Coffin's Game

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘I see.’ He wasn’t sure that he did, nor if he believed her. ‘And did she make a telephone call to you?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘No.’ She shook her head again. ‘No, I never spoke to Maisie again.’

  She hesitated. ‘How did Maisie die?’

  ‘We think she let her killer in, and then was killed.’

  ‘How was she killed?’

  ‘She was stabbed,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘So, is there a connection with the other deaths?’

  ‘It seems likely, doesn’t it? But we don’t know yet.’

  This time, the tears that sprang to her eyes were real.

  The Chief Superintendent asked a few more routine questions about times and so on, more to keep the interview going while he watched Stella than anything else.

  Finally he said, ‘Well, thank you.’ He looked at DC Behr, who stood up, smiled at Stella, and walked away. Archie followed. At the door, he paused and looked back.

  ‘Sorry I had to make it so formal, but it seemed best.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I understand. I’m glad it was you asking the questions and not someone else.’

  Archie nodded. Like Phoebe Astley, for instance. She wasn’t out of that wood yet, though she didn’t know it. There was a going over from Inspector Lodge ahead of her, one of his specials, with his own particular brand of questioning. He would be there asking about Pip Eton and also about the first death of all, that of Francesco di Rimini.

  He longed to light a cigarette and offer one to Stella, but he was a dedicated ex-smoker who still had hankerings when under pressure, as now: he was walking a tightrope here between loyalty to Coffin and loyalty to the job. And there was his own career to consider. He was beginning to see that they might sink or survive together. Tonight he would talk it over with his own wife and benefit from her advice; he trusted her judgement more than his own, which seemed to him the right way round in a marriage.

  She admired John Coffin while being slightly envious of Stella’s glamorous career. His wife had a career of her own, she did not mind being outshone by Stella, but she had once admitted rather wistfully that she would have liked those clothes!

  He left Stella then, thanking her again for her help.

  ‘Is that the end?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Probably a few more questions, but don’t worry.’

  ‘That’s what doctors say when there is everything to worry about.’ But she said it with spirit and did not attempt to detain him.

  He admired her for that: she was a fighter. On the way out, he passed Alice, also a fighter, he judged. A hefty young woman, too; he couldn’t see her playing Ophelia, but perhaps there was a place for everyone in the modern theatre.

  As he took in the aggressive tilt of her square shoulders, he allowed himself a passing wonder about her sexual stance. If she preferred women, that explained her manner – half-protective, half-hostile – to Stella Pinero. Not likely to get any change out of Stella, who was enthusiastically hetero. He knew that performers could be any which way, but not Stella, not the Chief Commander’s wife.

  Archie Young nodded politely to Alice and moved on; he had a very straightforward attitude to sexual matters. Too straightforward, his wife had once hinted. A hint Archie did not take and, in fact, hardly recognized for what it was.

  Archie’s wife was herself a policewoman, currently chairing a committee on pornography and women, so she was a very knowledgeable lady. It might be a good idea to get her to take a look at Alice.

  He turned back for a last word with Stella. ‘Work on remembering the woman’s voice,’ he said. Wondering if there really had been a woman.

  Stella gave him an opaque look.

  John Coffin, with Augustus once again firmly attached to him, was working in his office, checking through reports with Paul Masters. If he himself was destined to be a life peer when he retired, as had once been sourly predicted, then he would see that Paul was promoted. Archie Young, so long his friend and ally, would have to be included in the pantheon somewhere, but he was a detective pure if not simple and without the administrative skills the top jobs demanded. And Inspector Lodge could be moved on.

  But I am not going yet, Coffin told himself. Those who think so can wait and see.

  Before he did anything else, he had to telephone Stella. She was in her office, so she answered promptly.

  ‘You might have told me you were sending a great big dragon round breathing fire and asking questions.’

  ‘I don’t believe that Archie breathed any fire.’

  ‘I admit he is a nice friendly dragon at heart, but he tried. He did a little bit of puffing and huffing. He sends out rather nice smoke for a dragon.’

  ‘You’re making me jealous.’

  ‘No need, but you might be jealous of Alice, she’s been eyeing me a bit.’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘You don’t sound surprised. But don’t worry, I’m not really her style and she is certainly not mine.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘I think I know who is: Letty, judging by the way Letty was shouting at her. Angry.’ Stella managed a laugh.

  ‘Letty?’

  ‘Yes, she picked it up and reacted. Energy was crackling through her.’

  ‘You said anger.’

  ‘Often the same thing with Letty.’

  That was true enough.

  ‘I’ve dropped you in it, haven’t I?’

  ‘We will talk later,’ he said gently. ‘In fact, I ought to apologize to you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I will explain, but later.’ Not a superstitious man, he kept his fingers crossed.

  They ended there and he returned to Paul Masters.

  ‘I’m off to Fish Alley.’

  Paul Masters nodded.

  ‘The Chief Superintendent is talking Stella through various episodes.’

  Masters gave another nod. He knew; he was the man who knew everything.

  ‘I believe she will have to speak to Inspector Lodge … I shall see him myself.’

  ‘He’s at Fish Alley,’ said Masters. Phoebe Astley would not like that.

  ‘I know.’ Phoebe had told him. Coffin asked: ‘Anything further on the riot?’

  ‘A white van was tracked to a house in Dedman Street, just beyond the Spinnergate tube station … the ring leaders were inside. They’ve been brought in to be questioned. Inspector Dover is well pleased.’

  ‘Good. It was an arranged thing then, not spontaneous?’

  ‘No, there was a bank robbery planned for the same time … didn’t come off. The new CCTV cameras tracked three men in a stolen car on their way there … They have been brought in too.’

  A busy day, but a commonplace in the Second City, and not without its successes.

  This time he did not walk but drove himself to Fish Alley, where the kerb in front of Linton House was lined with police cars.

  Inspector Lodge was standing on the stone steps to the front door, deep in thought. He looked up to see Coffin park his car. ‘Thought I would find you,’ said Coffin. ‘Had a chance to look round yet?’

  ‘A bit. I’ve been talking to Peter Corner.’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s the man you had planted with the building firm.’

  ‘Yes, a building firm is always a good place to put a man, a sleeper, which is what Pete was more or less. Builders move around, get to know all the gossip.’

  ‘So they do.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I had had my doubts about the firm I got him into. They had been doing some work on contract in Belfast, I thought they were worth watching.’

  ‘And are they?’

  ‘The Archers seem to be clean enough, although when Pete went missing I did wonder. And the dead man being found in a house they were working on …’ Lodge shrugged. ‘But nothing has turned up that incriminates them. Astley’s got a nose for that sort of thing,’ he said admiringly, ‘and she would have smelt anything there was. She says not. I coul
d do with her on my team.’

  Coffin said nothing. He knew well that the men and women who worked with Lodge were a group of individuals who followed their own line, investigated in their own way, and although loyal to their mates were not team workers. It was not always safe to think of yourself as a team in their questionable world. Phoebe might do well in it, he granted Lodge that much.

  The flat was quiet, but not empty. You could feel the presence of the police all over it.

  Phoebe Astley was in the sitting room with Peter Corner. She was pouring coffee from a tall carton into white plastic mugs.

  ‘Like some coffee, sir?’ she said as she handed a mug to Peter Corner, a tall, dark-haired young man with bright blue eyes. Coffin could see straightaway that she was giving Corner one of her more flirtatious treatments. It was a treatment, sometimes you felt the better for it and sometimes much the worse. Corner looked unmoved, which Coffin judged to his credit.

  ‘Have a sandwich.’ Phoebe held out a plate. ‘We were so hungry that Pete kindly went along to Max’s and brought grub back. Cheese and chutney, ham and salad, and smoked salmon. Try the salmon, Peter, it is said to be stimulating.’

  She was deliberately baiting the Todger, who stayed expressionless but was probably chalking it up.

  Coffin drank some coffee, black. Max made the best cup of coffee in the Second City. Even a plastic mug could not spoil it.

  The whole feel of this room had changed since he had visited earlier that day with Stella. A forensic team, a clutch of photographers and several detectives had been through it, probing and looking, and changed the scent.

  He stood in the middle of the room and demanded bluntly: ‘What have you got?’

  Phoebe took it upon herself to be the voice: ‘In the first place, the clothes, the bloody bundle. From the nature of the bloodstains down the front of the T-shirt, all down the leg of the jeans, and on the arms and front of the denim jacket, we feel sure that the killer was wearing them at the time of the killing. Forensics have taken them off to match with the blood of Pip Eton.’

  ‘Right.’ Coffin nodded. ‘What else?’

  Phoebe hesitated. ‘No name tags, but they are good Italian jeans and denims … you say Stella thought they were hers.’

  ‘Thought they could be,’ he said tersely. ‘She hasn’t missed them. She keeps working clothes at the theatre.’

  Phoebe spared a passing thought for a woman who could keep expensive clothes, which these were, as spare working clothes. ‘Quite. Easily purloined.’ She was rather pleased with her use of that word, put her in the Wilkie Collins or Edgar Allan Poe class as a commentator on crime.

  ‘I want to look round.’ He made a silent tour of the flat, followed by the others; he went into the bedroom where the clothes had been found, and looked under the bed. There was a fair amount of dust, which told him nothing he did not already know about Stella and housekeeping. He moved on to the bathroom, where he paused, studying the hand basin, the bath and the lavatory.

  ‘Any traces of blood here?’

  ‘Forensic took samples and will be coming back to us.’

  Coffin nodded, and went on to the kitchen. He stared at the floor, which was carpeted. ‘Looks a bit wet.’

  ‘Forensics took a scraping.’

  ‘And the sink?’

  ‘From there too.’

  He made no further comment, until they all came back into the sitting room.

  He sat down and picked up his unfinished mug of coffee.

  ‘That will be cold.’ Phoebe seized the carton and shook it. ‘Still some here, feels warm, let me give you a drop more.’

  Coffin finished what was in his mug. ‘I don’t mind it being cold.’ He turned to Peter, who was standing with his back to the window. ‘Before we talk about anything else, what about those underpants of yours?’

  There was silence. ‘Is this important?’ asked Phoebe.

  ‘I think it is, I think it is very important. I wouldn’t be surprised if Inspector Lodge did not agree with me. These were the ones found on the dead body in the bombed house in Percy Street.

  ‘How do you think they got there?’

  ‘I thought it was pure chance.’

  ‘Did you? Why was that?’

  ‘The reason I have my name inside is partly because the unit like us to be labelled in case we turn up dead – that’s the hidden message for knowing eyes only – but I have my name written in marking ink because I use a laundry and they do get lost. I have lost several pairs. Other clothes too. If you have your name inside, the laundry is willing to refund you the loss.’

  ‘And have they refunded you for these?’

  ‘I haven’t made a claim yet. I’ve had other things on my mind.’ He had left them, of course, when he last visited di Rimini. They probably knew. Lodge must have guessed.

  ‘You did not address your mind to how and why they turned up on a murdered man? I can see from Inspector Lodge’s face that he has been wondering.’

  Lodge moved his hands in front of his face, then drew them down as if he was wiping it.

  ‘I had other things on my mind, you know, sir. I was following up a lead which led me here. I’ve been working as a temporary handyman in the local school, and doing the furnace here. It was my way to keep an eye on things here. But yes, I was out of touch, we don’t always keep in touch in this game.’ He was definitely defensive; ambition, rivalry with Lodge had driven him. Sex – unluckily he really liked di Rimini – had been a spur also. He wanted to avenge him.

  ‘I think you knew where they could have been … not who used them, because that would mean you knew the killer,’ said Coffin carefully. ‘But certainly where they might have been so the killer could use them.’

  Peter looked at Lodge, then at Phoebe, who was giving him a careful scrutiny.

  ‘Well, I never,’ she said. ‘I never would have put you down for one of di Rimini’s pick-ups.’

  ‘I was working a line, you often have to do things you don’t like, act in a way that is alien, when you are on a job.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Inspector Lodge.

  Peter shrugged. ‘When the matter came up, when the question was asked, I would have said. But other clothes of mine have gone missing, including underwear.’ To Phoebe’s amusement, he spoke the words prissily, like a woman referring to her knickers. ‘What do we call them now?’ she asked herself, repressing her mirth. ‘Briefs, bikinis?

  ‘Oh, Pete,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘How you disappoint me. And I expect you are breaking Inspector Lodge’s heart.’

  ‘Cool it, Phoebe.’ Coffin stood, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘Did it never occur to you that you were compromised? That your work and status was known?’ He turned round. ‘I can see it occurred to Inspector Lodge.’

  ‘Of course it did,’ said Lodge irritably. ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I came across Francesco – I called him Frank or Ed sometimes – at a pub down at Spinnergate. We chummed up, I thought he was worth working … And he was, it was something he said that put me on to Fish Alley and to watching this place here. I was already eyeing Miss Pinero. All right, I did keep mum and drop out, but we do in our business, and it was worth it. I got a strong lead on Pip Eton.’

  ‘A strong lead,’ said Coffin again. ‘So what was it?’

  Peter looked at Inspector Lodge, then made his own mind up. He was, so Coffin decided, fully the same rank as Lodge, and in the world in which both men moved, possibly his superior. How much of an act his mock repentance had been was not clear. God what a crew. Coffin thought. I wish I had never got mixed up with it all, but I couldn’t keep out.

  Briskly, speaking coolly and with command, Peter Corner said: ‘We knew about Pip Eton, of course. He had been identified as a member of a small cell, associated with the bomb makers. He was a recruiting officer and the one with the money, but up to whatever he was asked to do, you can take that for granted. He may have helped place the second bomb, he may not.
Not sure.’

  ‘Was his unit responsible for the bomb outside the shop in Spinnergate?’

  ‘As I say, we can’t be sure as yet. The main team came from outside. This lot were a reserve team, but they would have played their part. I’ve been watching them for some time, it’s why I am in the Second City. Pip Eton hung around with some locals and was trying to make time with Miss Pinero. He was the paymaster, the money man, but also the professional soft man of the unit, the one that went out to make friends. He may also have been their M man, the one who got the transport, but his main use was to get a local contact. Well, he had one ready made, close to you.’

  ‘So he did,’ said Coffin. ‘We know that.’

  ‘But I didn’t know about the house in Fish Alley, whereas Frankie did. He had a foot in the theatre world and these things get passed around. The woman Maisie knew, and she knew Frankie, they drank together.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Coffin thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, now. And so is Pip.’

  ‘So he is,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Now, one school of thought says he was killed by a member of his cell for talking. Or for spending their money. I favour that view myself. I lived opposite for a week … sometimes I slept in my car, sometimes I didn’t sleep at all. I watched Linton House. I was inside the place doing odd jobs, I watched Pip Eton go in the day his body was found. I didn’t see him leave, but there is a back entrance where you could park a car. He may have left, dead.’ This was the fullest statement the man had made so far.

  ‘Any other comings or goings?’

  With some reluctance, Peter admitted that a local bus ran past Fish Alley once an hour, that the stop was not far away from Linton House. No, he could not see who got on and off.

  ‘So Pip could have got on it?’

  ‘That is so. He wasn’t a man who liked going on a bus. Public transport was not his preferred way of getting about.’

  Coffin ignored this.

  ‘But he could have done?’ Phoebe was not about to ignore anything.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Anything else?’