All of them underestimated John Coffin’s remarkable ability to draw disparate strands together and to make a whole picture of the deaths of Rosie Ascot, Amy March, Veronica Peasden and the others. In which list he did not forget the deaths of Peter Tiler and his wife.
And to see exactly the importance of the head and hands of Peter Tiler.
Synthesizing, it was called by scientists, and it went on deep inside him, emerging sometimes as a shout.
At the moment he had all the elements, could see a picture, but did not know why it had happened. That was soon to change. Shouting time was coming.
CHAPTER 15
But the first shout fell to old Tom Cowley of the Black Museum. Two days later, while DC Winter was still combing the caravan sites of London and its outskirts searching for Old Bean who lived in a trailer but liked to keep on the move and who might or might not have the red flock curtains, and while the bodies of all the women were being tidied and placed in neat, frigid drawers until the much adjourned inquest could take place, Tom shouted over the telephone. The head and hands of Peter Tiler had not yet been reunited with his body at this time, although it was about to happen, but Tom got his shout in first.
It was morning, breakfast-time, not Tom’s breakfast-time, which was about six a.m., but John Coffin’s breakfast-time which made it roughly two hours later. Still early indeed to be confronted with a bellow down the telephone.
‘John, are you awake?’
‘I am, Tom.’ I am standing in my kitchen in St Luke’s Mansions, holding my telephone in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The postman has just delivered my post with what looks like a parcel from my sister, Letty Bingham, and the gas bill. He put down the coffee cup.
‘We’ve been broken into.’ The outrage was strong. Coffin moved the telephone an inch or two further from his left ear.
‘Where? Where are you speaking from, Tom?’ Yes, the parcel was from Letty and it contained THE DIARY. He cradled the telephone under his chin and tried to get a look.
‘The Black Museum, of course. We’ve been done over. You’d better get down here.’ No thought of the rank of the man he was talking to, Tom was beyond caring about status, if he ever had.
Anything to shut Tom up while he got a look at his mother’s diary. ‘I’ll look in on the way to the office.’
Within the hour he was with Tom in the Black Museum. Behind him lay an anguished telephone call to his sister Letty. He could not read his mother’s writing. ‘I can’t make out a word!’ Letty in return sounded both amused and calm. ‘You have to get your eye in, John, I am surprised to have to tell a policeman that. Keep at it, a little at a time. Words will spring out at you and by degrees you will find you can read it. It will be worth it, I can promise.’ He had thrown the diary to the ground in a fury, then picked it up tenderly to place it on his desk. Drat you, Mother, said an angry voice inside him, a puzzle to the end.
‘Glad you’re here,’ said Tom. No words such as Thank you for the visit, or I know you are a busy man, passed his lips. ‘Thought you weren’t coming.’ He was wearing a dark overall and carrying a brush and pan. ‘We’re a mess. It’s a disgrace.’
The long low room which housed the museum was in an annexe to the Rainshill Police Station and thus around the corner from it and in the area which housed the garages for the patrol cars. It was easy enough to break into, perhaps a marvel it had never happened before, but now someone had done so.
Tables were overturned, chairs thrown aside and display cases broken into and their exhibits piled on the floor. Not destroyed, but heaped up, like jumble before it was sorted. There was broken glass from one display cabinet on the floor.
‘You know what this is about, don’t you?’ said Tom. ‘It’s an attempt to close us down. They’re at it, that’s what they are.’
‘Anything stolen?’
‘No, not that I can see. But there wouldn’t be.’
‘Any idea who did it?’
Tom looked at him scornfully. ‘If I knew I wouldn’t be here, I’d be round nicking them.’ ‘How’d they get in?’
‘Through the door, same as you and me. Double lock, but it couldn’t keep out a bird.’
The lock had not been broken. The intruder had either had a key, or had known how to pick the lock. Neither was impossible. He or she (but surely the invader was male) had then, rather tidily now Coffin took another look, disembowelled the room. It looked contrived to him, not a real robbery at all.
‘You know what it’s all about? They want to close us down.’
Coffin didn’t say Who does? because he knew he wouldn’t get an answer from Tom in a state of paroxysm. Especially as he had yet another grievance.
‘Something else as well. They’re trying to blame the bug that’s been going round on us. Did you know that? I had a woman doctor round here inquiring about that meal we put up for the visiting firemen. She says the kids at Madame Katherine Lupus’s school started it. They had polio immunizations and the virus bred in their guts and they passed it on in full strength to people like you and me.’ He made it sound a deliberate act of malice, not the simple working of a virus mechanism.
‘Not quite blaming you,’ observed Coffin mildly, moving around the room taking it all in. ‘Who did the food?’
‘Got the delicatessen chap, Max, to do it.’
‘Goes back to him, then,’ observed Coffin. Not good news for Max and the deli, if so.
On a table before him were laid out, as if for inspection, the rope from the display on Jim Cotton, the Leathergate strangler. Next to him, also laid out, were the exhibits from the rape and murder of two young women, a crime described by Tom, at that famous party, as one of their ‘failures’. There were the stockings, the old raincoat and the sheet of yellowing newspaper with its faint, bloody fingerprint. It was the print of a thumb and across the ball of the thumb was a sickle-shaped scar. Coffin could just make it out.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd, Tom, the way these objects are laid out? What do you think it means?’
‘I dunno,’ said Tom. ‘You think about it.’
John Coffin absorbed his dismissal with the same good humour he had taken the initial summons. Old Tom was a law unto himself, and had to be accepted as such.
As he turned the corner into the main road, he got a glimpse of Stella Pinero striding towards the tube station bearing a large bunch of flowers. Not lilies, but roses. Roses for Little Billy?
Stella was allowed to see the boy, without realizing what an exception she was. Billy was up, dressed, and sitting at the end of the ward by the big television screen. It had proved impossible for him to keep up his act. Malingering was hard work. Urged forward by the doctors and positively prodded by the nurses, he had rejoined the world. Later today he was going home.
He accepted the flowers graciously, although fruit or better still chocolates would have been more welcome. He was glad to see that Stella had honoured him with a perfectly groomed appearance: a cream silk suit and a waft of Madame Rochas.
‘You look better than I thought,’ said Stella, giving him a hug. Ridiculous to be so fond of the little beast, but she was. It made her feel the want of her own daughter. ‘We shall see you back at the theatre sooner than I thought.’
‘My mother’s taking me away for a holiday,’ said Billy. ‘Don’t want to go but I’ve got no choice.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Bermuda.’ He tried to look as if the choice displeased him, but could not quite manage it.
‘You lucky thing. We shall miss you.’
‘I’ve had a bad time,’ he said with some pride. ‘I need building up.’
Stella put on a sympathetic face. ‘Nasty virus. And then you were missing. We were all anxious. What did happen, Billy?’ She tried to make the question sound casual, but he was not deceived.
Billy considered. He was aware that a cloud of scepticism hung over him. He needed to talk to someone and, in his experience of her, Stella had proved
trustworthy.
‘I hid because I thought the murderer was after me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Still think so. Thought I was being followed. So I was, but not by the person I expected it to be. I hid there, but I saw the feet. Pretty shoes. With a nice heel. A lady’s shoe.’ He let that sink in, before saying: ‘Wasn’t Charlie, in case you were wondering. I know he dresses up. Helped him sometimes. I’d know his feet anywhere.’
Stella gave a small sigh, a mixture of relief and surprise. Thank God for a sophisticated theatre child, but he really knew too much. ‘OK, not Charlie.’
‘But I still think I was right to hide. I might have been killed.’
Stella looked at him. He was telling what he believed to be the truth. ‘You can trust me. Something made you think you know who the killer was … It’s that pot, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘I was the one who found it in the gutter. Wish I’d left it there.’
Don’t we all, thought Stella. But no, it was meant to be found. Someone would have picked it up.
Billy went on: ‘Didn’t mean anything to me at first, then I thought: I know where that came from and who could have used it.’
Stella said: ‘I’ve had my thoughts too.’
That household that they had in common where pot plants flourished and such a bronzed urn as had encased Peter Tiler’s head had been seen by both of them. She had seen a row of them on that terrace. Why had she not told John Coffin that final truth? Loyalty or a kind of fear about how it would touch the theatre?
‘You going to say anything? It’s easier for you.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, Billy,’ she said. ‘Is there anything else you are worried about?’
‘I shall be going away. I’ll be safe. And I’m never going to say anything. You can count on that. I might do it when I’m grown up and safe. Only I guess you knew?’ Stella nodded. She had had an idea for some time. One she had pushed aside because she could not see how it made sense with all those other bodies, but which nevertheless kept returning to her with irresistible conviction. ‘But there’s Clara in Max’s. I talked to her.’
‘But who would know you talked to Clara?’
‘Mum does. And she might have said. I dare say she would have done. As things are.’ The hint was clear.
So Clara might be in danger?
Stella walked home. She needed the exercise and she wanted to think. The first thing to do, she decided, was to go into Max’s where she might find Clara. It was still half term so Clara was safe as far as that went.
A soft rain began to fall from a heavy sky as she approached Max’s. What did you say to a murderer if you happened to meet one: Good morning, and I know you are guilty? Or just keep quiet like Little Billy? Who could be wrong, she reminded herself. Still, there was a case to answer.
There was no personal risk to her, she told herself, but a precaution might be sensible. In her youth she had acted in more than one thriller where the heroine nearly gets killed when a sensible telephone call could have saved her.
Passing a callbox, she made a call to John Coffin. He was not there, but she left a message saying she was going to talk to Clara in the deli and it was important. Would he call her there?
This was the last anyone heard from Stella Pinero at this time.
John Coffin was not slow in getting back to his office, but Stella’s message had been sitting there on the pad, awaiting his attention for something over an hour when he read it. There was other urgent business, an important call from Belfast about a terrorist who might be in his district, Celia had not thought what Stella had to say important.
When he read the message, Coffin decided to go straight to Max’s himself.
Max, his mind full of his own worries about his food and the spread of infection, greeted him politely but seemed surprised. No, he did not know where Miss Pinero was. Lovely lady, he always enjoyed seeing her, serving her was an honour, such style she had.
And Clara? Again he looked surprised. No, she was not here either, she had received a call from her headmistress, Mrs Lupus, and had gone to meet her.
‘Where?’
Max did not know. At the school, he imagined. Or possibly where Mrs Lupus lived. Such a nice lady, an honour for Clara to go to her.
‘Can I use your telephone?’ asked Coffin. Overriding questioning voices, he ordered inquiries to be made at the Theatre Workshop, the Lupus office and the Lupus home, and yes, the school. Yes, Stella Pinero and the girl Clara, please.
He put the telephone down, half believing that he would turn round to see Stella walk into the shop.
Max said: ‘Mr Coffin, if I could talk to you, please, about the epidemic …’
‘Later, Max.’
He walked out of the shop, not clear which way to go, but knowing he must find Stella.
The rain was coming down heavily now, shrouding the sky, while a wind gusted off the river, pushing strings of dark clouds across the sky.
He walked down the main road, leaving Max’s deli behind him on his right. Ahead and to his left was the new Dockland railway, with the river beyond.
He could see on the skyline the profile of the big bleak school building where Kath Lupus presided. Nearer at hand was the block of flats, built into and around a former warehouse where Ted and Kath lived. There was an outer courtyard running down to the river’s edge, together with an inner courtyard planted with geraniums. He walked towards this block.
Immediately facing him across the road was a row of garages. He could see something small and pale lying on the pavement.
When he got up to it, he saw it was a white handbag. One he had seen often before. As he picked it up a breath of scent came towards him. Stella’s handbag.
A police car drew up at the kerb at that moment, a plain clothes detective and a woman detective with him.
‘Go to the Lupus flat, I’m going for the river.’
He ran down the courtyard, turned on to the river walk where only a low wall offered protection from the long drop down to the water. The walk curved round the building and out of sight.
He started to run. As he ran he heard a scream. A loud scream from a throat that knew how to project sound. A theatrical scream. Stella’s scream.
Even as he ran, he thought: Good for you, Stella, that’s as much a shout as a scream.
A second later he heard the splash of water.
CHAPTER 16
‘Thought they was all a goner,’ said the old waterman, pipe still in his mouth, although he was soaking wet. ‘When I saw them slip over the side, I thought: That’s it, we’ve lost them.’
‘Good job you were there.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen plenty of men go in the water. You need to act fast. Accident, was it?’ His eyes were bright and sceptical, he knew it was no accident.
‘Yes,’ said Coffin briefly.
‘I heard the lady scream. Fair pair of lungs she’s got.’
‘Yes,’ said Coffin again.
‘Looked to me as if the older lady was pushing the girl and the other lady trying to drag her back,’ said the waterman, his gaze brighter, his grin spreading more widely across his red weathered face. Not a lot of real humour in that grin, but a lot of cynical comprehension. He’d seen it all before on the river. ‘Handy I was there fishing.’ The River Thames produced a harvest of coarse fish, but this was his biggest yet.
‘I’ll get a police car to drive you home.’ A note changed hands.
‘No need, sir, I can row myself back.’ He turned back to the steps leading down to where his boat was tied up. ‘I hope the ladies will be all right. You’re poisoned before you’re drowned in the river, sir.’
Three ambulances were already leaving to take Clara, Kath Lupus and Stella Pinero to the hospital.
Coffin got to the hospital in time to find Stella vigorously protesting that she had not fallen in or been dragged in, but had jumped. ‘I went in to save the girl. And I would have done, too, I’ve got my lifesaving medal. Only the old man in the
boat pulled her out.’
She started on the story again, full of anger, more in shock than she knew. ‘And I don’t want to stay here, and I don’t want that stuff, just some dry clothes,’ she said to the nurse who seemed to be offering a sedative. ‘I have a first night coming up.’ She saw John Coffin. ‘Oh good, you’re here. Get me some clothes to go home in, please. Preferably my own.’ She looked with disfavour at the hospital robe in which she was draped.
‘Bless you, Stella,’ said Coffin. ‘Thank God, you are all right. They may just want to keep you here overnight to see.’
Stella visibly ground her teeth. Marvellous publicity, she reminded herself, but she did not intend to stay.
‘Where is Clara?’
‘Not far away. She’s got her mother with her.’
‘And Kath Lupus?’
Coffin shrugged. ‘Just going to see.’
‘She couldn’t have killed all those women.’
‘I don’t know how you got yourself involved, Stella,’ said Coffin, half loving, half exasperated. ‘Except you always have to get into every performance.’
‘I recognized where I’d seen that pot, that urn. So did Billy.’
Coffin groaned. ‘You’re two for a pair.’ But he held her hand tightly and felt it gripped back.
A minute later he was looking down on Kath Lupus. She stared at him silently, but he wasn’t sure if she saw him. Shock can take so many different forms.
And she was ill. A high fever, the ward sister informed him quietly.
‘You didn’t kill anyone, Mrs Lupus,’ said Coffin quietly. ‘But you certainly know who did. And you would have drowned yourself and the girl to save a murderer. Or one murderer.’
Kath Lupus stared, then closed her eyes. The infection bred within the guts of a group of children immunized with live polio vaccine, passed on to Clara’s mother where it went ‘wild’ and contaminated the food she prepared for the Black Museum and thence spread outward, had at last caught up with Kath.
It was a symbol, Coffin felt, for a worse infection in his district. One which had been embedded in the population for years.
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