As she held the door open for her, Nell said: ‘Do you think the police will take it seriously.’
‘I know one who will,’ Stella promised. Or she would know the reason why, she told herself.
Cars were parked at intervals along the quiet street, but she had no sense of being watched or followed as she turned in to St Luke’s Mansions. She looked up at the window in the tower. Still alight.
Should she call now? But even as she looked the light went out.
Before she drifted off to sleep, one question worried her. How had the person or persons who grabbed Bonzo known he belonged to Tom? For that matter, who had known about Tom, his name and who he was? Nell Casey and her son had only been in the country for a few days.
The same question was worrying Nell herself, as she lay in bed. It must be someone who knows us, she thought.
Some person, somewhere, in this country she had come back to, hated her and Tom enough to torment them. She had an enemy, but who was it?
A secret enemy was a frightening thought, but an enemy who moved in one’s own world, whom you know, perhaps had liked and trusted, that was even more frightening.
‘But there’s another way of looking at it,’ Nell said to the silent interlocutor who was conducting the inquiry inside her, ‘someone whom you know to have a grievance.’
Someone like Gus.
Sleep was not going to come easily tonight. It was haunted by thoughts of Gus, whom she had once loved, and still admired, and whose character she knew to be striped about equally with generosity and anger. He was capable of anything, probably.
John Coffin slept soundly, his dreams not disturbed by fantasies of the missing coach with its pilgrims to horror, nor even by the child murderer who might now be one of his own flock. He had learnt long since to dismiss the worries of the day as far as his work was concerned. He had built up an efficient CID force, ably backed by the uniformed men. Let them get on with it. They had radio telephones, fax machines, and a computer network to help them. He could let them get on with it.
That said, he had enjoyed being a detective, puzzling out the truth of a crime, looking for the evidence and then putting one patient piece after another into the jigsaw until he had the truth. After that came the job of getting a case together and conviction in the courts, and there, he had to admit, he had not always been successful. There were one or two men and several women walking around who had escaped the law. They probably hated him just as much as if they had gone down. He got several hate letters a week. More sometimes. This too did not disturb his sleep.
Stella Pinero, however, could always disturb him, and she did so now. The telephone rang by his bed, waking him up.
‘Stella?’
‘Yes, of course, it’s me.’
‘What is it?’
‘Come down and have breakfast with me and I’ll tell you.’
‘I don’t eat breakfast.’
‘Not true. I’ve seen you having a croissant and coffee at Max’s.’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to do that today. I’m in a hurry.’ Not quite true, but if Stella detained him too long, then he would be. Holding the phone away from his ear while he removed the cat from his chest where Tiddles seemed to have spent the night, he could hear her voice still talking. ‘Peace, Stella, I will come down. Put the coffee on.’
When he rang her bell, she opened the door at once, looking businesslike in spectacles with her long hair tied back.
‘I like you looking like that.’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek.
‘Like what? Come into the kitchen.’ The smell of coffee was floating towards them. Other people’s coffee always smelt better than your own and Stella’s could be relied upon. She had learnt how to make a good rich brew in her first job as ASM to Douggie Fraser, who liked his food, and had kept up the standard.
‘Like a power lady. You are a power lady.’
‘Have to be.’
Stella had not slept well but she had turned her wakefulness to good use. She had risen, showered and dressed in her white linen track suit, and then settled down with her notebooks. There was always plenty of work to do, it seemed to get more not less as her ambitions and those of Letty Bingham flowered. Also, Letty was always mean about money and kept the theatre on a rolling budget which demanded Stella’s constant vigilance to avoid going cap in hand to Letty.
Cash was always one of her preoccupations. Hence the Festival, the Charity Night which the Friends of the Theatre were organizing (up to them in theory, but in practice Stella liked to keep a sharp eye on what was going on … there was trouble about tickets, they would keep allocating the best seats to their own friends), and the Workshop for Students which Gus was about to conduct, and she’d kill him if he misbehaved. A good grant from Thameswater Educational Authority was involved here, they mustn’t lose it.
‘Come on then, tell me what’s worrying you.’ He had finished his first cup of coffee and was holding his cup out for another. He had his own worries. Before coming over to her, he had taken a quick look at his fax sheets. There was a fire in the tunnel near the Spinnergate Tube station and a train, complete with several hundred early commuters, was held up there. A man had just reported that he had blown his wife’s head off with a shotgun in his house in Poland Street, Swinehythe, and the coachload of tourists was still missing. Two potentially major incidents boiling up, with the only good bit of news being a late fax suggesting that the man in Poland Street was a fantasist who had no wife and no gun.
Briefly, Stella told him. He heard her out, then put his coffee-cup down smartly. Suddenly the coffee sat sourly on his palate.
‘Damn, oh damn.’
She was surprised at the force of his reaction, but not alarmed. ‘You take it seriously, then?’
Oh yes, he did. But this did not seem the moment to tell Stella about the arrival of a suspected child murderer in Spinnergate.
‘Come on, let’s go and look at this dog.’
For a moment, he considered bringing in the whole CID apparatus. Scene of Crime officer and all. But what crime? None had as yet been committed. Assault on a stuffed dog hardly seemed to be enough.
‘Bring the trowel you used before and a pair of gloves.’ He wouldn’t handle anything himself, and traces of Stella must be all over everything already.
It was a perfect spring morning with a pale blue sky and a soft breeze. Just the morning for a little digging.
Stella led him round to The Albion, and pointed out the site of the burial. ‘There, under the tree. You can see the earth is heaped up.’
‘Yes.’ Earth was sprinkled over the grass. ‘Anyone could see.’
‘I thought I left it tidier than that. It was darkish, though.’ And she had been upset.
There was movement behind them, and there was Nell Casey, holding her son’s hand. He was wearing an immaculate pair of jeans and a shirt with TOM embroidered on it. No trouble in identifying who he was, thought Coffin.
‘Good morning. Saw you from the window. So we’ve come to look.
‘Should the boy be here?’ asked Coffin bluntly.
‘Can’t leave him, Sylvie’s just popped round to the deli to get some milk and croissants.’
‘Well, take him for a walk while I do some excavating.’
But Tom had spotted something. Wrenching his hand away from his mother’s, he ran over to the bushes.
‘Bonzo, Bonzo,’ he cried in triumph, pointing to a low branch on the cotoneaster. ‘Bonzo in the bushes.’
There, suspended by his neck, looking a wreck, yet somehow quite relaxed and comfortable, was dear stuffed Bonzo.
Tom seemed unmoved and unalarmed by the damage done to Bonzo; perhaps with a child’s selective vision he did not even notice. He reached up and plucked Bonzo down, holding him firmly to his bosom. Nell made a noise of protest but her son ignored her.
Coffin looked from him to the little tumulus, then turned to Stella. ‘Open it up. Let’s see what we’ve got here.’
&
nbsp; ‘Well, nothing, I suppose.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
Stella knelt down and got to work. She regretted the green stains on her white trousers but this was no time to be selfish.
‘With gloves,’ commented Coffin. He ought to have been feeling better about things, just a joke of a dubious nature here after all, but he had that nasty feeling at the pit of his stomach that suggested otherwise.
Slowly, with nervous hands, Stella moved the earth away until the cardboard box was uncovered. ‘Still there,’ she said.
‘I see that.’ Coffin knelt down beside her. ‘Give the gloves to me.’ Without disturbing the box in situ he lifted the lid which was lined with plastic film. It came away with a little sucking noise as if it had got stuck.
Inside was one small, perfectly formed child’s hand. Severed at the wrist.
And streaked with blood. A bloody hand.
CHAPTER 5
March 6 contd
‘Stella, take Nell and the child upstairs.’ Coffin’s voice was rough with tension, ‘take her up there and keep her up there. I don’t want her to come down again.’
‘Right, come on, Nelly.’
‘I heard what you said, but I don’t think I want to go up and be hidden. I want to see. There’s been a child murdered.’ Her voice was rising.
‘We don’t know that,’ said Coffin absently. ‘Take them up, Stella. I’m going to do some telephoning.’
There was a call-box on the corner of the road outside The Albion, he shut himself in, ignoring the interested gaze of a lad who ought to have been delivering the newspapers.
He gave his instructions briskly. ‘Get plastic sheeting over the whole area. Keep an eye on it. No, nothing else. I don’t know yet if any crime has been committed. Oh yes, send a policewoman over. NOT uniform.’ He could give the orders, cut corners, arrange things as he wanted them, and he did. Not always, but when it suited him. ‘To Miss Casey, Flat Three, The Albion.’
‘Classy joint,’ said the CID sergeant who was taking the call. ‘And the Old Man is there himself.’ John Coffin’s code name was WALKER, but you only used that in certain circumstances. ‘A WDC, he says. Would you like to go, Mary Anne?’
Mary Barclay, the Anne was extra, a joke which she privately resented, was keen to go.
‘What is it, though?’ She was a girl who always liked to get things established and as clear as possible. Anything to do with the missing coachload of tourists? Still unaccounted for as far as she knew, and that really was weird.
‘Don’t know, might be a nasty, might not, but if the Boss calls we answer.’
Mary Barclay prepared to depart. ‘There’s a bit more than that, though, isn’t there?’ she said, knowing him.
‘A child is involved,’ said the sergeant towards her back without looking at her. ‘He said that much. He’s waiting for you there, he’ll tell you the details.’
‘Ah.’ Reluctantly he met her eyes. Brown, sympathetic eyes. Both of them had read the item about the suspected child murderer thought to have moved into the area. And the Sergeant had lost a child last year. His son had gone out to play and never come back. He had been found afterwards, in the canal. Drowned. Not foul play, exactly, they said. Murder by his peers. Three six-year-olds, having a game.
Mary Barclay drove off, glad to get away from Sergeant Jeremy Kay, she was so sorry for him that it felt painful.
On the other hand, she thought, if I’ve got to face an anxious mother that’s not so good, either. But it’s the job. She had only been a CID officer for six months after a tough apprenticeship in the uniformed branch. But she liked her work and liked the district where she had grown up. To know so many people and have them know you was both a help and a hindrance; it made them tell you some things and hold back on others.
Nell Casey? She knew that name, she had seen one or two of the episodes in the soap Destiny in which Nell had appeared, although it was tripe. Ripe tripe. But the clothes had been lovely; she had read that Nell was out of it now, and had come back to England to be made legitimate on the stage.
A uniformed constable was already covering an area of earth and grass under a big tree when she got to The Albion.
Coffin met her in the hall.
‘We’ll talk here.’
Upstairs, Nell Casey and Stella were looking out of the window, down to the garden.
‘What’s happening?’
‘A policeman in uniform is pegging down a sheet of plastic.’
Nell shivered; she still looked white. ‘It was horrible.’
‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘Oh yes.’ She looked across the room to where Tom was playing with a train, but he had Bonzo by him and was keeping a protective eye on the animal. An attempt to remove Bonzo from his custody was likely to produce a storm. ‘As long as he is.’
‘No one touched him. You nearly fainted down there, you know.’
‘You knew it wasn’t a real hand, didn’t you?’
‘Not straight away. But at a second look.’
‘I didn’t take a second look,’ said Nell with a shudder. ‘It looked like real blood, though.’
‘I think that was real,’ said Stella thoughtfully.
But the hand was of plaster, the very perfect model of a child’s hand. Not exactly a museum piece, but a good piece of work. The Victorians had liked that sort of thing. Some loving mother had had that piece made. Perhaps of a dead child.
Better not think on those lines.
‘Queen Victoria had models of all her children’s hands. Of their feet too, for all I know.’ Not much of a joke, but it might lighten Nell’s mood of doom. Not unjustified, she must admit. And a small smile did touch Nell’s lips. ‘We had one as a prop when we did Housman’s Victoria Regina.’
‘Is that where it came from, do you think?’
‘We borrowed ours from a local antique shop, as I remember. He got a credit in the programme and a couple of free seats.’ A wide boy name Les Llywellyn who knew as much about antiques as you could read on the back of a postcard but knew how to make money. ‘I suppose it went back.’
The young policewoman detective, who said her name was Mary Barclay, came up into the apartment and asked gentle questions, taking statements from both women, Nell Casey first because she was the mother of Tom, and then Stella, making notes as unobtrusively as possible. Downstairs, John Coffin had told her to handle the whole thing with tact. She had meant to do that in any case, but she was also observing Nell Casey and Stella Pinero with passionate interest. They both looked a bit pale and beaten up, not that you could blame them, and smart clothes were not in evidence, but, yes, a definite glamour hung around them.
Sylvie, who was in charge of Tom, had also been spoken to but seemed to know nothing. But you couldn’t be quite sure of that, thought Mary, who was better able to judge a girl so near her own age. Sylvie might know something. She saved that thought up for future use.
Stella Pinero took herself off to her own apartment, protesting she wouldn’t go if she didn’t have a meeting.
WDC Mary Barclay saw her to the door.
Time for Tom also had to have his minute with her, sitting on his mother’s knee, clutching Bonzo.
‘I think he’ll have to give Bonzo up for a while,’ Mary whispered to Nell Casey. ‘Tests, you know.’ Coffin had instructed her to get possession of the stuffed animal. Peaceably if you can, he had said, but by brute force if you have to. Not the easiest of her jobs.
Nell shook her head. ‘Not a chance.’
‘He’ll have to, Miss Casey.’ Was she Ms, Miss or Mrs? Mary Barclay did not know but took the safest route, actresses were always Miss, the days of Mrs Siddons were long over. ‘Either I shall have to take it off him or you will. Better you, really.’
But getting the dog away from the boy went better than Mary expected, surprisingly easy, in fact. The boy didn’t have much of a vocabulary but what he had he was efficient with.
His mother had sat dow
n on the floor and asked straight out for the dog. And straight out, she had set a price.
‘A pound if you let me have him.’
No response.
‘All right, two pounds. And you’ll get him back. He will, won’t he, Mary?’
‘You will get him back,’ Mary had promised, not knowing if he would or not.
‘More,’ Tom had said with a winning smile. ‘More dollars.’
‘The deal is in pounds,’ his mother reminded him.
‘Is that more?’
‘It is.’
‘Yes, Tom will.’ But he still held on to the animal. ‘Each day.’
‘What, each day Bonzo is away? Come on, Tom.’
‘He won’t be away long,’ said Mary hastily. He might never come back, who could tell what Forensics would get up to, but it was a lie in a good cause.
‘All right,’ said Nell, ‘you’ve got me over a barrel.’
As she took the toy away from the boy and put it in a plastic bag, Mary thought: Wonder if he could have done it himself?
But no, that was a wicked thought, although in her experience kids could be wicked. But still, he certainly couldn’t have buried the plaster hand and he didn’t look old enough to have written his name.
‘Can you write your name, Tom?’ she asked.
His mother answered for him. ‘He can’t,’ she said coldly. ‘No more of that, please.’
‘I had to ask.’
She put a few questions about the plaster hand, but Nell Casey knew nothing more.
Mary Barclay did not pass on the information about the arrival in the district of the child murderer.
‘Keep a watch on him, Miss Casey. Probably nothing to worry about. But if anything does alarm you, you can always call me.’
Why did she have the distressing notion that she and Nell Casey would be seeing a lot of each other?
As well as the alleged child murderer who had just moved in, they had their own authenticated, fully certificated bunch of child molesters all on the register.
They had names, addresses and records. These were the lads who had been caught, sentenced and served their term.
In addition, there were all those undesirables they did not know about, who still moved murkily about the undergrowth. Life was full of joy, Coffin thought.
Coffin on Murder Street Page 5