Cracking Open a Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Why didn’t you like her working there?’

  Mick shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Seemed to alter her … Well, perhaps not alter, just seemed a character change of some sort. Perhaps I imagined it … I don’t like talking about this. Seems disloyal.’

  ‘You may be helping to find out who killed Amy.’

  Mick looked sceptical. ‘OK, if you say so.’

  ‘I believe Angela Kirk works there too?’

  Mick shook his head. ‘You’ll have to ask her.’

  ‘Would you say Martin Blackhall was capable of violence?’

  ‘No,’ said Mick shortly.

  ‘Did you know Virginia Scott?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I understand she was studying history, as you are?’

  ‘It’s a big school and she was one year ahead of me. We didn’t know each other.’

  ‘But Martin Blackhall knew her.’

  ‘He may have done. He gets around more than I do. I’m a worker.’

  ‘And he isn’t?’

  Mick did not answer.

  Coffin got up from his seat on the stone steps. ‘Thank you for answering all those questions.’

  ‘No trouble.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I wasn’t much help.’

  ‘Oh you were. You have told me, whether you meant to or not, that you were anxious about Amy. Your anxiety seems to centre about Star Court House. You have told me that she was emotionally stirred by her contact with that place, and emotion can be an important pointer when a girl is murdered.’

  Mick opened his mouth as if about to speak and then shut it again.

  ‘And you have been very careful to distance yourself from Martin Blackhall.’

  Mick went white.

  ‘And to know nothing about Virginia Scott who was also killed and who also went to work in Star Court … What is it you have on your mind, Mr Frost?’

  When Mick said nothing, Coffin went on: ‘I can probably get it out of Miss Rebecca.’

  Mick considered. Yes, Beenie might blurt it out. ‘All right,’ he said, his voice unsteady. ‘Someone was beating Amy up. At least we thought so. At intervals. Beenie and I saw the bruises. Star Court House is a place for people like that, isn’t it? What’s the connection? I don’t know. You work it out.’

  ‘And that’s why you don’t want Angela to go there?’

  ‘What do you think? And the sick thing was, the thing that really bugged me was, we didn’t understand Amy’s attitude. She couldn’t push off the bruiser, whoever, not me, not Martin, we’re not into that.’

  ‘Do you know anything about a slashed photograph, one of Virginia Scott?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ There was a long pause. Coffin waited. ‘Amy did that herself … we saw her. Martin tried to stop her, took it away. I don’t know what he did with it. Burnt it if he had any sense. I told you she was sick.’

  ‘She needed help.’ It was a mark of a disturbed and unhappy girl.

  ‘We told her to go to the Student Counsellor but she didn’t. Just tootled off to Star Court House.’

  ‘Who took the photograph?’

  Mick shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not Martin.’

  Coffin looked at Mick with a mixture of irritation and sympathy. Still something there he wasn’t getting. He took a card from his pocket. ‘This is where I live. If you think of anything you want to tell me, you can find me there.’

  Mick stood up, a shade of relief on his face. He’d not said too much. There might be more to say, but he would consult with Beenie first. ‘Oh, I know where you live, sir. I’m singing in a production of extracts from The Ring. I pass where you live every time we rehearse.’

  Coffin took his card back. So be it. ‘And there’s always Chief Inspector Young,’ he said, not without a touch of malice. ‘You’ve met him?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Mick was beginning to edge away. And hoped not to meet again.

  ‘One last thing.’

  Mick looked nervous. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you tell me where I can find Angela?’

  ‘She might be in her room. Armitage 23. And Armitage is the block on the north-west side of the campus.’

  As he walked away, Coffin glanced back to see Mick, not walking sedately towards his tutorial as might have been expected, but running like a hare into the university library.

  Inside the library, Mick slowed down to avoid being noticed but made haste towards the main reading-room. He walked through it, to the stacks behind.

  ‘Beenie! Thank goodness, I’ve got to you. I told that policeman Coffin that you were in London at a lecture or he’d have been after you. He asked far too many questions and he’s a friend of Dean.’

  ‘That’s lethal,’ said Beenie.

  ‘It’s Angela we have to think about now.’

  Beenie sighed. ‘We love her, don’t we?’

  ‘Oh, everyone loves Angie. Just like they did Amy. Got that way with her. The kitchen love her, the security staff love her, her tutor loves her, the Rector in his ivory tower loves her.’

  ‘If he knows her,’ said Beenie.

  ‘Oh, he knows her all right,’ said Mick.

  Beenie gave him a long, thoughtful look, and Mick got back to what was worrying him. ‘We have to decide what we are going to say.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I think I said too much … The trouble is I half wanted to say it all. Confess. He’s got that way with him.’

  Beenie meditated. ‘We don’t actually know anything. You said that yourself.’

  ‘He’s suspicious. He was asking questions about Virginia Scott.’

  Beenie said: ‘I heard that the police found a box in Martin’s room with her photograph in it, all cut up.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we know about that, don’t we?’ said Mick. ‘I told the copper Amy did the slashing, he was asking. A sharp bloke. I had to do it, but I wish I hadn’t now. Nasty.’

  ‘The whole thing is nasty. Maybe we should let it all out.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for Angie we could. We’ve got to protect her. And the best way is to keep quiet and try and get her out of it.’

  ‘Like we protected Amy?’

  There was a pause while one of the librarians came from behind the stacks with a trolley of books.

  Then Mick said: ‘I don’t think anything could have saved Amy.’

  ‘Do you think she heard anything?’ asked Mick, watching the back of the librarian.

  ‘No, they never hear anything,’ said Beenie with confidence. ‘They don’t think of us as people, just students, not quite human.’ In her way Beenie returned this attitude, regarding the librarian as a kind of book transport with arms.

  ‘She gave us a look.’

  ‘Just doesn’t like us being in the stacks. Thinks it’s her territory.’ It was in fact a forbidden area for students but Beenie always got away with her invasion. Sometimes she thought she must be truly invisible without knowing it. ‘Didn’t hear a word.’

  But she had heard, and was wondering what it was all about and what she ought to do about it. She knew who they were, and of course everyone was talking about the murder. Not much else was being talked about, except the deficiencies of the new Head Librarian and the general shortage of money in the library world. They were all under suspicion here, that was the feeling. Each and every one of them. She favoured Martin Blackhall herself. You could never trust those good-looking ones.

  She found herself humming as she moved. Annoying, not what she should be doing at all, but one of the young lads who worked in the library was singing in some choir and was forever trying out bits of it when he thought no one could hear. Now she was doing it, she who despised Wagner.

  Wouldn’t it be something if she could contribute to the police case? Go to that nice-looking policeman and say what she knew?

  No, she would telephone, she knew her voice was her best feature.

  John Coffin, on his way to the Armitage Building, passed the Maintenance Department and was thus able
to get a sighting of the neat pile of wooden planks, some of which might have provided Amy’s burial chest. He looked but passed on; not for him, specimens had already been taken and were being inspected in the Police Forensic Laboratory.

  He walked into a narrow hall lined with notice-boards which were themselves covered with posters, lists of names, and notices of meetings, lectures and admonitions about fire risks and cigarettes, and almost slipped on a highly polished stone floor. At the end of the hallway was a tea and coffee dispenser, with a notice saying it was out of order, and next to that a machine selling condoms, in two shades and two weights. This appeared to be in good selling order.

  There was a lift, but he chose to walk up the stairs, reasoning, from the number he had, that Angela’s room was on the floor above. He passed the white doors numbered in brass, before coming to a stop outside a door that had, in addition to its number, the picture of a rabbit and the name ANGELA.

  Did she think of herself as a rabbit? He rapped on the door. No answer came, but he heard movement behind the door. He knocked again. ‘Angela?’

  Silence, but he would swear she was pressed against the door, listening.

  ‘I am John Coffin, I am a policeman, Chief Commander of the Second City Police. I would like to talk to you.’

  A pause, then the door opened a crack. A pretty, distracted face looked out at him.

  ‘Angela?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ She swallowed, and took a deep breath. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to you. Can I come in.’

  She leaned against the door, long pale hair falling across her face. Perhaps just a bit like a rabbit, but an appealing one, with big blue eyes. Yes, they were lovely eyes, he thought, now they were focused on him. What people used to call speaking eyes, although he was not sure now what they were saying. ‘I suppose you are a policeman?’

  ‘I can prove it.’ He put his hand into his pocket.

  ‘No, it’s all right. I recognize you; I saw you when …’ She hesitated.

  ‘When Amy was found? I remember you, too. May I come in, then?’

  She thought about it, giving a quick look at the room behind. ‘If it’s important.’

  When he got inside, he understood her hesitation. Chaos reigned. Clothes, books, papers, all lay scattered around. He wondered if she always lived like this. Some of the clothes looked none too clean, either. Amy too had favoured squalor, he remembered. Perhaps a disease they caught.

  ‘I’m packing.’

  ‘You’re going away?’

  ‘I’m going to take a term off. Perhaps the rest of the year. I’ve spoken to my tutor. She thinks it’s a good idea.’

  ‘You were pretty close to Amy?’ She nodded dumbly. ‘Is that why?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Not much of an answer, but all he was going to get.

  Not really an articulate girl, our Angela, he thought, but with eyes like that who needs a tongue. Or is it that she just doesn’t want to talk to me?

  ‘So what will you do?’

  He saw the faint look on her face that suggested it was none of his business, but she answered politely enough. ‘I shall take a temporary job. I might be working at Star Court House.’

  ‘It’s about Star Court House that I wanted to talk … You and Amy put a lot of your energy into your work there.’

  She cleared the one armchair of its burden of clothes and books, nicely mixed. ‘Do sit down.’ She herself sat on the bed on a pile of papers. ‘I’m doing the sociology special like Amy, she put me on to Star Court. It’s interesting. I don’t mind doing it. I’ve got a case history to complete.’

  ‘Don’t you feel like a case yourself sometimes?’

  She looked at him bleakly and knowingly. Not a look he liked to see on someone like Angela. ‘No.’

  No change there, he thought, watching her. She moved restlessly, and several folders fell off the bed and exploded on the floor, where they joined a tweed coat and a pair of jeans.

  ‘Taking all your possessions with you, are you?’

  Possessions, property, he realized what a policeman he sounded.

  She looked at it as if didn’t matter to her, was of no interest, as if she was only packing it for something to do. Burning energy that she was lumbered with.

  ‘I suppose I could shove it all in a drawer. But some other student will have the room. Be glad to come into residence, a lot of us have to live out in rooms.’

  There was a large trunk in the middle of the room, already half filled. Packed you could hardly call it, thrown in looked more like it.

  She moved forward gracefully, brushing against him as she threw some books off the bed on to the floor, thus clearing a place for herself to sit down. Through her fringe of hair, she gave him a half smile, then lowered her lids over those amazing blue eyes.

  The eyes said she didn’t dislike him.

  He had met that look before in other eyes, and was surprised to see it now.

  ‘You’re very distressed about Amy, I can see that. I’m sorry I have to talk to you now.’

  She bent her head in that manner at once submissive and inviting. He could see that if you were given that way it could be exciting.

  ‘She was my best friend. We shared a lot.’ Her voice dropped on the last sentence. ‘I feel guilty, as if I could have saved her.’

  ‘How could you have done that?’

  There was a pause. ‘No way.’

  ‘I was surprised to see you running out of Mr Dean’s car that evening.’

  ‘I made him take me. He didn’t want to … but I guessed you’d found Amy’s body and I wanted to see. But he wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘If he had been willing, I would have stopped you.’

  ‘I don’t understand that … I suppose you think, both of you, that you were protecting me.’

  ‘I don’t know what Mr Dean thought but for me it was a professional matter. You had no place there.’

  ‘It would have been better if I had seen Amy, I needed to see her … When my father died, they wouldn’t let me see him, and so I never believed he was really dead.’

  ‘You can believe your friend is dead,’ said Coffin soberly, wondering how much truth there was in what she said. He believed in the dead father. He could almost have predicted that. ‘Did Amy have a blue and white sweater?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve already said that. And no, I don’t know if I’ve seen it recently. Maybe yes, maybe no. And if you’re going to ask about the bus ticket, no, she never used that bus. Never got on a bus. Said they made her sick. And that route is always late and crowded.’

  ‘So you did talk about it?’

  Angela flushed. ‘I used the bus to go to Star Court House.’

  ‘Ah.’ Yes, of course she must have done. Too far to walk and no car.

  The bus and the ticket came in somewhere, he was sure of that. The way it was tucked into the pocket suggested care, forethought.

  He had the sudden conviction, what was known among his subordinates as one of the Guvnor’s flashes of light, that the sweater had not been washed up by the river, but deposited on the bank to be found.

  ‘You know Martin Blackhall has been found?’

  ‘Yes, he didn’t kill Amy,’ said Angela swiftly. How they all protected each other, Mick and Rebecca and now Angela.

  ‘I didn’t say he did.’

  ‘But people think so.’

  Angela stood up. ‘I think I’d better get on with my packing.’ She pushed her hair away from her face and her shirt, loosely buttoned, fell away from her neck. She put one hand delicately on her neck, in that same manner at once submissive and inviting.

  As if she could not help herself, she smiled. She held her hands up, palms facing him, fingers curled back, and moved the hands slightly towards him. An invitation, if he had ever had one, by God.

  Just for one second, his own hands moved forward, he almost touched her. Then he drew back sharply.

  ‘No more questions,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’


  ‘Yes, sure. Sorry if I wasn’t much help.’ She held the door open for him and closed it behind with a small but decided bang.

  Outside he paused. You learn something about yourself all the time, no matter how old you are.

  He was thoughtful about Angela’s behaviour. She puzzled him. Might ask Stella about it, he thought, get the woman’s point of view. That is, if Stella was giving him the time of day.

  As he walked down the stairs, he thought: No, there had been no deliberate display. It was unconscious. She had been created by nature to appeal, to attract, to be a perpetual invitation. It was built into her.

  And when the shirt had fallen away from her arm, he had seen a trio of small bruises, spread out like fingers.

  The porter on duty at the main entrance saluted him as he went past. Coffin stopped. ‘I know you … Robinson, Fred Robinson.’

  ‘That’s right, sir, I thought you’d remember. I worked with you on the Greenwich Tally-Ho murders. Never forgot that case, brilliant work you did there.’

  ‘So you got out?’ He was surprised now he thought about it. Sergeant Robinson had looked like a man powering himself to go right to the top. He’d put on weight, but he looked content. ‘Weren’t you just moving over to the Major Crime Unit?’

  ‘Took early retirement … The wife was very ill, didn’t look as though she was going to make it, and I wanted to be with her for as much as I could for what we’d got left.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ He probably wouldn’t have done it himself, not at that age, and that was a mark against him. ‘How is she?’

  Robinson smiled. ‘Doing very nicely. I’m not as worried as I was.’

  ‘So you came here?’

  ‘Not straight away … I worked for Mr Dean, on his security staff. Daughter still does, on the switchboard. But there wasn’t a lot of free time there either, not what I wanted for me and Alma, so when this job came up, I applied and got it. Mr Dean gave me a very good reference … There’s more responsibility here than you might think.’

  ‘Can’t be easy at the moment.’

  Robinson puckered up his lips in a way that Coffin suddenly recalled. ‘No, it’s a bad time. Second time round too … Never cleared up that first poor girl.’