He looked at the telephone, willing it to ring. Silence. Then there was a knock on his door. He was protected by at least one secretary and several assistants but they had left.
A head poked round the door. ‘Can I come in. All right?’
‘Archie, glad to see you.’
Archie Young looked surprised; the two men had a good, friendly relationship but he didn’t usually get such a welcome. He sat down and did not ask if he could smoke. This room had been a No Smoking area for some time now.
‘I heard you’d asked for postmortems on Henbit and Pittsy.’
Coffin nodded.
‘Glad you did. I might have done it myself if you hadn’t. I’ve been worried for some time about those two deaths. And I’m not the only one. There’s been a bit of talk. It didn’t seem right. Two of them in the same few weeks.’
‘What’s being said?’
Archie Young considered: ‘They were known to be working on the banking case, although you weren’t supposed to talk about it. The bodies were gone over for the inquests and both were found to have a lot of drink inside them. So the idea of accidental death was acceptable … at first, till people started thinking … But they weren’t drinkers, either of them.’
‘I’ve asked for results as soon as possible.’
‘We’re all a bit edgy at the moment with this report on the reshaping of all police forces. Men don’t know where they stand.’
‘Sometimes these reports come to very little in the end.’ He wasn’t sure if he believed that this time and he had the idea that he might be one of the officers eliminated. He had always had his enemies, and this might be a prime chance to get rid of him. He would be made redundant to make way for another head for the Second City force with another title and less freedom of action.
‘Hope you are right. Want to go on working myself.’ He stood up. ‘Said my bit. Off to a concert tonight at the Festival Hall – my wife is educating my ear.’
Coffin picked up his bag. ‘I’ll come with you.’ They walked towards the lift together.
‘Pittsy and Henbit were friends,’ said Young. ‘Trained together. What one knew the other would know too. They wouldn’t talk, but Henbit might tell his wife: Pittsy wouldn’t.’
‘I put the request for the PMs through Timpson,’ said Coffin. ‘I think it would be best if it wasn’t talked about.’
He had put Phoebe like a ferret down a rabbit hole, but if word of the PMs got out, he might have put her in danger.
He had felt hot all day, no surprise with the temperature in the eighties, but now he began to sweat.
Stella was waiting for him in Max’s, which was both a pleasure and a surprise. She was wearing a pale cream shift over tight trousers and chattering away to another woman, another actress. He didn’t know her name, he had never seen her before either on the stage or the TV screen but he knew her for a member of the profession. He had learnt to recognize them. ‘It’s how they present themselves,’ he would have said, if asked. ‘They don’t hold back. They have a pro’ey face’, as Stella would have said. It was partly the make-up, always well done, even if they said: ‘Only just got out of bed, dear, not even run a comb through my hair’, they always had though, carefully disarranging it. But it was also the clothes: there were two types here, either they emerged from Browns or Harvey Nichols weighted down with carrier bags and bills of several thousand pounds to present hopefully to their accountant as necessary expenses, or they strolled around in jeans, shirts and boots. The woman with Stella belonged to the latter group.
Stella saw him, smiled and held up a hand. It was a beautiful gesture of welcome, deserving of a larger audience. The other woman stood and began to move away.
“Bye, Liz.’
‘Who was that?’ asked Coffin, seating himself.
‘Liz Caldecott. She’s a doctor.’
‘You’ve destroyed an illusion.’
‘Which one was that?’ She poured him some wine. ‘But she used to be an actress.’
‘It’s left its mark on her,’ said Coffin, with relief – he was not losing his skill. The wine was very cold and delicious, he sank back in his chair with pleasure, cool for the first time that day, because the sensible Max had invested in air conditioning in his restaurant. ‘What are we eating?’
‘Something cold, I left it to Max.’
‘What is it you’ve got to tell me?’ He wanted to know, get it over, he was always terrified she would say: This is it, all over, I’m off.
‘Later, after we’ve eaten … You’re tired, I’m tired.’ She didn’t look it, her eyes were bright and alert. ‘After food we shall both be better. But you’re worried, I can tell.’
‘There’s a lot going on.’
‘If this was on TV, I would say: Want to talk? And you would, but I have always thought that a particularly corny piece of dialogue.’ Nevertheless, she sat with her eyes fixed on him.
‘It’s a hot summer. Heat doesn’t suit this community.’ Tension between the rich and the poor in the Docklands was always there but it was aggravated now by the fact that the poorest of the poor were not white and British, but from India, Pakistan and Africa. The native working class British were not being welcoming hosts; in fact, the bulldog breed was showing its teeth. Coffin had to keep the peace and offend no one while doing so, a quite impossible task. ‘We haven’t had a full scale riot yet, but we’ve had some nasty little brushes.’
‘But that’s not it?’
‘Let me tell you a story, as if it was a play script, but you don’t have a part in it and please God never will. It starts with money – dirty money – being fed into banks in the big old City of London around Threadneedle Street and cleaned up, but some of it is coming to banks here … City of London police and a special unit from my force are dealing with it … the money is not my problem. Or not directly.’
Stella looked at him intently. ‘Go on, I follow so far, it’s not difficult.’
‘But two of my young detectives, two of the best, have died. Supposedly by accident.’
‘I know that look on your face: you don’t think the deaths were accidents.’
‘No, and I’m not alone. But that’s not all: now the wife, the widow, of one of the men has committed suicide, or we are meant to think so …’
‘But you don’t?’ It was hardly a question, she could read his face.
He shook his head.
‘I don’t think I like this story.’
‘It gets worse … I put in someone of my own, which means, I have to tell you, that I don’t trust even my own officers.’
‘I should think your person would be in a hot spot,’ said Stella. ‘She’ll be in danger.’
‘She? Why do you say that?’
Stella gave an elegant shrug of her shoulders. ‘Like you, dear, I watch and listen. Let me make a guess: it’s Phoebe Astley.
‘Oh well, it was easier than that … She came in here, you were with her, you were noticed … You think people don’t tell me things like that.’
He had to admit that Stella had a strong way of springing her traps. Only it wasn’t a trap. She reached out her hand to grip his. ‘You’re a nice man, and you feel responsible for too much and you try to be responsible for too much. Don’t worry about Phoebe, I reckon she can look after herself.’
Max appeared bearing a silver dish from which he insisted on serving their chilled, creamy soup himself, chattering away as usual. When he had left them Coffin took his chance. ‘What is it you were going to tell me?’
‘Ah … well, I’m going to put my flat on the market and move in with you in your tower. It’s silly having two homes, expensive and wasteful. Besides, I want us to be like an old married couple.’
‘Do you think we will ever be like that?’
‘In some ways, yes. Not old and bored with each other, never that, but comfortable.’
He wondered what had happened to her while she had been away; Stella had never been one to seek the easy relationships
.
‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I wasn’t laughing, I was just thinking how lucky I am to have you.’
‘I’d lean across the table and kiss you if Max was not moving towards us with our salmon mousse.’ When Max, still chattering away, had left them to eat, she said: ‘Cheer up. I know you’re having a bad time. I’m trying to help. I know the death of Felix Henbit goes deep, you liked him.’
‘In some ways, I saw him as myself when young.’
‘Yes, that’s always painful.’
‘And I liked Mary too. She was a friend as well. Or had been,’ he said carefully.
Mary Edwina Henbit, aged thirty-two, brown eyes, with soft hair and a kind heart who had killed herself so terribly.
‘I see.’ Stella moved her fork through the salmon mousse. ‘This is good, isn’t it? Perhaps a shade too bland.’ She looked at him. ‘When was this … that she was such a friend?’
‘Before we married, well before. And before she even knew Felix. I just wanted to tell you, that’s all. And it was nothing much.’
‘You didn’t take her to bed, you mean?’
‘As a matter of fact, not … Why are you laughing?’
‘Eat up and enjoy the pink champagne that I have ordered and that Max is just bringing us. If confession is good for the soul, do you want me to tell you everything I have done in my wicked, wicked life?’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Thank you, but no. Stella, I’m having a bad time but I’ll live through it. I get the feeling that something happened to you while you were away. Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘Later. Let’s go home early and talk to each other in comfort, we don’t do much of that.’
‘Stella, now!’
‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m all right, I’m not ill, but on the flight to New York, I…’
She was interrupted by the sound of the telephone in Coffin’s case. ‘Ignore it,’ he said. ‘You go on.’
‘No, what I have to say is important, serious. I don’t want to talk against that noise … we can talk later. Answer it, please.’
Against his will, Coffin lifted the telephone. ‘Hello … Archie.’ He listened quietly, as he did so, Stella saw his face change.
‘Thank you for telling me. Keep me in touch, please.’ He put the telephone away and sat quiet for a moment.
‘What is it? Are you called away?’ Life with a serving police officer had made Stella used to disappearing acts.
‘No, no need for me to leave … It’s another detective but not one working on the banking case … his car exploded.’
He looked at Stella. ‘It alters everything.’
It had grown hotter and hotter outside in the street while they had been eating. Inside in Max’s air conditioned rooms they had not been aware of it.
The summer sky had darkened as heavy clouds rolled in from the west. A distant roll of thunder rippled round the room, but was too soft to make an impact on the noisy crowd.
Stella heard it though and felt cold.
4
‘How does it change everything?’
Stella was hurrying beside her husband, trying to keep up with his pace. He didn’t answer, frowning as he walked. She could tell how preoccupied he was because his normal good manners had deserted him. Instead of waiting for her to catch up, or adapting his stride, he was marching forward, dragging her with him.
A flash of lightning, swift and jagged, bolted across the sky. One heavy raindrop fell on Stella’s face. ‘Damn!’ She put her hand up to her head.
A dozen or so great drops and then no more.
‘Oh, horror, a dry thunderstorm, that’s the worst sort of all. It makes you feel that the gods are sitting up there in Valhalla, throwing thunderbolts at us. Next act, the end of the world.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. Talking to myself. Tell me what you meant when you said: this changes everything.’
‘Perhaps I’m wrong,’ he muttered. ‘But if this detective, who was not working on anything sensitive, whom I do not know except by name is hit, then the idea is wrong that only a special group of men were being targeted – it is any detective who attracts attention. Or seems an easy target.’ He took two big paces. ‘It could be anyone next.’
‘Does there have to be a next?’
‘It looks like a campaign.’
‘But it does mean it’s not so much your responsibility.’
‘Stella, it’s always and for ever my responsibility, that’s what the job is.’
Stella did not answer. How sad, she was thinking, he’s got this terrible job sitting on his shoulders like some awful goblin. But I can’t ask him to leave, resign, do anything else – it is life.
Only not my life? The memory of her travelling companion to New York shadowed her mind.
‘Isn’t life too short to take all that on, my love?’
Something in her voice got through to him. ‘Wait a minute, Stella.’ He drew her into the shelter of a clump of trees in the small triangular garden which edged the old St Luke’s church where he lived in the tower, his apartment known as Number one, St Luke’s Mansions. ‘What was it you were going to tell me? About yourself?’
Down the road, a car drew into the kerb outside St Luke’s Mansions and stopped.
‘Come on, tell me now, Stella, before we go on.’
Stella had seen the car too. ‘There’s a car just parked,’ she said in a nervous voice.
‘It’s all right. No threat there. It’s Archie Young, he wants to talk to me. That’s why I want to hear from you now, before we go in. If we wait till we get inside then it will be all police talk. I can’t sit through it without knowing about you. You come first; I know that sometimes it doesn’t seem like it, but it’s true.’
Stella was silent.
‘Believe me.’ He put his arms round her.
‘I believe, just getting my breath.’ She assembled her thoughts, then plunged in. ‘On the flight to New York, there was a fellow passenger across the aisle that I talked to a bit. A nice man, business, you know. Younger than me, told me about his wife, she was an actress, that’s how we started to talk. He recognized me, he said I’d done good work. I was glad to hear that because between you and me, Spain was a bit of a pill. I definitely did not do any good work there and it’s not going to be a good film. And I hadn’t heard from you, you know, for ages.’
‘I wrote.’
‘Meagre letters.’ Thin, she had thought, half starved letters, not the sort to nourish a person.
‘I sent my love.’
‘Oh sure, in proper writing. Neat, clean. It ought to have been jagged and rough. A few smudges wouldn’t have come amiss.’ Tears, idle tears, she wouldn’t have minded some sign of those; he had been too calm by half about her absence. ‘Anyway, it was good to be admired. It sort of got under my skin.’
‘I see.’ What was she leading up to? Along the road, he could see Archie Young standing by the car.
‘I went to sleep, I was tired. Then I was woken up by terrible noises from across the aisle … it was the way he was breathing. It was his heart … there was a doctor on the flight, young chap, he did his best. I’m sure he did his best, but my friend died. He was my friend by then, I felt he was … He died and I didn’t even know his name.’
‘He knew yours,’ said Coffin, awkwardly, stupidly because he must say something. Archie was walking towards them.
‘Yes, sure. But I thought about his wife, who was waiting for him back in Berkshire. She didn’t know he was dead. She might be eating her supper, watching television and he had gone … so I made up my mind, that when I got back, I would not be such a separate person. Giving up my own place is a start.’
‘Darling Stella.’
‘But you’ve got to help. I need you.’
Archie Young was almost up to them, waving his hand and saying there you are. Damn you, Archie, for coming just at this very moment.
‘The other
side of the coin,’ said Stella in a careful voice. She had her back to Archie, not seeing his approach, ‘is that now I understand better how you are divided into two. I can live with that.’
From the citadel above there came a flash and then the battery opened up. This time there was rain and Archie Young moved forward at speed.
‘Not safe under that tree,’ he called.
‘Not safe anywhere.’ But Stella sounded happy and Coffin’s spirits rose a little. Came through that one, he thought. In their life together there would be more battles, more chasms to jump, but it looked as though they might do it hand in hand; he thought they were really coming together. Some couples seemed to do it at one go even as they took their marriage vows, but for him and Stella it was more of a long negotiation.
Stella patted Coffin’s arm, as if she was saying, well, goodbye for now, but we part on good terms. Her body language was always good, but Coffin never forgot that she was an actress. ‘Hello, Archie, nice to see you. Come up, I know you two want to talk, so I’ll keep out of the way, but I’ll make you some coffee first.’
‘Thank you.’ Archie Young’s response was cautious: no one admired Stella as an actress more than he did, he was her long time admirer but as the husband of a powerful woman himself (whom he acknowledged to be that shade brighter than he was), he knew how to behave: carefully. ‘Nice to see you back.’
He had said the wrong thing. ‘I was never really away.’
‘Ah.’ He wondered what she meant by that, but his was not to wonder why. ‘Of course, it was me really,’ he said humbly. ‘Off on a course. That felt like being away, I can tell you. Hard work and terrible food.’
The three of them were walking in a companionable way towards St Luke’s Mansions.
Archie Young studied Coffin out of the side of his eye. The chief commander was walking along, just slightly behind them, but in step. He seemed deep in thought.
‘Nice place to live in, you’ve got here.’ Archie and his wife had a decent suburban semi: clean but not tidy, no one could call his Alison a homemaker, although she was a good cook.
‘Want to buy one? I’m giving mine up.’
‘Is that so?’
The Coffin Tree Page 8
