‘I’ve got a lot of time for Rosa.’
‘I didn’t know you knew her.’
Stella shrugged. ‘Friend of Josephine’s. Know Josephine, you know Rosa. She’s certainly helped there.’
‘She’s a bloody nuisance. I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.’
Stella laughed. Another coal fell on the fire of his anger which was hotting up nicely.
He was getting more and more angry with Stella, and the underlying cause was that new radiance that could have only one reason.
‘Oh, by the way, Josephine wants to talk to you.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘Was it about Angela or with Angela?’
‘There’s quite a difference.’ He was still responding with irritation. ‘How do you know this?’
‘She said something to Rosa and Rosa told one of her girls, and one of the girls who’s performing as a Valkyrie (she isn’t singing, just moving round, Philippa likes the look) told Philippa, and Philippa told me.’
As well to know the chain of communication, Coffin thought. Why can’t she just pick up the telephone? ‘What about just telephoning? My secretaries are there to take messages.’
‘I expect it’s more personal,’ said Stella stiffly.
‘I’m home sometimes, and there’s always my answering machine.’ Could it have been Josephine’s voice on that tape? No, surely not. What interest or knowledge could she have of his professional problems?
‘I expect she will do something. Take it as an advance warning. If you are interested. Or shall I tell her not to bother?’
‘How’s your leg?’ he asked, trying to switch his mood.
‘Not even badly bruised. Thanks for helping me. You were good that night.’
He thought the implication of that was worrying, but he bit back an answer.
‘You know when you were talking to me, telling me about Jim Dean and how you knew him years ago. You thought I was asleep. I was and I wasn’t. I was drowsy, but I was taking it in and I thought about it afterwards. You’re obsessive about him, you bear a grudge, you think he betrayed you, let you down, and it’s not doing you any good. It was a long while ago, forget it. Throw it off, John.’
So she had been listening and now was drawing conclusions. He had valued that moment as something private between them. Now he felt a sense of outrage, a judgement had been passed upon him in his absence. He said so.
‘That’s the trouble,’ said Stella crisply. ‘You are absent. Elsewhere. You are now. Not really here at all.’ Then she pushed the hair back from her forehead. ‘Oh damn, I didn’t want to quarrel. Let’s call a truce?’ She reached out for the wine and poured some in his glass. ‘The wine is good, isn’t it?’ she said in a placatory voice.
‘It’s excellent.’ Surprisingly so, since Stella was not famous for choosing good wine. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘A present.’ She giggled. ‘From a fan.’
No doubt about it, he was angry now. Stella was aware of it too, without knowing why; he could see it in her eyes.
Tiddles leapt up and knocked over his glass. ‘Damn.’ He leaned forward, dabbing at his sleeve. ‘Let’s stop playing about. Let’s talk. What is our status?’
Stella moved her chair backwards an inch, as if he was coming too close and she did not want this.
‘Status, status, what is this status? You can’t use words like that to me. We’ve known each other too long.’
‘Perhaps that’s the trouble.’ He wanted to say: You’re seeing someone else, who are you seeing?
Stella drew in a breath as if it hurt. ‘I know we always seem to be quarrelling lately, but I didn’t know it was my fault, or if time had anything to do with it.’
Yes, he had hurt her.
Stella believed in hitting back when attacked. ‘You’ve been in a lousy mood for weeks and I refuse to accept responsibility for your bad temper tonight. I simply offered you some food when you were hungry. Which you haven’t eaten, by the way. If you don’t want the fish, give it to Tiddles.’ She bent down to stroke the sycophant who was weaving himself round her ankles and purring. He was slightly damp from the Sancerre which had dripped over him.
Coffin was conscious of a mixture of emotions inside. He wanted to set things right with Stella, it was his fault but he didn’t want to admit it, he couldn’t bring himself to say he was sorry.
He stood up. ‘I’d better go.’
Stella stood too. ‘Yes, you had.’
Stella was tall. Standing up, she nearly matched him for height; he had always liked that, it made so many things easier. A breath of her new scent drifted towards him, sweet, rich, sensuous.
‘Nice scent,’ he said huskily. He bent towards her. ‘Sorry, Stella.’
‘Don’t. Not good enough.’
He put his arms round her, but Stella pushed him away. ‘I said Don’t.’
‘Stella …’
She had pushed hard and he fell back against the table, a glass fell over. He ignored it. A strong, hot anger swept over him. Without conscious thought, his right arm raised itself. He saw Stella’s eyes widen, the pupils black. He knew fear when he saw it.
He took a deep breath and dropped his arm. Behind him his hand found the glass, he gripped it, hard, harder. It broke, splintering his palm. His anger was gone, but he felt cold.
They stared at each other. Both seeing what they had come close to.
‘I’ll leave.’
‘But your hand …’
He wrapped a handkerchief round it. ‘It’s nothing.’ It was his own blood, thank God.
He stumbled towards the door, a set of conflicting emotions assembling itself inside.
As he walked to his own front door, a voice inside him said: I only wanted to make love to her.
But isn’t sex itself somehow an invasion?
And in my present mood, isn’t that exactly what it would have been? Wasn’t that just what I wanted to do to Stella? Show her who was master? Stamp her with my mark, like a bloody tomcat?
At this kindred with himself and Harry Coleridge, and whoever had killed Amy Dean, all rapists and men of violence, he went miserably to bed.
In the morning he felt quite different. He awoke, hungry and in a cheerful mood. He was purged of anger.
His feeling for Stella was good, real.
He knew what he must do: what Mat had urged him to do, and what his own heart now instructed him to do: talk to Stella. Tell her the whole problem, let her decide.
It was all coming together, his own particular problem, his feeling for Stella and even his understanding of this terrible murder case.
He had an insight now into the angry, anxious violence of the killer.
And one more factor: there was sex in it.
CHAPTER 10
The morning after. Josephine, Angela, Amy Dean. A double circle like a noose round them.
Coffin found these names written on the pad of paper he kept by his bed. He must have written them and drawn the circle round them in his sleep. As he stared at his drawing sleepily, it did look uncomfortably like a hangman’s rope, he wondered what he had meant by it.
Even after a strong cup of coffee he was not sure what he had been up to, but it was his pencil, his paper and his writing.
So what was it Stella had said? Josephine would like to see you. That must be it. The circle was the mystery, and there was no accounting for the unconscious mind.
Usually a man who threw his clothes on while thinking of other matters, he dressed carefully. Occasionally he had to wear uniform but this badge of office was not required today.
After the explosion of the day before, the weather suited the Chief Commander’s mood: it was a cool, sunny, autumn day, the best sort of weather for working and for being happy. Not just content or peaceful, but positively, actively happy.
He might even take a holiday. Go to Venice, and look at pictures. Paris, and drink and eat too much, and buy scent for Stella. Would she come? Damn all expense and all gossiping tongues.
Before he left, he listened once more to the message of warning. An incoming message trying to sell him double glazing had overprinted all but the end of it, but yes, there again was that woman’s voice in the background. He heard the tone again, certainly not Josephine’s, a higher, younger voice. There was something tantalizingly familiar about the man, though. Someone I know and have spoken to recently, he thought.
He drove towards Spinnergate where Mimsie Marker had his paper ready rolled for him, then walked the few yards to the florist’s called Flora’s Flowers where he ordered a large bunch of roses to be sent to Stella. No name attached and no message, since none was needed. She would know who had sent them and why. He hoped for a response.
He felt absurdly optimistic, even romantic, everything was going to be all right. He would fight off all attacks, remain in command of the Second Force, and he and Stella would sort themselves out. How and in what manner, he did not know, but it hardly seemed to matter. It would happen. He had married once and it had been a disaster, Stella was still married, but things would be worked out. Even the custody of Tiddles and Bob the mongrel would be settled. They divided their time between their co-owners as it suited them now and would go on doing the same.
‘Red roses, sir?’
‘No, those pink and white ones, please.’ They were the most expensive flowers he had ever bought, but they had a lovely, fragile elegance that seemed to suit how he felt about Stella this morning.
‘How many would you like?’
‘How many have you got?’
‘Just those two dozen, sir.’
‘The lot.’
Knowing his sometimes frugal ways (born of long years of never having any money), Stella would read the message he was sending. He might even get a response from her that morning.
What would she say: ‘Roses, thank you. You’ve never sent me flowers before.’ Not quite true, but very nearly.
Or would she say: ‘Let’s drive to Greenwich and have a proper old-fashioned fish and chip supper at that place we know.’ Alf’s, was it? Or Ted’s. He remembered going there with her and drinking strong tea.
‘This morning’s delivery?’ he asked, just to give himself the best possible chance of doing so.
Flora of the Flowers, a sturdy young woman in a white overall who had been up at four to go to New Covent Garden to choose her flowers, looked out of the window to the kerb where her smart red and white van was parked. ‘Straight off,’ she said. ‘The delivery man’s just arrived. St Luke’s, oh, that’s not far. Miss Pinero, oh, we know her, of course. Sent her some freesias only yesterday.’
Not quite so good, that, but so what, if he wasn’t the only person who sent her flowers. He suppressed the twinge of jealousy. Enough of that, he told himself.
It was still early morning, just after eight, but the commuters were pouring into Spinnergate Tube Station. He drove past, then swung towards the new Headquarters Building. On a day like this it was hard to accept a world in which girls like Amy Dean were murdered and women like Betsy Coleridge were beaten up by their upright, hardworking, police officer husbands.
Josephine, Amy, Angela, they were there all right, in his world and in his mind, edging out Stella. He tried to hang on to his image of Stella Pinero but it was beginning to get misty.
He hoped to hear from her soon. Thanks for the flowers. She was good at delivering thanks. A giver herself, she welcomed another generous heart. Which he did not always have; he forced himself to recognize that unpleasing fact about himself.
Meanwhile, work had to go on. One of his secretaries always came in very early, they settled the rota between them, so the messages, letters and reports were already arranged on his desk in neat rows. That meant Fiona, she was the tidy one, not Lysette, but otherwise they were interchangeable. Efficient, quiet, and neutral. But he had a strong suspicion they had active social lives and what he saw was just one face.
‘Don’t put anyone through,’ he said, sorting through his papers and arranging them in order of priorities. He could see by Fiona’s face that his priorities did not accord with those which she had already awarded them. Why, for instance, was he pushing the letter from the Bishop of Billericay to the bottom of the file and moving upwards the letter from the Spinnergate Garden Club who wanted him to speak to them? (The reason being that he knew Bishop Bill would not mind waiting for an answer, whereas the Chairperson of the Garden Club was Mimsie Marker, who would.) In the middle went the great mass of official material which he would deal with or ignore as seemed politic.
‘Don’t put through any calls.’
Fiona nodded. She would do what she thought right, she felt she made better judgements on these matters sometimes than he did.
‘Except Miss Pinero.’ Fiona certainly knew about his own troubles, the communication network within the Force was swift and secret, but officially she knew nothing and would not refer to it even obliquely. ‘I’ll talk to her.’
Fiona gave the small secret smile she reserved for worktimes when she knew something the boss didn’t. ‘Lovely photograph of Miss Pinero in the Mail yesterday.’
‘I didn’t see it.’ All newspapers were delivered to his office and he read as much as possible. Part of the job.
‘I cut it out.’
Fiona put a clipping in front of him. There was Stella, radiant, smiling, her professional face, and there with her was the new young American star of the TV series in which she still had her part. They looked on extremely good terms.
‘He’s lovely too, isn’t he?’ said Fiona.
‘Yes,’ agreed Coffin, mentally awarding Fiona a star for neat bitchiness. He hadn’t realized she disliked him so much. Another little bit of the happiness he had started the day with peeled away.
The morning passed, the telephone rang, messages came in, and Fiona dealt with them. Stella did not ring.
Fiona brought in coffee and sandwiches, closing the door quietly on him eating his solitary working lunch. He heard her laughing with someone in the room beyond.
He continued going through his papers, making notes and dictating letters on a tape. Lysette took over after lunch, the two girls worked their shifts as it suited them. Lysette was gentler than Fiona and not so compulsively efficient. She was married, although she never spoke of her husband, so that Coffin, who was incurious when he could be (so much of his life having compelled him to asking questions), had decided he must be a sailor or a long-distance lorry-driver.
He was surprised by a voice outside and the door opening with a thrust.
He looked up. ‘Oh, you. How did you get in?’
‘Yes, me. Not so much of a surprise, am I?’ James Dean looked thinner and greyer since their last meeting. His shirt and tie did not match as well as before, his suit looked creased. Grief could do things like that to you.
There were numerous checks and barriers, some electronic, others men wearing uniform, that should have stopped Dean coming through without permission, but clearly they hadn’t functioned. Another sign, Coffin thought, that Dean knew his way only too well into Coffin’s world.
‘You think you’re protected? Not as well as could be.’
‘I’m learning, thank you for alerting me. I shall do something about it.’ He would find out who had let Dean through and why and for what price, because there would be one and it might not be money.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t be in? Did you think I’d quietly step aside while you let Martin Blackhall get away with it?’
‘He hasn’t got away with anything … Just at the moment he isn’t charged with anything. There is no evidence to charge anyone.’
‘I know all that.’
‘I expect you do.’ Paul Lane, no doubt, is your source. Coffin too had been making his inquiries and had discovered that Lane and Dean met regularly at the same Golf Club. Harry Coleridge could be another informer and glad to be, no doubt.
‘I hold that boy responsible for my daughter’s death.’
‘I believe
you do,’ said Coffin, respecting the conviction in Dean’s voice. ‘But it’s not enough. You know that.’
‘He buried her.’
‘I don’t think he did.’
Dean looked at him. ‘Does that mean you know who did?’
‘No, it doesn’t. I’m just telling you what I believe to be true. The boy did not bury Amy. He may have killed her, but he did not bury her.’
Dean frowned. ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
‘Think about it. I don’t believe one person could have got Amy into that box.’ He saw Dean flinch at the word. ‘And then buried her in it. Or not alone. More than one person must have been involved.’
‘That doesn’t clear the boy of the killing,’ said Dean quickly and almost sulkily. Sullen, Coffin thought.
‘It complicates the picture immensely, though, doesn’t it?’ said Coffin with sympathy. ‘There are more people involved than we thought at first. Whoever they were. Or are.’
He could smell that Dean had been drinking. ‘How’s business?’ he said.
Dean’s face sharpened. ‘It’s fine, fine. The recession’s hitting me, but it’s touching us all. I’ll come through, and if I don’t, well …’ He shrugged. ‘Who cares? Without Amy, I’ve got enough for my needs, she was the future. But I’ll get that bastard Blackhall. And you too, if I have to.’
He was out of control and not caring who knew it.
Coffin went to the window to look out. If he wasn’t careful, he would hit Dean. Or Dean would hit him. Either way, it would be disaster. ‘I think you’ve already had a go at that, haven’t you?’
‘Rubbish.’ Dean slumped down in a chair. ‘If you’re still going back to the time down by the docks … You thought it was me, I’ve always known that. Sold us down the river. What did I get for it? A pound of silver and a shot in the guts?’
‘If I did think that, and you did do it, I’ll never prove it now.’
‘Quite right.’
‘But I was thinking of something more up to date.’ He could see Dean’s hand behind his present crisis. If he hadn’t started it, then he had helped it along.
Outside he could hear Lysette on the telephone. Coffin touched the button that would bring her in.
Cracking Open a Coffin Page 15
