Coffin's Ghost

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Call me if you need me.’

  He felt she meant the offer. He knew Mimsie, he knew it meant that she had thought things over and was taking a line. She was by no means always a supporter of the police, quite the reverse sometimes, although always personally friendly to Coffin.

  By now she had heard, he was sure, from her own sources, that several police officers were under questioning, and she had made a deduction about the killing of Etta, the shooting of Albie (unpredictably, for such a lawless lady, a favourite with her) and the limbs in Barrow Street. It might even be that it was the killing of the cat that had tipped her over to one side: she was a notable animal lover. She was also believed to have a mink coat, if not two, hanging in her cupboard. But that was Mimsie: many-sided.

  At the counter the new cook was making a sandwich for a stallholder to take away. He was issuing orders about what he wanted and what he did not want between the bread and butter: ham, a slice of cheddar, no mustard but sweet pickle, tomato optional.

  When it was his turn, Coffin asked for coffee but no milk. The coffee came out of a big pot on the stove behind the counter but was none the worse for that.

  A woman came out through the door in the wall. She was the fattest woman he had ever seen. Legs, arms, body, were gross. The face was imbedded in fat.

  He looked at the face, and from the depths of the flesh, the eyes looked back.

  He knew that face. ‘Anna?’ Not dead, not chopped up into bits. ‘Anna, it’s you.’

  She came right up to him so that he could smell her.

  ‘You’ve been here all the time?’

  ‘Yes, just growing the flesh to hide in.’

  He thought she had succeeded.

  ‘You had no chance of recognizing the lovely, slim Anna, did you? Not just food, you know. I didn’t eat my way to greatness . . . heart did it. Swelled my body like a steroid balloon. So I thought your heart could suffer a bit.’

  Coffin was silent.

  ‘You’ve had troubles, haven’t you? Read it in the papers.’

  ‘You could say that . . . I think you knew the girl Etta, Mimsie said she thought she had seen her here.’

  Anna . . . Jo, was she now, looked across the room to where Mimsie Marker sat. ‘She always knows everything.’

  ‘And I think you had Alice staying here.’

  Anna blinked. ‘I can’t have children, you know. Hormones all wrong. Yes, I took her in. Freedom dumped her here. I’ve known him a long while, he’s been kind in his way. I owe him.’ She hesitated. ‘He knew I had a strong feeling for a baby. He could trust me.’

  ‘Alice said you were kind to her.’

  ‘Poor little beast. I’d have kept the baby if it had come to term . . . popped out like a pea from a pod, it did. You ever seen a baby born like that? Don’t bother, you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘And you buried it.’

  ‘Said a prayer. If I’d told the father, that pig, or Dave, he’d have said, Just burn it.’

  This is Grand Guignol all right, thought Coffin, as this washed over him. Soft talk but he could hear and Mimsie could watch. She could probably lip read.

  ‘That was good,’ he said simply, trying to get his bearings.

  ‘No, I’m not good. You got it right when you turned me away. I wasn’t good then, and I’ve got worse.’ She put her head on one side. ‘You don’t believe me? Let me introduce you to Win, she used to cook for us.’

  She led him round the back.

  ‘She’s here?’ He looked around. ‘Is she comfortable?’

  Anna laughed. ‘Suits her. She can’t walk, you see?’

  ‘Is she crippled?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s crippled. Very crippled.’

  He began to have a sense of the macabre dialogue in which he was taking part.

  Anna threw open the freezer cabinet. Looking up at him, eyes closed, features blue and pinched, was a head.

  ‘She dropped dead in my kitchen.’

  Coffin said nothing, he had nothing to say.

  ‘She donated her limbs to a good cause . . . the good of getting at you and your lovely wife who was the love of your life. You shouldn’t have said that.’

  Dave appeared through the further door. He stood looking at Coffin, then he walked forward with a flourish: he was an actor and he was on stage, centre stage. He put his arm protectively around Anna.

  ‘No, you shouldn’t. Pushed her over the edge.’

  Coffin shook his head. That was done by the tablets and the sniffing and the drinking. You don’t get like that on cups of tea.

  ‘She was young and you made her feel like dirt. She never got over that. I was just getting her right when you did it to her again.’ He paused. ‘So she sent you the messages.’

  ‘And you did the rest? Why?’

  Dave reared up like a hero from a Greek tragedy: he shouted, beginning low and rising to an ear-cracking bellow: ‘She is my wife.’

  ‘I don’t believe it was all lover’s passion. You had another interest at your killings.’ Coffin was willing to take them both on. ‘I want you to know that I saw early this morning when I was going through all the reports that I could see you were the one who had the chance to kill Etta . . . you picked up her message on the answerphone in the refuge and realized she was going to tell what she knew about you and Grimm and the others. There was a report of a white van near the car park where she was killed. Forensics will be checking that van. You aimed to kill Albie Touchey because he had been told you were in the drugs game and were willing to kill. Once again, you heard his recorded message. You knew he was on the way.’

  In his mind, he had the picture of Dave, the actor, acting George Freedom and getting into the Gun Club. He looked at Anna and remembered what Stella had said about the large woman in the library who had jogged her arm so she dropped the books and forgot her handbag, which Anna must have picked up. Dave got the keys copied and took the bag back.

  He hadn’t needed to break into the St Luke’s Tower. He had the keys and he had a gun. Or had had the gun. The police had it now.

  In spite of himself and his confidence in his power to look after himself, he felt a shiver run through him.

  ‘I wanted you,’ said Dave, as if he read Coffin’s mind.

  ‘I was certainly to be a victim but you wanted to bring me down first. But the cat . . . why the cat? That was you, I saw that once I read all the reports. You had the cat’s head hidden in your cleaner’s bag and you broke the window – outwards . . . A real act, just as you acted George Freedom in the Gun Club . . . tall and thin, that was you. You’re not a bad actor.’

  ‘A bloody good actor when I get the parts.’

  Anna said: ‘I did the cat. I did all the choppings. I with my little axe. I knew it would make you sick.’ Anna went on: ‘Most of all I wanted you sick and hating yourself. To know that feeling and know that I had given it to you and the love of your life. How is she, the loved Stella?’

  I can’t accept the blame for all of it, Coffin thought, but might have to take some. It will all depend on what Stella says.

  Then he thought: Damn it, I’m getting as mad as they are.

  I am not guilty.

  He was relieved when that figure of sanity, Phoebe Astley, walked in with Mimsie behind her.

  ‘I knew how it would be,’ Mimsie was saying in a loud voice. ‘Nasty, I could just smell nastiness. Not just mad: evil.’ And fixing Coffin with her strongest glare and giving him an extra blast of sound: ‘And don’t believe all that man there says. It’s money with him all the time. Whatever he’s done there be money for him somewhere.’

  Coffin was late home that night, there was so much to tidy up, interviews to be given for television, the radio, and the newspapers. No hope of keeping things quiet with Mimsie on the spot.

  He had also had to talk to the men and women in the incident room to congratulate them on the result, and thank them for their hard work.

  He had taken the precaution of telephoning Stell
a at the theatre and telling her everything. Or almost everything. He kept quiet about the sickening fear that Anna and Dave had created in him, as if they would chop him up and eat him if they could.

  Stella, when he got home, was at her best, loving and gentle and quiet. If it was a performance, at least it was tailored to her audience.

  He came in, sank down on the sofa, let Gus massage his feet and Stella his ego. She let him talk, repeating himself a bit, and then came in with a tray of hot food and cold wine. This time she had done the cooking herself, a baked salmon with a lemon sauce, one of the dishes she was good at. There was hot crisp bread with it too.

  ‘Not the time to have a cold meal, you need the warmth.’

  He tried to say something, to complete his confession, but she held up her hand:

  ‘Sometimes I feel much more worldly than you, my love. The way to deal with this is to treat it like a play. Some good parts, some a shambles . . . you know what the shambles are?’ He nodded silently. ‘The killing ground, where the animals are slaughtered. We’ve had that, the show is over.

  ‘Draw the curtain down.’

  Sergeant Grimm arrived late that night at Waterloo Station from the shuttle. He crossed the platform to catch the tube out to the Second City.

  Lucky fella, I am, he told himself as he waited for the train. Money in that lovely bank in Geneva, and that bloody Etta off my back. It was money well spent getting her dealt with. The train was arriving. Wonder if he had any luck with Albie? Good to have him out of the way too. It had been part of the contract.