Coffin's Ghost

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘He’s an important man.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The attack on him was meant for me.’

  ‘He may have something to tell you on that when he comes round,’ said Fairlie in a soothing voice.

  ‘I wish it was me there.’

  Stella, selfishly – I’ll put the show on at Christmas whatever happens – did not. She held on to her husband’s arm.

  At this point, cautiously but interestingly sure of herself, the nurse said: ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but Mr Touchey’s brother is outside and wants to see him.’

  Coffin said suddenly: ‘He hasn’t got a brother. No one, he’s alone.’

  ‘A journalist,’ said the knowledgeable Stella.

  ‘Stay here.’ And Coffin walked towards the door of the ward. He stepped into the corridor.

  A couple of nurses walking together, talking. A male nurse pushing a wheelchair, empty. A man with a trolley piled with what looked like bedpans.

  Further down the corridor, in an alcove, protected from the light from the window, was a tall thin man with a big black hat that seemed too big for him.

  Coffin moved forward. ‘Hi, there!’ But the man was faster, he turned, and ran down the corridor and out of the swing doors.

  Coffin pulled out his mobile phone. Thank God for this, he thought.

  Not that they’d get the man with all the description he had been able to give them. He had a fleeting vision of his force arresting all the men in the Second City unlucky enough to be wearing black hats. Or any hats, for that matter.

  Back at the bedside he said to the man on duty: ‘Stay with Mr Touchey all the time.’ He could feel medical protests rising up at this but he put out his hand, brushing them aside. ‘And if he says anything, anything at all, let me know at once.’

  Coffin drove Stella back to the theatre where she had a meeting with Georgie Freedom and Robbie Gilchrist.

  ‘Don’t let them beat you up,’ he advised Stella as she got out of the car.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

  Neither did he, except a vague warning. ‘I don’t know either, but they both look hungry men to me.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  He then drove on to his headquarters where an incident room had been set up to deal with the Barrow Street body. Or the bits of it.

  Presumably by now, another incident room was dealing with the attack on Albert Touchey.

  Over the years since he had arrived, Coffin had managed to get sufficient high-class equipment – computers, telephones, faxes and printers – to make for heightened efficiency. He remembered the primitive conditions which had prevailed when he had been a young detective and contrasted it with what he saw now.

  But the past would not be put down. It had a voice, his own voice: we did good work, though, in the old days; it’s hard work, intelligence and cooperation that counts.

  He stood for a moment outside the glass swing door through which he could see Phoebe Astley talking to a slim young woman whose face he knew and about whom Phoebe had been talking. DS Tony Davley, an up-and-coming officer, one to watch, a future star. Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Cambridge, father a judge. Or was it the mother who was the High Court judge?

  Yes, truly one to keep an eye on for more than one reason, she was remarkably handsome in a well-bred English way, which, as it often did, had that hint of something warmer underneath.

  In one corner of the room, a woman detective was tapping information into a computer. In another a young man, jacket off, was talking into a telephone and making notes. A door in the opposite wall swung open at intervals to let in messengers whose function seemed to be to deposit papers on a central table.

  It was near this table that Phoebe and Tony stood, arms akimbo.

  Phoebe seemed to be doing most of the talking.

  ‘So, it’s not two cases but one.’

  ‘I always did think that, didn’t you?’

  Two shootings so close together? Yes, it looked as though there was a connection . . . May not be two cases into one, though.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  Phoebe left this question of semantics. ‘Think a bit deeper.’

  ‘I see what you are getting at, and the thought did come to me. Maybe not two into one but three into one. It’s all one case with one killer.’ She paused. ‘I’m still trying to think it out.’

  ‘It’s like a bit of knitting, you think it’s a muddle, all tangled up, then you see what you’ve got is in fact the pattern.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve quite got the pattern yet,’ said Tony humbly.

  She had seen the Chief Commander push through the door and humbleness seemed a wise precaution.

  Phoebe went forward. ‘How is Mr Touchey, sir?’

  Coffin did not ask how she knew where he had been because he was aware that all his movements were known.

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘He’s going to come through, isn’t he, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so. The doctors say so as much as they allow themselves to say anything. I wish he could talk, but he can’t as yet . . . he’s not in this world at the moment. But we need something.’

  Phoebe Astley looked at Tony. ‘We’ve got something. You may be surprised. I don’t know. I wasn’t altogether. Puzzled, yes . . .’

  ‘Come on, out with it . . . It’s the bullet, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ve guessed.’

  ‘Not difficult, couldn’t be anything else. Not at this stage of the game . . . It’s the same gun that killed Henriette Duval.’

  She leaned forward. ‘He was after you, sir.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘It has to be so. Outside where you live . . . he thought it was you.’

  It echoed in his brain: it’s you he’s after.

  Well, plenty of people had been after him in the past. Maybe one would catch up with him.

  Albie may say something. If the poor sod ever speaks again.

  Stella was enjoying her meeting with George Freedom and Robbie Gilchrist this morning, she had the feeling that money was in the air. Or flowing into her pocket.

  – Keep ‘em talking, her moneywise sister-in-law, Letty Bingham (Laetitia had had several surnames but had chosen to stay with this one) always said. You get more money out of a man when he thinks he is being clever.

  Stella poured out coffee and added whisky with a lavish hand and laughed happily at all Freedom’s jokes.

  You didn’t have to give much of a laugh when Georgie cracked his jokes, but something he expected: it was his due.

  ‘Bad about Albie,’ volunteered Robbie. ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  Is he going to live? he meant. Not will he be able to walk, speak, think. To Stella all those seemed doubtful.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Have to hope. He asked me if I would put on a show at the prison at Christmas. I’ll do it come what may.’

  ‘One of three: the limbs in Barrow Street –’ began Robbie.

  ‘No, no,’ said Freedom. ‘Can’t be connected. Who says so?’

  Robbie went on: ‘The shooting dead of the girl in the car park and now Albie. The way the girl was killed, that makes him a good shot.’

  ‘Not such a good shot,’ protested Freedom. ‘He missed Albie.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot you knew about shooting. Belong to a club, don’t you?’

  Freedom picked up his coffee cup and held it out to Stella. ‘Drop more, please, ma’am . . . I don’t shoot seriously.’

  ‘Not any more?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Haven’t I seen a silver cup and platter in your library?’

  Stella gave a pleading look at Robbie while offering him some more whisky.

  ‘All right. Joke over. You are an ex-gunman . . . Mind you, George, wouldn’t this make a good film . . . no, correct me, a good TV three-parter. Limbs first and end first part with the shot girl, second part find the attack on Albie, third par
t find the rest of the body and solution.’

  ‘Sounds easy,’ said Stella.

  Robbie grinned. ‘As I am writing it, it is easy. Not for your husband, I daresay.’

  ‘No. Never is. He’s hoping Albie may remember something. Say something when he comes round.’

  ‘I know how he feels,’ said Robbie with feeling. ‘I wish my missing stepdaughter would get on the blower and tell us where she is.’

  ‘She will when she wants,’ said George Freedom. ‘You fuss. Kids these days like their freedom.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ It was Robbie’s turn to look to Stella for help.

  Stella moved the conversation deftly on to what she wanted for the theatre. As she did so she had the uneasy thought that in all the anxiety about Albie there was something she had forgotten to do.

  Or wasn’t someone going to remind her about something?

  Dave, sitting in the car and feeling cold, said: ‘It’s your fault. You were supposed to remind her.’

  There they were outside the St Luke’s Tower, home to Coffin and Stella. It was cleaning day, an extra built in because Stella thought the windows needed cleaning.

  ‘No, it was you.’

  Dave smiled. ‘I must be getting old.’

  ‘Not you, me old mate, ageless, you are.’

  ‘OK, so I forgot to tell the lady to be there to let us in. Why can’t we have keys?’

  ‘Security, security.’

  ‘On which point, the security guard is giving us a dirty look.’ Dave started the car. ‘Let’s go and have a cuppa at the café and you can telephone and ask Miss Pinero to come round. And before you say anything, you can phone because she likes you better and you are the boss. I just work for you, I’m the hired help.’

  They sat drinking coffee in the plain white mugs which the Stormy Weather café produced. The large woman who ran the place mopped at the sweat on her face – she was busy frying sausage and chips for a table of workmen across the way. She was over-fat, what had once been a handsome, if not pretty, face embedded in too much flesh. She wore her hair puffed up round her face. She worked politely and with efficiency but she did not meet your eye readily.

  Arthur found her intimidating but Dave seemed fond of her. Of course, she was his landlady and he had already guessed from what he knew of Dave that he was usually behind with his rent.

  ‘Flo seems to be doing everything,’ said Arthur, finishing his coffee. ‘What’s happened to that greasy cook that was here?’ He had only caught a glimpse of the lady but had not cared for what he saw: unhealthy somehow, not what you wanted close to food.

  ‘Around somewhere,’ said Dave. ‘But I don’t ask Flo.’

  ‘You keep on good terms with that one,’ Arthur said as he got up.

  ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘Thought she was called Jo.’

  ‘Only on Mondays,’ said Dave placidly. ‘Today’s Wednesday.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Arthur, going to the phone.

  Dave waited, finishing his coffee while Arthur telephoned. Doesn’t know he’s born, that lad, he thought.

  Arthur came back. ‘She says to drive round, she’ll give us the keys and we can get in and she will arrive as soon as she gets the present talking over. Dunno what she means by that, but off we go.’

  ‘You go. I’ll finish my coffee first and wait here.’

  ‘I don’t know why I let you get away with things.’

  ‘Because I’m a magician,’ said Dave, still placid.

  Arthur went off and was soon back.

  He threw the keys on the table so that Dave could pick them up.

  ‘She didn’t sound cross, although she’d had the right to be . . .’ Arthur frowned. ‘I don’t want to lose this job, it’s a good one, and apart from that, she hires actors.’

  ‘I knew she would hand over the keys,’ said Dave placidly. ‘Worth the gamble.’

  Arthur led the way to the car. ‘Well then, let’s go and have this party.’

  When they got there, Dave leapt out. ‘Get the cleaner out. I’ll make a start.’

  Arthur took a look behind him into the back of the van. ‘The mess you’ve made in there, I’ll have to dig it out. What were you doing, burying it?’

  ‘Just looking for something.’

  Dave was already getting the front door open.

  Arthur yelled out. ‘Be careful, don’t set off the burglar alarm.’

  He saw Dave hesitate at the door, take a step inside, then draw back. He shouted: ‘Sounds like it’s already sounding . . .’

  Arthur couldn’t hear anything, so with a shrug and a curse, he went to try to extricate the cleaner. If Dave had buried it on purpose he couldn’t have done a better job.

  He was dragging it free when he heard a shot. ‘Dave? Dave, you all right?’

  Silence.

  He found himself running towards the tower. He was trying to run fast, but it seemed to him he was going slowly, slowly. As in a nightmare.

  ‘Dave, Dave?’ Breathless, he paused on the threshold of the tower. He heard a voice calling him from up the staircase. So the man was alive, anyway.

  Straight ahead he could see the big window which Stella had created, from where he stood it looked as though a great pane of glass was broken.

  Dave came running down the stairs. ‘I was looking for him but I think he got out through the window.’

  ‘Someone smashed it, did a good job.’ Arthur had come into the hall and was surveying the window with incredulous eyes. ‘How did he do it?’

  Dave pushed him. ‘I don’t know, do I? Probably had a hammer on him. Or used the gun . . . Come on, I’m going after him.’

  Muttering something about the police, Arthur was also saying to himself: Who’s he? Did you see him? ‘I’ll look inside.’

  But suddenly there was the police presence. A young constable had stopped Dave. ‘What’s all this, sir?’

  ‘If you were protecting the tower you haven’t done a very good job,’ said an angry Dave. ‘A man broke in. Did you see him? Did he go past you?’ Dave was spluttering.

  ‘Calm down, sir.’

  ‘We’ve lost him now,’ said Dave, slapping his side with anger. ‘The tower broken into, me shot at, and the man away because you were slacking.’

  PC Vallent was about to defend himself strongly on the grounds that he had been round the other side of the tower, patrolling as requested, nay ordered, by his sergeant, but he decided that attack (except with a sergeant) was better than defence. ‘Are you sure you saw a man, sir?’

  Dave opened his mouth in fury when Arthur shouted:

  ‘Come, come quick, there’s something wrong inside here.’

  Nasty wrong.

  8

  On the first rising step of the staircase lay something small.

  It was the head of a cat. A black and white cat. Underneath it was a sheet of paper with letters cut out of a newspaper.

  SO YOU WANTED A HEAD?

  Coffin, summoned from his office, swore under his breath.

  ‘Does anyone know whose cat it was?’

  Phoebe Astley shook her head. ‘A stray, I expect. Plenty of them around in the Second City.’

  She stepped back to let the photographer continue taking the picture of the poor little head.

  She turned to Stella who had arrived to collect her keys in time for the drama. ‘Not your cat, anyway.’

  ‘We haven’t got one at the moment.’ Stella looked sick. ‘What a terrible, loathsome thing to do. Poor little creature.’

  ‘I hope it was dead when the head was cut off.’

  Stella moved away. ‘I don’t suppose you do a postmortem on a poor old mongrel cat. No, of course not. Why did I ask?’ She was getting rid of her pain with a dose of anger.

  ‘I expect we could get a vet to take a look,’ said Phoebe doubtfully.

  ‘I’ll pay the bill.’

  Coffin came up to Stella, put his arm round her. ‘It was a lousy thing to do. Thank goodness you had the dog with y
ou.’

  ‘I can’t even get into my own home,’ wailed Stella.

  ‘No, the forensic and scene-of-the-crime people must go over it all.’ He looked towards the van where Arthur and Dave were sitting, uncomfortable but forbidden to leave until they had made a first statement with the promise of another to come to be signed later. ‘They will clean up for you afterwards. You go off to Max’s, order lunch and I will join you when I can.’

  ‘You will come?’ He was famed for making a promise to arrive and then failing to turn up. Police business was tricky and unpredictable was his excuse.

  ‘Sure. Have you got the dog with you?’

  Stella nodded. ‘Not actually with me. I left him behind in my office, but he will be safe.’

  ‘I am thinking of you, not him,’ said Coffin. ‘He’s not a bad protector.’

  Of course, he had to see this second attack on his house as a clear threat.

  ‘He’s got teeth,’ agreed Stella dolefully. ‘I suppose he would defend me.’ He had in the past. She kissed her husband on the cheek in a neutral kind of way and went to her car, passing Dave and Arthur on the way.

  ‘You can come and clean up after this.’

  ‘Sure. We will be there,’ said Arthur.

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t get hurt, Dave.’

  ‘Oh, no question of it, Miss Pinero.’ Dave nodded his head sagely. ‘Not after me, I don’t think . . . he made off as soon as he saw me.’

  After me or my husband, thought Stella. And all part of this horrible sequence of events starting in Barrow Street.

  ‘Are we stuck here, Miss Pinero?’ asked Arthur; he was the paymaster. ‘We have another job to go to.’

  ‘You’ll be told when you can go, when the forensics and the photography are done,’ said Stella. ‘Not too long, I shouldn’t think.’ She gave them a sympathetic wave as she drove off.

  ‘What’s all this forensic stuff they do?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘Oh, body traces and suchlike in the house. Fingerprints. They will want mine, I daresay, as I went in.’

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  ‘Can’t remember. Must have done. It’s all a bit of a daze now. I told them that.’

  ‘Wonder how he got in?’