Coffin and the Paper Man

by Gwendoline Butler

  Meanwhile, a case conference was called for that morning, Sunday though it was, in which he would be requesting that all the local doctors (with special reference to both the Zeman doctors) be asked about patients on Digoxin. He must practise saying the name.

  He wrote on a pad in front of him: Digoxin.

  In his experience, doctors were not inclined to be helpful about their patients. The Zeman record of prescriptions would have to be opened to him. He thought he could force that opening.

  And doctors only handed out prescriptions, very few these days ran their own pharmacy. So there would be all the local chemists to question.

  He had been one of the foot soldiers himself once, so had Archie Young and so had the top man himself, they all knew what that meant in the way of trudging around and asking questions and getting no answers or not the ones you wanted. But it had to be done.

  As with the conference of all those concerned. This was now a Major Incident with everything it entailed in the way of Receivers, Indexers, Statement Readers and Action Allocators. He hoped the computers did not go down. All the computers, nationwide, Force to Force, were supposed to be able to speak to each other, but in his experience this did not always happen. He relied on the computers, you had to, a great tool, but when they failed you, it was as if you had ropes hobbling your feet.

  In his time he had enjoyed the setting up of a MIRIAM room, now he was the overseer, a boss figure, and the mundane task of creating the room fell to the likes of Archie Young.

  He called his wife and told her that he would be late back, not to expect him, he was sorry to miss Sunday lunch but she knew what was going on.

  She did know. Mrs Lane always knew a bit more than he thought she did, she was an experienced police wife, an old hand at the game, she knew about the drinking parties, the odd woman, but she knew also about the grind, the strain, and the long hours of work. Provided he kept it under control, she adapted herself to it. She also had what she called her ‘little hobbies’ and one day, when it suited her, she would let him know about them. It made for give and take.

  She loved her husband, but she feared for him in the violence that surrounded him in his work. It was a turbulent world he faced where the police were as often as not the victims. They had moved into Spinnergate when the new job came up, and although she enjoyed her sparkling bright flat with its views of the river, she sometimes felt nervous of the district outside. The children were grown up and away from home, she was on her own a lot. New riches and the memory of old poverties don’t make easy friends. The natives were definitely unfriendly.

  So she washed her hair and took herself out. She had in any case not cooked Sunday lunch, gambling on Paul not being home.

  By late afternoon Dr Leonard Zeman was conscious and able to talk. Archie Young went down to see him in his hospital room. A nurse stayed with him and a youthful doctor, called Erskine, hovered. Rather more closely than Inspector Young, who had a sergeant with him, thought necessary.

  To the first question, Leonard Zeman said that he couldn’t seem to remember much, except beginning to feel ill, trying to telephone as well as wanting air.

  Had he opened the front door?

  Yes, he thought he might have done. Yes, he was sure he had. The dog was there with him, he remembered the dog.

  ‘The dog was seen on the doorstep, he couldn’t get back in. The milkman saw him and then found you. You probably owe it to the milkman that you are alive.’ A few hours more, the medical opinion had suggested, and recovery would have been unlikely.

  ‘You had a meal, Dr Zeman? You remember eating?’

  ‘Yes, I had supper with Tim.’ He had been told about his son, but Archie Young doubted if he had taken it in.

  ‘Do you remember what you had?’

  Leonard Zeman seemed to dig into his memory. ‘We had cold soup, gazpacho. I remember the ice. Then a chocolate pudding. Then raspberries and cream. I think that was it.’

  He lay back on his pillows. ‘I gather I was poisoned. From the questions you ask, you must think it was in the food.’

  ‘Just trying to establish just how you got it, Doctor.’

  ‘There won’t be any of the soup left. I poured it away. Might be some of the pudding. I don’t remember about it.’

  ‘There wasn’t.’

  ‘Timmy finished it up, I suppose.’

  And got far more of the poison than you did, and hence died? Young thought. From the way Leonard Zeman spoke, Young guessed he had understood about his son.

  ‘I’d like to know what poison I’ve ingested. I’m trying to work out what it could have been.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother with it, Dr Zeman.’

  Leonard Zeman closed his eyes. He said: ‘Where’s my wife? Has she gone home? She was here, I know.’

  The nurse spoke before Young could open his mouth. ‘All the time, Dr Zeman. When she saw you were going to be all right, we persuaded her to go home for some rest. You’re out of the wood now, you know.’

  ‘I ought to be with her.’

  He had understood about his son, Young thought, and his mind was working on the problem with more sharpness with every minute that passed. He wasn’t in a happy position when it could be that either his wife or his son, who might have been a suicidal murderer, had poisoned him.

  Young stayed for a while longer, asking a range of questions about the family and their habits, more to assess how they went on than from any hope of positive evidence one way or another. But the nurse started to make murmuring noises about tiring Dr Zeman, so he got up and left.

  Leonard Zeman held out his hand and hung on to Young’s for a bit. ‘If I think of anything I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Anything. Be glad of it.’

  When Inspector Young and his sergeant got outside, he found that someone had kicked the side of his car, damaging the paintwork.

  Outside a hospital, he thought, and on a Sunday too.

  As he drove back to his office, he saw a spiral of smoke in the distance. Fire-engines were already rushing that way.

  Down by the river, he thought, or was it? As he drove the acrid smell of burning came up his nose. Perhaps nearer than the docks? He couldn’t be sure.

  Definitely not a nice Sunday.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Still on that same Sunday

  Sunday was a day for burning.

  But not down by the docks, Archie Young found out as he drove towards his office, much nearer home.

  Some sod, as his sergeant delicately put it, had driven an old banger into the car park of the new police station, where security was not what it should be, and then set light to it. Blazing merrily, it had then exploded and looked as though it might set light to several other cars, including the sergeant’s own. The fire brigade had then arrived in force and blanketed every vehicle in sight in foam. One of those covered was Superintendent Paul Lane’s own special Rover, and another belonged to the Chief Commander. There were many others, and since everyone feared that the foam could be damaging to paintwork, chrome and internal upholstery, their owners were not happy men.

  Since the whole building had been evacuated on the fire chief’s orders in case there was an explosion, all concerned had a full view of the spectacle.

  That was the best and biggest fire, but there were also smaller fires in two empty houses just finished and awaiting occupation, and another fire in the site manager’s office on a new flat and marina complex just started. A guard dog had been drugged.

  A fire that never took place was in the courtyard of St Luke’s Mansions between the Theatre Workshop and the old church itself, now awaiting its new life as the main theatre. In this courtyard a small bonfire had been built, but no attempt had been to light it. Stella Pinero interpreted it as a threat.

  She surveyed it late that afternoon in company with Lily Goldstone.

  ‘It’s a warning.’

  ‘Nothing personal,’ said Lily easily. She had a riverside flat, she had bee
n born locally, some of her family still lived here, she felt she spoke for the whole neighbourhood.

  ‘I think it is. Someone doesn’t like me.’

  ‘The fire never happened.’

  ‘I’m to wait for it. Next it will happen. Or something worse.’

  ‘Don’t think bad thoughts.’ Lily was very nearly on the point of giving up Marx and taking up the Master of the Karma, a local seer, who had beautiful eyes and lovely hands. At the moment, she was riding both horses at once, a feat only Lily Goldstone could achieve. ‘You bring on yourself the fate you fear.’

  ‘Thanks, Lily.’

  Together, they cleared away the bonfire materials, old boxes, newspapers and rubbish. It looked as though several dustbins had been emptied in their courtyard. It was all rather smelly and Stella wrinkled her nose distastefully. She had a nasty feeling she recognized some of her own rubbish.

  Stella had returned from her filming the day before to hear the news about Tim Zeman. By the time she got back, it was known that Dr Zeman would survive. John Coffin had come down to tell her himself, they had a quiet drink in her flat and he told her not to worry.

  As is so often the case with reassurance, she felt more worried afterwards, although she tried to hide it. Bob knew this fact, and leaned heavily on her feet, staring at her with loving eyes. She was his now, and he was hers.

  The Sunday of the fires worried them both. They crept out together to look at some of the conflagrations, Stella telling Bob that they ought to know what was going on even if it frightened them.

  A crowd had gathered to watch the scene at the police station, at the heart of it a silent, watchful group of youths. After a bit, they melted away and reassembled outside the Zeman house. By now other onlookers had gone and only a uniformed constable remained outside the front door. He eyed the youths warily but did nothing, except radio in a report. Then a tall, scrawny lad kicked the side of Felicity Zeman’s car, and another threw a stone through the rear window. Then they ran.

  Another small gang was touring the area near the fire on the new estate. Hanging about, doing nothing much, but very clearly in evidence.

  For a short while they coalesced with the first group, then they split up into several small parties, and roamed the district. Prowl cars kept up a quiet watch, and an All Points Bulletin sent out the message that there might be trouble on the way, and to watch for gatherings of youths.

  By evening on that Sunday, they had all disappeared. Plotting something worse, was the police judgement.

  At some point, a joker was able to paint on the garage wall behind the Zeman’s Feather Street house, the message: GLAD THERE GONE.

  Silently a group of Feather Street ladies, headed by Phil Darbyshire and Mary Anneck, scrubbed it out. They did not comment on the spelling but it added to the fury with which they worked. They were assisted by their children, unwilling conscripts.

  Phil said to her son and daughter: ‘If I ever catch either of you two doing anything like that or mixing with those who do, I will kill you personally. That’s a promise.’

  ‘We wouldn’t,’ they said, speaking as one.

  ‘And the form that killing will take will be the cutting off of all financial support, other than plain food and a bed for the night. It will be death by monetary starvation and you will find that very painful. And you can take that seriously.’

  They had been taking things seriously for some time.

  The emptying of the streets was noted by the police.

  ‘Retiring and regrouping to think up something else, the louts,’ said Paul Lane sourly.

  He and Archie Young were having a private conference with the Chief Commander in his office. Coffin had made it clear that he had a personal interest in all this business.

  Lane had had no lunch and was very hungry. Archie had sped home to a meal cooked by his wife, and had since eaten some scrambled eggs in the canteen. He felt he could go on all night.

  ‘I know one or two of the faces that I’ve seen hanging around. Could have been involved in the car window smash, their style.’ Archie Young had been offered and was now drinking a cup of tea; he would have preferred beer or whisky, but this had not been on show and from the ironic look in the Old Man’s eyes was not going to be. Tales said that he had been a bit of a lad himself in his day, but he was so respectable now it was painful. ‘All this disturbance, fires, bricks, the lot, is linked up with the Kinver case and the Zeman deaths somehow. They’re exploiting the situation, but there’s real feeling there. You agree, don’t you, sir? I don’t suppose one of them killed the Zeman boy?’ He sounded wistful. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting Terry Graham for it, if I could. I hate his guts. Or Ron Slater, he’s worse. All that Planter Estate gang are bad.’

  ‘I don’t think they could lay hands on the Digoxin, or knew what it was if they did,’ said Coffin absently. Or find the means of getting it into the food.’

  ‘I might take one or two of them in and see what I can get out of them. They might have robbed a chemist’s shop. Boots in Paradise Street was broken into last week.’

  ‘Still got to find the means of administration.’

  ‘If I thought they had the drug, I wouldn’t worry about anything else.’ He thought about what he had just said, and decided it wasn’t such a clever thing to have voiced. He was glad to be in the company of two senior officers, drinking with them, even if only tea, but it was a burden to him too. ‘What I mean is, if they had the drug, we would be more than half way there. We know the motive: one, they’re wiping out the family they think responsible for the Kinver kid; two, it’s a class thing. Never mind that the Zemans have lived here forever, it’s a Them and Us thing.’

  ‘There’s something in that,’ admitted Paul Lane. ‘Get Graham and Slater in. Question them. It’s a start.’

  ‘You don’t know yet in which food the poison was hidden,’ said Coffin, still pursuing his own silent train of thought.

  ‘Dr Livingstone thinks the soup is the most likely. It would hide the flavour and the rough texture of the soup would hide the slight grittiness. She also thinks a higher concentration of poison per mouthful could be achieved in the soup as opposed to the chocolate pudding. If the pudding had been in individual helpings that would have been different, but apparently it wasn’t.’

  ‘And there is none left?’

  ‘No, it was all eaten but the dishes were left unwashed. A forensic team is going over the kitchen to see what it can find.’

  ‘The pudding came from the freezer?’

  Young consulted his notes. ‘Yes, Mrs Zeman took it out. But she says she did not make it, the pudding was made by Val Humberstone. It seems chocolate cakes, puddings and biscuits were her speciality.’

  Coffin realized he was about to make himself unpopular with his colleagues. Interference, would they call it?

  ‘I had a look round the Feather Street house where Val Humberstone died. Of course, you will have done so too.’ Silence from both men. Inspector Young had had a look, Paul Lane had not, he had other things to do that day but he was not going to say so. Young was well aware that Coffin was going to claim to have seen something that no one else had done. He sighed.

  Lane said, half defensively: ‘It was before we had really tied Miss Humberstone’s death in with anything.’ He himself had been convinced it was a natural death, and had not welcomed any other suggestion. Life was difficult enough as it was. But he had had to agree that an autopsy was a good idea, he had protected himself. In a longish police career, he had learnt how to do that with some success.

  He had also learned how to listen to a superior; he listened now.

  ‘We agree that the dog, Bob, was poisoned too? When I had a look round the bedroom in the Zeman house that day, I saw a plate with a few crumbs but a licked look. I think it had had cakes or biscuits on it that the dog finished up. Miss Humberstone had eaten most, probably, so she got most of the drug. She died, Bob recovered.’

  ‘I remember the plate,’ admitte
d Young. ‘I think the biscuits must have been chocolate biscuits.’

  ‘So do we think that chocolate pudding held the poison in the second poisoning?’ asked Lane.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘I’ll get the forensic team on to it. They may get traces out of the freezer or the dishwasher.’

  ‘Two deaths from poisoned chocolate. Well, it has a strong flavour and I understand biscuit crumbs and brandy were part of the recipe,’ said Lane. ‘Homemade, too. I’m not sure I will want to eat home-baked chocolate cake again.’

  ‘Oh, if your wife cooks it …’ Young spoke happily. He trusted his wife.

  ‘Yes, my wife,’ agreed Lane uneasily, resolving to pay her more attention in future. Not that she seemed to do much cooking these days. What did she do with her time when he wasn’t there?

  ‘More than two deaths, perhaps,’ said Coffin. ‘Could be three. I wonder if Mrs Kay Zeman ate chocolate cake?’

  ‘I am asking for an exhumation order there,’ said Lane defensively.

  There was a moment of uneasy silence. Both Superintendent Lane and Inspector Young thought: The Old Man knows something we don’t.

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ Coffin said. He went on: ‘But don’t overlook the soup. The drug could have been in the biscuits or cake in one case and in the soup in another.’

  ‘Poisoners usually stick to one MO,’ said Lane.

  ‘This one is different.’

  Coffin played with a pencil on his desk. ‘It says something about the character of the murderer. Makes him someone who was free to walk in and out of the kitchens of both houses and take an opportunity when it offered.’

  ‘He or she,’ said Lane heavily.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like the Planter Estate lot. Not exactly handed the key of the house anywhere,’ said Archie Young. ‘But I’ll take a look at them anyway. They’re great at getting into places where they shouldn’t.’

  ‘Yes, I should do that,’ advised the Chief Commander. ‘Don’t give up on anyone, because as I see it there are pointers this way and that.’