He drank some more coffee. In No. 13 Elder Street, a siege was going on, because Fred Kinver, on what looked like solid evidence, was about to be arrested for the poisoning of the Zemans. In Leathergate and East Spinnergate there was civil disorder because a lot of his fellow citizens thought he was guilty but justified.
No sooner do you get a case set up in what looks like concrete, thought Coffin, than it begins to crack apart. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.
His telephone rang. He expected it to be either Lane or Young reporting on the siege in Elder Street. Over, he hoped. Or else Chief Superintendent Ward telling him the streets were quiet. Judging by the noise he could hear through his open window, this did not seem likely.
In St Luke’s Mansion, Stella Pinero heard the singing stop.
The voice on the telephone for John Coffin was that of Dr Angela Livingstone from her office in Leathergate.
She sounded nervous. ‘Sorry to bother you.’
I hope you won’t be, thought Coffin. He made a noncommittal noise.
‘I tried to get hold of Superintendent Lane or Inspector Young but they are not available.’
‘Occupied with other things.’
‘I can imagine.’ She had got over her nerves and was speaking with more confidence. ‘Look, I’ve heard about what is happening in Elder Street … Of course, I don’t know what evidence you’ve got, but there’s something I ought to tell you. I ought to have drawn attention to it earlier’—But I do find Lane obnoxious and this obscured my judgement. She did not, however, offer this excuse aloud. ‘The Digoxin tablets of which I found traces were blue in colour. They are more normally yellow. It can, of course be given in injections. Pediatricians use it that way.’
‘So?’
‘I think therefore that these tablets were a proprietary brand, much used in veterinary work.’
‘You mean they are given to dogs?’
‘That’s right, though other animals have it, too. But it is in wide use for animals.’
‘Thank you,’ said Coffin. He put the telephone down.
The crack in the case had widened.
He went back to the window. The air seemed quieter, which might be a good sign. He returned to the telephone and asked to speak to Inspector Lee in the radio van.
‘How are things?’
‘No strong developments as such, but Kinver is talking. He might let his wife out. He’s half suggested it.’
‘Would that be a good idea?’
‘Depends. Might mean he’s going to give up. Or might mean he’s thinking of killing himself.’
Coffin considered the situation. He ought to be in two places, if not three, at once, but he had to choose. He knew without much thought what his choice would be.
‘I’m going to be out of touch for a little while,’ said Coffin. ‘You can always reach Ward, and you have plenty of back-up.’
‘Right, sir.’
‘There is something I have to do.’ And I want to do it myself.
His code name was WALKER and he was known to take tours around his own territory. Unobtrusively dressed, walking fast, he liked to see for himself.
Before he left, he managed to talk to Chief Superintendent Ward, who reported that he thought he had things under control, though you could never be quite sure what would break out, but he didn’t need the troops in just yet. A gang of the Planters was on the loose but he’d soon have them. He sounded confident.
But then he always did, thought Coffin, as he walked on soft feet downhill towards Feather Street, it was what had brought him promotion, but it was not always justified.
The summer sky was beginning to darken but it was by no means night yet. He walked down Feather Street, which was quiet, and turned into the front garden of the house where the Marshes, father and son lived. He had a hope that Jim was at home, a light shone from the hall.
Jim himself opened the door. He looked startled to see his visitor.
‘Are you on your own, Jim?’
‘Dad’s upstairs. He’s asleep. He said he’d seen all the riots and demos he wanted and was tired.’
‘It was you I wanted. I want you to tell me which vet the Zeman dogs were sent to.’
‘Mr Dibbin. Just round the corner from here.’
‘Is he home?’
Jim shrugged.
‘Take me there.’
‘What, me?’
‘Yes, you, Jim.’
‘Well, I hope he’s sober,’ said Jim with philosophy.
John Dibbin was indeed sober. Coffin wondered if Jim had maligned him. He had already decided not to believe all Jim told him. An inventive mind there.
He introduced himself and asked for a word in private. ‘In your consulting room?’ There was a strong smell of disinfectant and dog in the hall, not unpleasant but individual, a smell you would know again. ‘You wait here, Jim.’
Jim, standing outside heard nothing of what went on inside. After a bit, he put his ear to the door. He heard Coffin say:
‘So you are, in fact, casual about how many tablets you hand out? And consequently, how many you have lost.’
Jim giggled. You could say that again.
The door opened and Coffin appeared. ‘Don’t go, Jim.’ He took a grip on Jim’s arm. ‘We’ll walk together. You heard that, did you?’
‘Just that last bit.’ Jim strode forward, up the hill to Feather Street. ‘It’s just the last bit of proof you needed, isn’t it. Fred used to do odd jobs down there. I suppose he helped himself to the Digoxin. And the tin trunk, smelt like Mr Dibbin, didn’t it, that trunk?’
‘Possibly. You seem to have heard a lot.’
Jim slowed down. ‘Well, maybe I listened to a bit more than I said. Still, it’s where Fred got the stuff.’
‘He could have done,’ said Coffin, ‘if he’d wanted to, or needed to. In fact, his wife had a supply.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’
‘But I don’t think he used the drug from either source. In fact, I don’t believe he used anything.’
‘Oh.’ Jim sounded shocked. ‘But the diary, what about that? And the letters?’
‘He didn’t write those. Oh yes, he collected those cuttings about me, that was the genuine Fred Kinver effort, but the rest … a fabrication, Jim, by someone too clever by half. You can tell a lot of things from forensic evidence, which often contradicts what you get from other sources. Dogs’ hair on a jacket on a dummy. Hairs from dogs like Arthur and Bob. But the most valuable evidence is what you see for yourself. I told you how I went in a helicopter over all this place. I saw then all the little paths and tracks across the Feather Street gardens, and I thought: Anyone who wanted to could get from any one of those houses and into the back door of another. Quite a little network of communication to anyone who had the freedom of them. I saw that myself.’
‘Well, good for you,’ said Jim cockily.
‘And I also saw your face down at the allotments when you got out that box. You were pleased. Too pleased with yourself, Jim, and not quite clever enough. The person who finds a box like that is likely to be the person who put it there.’
They had stopped under a tree in Feather Street, Jim with his back to it.
‘You were the Paper Man, Jim, you made up the dummy and put Kinver’s diary in the shed. You wrote that diary. It was your style, not his, and you betrayed yourself with every sentence. Too clever, Jim. It was all too clever, poisoning the Zemans, one by one, in their own food. I don’t suppose they noticed you coming and going. And I’m told you’re a fair cook. If a lethal one. I’m not sure yet in what food you put the poison, but I guess chocolate pudding, chocolate cake and chocolate biscuits, because chocolate would hide the taste and colour. And perhaps you put a touch in the gazpacho soup as well. It was your luck that the Zemans took your chocolate pudding out of the freezer that night, and Dr Felicity’s luck that she only had time for a spoonful of soup. No, don’t run, Jim.’ Coffin reached out an arm and gripped him. ‘We have
a police car following us. I took that precaution.’
‘They deserved it,’ screamed Jim, losing control. ‘Fred Kinver was a rotten father to Anna, he didn’t deserve her. And Tim Zeman killed her, I know he did, or as good as. I was there. And the rest of that rotten family would have got him off. I would have done for the lot if my father hadn’t got there too soon. I wish I’d poisoned him as well, and I would have done if I could have, I know he did for my mother. I hate them all.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And I found Anna, remember that, I found Anna Mary, I saw what she looked like, heard what she said, it was him, Zeman, that gave me a right.’
A dark car drew up to the kerb. Coffin pushed Jim in. ‘Get in. I’ll deal with this in my way and in my own time.’ He was without sympathy: he was aware of a thick band of anger inside him. Jim Marsh deserved whatever was waiting for him. He was no killer from a sense ofjustice, just a killer.
On the car telephone he spoke to the radio car in Elder Street and instructed the unit there to call across to Fred Kinver that he was not suspected of mass poisoning.
‘That ought to bring him in quietly.’
A report awaited him when he got back to his office from Chief Superintendent Ward that all was quietening down nicely.
All quiet.
Quiet for Stella Pinero too. The quietness of being shut up in a room with someone of whom she was terrified.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wednesday in darkness
Stella Pinero had the local radio station on so that she heard all the news about the siege and the trouble on the streets down where Leathergate and Spinnergate ran together, a rough area, but it all seemed distant from St Luke’s Mansions. She was concerned about the Kinvers, however, and was wondering what she could do to help. Not very much at the moment certainly, but afterwards … If there was an afterwards, but there must be. She was fond of Elsie Kinver and even Fred wasn’t too bad when you got to know him. Off his head at the moment, obviously, and she could understand how he got there, but not a killer.
Behind her surface anxieties about who was the poisoner rested a disquiet she was not admitting. She felt vulnerable in St Luke’s Mansions. Silly, perhaps, the product of an over-lively imagination, but there it was. She was frightened.
It was a hot night but she went round the rooms closing all the windows.
In the kitchen she made a pot of tea and took it back into the sitting-room where Bob snored comfortably on the sofa. Nothing in the world was going to stop him climbing on to any soft spot he took a fancy to bed down on. They would have to come to terms with each other on that.
A new play was just coming into repertory tonight, a lightweight piece, Abigail’s Party, in which her part was small, a short run, before they heaved themselves into Cavalcade, so she was home early and glad to be.
She thought she was glad to be, she had fully intended to be glad, but suddenly she missed the hurly-burly of the theatre. People, voices, laughter, and movement. She could go back, almost everyone was probably still there as Lily Goldstone was having what she called a bash to celebrate a notable victory of some left-wing sort. Stella had been invited but had excused herself, she couldn’t always take Lily in her radical moods.
Cup in hand, she wandered round. Nearly two years now she had lived in this flat in the adapted old church, and she had been happy. It felt more like home than some of the places she had lived in; Stella had been a bit of a wanderer.
She might stay here, dig herself in. The main theatre was slowly making its appearance. The foundations were drying out and the shape of the auditorium was now visible. Not exactly a theatre-in-the-round, you could hardly have that in what had been a church, but a theatre in the middle of a cross. The acoustics were fine, but they owed that to the original Victorian builders, who had liked a good sermon and intended every word to be audible.
The thought of John Coffin as her neighbour floated to the top of her mind, to be dealt with firmly and pushed back underneath. Their relationship was not going as she might have wished it. In the past, she had always called the tune. Now she was the uncertain one. The hopeful but might be disappointed one. The idea stung.
The radio interrupted its music with a brisk sentence about traffic diversions around Spinnergate Tube Station. The road was blocked. No explanation, just the advice to go round it, through back streets if you could.
One of those would be Rope Alley if you were on foot, thought Stella, not liking what she heard. It meant trouble.
Suddenly St Luke’s Mansions did not seem so remote after all. She opened her door, went out into the little quadrangle on to which all the doors opened to listen. Sir Harry was not in residence yet, more was the pity.
She could hear the usual hum of traffic, the distant howl of a police car siren, and was that an ambulance or a fire-engine? But it was all some way off.
Stella was going back inside when she heard the singing. She could not hear the words, just as well probably, but the singing was rough. Not exactly a male voice choir. On the move too, a carload of drunks, she decided, but coming this way.
She went back to her flat, putting the chain on the door. Bob still slumbered, with an occasional twitch accompanied by a tiny growl as he dreamt. Stella gave him a pat as she passed on her way to the kitchen for more tea, but he only rolled an eye at her and refused to come awake.
Stella had changed into jeans and a silk shirt when she came in. Then she had felt hot, but now she wasn’t sure if she felt hot or cold. A shiver ran through her.
Somehow the kitchen window had been left open, so she closed it. The sound of singing was nearer now. Still moving, though.
She frowned. The carload was circling the block. Going round and round, she could tell from the sound pattern. It was closer again now. She found she could almost hear the words of the song. Only it wasn’t a song. If she hadn’t known it was madness, she would have thought that what they were singing was: Stella, Stella, we’re coming to get you.
A nursery nightmare, she told herself, of course they aren’t singing about you. You are too preoccupied with yourself, Stella, a bad fault. ‘That’s right, nanny,’ she said. ‘Stella is a silly girl.’
Stella had never had a nanny but would have welcomed a nagging but reassuring presence at that moment. She was full of unease, the tension of the whole district seeping into her spirit. Flesh, bones, nerves were all reacting.
She could telephone John Coffin. But no, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t add to his burdens at the moment. Anyway, she knew whom she’d get if she called his office: Edith or Will, his two guardian secretaries. A wife could break through that cordon, a Stella Pinero could not.
Perhaps a gin and tonic would do the trick. Or whisky. Everyone said whisky bucked you up. She abandoned the teapot, which was cooling down anyway, and went into the sitting-room.
The radio was indulging itself with a jazzy version of an Offenbach waltz.
Then the doorbell rang. Just once, but long and loud.
Stella hesitated, then slowly made her way to the front door. Her legs felt weak. She peered through the spy-hole.
No one. The quadrangle was empty.
Keeping the chain on the door, she opened it. ‘Who’s there?’
No answer came from the night.
She went back in and turned the radio down so that she could listen. Now it was announcing that the traffic diversion on the Lower Road was over and traffic was flowing freely.
This time Stella did pour out some whisky and had the glass to her lips when the bell rang again. Twice.
She drank her whisky deliberately, ignoring the bell. Then the ringing started again, rhythmically. Long, short, short, long. And again.
Drink in hand, Stella went to the door and peered out through the hole.
Four youths circled her door, mouthing silently at her. She could not make out the words. There were no words, they were just mouthing obscenely.
She backed away from the door, towards the sitting-room. They couldn’
t get inside. Then she heard the noise of breaking glass behind her.
Her heart was banging in her throat as she turned to meet him. She had guessed he would be there. Coming through the door from the bathroom, in jeans and a dirty sweatshirt, the one with the teeth, the one she had met before, the one she feared.
‘You didn’t quite shut your bathroom window, lady, so I’ve come on through it to protect you.’
A smell of smoke and sour sweat had come into the room with him.
‘Get out.’ She looked at Bob who had risen up from the sofa, growling. ‘I’ll call the police.’ But he was between her and the telephone.
‘Shouldn’t bother. You asked me in, you left the window open for me.’
‘It wasn’t open. You broke in.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s what I say that counts. You know what the police are like? Men, like me. They’ll believe me … Did you like my diversionary band outside? They said they’d make a nice show while I came through. So you wouldn’t hear me. I wanted to surprise you.’
He’d done that all right. Stella rallied her forces. ‘Well, you’ve done that, now get out.’
‘Of course, I could ask them in, and then you’d have all of us. Or all of us could have you.’
Stella tried to reach for the telephone, but he got a grip on her arm. ‘But I don’t want to spoil it for myself.’ He put one arm round her waist, holding her tightly. A knife appeared in his right hand.
In spite of herself, she gave a small scream. She threw her drink in his face, he swore at her and knocked the glass from her hand.
Bob leapt forward, growling and snapping. Toothface kicked at him hard, and Bob yelped and retreated with blood coming from his jaws. Then Toothface turned his attention to Stella, pulling at her jeans, tearing the thin silk pants underneath with the one hand while holding the knife to her throat.
‘Unzip me.’
Stella did nothing.
‘You’re a cow, lady, I thought that the first time I saw you and I thought: I know what I’d like to do to that cow.’ He pressed the knife against her face, just above the mouth. ‘Unzip me. I like it that way.’
Slowly, Stella did as he asked.
Coffin and the Paper Man Page 19
