why? Why did this person kill?’
He was not the only person to have a disturbed night. In one of the empty factories behind Drossers Market and only a few hundred yards from Chopping Tree Lane on the one hand and The Argosy block of expensive flats in Rickards Passage, a business meeting was going on.
This factory, formerly the home of a freezer firm which had tried to undercut foreign markets and failed, was not as empty as it looked. Nor was it without an owner, but the owner preferred his outfit to be anonymous. He specialized in moving on fast. Which indeed was a trait built up and inherited over the centuries, since before Sam Pepys’s time and after, among some of the traders and businessmen of Drossers Market.
Two men were sitting round a rough table, one on each side, both were wearing thick overcoats since the establishment was cold. Freezing cold. A light was suspended from the ceiling and several white cabinets lined the walls and stood in rows around the table.
Commercial-size freezers, all plugged in and working, which would have been a surprise to the Second City Electrical Power Company, who believed the place to be empty and disconnected from the mains with no meters working. In fact, it had been tapping in illegally for some months. Ever since the present occupant had moved in. Illegally and rent free too.
‘Of course, this is good Scotch beef, Hamish?’
‘The best from Fif
e, Ed,’ Hamish assured him. He poured Ed a large whisky and himself another large one – he was already into his third, and the whisky was one product of Scotland that he did not muck about with. Why improve the best?
In fact, his beef had never seen Scotland, its provenance was obscure, except that it came from cows, or beef cattle that should have been slaughtered as a protection to the public against disease.
Hamish knew this, as did his buyer.
‘Hamish, Hamish, my dear chap, that’s far too much whisky. You’ll have me drunk.’
Fancy that, Hamish thought, as if I didn’t mean to. He took another nip himself. It was precious cold in here.
‘Not a bad time to do business,’ he said. ‘The middle of the night is so quiet.’ Not that it was ever truly quiet in the Second City. ‘Got the van nicely parked, have you?’
‘Just down the road and I can drive in, load up and be off.’
‘Of course you can.’ Hamish himself had suggested the right place to park and then ease into the warehouse and back out for a quick exit. The police were pretty decent round here near Drossers Market, he had good relations with at least three of them, but you had to go along with foibles like not putting yourself where you could be caught.
Darren patted his pocket. ‘Let’s get down to business. My bird expects me back. If I’m not back in two hours, ring the police.’ He grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. ‘Joke.’
It was not a joke, but his primitive security – I have someone who will tell the police if I don’t make it back.
Lovely boy, thought Hamish, he hadn’t done business with Darren before and they might never meet again, but for the moment they had bonded.
Beef and money did the bonding.
‘You’ll be back with Lorraine,’ he said, smiling. ‘Come and look at the goods . . .’
They went along the row of cabinets, all full of neatly jointed beef. It looked like beef anyway. Darren prodded the odd joint as they passed.
It looked all right to him, and he already had a buyer lined up.
‘We’ll have to load it ourselves but I have a mate coming in.’
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