Cold Coffin

by Butler, Gwendoline

  ‘Phoebe sounded upset.’

  ‘Yes, she is. Dead’s dead to her.’

  ‘I mean, more than you would expect. Professionally,’ she added, as Coffin seemed not prepared to say anything.

  ‘Black Jack’s an attractive man,’ he said finally. ‘Are you getting the coffee for Phoebe?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I think they had a relationship once,’ said Coffin reluctantly. ‘I never enquired.’

  ‘She’s a woman of surprises. I always knew she put it about a bit, but really . . .’ Stella was trying to sound both shocked and surprised when she was neither. ‘And I don’t believe you never asked questions.’

  ‘Well, only in the way of work, and not directly to her.’

  Stella nodded. It would make a good play, this would. ‘I’ll get dressed.’

  ‘You look lovely as you are.’

  ‘I know. That’s why. It’s not fair on Phoebe.’

  She took her time dressing, a long grey wool and silk skirt with a cashmere sweater. Gold earrings. Then she made some more coffee, but still no sign of CI Astley.

  ‘She’s in no hurry,’ she said, sailing in with a tray of hot, fresh coffee and the best china.

  ‘I thought I heard the car,’ said Coffin looking out of the window. ‘Yes, she’s here, but I can’t see what she’s doing.’

  Stella joined him. ‘She’s crouched over something. I hope it’s not another body. Not in our back yard.’

  The large, elegantly paved square between the church tower and the new parts of the theatre was no one’s back yard.

  Coffin moved away from the window. ‘Whatever it is, she’s bringing it to our front door.’

  It must be a head, thought Stella; she couldn’t carry a body. She hurried down the curving staircase to where Phoebe was ringing the bell.

  Phoebe was there, cradling in her arm a small, emaciated young cat, hardly more than a kitten.

  ‘I found it outside. It’s been abandoned, I think it’s starving. Dehydrated too.’

  Coffin stroked the tabby head with a gentle forefinger, and the little creature looked back with no expression in its yellow eyes.

  ‘We’d better get some water down it and then some food. Got any fish, Stella?’

  ‘In a tin,’ she said. Stella had only ever seen large, plump healthy animals, never one like this bedraggled little specimen. Death, she thought, might be its next encounter.

  ‘We will try to get it to eat a little, but we must get the vet to it . . . He probably ought to take it away so it can be nursed properly, unless the shock of moving it kills it. But I think it’s past that, we must just try.’ All the time he was gently stroking it.

  Stella had a busy day ahead but it did not include a string of murders and an overwrought CI Astley. Life was to be sought rather than death for a tabby stray as much as anyone else. ‘I’ll organize it,’ she said.

  ‘So what about Black Jack?’ asked Coffin over the kitten’s head.

  ‘His throat was hit; he must have swung round and got shot there . . . He was found by the next person down Piss Passage . . . when the ambulance got there his heart had stopped.’

  ‘Dead,’ said Coffin.

  ‘Pre-dead. It’s a new state. Get to you fast enough and they can bring you back.’

  ‘And the medics did?’

  ‘Yes, they’re mighty clever, but he might stop breathing again any minute, or he might be brain-damaged. He lost a lot of blood. I don’t know how he’d feel about that. He might think they’d been too clever.’

  ‘I expect he’d rather be alive than dead,’ said Coffin, still stroking the cat. ‘And you think the attacker was the one who did for his mother and his sisters?’

  ‘At the moment it’s the only idea I have.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Nothing as yet, except the nature of the wound in the neck. The same sort of weapon. But that’s only guessing.’

  Good guesses count for a hell of a lot, as Coffin knew well.

  ‘And Dr Murray?’

  ‘Another one done by the same killer.’

  ‘Hm.’ Coffin stopped stroking the cat, to whom Stella was now administering spoonfuls of milk and water.

  ‘Kill or cure,’ she said. She gathered up the little animal. ‘I’ll take over now; the vet said he’d be here within twenty minutes. First call of the day.’

  ‘Let me know how it goes,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Right,’ said Stella.

  Coffin watched her walk away with the cat. Darling Stella, she always came through when it counted. If the kitten lived, and she would see it did, then it would be with them for the rest of its life.

  He swung round to Phoebe.

  ‘No infant skulls around this one’s head?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘None around in Minden Street either.’

  ‘Mrs Janey Jackson was a maternity nurse, though.’

  Coffin looked up in surprise. ‘Was she? I didn’t know that.’

  Phoebe had herself under control by now. ‘If Jack dies, it might be an idea to have the post-mortem on him and Dr Murray one after the other.’

  ‘Would Dr Everle take that?’

  George Everle was Professor Dennis Garden’s senior assistant. Garden was so eminent and famous that he was absent a good deal on what he called ‘important university business’. He had a very handsome set of rooms in the shining, gleaming new department that had been built under his magic. Everyone agreed that Professor Garden had magic.

  ‘Oh nothing worries Everle . . . just doesn’t get through; if you see as many bodies as he does, then one more doesn’t matter.’ Of course, she didn’t go to many PMs herself these days, nor did the Chief Commander (when had been the last?), so the simultaneous arrival of both of them might cause Everle to raise an eyebrow. If he looked at them at all.

  As she left, Phoebe said to Coffin, ‘By the way, do tell Stella to watch the scraps of paper with important notes on that she drops. I picked this up in the hospital and it has a telephone number on it. And I think there might have been others.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ said Coffin absently. He was thinking about Black Jack. Dead or alive?

  But Black Jack was not dead. He was hardly alive, not conscious, and the prognosis was not good, but dead he was not.

  Coffin got on with routine work, receiving at intervals bulletins about Black Jack from the hospital and the kitten from Stella.

  Stella reported that the vet thought the kitten would do well now it was in care; he was giving it a special food. Stella added that it was female, had been badly treated, bruised, but it was not in kitten. She had told the vet that she would be giving it a home, but would be having it neutered.

  Coffin was mildly surprised because she had tolerated rather than loved the various animals he had brought with him into their lives. Except Gus, the dog; she loved Gus. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No, Stella, be nice to have a cat again. My familiar.’

  ‘I feel guilty, you see. I heard a cat crying, several times, and I never did anything. It might have died if Phoebe hadn’t brought it in.’

  ‘No need to feel guilty. Or not on your own. I could have heard the cat too and done something.’

  ‘Oh you had murders and such on your mind . . . I expect in the end she will be more your cat than mine.’

  ‘I give you my share,’ said Coffin generously.

  ‘Any news of Jack?’

  ‘He’s not dead. Not quite alive, either.’

  ‘He was shot?’

  ‘Yes, in the neck. Only the fact that he was wearing a coat with a collar up protected him . . . deflected the bullet a bit, so the surgeons say. They’ve got the bullet out.’ Phoebe’s outfit had wanted the bullet to see if it made a match with the bullets in the other killings.

  He worked on, dictating a report to one of his secretaries, and taking a phone call.

  ‘Charley Fisher here, sir.’

  Inspector Fisher had taken
over from Sergeant Drury and was handling the delicate matter of the missing Mrs Lumsden.

  ‘Just to say, sir, that there has come a postcard from Mrs Lumsden. Sent to her mother. Picture postcard of Teignmouth, postmarked South Devon. Teignmouth is in Devon.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Coffin irritably. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It says her mother is not to worry, she is well.’

  ‘Does she say why she went off?’

  ‘No, just that she is in hiding.’

  ‘In hiding? From whom?’

  An almost audible shrug came over the telephone wire. ‘From her husband, I take it, sir.’

  ‘Is it a joke? Is it genuine?’

  ‘The mother thinks it is her daughter’s writing, but she isn’t sure. And she has no idea what is meant by being in hiding.’

  Into the silence, Fisher said, as reproachfully as he dared, ‘You did say you wanted to be kept in touch with any development, sir.’

  ‘So what do you think? Is the card genuine?’

  ‘The postmark is genuine. Last week. Took the mother that long to let us see it. But the card, well, it’s an old one.’

  Coffin was silent again. He should keep out of this, he was getting involved in too many cases that he ought to leave to the investigating teams. God knows, he had enough problems to deal with.

  ‘You don’t believe it,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘No, sir. Fishy.’

  So that was it, for the moment. Arthur Lumsden was still in trouble, and so, by transference was the Second City Police. No one wanted an officer who had done in his wife. It was the last thing to cheer up an already anxious Chief Commander. Especially one who no longer felt he had the back-up of his surrounding office staff.

  There had been a lot of changes in his office lately. The secretaries that he had relied on had departed to promotion or maternity; he would always welcome them back if they fancied it, but meanwhile he had to take on fresh bodies.

  Stella had told him that he depended too much on women, so now in addition to Paul Masters he had Sergeant Roger Adams (he liked to be called Rog, although not by the Chief Commander) and Sergeant Anthony Davies, a highly efficient young man with whom he was not yet on easy terms, while respecting his skills. Rumour had reached Coffin that Sergeant Davies was considering becoming Antonia Davies. Coffin had nothing against this; in fact, it took him back to his early days as a young constable still in uniform on the beat, when he had met his sergeant, a sturdy well-built figure of a man, on the tube going towards Piccadilly wearing a velvet skirt, an organza blouse with frills and a blond wig. He had been carrying a small white handbag on a hot summer day. In those days, a pub behind Fortnum’s called the Flower of the Forest had been a chosen venue if you were looking for that sort of activity.

  No words had been exchanged, no recognition admitted, none claimed. After all, the man was off duty.

  Stella had laughed when he told her the story and asked what had happened to the man. Coffin had admitted that he had become Chief Constable – after all, he was a Scot – in a Scottish force. Presumably wearing a kilt.

  He had not told her about Anthony/Antonia, and hoped the story was wrong.

  Now he finished reading the report on Crime in the Inner City, initialled it and set out to to meet CI Astley.

  You could walk from Coffin’s office through gardens to the quiet building that housed the post-mortem suite, passing as you did so the hospital in which Black Jack now lay.

  Coffin debated going in to the hospital to see how the man was doing. He had the sort of sneaking liking for Black Jack that he had had long ago for his sergeant in skirts.

  The hospital building dated back to the beginning of the twentieth century, but it had recently had a wash and brushup. Everything that could be repainted had been repainted. The whole building had been rewired and bits of smart, new equipment installed. But somehow it smelt the same.

  Coffin knew enough about how things went to know that Jack Jackson was being nursed in high security, one constable outside the room and another by the bed. If Jack came back to life, he was a valuable witness.

  Coffin knew where this room would be, third floor, but he checked at the central desk first. Yes, said the pretty young woman by the computer, he had it right. She looked at him with interest.

  He made his own way up in the lift. The man sitting on the chair outside Jack’s room was looking bored, but he knew Coffin and decided to jump up and look alert.

  Coffin nodded at him, then went into the room. Jack lay in the bed, tethered to it by tubes and a machine with a flashing red light. He had seen it all before. He had never seen Black Jack look like this though: white and shrunken, yet with his face oddly puffy. His eyes seemed to be submerged in swollen flesh.

  What thoughts are you having, Jack, if you are thinking at all?

  He turned to the constable who had been sitting by the door. ‘Has he said anything?’ Coffin looked at him. ‘Denton, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir . . . No, he hasn’t spoken. Muttered a bit, just sounds and grunts, nothing you could make anything of.’

  A nurse appeared through the door, a tall thin girl with spectacles and bright red hair. She gave Coffin a disapproving look. ‘It’s the Chief Commander? Would you like to see the doctor? I can get Dr Peters.’

  Coffin refused this offer. From what he knew of hospitals, he guessed that a busy young doctor would not want to add a visit from the Chief Commander to his day. In any case there was little to say about Black Jack, whose hold on life seemed tenuous. The only thing in his favour that Coffin knew from experience was that you could not trust him to go either way. Unpredictable was what he was.

  A trolley escorted by a nurse and pushed past him by a man in a pale blue tunic went down the corridor. The occupant of the trolley had closed eyes. Coffin hoped he was still alive. As they passed, the nurse gently drew the sheet over the patient’s face.

  The trio got to the row of lifts well before Coffin, who decided to use the stairs. There seemed less morbidity there.

  Three flights to the ground floor, as he knew well. He was not alone: on every floor down he passed nurses and the hurrying figures of doctors who, he was interested to see, no longer wore the white coats as seen in films and soap operas. Time moves on.

  Each floor was noisier and livelier than the last. Clearly if you were about to die, you went up to the top floor to be quiet about it.

  He would probably be transported up there himself one of these days, hopefully to come down again. There were plenty ready to take a poke at him. Almost every week letters breathing hate and threats arrived at his office. Stella knew about them in general but not in particular, unless they seemed important. Nothing at the moment as far as he knew, although it was always his belief that the worst threat came without a signed warning.

  Joe and his team, Sam and Matilda, saw him through the glass door on the ground floor.

  ‘There he goes,’ said Joe. ‘Coffin.’

  ‘Sort of good-looking in his way,’ ventured Matilda, who was an expert in masculine good looks. ‘Attractive. Don’t you think so, Sam?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so.’

  ‘You know what,’ said Joe. ‘I reckon he’s the sort of chap who grew into his face. You have to have stamina to do that. It’s a long-lived face,’ he ended thoughtfully, leaning on the large vacuum cleaner that was his power symbol. Joe fancied himself as an expert on physiognomy.

  Sam kept quiet, but he judged himself an expert in faces; he wanted to remind Joe that no one lived for ever.

  No one had a sharper sense of the ease and unexpectedness of death than Coffin. His work forced it upon him. In the old days, he had gone to many a post-mortem as the senior detective in charge of a murder investigation.

  Phoebe Astley was waiting for him. ‘He’s just started. We can go in. He’s talking a bit, so it’s not one of his silent days.’

  ‘Oh,’ Coffin nodded. ‘Good.’

  ‘Seems he knew Dr M
urray. She used to come to talk to him sometimes about skeletal structures. He knows the husband too. Not sure how. Not over hair, I shouldn’t think.’

  Coffin reminisced as they walked in and the familiar odour of disinfectant and dead bodies reached him. It was interesting, he thought, how this smell, which had been banished when the new buildings first came into use, had now come back. ‘He doesn’t mind doing the PM? He could have got someone else.’

  ‘No, quite matter of fact about it. He wants her killer caught, though, so he shows that much emotion.’

  Coffin felt oddly glad about that: he did not want Dr Murray to be cut up too coldly. Professionally, yes, but with some heart.

  It was soon done. Everle was a quick worker, aided by an efficient assistant, a young woman he was training.

  He came over to them when he had removed his gloves and gown.

  ‘She was shot in the back of the neck. The gun was 9mm; the bullet, had, of course, been removed already for forensics to work. Just the one shot. She died quickly, from massive blood loss. You will get the full report, of course.

  ‘And, yes, in case you were going to ask: similar method of killing as Janey Jackson and her daughters.’

  On the way out, Coffin said, ‘We might have to add Jack Jackson to that list. He had a gunshot wound in the neck from the same type of gun.’

  ‘I went in to see him,’ Phoebe said in a carefully neutral voice.

  ‘I thought you would. I went myself.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll pull through.’ Her voice was even more carefully expressionless.

  ‘He might.’

  She really cares for that chap, he thought. That was the trouble with Black Jack; he was likeable. Unreliable but loveable. Damn him.

  He had always been careful not to dig too deep into Phoebe’s complicated emotional life, partly out of respect for her privacy, but as much for fear of being dragged into it, as he had been once, years ago. They had worked together often in the past, and it was the Chief Commander who had persuaded her to leave Birmingham to join his Force. They had had differences of opinion here and there, but he hoped she had never regretted the move.

  She was a good detective and a loyal friend. Hang on to that thought.