Cracking Open a Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Were you here then?’

  ‘Last year? Just joined.’

  ‘So you didn’t know her?’

  Robinson shook his head. Behind him a telephone began to ring. ‘Saw her. Nice-mannered girl, always polite, more than you can say for some of them … Perhaps she was too polite.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know why I said that, sir,’ said Robinson, as if he had surprised himself. ‘Perhaps polite wasn’t the word, more docile … I’m not saying she was a natural victim, but going that way. You get dogs like that sometimes, you can just look at them and say that one will get his throat bitten open.’ The phone continued to ring. ‘I’d better answer that, sir. I’m the only one on duty at the moment. Bit of sickness around.’

  ‘I’ll remember what you said about Virginia Scott.’

  ‘I hope you get the chap who did it.’ He looked directly into Coffin’s face. ‘Perhaps you’ve got him already.’

  ‘The file isn’t closed,’ Coffin said.

  As he drove away, he asked himself what he thought he had been doing here in the university?

  What was I really up to? I am looking for a guilty man. Well, certainly that. But as well? Deeper down?

  I am worried, I am miserable, because I think this whole investigation is going all wrong and I can’t think of what to do about it. Because at the same time, I have the feeling my career, my whole life is going down the drain. I am thrashing around because I have a big problem inside me.

  The traffic streamed past him on the main road, he had to wait at the traffic lights for a moment to cross. He took the opportunity to draw in a breath and try to get a grip on things, tell himself to go back being a reasoning man.

  To be honest I was trying for questions, any questions, to see what I turned up … And I did get something. I got to know one aspect of Angela. And I saw that bruise on her arm.

  And as an extra, a straight tip from an inside voice that Martin Blackhall did for both of them.

  He thought he would give Star Court a miss, he had been down there recently and he didn’t think they would welcome him again. They were not that keen on men and policemen. But then he saw Angela drive past him in a taxi, presumably on the way to Star Court but with no luggage that he could see; he was surprised that she had moved so soon, and curiosity about her reception from Mrs Rolt and Josephine, not to mention that passionately interested small boy, led him to drive briskly in that direction. He liked inquisitive small boys, he had been one himself, but he hoped not to meet that one on this visit.

  He drove up the slight hill, so that it was some time before he came in sight of Star Court House. When he saw it, he stopped dead.

  Parked at the kerb was a line of six motorbikes, each with a black-leather-jacketed rider astride. It was still daylight, but each bike had the headlights shining. A wasteful, defiant, but somehow telling gesture. Ready for anything, it said.

  The riders, goggled and helmeted, let him pass, but as he walked in the gate he saw an inner cordon of black-jacketed figures lounging about the grass. A couple straddled the path, obstructing his way.

  Our General had called out her troops.

  He halted at the gate. ‘Can I come through?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  He identified himself. ‘I want to see Mrs Rolt.’

  He got a suspicious look. ‘Wait where you are.’

  He decided to be patient, half amused by the parade. He could pull rank on them, demand to be let in, but to do so would reinforce all the suspicions they had already about men and policemen. In any case, they would probably have ignored his demand, he doubted his ability to fight all of them, and he would have lost face. In playing this game with Our General, you had to play by her rules.

  While he was waiting he was making an observation of the assembled blackjackets. Not all girls, he noticed, at least a couple of older women, and one or two lads. He wondered if they were armed, and decided that he wouldn’t be surprised. They’d have something to fight with apart from bare fists. What had the Valkyries used? Swords, if he remembered rightly, and a bit of magic. But they had to be careful about whom they loved or powers could be lost. He wondered where this outfit’s sexual inclinations lay?

  Our General came out of the front door and advanced down the path towards him. They met half way.

  ‘What’s all this parade in aid of?’ he said.

  ‘Protection.’ Rosa Maundy put her arms across her chest and stared at him. Seen close to, she had a bold, strong face, with narrow eyes under dark brows. She was not beautiful, and wore no make-up, but there was something attractive about her very strength. She was a leader, he granted that much.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘A woman is hiding here from her husband. She came in today. We’ve heard he is on his way round.’ There was movement, people gathering in the hall behind her, but she ignored this.

  ‘You could have called the police.’

  Rosa grinned, showing strong white teeth in a smile without amusement. ‘What do you think we are? Think we do this for fun?’ She spaced her words, dropping them like hard stones into a pool. ‘He—is—a—policeman.’

  No, not hard stones, he thought. More like a bucket of cold water right in the face. Coffin was halted. For a moment, he could find no words. ‘Who is he?’ he demanded.

  The flurry in the doorway behind her resolved itself into three figures. Mrs Rolt and another woman on either side of a third whom they were supporting.

  ‘We don’t regard our friends as exhibits,’ said Rosa. ‘I wouldn’t let you see her in the ordinary way … But this time you can. Maisie and Dr Gray are taking her to the hospital. Stand aside.’

  To encourage him, she gave him a hefty shove to the right.

  ‘You may know her … if you can recognize her face.’

  They were supporting her because one leg seemed damaged so that she was limping; they were guiding her because her eyes were hidden by a great swelling. Her face was distorted, tilted to one side. She looked like the victim of a bad road accident. Coffin recognized the result of a thorough beating-up. She was not to be recognized.

  What he could see, though, was that this was a middle-aged lady wearing good shoes and well-made skirt and jacket. No throwout from society, but a middle-class woman from the professional classes.

  ‘Know this lady, do you?’ asked Our General. ‘Know her face?’

  Coffin shook his head, trying to draw away as they passed, although he saw that the woman was past noticing him. Then he saw the crisp red hair, just beginning to go grey. Dyed? It didn’t look dyed, he had never thought it was.

  ‘Betsy Coleridge,’ he said under his breath.

  Mrs Harry Coleridge, wife of Chief Inspector Coleridge, soon due to retire from the Force with honour.

  ‘And don’t think this is the first time,’ said Rosa. ‘He’s been at it for ever.’ She turned aside. ‘Come away. That’s enough. Don’t stare.’

  Coffin drew back into the garden while Mrs Coleridge was helped into the doctor’s car and Maisie Rolt came back into the garden.

  She didn’t seem pleased to see him. ‘What do you want?’ Her voice was gruff. Her face looked more pinched and tired than he remembered, but she was dressed in cheerful yellow and blue. ‘Hurry up, please.’

  He was surprised into stiffness and formality, ‘On the matter of Angela.’

  ‘Which Angela?’

  ‘Angela Kirk. She’s helped here.’

  ‘Oh, that Angela. Can’t help you there, don’t know anything about her.’

  ‘I thought she was here.’

  ‘Well, she’s not.’

  ‘On her way, then.’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’ She frowned. ‘Oh yes, she did ring up with some offer of help. I turned her down. Silly girl. Now is that all?’

  For the moment it was, he thought, not dismissing his interest in Angela but moving aside. ‘About Mrs Coleridge … I had no idea.’

  �
�You weren’t meant to have.’

  ‘You can dismiss the guard. I’ll have a word with Coleridge.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it. I’ve met him, you know.’ She turned back into the house. ‘But the girls won’t go. I don’t give them orders.’

  ‘Come from the All Highest, do they?’ said Coffin, looking at Our General.

  ‘Just about.’ Maisie allowed herself a smile. ‘I’m off to the hospital to bring Betsy back—if she’s not kept in. Suit yourself what you do.’

  There was a movement among the gang. They were lining into a battle order near the gate. Two of them in front, then three, four behind that. Quite effective as a fighting formation, he thought, and turned round.

  A car was coming up the road, slowing as it approached the gate of Star Court House.

  Coffin walked towards it. Harry Coleridge turned his face towards him as he came up. He stared at Coffin, first without expression and then with surprise. Continued to stare for a long, silent moment. Surprise melted away from his eyes, the pupils contracted, the eyes narrowed, and dislike, even hate, took the place of surprise. His face went white. Then he started the car and drove off.

  That’s one of my enemies, Coffin thought. Or if he wasn’t, then he is now.

  Maisie Rolt drove them both to the hospital. ‘If you want to come, leave your car and come with me. Someone will pick it up for you, I expect.’

  ‘Why do you want me with you?’

  ‘I want to talk.’ Her irritation had disappeared. ‘Sorry if I was short with you about Angela, but that girl gets on my nerves. She’s taken to hanging around Star Court. Says she’s trying to help, like Amy. She claims she’s doing it for Amy, that it’s what Amy would have wanted. I don’t like the attitude, it’s patronizing. It’s not what we want. It worries me.’

  ‘But you were worried about Amy,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Not like that,’ she said illogically.

  ‘She’s said that she’s taking a term off and coming to work with you. I thought she’d be there now.’

  ‘She isn’t,’ said Mrs Rolt in a decided voice. ‘And I can’t be bothered. You’ve seen the sort of problems we have. And we’re still upset about Amy. I suppose the boy did it?’

  ‘No opinion on that yet,’ said Coffin cautiously.

  ‘Looks obvious,’ said Maisie, driving the car forward at speed and turning a corner. ‘Whoops, hang on.’

  As they drove, Coffin found himself thinking about Harry Coleridge. He was badly shaken. All those years he had worked with Harry and thought of him as nothing but a pedestrian, dull, quiet man, who was an efficient administrator and not much else, while all the time this had been going on behind the façade.

  He had never known him well. As young men they had worked in different districts and their careers had moved them apart, but he had always known his face and his name. When he had taken his new position as Chief Commander, he had been glad that Harry Coleridge had stayed on in the area to join his headquarters team. Harry had had the choice, he could have left and taken promotion elsewhere, but he had chosen to stay and had been seen as the quiet face at committee meetings while his signature at the bottom of a report was guarantee of a job well done. They had never met socially, and he had never thought of Harry as a friend, but he had felt comfortable with him.

  No more. There had been that in Coleridge’s look that suggested a long-held dislike now unveiled. Coffin was shaken.

  Could Coleridge’s have been the voice of the anonymous telephone caller?

  No, that voice might have been uttering a threat, but it had also been sending a warning. From what he had seen of Coleridge today, that man would rejoice in Coffin’s downfall.

  He might even have been one of the people trying to organize it; Coffin was beginning to get the strong feeling that it was being organized.

  He was thrashing around trying to sort out things. He took a deep breath, so deep that Maisie Rolt looked at him. ‘Don’t get too worked up. I’m not that bad a driver. Nearly there now.’

  ‘I hope Mrs Coleridge will be all right,’ he said, as he got out of the car.

  ‘She won’t be going home.’ Maisie made it a brief statement.

  ‘No. Can’t blame her. I would never have thought it of Harry Coleridge …’ A man with two faces. But perhaps he was like that with Stella. Not always open and honest.

  He felt he had met an enemy and at the same time got a look at his own secret face. The one he would not want Stella to see.

  He hesitated about going with Maisie Rolt to see Mrs Coleridge, but found himself dismissed.

  ‘You can leave me here.’

  ‘Betsy Coleridge,’ he began, ‘shouldn’t I … ?’

  ‘She won’t want to see you,’ said Maisie bluntly. ‘You get on with what brought you here in the first place. The boy, I suppose? You go ahead. If he killed Amy, go and get him.’ That was the tough ruthless side of Maisie Rolt showing from under the tender concern. She probably believed in the death penalty for men.

  Outside the room of Martin Blackhall, he saw one of the CID sergeants, known to him by name only. By the unsurprised look on Sergeant Duke’s face, he knew that the word had gone around that WALKER was out and on the prowl.

  Duke turned away from his conversation with the uniformed constable who now had a chair to sit on in the corridor. He got up hastily as he too recognized Coffin and saluted.

  Duke seemed genuinely pleased to see his Chief Commander, as if he had a problem he was glad to offload. An unsmiling man, he smiled.

  ‘You’ve heard, then, sir?’

  ‘So the boy’s conscious?’

  A faint look of surprise appeared on the Sergeant’s face, though his tanned, battered face never showed much expression. ‘Well, yes, he is. Has been for a few hours, but that’s not all. The girl has come round, the shop assistant, and wants to talk.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’

  ‘No, sir, I haven’t. The CI said to lay off, he’s coming down himself.’ But his eyes, those pebble-grey, hard eyes said that he had listened and heard something.

  ‘I’ll go in and see her myself. Third door down, is it?’ There was another uniformed constable outside this door.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No, stay where you are.’

  He nodded at the police constable on guard outside the girl’s cubicle, entering to the sound of voices. The nurse by the bed seemed to be trying to calm the patient.

  ‘Lie back, dear.’

  ‘No, I want to talk, to tell.’

  Coffin stood at the door. The girl in the bed was propped on pillows, her head swathed in a turban of white. A tube was attached to her arm and another further down, but her eyes were wide open, staring at the nurse. Neither of them took any notice of John Coffin.

  ‘May I talk to your patient?’ He introduced himself, his voice more hesitant than he had meant it to sound. Truly, he shouldn’t be here, he thought, but he meant to stay.

  The nurse turned round, taken off guard, slightly flustered. ‘No, not without Dr Mallet’s permission, I don’t care who you are.’

  The girl began to pipe out that she would, she would, she would talk. Her voice was frail and thin. But determined.

  She began to flail at the nurse with her hands.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘No, go away. I’ve just turned out one of you.’

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ said Coffin. It was a tiny room, and he was almost on top of them.

  ‘I think it’s an abnormal reaction to one of the drugs, it can happen, she’ll calm down in a minute, then go to sleep.’

  Right, he thought, I’m hanging on.

  ‘Please leave this minute.’ The nurse turned back to her patient, but the girl reached out and grabbed Coffin’s sleeve, pulling him towards the bed.

  ‘He was so brave … He tried to fight off that man … that one had a gun … he was so brave, he helped me.’

  Coffin leaned forward, ignoring a protest fr
om the nurse. ‘Who? Who helped you?’

  Our General? One of Our General’s cohorts? She had few males. But he knew what the answer would be even before the girl spoke.

  ‘Martin, where is Martin? He helped me.’

  Coffin knew he was hearing something important; he looked at the nurse and her eyes flickered as if she too knew she was receiving something vital. He wondered how the sick girl would stand up to questioning when she was out of the shadow of the drugs. Was it fantasy?

  But she had the boy’s name off pat: Martin.

  Archie Young and Paul Lane were not going to be very pleased with him.

  The girl’s eyes closed as she dropped back on to the pillow.

  ‘She’s off,’ said her nurse with relief. ‘Now clear out, whoever you are.’ Relief had sharpened her tongue.

  No, CI Young and Chief Superintendent Paul Lane would not be pleased and would not be able to show it, although they might find ways, not being his puppets but men able to discharge their anger.

  He wondered what they would make of it. They would probably not believe it and if they did, then would secretly resent the clearing of Martin. But they lived in a shell of normality and his shell was cracking.

  I’m like the Queen in Alice, he thought, I can believe anything.

  And she did have the name off pat.

  He walked out of the room into the corridor where he saw that Archie Young, with Sergeant Duke behind, was just swinging round the corner with that rolling walk of his which suggested he might be about to burst into a run. He saw the Chief Commander and hurried his step.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you, sir.’ Which was not quite true as word had gone around that WALKER was out on the loose, and liable to cause trouble. He was on good terms with the Big Man and meant to keep that way. ‘Chief Superintendent Lane is out of reach …’ he said breathlessly. ‘What have we got here?’ He was cheerful and yet cautious. ‘So the girl is conscious. I’ve been looking forward to that. Now we’ll get something to work on.’ His eyes were wary, belying his tone. Somehow the message had got through to him that he might not be getting all he expected.

  ‘She clears the boy.’ Coffin made the statement blunt.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said the Chief Inspector, moving forward like a terrier approaching a bone. ‘And that doesn’t touch the Dean case. You coming in, sir?’