Coffin's Dark Number

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘That was a funny thing to say.’

  ‘I didn’t know what he meant. And I said: Come down, then. And he said: I can’t, the power’s gone. Then he said he was falling.’

  ‘But he hasn’t fallen.’ I squinted upwards, trying to see.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ agreed the woman.

  ‘I think the lift’s stuck,’ said the boy.

  ‘It was working all right this morning,’ said one of the other men, turning round to talk. ‘Much you know about it, Patsy Burden.’

  ‘I know what I’m told,’ retorted Patsy.

  ‘And what’s been done about it?’ I aked. I was beginning to think the man up there was ill. Or worse.

  ‘I heard him call out,’ said the woman, reading my thoughts, ‘when I got here first. He’s dead silent now.’

  ‘I got the foreman coming,’ said the boy.

  ‘I reckon he’s dead.’

  ‘The foreman’s coming,’ repeated the boy.

  ‘He’s not God, is he?’ demanded the woman. ‘Supposing the poor chap’s gone, he can’t bring him back.’

  ‘He’s not gone,’ said the boy. ‘I see him.’ He pointed.

  ‘Not gone in that way, stupid. Gone, passed away. Dead.’

  I was still silent. I had that itchy, scratchy feeling I get when things are going wrong. I scratched my wrist absently. I’d had an infection there once and my skin still remembered it.

  ‘Here is the foreman,’ said Dove. ‘It’s Joe Davies. I know him. Hello, Joe, trouble here?’

  ‘There shouldn’t be,’ said the foreman, a tall spare man with a brush of fair hair. ‘But this lot can foul up anything.’ He glared at the bunch of men. ‘Have you tried bringing it down?’

  ‘No,’ said one of the men. ‘I saw one of those cages drop from top to bottom once with the man in it. You do it.’

  ‘Who is it up there? Whoever it is he shouldn’t be there. We’re not working that face today.’

  ‘I bet he’s thinking he shouldn’t be there.’

  ‘I think it’s Tom Butt,’ said one of the men.

  ‘And what’s Butty doing up there?’

  ‘I dunno. Anyway, he’s a nervous type. If he went up there it was because someone told him to.’

  ‘I’ll give him nervous when I get him down.’ He moved away.

  ‘I’ll come with you, Joe,’ said Dove.

  ‘Thanks.’ But he hardly looked at Dove as he strode off. We both followed him towards a small wooden hut which stood at the bottom of the scaffolding.

  It was empty, but smelt of men in sweaty clothes and cigarette smoke and stale tea.

  ‘I have all the controls here,’ said Joe. He looked white. He put out a hand towards a panel of switches, then hesitated. ‘Maybe I should get the police.’

  ‘I am the police, Joe,’ Dove reminded him.

  ‘How does the lift work?’ I asked.

  ‘By electricity. We don’t pull it down by hand.’ He was irritable. ‘He has a control up there. I have an emergency switch down here.’

  ‘How can you get in touch?’

  ‘We have a telephone.’ He pointed at it. ‘But either it’s gone dead or he’s not answering. I’ve tried to get him three times.’

  ‘Pull that emergency switch.’

  ‘If that man gets killed …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dove gently.

  ‘Why is this hut empty?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t there be someone here?’ It looked like the technological heart of the building operation.

  ‘Yes, me,’ said Joe briefly. ‘And the boy’s about. He took the call.’

  ‘Pull the switch, Joe,’ advised Dove. ‘And quickly. If the power is on then that cage will come down safely. If it’s not then it’ll stay put; it won’t fall.’

  Joe still hesitated.

  ‘Get him down,’ said Dove.

  I was letting Dove take charge because he knew the man.

  Without another word, Joe reached out and pulled down a red-coloured lever.

  ‘Go outside and watch,’ he said, now calm. ‘I’ll stay here.’

  When we rejoined the watching crowd it had grown in size. There was a pause and then the cage began to descend, slowly at first and then more swiftly. The crowd sighed with relief.

  Gathering speed the cage slid towards the ground. I thought it was travelling just fractionally too fast for safety.

  I looked at it and looked again.

  The cage slid to the pavement. But this time we had all seen. There was a heap of crumpled clothes in a corner and a pair of shoes, but otherwise the cage was empty.

  The woman gave a little tiny muted shriek.

  We could see a jacket, some shoes, a shirt, and a white protective helmet. But Tom Butt was gone. He had left his clothes and disappeared.

  Chapter Three

  John Coffin

  On the corner of Saxe-Coburg Street and Harper Road we examined the clothes. I didn’t know what to make of the episode. It was a strange thing, but the clothes were there all right.

  An old pair of working trousers, not too dirty all things considered, a short-sleeved shirt and a woollen cloth jacket with a zip up the front. There was also a pair of black leather shoes with rubber soles. The shoes were pretty worn.

  ‘Tom’s clothes,’ said one of the men. ‘That’s his jacket, anyway. About the shoes and shirt I couldn’t say.’

  I ran my hand through the pockets of the jacket and drew out a few coins and a letter folded in two.

  The letter was addressed to Tom Butt and the address was a hostel in Farmer Street. I knew the place. I looked at the envelope, but decided not to open it just yet. It was still Tom Butt’s private life. He still had one. We’d let him keep it as long as we could.

  No one knew better than me that his chances of keeping it, under certain circumstances, were slim.

  ‘Yes, they’re Tom Butt’s,’ I said. I folded the clothes and handed them back to Joe the foreman. ‘You better keep these for the time being.’

  ‘But you’re the policeman.’

  ‘I don’t know that there’s a case for us here.’

  ‘But where’s Tom?’

  I shrugged. ‘Wherever he is he’s got on his underclothes and a pair of socks.’

  ‘And his overalls,’ put in one of the onlookers. ‘He wore overalls over that lot.’

  ‘And some overalls, then,’ I said.

  ‘But where’s he gone?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps better. Where’s he likely to have gone?’

  ‘But how could he go? One minute he’s calling out for help from the top of the building and the next he’s gone. How could he go?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t walk,’ I said. ‘And I don’t suppose he could fly.’

  ‘If he didn’t come down, then I bet he’s up there still. He could hardly crawl through the bars of the cage. He must have lost his nerve,’ said Joe, turning back to look at the shell of the building. ‘Search the place, boys, and shout as you go, so as I’ll hear.’

  Dove was very quiet and so was I, but we eyed each other. Dematerialization wasn’t something we’d worked with much.

  ‘If there’s a screwy situation, there’s a screwy answer,’ muttered Dove. ‘But there’s an answer.’

  He was right, but it wasn’t always an answer you wanted to hear.

  They searched the building site from top to bottom but there was no sign of Tom. But rolled up in a bundle, not far from the cage, they found some overalls. They were reasonably clean and not stained or torn in any way; they appeared to be Tom’s. So now, wherever Tom was, he didn’t have overalls either. It was a perplexing thought.

  ‘Like I said, there’s an answer,’ said Dove. ‘Just wait and he’ll come walking in.’

  ‘You may be right.’

  ‘Or he won’t come walking in. He’ll be carried in. Or we won’t ever see him again, but there’ll be a picture and we shall know how or why.’

  It was because he really believed this t
hat Dove was a good policeman. He never took no for an answer. But sometimes he had to put up with two answers and not knowing which one was right.

  Joe came back, looking worried.

  ‘My God, I don’t know what’s become of him,’ he said. ‘It’s like he’s been snatched up to heaven. Where’s that boy Patsy Burden? What was it he said to you? Tell us again, Patsy.’

  ‘He called, “Help me, help me, they’re getting me”. That was the first time. And I said, “Come on down then”. And he said, “I can’t, the power’s gone”.’

  ‘Only it hadn’t,’ said Joe.

  ‘No. And then he said, “Help me, help me, I’m falling”.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s mad.’

  He looked up at the building. ‘He’s our first casualty. If he is one. On a big site like this the building always gets one or two. But this is the first time anyone’s absolutely got eaten up.’

  ‘That’s a strange way of putting it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s what it looks like, isn’t it? If one thing’s certain it’s just that he didn’t fall.’ He stared upward again, then shrugged.

  ‘He’ll be back,’ said Dove, maintaining his unshakeable belief in the laws of the universe. But perhaps the laws of this world don’t hold good for all other worlds. There might be a way on what the scientists call the “space-time continuum” for a solid block of earth-matter called Tom Butt to disappear from our view.

  He might be gone and yet still be there. Perhaps he could hear us.

  ‘Call his name,’ I said suddenly. ‘Call his name. Tom! Tom Butt!’

  We all called, once, twice and three times, but the wind brought his name dustily back to us and there was no other sound.

  ‘A weird little business,’ I said. ‘But nothing to do with us.’

  ‘No. Nothing. Leave him alone, and he’ll come walking in.’

  Certain things are clearer to me, now that I am getting this on the tape, than they were at the time, and one is that Dove was putting on an act. He was not altogether genuine in his portrayal of an unimaginative down-to-earth policeman. Underneath he was already deeply disturbed.

  ‘I’ll give you a lift home,’ he said. He was proud of his car, which was new. ‘It’s over here.’

  ‘Thanks, but I think I’ll walk.’ It was only just round the corner. And I think better walking. There seemed plenty to think about.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said furiously. ‘My car’s gone. It’s been lifted.’

  There were cars in plenty lining the kerb, but his car, smart and shining, was gone. Those that were left had suffered a little from their life in London.

  He was white with rage. ‘Come on, let’s report it missing and start things moving.’ He stamped forward. ‘God, I’m angry,’ he said.

  But after his first outburst, he didn’t say much. My wife complained I was silent that evening. Probably Dove’s wife did the same. I suppose he spoke about his car, but I don’t believe he said much else.

  ‘No, different,’ I remember I answered my wife when she had asked me if this case was like the case of the missing children. This wasn’t quite true. I was wondering if there was not some similarity.

  We had set up a temporary headquarters for the missing children investigations in a small house annexed to the station. We had to have a special place because we were getting a lot of outside help. By which I mean that everyone who knew something that might help or thought they did or hoped they did called us and wanted to talk. I don’t blame them, in a case like this it’s almost inevitable, but it makes work harder. You have to listen to them, but all the time you know that the person who could tell you something is keeping quiet (because almost certainly there is a wife or a mother or a sister who could tell you a lot) and yet you listen, because the very flow of these stories puts pressure on the silent one, which in the end is going to break her. I say her, but it could be him. Usually it’s a woman, though.

  Dove had just finished a briefing session with the detectives assigned to the case when I came in next day.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said straight away. ‘There isn’t anything new.’

  ‘But you thought there might be?’

  ‘Well, I was hoping.’

  ‘Anything new on Tom Butt?’

  ‘He hasn’t turned up, if that’s what you mean,’ Dove said in a sour tone.

  ‘Well, we don’t have to look for him, do we?’ I sat down at Dove’s desk. All his papers were thrown about. I could see he’d doodled a huge circle on a piece of paper and then dug a hole in it with a pencil. It was how he felt, I suppose. Inside a circle and he’d got to dig himself out. It was how I felt too, come to think of it.

  ‘No one’s yet asked us to look for Tom Butt. He’s an adult and can go where he likes.’

  ‘Eighteen,’ I said. ‘Just eighteen and a nervous type. Not such an adult. And in a strange country.’

  ‘I’m wondering now if he isn’t in a stranger one,’ said Dove.

  ‘Hasn’t it struck you that there’s a resemblance showing up between the way Tom Butt went and the way the children went?’

  ‘And lots of points of difference too.’

  ‘And that that’s the stranger country he’s now in.’

  ‘It did occur to me,’ admitted Dove, ‘but it’s ridiculous.’ He walked around the room. This house had once been a small school and it still had blackboards round the walls which we used. Dove had written a list of dates on them.

  Thursday June 26, 1969.

  Wednesday April 23, 1969.

  Monday March 18, 1968.

  I knew what these dates stood for: they were the dates of the last three disappearances.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Dove repeated, turning his back on the dates. ‘He just left, that’s all. He wasn’t taken. He just left.’

  I went over to the blackboard and wrote the day before’s date on it. ‘There, if Tom Butt comes back, we can rub it off. Otherwise, it stays.’

  ‘Either he’ll turn up or he won’t turn up,’ said Dove, with a shrug. ‘Either we’ll find out all about it or we won’t find out about it. That’s how I feel.’

  But Coffin felt a little sick.

  Chapter Four

  At this stage Coffin had only the one tape, his own. He played it over to himself because it seemed to him he had thoughts and words down on it that were useful. Dove was shrugging his shoulders but Coffin was uneasy.

  He was surprised to realize how much he (and Dove too for that matter) seemed to be reaching forward to put into speech things they didn’t quite understand. Why for instance had they both seized on that phrase ‘A strange country’? Perhaps it was he and Dove and not Butt who were in a strange country.

  Tom Butt, aged eighteen, five feet four inches tall, weighing 140 pounds, had disappeared into thin air. He had gone from a closed cage stuck up high on the building, flying away like a bird.

  He was a man in a puzzle. If you could think of him like that then you reduced the human element.

  But nothing could reduce the human element in the case of the missing children and it would be obscene to try.

  Coffin put the tape in a drawer and got back to the routine of his day. He had reports to read, three reports to dictate and in forty minutes he had to attend a conference to be held in another division about the amnesty of firearms. He was going to be late for this conference.

  And in his opinion there were still plenty of firearms floating around his bailiwick that the amnesty wasn’t going to touch. No amnesty was going to make a man give in a gun that he had paid for, polished, worn next to his skin and, whether he knew it or not, was looking forward to using. Only the people who were never going to use a gun were going to be influenced by any police offers of oblivion. At the most, you removed a few outmoded weapons and left behind the really lethal equipment. He could think of at least two men who almost certainly had a nice little armoury left.

  ‘Charley Barnes for one,’ he said aloud thoughtfully. ‘He was lookin
g pretty cheerful the other day down the Blue Anchor.’ The Blue Anchor was the local street market. Charley had certainly been looking cheerful and his wife had been wearing a mink wrap. Of course, mink was getting cheaper, but still … ‘It might be an idea to make him less cheerful. Might get a search warrant and have a look round.’

  He made a note to start this ball rolling and at once felt more cheerful himself.

  Out of his window he could see a uniformed constable walking along the row of parked cars and testing the doors to see if they were locked: he interpreted this as the arm of Inspector Dove reaching out. He hadn’t seen his colleague today, but the grapevine reported that his car had not yet been returned.

  Also out of his window he saw an untidy straggle of children headed by a teacher pass on their way from the new swimming pool on the main road to their old school (due, like the police station, for imminent demolition). He had long eyesight and recognized the teacher in charge as Jean Young. He had interviewed her over the disappearance of Katherine Gable. Anyway, they were old acquaintances and enemies. At the age often she had asserted her defiance of law and order by heaving a stone through one of his windows. In a way she was heaving them still.

  Coffin looked at her with something like sympathy. She headed every action group in the district, marched on every protest march and had organized the petition against police cruelty when the Peace Marchers had camped down by Daffodil Fields (no daffodils but a good square of concrete), but she had had to be mother and practically father as well to her brother Tony since her mother had died. He looked at her organizing her flock to cross the road. No doubt about it, there was a lot of maternal feeling seeking an outlet in Jean.

  ‘Jean,’ wailed one of her pupils, as they turned into the school. It was the sort of school building that had been built at the turn of the century on the lines of a prison with boys, girls and infants on separate floors with iron gates all round them. A more liberal generation had tried to brighten it up with bright paint, but its days were drawing to a close. Not before time, Jean thought.

  ‘Don’t call me Jean,’ she said mechanically. ‘I’m Miss Young.’ Miss Young for ever and ever, she thought rather sadly. She didn’t really fancy a virgin life, but she could see it coming.