‘I would not have this feeling if it were not for that terrible photograph. Which was not a joke. A fake, but not a joke.’ And also because of the information gently passed over to him in Scotland. At the time he had tried to reject it, shrug it off as a case of mistaken identity, or a computer error, or someone’s genuine mistake, which did happen even with the men he was being briefed by. Now he did not know.
He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. From inside, he withdrew a bundle of letters. Underneath was yet another, smaller bundle, older and grubby, as if much opened and read. All the letters were from Stella, he had kept every letter she had written to him: the older packet dated from when they first met, before they quarrelled and parted. The more recent letters were since they met again, and were written by Stella when away filming or on tour. He had asked her to write as well as telephone and he had written back.
‘My secret hoard,’ he said aloud. He never asked if Stella kept his letters.
There were no photographs. ‘I hate being photographed except in the way of publicity business,’ Stella had said, adding with a giggle: ‘Besides, photographs are dangerous.’
Yes, Stella, they certainly are.
He packed the letters in his briefcase to take home where he could study them to see if they could tell him who took that photograph of Stella and, more importantly, who doctored it.
Who did you know, Stella, who could treat you in that way? Who wanted to make you look half-woman, half-beast?
He picked up the telephone. Paul Masters answered promptly, as if he had been awaiting the call.
‘You know what’s been going on?’
‘Just a bit, sir. If I may say so, sir, don’t worry.’
He’s sorry for me. Coffin accepted the gift with resignation. No doubt there was sorrow and pity all around him at Headquarters, seeping out into the whole police division which he commanded. Many a laugh and a joke too.
But the photograph was not to be laughed at. Some strange fish had swum into his pool and must be accounted for, and, if necessary, caught.
‘Get me Chief Inspector Astley, Paul, please.’
‘She’s here actually, sir. Outside. Shall I send her in?’
‘Yes, do.’ So had it been Phoebe laughing?
She swung into the room a second later, her face grave. She had not been laughing. But she smiled when she saw him. ‘I was on my way to you. I knew I had to see you to tell you what the latest was.’
‘You know about the body in Percy Street? Of course you do.’
Phoebe advanced into the room with the confidence of an old friend and ally; she perched herself on the windowsill. She invariably dressed soberly for work; today she wore black trousers with a cream silk shirt, but there was always the impression with Phoebe that underneath was lace and silk, probably in red. It was a tribute to her impact on her colleagues because, as she confided to her friend Eden when she heard the rumour going around about her red knickers, in fact they were white cotton, ‘from my favourite high street store, and made in Israel’.
‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Yes. I thought you’d given that up.’ In an early brush with what might have been but was not something malignant, Phoebe had given up all sins of the flesh from food to sex. Rumour had it that those days were over. Rampantly, cheerfully over.
‘I’ve started again.’ She lit up. ‘When under stress.’
‘And you are under stress?’
‘I’m catching it from you.’
‘Right,’ said Coffin. For a moment he said no more. He trusted Phoebe, to whom he would probably speak more openly than to anyone else. Except Stella. The Stella he had lived with and loved, but it looked as though there was a Stella he had never known. I won’t allow this thought to enter my mind, he told himself. I have to trust Stella, to believe in Stella.
‘I was coming to see you because the Todger called me in.’ She looked at him gravely.
‘He would do,’ said Coffin. Phoebe’s area of responsibility touched upon that of Inspector Lodge. They did not like each other, but there was respect.
‘I went round to Percy Street, the body had gone by then. I was told why they had thought it was Stella and got you round there, although I am bound to say I would not have thought it was her for a minute.’
‘There was another factor …’ he could hardly bring himself to call it a reason.
‘The handbag? I was told about it and what it contained.’
‘That was why I was brought round at speed,’ Coffin said gloomily. ‘I understand it, the bag has gone for forensic testing, and I am supposed to be going through Stella’s things to see if the one she owned, her bag, is still there. But I am not doing it because I am perfectly certain the blue Chanel bag is the one and original.’
‘Could be,’ said Phoebe, ‘but I shouldn’t let it worry you, it’s just a dirty trick. We’ll sort that one out, don’t worry. Her bag was used to create the illusion, someone wanted to distress you.’
‘Someone succeeded.’
‘But it wasn’t Stella, and I am surprised that the illusion held for as long as it did. Once the body was moved and taken round to Dennis Garden for examination.’ Phoebe picked a loose piece of tobacco from her lips, and smiled slightly. Professor Garden, an academic from the local university, was a pleasure to cross swords with. ‘Once Dennis got it on the table – even before, I should guess – he knew not only was it not Stella Pinero but that it was not a woman. Too flat, no breasts.’ She went on talking, giving him time to start breathing again; he seemed to have stopped. How long can the brain go without oxygen? ‘The pelvic structure, of course. Quite different, you can always tell.’
‘I suppose that, unconsciously, I saw that too. I knew it wasn’t Stella.’ Coffin went to the window to stare out. He could see across the road to the big car park where his own car had its privileged place; looking beyond was a large modern school where he had once given away the prizes, and further away the roof of the University Hospital where Dennis Garden taught and operated on the living and gazed upon interesting corpses with whom he was able to set up a relationship at once intimate yet impersonal. He fancied he could see one of those discreet, black-windowed ambulances turning in now to deliver another customer for Dennis’s attentions. Coffin turned back to Phoebe. ‘I suppose as Lodge called you in he thinks there is some terrorist connection.’
‘His antennae are twitching,’ said Phoebe.
Coffin came back to sit at his desk. ‘That needs thinking about.’ He tried to wave away Phoebe’s cigarette smoke. ‘I wish you’d put that out.’
‘Fag finished.’ Phoebe crushed the cigarette out on the sole of her shoe, then threw the stub away. The need for the counter irritant was over: Coffin was back on the job.
‘Pity about the face,’ said Professor Dennis Garden. He sounded genuinely moved. ‘The hair was a hairpiece on a band. Very good quality,’
‘It does make identification difficult,’ agreed John Coffin.
‘Not only that, but from what I can make of the bone structure, he had a graceful, pleasing face. Small-boned altogether, or he would never have got into the jeans,’ Garden said in a regretful tone.
‘Strange there wasn’t blood,’ observed Coffin. ‘Not much on the hair or hairpiece. What do you make of that?’
‘Not much at the moment.’ Garden was giving nothing away. ‘I have not examined the body properly yet.’
‘There was not too much blood in the room where he was found, but he was probably killed there. Interesting in itself. I wonder why?’
Professor Garden smiled happily. ‘Your problem, my dear, not mine. I deal with only this end of the affair. It’s for you to fiddle out the rest. If you can.’ He waved a hand to an attendant. ‘Seen all you want? Right, let’s put this poor fellow away to rest.’ The attendant wheeled the trolley to the refrigerated cage. ‘I shall have to be at work on him later, but I promise you I’ll do it delicately.’ His pale blue eyes glinted with amusement at Co
ffin. ‘Bit below you, isn’t it, to be taking an interest in a simple case like this?’
‘I always knew it wasn’t my wife,’ said Coffin bleakly. He knows all about it, every last detail, probably seen a copy of the photograph, or a drawing, or heard it with every elaboration and joke that his colleagues’ humour could devise …
‘Of course, of course. Very nasty moment it must have been. But soon over, you knew at once it was not Stella.’ He crossed himself carefully. Amid a myriad of other interests in Dennis Garden’s life was a feeling for a god. He was not always sure which god but he knew it was one to keep on good terms with. Besides, he liked Stella (inasmuch as he could admire any woman, his tastes not going that way), and wished her well. He would not have enjoyed doing a postmortem on her. He had an idea already that he was not about to enjoy this one.
‘What about the hands?’ Coffin asked.
‘Ah, you saw the significance of the gloves?’
‘One of the ways I knew it was not my wife,’ said Coffin. ‘I knew that Stella would not wear white gloves with jeans. So, what about the hands?’
‘You were right to be worried; the fingers were cut off at the knuckles.’
Coffin nodded. ‘No fingerprints then? What about the thumb?’
‘Even the thumb has gone … Whoever did it was taking precautions about identification … But don’t worry too much, science is wonderful, something might emerge that helps.’
But he was glad it was not Stella’s body they were discussing. He was skilled in morbid anatomy; he taught it, even enjoyed doing so, but one does not want to cut up one’s friends. Although there is always pleasure in a job well done. Already he had it in mind that he would identify this body for the police. No one got the better of Dennis Garden. Anyway, damn it, the face – he knew how to reconstruct the face. He had a sense of knowing that face.
He saw the Chief Commander to the door. What was she doing though, the beautiful and talented Stella, wandering away without warning to her husband when their marriage was supposed to be a notable success?
Not a man you could play around with, he considered, watching the Chief Commander’s retreating back. There was something to the set of Coffin’s shoulders that suggested he might not be easy.
Coffin summoned Inspector Lodge to see him. Lodge arrived with speed, suggesting to Coffin’s anxious mind that he had been expecting a call.
‘You went round to Percy Street very fast. Was there any special reason?’
The Todger took it quietly. ‘I wondered if we might have a terrorist there.’
‘Any other reason?’
The Inspector became even quieter. ‘Always interested when something like this turns up … it’s my job.’
Coffin waited.
‘In confidence, we have had an insider working here, I thought it might be my plant.’
‘And is it?’
Lodge shrugged. ‘No identification yet.’
‘Is your insider a man or a woman?’
‘A man,’ he said with reluctance. How he hated to part with information. Coffin thought.
‘So it could be the dead man?’
‘I am waiting to find out more, see who’s missing, run checks, but yes, I think, yes.’
‘And why was he dressed up like my wife? With a handbag containing a photograph of Stella? Any views?’
Lodge looked away, then back so that his eyes met Coffin’s bleak gaze.
‘Ah,’ said Coffin, understanding what he saw. No need to make mysteries here, he told himself, least of all to yourself. This man has been told what was shown to me with relative delicacy … yes, I have to say they tried to be humane.
No more was said on that secret subject. Lodge departed murmuring that he would keep the Chief Commander in touch, but it looked at the moment that this was a terrorist killing. How his man had been flushed out, he did not yet know, but it was vital to find out.
‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who got on to him or how, but by God I am going to find out.’
‘A traitor in our midst,’ said Coffin sadly.
‘I hope not, but we may have to face it.’
‘Let’s meet for a drink sometime soon,’ said Coffin. There was a hole here that needed mending, patching up, and it was his job to do it.
After Lodge had gone, Paul Masters came in with a tray of coffee and file of papers.
‘Hot and strong. And this is today’s list: a CC and Accounts meeting at midday. A delegation from Swinehouse … ethnic problems. And Anthony Hermeside from the Home Office is inviting himself to lunch …’
Coffin groaned.
‘Yes, good luck, sir. I have all the notes you will need to brief you on him in the folder. Oh, and Hermeside doesn’t drink.’
He departed in polite good order. He had arranged what he could, smoothed Coffin’s path and now it was up to the Chief Commander.
Coffin drank his coffee, which was, as Paul had said, hot and strong, there was cream to go with it and a new sort of chocolate biscuit, all confirming once again that everyone knew everything and quite possibly more than could be known – rumour always magnified a story – and he was being offered comfort.
He drank some more coffee, gazing at a corner of the room where it seemed to him a part of his own mind was circling.
‘Ever been betrayed?’ he asked this self.
‘Many times and oft,’ Old Sobersides up in the corner, who seemed to know more about his life than he did himself, came back with. ‘And you just have to get on with it.’
He had asked for a report on the body in Percy Street to be delivered quickly, and it was now on his desk.
The report, put together with speed by Sergeant Mitchell said:
The body is that of a white male, probably aged between thirty-five and forty. He was not dirty, he had not been living rough, nor was he undernourished. His hair, beneath the wig, was dyed.
Cause of death was a neat stab wound which had not bled profusely. We will know more about this when the pathologist reports.
It appears that he had been killed in the room where he was found. Blood traces, cleaned up but still to be seen, indicated this. Forensics are working it now.
Also, it is clear that he had walked there, wearing the clothes in which he was found. A video of him rounding the corner out of Jamaica Street shows him on the afternoon of the day within twenty-four hours of which he died. He was alone.
A first search of the rest of the house has turned up nothing except bomb-damaged furniture. Bed linen and towels in a cupboard in the upper bedroom, along with some old clothes.
A copy of the relevant part of the video is attached.
It was a blurred dark picture but one in which a figure, wearing jeans, swinging the Chanel bag over a shoulder, could be clearly seen turning the corner.
Good work, Mitchell.
He studied the picture again. Yes, there he was, centre picture, clearly shown. The end of the street was more blurred.
Well, that was it, for the moment.
Taking advice from his darker, grimmer self, Coffin did as he was told and got on with the job, following the appointments laid out in his diary and pointed to by Paul Masters.
Used as Coffin was to the dead times in an investigation when nothing seems to move forward, he found it hard. In a way, it was Inspector Lodge’s case if the dead man was indeed his man. Equally, because of the involvement of Stella, Coffin ought to keep out. He did not intend to do so.
He worked through the day, keeping his head down to avoid the interested eyes and hints of sympathy, but his temper was not improved by either.
Paul Masters had accompanied him into one committee meeting to keep the notes.
As they entered this last meeting together, Paul Masters passed on one more message to the Chief Commander. He was sensitive to his chief’s moods and knew at once that he would not be pleased at what he was about to learn.
The message was in a sealed envelope, but nevertheless, thro
ugh his own channels, Paul knew what was in it.
‘From Chief Superintendent Young, sir. He wanted you to have it soonest.’ You might need a strong drink when you’ve read it, instead of this committee of ways and means.
Coffin went into the room, already full of committee members, took his place at the head of the table, surveyed them bleakly, muttered an acknowledgement, then opened his letter. Why is it, he was saying to himself, that even colleagues you liked and respected (not always the same thing by any means) turn into trouble when they become committee members?
He read the letter quickly. ‘Thought you would wish to know that the dead man has been identified as Peter Corner, who was working undercover for Lodge. He had taken a job as office assistant and manager of the firm of builders repairing the house in Percy Street where he was found. He was identified by his underclothes, which had not been changed when he was dressed up as a woman. He had an invisible coded number, as is the rule, inside his pants.’
Coffin looked up from the letter. He could already tell that the bad news had been saved until last. ‘Lodge has sealed off the room which Corner rented in Pompey Land, Spinnergate. He found some notes there in which Miss Pinero’s name was mentioned.’
Damn, damn and damn, thought Coffin, even as he opened the meeting in a polite, calm voice.
Archie Young had scribbled an additional line or two himself which Paul Masters was not privy to since it had not been typed and thus was out of the chain of communication.
‘Series of photographs of Stella, taken in a bar, in company with an unknown man.’
Damn again, so the dead man had been watching Stella. Of course, she knew a lot of men, met them in the way of business.
Old Killjoy, his other self, who had come along with him and was nesting in the corner of this room, said sceptically: So?
Still, if there was anything bloody to come out, he would rather Archie Young knew than anyone. Not sure about Lodge, though.
He became aware at this point that the committee was waiting for him to speak. He forced his two selves to fuse, and took up the duties of a chairman of a difficult committee which must get down to business.
Coffin's Game Page 4
