Coffin's Ghost

by Gwendoline Butler

  Now you could easily smuggle such a gun in from the continent.

  It was a daisy of a gun, light, easily stripped down in seconds and the parts chucked into the River Thames running so obligingly through the Second City.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘He knows what he’s doing, our chap. May have ditched the gun already.’

  ‘No,’ said Archie Young slowly. ‘I reckon he’s still got it. He likes this gun, he’s used it three times at least . . .’ He paused.

  ‘And he may have another use for it,’ Coffin finished for him. ‘Yes,’ said Archie Young. ‘He’s on the boil. I reckon he plans to use it again.’

  ‘I hope it’s for his own head then,’ said Coffin savagely.

  Archie Young drove them both back to Central Headquarters through the late-afternoon traffic. Mimsie Marker saw them drive past and gave them a wave.

  It’s an ill wind, and events in the Second City were selling her papers well.

  Coffin remembered another worry: ‘Anything new about the Gilchrist girl?’

  ‘No, not that I’ve heard. But I do know that Edith Lodge is of the opinion the girl will turn up. She is usually right.’

  Inspector Lodge was head of the unit that dealt with missing teenagers and runaways. Experience had suggested that the Gilchrist girl would come home. She did not regard the case as urgent or high priority.

  ‘I hope she comes back in one piece.’

  Archie Young looked at the Chief Commander but decided not to say anything. They drove along in silence. He did speak in the end.

  ‘You don’t like Gilchrist.’ It was a statement more than a question.

  ‘He’s preferable to Freedom. But what do you make of a stepfather who can’t be sure how old his daughter is? What’s the girl running away from? Perhaps she knows what she is doing.’

  ‘Abuse, you think?’

  ‘Well, Gilchrist never made a direct report of her being missing. Told my wife he was anxious and saw to it that she told me. Kind of back-handed.’

  Archie Young was not enjoying this conversation. His own fourteen-year-old daughter had left her home and he had not told his colleagues. Nor reported her missing.

  And why not?

  For precisely the reasons that must have held Gilchrist back: what people would say. His girl had come home soon enough, and yes, there had been some trouble behind it: she had had a drug problem. He had managed to keep it hidden, she had taken treatment, come to her senses, as he put it to himself, and all was well. He hoped.

  ‘It’s always there in the background of your mind, isn’t it, when a girl runs off?’

  Young played a prevaricating card: ‘I think Phoebe Astley has been in touch with Edith Lodge.’

  He knew that Astley had been asked to take action on the disappearing girl, and that, this not being her speciality, she had gratefully handed it over to the right person. It was true enough, as the Chief Commander was suggesting, that the case of the missing girl had not been taken seriously and had been handed from person to person.

  ‘Edith Lodge is good and conscientious.’

  ‘I think I’d like to see her myself.’

  Young parked the car not far from the block in which Inspector Lodge had her office. He recognized her car, they knew each other well, she had been at school with his wife, which relationship had enabled them to know they liked each other but precluded them from doing anything about it. Her red Metro told him she was there still.

  ‘Shall I come with you, sir?’

  Coffin looked at him as if he had not noticed he was there, a trick that had appeared lately and which annoyed Young, although he knew it meant nothing.

  Edith was packing up to go home as they came in. She looked pleased to see Archie but surprised to see the Chief Commander.

  ‘Afternoon, sir.’

  Coffin looked at the papers she was gathering together. ‘You’re off to give a talk?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I go out once a month to a different school to talk about what help I can give a runaway. I give telephone numbers, explain what will happen if they call. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Gets results, does it?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘So what about the Gilchrist girl?’

  ‘She hasn’t been gone very long,’ said Inspector Lodge. ‘I think she will be back. I have seen Mr Gilchrist and I think it’s one of those family situations. The girl will come back if and when it is resolved.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Gilchrist told you what the situation was?’

  ‘She’s clearly an attractive girl, that comes into it,’ said the inspector obliquely.

  ‘I hope you’re not hinting what I think you are hinting?’

  A thoughtful pause. ‘Not Mr Gilchrist, I wouldn’t say. But someone within the family circle. She is probably just giving herself freedom, that’s how I see it.’

  ‘Bloody freedom,’ said Coffin, half aloud.

  ‘Sometimes it is wiser for me not to probe too deeply. I don’t know the girl, I have seen her photograph, she is clearly disturbed. But I think this girl will be back.’ She consulted her notes. ‘She was last seen by friends six weeks ago, on the thirtieth of last month. She has not been in touch with her mother or friends, but she has been withdrawing money from her bank account . . .’ She looked up from her notes. ‘No money problem. Another reason for thinking she’ll be back.’

  ‘Good,’ said Coffin, without conviction.

  ‘She’s training to be an actress, don’t forget.’

  Coffin managed a smile.

  Coffin was tired, it had been a long and draining day but there was still work to be done, reading reports, signing them, and dictating a letter or two into his machine.

  At intervals, he thought he was hungry but he pushed hunger away. He was conscious of drinking a cup of coffee that his secretary Sheila Heslop brought in. It was lukewarm by the time he got it down.

  He was interrupted by a telephone call for him from the hospital. By this time, the officer sitting by the bedside was PC Terry Dane.

  ‘Mr Touchey has surfaced a bit, sir. No, sir, can’t say more. He spoke a few words . . . couldn’t make them out, sir. Doctor was with him, he couldn’t grasp what he was saying. But he says it’s a good sign.’

  ‘Thank goodness. Thank you. Keep on listening.’

  He rang Stella, who was in her theatre office. ‘Albie has come round and spoken . . . No, just a mutter that no one could understand. I’m going to the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll join you there,’ said Stella at once.

  Coffin was there before she was, sitting by Albie’s bed.

  ‘What a day.’ He reached out for Stella’s hand. ‘I am still thinking about that cat.’

  ‘I’m sorry it was my fault he got in.’

  ‘He – whoever he is – would have got in somehow. Don’t worry . . . I have upped security and had the locks changed. Perhaps we should buy a bigger dog.’

  ‘Gus wasn’t there, he was with me.’

  ‘Just as well, it might have been his head on the stairs.’

  ‘Head,’ came a mutter from the bed.

  Coffin swung round. ‘Albie . . . you’re with us again.’

  ‘Head . . .’

  ‘Yes, you got a bash on it.’

  Albie closed his eyes.

  ‘They miss you at your place of work . . .’ It seemed right to talk about prison here in the hospital. Albie was sorely missed although his two assistants did good work.

  Nurses no longer rustle in starched skirts nor do doctors necessarily wear a white coat, but when they move together, they make an impression.

  Stella went to stand beside her husband. Coffin was too intent on reading Albie’s face to turn towards the doctor.

  ‘Albie, what did you say?’

  ‘Mr Coffin –’ began the doctor.

  Coffin waved him quiet. He leaned forward to put his face near to Albie’s. ‘Come on, Albie, say it again.’

  Albie opened his mouth and a
dry kind of mutter came out of it.

  Coffin listened. ‘Thanks, I heard. Freedom, he said, Freedom.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t killed him,’ said the doctor, pushing the Chief Commander aside.

  ‘No, not Albie. He’ll live forever.’

  As he left with Stella, he reminded himself that Freedom could be a concept as well as a man’s name.

  9

  Tony Davley soon located Mr Copley, he was where he almost always was, sitting against a radiator in the City Library, reading a newspaper. A slender, grey man just going bald, he wore his very thick spectacles with panache, as if they were a decoration, taking them off and putting them on with a flourish. But Tony could tell from the way he held the newspaper right up to his nose, assisting himself with a magnifying glass on a ribbon, that anything more than a few inches away from his nose was a blur.

  As a witness, he would be hopeless. But he might, all the same, be a pretty good informant.

  Since he spent most of his day with the newspapers, both local and national, and the evenings almost attached to his television set, he was remarkably well-informed. He knew at once what was behind the query.

  ‘It’s this business of the legs and arms in Barrow Street, isn’t it? And then the girl shot dead in the car park and then poor old Albie.’

  He’d only missed out the poor cat. ‘Quite a list you’ve got there,’ said Tony. ‘What makes you think they are connected?’

  ‘Me and my mates at the Wellington Arms. We’ve talked it over. Connected with Drossers, somehow. Drossers Market is the real sink in the Second City.’ He sounded interested and excited at the thought. ‘Don’t go there myself, of course.’

  Tony nodded. She knew all about Drossers Market.

  ‘Besides, one of your lot, drinks in the Wellington and he lets things slip. Radley something.’

  ‘Bloody Radley,’ Tony thought. She knew him too and disliked him. Tony considered going into the question of the talkative policeman but decided against it for now. It could be gone into later and the wrong sort of question would cause Mr Copley to dry up. ‘Protect a mate’ was certainly written into his cortex from whence it gave out behaviour instructions.

  ‘So what can you tell me about the man who handed over the bag?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was Miss Pinero’s bag, then, of course,’ he said conversationally. ‘I soon heard though.’

  ‘You soon heard?’

  ‘She’s a famous lady, I could hear the girls that work here going on about it.’ He nodded towards the desks. ‘They don’t half talk, I listen on purpose when I can. Can’t always catch what they say.’

  ‘And the man who gave you the bag, would you know the voice again? No? Anything that struck you about it, anything you noticed?’

  ‘It must be important, that bag,’ said Mr Copley with a shrewd look in those short-sighted eyes.

  Tony nodded. ‘So what about the man’s voice?’

  ‘It could have been a deep, husky, woman’s voice.’ Copley was provokingly thoughtful. ‘But no, I don’t think it was.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tony. ‘Anything else that it was as opposed to what it wasn’t?’

  ‘Temper, temper now, missy. You’re just like my granddaughter. Grandpa, she’s always saying, get on with it.’

  Tony felt instant sympathy for the unknown young woman.

  ‘He only said a few words like, “Found this bag in the hall. Hand it in for me, will you? I’m in a hurry.” ’ He thought about it. ‘A nice voice, though. Educated.’

  That’s something, thought Tony. Knocks out about half the population of the Second City. Or more.

  Copley was still considering the voice. ‘But I tell you what: underneath he was local. Yes, he came from round here, a Docklands special.’

  The library was now closing for the day, so he detached himself from his cosy seat, accepted a lift from Tony Davley and went home to his flat behind the tube station.

  DS Tony Davley reported back to Phoebe Astley who telephoned the information to John Coffin who was now back at his desk, trying to catch up with the neglected letters and files of papers.

  ‘Not a lot of help, sir,’ said Phoebe Astley, who was also working late. She had promised to look in to the Serena Seddon Refuge that evening, where anxieties had not subsided, and where Etta Duval was grieved.

  ‘No, but Albie became conscious and spoke one word: Freedom. That could be George Freedom. He may have recognized him as his attacker.’ And therefore probably the killer of Etta and the depositer of the limbs on the doorstep of the refuge.

  Not to mention the man who seemed to have a grievance against the Chief Commander.

  Grievance, Coffin said to himself. Grudge is more like it. What have I ever done to George Freedom?

  Once failed to find amusing a comedy he had financed in the Sarah Siddons theatre off Piccadilly. Me and several thousand others, Coffin reminded himself, his part being perhaps more noticeable in that he had been sitting next to Freedom at the time.

  Answer came there none.

  ‘What have you got on Freedom?’

  ‘Nothing much that you don’t know about. He was in trouble over a so-called accident, nearly killed a girl, she’s still having treatment, he did serve a short sentence.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Coffin irritably.

  ‘He’s a man who has accidents, hit a man with his car, that was an accident. And before that his current wife nearly lost an eye. All accidents. Now his stepdaughter is missing.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘Then you know that she’s also the stepdaughter of Robbie Gilchrist.’

  ‘It’s a complicated relationship,’ said Coffin. But not unknown in theatrical circles.

  Phoebe ran over it. ‘Her mother, the lady of the damaged eye, is a kind of serial wife. The girl is fond of Gilchrist, less so of Freedom, I’m told. Her real father is off the scene.’

  Coffin knew that too. ‘He’s in Hollywood,’ he said. ‘He makes monsters.’

  Even Phoebe was silenced. She liked a good horror movie. ‘Like Godzilla?’

  ‘No, more like Frankenstein’s Monster and Jack the Ripper . . . And Jekyll and Hyde. He does the faces.’

  What a family. Blood for breakfast, it would be.

  ‘Anything else?’ Coffin asked while she considered this.

  ‘He’s not completely clear on anything but he always steps out of the shit. He certainly knows Albie, and probably doesn’t like him. I’d say that was mutual.’

  ‘I think he may be our killer.’

  You want him to be, thought Phoebe.

  ‘See what you can find, where he was on the days and times in question. Does he have a gun? Did he know Duval? See what you can get. But try not to let him know. He’s a clever devil.’ And Coffin had a last thought: ‘Check who his lawyer is, it is going to be worth knowing.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ Definitely not the sort of conversation in which to call the Chief Commander by his Christian name, even although she had done once. In the past in which they were both younger. And he was less fierce; he was very fierce at the moment.

  I hate this business as much as he does, but it isn’t making me fierce. That’s the difference between men and women for you: they are aggressive animals.

  Coffin hadn’t finished. ‘And while you’re at it, check on Gilchrist as well.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘We’ll need extra help, sir.’ Certainly sir, this time. ‘We’re stretched now.’

  Her unit was looking for the head and torso of the limbs deposited in Barrow Street, they were checking on all known contacts of Henriette Duval, and they might even be looking for a headless black and white cat.

  Etta had moved around a lot. Phoebe had the latest report beneath her hand now. After leaving the Serena Seddon Refuge she had gone to live in a street near to the tube station where she had a room. She took a job in a dress shop near by, then when it closed down, she went to
work in a coffee shop, managing it. At this time, it seemed she was running an affair with one Joseph Abraham, and it was apparently for him that she had stayed in the Second City.

  That relationship apparently ended because she took to working in a restaurant near the tube. Here she had another boyfriend. Only known by his nickname of Big Boy.

  Note: informant for most of this is Mimsie Marker.

  ‘I guess you’ve seen the report on the Duval girl?’ Very quickly, she added, ‘sir’. Not because she wanted to be servile but because the Chief Commander was touchy today. And who wouldn’t be with what had been happening to him and around him from the first bloodstained message and initials J.C. in Barrow Street down to the cat’s head.

  And I like cats, she said to herself, and so does he.

  Coffin agreed he had seen the report. ‘Wants more detail, Phoebe. There must be some indication of what or whom she was frightened of.’

  ‘Got to be a man.’

  ‘Yes, Phoebe, but what we want is his face, his name, his whereabouts.’

  ‘We are working on it, sir, that’s why I said we were stretched.’

  She paused, then added:

  ‘There is something else: it may be nothing. One of the uniformed lads has a father who lives in Blenheim Street, it’s not far from Barrow Street. He’s been away; when he got back everything in the garden looked as normal, but his terrier keeps wanting to dig up the potato patch . . . He told his son.’

  ‘Dig it up.’

  ‘Just on chance?’

  ‘All right, you’re stretched. Get the chief superintendent to find the men for you.’ He and Archie Young had worked together so often that they trusted each other to do what was required. It worked both ways, they helped each other out. ‘Get the potato patch dug up and’ – he put the emphasis here – ‘check on Freedom and Gilchrist.’

  Coffin put the telephone down. Time to get: home. He could be in trouble. Freedom and Gilchrist, eh?

  Stella will kill me if I put ‘em both away.

  She was home, looking at the staircase from which an area of carpet had been cut.