Coffin's Ghost

by Gwendoline Butler

  Stella gave the firm advice that either Miss Arden or his wife ought to tell all this to the police if they were really worried.

  She walked away, thinking that gossip must be all over the town. A juicy case.

  Some houses attracted violence, she thought. Wasn’t there a local story that Jack the Ripper had lived there? It wasn’t a place she had liked during the short time it had been the Chief Commander’s living quarters.

  She had kept out of it as much as she could do, leaving him alone there. Looking back, he must have been lonely.

  She tidied up her office in the theatre, taking some work back with her to the tower so that she could let in Arthur and Dave, and then stay while they did their two-hour stint. Stella felt she did not yet know them well enough to hand over the keys and tell them how the security worked.

  They were just arriving as she got to the door so they all went in together. Stella worked in the sitting room while they cleaned upstairs, then, when they were ready to dust and polish the sitting room, she moved up to her bedroom.

  She could hear them talking as they worked, it seemed to be Dave doing most of the talking. As she came down to the kitchen to get a drink of water, she met him polishing the taps.

  He looked at her with a smile. He seemed to wear a light layer of dust over his face and his hair, greying him down like a statue that had been kept in the attic.

  A good-looking man underneath it all, with those interesting grooves on his face.

  ‘You don’t remember me, Miss Pinero.’

  She did remember him, memories can go and then come back.

  ‘I was with you when you were just setting up the theatre . . . I was only a general kind of dogsbody, not surprising you don’t remember me. I hoped I might get a foothold on the acting side. I played young middle age then, but it didn’t work out.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I get by. Do a bit of TV as it comes along. Play older types now, The Bill and Carrie and the odd documentary. If they want a real street figure or an old market man, they call on me.’

  ‘Or a dustman,’ Stella thought. ‘What about your colleague?’

  ‘Arthur? Oh, he has his ups and downs like all of us. Went up for a part, good one too, in a radio soap . . . he does a beautiful kid’s voice, you should hear his baby crying . . . lost it, though, because he wouldn’t do a baby screaming . . . said he daren’t, it might ruin his voice.’

  Stella wasn’t sure if she believed Dave. Behind the dust, it was possible there was a laugh.

  Arthur appeared at the door. ‘Finished the kitchen, Dave?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but started to check his cleaning equipment – part Stella’s, part they brought with them. ‘Let’s be off then. Morning, Miss Pinero.’

  It was his beautiful voice that had persuaded Stella to hire the cleaning team, although their prices were high.

  ‘Look after your voice,’ she called as they prepared to depart. He gave her a surprised look. ‘I’m working on it, Miss Pinero, trying to deepen the tones, get more richness.’ He smiled. ‘Covent Garden, here I come.’

  Soon she heard them leaving, dustman and hopeful opera singer, climbing into the van, with Dave still talking and Arthur listening. He was wearing a hat now, a dark felt with a big brim.

  ‘Did you tell her about the new murder?’

  Dave shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She doesn’t collect murders. Nor do we. Besides, you don’t know the woman was dead.’

  ‘I bet she was,’ said Arthur. ‘She dropped like a stone. Dead gone, sure of it. You couldn’t see. I was in the van. You weren’t. Where the hell were you? That was a long shit!’

  ‘And what were you doing? Didn’t let the police know.’

  ‘I was parked illegally,’ said Arthur. ‘Besides, the man in the PO Telephone van rushed to do it. Not my business.’

  Arthur took his hands off the wheel to adjust the hat in the car mirror and wave to Stella. There was no doubt, she thought, that a touch of madness helped in the entertainment world.

  Perhaps that was what was the matter with her and Coffin: they were not mad enough.

  But no, she knew that wasn’t the trouble, there was an unease between them at the moment which she couldn’t account for.

  Not my fault, she thought.

  ‘Do you want to go alone, sir, or shall I come with you?’ asked Phoebe Astley.

  ‘I’m not a child, this isn’t a trip to the park,’ said Coffin irritably.

  The chief inspector took this for a kind of backhanded permission, which suited her as she intended to go with the Chief Commander anyway. He was the boss figure and entitled to look in at whatever he chose, but it was her case too. In the end, she would be responsible for what happened or didn’t happen. She admired and respected Coffin, but she had her own career to consider.

  The limbs were in the care, if you could call it that, of the Pathology Department of the Second City University Hospital.

  ‘Slung in a refrigerator and waiting for Dennis Garden to give tongue,’ as Archie Young had said sardonically. He was no friend of Professor Garden. Socially and intellectually, they lived in different worlds. Archie did not admire the carefully chosen blue and pink shirts from Jermyn Street with matching ties, nor the equally carefully chosen band of young men with whom he consorted. The professor’s technical skills he respected.

  But the new laboratories for which Garden had fought several successful wars in favour of dead persons getting the best, Archie Young, no mean fender-off of cutbacks, did admire. The Second City Police Forensic Unit was first class, Coffin had seen to that, and it maintained a small pathology group, but for anything major then it called on the University Hospital and Dennis Garden.

  ‘Been in here, sir, since it was rebuilt?’ asked Phoebe as she led the way into the gleaming, sterile, antiseptic new laboratories.

  Coffin had to admit that he had not. ‘Was invited to the grand opening but I couldn’t go. Stella went and said that there was more champagne than seemed decent in the presence of so many dead.’

  Phoebe had been there herself – one of our best customers, Garden had said – and had heard Stella Pinero say something on the lines Coffin reported, and had heard Garden say: ‘Not all dead, I have a few bits and pieces of people who are just dying.’ You couldn’t best Garden, Phoebe had thought.

  The great man was not to be seen, having been drawn away to an important committee in London, but his assistant Dr Driver was on hand.

  He was talking to a tall, pretty woman who held herself very straight.

  ‘That’s Mary Arden,’ said Phoebe Astley. ‘Now why is she here?’

  ‘Pretty obvious. To see the limbs. To identify them. Did you ask her to come?’

  Phoebe shook her head. ‘Certainly not. She wouldn’t be on her own, I’d have sent someone with her. I was thinking of getting her in, but Davley was off on something else.’ Which had seemed more urgent.

  ‘What’s Sergeant Davley doing?’

  ‘Checking the local doctors . . . as far as we can without a name, but the owner of the limbs must have been on someone’s list.’

  ‘Is there any chance Mary Arden could make an identification?’

  Phoebe shrugged. ‘Who knows? She was worried that the limbs belonged to a girl who worked in the house. Etta, she called her. But those legs belonged to no girl.’

  Coffin was watching Mary Arden, who was shaking the doctor’s hand and turning towards the door. ‘She’s leaving. Better talk to her.’

  ‘She’s seen us,’ said Phoebe. ‘And doesn’t want to talk. I’ll get her though.’

  This she did, walking towards Mary Arden with the question on her lips.

  ‘It wasn’t Etta, was it?’

  ‘He wouldn’t let me see the legs and arms. Just showed me a photograph.’

  ‘That was good enough, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . the real flesh . . .’ She shook her head. ‘One m
ight get a different impression . . . Colour, feeling.’ Mary Arden seemed genuinely anxious.

  Phoebe reassured her. ‘Can’t be Etta, wrong age.’ Even as she said it, she thought, this girl Etta might just fit the younger age estimate, girls do get into trouble, disappear, or worse, but she persevered: ‘Wrong life history from what one can tell. I think it’s brave of you to want to see those limbs. You are really worried, aren’t you?’

  ‘They were left on the doorstep of the house I live in and run as a refuge for women who are sheltering with me from violence. Of course I am worried, I am worried about Etta. She left, she has never been in touch with me as she promised and she has been seen around the town.’

  ‘I’d get off home if I were you.’

  ‘Home? The Serena Seddon Refuge? Do you know what it is like now? My poor residents whom I am supposed to be helping are worried because of what turned up on the doorstep. Each and every one thinks they will be next.’

  Her eyes flicked across to where Coffin stood talking to the young doctor.

  ‘Who’s that with you?’

  Phoebe did not answer.

  ‘Another policeman? He’s got the look.’ Mary began to move away. ‘Who is he? I fancy I have seen him before.’

  Again Phoebe did not answer.

  ‘Or are you arresting him? Could be, he has that drawn look about the eyes. Rather attractive.’

  Still no answer, and Phoebe could see that Coffin, although still talking politely to the doctor, was growing restive.

  ‘Oh, you’re right,’ said Mary Arden. ‘I did have a very strong vodka and tonic – that’s the chosen tipple in the Serena establishment – before leaving home . . . to strengthen me to look at the legs but much good it did me . . . I will go home.’ She was gone, with a brave wave of the hand.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Coffin asked as Phoebe came back.

  Do you say to your boss: She thinks you look haggard but attractive? Also a likely criminal. Phoebe thought not.

  ‘She wanted to view the limbs, she was shown a photograph which failed to click with her.’

  ‘That was a long talk about nothing.’

  Can he lip read? Phoebe asked herself. ‘She’s upset.’

  The young doctor had disappeared through one of the shining glass and chrome doors. The old pathology rooms had been dark brown with dim unpolished floors. Coffin, an occasional visitor, had thought it suitable for death, polite and quiet, but the new atmosphere was bright and brash and highly sterile, which he had to admit, the old place probably had not been, although it had always smelt strongly of disinfectants which yet failed to mask other deeper, darker, more intimidating smells.

  All gone now, there were even pictures on the walls of the corridor down which Phoebe was leading him. Although to be fair to Professor Garden, they were photographs of interesting autopsies and specially selected corpses, with here and there a greatly enlarged mordant eye or a scrap of malignant tissue.

  Lessons in mortality all the way along, thought Coffin. A learning experience every step of the corridor with a desiccated adult body placed next to a tiny, mummified foetus. Even just a hint of Garden’s sense of humour.

  Once out of the corridor, through the anteroom and into the working area, the atmosphere changed.

  Here inside was all clinical with almost an industrial feel to the tables, with running water draining down into large chrome apertures, and wall cabinets with their freezing drawers.

  Coffin nodded to the white-coated pathologist standing by the cabinets.

  A figure clad from head to foot in white, booted in white and wearing gloves, came up to him. He was carrying a neat camera.

  ‘DC Rodders, sir. I’m here on orders from the chief super to get some photographs.’

  Why? thought Coffin with irritation. Archie Young could be a nuisance sometimes. Photographs, photographs.

  The irritation came out. ‘Why the hell are you gowned up like that?’

  ‘Against infection, sir,’ said a pained voice behind the masking.

  ‘She didn’t die of AIDS, you fool.’

  DC Rodders may have blushed behind his screens but he said nothing, and muttering that he had the photographs, he retreated. Walking backwards.

  As if I was the Queen or the Pope, thought a still irritated Coffin.

  He turned to the pathologist, patiently waiting for him.

  The young pathologist – and he was very young, since Professor Garden always employed the youngest graduates as being on a low salary scale and also likely to move on, he liked a turnover of young men – this particular one being very left wing, did not approve of the police. He had nothing personal against DCI Astley and the Chief Commander, except that the latter had a very successful wife and was therefore too rich. (On which point Coffin, who had the usual quota of overdraft and mortgage debts since his church tower home, while charming to live in, had been expensive both to convert and run, could have enlightened him.)

  A drawer was pulled out.

  Inside, as if nesting, were two legs.

  No one spoke as Coffin walked over to take a closer look. He bent over the drawer, not touching the limbs, but studying them intently.

  He could see there was a damaged bone on the left ankle, from which radiated a scar, deep and red, running up the calf.

  The right leg was also scarred with what looked like the pucker remains of a burn.

  He nodded.

  Turn them, please.’

  The backs of the legs were smooth and unscarred. ‘No one kicked her there, anyway.’

  ‘She didn’t shave her legs,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Yes, I noticed that. Light brown to ginger, the hairs.’

  The bones of the legs were fine and slender; whoever she was, she had good legs. He felt a sense of grief as he looked down on them.

  ‘May I see the arms, please?’

  The arms were stretched out with the hands reaching for each other, a grasp they were destined never to make.

  Hands can tell you more about a person than legs and feet. Hands are the tools which dragged men up the trees and out of them, making a world. Not a perfect world by any means but better than crawling in the mud round the dinosaurs’ feet.

  The hands of this woman had worked hard, breaking the nails, and leaving many scars of cuts on the fingers.

  What had she been, he asked himself, a cook, a butcher?

  On the arms were signs of injections. So she had been on drugs.

  ‘On them for years,’ said the knowledgeable Phoebe.

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  ‘Signs in the blood too. We knew about that so no surprise.’

  Coffin found himself wanting to reach out to the right hand to see if he remembered the touch.

  But you didn’t do that sort of thing because, apart from anything else, it was frozen. Cold, heavy and hard.

  He nodded to the pathologist. ‘Thank you. I’ve seen all I need.’

  As they walked towards the car, he said: ‘No identification. I need to see the head.

  ‘Phoebe: I want you to find out what happened to Anna Michael; try the local paper first. Do you know anyone there?’

  ‘I know the editor, but he hasn’t been there long.’

  ‘See what you can do.’

  Phoebe said she would do her best.

  – And perhaps I will come back with that head that is worrying you, and it will still be on its neck and shoulders, not dead at all, but a big success and editing a mag or paper somewhere, or else on TV.

  It was so like a man, she thought, to believe that any rejected woman must end up dead.

  5

  Coffin wanted the head, as did several other people, including Phoebe Astley, the pathologist, and the funerian (no burial without the head) and he was soon to discover that, with a celebrated writer, heads do talk.

  If you can hear the voice.

  The word went round the investigating unit like a chant: He wants the head.

  But, Coffin w
onders, if they find the head, will it come complete with the trunk?

  For obvious reasons, he flinched from a view of that trunk. He reassured himself with the conviction that those legs could not be those of the young Anna he had known so briefly. The initials J.C. were a joke, or a coincidence. Nothing to do with him or any past relationship.

  But what about the bloodstained picture of himself – himself, and no other?

  Curse it, he thought. Thank goodness, as far as he knew, Stella was not aware of all this.

  But there was an alarming gentleness and sympathy in her manner to him lately which he had put down to wifely affection after the stabbing he had suffered. But now he wondered. And at the back of her eyes there was a hint of something he liked even less: amusement. And with Stella being such a good actress, if there was anything in her eyes to be read, then she meant you to see it.

  He was not something to laugh at, was he?

  He was not a proud man, he said to himself in the looking glass as he shaved that morning, but he had the natural sensitivity of any male to being laughed at by his wife.

  By anyone really, but especially by her.

  He gave a slight shiver – feeling the cold since the op, he told himself. But no, distantly, quietly, he could hear the ancient, archaic gods laughing at him from beyond the river and above the clouds.

  Perhaps he ought to learn to laugh at himself.

  Phoebe Astley was tired and tense, she had more than one case that she was nursing, and the affair of the legs and arms came to be like a film which she was watching and yet taking part.

  She seemed outside it and yet of it.

  Chief Inspector Phoebe Astley would like the trunk and the head to be found so that the case could be wound up, but she fears neither will be found. Ever.

  Either would do, she says to herself.

  Meanwhile, she had used her friendship with the editor of the Second City Chronicle to ask him if he could find a trace of Anna Michael, once a journalist on his paper. It’s thought she went to work on a London paper, possibly the Independent.

  In spite of his protests that he was a new chap here and did she know what he had on his desk, Phoebe called in a few of the favours she had done him (most notably in where and how he parked his motorbike), and he agreed to try. First reminding her when, taken as her guest to the annual Second City Police Ball, he had held her back when she had wanted to rush to the Chief Commander to offer to go to bed with him. And shepherded her, drunk as a lady, back to her car and driven her ‘ome . . . He was a professional cockney.