Coffin watched Stella join them and start to be happy again. The Feather Street ladies could be very exhilarating. For himself, he went to order some coffee.
Max served him himself and wanted to talk about his sister, Letty. ‘Have you seen Mrs Bingham lately?’ Max sounded worried. ‘I’ve put in my bid for the catering in the Drama School, but I just get silence.’
I’d like to know where Letty is myself, thought Coffin.
‘I don’t like to worry Miss Pinero.’ Although Coffin could see that Max would do just that if need be. ‘It’s not really her job. She’s the Artistic Director.’
‘She keeps her eye on things.’
In the night the wheels slowly turned, and the report from the community policeman who had checked Caroline’s flat on the top floor of Annie’s house was read and digested and a certain importance seen in it. It was passed to Archie Young, who gave it thought.
In the morning, John Coffin saw the fax on his desk.
CHAPTER 11
Where the river runs backwards
On their way to Max’s Deli the pair were observed by another patrol car who reported on the radio that WALKER and MISSUS were nearing home. It was always as well to know where the boss was. Very little about the Chief Commander’s life escaped his sharp-eyed Force.
In the patrol car, getting a strictly unofficial lift home, was the community officer who had called on Annie Briggs, searched Caroline’s flat for a man, and had initiated the information about a ‘suspicious character’ seen ‘loitering’ which was now on Coffin’s desk.
The two men were friends, although their careers were taking a different shape. Both were called James, so they were known as Jim and Jimmy. Jim was the driver. The third person in the car was a silent WPC, Jim’s partner.
‘There he goes,’ said Jim, observing Coffin. ‘He’s been a lot easier since he got hitched.’
‘Think so? He doesn’t come my way much.’ In fact not at all. Jimmy had never spoken to the Chief Commander, although he would have welcomed the chance and thought he could have told him a thing or two. He was deeply sceptical of the bureaucracy of the Force and wondered if any notice was taken of the careful reports he sent in. Straight in the bin was his bet.
Rarely did they talk about police matters. Crime you can live with, you don’t have to talk about it. But the current two murders certainly did interest them.
The two men soon got down to discussing Didi’s death and comparing it with Marianna Manners’s. The same killer for both, they agreed. It happened, not often, sometimes. They avoided the fashionable term of ‘serial killer.’
After coffee and a slice of Max’s special plum and almond cake Stella had recovered her spirits and wanted to forget about smells and so on. She decided it was time to worry about Letty.
‘Where is she when I need her?’
‘Gone missing,’ said Coffin. ‘Like her mother. It’s in the blood.’
‘I hope you won’t.’
‘No, I’m tethered.’ He took her hand and gave it a pat. ‘Let’s go home.’
She stood up. ‘On the way. Your place or mine?’
He was glad she was in an upbeat mood because he was going to have to ask some more questions about the smell; he couldn’t leave it alone.
On the way from Max’s they met Tiddles the cat, also on his way home. So they followed him and he positioned himself outside Coffin’s front door in the Tower and waited.
‘Do you know, I’ve never been quite sure of Tiddles’s sex,’ said Coffin as he felt for his keys. ‘I suppose he’s got one.’
‘As much as any cat that’s been spayed.’
Coffin gave her a wary look. ‘Spayed?’
‘Yes, Tiddles is a female masquerading as a male. I know you always call her he.’
‘I’m not good on sex in cats,’ said Coffin humbly.
‘I expect you’ve seriously confused her.’
‘Maybe we should send her down to the Karnival Club.’
He had the door open and Tiddles, unsexed but happy, bounced in before them. Bob, the dog, whose sex had never been in question since he was willing to mate with anything that moved, was the other side of the door.
‘We ought to talk about this sense you had of Charley being present or having been present at the Karnival.’
‘If Charley is this chap who is obsessed with me.’
‘I’m just using that as a name,’ said Coffin patiently.
‘Or if he has anything to do with the killings.’
‘I’m not saying so. Just speculating. We can’t rule anything out.’ And if he’s going for you next, then I want all the details I can get. But he hoped Stella would not read that thought.
Stella sat down on the big yellow sofa which had been her contribution to his furnishings. ‘Come on then, get the questions in and get it over.’
‘First, when were you close enough to the fellow to get any personal …’ He hesitated, fumbling for the words. ‘To get any sensation about him.’
‘When did I smell him, you mean?’ said Stella bleakly.
‘All right, yes. When was he close enough for you to get a whiff of him?’
Stella let her gaze go distant. ‘Only once. Near St Luke’s. Near the Workshop Theatre. I’d been at a meeting. And this figure was in the courtyard,. I had to pass through the archway to get home.’
‘So what did you notice?’
If he was hoping for details like alcohol, drugs or meths or even shoe polish and cigarette smoke, he was disappointed.
Stella shook her head. ‘You know, I didn’t notice anything special then. It was only when we walked through the Karnival that I thought I am reminded of something …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘It seemed very close then, his presence.’
‘Perhaps I should have taken you back and made you look at every person there.’
Stella smiled. ‘I had had a good look round and no, I didn’t recognize anyone. Not to look at. I’m not being a lot of help, am I?’
‘We’ll dig away at it.’
Stella nodded without enthusiasm. ‘I’ll go on thinking about it and if anything comes to mind, then I’ll tell you.’
But you’d rather not. He could read her face. She was more troubled by all this than she was willing to admit. He didn’t want Stella to suffer in any way. He was very protective of her now, more than ever. She was his Stella.
So there was possession there, too. Jealousy as well if it got the chance to raise its head. Which it could do with alarming speed: he had seen Job Titus looking at her.
‘What did you make of that little group, Titus and Eddie Creeley? Tom Ashworth too for that matter, he made up a third.’
‘He was there on business, I suppose. It’s always business with him. We ought to have asked him about Letty. He’s in everything, that young man.’
Coffin was glad to hear her call Tom Ashworth ‘that young man’, it seemed to diminish any threat he might be. He had noticed Tom Ashworth, too, looking at Stella, who had looked back.
He would have to live with that side of Stella, he couldn’t keep her on a string. He was not sure where strict faithfulness came in Stella’s canon of wifely duties, while being uneasily aware that he had better not ask.
‘But I like him better than Job Titus,’ continued Stella. ‘Did you see Titus eyeing me? He’s a swine, that man. But I don’t see him as a killer. He might hire someone to do it for him, but not Eddie Creeley. He’s got more sense than that. Anyone could see Eddie Creeley is a no-hoper and probably the whole family always were.’
‘They usually got caught,’ admitted the Chief Commander. ‘But they made a living by it. At least, the old generation did. Eddie’s got a job in a local hospital, so I’m told. I don’t see him as a killer somehow.’
‘It’s only because of his uncle and aunt,’ said Stella. ‘But you don’t inherit murder like a disease. There isn’t a gene for it.’
There might be, thought Coffin. But he had always been puzzled by the eld
er Creeleys’ murder. He had never heard of an adequate motive for it. A little money had been stolen, yes, but surely not enough?
He looked back into the past. ‘I never knew why they did it.’
‘You mean they were innocent?’
‘No, not exactly that,’ he mused. ‘But something never came out.’
Stella stood up. ‘I’m going to bed. I’ve got a heavy day tomorrow.’ She passed her image in a big wall looking-glass and gave an experimental smile. Awful. She’d have to do something about her face. Major cosmetic surgery, possibly. She studied her lips. Or perhaps a new lipstick would do it. Cheaper, certainly.
‘About the group of three in the club tonight. Were you just asking my opinion to take my mind off the other thing, or did you really want to know?’
It had been a bit of both. ‘Really wanted to know,’ he said.
‘Well, I’ll tell you: they stood out like a sore thumb, didn’t they? What were they doing there? What a place to meet.’
‘I’ve been wondering about that. Job Titus called Eddie Creeley there and Ashworth followed them. So it all comes from Titus.’
At the door Stella paused. ‘There’s something I have to tell you … Job Titus and I, a couple of years ago, before you and I really took up again … There was nothing in it. Not really.’
‘As these things go,’ said Coffin savagely.
‘Do you mind?’
‘I’m furious.’
As he was. Hurt and deeply angry.
Stella nodded, and decided to say no more. It was up to him now. ‘Coming up to bed?’
‘Later.’
Stella hesitated, then picked up her jacket and left.
He sat on. It was something he would have to accept in Stella. And after all, it was in the past.
No comfort really. You can be jealous of the past. He went across to the bureau where he kept drinks and poured some whisky. He might have more than one drink, he felt he needed it. Deserved it. And what was this about the smell of Charley? Was Stella imagining it? Or even inventing it because she was disturbed by the sight of Job Titus?
No, Stella did not invent things, a certain bleak honesty was more her style. As now, for instance, in telling him what she had. She needn’t have spoken. In a way he wished she hadn’t.
He wished, too, that she did not have her name juxtaposed to that of Charley in the diary of a girl who had been murdered.
He thought about Eddie Creeley, named on a tape by that girl about to die. Just his name and the distant sound that might be traffic. It was puzzling.
Had Eddie Creeley killed Marianna Manners for money, and then killed Didi as part of an old family feud? Eddie certainly had his name in there, but there was no real evidence, circumstantial or forensic.
Not yet.
The blood in his room was being analysed and grouped, all its constituents laid out ready to be labelled. It might prove to be Didi’s blood but Coffin guessed it was probably Eddie’s own.
It was a point to think about: why had Eddie drawn his own blood? There was something about blood that excited the imagination. Perhaps Eddie was drinking it.
Eddie the Vampire?
I’m drunk, Coffin thought and put the whisky bottle away. He had been down that road before and come back. Eddie was no vampire killer. Or was there a serial killer out there who might be stalking Stella?
He picked up a photograph of her that he liked a lot. She had been appearing in a Coward revival of Private Lives. The production had been dressed in the full ‘thirties style. Stella wore a long, bias cut satin dress, he knew it was a copy of a Molyneux original of the period. Black and white with a silver bow on the shoulder. Her hands held a long cigarette holder. He could see her slender fingers and painted fingernails. Stella had lovely hands; she did not bite and never had bitten her nails.
The chewed battered nails of both Marianna and Didi. Did the killer need that?
Or was it a signal to him to choose this one? He walked to the window, enjoying even in his present restless and angry mood the sight of his bit of London spread out before him.
And he never once thought of his sister, Letty, absent now for some days.
In the morning Coffin went into his office early. He took Stella a cup of coffee in bed. At first he thought she was not going to speak. Then she raised herself on one elbow.
‘Friends?’
‘A bit more than that.’ He sat down on the bed and studied her face with pleasure. Even first thing in the morning, she was good to look at.
‘I’m too truthful, that’s the trouble.’
‘You can hardly be that.’ He felt a strong urge to stroke her hair as it fell about her face. ‘I’ve fed the cat and the dog. Tiddles has gone out but you’ll have to walk Bob. I don’t want to take him with me, he’s fallen in love with the leg of my desk and it gets embarrassing.’
‘He is a pest,’ said Stella fondly. ‘I don’t know why we keep him.’
‘Look after yourself.’
‘I will, I always do, and I’ll take Bob with me.’ Bob was a keen guardian of Stella.
‘And if you have any more thoughts about the smell … Let me know, will you?’
‘You thought it was important?’
‘You were upset. That was real, that meant something.’
‘Yes.’ Stella thought about it. ‘It did hit me. But now it’s faded.’
‘Try and remember what really got to you. Analyse it.’
She nodded. ‘Do something for me: think about Letty. I’m worried about Letty. Don’t forget Letty.’
‘I’ve got a busy day.’ Several committees, two reports to read and absorb and one to write. As well as a diary heavy with appointments. In addition to a meeting with local journalists from newspapers, Radio Spinnergate and TV London, on whether his Force was dealing with racism and promoting enough women. He didn’t delegate enough, he knew it was a fault. ‘But when I’ve got time, then I’ll think about Letty.’
‘And what about Job Titus?’
‘Let’s agree to forget him.’ Not that he could, professionally, do so. He knew he was doomed to have Job Titus, MP, cropping up in his life. Someone might always kill Titus, of course.
There was a large pool in which swam assorted fish. There was one called Eddie Creeley and another called Charley and another called Tom Ashworth who was swimming side by side (and possibly in competition) with two other fish called John Coffin and Archie Young. And the biggest fish with the sharpest teeth was a shark called Job Titus. He could sense the presence of other fish but not name them.
And floating in the pool were two dead fish, bellies up.
Stella drank her coffee and watched him go through the door. Think about Letty. He probably would and that would be all. But she was worried. She had got to know her sister-in-law pretty well over the formation of St Luke’s Theatre and its allied institutions, and the one thing she had learned was that Letty kept her eye on her business.
‘Money has to be watched,’ she had said to Stella once. ‘Or it gets away from you.’
And it was just on this point that Stella was troubled.
She lay back on her pillows and looked at the ceiling. What she saw there was a question-mark.
In the Murder Room where two separate but linked teams were investigating the deaths of Marianna Manners and Didi Dunne, Chief Inspector Archie Young, who was the link, knew that he might have something important.
He had the report of the community policeman for the area in Spinnergate where Annie Briggs lived telling him that the neighbours had seen a strange man outside Annie’s house in Napier Street. Coming or going, they were not sure which. A favourite television programme, from which not even neighbour-watching could distract them, had claimed them at the crucial moment. And a quick look later he had gone.
But they had minded enough, felt nervous enough, to complain to PC Jimmy Fraser, whom they knew. Archie Young knew Jimmy Fraser also and trusted his judgement.
Jimmy had gone to
Annie Briggs’s house, asked to see over the flat on the top floor where the tenant Caroline Royal lived. Miss Royal was absent but Annie had, under pressure, let him look around.
Not much trace of Miss Royal but signs of a man. He had left clothes there. Jimmy thought this worth a mention.
Did they have Charley here?
He wanted to concentrate on all this but he couldn’t think.
The bustle of the room had gone quiet. They were all listening.
Even in here he could hear the screaming.
‘Archie,’ he said to himself, ‘you made a bad move there.’ His wife had told him many times that he was less than perceptive in his handling of women. ‘Gentle yes, subtle no.’ Kindly but heavy-handed, she had summed up for him.
I played the tape so she could confirm it was her sister’s voice and she went mad. It was unfortunate but I had to do it. Who else could I ask?
Suddenly he realized the noise had stopped. He walked to the door and looked across the ground from the Murder Room to the main building. The woman detective whom he had left with Annie Briggs when she became hysterical saw him and walked across to him.
‘The doctor came?’
‘Yes, sir. He’s quietened her down.’
‘I’ll go in and see her.’
Detective Winnie Baker hesitated. You didn’t usually tell your boss what to do (especially Archie Young who was no angel), or in this case what not to do, but now it seemed wise. She had had half an hour of Annie in full cry and it was nothing to start again.
‘I shouldn’t, sir,’ she said. ‘You’ll only get her going again.’
‘I need to go over Miss Royal’s flat. Annie’s got the keys. And I’d like her with me.’
He did not say why.
Detective Baker said nothing but her expression said a good deal.
‘Go in and ask her.’ He just stopped himself saying, ‘There’s a good girl.’ He was of the generation that wanted to say kind and helpful things to women but he knew it was no longer correct.
They ought to invent an expression like the theatre’s ‘break a leg’. Did people still say that? Probably that was wrong now.
A Coffin for Charley Page 12
