‘What have you got?’
‘Not good, I’m afraid, sir. I was with Mrs Baker, the mother of Mary’s friend, Alice Fraser, and she said that her daughter telephoned last night to say that Mary never came. They waited at the appointed place, but Mary never turned up.’
‘I see.’ He patted Bob’s head. The dog could be a comfort sometimes. ‘When did Mary telephone to set up the arrangement?’
‘When Alice wrote to suggest that she join them, three weeks ago.’
‘And did she hear again?’
‘No, they arranged where to meet, at the main railway station in Exeter, and the early afternoon train; Alice thought she would hear again, but everything was settled so she wasn’t too surprised when she didn’t.’
‘So it’s weeks since she’s spoken to Mary?’
‘Yes.’ He hesitated. ‘It seems that the Henbit marriage wasn’t too happy. Mary didn’t like being the wife of a policeman. And she had a boyfriend. So when she didn’t hear she thought maybe that’s where Mary was. She even thought marriage was on the cards.’
Coffin thought hard: that could be what Mary Henbit’s letter had been about: not death by burning but a marriage.
‘She rang the chap, she knows him. Mary was not with him. It looks bad, sir.’
‘You’d better get back here.’
‘I’m on my way. I’m catching the night train, be there in the morning.’
He was a good man. Coffin thought, and he would learn to mask that brisk, cold manner.
He himself went back to his work for an hour, when he was interrupted by a telephone call.
Archie Young’s voice was quiet: ‘Didn’t want to interrupt your evening but I suggest you turn on the television. Local independent station: Docklands TV.’
Coffin did so at once, he knew when Archie spoke in that tone that you heeded it.
The programme had already begun, he recognized it as a late night news and comment programme that centred on local Second City affairs. He already had that slightly sick feeling when you know bad news is coming, and as he looked at the screen he began to feel worse.
Geraldine Ducking was in the centre of the picture, before her a low table with a jug of water, and on her right, a journalist from the national press whom he recognized.
Not a friend. Not an enemy either exactly but one who was always ready to find the devil underneath the stone.
Next to him, sitting there with a sober face like a hanging judge was, goddamn it. Sir Ferdie. What was he doing there?
Lined up on the other side, their faces masked by one of those electronic wizardry effects, were two men.
He might not be able to see their faces but he could identify the rest of them. Those were certainly Syres’s feet, he would know them anywhere, they were the longest and thinnest pair in the force. He knew the hands of the other man: he had seen Tom Gambit fold his hands, left over right, watch showing, often enough.
Gambit and Syres, just the two of them. So Luke Franks had thought better of it?
Or perhaps he was dead, Coffin thought savagely; of the three he disliked Luke Franks the most. Devious, manipulative, sly even. But he was circumspect and would watch how things went before doing anything rash.
Coffin had come in on the journalist – Mike Hooley wasn’t it? – in full flood.
‘In matters of this sort where the Queen’s good justice is concerned, probity and honesty are of the first consequence.’
Geraldine was nodding her head. She was wearing a bright red shirt with matching trousers, a bad sign for the peace of the world. Expensive, however.
‘The fact that three …’ Mike Hooley hesitated, ‘two high ranking police officers have agreed to appear on this programme –’
So Franks had been expected and had cried off at the last minute. Coffin extracted some satisfaction from this conclusion. That would teach Geraldine and her producer not to rely on a sod like Luke.
‘Speaks for itself,’ ended Hooley.
Geraldine smiled. ‘In fact, they will not speak for themselves.’
Of course, they won’t, thought Coffin. Silent sneaks.
‘An actor will speak their words.’
Coffin heard with pleasure that the actor, it must be just the one, you could tell from the voice, had decided to give a Yorkshire accent to Syres, who was deepest Surrey, and a strong Birmingham accent to Gambit who had been educated at Radley and then Cambridge and prided himself on being classless. Which he was not.
The chief commander wondered with what evidence the actor had been provided that he produced such accents, or whether Geraldine had done so out of malice. She was capable of it and her motives were always hard to know.
What the actor was mouthing, whether truly the opinions of Syres and Gambit, hardly mattered, sniping and unpleasant as it was, but he doubted it: he could see Syres’s feet twitching, and he knew that twitch. Tension.
But all the same, it was poison they were spitting out. Damn them.
Then he heard Sir Ferdie speaking in careful, measured tones, but with that croaking strange voice he had sometimes, the academic viper, he thought. He turned the sound down till Sir Ferdie’s face had gone.
He sat through the programme. Not much in it that could be called hard fact, but a layer of nastiness was being deposited over the Second City force and over his own work like a smelly greasy sludge.
He wished Stella was here, he needed her to be there with him. Somehow her mere presence would make him feel better. But he had learnt to pass through such moments without taking to the whisky bottle. He waited for a few minutes, then dialled Docklands TV, and asked to speak to Geraldine. She should still be there in the hospitality room offering drinks to her panel.
There was a pause, he could hear voices, and then she answered. ‘I knew it was you.’
‘I thought you were a friend.’
Geraldine was defensive. ‘And I thought I channelled the mood nicely your way.’
‘Oh, did you? And I think you shouldn’t have had the programme.’
‘I have a job to do, I’m a freelance lady and have to take what I am offered.’
She wasn’t offered that, he thought, she went and begged for it. ‘You haven’t done anyone good. Not me, not the Second City, and certainly not Syres and Gambit. What happened to Superintendent Franks, by the way?’
There was a pause. ‘He couldn’t make it.’
‘I bet he couldn’t. Didn’t that tell you something? He knows a loser when he sees one.’
‘I can’t talk here.’ Geraldine’s voice was showing emotion at last. Coffin felt triumphant. Not nice of him but there it was, he did. ‘People are listening.’
‘Why worry? It’s what you want, isn’t it?’
He started to put the telephone down carefully, he was angry, very angry, but he would not show it by violence.
‘Wait a minute, can’t we meet? I want a meeting. Come round here, or to my place, so we can talk. Or I can come to you, just as you please. I’d like to do an interview … sympathetic. Give your point of view.’
Without a word. Coffin put the telephone down.
He was asleep when Stella came home. Bob was at his feet and the cat lay across his chest, but they all seemed perfectly content.
Stella considered them. ‘Haven’t missed me at all, the dreary lot.’
Coffin woke up at once. ‘Where have you been?’
‘That’s a very husbandly remark. Move over.’ She sat beside him on the sofa, picking the cat from his chest.
‘I told you it was important, so it is, money for the drama school and a part for me.’
‘Who’s the benefactor?’
‘A friend of Letty’s, I believe. Anyway, he knows her, she’s the introduction: he’s a banker, very rich, I should think, seeing what he’s splashing around.’
Coffin sat up. ‘If he’s a banker with money to offer, keep away from him.’ How dare they use Stella.
Stella opened her mouth to speak and then c
losed it again. She took a breath. ‘He’s a lovely man, with a beautiful Armani suit. Don’t be jealous, he wasn’t trying to seduce me, I think he prefers the boys.’
‘Seduce you, rubbish!’
Stella looked hurt. ‘He did like me,’ she began.
‘It’s a bribe. No, it’s not even that, it’s an attempt to get dirty money in our bank account.’
‘My account,’ said Stella who was still hurt.
‘It’s the same thing.’
Stella took a deep breath. She was a much better hand at holding on to money than her husband and they did not share a bank account.
‘You touch that money and we are both in trouble.’
Stella stood up, she was not a fool. ‘Right. I hear what you are saying. Alas, I was the more deceived … I’ll make some coffee.’
Brenda James, the plain clothes officer, who had called on Albert Waters and been shouted at for her pains, had watched the TV programme too. She had a free evening, which did not come very often in her life because she was taking a degree at the Open University as well as helping with the difficult domestic life of an invalid sister.
So she had been determined to make the most of it: she bought herself a selection of meats and salads from Max’s Delicatessen, made a large pot of coffee, considered drinking some wine but decided she had had all she should have this week (she was a stern self disciplinarian), and settled back for a good evening of TV viewing.
She was in happy spirits because her last essay for her degree course had come back with the words: OK. Good; printed across it in her tutor’s large firm writing. At the same time, her sister’s health seemed to have taken a turn for the better so that Brenda had the feeling that this weight might soon be lifted from her. She loved her sister who was older by a good many years, but self-fulfilment beckoned.
She sat through her favourite soap, through an indifferent thriller and a news bulletin. She was half asleep when Geraldine’s programme started, but she woke up at once when she realized what was going on. She watched for a few minutes, then she moved to turn the sound up louder, she was frowning.
She began to pace the room, her eyes still on the screen. After a while, she set the video so that she would have a record of at least part of the programme.
When it ended, she was still on her feet. ‘I’m sure I am right … But how can I be?’
She didn’t try to answer that question, but abandoned all discipline to make herself a large gin and orange. She was on the edge of the circle of detectives working on the case which had burst into fire with the body on the pyre, had dragged in the deaths of Henbit and Pittsy, and now had Albert Waters as part of it. The head in the river Thames might be part of the cycle of murders or not. She did not see all the reports as they came in, but she attended the daily briefings so she knew the general shape of the investigation. She knew that the two policemen had been drugged first with sedatives and then killed, that Henbit had probably died first with Pittsy on a later occasion; somehow they had been tricked by the killer; she knew this was guesswork and perhaps the way people wanted it to be. Because why couldn’t two policemen protect themselves, be on their guard?
What was there about this killer? They had so little to go upon. But now she thought she had something to offer.
She would need her nerve to offer it, though. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said aloud. ‘I’ll tell him. He can only laugh at me.’
Somehow she did not think John Coffin would laugh.
In the morning she played the video through again and thought better of it. Such as she could not go straight to the chief commander and ask to be heard. You had to go through the right channels. And it was only her notion.
Still, she thought it was the voice she had heard through the letterbox at Albert Waters’s pretending to be him. The voice that had desired her to ‘fuck off’. There was something about the timbre.
She could tell her senior officer, but he was a difficult character who might shrug it off. Also, in view of the rumours floating round, who could you trust?
She could write a letter to the chief commander, but his secretary would read it first and it might never get through to him.
Besides, it was her idea and she felt possessive of it.
She debated the problem while she ate her breakfast, she was so deeply thoughtful that she forgot what she was eating and was surprised to find herself munching dry toast with apparent satisfaction. The butter had gone from the dish so that must have been eaten somehow.
Later that day, still preoccupied with her problem, she confided in one of her friends who was in the CID with her. They had trained together and then worked as a pair. She talked about it over coffee. Not what the evidence was, she hugged that to herself, but that she had some, or thought so.
The friend was firm. ‘You have to report it.’
‘It’s more of an idea, something I have noticed. Maybe not hard fact.’ But she thought it was. Perhaps someone else had noticed too? ‘I could hang about until I saw him and then speak.’
‘That would look good!’
Brenda accepted the judgement, but she was not giving up. She would find a way. What she had to say might, just might, be important. ‘I don’t know what to do, but I shall do something.’
‘Don’t get yourself killed. Let’s have a chocolate biscuit.’
Brenda stood up. ‘Right, we will. I’ll pay.’
Her friend called after her: ‘I’ve heard they’ve found a headless body in Tedder’s Reach. It’s not where the floaters usually end up but it got caught on a barge. What do you make of that? Must match with the head, but who is it?’
‘You and I can make a guess,’ said Brenda sitting down again and planting her feet with heavy weight on the floor. Suddenly she felt she weighed a ton.
Coffin and Stella did not breakfast together that morning, he was up and out before she opened her eyes.
He had been woken with the news of the body, been told of the tentative identification, and looking down at his sleeping wife had said the prayer he prayed so much lately: God keep you safe.
Then he went to start what was going to be a painful day.
He went straight to the incident room where Sergeant Eliot was already talking to Archie Young and where Sergeant Jeavons had just arrived, travel-stained and weary. Coffin looked at him. ‘Get shaved and have some breakfast, you’re not going to carry on like this.’
The teams investigating the several different murders had merged, it was recognized that this was a multiple murder case. Not a serial killer, possibly not a mass murderer, but one killing pair of hands wiping out person after person. Some detectives were out already, checking statements, others were following different leads, one was at work on telephone calls, and another checking records of missing women. And at least one was quietly working out the overtime report he would be putting in.
Sergeant Jeavons reappeared and was joined by Sergeant Eliot, all of them went as a group to view the body in the police mortuary. They had silently formed themselves into what was, in police jargon, a Unit Four, in other words a detective from each case being worked on. You could drop in and out of Unit Four but someone had to be there to report back to the collator and hence to all other detectives. It was part of the chief commander’s hands-on policy.
They were missing something that connected all the cases, and every man here knew it, but perhaps they had it with this body.
A river police patrol had spotted the body, then got it ashore. A police surgeon had then examined it and made the first suggestion that it and the head belonged together.
He spoke without pleasure: ‘Someone had to say it, it just happened to be me.’
The woman had been wearing a light cotton dress with a jacket that was still buttoned into place.
‘Don’t know why that wasn’t torn off,’ said the police surgeon, ‘because she’s been rolling round the Thames and thrown against God knows what, but the jacket is still in place.’
&nbs
p; ‘Have you touched the clothes?’ This was Coffin.
‘No. Touched nothing.’
The dress which may have been pale blue, slight signs of colour remained around the collar of the jacket, was now grey and stained with mud and oil as well as other nameless liquids.
Soon the clothes would be peeled away and handed over to the forensics, and the body delivered up to the pathologist.
‘I want to see the clothes when you get them off.’ Coffin was not hopeful that anything of use would be found, but he knew the value of the naked eye. Seeing was important.
‘Smells, doesn’t it?’ said the police surgeon amiably. ‘Who’s going to undress the lady?’ Like many police surgeons, he had developed a bawdy sense of humour. But this time, a glance from Coffin stopped him going on to his favourite joke about what you want to take to bed with you. ‘Leave it to the forensic lady, eh? Is Amy there?’
Amy was there, in the background of the group. Coffin watched as her gloved hands went to work.
The jacket, the dress, the stained pants and bra were gently removed then placed on a plastic sheet. Amy ran a delicate hand over the jacket. ‘Something in there.’ They watched while she inserted two fingers inside an internal pocket. Then she reached for a spatula and carefully drew out a small, sodden lump. ‘Believe it or not, I think we may have a letter.’
They all stared at it. ‘If we can get anything up,’ said Amy, ‘then we may have an identification. Give me time.’
Coffin turned away. Time was not what he had to waste in his state of guerrilla war with the enemy striking their tents and moving into action. The clothes told him nothing. He did not know whether it was Phoebe lying there or not.
Archie Young walked close behind him. ‘I want to talk.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Come in the car with me.’ His driver already had the door open, waiting.
‘I don’t want to talk in the car.’
‘My office, then.’
‘Some of the stuff I learned about the people you asked me about is hot stuff.’
‘It’s not bugged.’ Perhaps it was? ‘We mustn’t be paranoid.’
Archie Young got into the car, settling down as if his feet hurt. ‘You’re right. But I promised some of the blokes I spoke to that I would hold on to what I got. And when I say blokes, there was no blokiness … Not that sort of men.’
The Coffin Tree Page 21
