‘I think I’d rather have beer.’
‘You shall.’ She opened the refrigerator. ‘And I shall have wine.’ She pushed Tiddles’s face away from Bob’s dish. ‘Eat your own food, you monster, and leave his alone.’ Bob licked her foot. ‘Oh, Bob, you sycophant.’
Coffin accepted his beer and sat down. She was talking too much, nervous probably.
‘Would you like the cat’s chips?’
‘No, thank you.’
Nor Bob’s, no, she put them in the bin. They didn’t eat all their chips. No one ever does. The last clump of them have usually descended into sogginess. Probably that was what the bread and butter had been designed for in the classic menu: to mop them up. And then the tea took the taste away.
Still, she was talking too much. And he was too silent.
‘And what’s the special worry, the one you don’t want to talk about?’
‘Is it so obvious?’
‘To me.’
The fish was settling heavily on his stomach. ‘Another body turned up today. A girl. Strangled like Marianna Manners.’
‘Oh, that’s bad. Where was she?’
‘The body was found near an arch, near the river in Spinnergate. She was probably killed underneath the arch. It would give shelter, you see.’ Now he was talking too much.
‘A local girl, was she?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes. You might know her: Didi Dunne. Diana Dunne.’
‘No, don’t think so.’
He had acquired a few facts about Didi before coming home. He felt he owed something to her sister Annie.
‘She auditioned for a part in a play, part of the Drama School’s warm-up.’
‘I haven’t had all that much to do with that side of it. Letty and I have been so busy setting up the essentials … Poor kid.’
‘Yes, she’s a member of a famous family in a way. Her sister saw the Creeleys burying their body and gave evidence. She was just a child at the time, so it made legal history.’ As well as filling the newspapers and inflaming what was left of the Creeley family.
Stella was quiet as she made some coffee. She had lately got the art of it quite nicely. It was quite easy if you bought the best and freshest coffee you could and used plenty of it. ‘Did the same person kill them both?’
‘Too early to tell yet.’
‘But you think so? … There’s a name for that sort of killer, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, serial killing. Jack the Ripper was a serial killer.’ Probably not the first but the first to make the headlines.
‘Do you think one of the Creeleys did it?’
‘There’s only one possible suspect from that family now,’ said Coffin. ‘And I have to say his name is up there.’
‘I suppose that let’s Job Titus out?’ Stella said. ‘A pity. I rather fancied him for the killing. But that’s because I don’t like him.’
Good, thought Coffin, because I have every reason to believe he likes you and I am as jealous as hell.
‘Let’s go upstairs.’
Stella looked around the kitchen. ‘I suppose I ought to wash the dishes.’
‘There is a machine. And aren’t we too grand and important these days to wash up cups?’
‘You’re never too important once you’re a married woman,’ said Stella. ‘That’s something I’ve discovered. I expect even the Queen has-put the odd cup under the tap.’
Still talking too much, he thought. ‘And what about you?’ He looked at her. ‘All clear today? No one hanging about? I’ll carry that.’ He took the tray of coffee-pot and cups from her and went ahead up the stairs. All was peaceful up there, the fire had settled down to a red heap and the dog and the cat were already asleep by it.
‘I had a wild, wild telephone call from Letty,’ said Stella, not really answering. ‘I mean, we’ve been working on setting up the Drama School and she’s been as good as gold but she rang up and said she was in Bruges. Bruges, I ask you!
‘Nice town,’ said Coffin. ‘What’s she doing there?’ He was not seriously worried about Letty, a tough lady who had proved herself well able to look after her own affairs. Also she wove in and out of his life as it suited her.
‘Looking for her daughter. But she wasn’t in Bruges, she was lying.’
Another family absentee, he thought. Perhaps she’ll meet up with our maternal grandmother. Or Granny’s ghost. Granny had been a notable wanderer too.
‘I need Letty here, there’s business things to settle.’ Stella sounded anxious. ‘We must have good teaching staff or we won’t get accreditation, and if we don’t get accreditation, then the students don’t get grants and we don’t get students. And if we don’t get students then good teachers don’t come. It’s a circle.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And that’s not the end of it: Max’s Deli is putting in a bid to do the food, but should I consider it? We might need a bigger outfit.’
‘This isn’t the sort of business you should be bothering with.’
‘Well, who else?’
‘Letty never neglects business.’
‘Well, she didn’t sound at all like herself.’
There was a pause. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there. The hanger-on, your watcher? Been around today?’
‘Didn’t see anyone,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve been in and out and all clear.’
‘Good.’
‘I suppose your patrol car may be keeping him away.’
‘So? There is something worrying you.’
‘Not exactly worrying me,’ said Stella carefully. ‘But the telephone rang once or twice and no one spoke. Someone there, though, I could hear breathing.’
He stood up and started to walk about the room.
‘Calm down, it may mean nothing. Don’t get too upset.’
‘Because it’s you. Because it’s you.’ He was possessive and jealous and anxious and frightened for her, all the emotions boiled together into anger.
‘I’ll have the number changed.’
‘Thanks.’ But it seemed no solution to Stella. ‘I’d rather meet him head on and have it out.’
Coffin took her hand. ‘He might be a killer. Marianna thought someone was watching her. Annie Briggs, the other girl’s sister, thought the same thing. I can’t risk it, Stella.’
The telephone rang; he felt Stella flinch. ‘I’m safe here,’ she said quickly.
‘Of course you are. I’ll answer it.’
It was Archie Young, trying to forget the Chief Inspector and be the friend.
‘Could we have a meeting?’
Something in his voice. ‘Yes.’ Keep it social, unofficial. ‘In the club. Tomorrow.’ He thought rapidly. What was happening tomorrow? ‘Around midday.’
He was early at their meeting but Archie Young was already there, standing talking to the barman. He had a folder of papers tucked under his arm.
‘You need to break it, a good sharp break, then beat it hard. One won’t be enough, two or three at least.’
‘What was all that?’ Coffin asked as they sat down.
‘Omelette … I was telling him how to make an omelette, his wife’s gone on a cruise with his daughter. She’d left him a freezer full of food but he wasn’t sure how to defrost it. I explained that too.’ Young laid the folder of papers on the table before him.
‘I didn’t know you were so domestic.’
‘Had to be.’ His wife too was a career woman, a police officer of higher rank than his own, and cleverer. Archie knew it and did not resent it. There had been a time when some of his more macho colleagues had encouraged him to resent it, but Archie had seen the danger and drawn back. He was lucky to have a wife like Alison.
‘I thought I’d rather have a talk here, sir. Wanted to talk the Manners and Dunne cases over with you.’
‘You think they are related?’
Archie drank some beer, noting that the Chief Commander had restricted himself to tonic with lemon in it. ‘Yes, I do. We haven’t got the forensics in on the Dunne girl, and I don’t kno
w if they will give us anything but I’m hoping. But yes, there has to be a link.’
‘Not a copycat killing?’
‘I dunno. Could be. But neither victim seems to have struggled and that’s got to mean something. They went willingly. So they knew the killer. Or trusted him.’
‘Or it was a person they could trust,’ said Coffin. ‘Like a doctor or nurse. Or someone in uniform like a policeman?’
‘It has been said.’ Young was dour. ‘And uniforms can be hired.’
‘Yes, theatres do it all the time. So are you looking for an actor?’
‘We aren’t ruling anything out, but frankly we’re floundering. There are differences as well as likenesses. Manners now, well, she mixed with a wide range of characters, not all wholesome. And she had quarrelled with Job Titus.’ There was no love lost between Titus and any member of the Second City law enforcers. Titus had attacked them too often.
‘But the Dunne girl had no enemies that we can find. Then Manners was killed indoors and the other outside, probably under the arch near where her body was found. And for the killer that’s running a risk.’
‘And why didn’t she scream or shout?’
‘Well, she may have done, we don’t know that. We may get a witness yet.’ He was not hopeful.
‘Same method of killing but different settings,’ said Coffin. ‘So those are the differences. May not be important but must mean something about the killer.’
‘No motive, sir, not that I can see. The girl had no enemies and only one young man she went about with.’
Coffin drank some tonic water and tasted the lemon. ‘So if there is no motive it looks like a killer who does it for fun.’ He thought about it. ‘Who’s the boyfriend?’
‘You’ve got it there, sir.’ Young banged on the table. ‘Eddie Creeley.’
Coffin mopped up the tonic water that had spilt. ‘Go on. Let’s add it up.’
Young did so. ‘Eddie Creeley was mentioned in connection with the Manners death. He comes from a criminal family with an inherited feud against the girl’s sister. You might think he would be one person the girl would avoid. But no, he’s the lad she’s been seeing.’
‘He hasn’t been in any trouble, has he? No record?’
‘No.’ Archie Young shrugged. ‘But coming from a family like that, who knows? They’ve got crime bred into them, that lot. Auntie is coming home this week. Parole.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Yes, Job Titus helped there.’
‘Yes, that seemed the link-up with the Manners girl: Titus helped with Auntie and young Creeley got rid of an encumbrance that Titus didn’t want around.’
‘I had wondered myself.’
‘Well, that was one set of thoughts, although no evidence. But I had a look at the Creeley boy and he seemed, for one of that family, to be of good character. Getting the house ready for his aunt, looking for a job. And so he seemed less and less likely, somehow.
‘So?’ Coffin was patient, he knew that Young liked to think aloud but he seemed to be taking his time.
‘That was until the Dunne girl’s body turned up. Even then, I thought: Serial killer, or copycat crime. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it to be Eddie Creeley, but once I’d seen him face to face, he didn’t seem like a killer.’ Young opened the folder of papers, reports, a photocopied page or two, then put his large hand firmly on them as if that wasn’t where he was starting.
He took a drink, and said: ‘I know you’ve worried about Miss Pinero.’ It was universally accepted that this was how they referred to his wife. Mrs Coffin wouldn’t do for Stella, even though he had been at their wedding. Alison called her Stella and so did he on more private occasions. ‘She’s had trouble from one of these starwatchers, so-called.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Get on with it, Archie.’
‘We know that Marianna Manners had the same complaint or she thought so; Annie Briggs also … Well, that may have been Eddie Creeley or it may not, but …’
He laid a sheet on the table in front of Coffin. ‘Photocopy of a page in the sister’s diary.’
Half way down the page was a pencilled name with a question-mark.
Charley?
Young laid his finger against it, then moved down a line.
Miss Pinero.
No question-mark this time, just Stella’s name.
‘No connection maybe, but all in all, I wanted to show you before you got the official report.’
‘I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if Stella knows anyone called Charley.’
‘She wouldn’t have to know him, sir, would she? Not by name. But it may be a man called Charley we ought to be looking for.’
So there was another player on the scene.
‘We shall be looking for Charley in Marianna Manners’s life,’ said Young. ‘With luck we will find something.’
Coffin had a sudden memory of Didi’s face lying on the muddy grass. Stella’s face became superimposed upon it.
But it was impossible that Stella would ever be found lying in the mud.
He telephoned her after leaving the Chief Inspector. After some difficulty she was located in the Theatre Workshop talking with the new lighting manager who seemed to have grander ideas than they could afford.
‘Darling, I must have known many men called Charles or Charley in my career but I can’t recall one in particular nor one that I know at the moment.’
He didn’t tell her why he asked, and she was left puzzling, although she could guess.
‘What’s your second name, dear?’ she said to the lighting expert, studying the name badge she wore, as they all did these days for security reasons. Elizabeth C. Rust. ‘Not Charlotte or Carlotta?’
‘Claire,’ said the girl. ‘What’s the joke?’
‘Not laughing,’ said Stella. ‘Just wanted to know.’
But she felt better today.
No silent, breathy telephone calls, and no feeling that someone was treading quietly behind her. In fact, if only Letty came back (Letty was a problem in herself at the moment; those two thought they were not alike, but they were—both obsessive and capable of rage), and the money things worked out for the Drama School she would have no worries.
On none other than those all women and all actresses carry with them as luggage.
The ground where Didi had been found had been searched very thoroughly. Her handbag with her small possessions and her diary had been found at once, lying so close to her body that she must have dropped it as she was strangled and the killer hadn’t cared.
Robbery was not his motive.
The whole area had been cordoned off and the search had gone on until dark. An alert-eyed constable had found a cassette from a tape-recorder under the arch. It was half hidden behind a pile of old bricks but clearly to be seen once you had your eye in.
The tape was taken back to the Murder Room where it was played. The sounds that came out were blurred. Then after about five minutes of playing time they heard a girl’s voice.
The investigating team could hardly believe what they heard.
CHAPTER 9
Under the arches
The young constable who had searched among the mud and old bricks and rubbish under the bridge was as amazed as anyone at what he had found.
‘I tripped over a brick and there it was. I nearly trod on it trying to right myself but I had my eye on it and knew that even if I broke my neck I must see I didn’t damage what was there. No, I remembered to pick it, up with a plastic glove.’ He shook his head. ‘I just knew in my bones it was important.’
He was only on probation as a detective-constable but he felt sure he would make it now. Who could turn away a man who brought back such a valuable bit of evidence?
Knew it for what it was, too. At once. No mucking about.
To his fury, he had not been allowed to carry his find back to the Murder Room himself, but although instructed to go on searching, he had managed to get in to hear it played.
For a few moments he t
hought he had brought back a booboo after all. First there was nothing, just a running blank, then a few blurred sounds. Traffic noises, a plane going across the sky.
I’ve bombed, he said to himself (he was his own best friend) but then it came good.
They heard a girl’s voice.
‘Eddie,’ she said. And then once more but clearly enough to be heard. ‘Eddie.’
In what came to be known as the Eddie Creeley tape, that was all that could be heard, but it was enough. The tape was rushed to the forensic laboratory to see if more sound could be brought up but no, what they had was what they got.
Archie Young played it over several times before bringing it to the attention of the Chief Commander.
‘This is only a copy, sir,’ he said. ‘Original’s over in the lab to see if they could bring up anything else.’
Coffin listened. ‘What it has seems to be enough. I suppose it is the girl’s voice?’
‘I’m betting so. Haven’t asked the sister to listen yet.’
‘I should leave that for the moment.’
She was liable to be seriously disturbed, hysterical, Coffin thought. He went to his office window and looked out on the early autumn scene. It had been raining in the night, but now the sun was out. The leaves on the trees in the little park beyond were turning a pleasant yellow. ‘But what was it doing there?’ he said aloud. ‘Why was it there? And why was it made?’
Young was too busy with his own thoughts to listen seriously; it was there. He was counting it lucky the tape had been found and been readable. He had the girl’s voice and he had a name. That was enough.
So then I had to think again. I haven’t forgotten to look for Charley but I’m taking Eddie Creeley in for questioning.
‘But how was it made? Why was it made? And why was it there?’
‘You’re not thinking it’s a fake?’
Coffin shook his head. Didi’s voice had carried a conviction. ‘Just asking questions.’
But Young had the bit between his teeth. ‘Those are questions, I admit it,’ he said briskly. ‘But we will find out the answers when we get the killer.’
Eddie Creeley had tried to call on Annie Briggs as soon as he heard about Didi. It was not an easy decision because he knew how Annie felt about him and how she was likely to behave.
A Coffin for Charley Page 9
