‘Where have you been?’
‘Oh Dad! I’m allowed out, you know. Do I have to say?’ She looked from parent to parent. ‘Oh, all right. I was talking to Peter.’
Edward relaxed. ‘I don’t mind you being with him. He’s a nice boy. Not very clever, not particularly well educated, but a nice lad.’
‘You told me never to see him again before we went away last time,’ said Nona, who did not forget easily.
‘That was then. You were only a child.’
‘And this is now?’ Nona had an adult amusement in her eyes. Her mother saw it, and made her own assessment.
‘Haven’t you outgrown him?’ she asked. ‘I thought you might have done.’ She understood her daughter better than her husband did, had watched her and seen the signs.
‘I was kind of saying goodbye,’ said Nona. ‘Of course, I’ll go on knowing him, he’ll always be my friend. But, well, I’ve got a lot of work in front of me if I’m going to get to Girton or it might be Vassar, I haven’t decided. I’m not going to have the time to go around much. And then I’ve just got keen on paintings. I want to go to all the galleries, and look. The National, and the Tate and the Victoria and Albert. I don’t think Peter would want to trail around all those after me. Not his thing.’
‘No,’ said Irene. How grown-up she was, how wise and sophisticated. Aware that two worlds had grown wide apart and it was time to be off. And how much wiser than she herself had been at that age. A wise child now but still one who had to be protected. It was better if she kept away from the boy. If only she had told me, Irene thought, and not allowed me to find out from a teacher’s report. That made it important. An episode like that in a child’s life ought to have been talked about. ‘Well, be careful how you do it, that’s all. Don’t hurt his feelings.’ More than you can help; they were going to be hurt, anyway.
‘Your mother will teach you how to say goodbye gently,’ said Edward, just audibly.
Irene heard him but said nothing. Bridges were being torn down, but would have to be built again. Somehow.
Nona said, ‘Oh, I’m being slow about it. We’re going out for a walk in the park. He wants to show me the sailing ship, the Cutty Sark. That’ll be interesting. And did you know there had been a murder? A man, stabbed to death.’
She was interested but untouched. Death, violent death, was so far away from her.
Later that night, Chris Court was on the telephone to his party agent in his constituency. The vote that night had not gone well for the Government and it was likely that there would be a General Election. Chris’s seat was one which, if the swing was large, would be marginal. He had worries.
As they finished their business, Chris said carefully, ‘I think there might be a divorce coming up. I’ll be involved. Of course there’s no question of anyone being labelled a guilty party these days, but will it matter, do you think?’
‘No,’ said his agent confidently. ‘Just try and get it well over before the Election.’
‘Yes. Right.’ He would have to talk over the dates with Irene, but she would be reasonable. ‘It’s my second divorce, you know.’
‘That’s all right. A friend of mine is agent for a chap who’s just about to have his fourth. In the Labour Party, too. That’s trouble. But he’ll probably get in all the same. The voters aren’t what they were.’
He was always optimistic, a bouncy man, like a cuddly bear with hidden claws, able to override worries; he would not be a political agent otherwise.
‘By the way, that inquiry you wanted me to make for you, about the missing students. I put one of your research assistants on to it, the little Scot, Fiona Graham, and she picked up something in the local paper down there in Greenwich. Yes, there was a story about three students but nothing much to it, they weren’t really missing, soon turned up and it never made the London papers. But she did pick up the story that one of the same students was later found dead. A keen little researcher, our Fiona. Suicide, but a bit of a puzzle because they never found the poison. Or the bottle. Or something like that.’
‘Thanks, yes, that is a help. I just wanted to know what there was in the story.’
‘A something and nothing. Want Fiona to go on?’
‘No.’
‘I’d try the police if I were you. There seems to have been a feeling they knew a bit more than they were saying. They had an idea a child was involved somewhere. If it’s that important.’
‘Someone wanted to know.’
‘Otherwise I’d leave it alone. It’s always dangerous digging up old stories.’
He spoke out of a full knowledge of the world, but without expecting anyone to believe him and without any certain information to go on.
Although it was late, Chris sat by the telephone waiting for the call, and when it came he answered it quickly and quietly, as if it mattered his end as much as it did the other.
‘Irene? Yes, there was a child involved. But I don’t know any details.’ He listened. ‘Yes, love, I’ll try. And you try not to worry, I think you are fancying things.’
He really believed what he said.
Later that night, John Coffin was still up and reading, when his bell sounded. He listened on the entryphone.
‘Oh, Paul, come on up.’ He released the front door and waited. In a short while he heard feet on the stairs and opened his door. ‘You’re around late.’
Inspector Paul Lane was shorter than the ideal height for a policeman but compensated for it by a solid square frame and hard muscle that made his ability to look after himself never in doubt. He was young for an inspector and wrote a very good report, the product, no doubt, of having taken a sound degree in history at York University. He was reputed to have a very happy marriage, but if so, his wife was a patient woman who made do with not much of his company, because he was always working. As now. This was no casual call.
‘I saw your light was on.’
Since Church Row was not on any route that Paul Lane might have been taking to home or work, there had to be more to it than a social conversation. Coffin waited.
‘Nice to see you. Have a drink? This is whisky, but you could have anything.’ He thought about what he had apart from water and orange juice and probably a can of beer in the refrigerator.
‘Any coffee?’ Lane put down his briefcase.
‘If I open a jar.’
Lane pulled a face. ‘You ought to learn how to cook.’
‘I’ve never been able to notice the difference between one sort of coffee and another.’
‘That’s because you don’t treat the stuff properly. I bet you open a packet and then leave it around going stale for weeks. I’ll take the whisky.’
After a moment of silence, he said, ‘We’ve found a bike. That is, a lad exercising his dog found it dumped in some bushes in a park around an old people’s home in Charlton. It’s always a boy with a dog, isn’t it? He shouldn’t have been there, of course, with his dog and it’s not clear why he was, looking for his grandfather, he says, but his grandfather doesn’t live there, is only thinking he might go in one day. Anyway, the lad found the bike the day before yesterday and told his dad and they went out and wheeled it home. After a close inspection, they decided they didn’t like the look of it and that it might not be the bit of buckshee good luck they’d thought at first. So the man told a pal of his who was a copper. He took it to the local nick. After a bit, it occurred to them there that it might be of interest to us.’ Lane took a long drink. ‘It had a lot of blood on it, you see. All over. The boy had taken it for rust, but the father knew it for what it was.’
‘The blood group?’
‘Same as Egan’s. It has to be his. The killer used the bike to get away.’
‘Could be,’ observed Coffin moderately. ‘They took their time letting us know. Malice deliberate, do you think?’
Lane shrugged. ‘No, just a natural slowness. They don’t love us, though.’
‘I think we were created as a group because someone ha
ted us.’ Coffin was half serious. He had enemies as well as friends. If he failed in what he was doing, bringing up to efficiency this whole sluggish CID area, then his career could be at a dead end. But he had picked his team deliberately and well. ‘Any fingerprints on the bike?’
‘Place is too cunning a bastard for that.’
‘If it is Place that killed Egan.’
But they both thought it was. He had disappeared from public view and his contacts and such friends as he had were keeping silent.
‘Until we are sure let’s call him X,’ said Coffin. ‘Any forensics?’
‘Still waiting. But with my naked eye I saw a bit of cloth caught in the saddle bar. Also a shred of plastic in the handlebars. The killer could have had a bag there, with the knife in it. We haven’t found the knife; he’s probably got it.’
‘Pity he didn’t leave it with the bike,’ said the still sceptical Coffin. ‘If the bike was all over blood he must have been covered with it himself. Quite a sight riding through the streets.’
Paul Lane ignored this sally. ‘It was late at night. And I don’t suppose he went out of his way to meet people. Either coming or going. And we have got a bit from the forensics. About Egan himself. There were shreds of grass on his shoes.’
‘So he walked to his rendezvous in the park. He’d have to do that. Even Egan. Not much of a walker, our William, as I remember.’
‘There were also traces of asphalt, or some sticky, tarry stuff on the soles and uppers of his shoes. It looks as though he’d tried to rub it off with a bit of newspaper and hadn’t succeeded.’
‘Yes, he always was a dressy man. Well, all the pavements around here seem to be under repair.’ Coffin looked down at his own shoes. Even Church Row.
‘Not all, but quite a few around the park,’ said Lane in that reasonable voice that could infuriate his peers. ‘I think he may have walked to his meeting. And if he did that, then he must have been hiding out somewhere not too far away. Not being, as you rightly say, much of a walker.’
‘Could be.’
‘So we might be able to find out where that was.’
There was silence between the two men as they considered William Egan coming out of his hiding place and then walking to meet his death.
‘The time of death has finally been agreed upon as about midnight,’ said Lane, coming across with another piece of information. ‘The medical lot didn’t want to come across with that yet, still doing tests on the gut or something, but I prised it out of them. The park is locked by that time, but I can think of at least three ways of getting in, and if I know them then Egan knew them.’
‘I wonder who issued the invitation to that particular meeting? And how it was set up?’
‘When we know that we will know the lot.’
‘If I know Egan and his son-in-law there was either a woman or money in it.’
‘A bait? Yes. I’d put Egan as the inviter. It has his mark on it somehow. But he walked into something he didn’t expect. He walked and X cycled. That makes them both living locally.’
‘Yes, I can accept that. If the bike is right,’ added Coffin cautiously.
‘This was my patch once, remember,’ said Lane.
‘I know.’ The bright boy from Guildford Grammar School and York University had started his career in the Force in an unsmart part of South London.
‘Where the bike was found is not far from where X’s sister lives.’
‘Why are we still calling him X? We both know we mean Place. I give you best on that. I think you are right,’ said Coffin. ‘But it’s still guessing.’
‘I went to call on his sister. Went to her house in Abinger Road. Just dropped in. I took as much of a look round as I reasonably could. He wasn’t there, of course.’
‘That would have been lucky.’
‘But he had been there. I swear it. I could almost smell him.’
‘Perhaps he was still there.’
‘No, I don’t think so. There’s not many places to hide in those little houses.’
He paused. ‘And there’s something else, something that worries me. His sister was frightened. She’s a tough little body, Roxie Farmer, but she was really scared stiff.’
The two men looked at each other.
‘You’re thinking of the way Egan was cut up,’ said Coffin slowly. ‘I wondered about that myself.’
‘Terry Place is either high on drugs or else he’s gone off his rocker. Perhaps both. He’s dangerous. His sister knows it and I reckon we know it.’
‘Then we’d better find him fast.’
‘He’s living locally,’ said Paul Lane. ‘I swear it.’ He bent down to get a package. ‘I found this rolled up in a cupboard in the Farmer house. I persuaded his sister to let me take this tweed coat away. She didn’t want me to have it, but it looked to me as if it matched the scrap of cloth caught on the saddle of the bike. I think it is Place’s. I believe there is blood on it.’
He was holding out an old grey tweed jacket which had seen better days. It was wrapped in a big plastic bag to protect any evidence. There were dark stains up the front and on the sleeves.
‘Mad to leave it around.’
‘I think he might be mad. Or near enough. But in any case, he might not have expected me to go to Abinger Road.’
‘Any mice about? Egan had mice droppings on him.’
‘I don’t think they had Egan in Abinger Road. And from what I know of Roxie Farmer, no mouse would stand a chance. No, Place didn’t have him there.’
‘I suppose I ought to be grateful to him for killing Egan, seeing Egan was after me,’ said Coffin.
‘I found this in the pocket.’ Lane held out a scrap of paper enclosed in a plastic envelope. He had done that himself. Standard practice. ‘It’ll have to be tested for traces. But he’s got your address on it.’
Coffin studied it. The piece of paper had been much folded so that the pencil scrawl was hard to read, but he could make out Church Row well enough. ‘That’s Egan’s writing.’
‘I think so.’ Lane nodded.
‘So he knew where I was.’
‘And now Place knows. Took this off Egan’s body, and he meant something by that.’
‘I hope I’m going to go on being grateful,’ said Coffin grimly. ‘Got anything else, or is that the lot?’
‘There is this ticket to the Cutty Sark. He’s been there, and quite recently too. He’s always loved the river. He’ll be down that way now. I’ll take a bet on it.’ He spoke with the utter conviction of someone who knew he was right. ‘Why don’t we look for him down there?’
Paul leaned forward and became urgent. ‘Why don’t we pour men in? Flood the place with searchers. Flush him out quick.’
‘Going to take a lot of overtime,’ said Coffin, somewhat sourly. You always had to think about money now.
But they agreed to try. If they could get the manpower. The TAS squad was small and its demands not welcome. But it could be done.
‘Leave that stuff with me,’ said Coffin, motioning towards the jacket and the paper in its plastic envelope. ‘I’ll take responsibility.’
Coffin saw his visitor to the front door. As he closed it behind Lane and walked up the stairs he had the feeling he got sometimes that wheels were moving. It was never a wholly pleasant feeling, unsettling and worrying.
Mrs Brocklebank would have called it ghosts, the spirits operating. But Coffin recognized it as human relationships interlocking and interacting and setting the machine in motion.
When you thought about it, it all came down to people.
He picked up the piece of paper again and held it to the table lamp. ‘Wait a minute. I didn’t look at this properly before and neither did Paul. Paul misled me and he misled himself. Not my address here. My number is 5 …’
He looked again. He could just make out that there was a faint number written there.
‘No. 22.’
Chapter Three
The murder case slipped easily into its nex
t phase, as if it had been programmed by a computer that had access to several personal files and knew where they interacted.
Coffin was still pondering on the significance of what he had seen written on the piece of paper from Place’s jacket. He had sent jacket and paper off to the laboratories, demanding an instant report. This had arrived and a copy had been sent to Inspector Lane. As far as they could tell, the writing, by a ballpoint, was Egan’s. The paper was of poor quality and had been torn off a pad of the kind you might keep in a kitchen or by a telephone. In Place’s pocket it had picked up fluff and minute scraps of human skin and hair. It had both Egan’s fingerprints on it and those of Place, blurred but identifiable.
At the same time a determined police search for Terry Place began in the area down by the river. It was neither quiet nor unobtrusive, since it was not intended to be. The aim was to frighten Place into acting hastily. Within a further twenty-four hours, his sister, Mrs Roxie Farmer, divorcee, was taken in for questioning at Royal Hill police station, but claimed she knew nothing. In spite of an onslaught by Inspector Paul Lane, she gave nothing away.
That is, until the very end of the interview. Lane had been assisted by a woman police officer, Detective-Sergeant Phyllis Henley, a thickset girl, whom he had called in because she was an old friend or enemy of Roxie whose own life had not been without criminal excitements.
On the table between the two police officers, in view of Roxie, lay the forensic report on the jacket found in Roxie’s house.
‘Come on now, Roxie, you know me.’ Sergeant Henley prided herself on her power to prise out information by a mixture of persuasion and light bullying like the icing on a cake, and although this had never worked particularly well with Roxie in the past, this was no reason not to try it now.
Roxie stayed silent as if she was determined not to be cozened, but she shifted uneasily in her chair.
‘You can trust me.’ Roxie looked sceptical, but still said nothing, just another little fidget. ‘If I say we know your brother has been with you, then you can believe we do know. And if I say we think you know where he is now, then you can believe we know that too.’ It was a long speech for Sergeant Henley, who relied on smiles and sighs and significant silences. And then a snap. The snap came now. ‘Roxie, you had a tweed jacket hanging in your hall and that tweed jacket was worn by him very recently.’ She did not add that it had blood on it, although she knew that too, having just read the forensic report.
Coffin Underground Page 4
