Come to think of it, he deserved a better father himself. But there were some problems you could do something about and others you could not. His father, now asleep after the early milk round which exhausted him for the rest of the day, was one such.
Jim put a casserole in the oven for the evening meal, he was a good cook, he’d had to learn and found the skill had come easily to him. He had collected recipes from the Feather Street ladies and got on with it. Mrs Anneck had taught him how to make a meat loaf, Felicity Zeman how to make gazpacho and Val Humberstone particularly nice and rich chocolate cakes. That was his repertoire. Now he took a bowl of stewed mince with him for Jumbo’s supper. He was convinced that Jumbo’s terrible aggression was due to what he was given to eat.
‘You are what you eat,’ said Jim. ‘You live by it and you die by it. That is a self-evident truth.’
In that case, he wondered what John Coffin, whom he had been observing closely, ate that his father did not and whether he should try to do the same himself. In an unfriendly way, he admired the Chief Commander. ‘We ought to assassinate him,’ his mother had cried, without any intention of planting any bombs. Jim did not agree here, he saw the man as doing a good job. You might not admire the job itself, but to see it well done was something.
‘It’s no good, though,’ he told himself. ‘I’m not that side of the law and never will be. It’s in the blood.’ His mother, possibly because she had been the child of a successful lawyer, had been a passionate protester against the police. She and Lily Goldstone had met on many a barricade. But Lily had a life force running strongly through her and Clare Marsh had not.
Jim woke his father before going out to walk the Feather Road dogs. ‘Dad, turn the oven down in half an hour, will you?’
His father opened his eyes. ‘Where are you off to? Where are you all hours of the day? I never see you.’
Jim shrugged. ‘I think I’m around most of the time.’
‘Then you ought to be at school.’ You could never win with his father. ‘What’s that you’ve got under your arm?’
‘Just something I’ve cooked.’ He made for the door before his father could look. ‘Don’t forget the casserole. I’ve got to go round to Mr Dibbin’s after I’ve walked the dogs.’ John Dibbin was the local vet for whom he did odd jobs. ‘He wants me to deliver some medicines.’
‘Heard you banging around in the kitchen. What were you up to?’
‘Just tidying up, Dad.’ And Jim escaped into the garden and out to what he called the ‘Dog Run’, the path between the houses owned by the Annecks, the Darbyshires and the Zemans, linking one back garden to the next.
‘You’ve got a hidey-hole somewhere,’ muttered his father before sinking back into sleep. He’d been up since dawn, he needed his sleep. His initial idea that he would rise early for his milk round, then have the rest of the day to spend writing his novel, or his play, or the poem sequence, had not worked out. He was always too tired. I ought to have been a brain surgeon, he thought.
Jim was methodical in the walking of the dogs. He took them in the same order every day, beginning with Felicity Zeman’s white peke, which hated to go out and usually had to be carried outward so he could hurry back home. Then came Val’s mongrel Bob, followed by Edie and then Jumbo. He always took Jumbo last because he was so aggressive, also because Jim disliked Jumbo as much as Jumbo appeared to dislike him. Not that one could tell for sure with Jumbo, who seemed willing to take on the world.
All the dogs went on the same walk which they knew thoroughly by heart and somewhat resented, especially Jumbo who was the most intelligent of the dogs as well as the crossest.
The food for Jumbo was by way of an experiment to see if it sweetened his temper. So far it did not appear to have worked.
Handing out food, a tidbit here, a trifle there, for he could not ignore the other animals, Jim got on with the job with his usual briskness. He did not linger anywhere much except in the Zemans’ kitchen. If he liked one of the animals at all, it was Bob, the mongrel.
When Val Humberstone came into the kitchen, he said to her: ‘I wonder if I could have my money today. What I’ve earned.’ It was two days off payday, which was usually the end of the week.
‘Sure.’ Val fetched her purse.
‘There’s something I want to buy.’
‘You don’t have to explain to me. Glad to do it. I might be away at the weekend anyway.’
Jim received his money politely, but did not smile. He was, as Val had observed before, an unsmiling, grave-faced boy. And she for one did not blame him.
She liked boys, she was fond of her nephew Tim, although he did get himself into troubles. This was not, at the moment, a very good time for the Zemans.
She stood in the kitchen and picked up the telephone. She dialled Stella Pinero’s number. Not there.
Val looked at the big old clock on the wall. She might be at the theatre. No matinée today and too early for the evening performance to have started, but Stella was probably there. Was Stella still in the show in London or had she come back to the Workshop? Val couldn’t be sure. She tried the theatre.
The bright voice of the young stage manager answered her. ‘No, Stella’s not here yet. She was going somewhere with Sir Harry Beauchamp. He’s doing some photographs of the site of the new theatre.’
Wonder where she is, thought Val. Like to talk to her. She might tell me what to say, or even what not to say, to her policeman friend John Coffin.
There was something she wanted to pass on to the police, needed to pass on. Just speculation really, the police might believe her or might not (that cocky young Detective-Inspector Young certainly would not), but John Coffin might.
She had met him once with Stella and thought him a believing kind of person.
She went back into the sitting-room where her Aunt Kay was sitting on the sofa. She hadn’t been too well these last few days. She was having treatment for her heart condition which was supposed to be responding well.
‘Auntie, do you think you ought to have eaten so many of those cakes?’ Several small chocolate cakes had gone.
‘They were so good,’ said Kay Zeman. ‘Better than usual. Your cooking is coming on.’ She sounded sleepy.
‘Thanks.’ Val picked up the tea-tray and carried it into the kitchen. She often made these little biscuity chocolate cakes. They were put together out of crisp crushed biscuit stirred into melted chocolate. A few nuts made them crunchy.
‘I think I’ll go to bed early.’
Val turned her head alertly. ‘Do you want the doctor?’
Leonard’s partner, Roger Eaton, treated Kay Zeman, while Val took herself off to another outfit altogether. Leonard did not look after his own family: not good professional practice.
‘No,’ said old Mrs Zeman stoutly. ‘Just early bed.’
‘I’ll help you up.’
‘Don’t bother.’ Kay Zeman struggled up the stairs, took out her teeth and quietly put herself to bed. She was beginning to feel very sleepy and heavy, but as a doctor’s widow she made light of her own ailments. You were trained to by years of no one wanting to know that you were ill.
In the night, her heart became arhythmic, she was already unconscious, soon she ceased to breathe and quietly died.
Leonard Zeman, summoned by Val, stood by his mother’s bed and looked down at her. There were no tears in his eyes, but Val had been crying. She looked shaken and white.
He stretched out a hand and gripped hers. ‘Don’t worry, you did your best. She loved you too, that counts. Her heart was bad, you know. She could have gone any time.’
‘But you didn’t think so.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘You can never tell. I’ll have to call Roger. She was taking the tablets he sent round?’ Val nodded. ‘He’ll do the death certificate. No need for an inquest, thank goodness.’
Oh no,’ said Val who hadn’t even considered it.
Natural death is always easier on the family. Fred Kinve
r could have told them both that.
Fred Kinver heard the news at breakfast as he read his daily paper. His wife had heard from the milkman who thought she ought to know. She was not usually on talking terms with Chris Marsh—who was?—but he meant this kindly, as she recognized.
She told Fred and with a sinking heart saw the gleam flash across his face. A locking-in day again, she told herself. Well, my lad, I’ve had another key made and you won’t shut me in so easily.
‘Gone, has she?’ said Fred, going back to his cup of tea. ‘That’s one of them away, then.’ He sounded pleased.
‘Heart, the milkman said.’
‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’
‘In her sleep last night. His son told him.’
‘I wonder how he knew?’
‘Went round with something for one of the dogs, I expect. And Miss Val would tell him.’
‘Miss Val, Miss Val,’ mocked her husband angrily. ‘Don’t talk like a servant. You ought to hate them all, all those Zemans.’
‘I can’t, Fred. I know you can, but I can’t.’
He stirred his tea. ‘The police were worse than useless with those Zemans. Someone else had to take a hand.’
‘Who, Fred?’
The tea swirled round the cup one way and then another. ‘God, I suppose,’ said Fred Kinver. He buttered a piece of toast, more to do something than to eat it.
‘I like it when God shows his hand,’ he said.
John Coffin heard the news from Mimsie Marker as he bought his morning newspaper from her.
‘That’s interesting.’ He stared at the newspaper headline which was about riots in China.
‘Why?’ asked Mimsie. ‘By the way, the Tube’s on strike. If you wanted to use it, you’ll have to walk.’
‘It’s always interesting when someone in the circle of people connected with a violent death dies.’
‘Coincidence, you mean?’
‘Yes, if you like.’ Whatever coincidence meant in that context. It meant movement, and in a murder case anything was better than stalemate.
‘It was her heart,’ said Mimsie. ‘So I’ve heard.’
He took his newspaper round to Max’s Delicatessen and asked for coffee and hot toast.
Max too had heard of the death. He was a small, neat man, reputed to be a Czech but now the complete Thames-water Londoner. He had a tall, plump Italian wife, who was hardly ever seen but who was known to be at work in the background, and three daughters, growing up fast, over whom he attempted, unsuccessfully as a rule, to operate a fatherly discipline. He knew that they did a lot of things he would disapprove of, behaved in ways that would have shocked his mother (long dead, God rest her soul), and could only hope now that they would never find it necessary to tell him what they got up to.
‘I shall miss Mrs Zeman,’ he said, planting a small coffee-pot and a jug of cream on the marble tabletop. ‘Nice lady. Good customer too. She knew what a cheesecake should be.’
‘Good cook, was she?’ said Coffin, pouring out some coffee while he waited for the toast. Presently a hand pushed a plate round the door. Mrs Max, presumably; the hand wore a wedding ring.
‘Couldn’t cook a thing. Val did most of it.’
Across the room Coffin could see Stella Pinero, wearing dark spectacles and pretending not to see him. This happened sometimes, usually in the morning, and meant she had no make-up on, was not looking her best, and he was not to know her.
‘Who told you?’ asked Coffin.
Max nodded towards Stella in the corner. ‘Miss Pinero. Val Humberstone telephoned her with the news.’
Coffin drank his coffee and ate his toast, taking care not to notice Stella when suddenly the rules were changed and she was there at his table.
‘Hello, good morning.’ She sounded distracted. ‘Don’t worry about me, just casting problems with Cavalcade. Lily Goldstone is being very legalistic about the new play.’ Lily would be, she always was, as many a police picket-line could attest. ‘Money too. I can tell you that your sister Letty is a hard bargainer.’
‘I know that better than you do.’ The flat in which he lived in St Luke’s Mansions was a part of the development of the old church initiated by his half sister Lætitia, but blood had given no bargains and he had paid a full price.
‘Who’d be an actress and a director all roled into one?’
Or policeman either, Chief Commander of a new Force? He had his problems: today a committee of Members of Parliament would be visiting him. He would give them lunch, then take them around. It was supposed to be a friendly inspection, but he had no doubt sharp questions would follow. You couldn’t keep politics out of his life.
Then there was the problem with a difficult subordinate, a man hard to work with but with valuable technical skills that were needed. He must try to hang on to Chief Inspector A. Swapping, while not letting him make the lives of those he worked with unendurable.
As Coffin himself was one of these, it was quite a problem, but one he was prepared to tackle with vigour.
But underneath all this, he was concerned at the emotional divisions in the population he was policing, the growing divide between the old docklanders and the newcomers, who were felt to be too rich and too pushy. This stress was finding a focus in the Kinver case.
There was a growing feeling about the lack of progress in getting the killer of Anna Mary Kinver. Or specifically, a positive feeling that they were going easy on Timmy Zeman.
The Zemans, like the Kinvers, were an old-established family, but they were well off, and that seemed to put them on the other side of the ravine.
Stella took a deep breath, reminding him that she was a forlorn and worried actress. ‘It’s too much for one woman. I have too much responsibility.’
‘It’s the breath of life to you,’ Coffin said to Stella.
Probably the same could be said of Coffin himself. He liked what he did, enjoyed it more every day, and thought he got better at it. But he missed the cases he had worked on, he had enjoyed prowling round an investigation, asking questions, watching people. He was aware that he still did behave like this and that some of his officers thought he should keep his nose out of a case, any case.
He had no doubt that both Paul Lane and Archie Young felt that way now, but Paul was an old friend with whom he had worked many times. They had a history together.
Archie Young was different: full of ambition, he probably resented being asked to discuss the Kinver case, but he would be too canny to show it.
‘But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,’ Stella was saying. ‘You’ve heard that Kay Zeman’s dead?’ He nodded in reply. ‘I’ve had Val on the telephone, she has something to tell you. I don’t think she wants to do it, but she seems to feel she must.’
‘About her aunt?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Stella paused. ‘From what she said, it’s about the murder of Anna Mary Kinver.’
When Coffin arrived in his office and before looking at the letters and messages which were already waiting for him, he telephoned Superintendent Paul Lane.
‘How are things going in the Kinver case?’
There was a pause. ‘Young keeps you in touch? He’s meant to.’
‘Yes, he drops bits of information at intervals. But what’s really going on?’ If anything.
‘A bit of a doldrums.’
‘I’m anxious about the pressures building up. There’s a lot of feeling building up. Them and Us. An idea we’re not really pursuing the Zeman lad too hard.’
‘Not true.’
‘I know that. But politically, I need a result. Or anyway, something. What’s your feeling about the Zeman boy, is he guilty?’
‘We can’t prove anything.’
‘But you think Yes?’
‘There’s a difference of opinion. I think Yes, Young thinks No.’
‘Valerie Humberstone wants to see me. She claims she has something to tell me.’
‘Ah. I reckon we might know wha
t that’s about.’
‘Well, what?’
‘She used to go to the disco where Anna Mary and the boy Tim and the Anneck kids and the Darbyshire boys went. She helped there. The disco is an offshoot of a youth club she was interested in. We’ve picked up the idea that she saw someone with Anna Mary once or twice. She might be going to tell us about that. Harold Darbyshire goes down there to help occasionally.’
‘Is that a loaded statement?’
Lane laughed. ‘I wouldn’t say that. All the Feather Street crowd took an interest in the disco at one time, although I believe they’ve given it up now and gone on to other things, like the theatre, but Harold was down there most often, apart from Val Humberstone.’ In a detached voice, he added: ‘Helped the girl with her computer studies, I gather.’
Later that evening he took one of his walks, quietly inspecting by moonlight the province in which he was responsible for keeping the Queen’s Peace. This habit had earned him the code name of WALKER: he knew his progress was observed and mapped, so that a sigh of relief went up when the silent watchers could report: WALKER is back home. But so far he had never been mugged or even threatened. Sometimes he had seen dark shadows melt away down side roads, but he had never been approached.
His territory stretched on both sides of the River Thames, touching Wapping and Poplar on one boundary and reaching Rotherhithe and Bermondsey on the other. All old Anglo-Saxon villages in origin where once manors and monastic estates had stretched towards the river, now heavily populated urban villages like those in the New City. Westwards was the ancient City of London itself where his writ did not run.
But this area of Leathergate, Spinnergate, Swinehythe and Easthythe was large enough for him.
Within his fiefdom were St Saviour’s Dock, which was probably pre-Roman and in its day in the thirteenth century had been the busiest dock in London; at the other end of his area, Coffin was responsible for the peace in the Great Eastern Dock, whose splendid Victorian structures were now carefully preserved buildings, housing offices and luxury apartments. Coffin could not have afforded to live there himself, but his rich sister Letty had just taken one for herself and her daughter.
Coffin and the Paper Man Page 6
