A Grave Coffin

A Grave Coffin Gwendoline Butler The Second City is gripped by the tragic murder of four boys, each connected to the police force in some way. Commander John Coffin investigates, simultaneously dealing with a different horror closer to home. From one of the most highly appraised English mystery writers, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie.The discovery of the mutilated body of Harry Seton shouldn’t have concerned John Coffin, Commander of London’s Second City. But the victim, a detective doing undercover work on the sale of illegal pharmaceuticals, had left a note amongst his papers: ‘Ask Coffin’. What he meant by this no one seems to know, including his superior, but it appears that Seton had been secretly investigating internal corruption just before his brutal murder. Coffin, acting on private instructions from above, directly involves himself in following up on Seton’s work only to find that someone is ahead of the game, muddying tracks and destroying evidence.But the Second City is bracing itself for a far greater tragedy. Four boys, each connected to the police in some way, have gone missing, and just as Coffin starts off in Seton’s footsteps a child’s body turns up – buried in a shallow grave in common land. That the children have been specifically targeted by someone with a grudge against the police seems obvious; that the perpetrator is deranged is now clear. The only witnesses to the abductions are a gang of rollerbladers, but fear and something else is keeping them quiet.The Second City is gripped by the horror of these events, and horror too comes stalking directly to Coffin’s door, threatening both him and Stella. But is it Harry Seton’s nemesis who is seeking out Coffin, or the child-killer still out there in the night? GWENDOLINE BUTLER A GRAVE COFFIN COPYRIGHT (#ulink_03048924-7c93-5997-a426-6f3541eec3fb) HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998 Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1998 Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780006510123 Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545452 Version: 2014–07–08 DEDICATION (#ulink_c814257a-cc1e-5e8d-920e-3f560417d6f3) With my thanks to Dr Colin Fink for all his help on scientific and medical matters. CONTENTS Cover (#ubdf5b640-564b-5709-b5d7-b883c008fdf2) Title Page (#u177ab9cd-09bf-57d5-971a-b0219277d64e) Copyright (#ulink_4ce2e315-1cd4-5e16-9b7a-6ca47d7a9341) Dedication (#ulink_6fa33e57-ca1b-5025-aa6c-4ab975162d49) Prologue (#ulink_1d987193-23dd-5ae7-a7fa-3c22136581d2) Chapter 1 (#ulink_02ddae7e-216f-5f0f-8235-b601711429db) Chapter 2 (#ulink_ff166672-42a5-5723-9ffc-809695f7d027) Chapter 3 (#ulink_53de9ae8-1509-5b09-aac0-08d16c31d0dc) The Key Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo) The Door Opens Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo) Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) PROLOGUE (#ulink_d241cad4-f349-59a6-a54d-5bf9c30486fc) A brief Calendar of the life and career of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police. John Coffin is a Londoner by birth, his father is unknown and his mother was a difficult lady of many careers and different lives who abandoned him in infancy to be looked after by a woman who may have been a relative of his father and who seems to have acted as his mother’s dresser when she was on the stage. He kept in touch with this lady, whom he called Mother, lodged with her in his early career and looked after her until she died. After serving briefly in the army, he joined the Metropolitan Police, soon transferring to the plain-clothes branch as a detective. He became a sergeant and was very quickly promoted to inspector a year later. Ten years later, he was a superintendent and then chief superintendent. There was a bad patch in his career about which he is reluctant to talk. His difficult family background has complicated his life and possibly accounts for an unhappy period when, as he admits, his career went down a black hole. His first marriage split apart at this time and his only child died. From this dark period he was resurrected by a spell in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when the Second City of London was being formed and he became Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, an old love, Stella Pinero, who is herself a very successful actress. He has also discovered two siblings, a much younger sister and brother. 1 (#ulink_b950f9d4-0c1b-5b97-9fb2-abb78dd7c493) The room had a view of St Paul’s Cathedral if you looked hard over the rooftops. To get into this room, you were required to press the red button on the door before entering; inside there was the distinct impression you were photographed from every angle and possibly microwaved as well. To the nervous it felt that way. The air itself was not fresh but filtered through a silent air conditioner which somehow made its presence felt so that even air and breathing were controlled in this room. John Coffin liked the view but was not sure of the company. He had got back the night before from a visit to Los Angeles where he had left his wife on business of her own, collected the dog from the kennels and found an urgent message from a high authority. ‘Wait until you see the body,’ said Edward Saxon. ‘Then tell me you cannot help me.’ He looked into John Coffin’s eyes, so blue, cold and clear. ‘Or study this photograph just to give you an idea.’ He pushed the photograph across the table. Coffin bent his head to look. ‘Jesus.’ ‘Yes. Look, I know we were never pals, but we got on well enough, we worked together for long enough. So did Harry Blyth, you worked with him.’ He tapped the photograph. ‘That’s Harry Seton now. Or was.’ ‘You hit hard.’ ‘So? What about it? Will you help?’ Coffin still kept quiet. ‘It’s not just me, you know, I am not asking this as a favour … it’s important for all of us.’ He looked Coffin straight in the eye. ‘You might die because of what is going on, someone you love might die. It’s certain that many have died already. Or been impaired, mentally and physically.’ He went on: ‘These are frontline pharmaceuticals for life-threatening, serious illness. Some are coming in legally through parallel importing, where a manufacturer finds they can make a drug more cheaply in Taiwan than West Middlesex – these are all right, because the quality, strength and the release of the drug in the patient will be the same. Sometimes there is counterfeiting, this has been an increasing problem first noticed on a professional production level in the late eighties. The cardboard covers and packaging are printed exactly the same, but the drugs inside might have been made in a backyard in Taiwan so that the activity in the patient, purity and contamination, all vary from the kosher production runs by legitimate producers. They might be no more than coloured starch, but unscrupulous pharmacy importers buy them, accept the false serial numbers without checking and offer them to none-too-fussy pharmacists at reduced prices. Big money and big chances for corruption.’ Coffin sat taking it all in. ‘What powers will I have?’ ‘As much as I can give you …’ Quickly, he added, ‘All you want.’ ‘Access to the production date and all papers and files?’ ‘The lot.’ ‘Freedom to interview all the characters that I want to?’ Was there a pause, a hint of reservation? ‘Yes,’ agreed Ed Saxon. ‘Right, then. It’s on.’ Edward Saxon drew a deep breath, whether of relief or pain was not clear to Coffin. It might be a mixture of the two. Rumours of Saxon’s ill health had reached him, but rumours, of course, often lied. ‘I will have to fit my investigations into my other duties.’ ‘That’s understood.’ Coffin let his thoughts go back to the years when he, as a detective sergeant, had worked with Saxon in that remote area of South London where Kentish men and Men of Kent had once vied with each before the Great Wen had swallowed them both up. He had worked with Edward Saxon, admired the man’s tenacity, but had sensed a reserve behind the good manners. That was all right, a man was entitled to his own secrets; Coffin had his own. Although he had noticed that the passing years peeled them away. Marriage, the passing of time, seemed to take off the surface through which a few artefacts you had buried came to the surface, as in an archaeological dig. His own wife Stella knew most things about him now, life had disgorged them before her, one way and another. Probably she still had a few secrets. He smiled at the thought, which he almost found endearing. He wondered about Saxon’s wife. ‘How’s Laurie?’ he asked. ‘Not too well. No, she hasn’t been well … she’s away at present.’ He added, as an afterthought, ‘How’s Stella?’ ‘She’s away too. In Los Angeles, looking at scripts.’ Among other things. ‘They still film in Los Angeles? I thought it was all over the place, never in Hollywood now.’ It was an idle comment, he did not really know or care. ‘They do film in Los Angeles in this film. And on location, later.’ He smiled. Stella had complained that she would be filming in the winter in the wilder reaches of the Bronx. If the film got that far, always a question. Stella, anyway, had other plans for herself before filming started. She would be in Los Angeles, attending to scripts and other more personal matters. ‘It’s an English company, anyway,’ she had said, ‘filming a short story of Scott Fitzgerald.’ It was, as he knew, an avant-garde company, more interested in winning prizes than money. Stella had accepted a part because, so she said, it would do her image good. But Coffin had an insight into one of Stella’s secrets and how her image would be improved: she planned to have cosmetic surgery in Los Angeles because American doctors were good at that sort of thing. ‘So much custom, you see, they are at it all the time. Makes the prices higher but the noses better. But I have arranged a prix fixe.’ ‘Like in a cheap hotel,’ he had said. ‘You needn’t have said that, darling.’ But I did need, he thought, and it slipped out. ‘Laurie’s with her mother.’ Coffin looked down again at the hideous photograph of Harry Seton’s dead body. ‘He was married, I suppose.’ ‘Yes, I want you to talk to Mary.’ Coffin looked up and raised an eyebrow. ‘Not just a sympathy talk,’ said Saxon. ‘She may know something that helps. I think she does.’ ‘I want to know all the details of what is facing me first.’ Saxon hesitated. ‘I expect we seem a small and unimportant unit to you.’ Coffin looked around the room, and he laughed. ‘Oh, I assure you, you do not. I have taken in where this unit works, and the security measures you run. On the contrary, you look important and influential to me.’ ‘We have enemies.’ Saxon spoke quietly but with conviction. ‘Inevitably in this trade. Which is why we have the neutral name of TRANSPORT A . We do need and use transport, but that is not our purpose. We watch transport, for that matter.’ ‘Drugs,’ said Coffin thoughtfully, ‘but not the usual sort: heroin, crack and so on, not them. They don’t come into it from what you have told me already. I’ve got that much.’ ‘No, always possible, but not what we are at present investigating.’ ‘Go over it again for me, please.’ Saxon nodded. ‘Pharmaceuticals. Antibiotics, drugs that can cure, or not in some cases. Legitimate drugs, manufactured here or abroad … Hong Kong, Singapore, watered-down, weakened, adulterated one way and another, packed up with fake packing, to look genuine. Sold sometimes to honest outfits that don’t realize what they’ve got but, no, it is cheaper than their usual supplier; more often to firms that know exactly what they want and want them cheap. Big profits all round and never mind the deaths. We have been monitoring them for some time, of course.’ Coffin nodded. ‘Nothing new, been going on for decades, and various units have been investigating it. We are the latest, it was hoped we would be more effective, we are national, cover all areas.’ He turned to look Coffin hard in the face. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know about this.’ ‘Not in the way you are telling it. Go on.’ ‘We are small in numbers, but regional: Mercia, Wessex, Deira, Anglia … all old-English groupings, and of course, the headquarters in London. In Mercia, my head man is Tim Kelso … you won’t know him, he’s young and new, but good. In Wessex, I have Peter Chard; in Deira – the ancient name, I chose it because I liked the sound but it is the Newcastle area, in fact – there is Joe Weir; in Anglia I chose Felicity Fox, who is very good. There is also Susy Miller, who shoots around as wanted. And I mustn’t forget Leonie Thrupp, also in Coventry, that’s Mercia territory.’ ‘And where was Harry Seton based?’ ‘London, with me. He was my back-up.’ There was a pause. Coffin felt he had to prod, so he said: ‘But that was only a cover from what you say. He was that and more. His real job was quite other.’ Another pause, then Saxon sighed. ‘Yes, three or four months ago, March it was, we began to notice that investigations initiated in all good faith were failing as if the word had got round. False drugs were going round the country and into the shops, sometimes through genuine if gullible traders, sometimes through outlets that knew exactly what they were doing and knew it before we did. As a unit, we were not only failing to do our job but failing radically. We looked around for a reason, and found only one: corruption from within.’ ‘Was it a shock?’ Saxon said, honestly, ‘Yes and no. It’s always something to look out for in this sort of operation. So I put Harry in to investigate … On the quiet, no one to know what he was doing.’ ‘Do secrets like that hold?’ In Coffin’s experience they did not, perhaps should not. ‘No, probably not, or not for long. But I thought Harry would clear it up quickly.’ ‘Was there any reason why you should think that?’ ‘Money does show up as a rule, and I thought Harry would sniff out the man who was living above his income. I mean, if you are corruptible, you want to enjoy the fruits, it goes with the crime.’ Saxon started to fiddle with the papers in front of him, moving his hands quickly away as if they were hot. Perhaps to him, they were. ‘So, he made progress?’ ‘He said he was “getting into things”, whatever that meant.’ ‘How did he report?’ ‘Nothing in writing … we met in a pub for a drink. Not always the same one, but the sort of pub we might have gone to naturally in a friendly kind of way. He talked but never gave names. That was in character, partly why I gave him the job; I knew I could trust a discreet tongue.’ ‘And he didn’t talk to you either?’ ‘No, I didn’t want it particularly when it was still in the air. I had to meet these people, act normal, not show suspicion. I am not a good actor, I would have given signs, which could be dangerous.’ Not too bad an actor, Coffin thought. I remember you in the past, Ed Saxon, you could act a bit then. Remember the Billy Trout murder in the late seventies … 1978, was it? You capered around then like magic. I used to think I would see you in panto, but I was never sure as What: Buttons, the Clown, the Wicked Stepmother, or even, Ed, one of the Ugly Sisters … I knew about that side of you, Ed. The one part I never gave you was the Good Fairy, and I am not giving it to you now. Ed’s eyes flicked away. Whatever you really want from me is going to be good for you and maybe not so good for me, thought Coffin, seeing the look. ‘So you have no idea what he was working up to? There was something? He wasn’t just null and void?’ Sunlight was pouring into the room. Saxon got up to pull down the blinds, cutting out the sun, but making the room even more closed and private than before. Wasn’t there an animal that hid from the sun. Coffin asked himself, and was it a nice animal or a nasty one? ‘The sun doesn’t worry me,’ he said politely. Saxon said briefly: ‘Don’t like it on my face.’ But that’s life, almost what life is: shining a light in your face that you don’t want. Happens the minute you are born. Perhaps Saxon had preferred the womb. Not what you could say to him, though. ‘So what had Seton got to say?’ ‘On our last meeting, in the Rose Revived in Harters Lane … do you know it?’ ‘Remember it.’ A big pub with dark corners. Like my mind, Coffin passed judgement on himself. I am afraid that I have got one or two dark corners where you are concerned, Ed, my lad. As you will have for me. ‘So what did he say then?’ ‘That he had found three people who seemed to have a higher standard of living than he had expected.’ Coffin considered this: ‘He said people? Did you think that an odd word to use? Did he mean that a woman might be included in his list.’ ‘I do have some women officers in the unit, as I said before.’ ‘How many?’ ‘Several. And a few whom you might call helpers.’ ‘I’ll bear them in mind, pay special attention just in case.’ ‘You shall have their names. I will take care you have all the records. Where they are based and all that.’ ‘And Harry kept to your quiet agreement not to name names to you?’ ‘He did.’ Coffin sat silent, then said, ‘And you believe him? Believed he was making progress?’ ‘He could tell lies,’ said Saxon, ‘I knew that, but they were always what you might call political lies – they pushed a job forward. So, yes, I believed him: three people, sex ambiguous.’ ‘Did he seem nervous? As if he thought he might be attacked?’ ‘No, not Harry. He never showed nerves. I’m not saying he didn’t know when to be cautious, of course he did, or he wouldn’t have survived …’ He stopped. ‘As long as he did,’ Coffin said for him. ‘Because he didn’t survive, did he? He is dead.’ He stared again at the photograph. ‘Terribly dead.’ ‘I didn’t see him again. No one heard from him, not even his wife, but he was working underground in a way, so there was no worry.’ ‘Not even from his wife?’ ‘No, she said she was used to silence when he was on a case. He might make the odd phone call, this time he didn’t.’ ‘Pity she didn’t scream for action.’ ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, Harry was long dead. He could have been killed soon after we met at the Rose Revived. So the medics think.’ Coffin got out the photographs of Harry’s dead body, all five of them, and shuffled them in order round the table. There were five photographs because Harry had been cut into five bits. Coffin arranged them in the order he thought right: head first, the torso second, the arms next, and one leg … the other leg had disappeared. You had to remember that where this body was found in Deptford Park there were urban foxes. ‘How was he killed?’ Painfully, Ed Saxon said: ‘By degrees.’ ‘I don’t think so, even if it looks like it, I don’t think death gropes for you; one bite and you’re gone, that’s how I see it.’ Saxon shrugged, as if he did not care for this way of talking, it might even be meant to be a joke. ‘If you say so.’ ‘Where was the body found?’ ‘In the bandstand in the park – it is partly boarded in. He may have been killed there, there was enough blood.’ Saxon gave the files another push towards Coffin. ‘It’s all here, medical reports and the forensic stuff, you can read it all up.’ ‘I might want to ask the pathologist and the forensic chaps questions.’ ‘Sure. You will find names and places in the files, you may know some of the team from when you were in the Met.’ ‘Probably younger than I am.’ ‘Oh, they stay with us a long time in this business.’ Coffin considered: ‘So you decided that he must have been getting close to the corrupt officer and therefore killed, in this particularly revolting way?’ Saxon stirred in his seat. ‘I had one reason which I have not yet mentioned … We had established a hotline so that he could talk to me. He never did use it except to set up meets. I had hoped it would be more use to us, he wasn’t much of a talker, Harry. It had its good and bad sides. But two days before he probably died he rang, asking me to turn up at the Fisher’s Arms off the Strand. I did and he did not.’ ‘Did it worry you?’ ‘From then on, I worried.’ ‘You didn’t do anything even then?’ ‘No. I sat and waited. About the worst thing I could have done. I just left it.’ He added: ‘I had a lot on my mind at the time; there’s never just one worry, is there?’ ‘No.’ Probably not, we both have a lot of experience on those lines. Ed Saxon suddenly clenched his hands and banged on the table. ‘Bloody, bloody business.’ Coffin studied Saxon’s face, tight and drawn: you are full of anger. Saxon pushed a small bunch of keys across the table. ‘Harry had a room here, but he hired a special place, just off Fleet Street; three, Humper Place. Top floor. These are the keys.’ ‘Thanks. Right.’ ‘The forensic boys have been there, of course, couldn’t keep them out, but they were required to leave everything as they found it … They got nothing out of it, by the way. You may do better.’ Coffin drew the files on the table towards him. ‘What have I got here?’ ‘Apart from the forensic and medical stuff, which I mentioned, you have a complete list of all the people in the unit, whether based in the Wessex, Mercian, Newcastle and Anglian teams. With it comes the evidence of corruption and why I thought it came from the unit. Read it for yourself and make up your mind.’ ‘I will do, of course.’ ‘You may find Harry had left records in his office in Humper Place, nothing in his room here, and he did his own typing.’ Bet it was a word processor, thought Coffin, the days of penpushing and typing are gone. Harry might have been vulnerable if his machine could be read. In Saxon’s face, he read the same thought. ‘I’ll check the computer.’ ‘I miss the old days when I wrote a report, typed it out and then someone lost it in the files forever. Suited me. Now you know the words are there forever, even if you had deleted them.’ Ed Saxon was still uneasy. ‘And what will you say you are doing here today? You will be noticed.’ Coffin smiled. ‘Never apologize and never explain.’ ‘Good.’ Saxon was still uneasy. ‘Now, in my turn, a question: why did you pick on me for this job?’ This tiresome, probably dangerous, bloody job? ‘I knew you were safe, which is more than I can say for all my colleagues … We always did call you the pea-green incorruptible.’ ‘Sea-green, I think. And it was from Thomas Stearns Carlisle, and he was writing about Robespierre.’ ‘Oh.’ Saxon nodded. He never had read much, Coffin remembered. But someone in his circle must have done … Jason Hull, Coffin suddenly remembered the man, he’d been a reader. Where was he now? Retired, dead? ‘How’s Jason Hull?’ he asked. ‘Do you ever see him?’ ‘Dead. Lung cancer, he always did smoke too much. Good man, though.’ ‘So, what other reason did you have? There was one, wasn’t there?’ ‘Sharp of you. Yes. In that file of papers, you will find a note in Harry’s own writing. He wrote, capital letters: ASK COFFIN. So I have asked you.’ ‘And how long have I got?’ ‘I could say: As long as you need. In fact, hurry, please, we are under pressure.’ He moved his hands together as if washing. ‘Just get a whiff, we will do the rest … and don’t forget you will have back-up from the Met. Well, in theory, anyway,’ he ended doubtfully. Coffin picked up the files on the table. ‘Right. I’ll take these, see what I make of it. Then I will come back to you.’ He held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Ed.’ Ed Saxon watched him go, then sat down at his table, and stared at his hands. Coffin walked out into the sunlight. What do you make of all that, Coffin, my boy? And how much of it did you believe? Ed Saxon wants something from me, and somehow I don’t think it is just who killed Harry Seton. A difficult character, old Ed, I was never quite sure when I was with him when we worked together, and I don’t feel any more sure now. An ambitious and successful man. He had been successful himself, head now of the police in the Second City of London. Married to a well-known actress and as happy as it was in his nature to be. What Stella would say when she heard was: Why was he doing it? Why had he accepted the investigation into corruption, which might involve old colleagues? He had already recognized a few names in a first quick run-through of the list before he left. Just curiosity, he told himself. Not a complete answer, but it would do for now. He had also, although he was not sure if Ed Saxon knew this, received a request, order really, from on high to undertake what he was asked to do. This he had queried. ‘Why, sir, why me?’ ‘It does seem a relatively unimportant job … I say relatively, as it has its own importance,’ the voice had said smoothly. They were talking on Coffin’s private line. Untapped as far as he knew. ‘But we want you to do it.’ ‘Don’t think about that now,’ he told himself. ‘Enjoy the walk.’ He was walking, just walking, enjoying the air and the sun. He was on Waterloo Bridge, walking south before he realized it. He loved the view down the river and up the river, he even enjoyed the massive block of the National Theatre. His own Second City had some good views of old docklands but nothing to compare with this. Coffin stood for a moment looking at the water running fast beneath him. The Thames was supposed to be a clean river now, but it seemed pretty murky to him. It must be several millennia since it had been a clear, leaping stream. Perhaps the Romans had seen it that way, but it must have been changing even then. The same river ran through his Second City of London, but his London, once bombed and battered, was now full of old warehouses containing new businesses of the sort that was not dreamt of when St Paul’s was built: computers, mobile phones and video recorders for midget television sets. There were health farms, slimming clinics and teachers of Chinese medicine, as well as small factories which were busy one day and gone the next. Life moved on in the Second City. He had cut short his visit to Stella, and the reason for this was that he had his own problems back home in the Second City. In particular, a number of missing children. Four now. There was no rest for anyone in the Second City till the children were found. Dead or alive. And what about the children who aren’t missing but who must be sheltered from the knowledge of this? He had pointed out this investigation in the Second City to the man from the Home Office when he was requested to agree to what Ed Saxon would be asking of him, and had been told to get on with it. Deal with both investigations, he could have what help he needed. Coffin got an ironic pleasure in discovering he was persona grata in the highest circles, when in the past he had been such an unorthodox, troublesome, unloved policeman. Time and its whirligigs bringing in its revenges, as Shakespeare had remarked. He put his hand in his pocket, where he felt the bunch of keys that Ed Saxon had passed over to him. On impulse, he put his hand up for a passing taxi. ‘Three, Humper Place, off Fleet Street,’ he said. ‘I know, gov,’ said the driver, slight reproof from one who knew his Knowledge. He could have walked from where he was, but he wanted a space to think while the taxi crawled through the London traffic. A right into Fleet Street, another right and there was Humper Place. ‘Doesn’t look good, gov,’ said the cabby, breaking into his thoughts. Two red fire engines and a police car blocked the way. Coffin paid the cab off and walked forward. Number three, Humper Place was smouldering. The fire seemed to light up something in his mind: Wait a minute, he told himself, supposing I am being asked to investigate this corruption business because the Second City is involved? 2 (#ulink_b31bc520-c3b5-5536-bfa5-4584391ed018) A small crowd of people stood at the kerb, with the air of having fled from the building in a hurry, but even as he looked they were disappearing into a small bar at the end of the cul-de-sac. The Queen’s Arms, it proclaimed itself, with a large portrait of a crowned lady who might have been Queen Victoria or Mary, Queen of Scots, since she was long since faded into a gentle blur. You could see the crown, however. Coffin walked towards the police constable stationed at the door of the building. He did not identify himself. ‘Can I get in there?’ ‘No, sir, sorry, no chance.’ The constable was young, blue-eyed and with red hair. Coffin stared up at the building. It looked to him as though the fire was out, the flames had died down. ‘I need to get in urgently.’ Coffin was still assessing the scene. It might have had the making of a nasty fire, but it had been controlled and the building looked solid still. There was an outer fire staircase which could be used. He nodded towards it. ‘I could go up there. It’s mostly smoke now, isn’t it?’ ‘You can have a word with the Chief Fire Officer, that’s him over there.’ The constable nodded to a large, uniformed man standing by a car. ‘I can’t give permission, out of my power.’ ‘Yes, I understand that. Where did it start?’ ‘Top floor. Or so I’ve been told.’ The fire was certainly damped down, but there was still smoke and heat. Coffin was both curious and anxious. Had the flat to which he had the keys been damaged? If so, was it by a genuine accident or by deliberate attempt? If it was arson he was very interested indeed. He strolled towards the Chief Fire Officer. The man glanced towards him without interest, then turned away to speak to one of the firemen. It was then that Coffin realized the disadvantage of being anonymous. For years now, he had had quick attention to his questions, he was not used to being ignored. In short, he had grown into being the Chief Commissioner of his force and was now going to have to shrink back in size. He stood there thinking the problem out: a certain duplicitous honesty was his best line. If the fire had not happened, then he would have slipped in and out with no one noticing. If anyone had asked, just one of the forensic team. But no one would have asked. Slowly he advanced to the Chief Fire Officer, who went on talking, then finally addressed him over his shoulder. ‘That your car there?’ Coffin looked towards a car parked at the kerb. Before he could speak, the Chief Fire Officer said: ‘Move it. Shouldn’t be there.’ Coffin bit back the comment that the car appeared to be perfectly parked and in no one’s way, but contented himself with saying politely that it was not his car. He could, however, see someone sitting in it, but decided not to mention this. ‘Is it safe to get into the building yet?’ ‘No.’ A blunt refusal. Coffin nodded. ‘Right,’ he said peaceably. ‘So when?’ Tomorrow, next week, he would have to accept it, and hope that the firemen had not destroyed too much. ‘Can’t say.’ ‘I need to get into flat twelve.’ He held up the keys, swinging them a little. ‘You the tenant? You rent the place?’ Smooth, taking manners, thought Coffin, charming fellow. ‘I am part of a police forensic team that has been examining the place.’ It seemed safe enough to say this much. It might easily be common knowledge, passed around the other tenants. He needn’t have worried. It cut no ice. ‘You can get in with the others when it is safe. Can’t say when yet.’ Reluctantly, Coffin faced the fact that he had got used to being speeded through any obstacles back home in the Second City and that life was tougher outside. He walked down the road to the pub into which he had seen the rest of the tenants disappear. He noticed that the car was now empty and a figure was walking into the pub. To his surprise, it was a woman. The Queen’s Arms was old and small and dark, it could have been there since the Great Fire of London in 1666, or even have survived it. Certainly it had survived the Blitz and all the rest of the bombs that particular war had thrown at it. Now it had a large notice advising customers to watch untended bags because of IRA bombs. Inside it was crowded. Coffin stood at the door, wondering if he could work out who were the tenants who had fled from their offices. He ordered a drink, which he stood by the bar drinking while he let his eyes study the crowd. Well, he knew the woman: the back disappearing down the road had been wearing a black coat. So there she was with a drink in her hand at a table in the window. And oddly enough, she was looking at him. Looking at him looking at her. He stared down at his drink to break the link, but he could still see her in his mind’s eye: she looked lean, intellectual and sophisticated. She was dressed in black, but not dead black, there was a gleam of leather and the hint of silk at the throat. In other words, she looked expensive. Life with Stella had at least taught Coffin what good clothes cost. Around him, the crowd of the dispossessed were drinking and shouting at each other. ‘I blame the chap on the top floor.’ This was a stout man in a check suit. ‘We never had anything till he moved in, and then we had the police, and now the fire brigade. And where is he now? It’s him.’ ‘It did start there, damn it. I ought to know as I was near it. But I don’t think he’s there any more. I never see him now.’ A pretty, slight girl in the shortest skirt and with the longest hair that Coffin had lately seen walking around London. (‘On the way out, that Loopy Lu look,’ Stella had told him. ‘And it’s time the wearers knew it, but it’s got to be a uniform for them and they really don’t see themselves. They will be dinosaurs before they notice it.’) ‘I think he’s gone. They weren’t police you saw, they were debt collectors.’ ‘Didn’t look like debt collectors to me,’ said Check Suit, ‘more official. And they locked the door.’ ‘Trust you to notice that.’ ‘They didn’t set fire to anything, though.’ ‘Wonder who did? I hope my notes on the report I am writing for Lord Herrington on fiscal controls and the EU aren’t too kippered. I couldn’t bear to do it again, he’s so stupid you have to make it easy.’ This was Miss Miniskirt, so she was the intellectual heavyweight of the two? She was a lawyer, he guessed, so what was Check Suit? Another lawyer? No, a businessman of some sort. Probably he imported or exported something, handbags or lacy knickers. ‘Lord H. is always kippered himself, isn’t he, the way he drinks and smokes? I will say this for the fire people, they got there fast and put the fire out damn quickly. I don’t think I will have lost anything.’ ‘The smell of smoke on everything is bad enough,’ grumbled the young woman. ‘And that foam stuff they use as well as water …’ But she didn’t sound too worried. Lord Herrington would have to put up with his smoked report. The two of them turned away to talk to the rest of the homeless. While listening to all this, and trying to assess what it told him about Harry Seton’s activities, Coffin had been watching the woman in the window. The second sense that all long-time coppers develop told him that she was watching him while listening to the man and woman, just as he was. That told him something. He met her eyes and this time, she smiled and nodded at him. The moment was flooded over by a burst of laughter from the dispossessed to his right. Coffin got up, walked across and stood looking at her; he said nothing. She held out her hand. ‘I know who you are: John Coffin. My husband had a photograph of you. He was in it too.’ Still she kept her hand extended. ‘Mary Seton.’ Coffin took her hand, noting the softness and the shining tinted nails, not what you expected somehow from a copper’s wife, although heaven knew, his own wife Stella was typical of nothing, not even the stage. ‘Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael and I …’ The line from the old Scots ballad ran through his mind; he could not remember who ‘I’ was, but he did know that she came to a bad end. On the scaffold, having killed … whom? Her lover or her bastard child? ‘I think we are expected to meet to talk about my husband. Ed Saxon told me you would be around.’ ‘I was going to call. But today I wanted to have a look round his office.’ ‘The one that someone tried to burn? Yes, I wanted to see it too. We picked the wrong day, didn’t we? Sit down, do. You make me nervous standing there.’ Coffin put his glass on the table, then sat down opposite her. He doubted if he could make Mary Seton nervous. ‘You know, I had no idea the office existed until Harry died … I only learnt then by accident. Wives are supposed to be kept from too much knowledge, painful knowledge, that is. Or that’s Ed Saxon’s philosophy.’ Are you sure, thought Coffin cynically, wondering if he could believe her ignorant. I think he doles out the painful bits as it suits him, and if he let you know about this office then it suited him. He was, he feared, a natural cynic where Ed Saxon was concerned. He nodded his head. ‘I know Ed has his ways.’ ‘I came today to look round. I didn’t have a key but I thought I could get in. I would have done too.’ Coffin believed her. She made a gesture with her hands. ‘Well, you saw … when I got here there was the fire brigade and the police.’ She nodded towards the talkers and drinkers near the bar. ‘So I followed this lot in here.’ She had sat in the car watching, Coffin commented to himself, a careful, cautious woman. He liked the way she used her hands. Stella would have approved of that: what you do with your hands on the stage is so important, they give you character or take it away. Never walk on the stage without knowing what to do with your hands and never let them droop. He could see that Mary Seton would never walk on to her stage with drooping hands. She must have picked up his thoughts. ‘I know you are married, I have seen your wife act. I admired her.’ ‘Stella’s in Los Angeles at the moment.’ ‘You must miss her.’ ‘I do, of course, but we agreed when we married that she must be free to follow’ – he paused – ‘well, whatever the theatre demands. I wouldn’t want her to lose by being married.’ ‘It applies to you too.’ She sipped her sherry. ‘But men don’t expect to lose by getting married, it’s just an extra, nothing to get in their way.’ Coffin gave her a cautious look. ‘I don’t think most policemen’s wives have happy marriages,’ she went on. ‘Stella is lucky.’ Coffin thought that Stella was not so much lucky as good at fighting her battles, probably he would have been as selfish and demanding as any, but Stella had not allowed it. ‘She deserves it,’ went on Mary Seton. ‘She is so talented.’ ‘I think so,’ said Coffin, glad to be on solid ground at last. ‘I made my own career – I own a small chain of fashion shops, I don’t think Harry minded, or if he did it didn’t show. It meant he didn’t see so much of me as he might have done … I have to travel a bit.’ The noise from the group at the bar interrupted them; loud laughter and a small bit of horseplay with Miss Miniskirt doing most of the pushing; she was not one to overlook. Coffin decided. ‘Jolly, aren’t they? They aren’t worried about the fire, or why it was started. Harry was destroyed and now someone has had a go at destroying what he was working on.’ She turned her head towards the window; Coffin saw the glint of tears on her lashes. ‘We don’t know that it was arson.’ ‘Oh, we do … it started on the top floor, Harry’s floor.’ Coffin had been looking out of the window, from where he could see that the fire engines were drawing away. He would probably be able to get into the building quite soon, if the top floor was not too hot. Or wet. ‘I want to have a look round myself, so I am hoping that it may not have been destroyed.’ She looked at him and shook her head. ‘They didn’t let me see Harry’s body. Just his face, so I could identify him, the rest was wrapped in sheets.’ There was no mistaking the tears on her cheeks now. ‘So I suppose they had a reason.’ You insensitive ox, Coffin told himself, all this bitter talk she’s been throwing at you is because she is bloody unhappy. She loved the man. There was another burst of laughter, and Miss Miniskirt swept past. ‘Going to inspect the ruins,’ she called out. Mary watched her go; through her tears, she said: ‘She spent a lot on that suit but she wasted her money: it doesn’t fit her. Didn’t you notice the sleeves?’ Coffin shook his head, he had not noticed the sleeves. All right, he had thought the black suit expensive, so he got that right. ‘You think I’m a bad-tempered cow, all right?’ ‘No, I think you are a very unhappy woman.’ There was a pause. ‘I loved him. I didn’t always like him, but I loved him.’ There was silence. She stood up. ‘I’m going to follow that woman. See if I can get into the building? Are you coming too?’ ‘Yes, but I don’t know what our chances are.’ ‘I am going to get in, I saw a fire escape. I shall go up that.’ ‘I saw it too.’ ‘I was working it all out as I sat in the car.’ ‘Why are you so anxious to see Harry’s office here?’ Mary slowed her pace, they could both see the woman in the miniskirt arguing with the police constable now on solitary duty. ‘Because Ed Saxon didn’t want me to. I only got the address because I read it upside down on his desk. What about you?’ ‘Work,’ said Coffin evasively. ‘An investigation.’ ‘Are you working on Harry’s death?’ ‘No, the Met are handling that, of course …’ This was true, although he would be privy to what they turned up and in return they would want to look at anything he got. A strange position to be in, he thought, never happened before. It made him feel two-headed. Mary looked at him sceptically, but she said nothing, moving ahead of him towards the office block. The woman in the miniskirt was still talking to the police constable. She seemed to be arguing fiercely. Both of them had their backs to Coffin and Mary Seton. Without a word, Mary put her foot on the bottom rung of the fire escape, gave Coffin a meaning look, and ran up, leaping from step to step. Coffin followed her. He was agile himself but she was nimbler. Good mind too, Harry Seton had been a lucky man. Only his luck had ended. Older than Mary. Hadn’t there been a first wife? He had memories of hearing of one called Elsa. Elsa he had never met, but he was willing to admit that she had been pretty and lively and clever, as with Mary. Did one always marry the same woman? What had happened to Elsa? Had she dropped Harry or the other way round? These questions flashed through his mind with speed as he went up the staircase. He was at the top before he remembered the answer: Elsa was dead. Curious thing, the mind, why had he just remembered Elsa and her death? Mary was looking through the glass door, it was darkened, stained by smoke. ‘A bit kippered, but you can see through.’ Coffin was feeling in his pocket. ‘Got a key?’ ‘No. I haven’t a key. Harry never gave me one, I wasn’t told about this place, remember? I only found out when he was dead, and Ed Saxon certainly wasn’t about to give me a key. Keep wives out is embroidered on his chest, that one. I was going to break in if I could. So I was always coming up this way.’ She looked down at her feet, ‘I was going to knock my way through the glass with a heel.’ Coffin was sorting through the bunch of keys. ‘You’d have a job breaking this glass without a wound or two. Good thing you met me.’ He wasn’t sure how much he believed her, but she had a beguiling way with words. ‘Are you sure you weren’t going to bribe your way in?’ She grinned. ‘Somehow, somehow. Maybe, maybe. But I found you. Come on, let’s get in.’ The lock turned easily enough but the door was stiff; it gave way, though, before his shoulder. ‘Here we are. In.’ Harry’s office had not been burnt to bits, or flooded with water. It smelt of smoke and was untidy, but that might have been Harry, not the firemen. His files had been in metal cabinets, but some drawers had been opened and the papers were on the floor. They were scorched but not destroyed. ‘If they were after Harry’s work, it was a shitty job,’ said Mary. ‘Maybe not, maybe just a warning … to you or to me. How do you know about where the fire started?’ ‘I was listening to that workshy crowd who had evacuated the building. All full of joy and even accusing each other of doing the job.’ She had advanced into the middle of the room, and was looking around her. ‘No, you are right … it’s a warning only.’ ‘You ought to work for the CID,’ said Coffin, who had also heard the conversation, with admiration. ‘Are you sure you didn’t start it yourself?’ ‘I didn’t hate Harry and his work that much …’ She was still looking round the room. ‘But you are quite right: there were times when he was alive … All wives hate their husbands in patches.’ ‘Thanks for that,’ said Coffin, wondering if he had better watch Stella for one of those patches. ‘I might well have burnt his office down, but not now he is dead.’ Then she said: ‘He had a period in a clinic when he had a kind of breakdown … did you know that?’ ‘No.’ ‘Drink, mostly. Usually is with coppers, isn’t it?’ ‘I can see you admire us.’ But he couldn’t say no, because he had been down that road himself. It was likely that Mary Seton knew it, too. Coffin looked round the room. It was dampened down by a spray of water from a fireman’s hose, but was not damaged. He was pulling open the drawers of the desk … still warm, but there was stuff inside. Not much but something. He thought that Harry probably hadn’t kept much stuff there anyway. Wise fellow. Not that it had availed him much in the long run. There was also the computer on a table against the wall, perhaps he was more of a computer man. It was not a comfortable room, probably the smallest and cheapest (no lift to it) in the building, but Harry had tried for a personal touch: there was a pot plant, now dead, on the desk. ‘Wonder who gave Harry that plant?’ said Mary. ‘Not me. Some fool thought it would cheer the room up.’ She touched the soil. ‘I see he never watered it.’ He may not have had much chance, thought Coffin. Mary read his face. ‘Yes, all right, he died.’ Coffin began to gather up the files from the desk, then those on the floor. He could see traces of the forensic efforts, with pale powder marks distributed freely over almost every surface, desk top, drawers, and the files inside. Not as many files as he had expected, he would have to ask a few searching questions about what, if anything, had been carried away. No doubt every document had been photocopied. He scooped them up, wishing he had a bag to put them in. Then he saw a carrier bag in the wastebasket. It was from a shop in Birmingham: FOOD GALORE, Reform Street. So someone had been in Birmingham. Then he turned to the word processor. Mary, who had stopped prowling round the room, watched him. ‘Harry wasn’t much good at that. I ought to know as I had to teach him what he had to know – the basics, anyhow.’ ‘I’m not much good myself,’ said Coffin, ‘but I know how to switch it on.’ The screen glowed blue. ‘The fire doesn’t seem to have hurt it, you can never tell with these things.’ ‘It’s on battery,’ Mary pointed out. ‘He travelled around with it. It wouldn’t be touched by any power loss.’ He pressed a key and a list of files came up. They were numbered, not named, so Harry must have kept a key or relied on memory. He pressed the key for Number One. The first page came up. In big capital letters, he read: WE’VE HAD A LOOK AT THESE. WE KNOW YOU WILL BE LOOKING TOO. HA HA. ‘Ha ha to you,’ said Coffin, pressing on to page two of File Number One. It was blank. Someone, possibly Harry, had wiped it clean. A quick glance through the next three files showed these to be blank also. Frowning, Coffin turned off the machine. Mary, who had been watching over his shoulder, said nothing. ‘I’ll just pack this up and take it with me.’ He looked around for the carrying satchel which was on the floor. ‘Right, that’s it.’ For the moment; he would be back and without Mary Seton. ‘Seen all you want?’ ‘Yes, nothing to see really. Hasn’t given me much idea about Harry’s last days. If you learn anything you can tell me, will you?’ Coffin nodded. ‘I will.’ She smiled at him. ‘Of course, I know what that means, you being a policeman. Can I give you a lift?’ ‘To the Tower terminus of the Docklands Railway? That’ll see me into my territory. Thank you.’ They were both silent on the short drive; Mary Seton drove efficiently through the traffic, delivering him near the entrance to the Docklands Light Railway, already known by regular users as the Dockers’ Delight. ‘How long does the battery last at full strength on this machine?’ He tapped the computer. Mary shrugged. ‘About two and a half to three hours when used.’ ‘And unused?’ ‘I don’t know. Just guessing, I should say about a week or a little more.’ Coffin considered this; the machine he had on his lap registered two hours’ working time left. So it had been plugged into a socket and the power stepped up. By whom? Also why? He occupied his mind with this question as Mary drove. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ Coffin opened the car door. Mary leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Thank you. You helped me through a bad patch.’ Coffin was thoughtful as he let the train swing its way through old Docklands. It was a journey he usually enjoyed because it provided a perfect example of the whirligig of time bringing in its revenges: the former run-down, working-class area was now full of smart and expensive flats powered by the new businesses which had moved in. He was satisfied to see history being made. His own Second City partook of both elements, a good deal of it still solid working class with a new dash of upmarket chic in converted factories and warehouses. Crime was about equal in both communities. But he wondered about Mary Seton. A kiss is just a kiss. Of course, but why me, he asked himself. The train stopped at the Spinnergate station which was where he had parked his car on the journey in. His car was still there; he checked to see if all the wheels plus wheel hubs were in place, as you were well advised to do in Spinnergate if you left your car alone for any length of time. All present and correct. His force’s pressure on the petty criminal must be paying off. At last, he thought, as he got in the car to drive home. No joy there without Stella, though, without her it didn’t seem like a home. Even the dog, Augustus, seemed low spirited, but that was probably due to overeating because Coffin just fed when he asked, which in Gus’s case was often. Gus appeared to greet him with a wagging tail and a small bark of complaint. ‘No, I couldn’t take you with me today. Not today, Gus. Grow up, you are a big dog now and must learn to live alone.’ Gus barked again. He had no intention of learning anything which did not suit him. But he meant to be guileful, since if he was too difficult he remembered that Coffin would get Phoebe Astley to look after him. The chief inspector was not gentle and persuasive like Stella Pinero, nor absent-minded and kind like his master, Coffin. No, Phoebe was firm, and strict, leaving a dog with not much freedom. Coffin fed the dog from a tin of his chosen meat, then he went to see if he had any message from Stella, either faxed or on the answerphone. The big sitting room was cold and dark. He turned on a light before drawing the curtains at the large window. If he looked out of this window, he could just see the roofs of the University Hospital, where a talk with the head of the pharmaceutical department was something he meant to take. He knew Perry Curtis slightly, but well enough to value his insight and judgement. Nothing from Stella, but a message from his own office. ‘Paul Masters, here, sir. Could you ring back as soon as possible, please?’ The inspector’s voice sounded tense. Paul Masters administered the Chief Commander’s office with calm skill. He did not readily show strain. Coffin picked up the telephone and dialled the number that rang straight through to the phone on Paul Masters’s desk. ‘Coffin here. You wanted me?’ ‘Ah, yes indeed. Chief Superintendent Young wanted to talk to you … As it happens, he is here now.’ Archie Young spoke quickly. ‘We have the body of one of the missing boys.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘The last to go missing, the ten-year-old from Percy Street.’ ‘He has been identified?’ ‘Yes, by his father. We have his body.’ Archie Young hesitated. ‘And parts of another.’ ‘How was he found?’ ‘In a wooded area by a young couple … looking for somewhere quiet and dark.’ ‘How did they come to find the body … was it buried?’ ‘Yes, but working free from the soil and leaves … they didn’t see it themselves at first, but they saw a man with his dog staring at something among the trees. He was holding back the dog. Or seemed to be, the dog was in the bushes. He said to them that there was something funny that they ought to look at. The young man did so while the man stood back. He soon saw it was a body, saw the feet, he says … he had his mobile with him and telephoned the police.’ ‘And the man?’ ‘He disappeared into the dark.’ Coffin put the telephone down slowly. ‘I’ll be in,’ he muttered. ‘We will talk it over then.’ When one question bothers you, there is always another one weighing on your mind. There was one way of getting an answer to one problem. He rang the Home Office man who had urged him so persuasively to investigate the pharmaceutical problem for Ed Saxon. ‘Tell me straight: why was I picked for the job?’ There was some silence. ‘You stand high, Chief Commander, you have a great reputation.’ Then he added carefully: ‘And of course, we both know Humphrey Gillow.’ ‘Did Ed Saxon want me?’ ‘He was very glad to get you.’ That came quickly. ‘You’d worked together before. In fact, he said that Harry Seton had named you as a good person in trouble.’ Oh yes, old friends. ‘Had he got a choice? I mean, did you have a list of suitable names?’ Silence again. An answer probably brewing up there, but taking its time. ‘So it was just me?’ And wasn’t I lucky with Harry naming me and everything. ‘But there was a special reason. So let me guess: something to do with the Second City.’ ‘Yes, there is reason to believe that an important connection of this outfit is in the Second City.’ One question answered brings another right out. ‘So why did you not tell me straightaway.’ ‘We wanted you to approach it unbiased, with an open mind.’ So it wasn’t me that was so wanted, it was the place I came from. I knew Ed Saxon wasn’t being straight with me. I could tell it in his eyes. There was something else too; I shall find out. He put Augustus on his leash, and set out to walk with him through to his own office in the police headquarters not far from Spinnergate tube station. The Second City, created out of old dockland London, with a long history behind it, a town before the Romans came, a city to greet the Normans, so large and rich by the time Napoleon was defeated that the Prussian General Blucher cried out in envy: ‘What a city to sack.’ Hitler thought it might fall to him too, but was disappointed in his turn. Now the Second City, its four districts of Spinnergate, Swinehouse, Leathergate and East Hythe had clung on to its character while absorbing banks and newspapers, watching old warehouses converted into expensive flats and eighteenth-century dock houses become cherished dwelling places again. Meanwhile, the indigenous population resisted rehousing in tower blocks as far as it could, preferring, with an obstinacy that had served them well in the past, to live in the old terraces of houses that had survived the bombs. There were bombs sometimes now, although planted overnight or delivered in person by hand or mortar and not dropped from the air, but these bombs too the Second City could cope with and survive. Coffin was most familiar with Spinnergate because this was where he lived in the tower of the old St Luke’s Church, now secularized to provide him a home, as well as being the site of St Luke’s Theatre complex. His wife, Stella Pinero, was the theatrical brain behind the theatre, while his half-sister, Letty Bingham, a much-married wealthy banker and lawyer, helped on the money side. Dog and man strode through Spinnergate, companionable and silent. Augustus encouraged his master to walk as much as possible on the grounds of health and pleasure: he was thinking of himself, but he had noticed that master (not a word Augustus accepted, food giver, walker, protector, these were how he thought of Coffin in a wordless way) needed little persuasion. Augustus had a few words: his own name, walks, dinner, these sounds he recognized, more complex emotions were known but not given labels. But Augustus recognized the route they were taking and felt a tinge of depression, he was going to the ‘other place’, this being how he sensed Coffin’s office. It was a kind of home to him, he was welcomed, he had a warm corner, there was a bowl of water, even food on occasion, but that said, he was ignored. This obliged him to plant himself across Coffin’s feet to remind the man of his existence. Coffin strode in, was greeted politely at the door, and took the lift to his offices. In the outer office, were two secretaries who changed constantly, usually through a career move or a baby. One woman, the tall, well-dressed Sheila, had been with him for some time now and he had hopes she would stay. Coffin valued constancy in his relationships. He nodded and spoke to Sheila, then looked across to the corner of the room where his valued assistant, Inspector Paul Masters, had created a kind of personal territory. Paul got up and came across. ‘Good afternoon, sir. Letters and messages as usual on your desk.’ ‘Right.’ Coffin was already walking towards his own quarters while Augustus was sidling across to Sheila, a known and secret source of chocolate. ‘Anything special?’ Paul Masters hesitated. ‘You’ve spoken to the chief superintendent … I don’t know more than he will have told you then.’ ‘He told me a boy had been found, dead, and identified by his father. One of the missing boys. And parts from another.’ ‘That’s right, sir. It’s all that’s known at the moment. The chief superintendent was off to see the father, but he wanted to get in touch with you first.’ Coffin advanced to look at his desk where Paul Masters had arranged a display of files and papers. He had an aesthetic sense, Coffin always felt, so that papers, although grouped logically, were fanned out in a neat presentation. He even managed to control the faxes, while keeping them in a separate group. All the same, they represented work, work and work, and there was always a special collection marked URGENT. ‘He will be in to see you, sir, after he has seen the father.’ ‘Who is running the investigation?’ ‘The chief superintendent is in overall charge, of course – he’s keeping a watching eye on things.’ ‘And who’s running the investigation?’ he asked again. He was shuffling the papers on his desk as he spoke. All the information he was asking for would be there, but it was quicker to get it out of Paul Masters, who might also oblige with a few case histories of the officers concerned, and how well they were doing the job. This was done tactfully, but Coffin knew how to read between the lines. ‘Inspector Paddy Devlin is the senior officer in charge, with Sergeant Tony Tittleton … they are both very experienced in dealing with children.’ ‘Experienced children-watchers?’ ‘That’s it, sir. Paddy Devlin, whom I know quite well, sir, I trained with her, handled the paedophile case in East Hythe last year. She is very, very competent.’ Due for promotion too, and hopeful of getting it. Red-haired and handsome too, but he did not mention this fact. ‘Yes, I remember now. Nasty case. Is there reckoned to be any connection with this lot?’ ‘Could be, but I haven’t heard it said.’ One of Paul Masters’s assets to Coffin was that he heard all the gossip that got held back from Coffin. It worked both ways, because if there was anything an officer wanted Coffin to know then he would take care to let Paul Masters know. ‘But it is one of the things they will be looking out for, of course.’ Coffin handed over to him the computer in its case, and the bag of documents. ‘Get this computer to John Armstrong and ask him to get back, if he can, all wiped documents. It’s urgent.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And the documents in the bag: I want them photocopied. I will think about the next step when that is done. They are confidential.’ ‘I’ll do them myself.’ ‘Good.’ Paul Masters disappeared tactfully while Coffin turned to the papers on his desk. He did not dislike the task as much as he sometimes let people think; there was satisfaction in running a tidy, tight ship. He read and signed letters, initialled reports, reflecting as he did so that the end product of a career as an ambitious and successful detective was to be an administrator. However, with some skill and some luck, he had kept his hand in as a detective. Just as well, he considered, in view of the job now handed to him by Ed Saxon. As to that matter, he had no idea where to start, and the very clear idea that it seemed stupid to separate what he was asked to do from the investigation into the death of Harry Seton. Not that he intended to do that himself; he would be thinking about Harry’s death with every move he made. And the note found on Harry’s PC suggested that the Met team would be thinking about him. Maybe they should meet. The sound of voices in the outer office disturbed him; Paul Masters knocked and put his head round the door. ‘Chief Superintendent Young is here, sir.’ It gave Coffin pleasure that it had been he who had promoted his old friend and fellow worker to this rank, but Archie deserved it. A tall, still thin man (his wife kept an eye on his diet) with a kind heart and a shrewd brain. An invaluable comrade and friend. Now the man looked sober. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid. You know the outline of the case: over a period of two months, four boys have gone missing.’ Coffin nodded. ‘Three still missing and one found,’ said Archie Young heavily. ‘And the leg of another child, possibly one of those missing.’ Coffin had a list: Matthew Baker, aged eight years and three months. Archie Chinner, ten years old and one month. Dick Neville, eleven years old and a week. Charles Rick, ten years old and four months. ‘And which one has been found?’ Archie Young’s voice was still quiet and sombre. ‘Archie Chinner was the boy whose body was found. He was hidden in the bushes on that bit of scrubland where the Delaware Factory once was. It’s due for redevelopment but nothing much has happened yet. As I told you, a courting couple found him last night.’ ‘Who interviewed the couple?’ ‘Devlin. And I spoke to them as well. It’s all on tape, but I have given you the gist.’ ‘Have to try and get hold of the man who pointed out the body.’ ‘Devlin is organizing it, using the local media to ask him to come forward, but she’s not hopeful, he would have stayed around if he had meant to be helpful.’ ‘What was he like?’ ‘Just a man with a dog to the couple. They were surprised to see him, not usually anyone around up there. He left the dirty work to them, they found the body and it shook them up. I have looked into them, just what they seem to be.’ His voice was heavy. ‘And his father identified the boy?’ ‘Yes, he had been dead a few days but he was recognizable. Easily.’ ‘How did you know which father to call in?’ ‘We had photographs of all the boys. All four of them went to the same school, the Junior School of the Royal Road Comprehensive – the Clement Attlee School is the full name, and the parents supplied photographs.’ Coffin waited, he could tell that Archie was quietly making his way up to what he wanted to say. ‘So he was identified easily enough,’ Archie went on. ‘No trouble there … the only thing is …’ And here he paused. Coffin waited. You didn’t hurry Archie when he was taking his time. ‘His father said that the clothes he was wearing were not his own … Not a stitch he had on was his.’ ‘Any idea where the clothes came from?’ Archie shook his head. ‘They look newish, may not have been worn much but not shop-fresh. Some boy has worn them.’ ‘That may help.’ ‘May do … But there was blood on them.’ ‘Much blood?’ ‘Quite a bit … but the interesting thing is that preliminary tests on the blood groups suggest blood from two people: one the boy’s and the other from an unknown person.’ ‘From one of the other boys?’ ‘Could be … Or from the murderer.’ ‘How was the boy killed?’ ‘Can’t be sure until the PM. Smothered, possibly.’ ‘So where did his blood come from?’ ‘Probably from the anus … he had been sexually assaulted. Pretty badly, too.’ Coffin tightened his lips. This was a horrible business. ‘That may be why he was smothered: he was too badly hurt to send him back into the world.’ ‘And he may have known his abuser.’ Coffin was starting at the list of names. ‘Wait a minute, Chinner … not a usual name. Is the father … ?’ He stopped, letting the query rest on the air. ‘Yes, he’s one of ours. A police surgeon, Dr Geoffrey Chinner, a local GP as well.’ ‘I know him, he worked on a case that interested me.’ One of the many, thought Archie Young. ‘We kept that information quiet when the boy went missing because we weren’t sure how it would touch his chances of survival. The media found out but went along with us. ‘That is not all: every one of the missing boys had a parent who was one of ours.’ ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘I was coming to you with it.’ Coffin was silent. Ed Saxon’s call had come in yesterday, he had been preoccupied with other problems, there was always something urgent. ‘I am supposed to know that sort of thing.’ ‘I am sorry, sir.’ ‘Before anyone else.’ Archie Young was silent. ‘All right,’ said Coffin grouchily. ‘I was in Los Angeles.’ Coffin got up. ‘I want to see where the boy was found. Then I want to see his body.’ ‘I’ll drive you.’ Archie Young was still prickly with apology, while feeling that he had been unfairly treated: the Chief Commander had been in Los Angeles, a holiday, God knows he rarely took one, and there had been a silent feeling that this break should be respected. In the car for the drive across Spinnergate to East Hythe, they talked. Coffin stared about him at the streets as they drove. There was a good deal of traffic, buses and many private cars. His eye was caught by a flash of yellow, red and green in a shop window. Great glass bottles full of colour and underneath a more sober display of packets. ‘What shop’s that?’ They were going down what had once been the main shopping street of old East Hythe and was still the High Street. A memory of the shop stirred inside Coffin. He ought to remember more. Archie Young took a quick look. ‘Oh, that’s old Mr Barley’s chemist’s shop, he keeps it old-fashioned like that. You should see inside. Doubt if he does much trade, but tourists love it.’ He gave a nod to the west: ‘And you can just see the roof of the school the boys went to. We are trying to keep it from the children – it’s mixed, of course – as much as possible. There’s the Junior School attached.’ The lost boys had gone there, sent by hopeful parents because it had a good reputation. He drove on quietly, the traffic was heavy here. ‘Miss the old trams,’ Coffin said. ‘They packed the people in.’ ‘I don’t remember trams.’ Archie Young was concentrating on weaving his way through the traffic. ‘No, you’re too young. Tell me about the parents of the boys.’ He sounds a bit better, thought Archie with relief, he’s loosening up ‘Not all the parents are officers: the Neville lad’s mother works in the canteen at the Leathergate substation, the Rick lad’s father is a DC in Spinnergate, and Matthew Baker’s dad is a CID sergeant in Spinnergate.’ Coffin looked at him. ‘Archie Chinner?’ The chief superintendent looked away, out of the window. ‘Yes, the boy’s my godson. His father is a police surgeon as I said.’ ‘Sorry.’ There was a pause. ‘Would you like to withdraw from any interest in the case?’ Young shook his head. ‘No, I couldn’t. In any case, Paddy Devlin is really handling it for all practical purposes, and she’s good.’ ‘So I have heard.’ They were passing through a large council estate, the Attlee Estate, which provided plenty of work for the Second City force. The press blamed youth unemployment, but Coffin wondered. ‘From different districts but, you say, all four boys went to the same school?’ ‘It’s a very big comprehensive, good academically so parents are pleased if their kid goes there, got an Oxford scholarship last year. A bus goes round picking up the pupils to ferry them there.’ ‘It’s worth thinking about the school,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘You can bet we are. Going over the place with a fine comb, nobody missed out.’ The road wound up a hill crested with trees and open land. ‘Plans to turn this into a park, but nothing has come of it yet.’ There were several police cars parked at the kerb, and a uniformed constable talking to a TV camera team. Coffin and Archie Young drove past the group fast. At the top of the hill there was a thick belt of trees and bushes. Here an area was marked off by tape. ‘He was found buried there.’ Archie Young nodded to where the grass was already dug up. ‘A shallow grave; the couple that found him noticed the flies buzzing around … And the smell,’ he added. ‘Then they saw the top of a shoe … trainer, the sort kids wear all the time now.’ Coffin walked over to look at the grave where white-coated forensic workers were still going over the ground. Other men were slowly searching the little patch of woodland. ‘Looking for anything,’ said Archie Young. ‘Not much to go on so far …’ ‘Except the bloody clothes. And the other limb.’ ‘Already in the lab being gone over.’ A tall woman appeared through the bushes. “Afternoon, sir.’ Coffin smiled and held out his hand. ‘Inspector Devlin. I believe I saw you at a party my wife gave in the theatre.’ ‘I’m one of her fans, go to nearly everything she does – I think she’s brilliant. And I was in the audience for you, sir, when you talked to us about advances in communication-techniques crime.’ ‘You’ve got a nasty one here,’ said Coffin. Paddy Devlin gave Archie Young a quick look. ‘Yes,’ she said to Coffin. ‘We are giving of our best, I can promise you.’ ‘I just wanted to come and look.’ ‘Glad you did, sir.’ He looked up the slope of the hill. ‘How was the body brought here? Or was he killed on the spot?’ ‘No, it looks as though he had been dead a day or two before he was buried here. As for being brought here …’ She shrugged. ‘You could park a car on the road up there, it’s very deserted at night, then carry the body down, or use a market trolley. You wouldn’t have to pinch one, plenty of them left around the streets.’ Coffin took a few paces through the trees, looking towards the road. ‘I think you are right. There will be traces left.’ ‘Forensic think they have found some … marks on the ground, broken branches on the bushes.’ ‘Good.’ He looked from Inspector Devlin to Archie Young. ‘I would like to speak to the boy’s father myself. All right?’ ‘I think Dr Chinner went back to work … It’s a one-man practice and he felt he must do. On the Attlee Estate, no one else will work there.’ ‘I’ll drive you,’ said Archie. Coffin still had his eyes on Inspector Devlin as they drove away. ‘I hope she’s up to it.’ ‘She certainly is.’ Archie spoke out loud and clear. ‘One of the best we’ve got. I can’t say what state Chinner will be in; he had himself under control but it may not have lasted … and I wouldn’t blame him.’ ‘What about the mother?’ ‘She’s dead. Geoff and I knew each other at school, and we were neighbours … he always had this missionary, must-help-the-public, spirit, that’s why he works in the Attlee bunker. It is that … metal grilles on the windows, special locks on the door … broken into about once a week even then.’ ‘I can imagine.’ Archie Young drove efficiently towards the Attlee Estate, straight up to the surgery which did indeed have an embattled air, but where the outside windows were newly painted and there was a flower in a pot on the outer windowsill. ‘I hope he’s got that geranium nailed down,’ said Archie as he parked. ‘Or perhaps he takes it home at night.’ ‘He doesn’t live over the shop?’ ‘No, would you? Got a nice house round the corner from me in Oakwood Drive … but neglected since his wife died.’ ‘Keeps this place up, though,’ said Coffin, getting out of the car. Archie did not answer, he was already striding forward to Dr Chinner’s surgery. The waiting room was not crowded: an old man with a stick and bent back, a woman with a baby on her lap, and a dog that seemed to have come in for attention on his own – he had a bandaged leg. ‘Thank God I haven’t got Gus with me, he’d probably join the queue.’ He knew, as any dog owner does, that dogs are terrible hypochondriacs. Dr Chinner appeared, ushering out the last patient, a woman with her child. ‘There’s that dog again,’ he said. ‘Why can’t he go home. Hop it, Jason.’ Jason did not. ‘He thinks he’s your dog, you see. Doctor,’ volunteered the old man. ‘I expect he will be in the end,’ said the doctor. He looked at Archie and Coffin, gave them a nod, and said that they could have five minutes and no more. Coffin thought that he had never seen a man holding the pressure inside him down more strongly and dangerously: he might explode any minute … You’d think a doctor would know, he said silently. Dr Chinner was a short man with a crest of red hair and bright-blue eyes. Normally he must have looked friendly and approachable. No mean feat as a professional working on the Attlee Estate. ‘I will tell you anything I can, answer any questions, but get on with it, please.’ Coffin hesitated. ‘I don’t have a question, Doctor. I just came to offer my sympathy. I am very, very, sorry. We will do all we can to get the man who did it.’ Thank you. Thank you.’ There was a bare admission in his tone that he recognized it for an act of kindness, and that he knew the Chief Commander. He had not asked them to sit down, nor did he now. He had never even quite closed the door to his surgery. Coffin looked at Archie, who went forward and patted his friend on the shoulder. ‘I’ll come round to see you later. Or you can come to us … what about a meal?’ Dr Chinner nodded, but it was not exactly a yes, or a no. ‘Thanks for coming. I think I am better on my own just at the moment, Archie.’ He held the door for them, and as they went out, he said: ‘Next patient.’ And the dog got up and trotted in. ‘So what did you make of that?’ asked Archie as they drove away. He had sensed a query behind Coffin’s polite goodbye. ‘Well, he’s good with dogs.’ ‘Seriously.’ Coffin shook his head. ‘I know we start with the family, but I don’t think he killed his son.’ ‘No,’ said Archie fiercely. ‘So?’ ‘But don’t let friendship blind you – I think he knows something.’ Archie said nothing as he sat hunched over the driving wheel. ‘Drive you back, sir, shall I?’ They parted with not much more said. Archie was disconcerted, angry and uneasy. At the school, the Royal Road Comprehensive, the day had ended, but small groups hung around the playground, skateboarding, rollerblading, or just talking and scuffling in the dust with a football. It was not encouraged that they should do this, but not forbidden either. One group were skateboarding but coming back together to talk. Just a quick comment, they were not into long conversations, dialogue was an adult skill not altogether mastered. This group was well informed, picking up scraps of information and assessing them. To be well informed, you have to be interested, and this group, four boys and two girls, were very interested. ‘We have to be,’ said one to another. ‘It’s up to us. And we ought to do something.’ ‘What?’ said his friend, the same age more or less, but female. ‘I’m thinking.’ ‘My parents stop talking when I come into the room,’ the girl said, and she laughed. ‘Tell you what,’ her companion said: ‘We ought to get someone to say something.’ Coffin went to his office, and collected Augustus. ‘You missed something, pal,’ he said. ‘You could have had your leg bandaged.’ There was a message from the wizard, John Armstrong, an old friend, who was looking into Harry’s computer. ‘I think I ought to be able to get most of the deletions back, they were not deleted by an expert. But I can’t promise. If you don’t hear from me then it is, No. ‘One left alive, anyway, and I think you ought to know of it. ‘It is a file on you, complete dossier of life and career, with present address. ‘It lists strengths – pertinacity, imagination, sharp mind. ‘Weaknesses: likes to be right. ‘I don’t know who put this together or why,’ went on John Armstrong, ‘but someone doesn’t like you.’ Coffin dialled his friend, his answerphone was on also, so the Chief Commander left a message: ‘Fax me that file, please. And to my home.’ His friend must have got back to his desk very speedily, (if indeed he had been away and not just sat there listening as the message came through) because the fax was waiting for Coffin when he got back to St Luke’s. He flipped through it quickly, noting without pleasure that Harry had left something else. There was a short, accurate profile of his wife, Stella Pinero, including the fact that she was now in Los Angeles. Somehow, he did not like it. But then he remembered the sort of man Harry had been and what he had said once. A bit drunk, words spilling out, he had said: ‘I want to get all I can on you, Coffin, because you hide a lot, you’ve got plenty going on that I would like to know about. Your past career, too. You’ve been in trouble, but look at you now. Yes, you are worth a study. And that lovely wife of yours. To know her is to know you.’ Coffin shook his head. That was Harry. Friend or enemy, who knew which? Did Harry know himself? But what Coffin knew was that he would always protect Stella. 3 (#ulink_127566df-269e-5038-b8f5-3e8e114d51c2) An old schoolmaster of John Coffin, who had had a great deal of influence on him although Coffin never liked to admit it, had been in the habit of pronouncing: Life is real, life is earnest. He usually said this at exam time, which was perhaps why Coffin geared himself up grimly and got good marks. He wasn’t an exam man, they were not things he thought about often, but just the word ‘Life’, pronounced the right way, could spur him into action even now. But at the moment he did not need it: the juxtaposition of two cases, their lifelines crossing, was enough to make him only too aware of the seriousness of life. His life in particular at the moment, and without Stella here to laugh and ease him into happiness, it was going to be bad. Without Stella, he thought, so why was she figured in the file on Harry Seton’s PC? Not good news. So perhaps it was as well she was safely out of the way across the Atlantic. He felt like going back there himself, but life over here had a firm grip on him. It had a firm grip on Archie Young, too. What was more important: the mission wished on him by Ed Saxon (and others higher in the chain of command), and apparently suggested by Harry himself with the words ‘Ask Coffin’, to find out who was doing the dirt in the pharmaceutical world, with special reference to Ed Saxon’s outfit, or the murder enquiry on a child in his own Second City. All policemen get used to dealing with two cases, or more, at once. In his time, Coffin had handled as many as ten, carrying all the details in his mind and yet keeping them distinct, so why was he getting the feeling that there were parallel lines here which converged in the distance? Of course, Harry had been murdered too, but that was the Met’s job, and if the message on the word processor was from them, they were not too pleased to have him walking on their ground. Territory, there was a lot of territorial feeling in this job. Always had been and always would be. Probably Sir John Fielding’s officers in those distant days in the mid eighteenth century when he invented their force had had strong feelings about where they operated and who might interfere with them. The Peelers of a century later had carried on the tradition, because Dickens’s portrayal of Inspector Bucket did not suggest a man who would welcome intruders. Coffin took a deep breath and pulled towards him the files he had brought down from London, already photocopied by the industrious Paul Masters. He now had two stacks of files: the photocopies and the originals. Now why did I want copies, he asked himself, and came swiftly back with the answer that he wanted them in case there was another fire. Or the equivalent – theft. Whoever had killed Harry, had tried to get the files destroyed. True, the Met had had a look at them first, and might have been coming back for more, but someone had tried, not too efficiently, to burn the lot. He looked from the photocopies to the scorched originals. In the outer office, Paul was packing up to go home; he worked a long day, getting in before the Chief Commander, rarely taking a lunch break, and usually still at work when John Coffin left. Coffin saluted an ambitious man. But tonight, Paul was leaving early since he was off to the opera. Coffin suspected he had a new girlfriend who liked Mozart. Or his wife, there was one, but who knew what went on in Masters’s private and somewhat secret life? Inspector Masters put his head round the door. ‘Want me to take the dog for a walk before I go, sir?’ Augustus looked up and wagged his tail hopefully. He got up and shook his body, he was a shrewd psychologist and knew how you did it. Generations of his ancestors had wagged their way into comfort and pleasure, and the genes were still working. ‘Go on with you, then,’ said Coffin, and to Paul Masters: ‘Thank you.’ When the pair had gone, he turned back to his papers. The photocopied files were offering sparse information. There was a map of Coventry with some street names marked in pencil. One area had a ring drawn round it. Attached to this were some scribbled notes which seemed to be of times and routes. It looked as though Harry had set off early and driven there. Against the name H. Pennyfeather, he had put a query. And Coffin had a question mark in his own mind there. Did he know that name or not? Half a dozen further names were just recorded and given a tick. Did this mean they were passed as all clear, whereas Pennyfeather was not? Or did the tick mean that they had been interviewed and Pennyfeather had not been at home. Or did it mean something else altogether? Coffin ground his teeth and worked on. A photograph was attached to one of the pages. It was the photograph of a woman. It was not a photograph of Mary. He saw a youngish, smiling face, with a smart, short haircut and large earrings. The woman was wearing a dark business suit. It was not a posed, studio photograph, but appeared to have been taken at a meeting of some sort, since he could see figures in the background. M. G. was written there. Coffin worked through the papers, assessing them quickly. There was a similar group with a map of Oxford, and another of Newcastle. In each case, the map was marked, and it came with a list of names, some ticked and one or two with a question mark. Thrupp in Coventry, and Weir in Newcastle, each had a question mark, as had Fox in Cambridge and H. Pennyfeather, but with no place name. So that made four in all. Sex not clear, but Ed Saxon had said he had a few women working for him. Possibly M. G. was one of them, although he hadn’t named her. He sat thinking about TRANSPORT A and its problems which high authority thought stemmed from the Second City, curse it. Thus was I lumbered, he thought. When the phone rang, he had a premonition it was going to be Ed Saxon, and so it was. ‘How are you getting on?’ ‘I haven’t got far yet.’ Not anywhere, really. ‘It looks as though I’ll have to go to Coventry first … You know about the fire?’ Ed Saxon admitted he knew about the fire. ‘I had Mary in here.’ ‘What did she want?’ ‘She said she’d met you. You seem to have made an impression. Not easy on that one, she’s a hard case. What she wanted was what you’d expect, to find how near we were to getting Harry’s killer. Not too near, I had to tell her. She didn’t take it well.’ ‘I can’t blame her.’ ‘Who’s talking about blame? But she was casting plenty of it around, she blames me in particular. And she isn’t far wrong. After all, I chose him for the job.’ ‘It may have nothing to do with that, you know.’ ‘You’ve got an idea? What? What is it?’ There was silence. Coffin could hear Ed striking a match for a cigarette, the man was in a pressured state. ‘Have you any idea, something you’re not telling me?’ ‘No, Ed. And the Met are investigating Harry’s death, remember? Not me. But I shall have to make contact with them.’ ‘Yes,’ said Ed, as if the idea did not please him. ‘I am beginning to get the feeling that Harry knew he was about to be killed.’ ‘Oh God, is that your great thought for the day?’ ‘It’s a start.’ ‘Where did you get it from? Out of the air, I suppose?’ ‘No. From you.’ ‘Don’t get you.’ ‘Oh, come on, Ed. I’ve known you a long time and you don’t change. I think he told you he was frightened, that he knew there was a threat. And he knew who it was from; it was from the figure in your outfit who is profiting from the sale of phoney medicines and drugs. That was why you wanted an outsider like me to carry on the enquiry.’ There was another reason, of course, why I actually got the job, but you may not know of it. The Second City is involved. Wouldn’t Ed know this? Why did he not know? Perhaps he was not fully trusted himself. Wheels within wheels, he didn’t like. Touch dirt and you get dirty, he thought. Ed was staying silent. ‘And perhaps you thought my investigating skills might have got rusty with the years and I wouldn’t turn up what you feared.’ There was still no answer from Ed. ‘Who was it he suspected? Not you, by any chance, Ed?’ ‘No, of course not.’ ‘Come on, Ed.’ ‘He was just guessing, in my opinion … there was a woman … she had been working for us, not in a high capacity, but on this pharmaceutical case – she was investigating likely medical contacts, she’d been a nurse and knew the language. He suspected her. Called her bad. I said, “Don’t go Gothic on me, Harry.”’ The one in the photograph. Coffin thought. ‘He thought she was dangerous, I thought he was wrong.’ ‘Does she have a name, this woman?’ ‘Margaret Grayle. You might as well know … we had an affair. Over now, of course.’ ‘Of course,’ said Coffin, half ironically. In his experience, whenever anyone, man or woman, admitted to an affair it was always claimed to be over. It might be or it might not. It was in his mind to be wary and sceptical of this lady. ‘You had better give me her address.’ ‘Oxford. But you should find it in Harry’s papers.’ ‘In case I don’t.’ A sigh came across the line. ‘If she’s still there, it was Owls House, Raven Road, Oxford.’ Not sure if I believe that address, thought Coffin, but he wrote it down. ‘And have you told the Met about Miss Margaret Grayle?’ ‘Did I say Miss? She is married. And no, I haven’t said anything. The Met have good men on the case, they will find Harry’s killer. And it won’t be Margaret.’ Not in person, Coffin thought, but she might have hired someone. Or been pressured to help get rid of him by associates she might have in the pharmaceutical racket. The body cut into five pieces, that sounded like a professional job. ‘Was Harry having an affair with her too?’ ‘Not as far as I know,’ said Ed gloomily. ‘We’d better meet sometime and you can tell me what it is you do know.’ Coffin tried to keep the irony out of his voice. ‘Meanwhile, I have a very nasty murder on my hands here in the Second City, so I can’t give your affair all my attention.’ Then he moved the conversation back a step. ‘Wait a minute … you said as far as you know, Margaret was not having an affair with Harry … Does that mean you think she was but can’t prove it?’ ‘It was just an idea I had, can’t put it any stronger, and it could have been wrong at that.’ ‘And did Mary know?’ Silence for a minute. ‘She might have done.’ ‘You mean you know she did,’ said Coffin bluntly. ‘She might have guessed … she’s a clever woman.’ ‘Don’t tell me you are having an affair with her too?’ ‘As soon have an affair with a piranha fish,’ said Ed bitterly. Perhaps both women had joined together to kill Harry. Now that was a picture. Let me read myself a scenario, thought Coffin. Mary got to know about Margaret, who didn’t love Harry so much after all. (Or had a lot to hide and wanted him out of the way.) So she got together with his wife and they did the job. Wasn’t there a French film with that theme? Was it Les Diaboliques? He had seen it with Stella. But the body being cut into five bits still worried him. It didn’t sound like a female killing. Still, it wouldn’t do to be sexist. He must find out if it was physically possible for the two women to have done it. Check on the physical force required, check on where they were at the relevant times. It would explain Mary’s strange need to get into her dead husband’s office. She might want to know what was there that could incriminate either of them. Not a bad scenario; it needed working on, though. Wait a minute, he told himself, this is the Met’s job, not yours. The telephone was bleating away. ‘Are you still there?’ Ed was saying. ‘Yes, I’m still here.’ ‘You’d gone dead quiet. I thought I was talking to myself.’ ‘No, I was listening.’ Didn’t hear a word, however. ‘Tell me, who is in charge of the investigation?’ ‘Larry Davenport. That was what I was telling you. Nice chap, he’ll get in touch,’ said Ed gloomily. ‘Although some of his juniors are a pushy lot.’ Could have been one of those who left me the rude message on the computer, thought Coffin. ‘He remembers you.’ Paths do cross, Coffin admitted to himself, sometimes to your advantage and sometimes not. ‘He says he grew up in East Hythe and his sister still lives there.’ He added with relish. ‘He’s a useful chap, he’s one that knows where all the bodies are buried.’ Coffin thought that he knew the burial sites of more than a few bodies himself. He pointed this out to Ed Saxon. ‘I’ve always had thoughts about the Cassington murder and what happened to Maisie Deeds … I bet you have too.’ ‘Yeah.’ The sound was almost a wince. ‘Well, keep in touch. You’re off to Coventry, did you say? It’s a Tim Kelso there, remember.’ He wanted to get away. ‘Hang on,’ said Coffin. ‘What are the names of the women you have working in this organization?’ ‘Felicity Fox in Cambridge, Leonie Thrupp in Coventry and Margaret Grayle is what I call a mobile … lives in Oxford, works where required.’ Ed Saxon put the receiver down hard. Two of those names had earned a question mark: Fox and Thrupp. Coffin heard the bang. ‘I hit a nerve there. Can’t be the Cassington lad or Maisie, so what?’ he asked himself. ‘He’s hiding something, I’m sure of it, and it isn’t just a tumble in bed that his wife doesn’t know about.’ He considered what Saxon had said. ‘I must take a look at Thrupp in Coventry. Then there was a question mark for Fox in Cambridge which was the centre for the Anglia outfit of TRANSPORT A. So one of the ancient university towns had a question hanging over it. Ancient but not innocent? He thought for a moment about Stella, perhaps even then undergoing surgery. Hope she doesn’t have her nose altered. I like that nose. He looked at his diary. He could go to Coventry almost at once. It would mean a shuffling of appointments, but Paul Masters would do that for him, and he could spend some of the time beforehand studying the records left behind by Harry, which would not be a long job. He could tell already that either Harry had not kept many or he had destroyed them. The names of those with question marks were made a note of and he would be checking on them. In Coventry he would be seeing Leonie Thrupp and the man operating in that area. What was it now? He turned back to his own notes: Tim Kelso in Coventry. Peter Chard in Oxford. Felicity Fox in Cambridge, which was the East Anglia area. Joe Weir in Newcastle, which Ed Saxon, more romantic than Coffin could have guessed, had wanted to call by the area’s old-English name of Deira. He did not know any of them, but none had won a question mark, whatever it might mean, good or bad, from Harry. Just as he was thinking that he ought to get in touch with Inspector Larry Davenport, who was investigating the murder of Harry, the man himself was on the telephone. ‘Hello, sir. Remember me, Larry Davenport … Inspector, CID now.’ Ed Saxon must have telepathy, Coffin told himself, or else he knew you were about to ring. ‘We both have an interest in Harry Seton.’ ‘So we do.’ Coffin was brief. Let Davenport be expansive if he liked. ‘Thought we ought to get in touch, sir.’ You help me, I’ll help you, the breezy voice hinted. ‘We’ve got East Hythe in common, too, sir. Nasty business about the boy.’ ‘It is. Not too good about Harry Seton. How are you getting on?’ Bet you won’t tell me. Neither did he. ‘Not much to say, unluckily, at the moment … Have you got any help for me, sir?’ ‘Not yet.’ After all, this was not his case. ‘We ought to keep in touch, don’t you agree, sir?’ Of course, Coffin thought crossly. ‘How did he die? Anything new there?’ ‘Blow to the head … then cut up when dead. Freshly dead.’ That was the kind of detail that Davenport relished. ‘Would it have taken a lot of strength?’ ‘Well, no, but a frail old lady couldn’t have done it. What there would have been was a lot of blood. All over the place, and we are keen to find that place. Haven’t yet.’ Like Devlin in the Second City, thought Coffin, a nasty parallelism, but police work could be like that. ‘How did the body get to the park, and then to the bandstand?’ ‘Must have been by car, not something you could carry through the street wrapped in brown paper … it was wrapped, by the way, but in a sheet. The park gates are open all night, in fact, I think it’s years since there was a gate. The bandstand is derelict, never used. As for the rest … well, there are urban foxes round there, a real, rough breed down by the river. I heard they had mated with wolves from Russia.’ He laughed heartily at his own joke. ‘I’ll keep in touch.’ Coffin did not laugh. Paul Masters came back with Augustus, both of them refreshed by their walk. Augustus bustled up smelling of dog, and grass and earth. ‘Had a good time, did he?’ Augustus answered for himself with a feathery wagging tail, and positioned himself at Coffin’s feet ready for another walk. ‘Oh Paul, I may be away from the office for about two days, but I will get back sooner if I can. You can always get me on my mobile … And I will phone you as and when.’ Paul Masters was too discreet to ask any questions, but having copied the files for Coffin could make a guess what it was about. He also had his own private theory: he gets fidgetty when She is away. ‘I’ll see you get to know everything important, sir.’ ‘And nothing that is not.’ Goes without saying. But he did not say it aloud, contented himself with his polite, enigmatic smile (Go on smiling like that, his wife had said, in that tart voice that occasionally made him feel like straying, and they will think you are hiding the secret of the Third Man, or was it Fourth and Fifth) and went away. He knew his smile, which he had worked upon before perfecting it, was a good, workable professional tool which would see him through many a crisis. ‘And you can wipe that smile off your face,’ said Coffin, as the door closed behind Masters. ‘I’m getting fed up with it.’ He too had watched its progress during the last few months. He gathered up his papers, put Augustus on the leash, then walked homewards at such a pace that Augustus began to lag behind, pointing out that he was a peke with little legs, not a bloody Great Dane. Back at his home in St Luke’s, he fed the dog, and considered making himself a meal. He was a passable cook if the frying pan and the grill were used. Then he stopped, changed into something more casual than his dark working suit (Makes you look like a coroner’s favourite pathologist, Stella had said once, which had rankled) and prepared to go to Max’s restaurant. Not the one in the theatre, but the bigger and grander one round the corner. Max, as chef and proprietor, had started small and was getting bigger every day. He went down his winding staircase with Augustus following him at every step. He manoeuvred himself to the door before shutting in a protesting peke face. ‘Don’t go on like that, Gus, or I will buy you a cat to keep you company.’ In Max’s newly redecorated restaurant, the proprietor stood in a welcoming way at the door. Max had got plumper and greyer and more prosperous in the years since he had set up; over these same years, his family had shrunk, then grown again. The daughter they called the Beauty Daughter had married and gone away, then another daughter had departed, leaving numbers seriously low, but now both girls were back without husbands but with several offspring. Max approached Coffin with a sympathetic smile. He knew that Stella was away, everyone knew, and he let Coffin see that he understood loneliness. Not that he suffered much from it himself, especially at the moment with four grandchildren taking up what felt like unofficial residence, but still … a man could imagine. He led Coffin to a table nicely placed near the window. ‘Miss Pinero not back yet?’ he said, as he handed Coffin the menu. As if you didn’t know. Coffin muttered inside, as he took the menu. He pretended to study it, but he always ate the same thing here: that which Max recommended – it was wisest. ‘The brill is very good tonight.’ ‘Right, brill it is.’ Coffin closed the menu. ‘Salad with it, please, and claret to drink.’ Max looked sad at the choice of claret with brill, an expensive Montrachet would have been better, but he sped away to serve the fish. ‘The chef has poached it with a little basil,’ he confided as he offered it to the Chief Commander. Coffin ate the brill, thinking wistfully of the days when fish was fried and served with chips. You could still get such meals in the right places, but not where the Maxes of this world ruled the menu. He wondered what Stella was eating in Los Angeles, or if she was eating at all, since she might now be under the surgeon’s knife. She had refused to let him know when the operation was to take place because she didn’t want him to worry. Strange idea of worry she must have, he decided, since I am worrying about her all the time. Not the nose, Stella, he said again over a mouthful of salad, nor the mouth: I love both of them. As he ate, he mulled over the two big problems on his mind: the pharmaceutical affair which Ed Saxon had delivered to him, and the missing boys. Since one had been found dead, he had to assume the others also were. What was the list Charles Rick, missing since mid-May, the second boy to go and not yet found. Dick Neville, a fortnight earlier, he was the first, and he went the first week in May. May Day, in fact. Was that important? Archie Chinner, the last week in June, the last to go and the first to be found. Matthew Baker, last week in May. A month before the next boy went. Was that important? Who knows, he thought to himself, with some anger. You never know until it is too late. Across the room he could see a table of the cast of the play now in rehearsal at the Stella Pinero Theatre in the St Luke’s complex of the theatres. This was the main theatre, created out of the old church, but in addition there was now the much smaller Experimental Theatre and the Theatre Workshop. The last two theatres received grants from the local university in return for allowing its drama department to use both theatres. He knew from Stella that the play under rehearsal was one of Pinter’s: The Homecoming. She had had it in mind for a long while, but had handed the production over to a friend, Alec Macgregor, always known as Mac. Mac was at the table too, and waved to Coffin, whom he had got to know well over the years. He was a tall, slim man with a mop of grey hair and bright, dark eyes. A fond parent had left him a pleasant fortune, so it was likely that he was paying for the dinner, and not the cast who probably could not have afforded it, since Max’s prices had risen with his success. Coffin knew that Stella was not a lavish payer, although Equity rules did not allow too much stinginess. As he waved back, he saw that Mac was getting up and coming over to him. ‘How are things going? Heard from Stella since you got back?’ ‘She rang up and I spoke to her yesterday.’ He thought it was yesterday, with all the pressures on him events began to run together. He was beginning to worry about his memory. Could you get Alzheimer’s through stress? No, it was congenital, wasn’t it, and the one thing he knew about his mother was that she was both long-lived and articulate. About his father he knew much less, and that was down to his mother too, since she had never been quite definite about who his father was. Give birth and move on, had been the name of her game. ‘Stella’s enjoying herself, going to the theatre every night.’ That was more or less true. ‘How are you and the production?’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/gwendoline-butler/a-grave-coffin/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.