Phoebe looked again at the note. ‘Not to you, maybe, but I think it may have been to her. Well, we’ve both had confessions to make … Did Felix know?’
‘I’m sure not.’
‘How many in your force know?’
One or two may have thoughts.’
‘I bet.’ She handed the letter back. ‘Especially after this.’
‘She knew she could turn to me, but I wasn’t in time.’
‘Did she blame you for her husband’s death?’
‘No, she knew the job and what went with it.’
‘But you blame yourself?’
He didn’t answer directly, but went to the front door and opened it to breathe in the hot air. The WPC outside gave him a startled look before taking a tactful step away. Then he turned round and came back. ‘I let her down.’
Phoebe stood in the middle of the hall and thought about it. ‘You haven’t changed as much as I thought you had. You’re a nice man but you’ve got a knack for falling into trouble … I don’t think you let people down.’
‘Thanks for saying that.’
She took a deep breath. ‘You can rely on me.’
It was a small house, not difficult to go over, but they took their time. Coffin started on the ground floor, opening drawers in the pale wood sideboard where they had kept a few bottles of wine, a bottle of gin and one of whisky – both nearly full. There were a few old letters tucked away in a magazine stand, but they were family letters, including a wedding invitation. The furniture was well dusted and polished, nothing there to suggest that two people had died so terribly, ‘Bearing up well,’ Teddy Timpson had said, and the evidence of this room bore that judgement out.
Upstairs, he could hear Phoebe doing the female bit, opening drawers and cupboards. Then she was in the bathroom, he heard the wall cabinet open and shut.
Presently, he heard her coming down the stairs and they met in the kitchen.
‘You ever been here before?’
‘No, never.’
‘You didn’t meet her here then?’
‘No, of course not. They weren’t married at the time,’ he said irritably. ‘She hadn’t met Felix, I was still with the Met in south London.’ Phoebe stood in the kitchen and looked around. ‘I want a glass of water.’
Coffin opened a cupboard, took a glass from the shelf. ‘Here you are.’
‘But you know where to find a glass.’
‘Everyone knows where you keep glasses in a kitchen, near the tap. If I hadn’t found one there, I would have looked elsewhere. Why do you want the water, anyway?’
Phoebe took a bottle from her bag. ‘Aspirin. I’ve got toothache.’ She touched her cheek where a red patch showed. Or something. And don’t mention the dentist … I will do that when I’ve settled in, got somewhere to live, got time.’
While she drank. Coffin inspected the kitchen: all the dishes and cutlery were in order: clean and arranged neatly, no muddle. In the refrigerator was butter, cheeses, eggs, two bottles of milk and fruit and vegetables in drawers to keep cool.
‘Doesn’t look like the kitchen of a woman planning to kill herself … but you can’t tell, a swing of mood.’
Phoebe said: ‘I’ve checked over the cupboards and drawers upstairs in both bedrooms and I can tell you that everything there is in apple pie order. Clothes clean and pressed, a pile of clean laundry on a chair by the window. If she kept a diary it wasn’t up there, but on the bedside table was a shopping list.’
‘So what do you make of it?’
Phoebe took her time. ‘The woman who kept this house running, who made out shopping for food, doesn’t seem the woman to kill herself in that way. I don’t know how or why she wrote that note, but it doesn’t match up.’
‘I agree.’
‘I don’t think she killed herself … that’s the easy answer. The woman who lived in this house wanted to go on living.’
‘There’s something else as well,’ said Coffin, ‘I knew old Albert Waters, I knew that he was always building this and that – it’s something of a hobby and obsession with him. But I didn’t know he had a stack of wood and was collecting other odds and ends of wood out there … I don’t know what Felix knew of him or what he could have told his wife. Nothing, I would guess. So how could she have known where to go?’
‘You know what we are saying? I think she was killed. It’s murder.’
The word murder was out.
‘Yes, I believe so.’
‘Wait a minute: Did she know Albert Waters?’
‘Crucial question. Or did he know her? I don’t know. But we’ll have to find out.’ He moved towards the door. ‘Come and see what I found in the sitting room.’
On a table by the window, he had spread sheets from several local newspapers.
‘Found these in the wastepaper basket.’
Bits had been cut from each newspaper, what was left was the skeleton of pages.
‘It’s what we haven’t got here that is interesting,’ said Coffin. ‘The dress shop advertisements were cut out from these papers. Note the dates.’
‘Several weeks old.’
‘Yes. Felix was alive and working when these papers came out. He cut the advertisements out, so they meant something to him, and I think he told his wife. If he thought it was dangerous knowledge he may have tried to keep it from her but she understood. She sent what he had cut out to me.’
‘That’s guessing … but a good guess, I reckon.’
‘Someone working in the chain of dress shops may be the Minder. You’ve made a start with Minimal. See what you can get.’
‘Without killing myself,’ said Phoebe. She thought for a moment, then said: ‘I might have seen the manager of Minimal, Eden Brown, at the fire yesterday. I’m not sure, but she could have been there in the crowd.’
‘I’m glad you told me that … it’s interesting, bears out the connection. Did she see you?’
‘Can’t say.’
‘We’ll have to hope not.’
That was her way forward, now he must think about his own. An investigation must now take place stage by stage. At some point, Albert Waters must be questioned again. What was his background and did he know Mary Henbit, either before she married or afterwards? Was she a local girl?
He knew what his next stage must be. Nothing cosy or domestic but the bleak examination of bodies.
As they left the house. Coffin said: ‘I will ask for detailed postmortems on the body, and on Felix and on Mark Pittsy. I think there might be something to find out that was missed.’
How much can you find out from a blackened, incinerated body, thought Phoebe, and was that why she had been burned?
Coffin insisted on driving Phoebe back to the lodging house, which he wanted to look at: it was small and cheap but not sordid. He wondered again what Phoebe’s real trouble was and why she was so broke.
‘I’m going back to Birmingham today to tidy things up there, then I’ll be back. I’ll probably drop into Minimal and see if I can link up with Eden Brown.’ She got out of the car: ‘I’m on your private staff for the moment. I’ve got that. But who will be paying me? Sorry to mention it but it counts.’
She knew what she had to do, she had to follow the suggestion that the killer – the so-called Minder – had a place in the shops that figured in the newspaper advertisements. ‘I’ll see to it; I have funds I can use. And it won’t be for long.’
‘And after all, look on the bright side,’ said Phoebe as she shut the car door, ‘I might always get killed, I seem to be moving into the danger area. Any advice?’
‘Keep your head down and see your dentist,’ Coffin said as he drove away. ‘That’s the best I can do at the moment.’
‘How will we keep in touch?’
‘Telephone me, I won’t telephone you. Either at home or at the office. I have a private restricted number there.’ He scribbled it on a card and pushed it across. ‘We are invited to a party this Sunday by Geraldine Ducking – remember her? Yo
u made an impression and she wants to meet again. Stella and I will be there. Here is Geraldine’s address.’ He added another scribble to the card. ‘Come if you can.’
‘Right.’ She knew what she had to do now.
Phoebe went into the lodging house which called itself a hotel when in one of its grander moods and paid her bill. She did not relish going back to Birmingham, to her house in Selly Oak where she might run into Rose, but it had to be done. In her present state of mind, she understood how guilty Coffin felt because she had her own burden to bear. Odd, she thought, you met people, liked them, sometimes liked them too much and fell into trouble and yet you had meant well. Life was a bugger.
She looked at her watch. There were two trains an hour to Birmingham from Euston. She had driven down in a Hertz car but had handed that in. It was still early afternoon; she had time to drop into Minimal.
‘Courage, Phoebe,’ she told herself; Eden Brown had looked harmless enough.
Still, looks could deceive.
She picked up her overnight bag, then took the underground train to Calcutta Street in Spinnergate.
The shop was open, two customers were just leaving, and Eden Brown was hanging up some of the clothes that had been tried on and rejected. She turned round as Phoebe walked in.
Oh, you’re back. Dress a success? Or do you want an alteration? It was a bit tight on the hips and I could adjust that.’
‘No, I’ll do that by starvation.’ Phoebe had a perpetual struggle with her weight, but it was one she was used to – her body was a friendly foe. ‘No, I’ve come to see if you really do have room for a temporary lodger.’
Eden hesitated for a moment. She could do with the money but her life was complicated, and Phoebe might add a complication. But she liked Phoebe, the woman had style, and style mattered to Eden.
‘Yes, OK, we’ll try it out. A month on trial, eh?’
‘Fair enough. I’m off now to collect my things; I’ll drive down in my own car, it’s been in dock. Got parking?’ Eden nodded. ‘I’ll come to the shop, get the keys and we’ll talk money then. What’s the address?’
Eden fished out a business card from her bag, she wrote her home address underneath: ‘Here. Got time for a coffee? Come into the storeroom; it’s all front, this shop, but I have a little hole at the back between the racks.’
She led the way behind, pushing aside a rack of evening dresses.
‘You know it was an Alaïa that last customer left on the floor … Customers.’ She was pouring coffee from the flask into mugs.
‘Don’t you like working here?’ Phoebe drank the coffee carefully, funnelling the hot liquid away from her tooth. If it was the tooth, it was beginning to feel more generalized.
‘Love clothes, need the money.’
It sounded like an epitaph.
‘I used to have my own little couture business … in the booming ‘eighties. I had a beautiful customer list and did the designing and cutting myself, but most of my clients lost their jobs or went bust and so, after a pause for thought, did I. I was left with a large, expensive new apartment which I can neither afford nor sell.’ She smiled at Phoebe. ‘Can you imagine?’
Phoebe realized that Eden was inspecting her, that she had been invited to drink coffee for that very purpose. ‘Certainly can, I’ve had troubles myself.’
‘Who hasn’t?’ The brown eyes were shrewd. ‘What’s the job? The new one?’
‘It’s a PR position,’ said Phoebe carefully. ‘I kind of oil the wheels between a lot of institutions.’
‘What does your boss sell? Or make?’
‘He’s in security,’ said Phoebe after a moment’s thought.
The telephone rang … Eden answered.
‘So you haven’t seen her? Thanks for ringing back.’
‘I’m concerned about a friend of mine, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Agnes for days. I think she must have gone away.’ She sounded worried.
‘I know you’ll think I am mad but yesterday I went to look at a fire, there was a body on it, although someone said it was a man.’
‘And was it?’
‘No, it was some poor woman, a suicide, her husband had died so she was following him. I thought that was awful.’
‘How did you hear?’
Eden laughed. ‘Oh, local gossip. There’s a woman who sells newspapers down by the tube station, she knows everything. Ask Mimsie Marker, she always knows.’
‘I’d better be off. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
As Phoebe left, she heard Eden going back to the telephone. She moved forward quietly to listen.
‘Agnes: this is the third message I have left on your answerphone. Please ring back, dear.’
So it had been Eden at the fire, and Eden had not seen her.
Good.
From Euston station, Phoebe made her first call to the chief commander on his special line: ‘Listen, I’ll be brief, the train goes in ten minutes. I’ve been to Minimal. If the woman Eden is deep in anything criminal, she doesn’t know it. But I think she’s beginning to suspect it. She is a deeply worried woman. I’m moving in. See you on Sunday.’
‘What’s the worry?’
‘It may be something from her personal life: she is concerned about a friend, one she can’t get in touch with.’
‘Male or female?’
He would put it that way, a bit clinical. ‘Woman, called Agnes. Or it could be the shop, I can’t believe it’s making a profit. The clothes are expensive, high fashion, they won’t sell around here.’
‘Possibly not.’ They would if Stella found them. Sonia Rykiel, Valentino, Kenzo, Ralph Lauren, and the one they all called Yves – nothing else, he was beginning to know the names. ‘Agnes doesn’t mean anything to me, but she might fit in somewhere.’ Phoebe had an efficient card index in her memory where the name Agnes would be filed, ready to be pulled out on demand.
He was tired, and ready to leave early to meet Stella. With her usual vitality, she had put in a day’s work at the St Luke’s Theatre complex, beginning with a business discussion at the theatre named after her; she would lunch there, nibbling a few sandwiches (I don’t need to slim now, dear, Spain absolutely emaciated me), and drinking the dry white wine that they all drank there. Then she had planned to go on to the theatre workshop which was having casting problems, the consequence of the artistic ambitions of the new producer who wanted to be visual, dear, visual, the English theatre is too wordy, dear. After an attempt to settle quarrels, which would only break out again tomorrow under a different name to all the performers’ secret satisfaction, she would go on to the new drama school. Life was said to be peaceful there, but that could only be because the new intake was still feeling shy and in awe of their tutors. When this wore off, there would be trouble there too: it was the way life was. Healthy, really. A quiet company, a quiet production, a quiet college, was probably moribund. Stella and confession time.
When the telephone rang again on his private line, he considered ignoring it, but it might be important. Phoebe again, or Archie Young. He was glad to hear Stella’s voice.
‘Listen, I’m too tired to cook.’ She didn’t sound it, there was life in her voice. ‘So I’ve booked a table at Max’s. He’s going to give us that nice little table where we can see the window and hardly anyone can see us. So we won’t be disturbed. Got something to tell you.’
‘Oh, what?’
‘Wait, love. Be patient.’ Not one of his skills and certainly not one of Stella’s. ‘Meet you in half an hour.’ That meant an hour at least, time was infinitely expandable to Stella, who regarded punctuality as an overrated virtue. ‘But you’ll like it. See you there.’
He looked at the clock and decided to do some more work. He opened the file on the inquiry into the leakage of drugs and criminal monies into the City banks. The latest report was technical and detailed and drew a diagram of how the money entered the system.
There seemed no doubt that three banks in the Second City were important
channels and the money was being funnelled into them by numerous small businesses. There were the names of the shops again.
Minimal, Dresses à la Mode, KiddiTogs, Feathers and Fur.
There were others in the two new shopping arcades which had recently sprouted in his city. Both had been built by Ashley Dent, who had also been responsible for a lot of redevelopments in the old Docklands.
He had made money out of it, although possibly not as much as he had expected since the recession had begun to bite, but he had been generous to local institutions like the St Luke’s Theatre complex and the two universities.
Reading the report, Coffin could see that suspicion was beginning to cluster round his name.
He had met Dent once, at Geraldine’s, come to think of it, and he didn’t seem like a murderer, very tall and gently spoken, although you could never tell.
He must know he was being investigated, but he would have first class lawyers ready engaged to defend him, and he would probably get away with his fortune intact.
He might employ someone to kill three people, but the motive didn’t seem to be there. It didn’t match.
No, there had to be another reason behind the killings.
Someone was being protected but it wasn’t Ashley Dent. There was something more personal, sharper, wickeder behind it all.
Coffin returned the papers to their file, noted that he was expected to attend a meeting on the SUBJECT (inevitably it was beginning to assume capital letters in his mind) in a week’s time. He put the file away in the small safe to which only he had access, and considered telephoning the incident room, or telephoning Archie Young or Teddy Timpson. But his interest was not always welcomed and was sometimes counterproductive. They kept information back, or let it drift along so that it was late news when he got it. For none of this did he blame them: he would probably have done the same himself in their place.
The Coffin Tree Page 7
