Coffin's Game
Page 16
He thought about the Production Room in the basement of his own police building, the room in which were stored all the artefacts which had had a place in crime: a blood-stained jersey, a six-pack of Coca Cola, and rows of radios and clocks. Each item, neatly packaged in a plastic bag, labelled and recorded in a register, lay on the steel racks which rose to the ceiling.
The copies of The Stage that had covered Pip Eton would be there, stored away in safety, like the clothes from Francesco di Rimini. Unless Phoebe had kept out those newspapers which had Stella’s fingerprints on them.
Unlucky Stella, he must get her out of this trouble, although at the moment he was unsure how to do it. It would come though, because it had to. A bell was ringing faintly in his mind, which was a good sign because a physical symptom often accompanied a genuine idea, he had noticed.
He had found that he got ideas from a study of the objects which had figured in a crime. Somehow the mind was acted upon by the touch of a piece of cloth, a leather bag, a dried bloodstain on a shirt. It was as if you had been there yourself at the scene of the crime. He never expressed this idea to his colleagues, who would have found it fanciful.
But he knew what he had to do first: go to see Maisie and ask her a few sharp questions about the clothes she was supposed to have given to a charity shop but which had turned up under Stella’s bed in the flat. ‘Maisie as a priority, then the Production Room.’
The clothes themselves would end up in their plastic bag on one of those steel racks in due course, no doubt. The whole room was a bit like the property room in the theatre, only here all the plays were over. Dead and done with.
Before setting out, he rescued Augustus from his hiding place under Paul Masters’ desk, put on his leash and walked him to the car. ‘Sorry to see him go,’ Paul said, watching them. ‘I like the little chap, and I think he’s beginning to like me.’
Augustus obligingly wagged his tail, although Coffin knew well that this meant nothing more than a general pleasure in being a dog.
Coffin appreciated the company of Augustus because he could talk to him and get no answer back, and he enjoyed this in a world which so often returned a reply he did not want.
‘Get in the car, boy. You’re coming with me on a visit. We won’t be taking Stella, and yes, that is where she sits, and you won’t be getting out of the car.’
Augustus settled down on the front seat. He was too short to see out of the window, but he liked the motion of the car. He was aware of Coffin’s voice droning on in his ear, but he paid no attention since none of the magic signals like walk or food were coming through.
Traffic was heavy as the evening dark drew on. It was getting dark earlier now, summer was over, autumn well advanced, you could feel the distant march of winter.
He spoke to Stella on his car phone. ‘I’m on my way to speak to Maisie. She may be home by now.’ She had better be there. ‘How are you?’
‘Better for the afternoon with you. But busy. Letty is in control, more or less. She’s marvellous with money.’
‘As we know.’
‘As we know. Letty is cross but working fast; Jane is trying to make me build up her character, which I won’t do, it would throw the play out, and Fanny is being sweet. Alice has migraine and is away. Everything pretty much as usual.’
She did indeed sound happy. It was wonderful the way she bounced back. Theatricals had to, probably, with such an up-and-down life.
There was one more call to make. ‘Archie? How’s the riot?’
‘A load of nonsense.’ The Chief Superintendent was tired and irritated. ‘Someone just wanted some publicity. Got it, too. We shall all be on the TV news.’
‘I want you to go to Linton House in Fish Alley. It’s off Arrow Street.’
‘I know where Fish Alley is.’
‘Flat on the second floor. I think it may be where Pip Eton was killed. I have sent Astley there, but it’s for you, too.’
Archie Young grunted a reply. ‘We have the Ferguson and Giner Eccles fraud tidied up. Two arrests; the courts may muck it up, but we’ve done our bit.’ The Chief Superintendent had not been involved in the riot at the docks, that had been handled by the uniformed branch, B unit, and CD (Crowd Control and Disperse) unit in particular, but he had his own problems of which this big fraud case was one. The di Rimini and Pip Eton murders were just another case, even if an interesting one.
‘I hear there’s a floater turned up by the Great Harry Dock,’ he said. ‘But the word is that it’s a suicide, so not one for us. Right, I’ll get down to Fish Alley, but Astley’s efficient, she’ll have it all organized.’
‘I want your eye on it.’
‘Right, right.’ Young was well up on the saga of Stella Pinero, as indeed were all his colleagues. As one wag had said, you’d have to be living up a tree in Greenwich Park with the birds not to know. Stella was admired and liked, but was also the subject of intense speculation and gossip.
‘The place belongs to my wife, long lease, dates back to the days before St Luke’s. Keep it as quiet as you can.’
Young said, ‘Right, right,’ again. He hung on to his telephone until Coffin broke the link. Bugger all, he thought, he deserves better.
Chapter 12
Coffin had driven to where Maisie lived. He was studying the house with some interest. This time round he wanted to see what Maisie had made of the place. You could tell a lot about a person from what they did to their home, and he needed to understand Maisie. He could see that she cared for the place, the paintwork on the door and on the window frames was red and white, and looked to be new. Or if not new then washed recently. The curtains on upper and lower windows hung crisp and fresh. Yes, Maisie was a good housekeeper. He hadn’t taken that in last time, now he did.
The house also looked mildly prosperous. How much did dressers earn? Not a great deal, he imagined. Possibly Maisie had other resources. It was worth thinking about. In Coffin’s sad experience money was always worth thinking about. The most unlikely people had their little secrets here. In his own family, his sister Letty probably had more than one secret and not so little either. He had none, partly as a matter of professional ethics, but also because he had never had any money to speak of. He did not despise money-makers like his half-sister Letty, but it was not his style. Or luck, he might have said. He did not despise money-makers, he just was not one.
He walked slowly down the narrow garden path, pausing to study the door with its brass knocker and brass bell. The trace of blood was still there, by the door bell. Coffin rang the bell.
No answer.
He waited, then rang again. He could hear the bell ringing in the hall, but no one came. So he tried the knocker; experience had taught him that householders often came to a hearty series of knocks because the neighbours could hear it.
He knocked several times more, then drew back to look at the house.
All right, Maisie was out. She might be at the theatre, but Stella wasn’t performing, so it was not one of her nights and Stella had not been able to find her there. As always now when the image of Stella appeared, he felt anguish. Since she had come back into his life, he had known great joy, but he seemed to have become sensitized to other emotions; happiness, misery, he felt them all more keenly. It was as if being with Stella had peeled a layer of toughness from him.
He shook himself like a dog (had he picked this up from Augustus? – a sardonic underthought) and went back to hammer on the door. If the bloody woman was there, he would flush her out.
This time he rang the bell and banged on the door all at once. It made a satisfying noise but did not produce Maisie.
But the front door of the adjoining house opened and out popped a woman. She stood on her doorstep and demanded to know what was going on. ‘Enough to wake the dead. My husband works nights and he needs his sleep.’
As if to support this, a tousled head appeared at an upstairs window. ‘Bloody noise. Shut it, will you.’ He left his wife to carry on.
Coffin explained mildly that he needed to talk to Maisie. Had she gone away?
‘No, not her, she always gets me to look after the cat when she goes away. Anyway, she’s there. I saw her come back from shopping and go inside.’ The woman marched back to her door.
From above came a shout: ‘Bang again and I’ll get the police in.’
‘I am the police.’
The woman swung round, walked over and stared at him. ‘Yes,’ she said after consideration. ‘You could be, you’ve got the look. Bit old though, aren’t you, to be on street work?’
‘We don’t all get the promotion we should do,’ said Coffin.
‘That’s true enough,’ said the woman. ‘Look at my husband: twenty years in that place and nothing to show for it except a bad back.’
A voice from the window called out: ‘Stop gassing, Ena, and come back in. I want my tea.’
Ena gave a shrug and turned away. ‘Try the door,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Maisie doesn’t always lock it behind her.’
‘And you ought to know, you cow,’ called the irate voice from above before drawing the window down with a bang.
Lovely man, thought Coffin, as he returned to the front door with whose appearance, down to the last scratch on the paint, he now felt thoroughly familiar. Still, who knew what Ena was like to live with?
He hesitated for a minute, then took hold of the brass handle. It turned, the door opened.
Coffin stepped inside. He was careful and had not made much noise but no one shouted, ‘Who’s that?’ at him. He looked around him: a small hall carpeted in red, a door to the left, and another at the end of a short corridor. A staircase rose sharply in front of him. Break your neck on that if you didn’t step carefully, he thought.
‘Maisie, are you there?’
He opened the door on the left, put his head round the door, and stared in to a tidy sitting room with a round table in the window, four upright chairs covered in red velvet and a sofa of the same. There was a television set against the wall.
All ordinary and quiet enough.
Only one odd thing: the television was on, but with the sound turned down. Coffin stared at the mouthing face of a woman with a froth of bright red hair. He thought he knew the face, which was that of the hostess of a chat show. The camera moved to take in the ranks of the audience, some of whom were laughing: the red-haired lady had made a joke.
People did leave the television on with the sound off; he had done it himself if the telephone rang or someone called unexpectedly.
There was a teacup on the little table by the sofa; Coffin touched it: cold.
It was hard to be sure on this carpet, but that looked like a stain by the door, a drop, a blotch. He bent down to touch it, one delicate flick with a forefinger.
Blood.
Perhaps it was already too late to be calling Maisie’s name.
He walked down the corridor to the kitchen, only to find it empty. There was a milk jug by the kettle which still had a trace of warmth in it. Hot not so long ago, he thought.
Moving more quickly, he went up the stairs. The door was open to the bedroom. A chair was turned over and the telephone pulled from the table to the floor, where it lay quietly, no longer making the scream some telephones make when disturbed in their sleep.
He must find out how long it took for a telephone to go quiet after it had been knocked from its hook.
Without realizing he was moving, he found himself standing in the bathroom.
There was blood on the floor, blood in the bath, blood where Maisie lay with her head backed against the wall. Blood on a small bundle of tabby fur.
They needn’t have killed the cat as well, he thought.
He looked down at Maisie’s body, then he knelt for a closer look, being careful not to touch. She had been stabbed in the throat, that was where all the blood had come from. It was all over the bath and over the carpet. There must have been blood on the killer and hence downstairs.
It looked as if Maisie had been stabbed either in the bath or dropped into it, and that she then struggled out and got as far as the window.
It looked, at first glance, as though Maisie had not fought her killer. She was a sturdy, strong woman who could have put up a fight, of which there was no real sign.
Coffin walked down the stairs and out to his car where he used his telephone to call Paul Masters.
‘Paul, get hold of Archie Young. He’s probably in Fish Alley with Phoebe Astley, but he’ll have his mobile on.’ And curse him if he hasn’t. The Chief Superintendent had been known to turn it off. ‘And get him down here. There has been another murder.’
He gave the address and asked for the back-up crews of SOCO and forensics as well as the police surgeon.
‘I will be here.’
He got out of the car, to find Ena and her husband on the pavement waiting for him. They advanced side by side, shoulder to shoulder, towards him. He was surprised to see that Ena was younger than she had seemed, while her husband, now wearing jeans and a white shirt, was not such a rough as he had looked when shouting out of the window.
‘It’s Maisie, isn’t it?’ Ena was fierce. ‘What’s happened? She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘Now, you don’t know that,’ said her husband, putting his arm round her.
‘Shut up, Stan.’ Ena turned her head to get a look as the first police car swung round the end of the road. ‘Something is up, anyway, and I think it’s Maisie.’ She began to march towards Maisie’s house. ‘I’m going in to have a look. Maisie was a friend and I want to know.’
‘Don’t go in,’ said Coffin, putting a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Leave it.’
Ena swung round. ‘She’s been murdered … done in.’ She had tears in her eyes. ‘Poor cow.’
Her husband came up to her and took her by the hand. ‘Come on, love, back into the house.’
‘I want to know.’
‘You’ll know later,’ said Coffin. ‘I shall want to ask you some questions.’ It was amazing what different faces people could put on. A few minutes ago Ena had been aggressive, angry, with a husband who had seemed surly and ill-tempered, but now here was a woman mourning a friend, being comforted by the sympathy of her husband.
What an old fool I am, he thought to himself. I ought to know that by now. Don’t I do it myself, change my face to suit the circumstances?
Two more police vehicles had arrived. From the first, a white van, came the forensic team, and from the second, the tall figure of Archie Young.
Coffin took a pace towards him. ‘You made good time.’
‘Got the message, came straight away. Left Astley doing her stuff in Fish Alley.’ He looked at the Chief Commander with well-contained curiosity, wanting to know how Coffin had found the bloodstained clothes in the flat, and what was to be made of it all. How did it fit with the double murders? He was assuming that the two killings were connected; that was the working assumption of the investigation. Could be wrong. And now there was this new death. And, once again, there was Coffin, discovering it. ‘Another body?’
‘Yes, Maisie Evans. She is, was, dresser to Stella. I came round to ask her about the clothes …’ He stopped talking.
Archie Young waited, before saying: ‘Would I be right in thinking you mean the bloodstained clothes in the flat in Fish Alley? And before we go any further, let me say: the accepted opinion is, yes, Pip Eton was killed there. Fingerprints and traces of old blood that can be matched with his, or we hope it will. Also on the clothes which you mention.’ He was brisk and businesslike; this was a difficult situation for him.
‘Yes, Stella was there with me when I found them. I had got Stella to admit that this was where Pip Eton had held her.’
‘It’s her place, isn’t it? So you told me,’ asked Young, bluntly, his eyes on the front of the house where a stream of police officers was now p
assing in and out.
‘Yes, I know it and you know it. Stella thought it was a kind of secret. She had lived in it once; now …’ he shrugged. Let Archie think what he liked. ‘She let friends use it in a casual kind of way.’
‘Casual,’ nodded Young thoughtfully, stopped by a sharp look from the Chief Commander’s blue eyes.
‘Damn you, Archie. I am speaking to you as a friend.’
‘Hearing it as one,’ said Archie.
‘But you are police as well, I know that. I just don’t want Stella prejudged.’
‘I like to think I am a friend of Stella’s,’ said Young with dignity.
‘Her flat, her clothes, with blood on them. That’s not so good. She told me these were clothes she gave to Maisie to take to a charity shop. I came round here to talk to Maisie myself – and found her dead.’
‘Right. I’ve got the picture.’ And a nasty one it is, thought Archie Young. All this, and her fingerprints on the copies of The Stage, it was beginning to mount up.
Coffin nodded. ‘Whatever you are thinking, so am I. And I’m even more disturbed, you can believe that.’ He moved towards the house. ‘Let’s take a look inside.’
Side by side they moved into the narrow hall. They were both big men, so that there was not much space. Coffin’s shoulder knocked at a picture on the wall which fell to the floor.
Young picked it up, a romanticized picture of a cat family, mother and three kittens. ‘Nice picture. She liked cats.’
‘Yes,’ said Coffin shortly. ‘There’s a cat upstairs in the bathroom with her.’
Young gave him a sharp look.
‘Yes, dead too. The killer was not a cat lover.’
The police surgeon had finished his examination of the body. He stood up, took off his white rubber gloves, and nodded. ‘Stabbed in the throat. Tore into an artery, accounts for all the blood, must have come spurting out.’
‘How long dead?’
‘Not long, matter of hours. Could be less. Rigor only just setting in. She’s hardly cold.’
Coffin nodded. If he had been a bit quicker, then he would have met the killer.
‘Looks as if she was stabbed in the bath, where she may have been pushed, and then managed to stagger to the window.’