The Thirteenth Coffin

by Nigel McCrery

  As Lapslie watched, Bradbury opened each of the coffins. Within each of them was another doll, each dressed in different clothing. There was a fireman, a nurse and six others. The neck of the fireman had been crushed, falling limply onto its shoulders. Every other doll had been badly damaged in some way. All differently, but all damaged.

  Numerous questions raced around his mind. Why were some dolls inside their coffins and not others? Why were the ones inside the coffins damaged and those outside them perfectly fine? What did the costumes signify? Why had they been left here, and did the dead tramp have something to do with it? Were they just dolls someone had made for a horror film, or was there something much more sinister about them? And what was the significance of the number twelve? Twelve apostles; twelve angry men; twelve days of Christmas?

  The smell of lavender reached him, and he wondered just which of the dolls might be triggering that smell in his mind: the fireman, the bride, the nurse? Or maybe it was simply coming from the cloth they were made with, somebody impregnating it with lavender to keep moths away.

  He turned to Bradbury. ‘I don’t suppose we know anything about the dolls, do we?’

  Bradbury shook her head. ‘No, sir, nothing. I was about to get the SOCOs to bag and tag them.’

  *

  ‘No, don’t do that. Well not for now, anyway. Do the media know about this yet?’

  Bradbury shook her head again. ‘No, sir, not yet. Seems little point in telling them now. I don’t suppose there’s much of a story in “alcoholic tramp found dead”.’

  Lapslie looked at her for a moment. ‘Everyone has their story, Emma – even alcoholic tramps.’ Before she could reply he changed the subject. ‘Let’s wrap up the body ready for removal and run this operation down.’

  ‘Before we are sure of the cause of death?’

  Lapslie nodded. ‘Yes. I’m pretty sure Whitefoot is right, but just in case, no one goes in or out until we have the final results. I want the placed resealed and any sign that we have been here gone. If we do have a suspicious death then there’s no harm done because the evidence will still be intact. If, as I suspect, we don’t, then I want the place watched to see if our doll-maker returns. There are a few questions I would like to ask him.’

  Bradbury seemed unsure, but nodded her acceptance.

  ‘I want the surveillance on for a week, twenty-four hours a day. If anyone is picked up, I want to know at once. There’s something odd about this and I want to know what it is.’

  ‘Chief Superintendent Rouse isn’t going to like this, sir. He’ll want to know why we’re spending money on surveillance when there’s no obvious crime.’

  ‘Do it anyway. By the time he finds out it will all be over – unless someone tells him.’

  He turned to Bradbury. She held defensive hands up. ‘Not me. I won’t breathe a word.’

  Lapslie stared at her for a long moment. ‘It might be nothing,’ he said finally, ‘but equally some important investigations have started out with something small like this.’

  Before she could respond, Lapslie moved off, heading out and towards his car. As he left, he heard Emma talking with Jim Thomson, the senior SOCO.

  ‘Did you hear all that?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then we’d better get on with it, hadn’t we?’

  ‘We had. I know the name of a good doll-maker, if it would help. Big hobby with my wife. She has dozens of them.’

  Either Bradbury didn’t reply, or her words were lost as Lapslie walked outside.

  *

  They say it takes at least a year to arrange a wedding. As far as Leslie Cooke was concerned, it had taken at least three of them. Well, that was how long they’d been engaged; straight after the split from her previous boyfriend, in fact. They had talked about getting married six months after the engagement, but there always seemed to be a reason they couldn’t. A reason to put it back, to delay. In the end, Leslie began to wonder whether she should scrub not only the wedding but also Nathan, her boyfriend, too. Third time lucky, perhaps. But after dropping some broad hints, and telling him she wanted a trial separation, Nathan had come up with a date, and here they were.

  She looked at the dress in the mirror for the hundredth time. It was truly stunning – just what she had always wanted – but then it should be for what it cost. Even with the damage, which her aunt had very cleverly managed to hide, it still looked wonderful.

  A voice from behind cut into her thoughts.

  ‘My God, lass, you look as good as your mother did on her wedding day, and that’s saying something.’

  Leslie Cooke turned to face her father. ‘Do I really?’

  Her father nodded, a broad grin across his face. ‘You certainly do. I just wish she was here to see you now. She would have been that proud.’

  Leslie moved across to her father and, picking up a hanky from her dressing table, wiped away the tears from his eyes. ‘She is here, Pa. Don’t worry, she is.’

  A grinning face suddenly appeared at the doorway. ‘Are you coming? Cars are here. By heck, you look good, sis. He’s a lucky man.’

  Leslie smiled across at her brother. ‘So I keep telling him.’

  She looked at her father one more time, straightening his bow tie before taking his arm and making her way down to the waiting cars.

  *

  Lapslie’s sleep was fitful that night, his dream a medley of the day’s events. He was back in the fall-out shelter, this time alone, walking slowly into its dark depths and seeing once more the dolls lined up against the wall. Some, the more grotesque and damaged dolls already in their coffins, slowly opened their lids and stepped into the dim light. As Lapslie watched they began to dance, alone and with each other. After a while the dance changed its stately and organized rhythm into something darker and more chaotic, and eventually the grotesque dolls abandoned the pretence of the minuet entirely and began attacking the dolls not yet in their coffins. They began to stab and beat them, tearing at their waxed faces with their fingers. Finally the last three unscathed dolls were pushed into their small coffins and the lids slammed shut.

  It was then that Lapslie noticed a thirteenth coffin, one that he hadn’t seen before. And there seemed to be an intense light on it, almost like a spotlight picking it out from the others; then, as the light flickered and faded and instantly returned in a blinding flash accompanied by a rumble of thunder, he realized the storm had returned. He’d survived sailing through it, but now it had come back to show him something. Something important.

  The dolls gathered around the coffin, pulling at the lid until it finally opened. They dragged the doll out and held it up for Lapslie to see. But at that moment the lightning abated, and in the gloom that followed he couldn’t make it out – although he sensed it was vitally important he viewed it. He edged closer, praying for another lightning flash so that he could see it clearly.

  But as the next lightning flash came it was accompanied by a heavy boom of thunder which awoke him. He sat up sharply, but there was no thunder from outside, just the heavy thud of the bin men loading the week’s recycling. He glanced at his bedside clock: 6.52 a.m. He blinked heavily; only twenty minutes from when his alarm was set, so he might as well get up.

  Two hours after leaving the bomb shelter he’d received a call at home from George, at that point only half an hour’s sailing from Clacton harbour. Too late and too dark to start work on any storm damage to the boat, they’d agreed to meet back at the harbour late the next morning. Give George a few hours’ more good daylight to assess any repairs needed.

  He ran one hand brusquely through his hair as he padded to the bathroom. He had once been told that dreams were nature’s way of clearing all the crap out of your brain – like Peter Pan’s nanny brushing his mind clear every night, ready for a new day. He also remembered how Sherlock Holmes had dreamed about the drawings of the Dancing Men as he tried to decode what they meant. Dreams could sometimes be a way of making sense of things that seemed senseless.


  He wondered why he’d been unable to see that final coffin figure, why that might be significant. Or maybe it was just the number thirteen that was significant – that harbinger of doom, unlucky number ever since Judas and the Last Supper – and having filled that final number, he was unable to match it with a face or costume.

  With no ready answer, Lapslie contemplated himself in the mirror and started cleaning his teeth.

  *

  The wedding had been a great success. Nathan had arrived on time, despite his friends and what looked like a stag night they would never forget but would like to. As Leslie walked down the aisle towards him, and he turned to face her, she had never been so happy. After that it was easy. Just a hard stare at her brother during the ‘If anyone can show good cause’ bit.

  She had never seen her dad so happy. He’d had a hard time of it since the death of her mother, two years before, and it was good to see him smiling and happy again. The walk back down the aisle was wonderful. All her family and friends were there, wishing her well, giving her decorated horseshoes and painted wooden spoons.

  ‘This way! Look this way!’

  It was the photographer, trying to get everyone to be serious, if only for a few moments. As Leslie turned to face him, her face glowing with all the happiness that was blossoming inside her, she felt a sudden impact on her chest. It didn’t seem anything much at first: she thought perhaps one of the pageboys had run into her, but she hadn’t seen anyone. Then she realized it must have been harder than she thought when she found herself thrown backwards and falling. Nathan’s hand was ripped from hers. Someone screamed as she fell, face upwards, onto the cold church floor. The impact knocked the breath from her body, and she felt silly and embarrassed. She hoped no one had captured the moment on tape so it would appear on one of those ‘pratfall’ programmes that were so popular on television at the moment.

  The impact must have been harder than she expected, because she was struggling to breathe. She hoped that the little pageboy, or whoever it was that had bumped into her, was feeling all right.

  The next thing she knew her father was by her side, holding her up and talking to her. His face was red, bright red, and whatever it was seemed to be dripping off his chin. She wanted to wipe it off, but couldn’t move.

  Her father began to speak: ‘You all right, lassie? What’s happened? Oh my God, what’s happened?’

  Leslie Petersen never heard his next words. Her eyes were wide open and staring but she could see nothing. Her father, unable to protect her any more, pulled her closer to him.

  ‘Oh God, no, no, no, no. Not Leslie, no!’

  *

  Lapslie was still officially off duty, seeing that he had curtailed his weekend away with the bunker investigation. Still, he put in a call to Emma Bradbury for any case updates while availing himself of a full English breakfast at his favourite café. Nothing pressing to report, so he browsed the day’s newspaper, finished his tea and headed to the harbour. When Lapslie parked his Saab at the dockside, George was already there. George nodded in greeting, and as they headed along the jetty towards the boat, Lapslie asked, ‘So what’s the damage?’

  ‘Looks like you were lucky. Like I said last night, the only thing is some loose play in the rudder.’

  ‘Will it take much to fix?’

  ‘I think a bit of tightening will see to it. You won’t need a new coupling.’

  ‘What about the inch of water in the galley?’

  ‘It didn’t increase on the sail back from Cowes and from what I can see the hull looks fine. No leaks. Looks like it came in from water swilling over the deck during the storm. Probably that aft hatch seal I felt had seen better days.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right. I should have had it replaced earlier.’ George had mentioned the wear on the seal almost a year ago, but with no rough-weather sailing to test it out it hadn’t seemed so urgent. Until now.

  George looked back towards the boat, as if gauging whether there was anything he’d missed. His face was worn and lined and he had only a few remaining wisps of grey hair, but his pale blue eyes seemed as sharp as ever; as if constantly scanning the horizons had kept his vision honed. ‘Should only take a couple of hours to pump the water and tighten the rudder. But if you want the hatch seal replaced, best I get that first so it’s all done at the same time.’

  Lapslie nodded after a second. ‘Yes. Go ahead with the seal too. I don’t aim to be facing more heavy storms any time soon, but it’s not worth taking the risk.’

  Lapslie joined George in looking thoughtfully towards the boat, as if he too was considering anything that might have been overlooked. Where a name should have been painted there was just a white blank, replacing the previous owner’s rather unimaginative name of Seagull. He supposed he could name her The Busted Flush, after the boat owned by ‘salvage consultant’ Travis McGee in the books by John D. MacDonald.

  The arrangement with George worked particularly well. Retiring from the Royal Navy, George couldn’t afford his own boat and Lapslie couldn’t afford a captain – either full- or part-time. So the arrangement was that in return for a few days’ sailing here and there, George would maintain the boat and sail it to more favourable sailing grounds for when Lapslie wanted to use it, so that he wouldn’t lose precious hours getting there; his preferred grounds of the Isle of Wight or Norfolk were almost a full day’s sailing away from Clacton harbour, but George had old Navy mates he could look up in both, so the arrangement worked well for both of them. All Lapslie had to shell out for was any parts needed.

  ‘Might have helped if I’d stayed with you,’ George commented. ‘Less panic.’

  Lapslie smiled wryly. ‘I’d have been all right on my own. My main concern was Charlotte being with me.’

  George looked as if he was struck with another thought, but finally decided against voicing it.

  They spent ten minutes more going round the boat while George went through his notebook checklist of damage, before concluding, ‘I think that’s it.’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Lapslie joined George in a final visual once-over of the boat from the dockside, then George took a fresh breath.

  ‘Well, it’s not going to get fixed with us just staring at it. So I’ll nip down to Griffin’s chandlery and—’

  Lapslie held a hand up as his mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. When he saw it was Emma Bradbury calling, he moved two paces away to answer it.

  ‘Sir, I thought you’d want to know straight away. Something has just come up – a murder at a wedding. The bride, no less.’

  ‘My goodness.’ Lapslie felt his chest tighten, his breath suddenly short. A bride had been among the dolls he’d seen in the bunker, but that could be just a coincidence. Impossible to make either assumptions or conclusions. Too early. ‘Where’s this happened?’

  ‘St May’s Church, Finchingfield.’

  ‘And you’re on the scene now?’

  ‘I’m on my way. Should be there in about fifteen minutes.’

  Lapslie could hear the siren in the background her end. He did a quick time and distance calculation. ‘I shouldn’t be too long getting there. An hour at most from now.’ He rang off and peeled a twenty-pound note from his wallet. ‘Sorry, George, got to run. Duty calls! Hopefully that should cover the hatch seal.’

  Foot hard down, he made the drive to St May’s Church in just fifty minutes. The place was teeming with the usual suspects. SOCOs, detectives, uniforms. The press were also there in force, both TV and papers. The mobile incident room had already been established and there was yellow incident tape everywhere. For once everyone, including the detectives, really did seem to have a purpose. There was a palpable air of urgency and professionalism. This had to be a bad one.

  As Lapslie went to drive through the checkpoint he was stopped for a second time, this time not by a pale-faced probationer but by an experienced uniformed sergeant. The man’s voice tasted of something simultaneously creamy and greasy, like avocados. Lapslie ha
d never liked avocados. His identification was noted and verified, as well as the time he arrived at the scene, along with the registration number of his car. Before he could drive towards the church car park the passenger door was opened and Bradbury got in.

  ‘I’ve got you a spot over by the church wall, sir, but you’d better be quick before it gets taken.’

  Lapslie looked at her. ‘What happened to my sign?’

  Bradbury shrugged. ‘Disappeared, sorry. Some scrote took it away with them. It’s probably hanging on their living-room wall right now.’

  Lapslie frowned. Yet another perk gone. There would be no point to it all soon – everyone would be equal in a flat management structure. Apart, of course, from Chief Superintendent Rouse.

  He followed Emma’s directions to the parking spot. Fortunately the gap was still free. Lapslie pulled into it. He turned to his sergeant. ‘So what have we got? It’s obviously bloody serious.’

  Bradbury paused for a moment, determined not to get a thing wrong. ‘The girl . . .’ she looked at her notebook ‘. . . is Leslie Cooke, aged twenty-two years, who got married here today and was shot and killed shortly after the service concluded.’

  Lapslie was impatient. ‘By who? Husband, former husband, boyfriend?’

  ‘No none of those, or we don’t think so. She was shot by a sniper . . .’

  ‘A sniper? What is this, Iraq?’

  Bradbury shrugged. ‘The Army have provided a Special Forces contact. He’s trying to establish where the shot came from. We know it came from some considerable distance, and the person pulling the trigger must have been well trained.’