Cold Coffin

by Butler, Gwendoline

  So she must have been happy; it was one way of telling.

  A hand touched her shoulder. She swung round. A large young woman, fat really, but pretty, carrying a folder of documents or they might have been photographs; you were always getting photographed or X-rayed in hospitals. Or so it seemed in the sort of films and TV soaps that Stella watched, when she watched. Or acted in.

  ‘Oh, Joanna.’

  ‘Yes, Joanna. You were looking down at your shoes so hard that you didn’t notice an old friend.’

  ‘I was trying to make up my mind about them. Someone said they were kinky.’

  ‘Kinky?’

  Joanna studied what Stella was wearing: the shoes were black patent, shiny, high-heeled, with just a hint of something in the white line that ran round the toe.

  ‘That person was not a friend,’ said Joanna severely. ‘Stella, you could never be called kinky, nor anything you wear. Even by putting them on, those shoes ceased to be kinky.’

  Stella looked at Joanna with caution. She was never sure when Joanna was laughing at her. She probably was doing so now, but never mind, she was glad to see her. If surprised.

  ‘You work here now?’

  ‘In accounts.’

  ‘Oh yes, you always were into figures.’

  They looked at each other and laughed. The two had met in the early days when Stella was working in Greenwich and Joanna Kinnear was taking her final exams in accountancy, and they met again when she had discovered that Joanna was doing the accounts for the private hospital that had attended to Stella’s facial requirements (mention not the words ‘uplift’ and ‘beauty surgery’). And now here she was in a big hospital, wearing a white coat and looking important. She probably was.

  Joanna saw her look. ‘Even hospitals have bills and accounts to keep,’ she said with amusement. ‘In fact, they are big spenders.’

  ‘Why are you wearing a white coat, though?’

  ‘Oh, I just like to look a big shot.’

  Stella accepted the explanation while not believing it. She knew enough about modern hospitals to know that white coats were out of fashion, laundry costs presumably. No, there was more behind it than Joanna was saying, but not for Stella to enquire.

  ‘I’ve lost my husband.’

  ‘Medically, or emotionally?’

  ‘Practically. He came in to see a skull . . . a baby’s skull.’

  ‘Oh, the dead babies’ room.’ A nerve twitched in her cheek, as if it wanted to be scratched. Stella felt she wanted to scratch it for her, but you don’t scratch anyone’s face for them.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what we call it.’ She put out her hand. For a moment, Stella thought she was going to scratch that itch, which was still twitching away, but no, the hand was being offered to her.

  ‘Come, I’ll take you there.’

  Down a long corridor, and then a right turn, and across a courtyard.

  Of course, museums are always in bloody awkward places, thought Stella, picking her way across the uneven paving stones. If she broke an ankle, as seemed likely, at least she was in the right place to get it fixed.

  A uniformed constable stood outside double glass doors, surveying them blankly. He was a new recruit, fresh in the Second City; he thought he might know Stella’s face, which reminded him of a television drama he had watched, as indeed it might, since Stella had performed in it. The other woman he definitely did not know, but in his opinion she was too tall to be a woman, although well built.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Joanna. ‘Trouble. Might have guessed it, since your husband is here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Stella.

  She addressed herself to the constable. ‘I am Mrs Coffin. I want to speak to my husband.’

  The constable’s blank expression did not change. Intensified rather.

  ‘She is,’ said Joanna. ‘I can swear to it.’

  Now there was doubt in his face.

  ‘I’ll be off,’ said Joanna. ‘Give me a ring.’ Over her shoulder, she called. ‘Take my advice: break in.’

  The alarmed young officer advanced towards Stella. She was saved by the door swinging open to let Sergeant Dawlish pass through.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Coffin. Can I help you?’

  ‘Can I see my husband?’

  ‘He’s a bit tied up at the moment.’

  A comment that Stella rightly interpreted as meaning her husband did not want to see anyone, not on the job. Not even her.

  Coffin called, ‘Is that Dr Merchant?’

  When he saw Stella, his face changed.

  ‘You forgot me.’

  ‘No.’ He took a step forward. ‘Don’t come in, love.’

  But she was already level with him at the great swing doors and could see beyond. Her view of the body was blocked by the police photographer busily taking pictures of the dead woman and the place of her death. Although she could not see the face, she could see the shoes and knew it was a woman lying there.

  ‘Who is she?’

  Coffin did not answer.

  ‘That means it’s someone I know.’

  Coffin gave a little shake of his head.

  That didn’t say yes and didn’t say no,’ complained Stella sharply, but inside herself she was saying, By God, yes it did. I know this dead person, dead woman, I know it’s a woman . . . But who is it?

  Ignoring her husband, she pushed past him into the room. ‘Who is this doctor you thought I was?’

  Coffin muttered something about skulls, a paediatrician.

  Stella had taken a pace within the room. She could see the half a dozen or so skulls that had been made into a macabre ring round the dead woman’s head.

  ‘Doctor . . .’ she said scornfully. ‘You don’t need a doctor. I don’t know what this doctor will tell you, but I would have thought you could have seen for yourself.’

  ‘Each of these little creatures was malformed . . . no normal baby has a skull like that.’

  Dr Merchant came strolling up with the ease of one who knows that there is no hurry. All his specimens were dead.

  ‘Mr Coffin, I am sorry if I kept you waiting . . . I had to come across from the university, a committee meeting.’ He looked around him. ‘I am the curator of this little museum, one of my subsidiary jobs. The Jordan Jones Museum, a Victorian doctor and donor. Not much used now, ways have changed, but he left a bit of cash too.’ He gave a half-smile, ‘But I see you managed all right without me.’

  Coffin said tersely, possibly with a touch of grimness, ‘We managed.’

  Merchant advanced to look. ‘Poor soul, poor soul. How was she discovered?’

  Joe had found her in fact and called security, but Phoebe preferred to put it her way. ‘We had arranged to meet here.’ Phoebe Astley was short.

  Merchant looked his question.

  ‘She was helping me with my enquiries.’

  ‘Poor woman, poor woman. And yet, you know, you could almost have predicted a violent death for her. There are some people like that. And if they miss it one way, then they get it another.’

  ‘You know who she is?’

  Dr Merchant almost gave a friendly smile. ‘Of course. There is no more efficient gossip mill than a hospital.’ He added, half thoughtfully, ‘Her husband cuts my hair.’ He ran his hand over his designer trim, layered and shaped. Everyone has his own vanity.

  ‘You know him?’ asked Phoebe Astley.

  ‘He does some private work, out of the Mayfair salon. Just the cut and the styling. Calls himself a man with a knife and a pair of scissors.’ Then he realized what he had said, and added hastily, ‘I’m sure it was a very happy marriage and he will be devastated. Does he know yet?’

  Phoebe did not answer. She had no idea. Somewhere in Spinnergate, no doubt the uniformed men would be dealing with that part, might already have done so.

  ‘He might not be there, of course,’ went on Ken Merchant. ‘He’s away a lot. Demonstrations and photographic sessions.’

  You seem to know a
lot about him, thought Coffin, who had been silently observing the scene and realizing that Phoebe not only knew Dr Merchant, or of him (he’d have to think that one over), but also didn’t like him. Might be worth finding out.

  This view was confirmed when, moving forward to thank Dr Merchant for coming, he gave him the polite dismissal and said that Chief Inspector Astley would be taking his statement. He saw the look of satisfaction flit across Phoebe’s face. What had he done to her?

  ‘Statement?’ No pleasure there, instead surprise and hurt dignity.

  ‘Just routine,’ Phoebe assured him. ‘Anyone who has access to the museum.’ She murmured something about fingerprints with some satisfaction.

  He must have either spumed her or raped her, thought Coffin. He did not usually form such wicked witticisms about a colleague and friend, but even he sometimes had a thought better not expressed that he pressed firmly down, and this one had escaped.

  He realized he was in shock.

  Stella meanwhile had performed the well-known theatrical trick of disappearing while still being there. (She could do the opposite too: not being there but seeming to be present, while really being at the hairdresser’s having a tint.)

  ‘I’ll clear off,’ said Dr Merchant. ‘Leave you to it. I’ll be in my room working, if you want me. I am preparing a lecture for tomorrow. Room 3A in the Bedford teaching block.’

  Thank you,’ said Coffin, his eyes on the group round the body. However often you saw it and however tough you were, there was something final about the journey to the pathologist’s table.

  ‘Ready to move her now,’ said Phoebe Astley.

  Something rolled from the body, out of a pocket in her jacket.

  Golden, round and shining. It was a wedding ring.

  ‘Were the clothes searched?’ Coffin found himself unable to say ‘her’ clothes . . . too personal, better keep it neutral.

  ‘Not really, sir,’ said Dover. ‘A quick search to establish identity . . . The rest will be done by forensics when the clothes come off.’ Subdued hint of reproof here: You know the ropes, sir.

  Coffin knew them. To Phoebe Astley, he said, ‘Keep me up to date.’

  ‘I will, of course.’

  Underneath, they were conducting a different dialogue. Coffin was saying that this was a particularly bloody murder in which he had been named and called in, and he wanted to know why.

  From Phoebe, proving that great minds do not necessarily think alike, came the thought that she was irritated by this and wished he would keep out. She would call him when it was necessary.

  Coffin picked up the irritation as he watched the body removed.

  ‘What about the MO?’ he asked Phoebe. ‘Does it remind you of the Minden Street murders?’

  Phoebe shrugged. ‘We don’t know if she even knew where Minden Street was.’

  ‘Minden Street may have known where she was.’ He was pacing the area where the body had rested.

  Plenty of blood. Too much. Amazing the way the heart keeps pumping it out when it would be better to stop. Even if help had got there earlier, she would probably still have died.

  And she had asked for him, allegedly. By name.

  Coffin. Get Coffin. Sounded like a Hitchcock film.

  To Phoebe he said, ‘Get the blood tested.’

  Surprised, Phoebe nodded. ‘We always do, sir.’

  Coffin walked round the room. The police technicians, still at work, moved aside as he came past.

  It was a small museum, showing not only heads. Whole skeletons, exposed in the old-fashioned cabinets, had not been disturbed.

  ‘It’s the heads that are important,’ he said, coming back to Phoebe.

  Looking at the ring of tiny skulls, Phoebe thought she had worked that out for herself.

  ‘Question the man Joe thoroughly. I get the feeling he may know something.’

  ‘That will be done, sir.’

  ‘I’ll go to the post-mortem with you,’ said Coffin. He felt he should; the dead woman had asked for him as she died. It was the least he could do for her.

  ‘Thanks. I hate that place.’

  ‘So do I.’ Who didn’t? As a young policeman he had attended post-mortems as duty demanded. He hated the ice cabinets, with their freight of bodies, the trays on which they emerged to lie on metal tables with drip trays underneath.

  Coffin looked round for Stella, only to find that she had done a disappearing act, and not a theatrical one; she was nowhere to be seen.

  She was outside in the car, reading.

  ‘I shall always bring a book with me when you take me out to dinner, then I can read it when you go off.’

  ‘You seem to have got one.’

  ‘I found it in the car.’ She held it up: David Copperfield. ‘I never had you down as a Dickens reader.’

  ‘Oh, every one is at some point . . .’ He could see this needed amplification. ‘I thought Dickens’ London might help me with the Second City.’

  ‘And has it?’

  ‘Not really. Some of the characters fit in. Mimsie Marker, for instance. She’d be the rich eccentric who rescues the lost child.’

  ‘And you would be the poor little lost boy, I suppose?’

  Coffin was quiet. Maybe yes, maybe no.

  As he started the car, Phoebe went past, gave them a wave. No smile.

  ‘What’s up with her?’

  ‘Oh, she’s having an identity crisis. She has them at times.’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘That too, I expect.’

  As he spoke, Phoebe came back. ‘I’ll see the blood is tested.’ Then she said, ‘I’ll go and see the cousin, Natasha Broad. Do you want to come, sir?’

  ‘As Dr Murray asked for me by name, I think I had better.’

  ‘I’ll set it up and call for you, sir.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Better be soon, I think, don’t you?’

  ‘Have to be. If not soon, then not at all. She has someone with her?’

  ‘There’s a husband.’

  As they drove away, Stella said, ‘Did you go and call on the Jacksons?’

  ‘No. There was no one left to call on.’

  All dead.

  Bar one. Jack. But that would be attended to. ‘Funny you should ask. I had been thinking about them, and I believe Phoebe was too.’

  ‘You think the same person killed Dr Murray?’

  ‘Could be. It’s not impossible. That’s why I want forensics to get a move on.’

  ‘You mean the way she was killed? The gunshot?’

  ‘Yes.’ He had meant that, but in addition it came to him that there had been a smell. A sour, body smell, as if the killer had run a long way to the kill and hung about afterwards so that he had left his ghost behind.

  Without meaning to, Coffin put his foot down.

  ‘You’re driving much too fast,’ reproved Stella.

  It was true he had visited the house in Minden Street and seen the bodies where they lay. They had been taken by surprise: the mother had died first, the two girls afterwards, together in the same room. As he walked around it, he had wondered if the mother had brought the killer in with her.

  ‘Is this what you would call a serial killer?’

  ‘Motive is certainly obscure. At the moment.’

  ‘Killing for the sake of killing, then?’

  ‘Certainly I felt a hint of pleasure in it.’

  Perhaps not in the Minden Street killings, but in the murder of Dr Murray, the careful way the heads had been laid out around her seemed as if the killer had savoured what he was doing.

  If it was a he. Could be a woman.

  But he thought there was some evidence of physical strength. Dr Murray was a tall, strong woman, who apparently had not struggled. Also, one of the twins, Alice, he thought, had large bruises on her upper arms, as if big strong hands had gripped her hard.

  There might just be a fingerprint to be culled there. Out of the bruise. Worth thinking about.

  The traffic li
ght has changed,’ said Stella gently. ‘Safe to go.’

  A bruise and a smell. Not much to work on, and certainly not the sort of information to lay before Phoebe Astley.

  ‘Let’s go for a drive,’ said Coffin to Stella. ‘So I can think.’

  ‘You mean I’m not to talk?’ Stella wound a scarf round her head.

  ‘Now and then.’ He gave her a friendly look but said nothing else. Stella closed her eyes. It was possible she slept, but she had the distinct impression they were across the river and driving round Blackheath, then down to Greenwich where she and Coffin had first met.

  She put her hand on his wrist. ‘I know where we are. And I know why: you are talking with ghosts.’

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have left, Stella.’

  ‘We didn’t have a choice. Life picked us up and moved us on. It always does.’ Then she said, ‘And now it’s dropped us back.’

  ‘We’d better go home.’

  ‘And don’t say that home is always where I am . . . You can write better dialogue than that.’

  Coffin laughed. ‘Besides which, we would both have been homeless for about thirteen years when we were apart. Come on, I don’t know what it is about St Luke’s Tower with you in it, but I like it. I reckon it’s as near home as you and I will ever have. We’d better get another cat. After all, we still have a dog.’ Gus had been ill but had survived. As probably, Coffin felt, he always would do.

  He turned the car and drove back to the Second City.

  Phoebe, as ever, did not let any grass grow beneath her feet.

  There was a message on the answerphone by the time they got back to St Luke’s Tower, after their drive through the past and after Stella had cast a wistful look at her theatre complex, and Coffin had parked the car in the underground garage that he had had constructed, since life up above was dangerous for a Chief Commander’s cars. One petrol bomb too many.

  The message said that a car would be calling for him NOW to take him to 20 Nean Street, where Nat and her husband, Jason Broad, lived. Out of the shadow of her powerful cousin, she was always Nat or Natty. The change of name seemed to change her too. Or so Phoebe, who had known her briefly as a friend of a friend, thought.

  Phoebe was driving the car herself. ‘Want to be introduced, or want to be anonymous?’ she asked as he settled into his seat.