‘You in bed, Steve? If not, take yourself off there. Bath first.’
Listening for the bath water running, she went back to the telephone. She had to find the number.
‘Mrs Lorimer? May I speak to John Coffin?’
She could hear Mrs Lorimer shouting for her favourite lodger, then she heard her say in a loud voice, ‘It’s a woman. She didn’t give her name. Sounds like Rose Hilaire.’
In the war Mrs Lorimer had been an ARP warden; in the peace she was a JP. She was well acquainted with the families of Paradise Street. They all had the same voice, she said.
She was no forensic scientist but she was a great scooper-up of information all the same.
‘Rose? Is that really you?’
‘Yes. Brave of me to confront your dragon.’
‘No dragon,’ said Coffin, casting a cautious eye towards Mrs Lorimer.
‘You were quite right: I have got more to tell you. Can we talk?’
‘Now? Shall I come over?’
‘No, not here.’ She thought of Steve. ‘Let’s meet on neutral territory.’
‘Cat’s or the Red Anchor?’
‘The Red Anchor. I can park the car outside.’
Before she left Rose looked in at Steve. Her son was deeply asleep, one hand underneath his cheek.
He was there before Rose with some whisky waiting for her.
She drank it without protest. ‘So that’s the way of it, how I think it was. I was high on LSD probably, but that’s just a guess.’
‘A bad trip.’
Rose gave a shudder. ‘God help us all. I can’t tell you the terrible sense of horror I had. It was like Doomsday. I think I must have been stumbling round. I hope on my feet. But it could have been on my knees.’
‘Gabriel saw you.’
‘She did? God bless Gabriel. Or do I mean that? What did she see?’
‘You were in Mouncy Street,’ he said gravely.
‘Do you think that was where I saw the body? That I really saw it? When I woke up I was in my own bed with a terrible hangover. Threw my system for days. I thought I was pregnant.’ She drank a good gulp of whisky. ‘And then, although the other horrors faded, I still saw the dead body lying there. I couldn’t say where, except it was like a pit, and sometimes I was floating above and it was nothing to do with me. But sometimes, I said No, Rose. You did it. Your hands feel that body. Carry the memory on their fingers.’
She looked at him. ‘I hope I didn’t. If I did, can I claim it was the drug?’
‘Almost certainly. Rose, I’ll have to talk to Phil Jordan.’ Or he might speak to Commander Dander. Rupert the Dandy, that sometimes kindly, but always alarming, figure.
‘I know.’ She finished the whisky.
‘Where will he find Joe Landau?’
Vaguely she said, ‘Oh, he’ll be around. In the club, for a start. Where do you think he comes in?’
‘God knows.’
‘I don’t think Joe would kill.’
‘No?’ He wanted to get Joe for something.
‘No. Playing games, that’s one thing, the bastard, but killing I don’t see.’
‘Anyone can.’
‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘I just have to hope it wasn’t me.’
‘It wasn’t you three times,’ he reminded her.
‘No.’ She seized that. ‘So I saw something, but didn’t do it. And there’s one other thing: I had this sensation of movement. Like being on a boat, I think,’ she added doubtfully. ‘I wonder if that means anything.’
‘I don’t know. Drink up.’
They parted amiably, even affectionately. John Coffin saw her into the car and watched her drive away, then himself walked home across the Heath.
Several people had noticed them in the bar, but no one saw when they left.
At some time between that parting and morning Rose Hilaire disappeared. Her car was parked outside where she lived, but she herself was nowhere to be found.
Her son, Steve, got up, gave himself breakfast, and took himself to school without reporting her absence. As he said later, she was often away from home.
Chapter Twelve
The alarm came first from Belmodes. Gabriel came in early, anxious to find out what the police team had done the night before. She was relieved to find she could get in.
She could hear activity in the workrooms. Dead quiet, though. The machines were whirring away, but no voices. She peeped in. One of the women, at the machine nearest the door, looked up and smiled. Then she shrugged and went back to work.
That was the feeling of the day, then? Put your head down and pretend nothing is happening. Gabriel wished she could have done so herself.
But her breakfast had been broken into by a phone call from Charley, cancelling a work session with her later that day. The police had left a mess in his place: he’d be busy. No, he didn’t know what, if anything, they had taken away, nothing, he rather thought, but they had left it untidy. He sounded sour. Or perhaps just tired.
She shrugged off the cancellation. Her heart was no longer in the campaign against Rose. They were two women together now in a hostile world.
Where was Rose? She wandered round the factory looking for her and came across Dagmar doing the same.
‘Where is she? Do you know?’ Dagmar had her hostility to Gabriel well buttoned up, but it was still there. Judging by her tone, she might even have transferred some of it to the absent Rose. ‘I must have her, I’ve got that man from Milan who wants to do business with Belmodes coming in this morning. She ought to be here.’ Dagmar had her finger in all Rose’s pies, checking their temperature.
‘I can manage him.’ Gabriel had met the man, a long-faced northern Italian.
Dagmar ignored the offer. ‘I’ve rung her at home and there’s no answer.’
‘Then she’s not there.’
‘She could be asleep. No, I kept ringing. Rose doesn’t sleep that heavy. You don’t think the police have got her? She hasn’t been arrested?’
‘How would I know?’
‘You know a policeman.’
‘Not his case,’ said Gabriel automatically, as if John Coffin was speaking through her. ‘What about the boy? He must know where his mother is.’
‘Might know,’ corrected Dagmar. ‘I never knew where my mother was all day. Did you? No, let’s leave him out of it.’
By midday they were still agreed to leave Steve out of it, but Gabriel was telephoning Coffin. Once again she tried the ask, ask and ask again technique, and once again it worked.
He sounded surprised. ‘How did you know I was here?’
He was standing in the bare, empty front room of his own house in Mouncy Street. There was no sign of any of his colleagues, but the door to the kitchen area was sealed and padlocked. Looking about him, he could see that tiny segments of woodwork from the floor he was waxing and polishing and from the doors he was stripping of paint, had been removed with delicate precision.
As he came through the front door he had picked up his post. He identified his electricity bill and the telephone bill (he hoped his colleagues had not been using his phone too much) and a typewritten envelope which he took to be an advertisement. He tucked them in his pocket, where he forgot them.
‘I kept on asking. No good. So I thought: Let’s try Mouncy Street. He could be there. It’s his house.’
Not his case, but his house. It was a kind of refrain that seemed to mark his life at the moment.
‘You’re getting to know me too well.’
‘Not nearly well enough.’ Gabriel could always find time for a little flirtation. ‘But that’s not it, just now. We can’t find Rose. She’s not here at Belmodes. Not at any of the shops. Nor at home. Dagmar and I are worried.’
Now Coffin too felt alarmed. There was a feel about this moment that he did not like. A real, genuine premonition of bad news.
‘No, I don’t think she’ll have been arrested.’ Not just yet. Or not in that way. It would be no secret. This wasn’t a pol
ice state and 1984 was a long way off. ‘Have you asked the son?’
‘No. Not yet. We don’t like to worry the school.’
‘What about popping round? Must be coming up for school dinner-time.’ She knew he was fobbing her off, but she accepted it; she was willing to sit in the back seat and let him do the driving. She was tired and a little afraid.
‘All right. I’ll let you know what I find out.’
After a little consideration he decided to talk to Phil Jordan. After several attempts he got him at last on a bad telephone line. Not only the usual crackles but voices muttering away in the background. It wasn’t, he thought, that he and Jordan got lines so much worse than anyone else, it was just that more people were listening to them.
Give something, get something. He would trade with Jordan.
But first he would get the information he wanted. Standing in his own house, once his pride, now an abomination. It was still hot outside, and his house had at once the smell of summer and the smell of death.
He was surprised he hadn’t recognized that smell the minute he moved in.
He made a start.
‘Phil? You won’t know anything yet from the forensics?’
‘No.’ Jordan was giving no ground. Hardly could, really. Neither of them expected it, especially with everyone listening in.
‘Takes time. But as the owner of one of the sites you’ve been turning over, could you be more specific about what they’re looking for? I can see bits of my woodwork have gone.’ As though the mice had been at it. ‘I wish I could frame the question so you could just answer Yes or No, Phil, but I can’t do that.’
‘No. Yes.’
‘I think you’d help me if you could, Phil.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks. So if I made some guesses you might be able to answer.’
‘Yes.’
‘The wood is a bit special. Something a bit different. Something they think they could match easily?’
‘No.’
‘No? No, then it’s not the wood itself, but something on it. Paint?’ He answered that one himself, looking at his own floor. ‘Stain?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it might be No? A kind of stain?’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Jordan.
‘Not as good as a fingerprint,’ said Coffin, ‘but I can see it would help. Well, thanks. Let’s meet for a drink sometime.’
‘Yes,’ said Jordan, sounding as if he meant No.
‘Ah, I get you. Nice expressive voice you’ve got there Phil. Ever thought of going on the stage?’
Then Coffin stopped himself. He must not alienate Phil Jordan, who was only doing his job and trying to be a friend at the same time.
There was something about the wood fragments that Jordan knew and was not saying. Was Jordan trying to tell him something, and if so, what? Something about the nature of wood, perhaps.
‘Listen, Phil. I know you can listen even if you can’t talk. Do you know the whereabouts of Rose Hilaire? She hasn’t been in to Belmodes, and is not answering her phone. Do you have news of her to tell me?’
He guessed the answer to that would be No, and it was. What he did not expect was the long pause, and then the urgency of Phil Jordan’s voice.
‘That offer of yours – I’ll take it up. The Red Anchor this evening. Hang about.’
This time it was his turn to give the one word answer. ‘Yes.’
As he put the receiver down he thought: Rose, I’ve got to find you fast. And first, before my friends and colleagues do.
Then it boiled down to one simple reaction: dear Rose, I’ve got to find you.
By the time Gabriel and he met in the late afternoon they knew that Rose had probably never got home the night before.
‘So I was the last one to see her?’ said Coffin. ‘Unless Steve … ?’ He looked at the boy.
They were standing in Rose Hilaire’s own kitchen.
Gabriel had collected Steve from school and brought him home, where she had cooked him a meal.
She shook her head. ‘He says not. Didn’t hear her, and she wasn’t there in the morning, no sign of her bed being slept in. So he went to school.’
At the moment Steve was eating baked beans on toast with easy pleasure. A cool customer.
‘He says he’s done it before.’
Coffin’s eyes met Gabriel’s, hers full of meaning so that he looked away sharply. Silly to be jealous, everyone knew Rose was no chaste angel.
‘Think she’s with a man?’
Gabriel reflected. ‘No. I wish I did think so, but I don’t.’
Charley came in, carrying a small grey cat and a carrier bag of shopping. ‘I got all the stuff you wanted, Gaby. And I found this animal outside.’
Steve spoke for the first time. ‘That’s our cat.’
‘Has he got a cat-flap?’
‘No.’
‘When you went to school, did you let him out?’
‘No, he was asleep on Mum’s bed.’
‘So someone came in.’
‘Rose?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Someone with a key. You’re sure the cat was in, Steve?’
‘Certain sure.’
Steve was opening a tin of food for the cat, who was meowing silently.
Coffin watched him. He did not believe that Rose, if she had come back into the flat, would have let the cat out, or left it unfed. People under pressure could act out of character, certainly, but they also acted according to habit.
‘Someone’s got Rose’s key,’ he said aloud. ‘Maybe Rose herself. Maybe not. I know what I think.’
Charley put the kettle on. ‘Let’s have some coffee, and I brought some brandy. Hop off to your room, Steve, and don’t think too much.’
Steve went, without a backward look, but carrying the cat.
‘Charley, you’re a wonder,’ said Gabriel. ‘How can you be so relaxed?’
Charley shrugged. ‘Remember me? Born in a bomb-shelter. I believe they had to dig Mum and me out. Starting that way, you go on as you came.’ He poured the coffee, adding a good measure of brandy to each mug. He put plenty in his own. ‘What are we worrying about? A few scraps of wood, a pair of pants stained with blood that’s the same group as Ephraim’s. That’s right?’ He cocked an eyebrow at Coffin, who nodded. ‘And a woman gone away who is well able to look after herself.’
An interesting man, thought Coffin, I never took him in before.
‘And three dead bodies,’ Gaby reminded him sharply. ‘Don’t be too jolly. Those boys are dead, poor little beggars.’
‘I’m not likely to forget, Gaby. Drink up your coffee,’ said Charley calmly. ‘I know where I rate death in life’s tragedies. After being crippled but below senility.’
‘But dying – ’ began Gaby.
‘For all we know dying may be a delicious experience, like dropping into a warm bath after being cold all day. Life’s last treat for us.’
Yes, an interesting fellow. He could certainly manage Steve and possibly Gabriel as well. He felt relieved. Better she should be with a youngster nearer her own age than with him, who anyway fancied Rose Hilaire.
He left them cooking each other supper and drinking brandy.
A good couple. Perhaps Gaby was the man of the two. Certainly Charley’s hair was as long as hers, blonder and curlier too. But Coffin no longer disliked this; he might let his own hair lengthen. His hairdresser had said tactfully that short back and sides was no longer an unquestioned good thing.
As he hung about the Red Anchor he noticed for the first time that its character was changing. The lovely smell of beer and tobacco smoke built up over almost a hundred years was being driven out by other smells: fresh paint, newly-glued-together plastic and fried food. The cigarettes people smoked smelt different as well and his policeman’s nose told him they were not all honest virginia.
The furniture was on the move too, with the old, solid benches and wooden chairs being replaced with curving, light-weight new ones in
bright colours. In fact, without his realizing it a rising tide of change was lapping around his ankles.
Phil Jordan was with him before he realized, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Let’s make this quick.’
‘I feel the same way.’ Worry about Rose was paramount now.
‘What we said on the phone was true enough; of course, the forensics don’t have any news for us yet. It sometimes takes weeks, we both know that.’
Coffin nodded. He was still thinking about Rose. What state would she be in if weeks passed before she was found?
‘This is a private conversation.’ Jordan looked at Coffin, who nodded. ‘So I can tell you that the word is that they have not found what they were looking for. At a first glance none of the samples match what they had from the body specimens.’
‘So it’s a No? You are still looking for where the boy could have been?’
‘You could say so. The team’s feeling is that when we find that place we will know who was the killer. It’ll really pin it down.’
‘Anything else?’ He had felt on the telephone Jordan had a little nugget of information tucked away somewhere. ‘About what they were hoping to find, maybe?’
‘The wood scraps found on the boy’s clothes suggested someone, somewhere, was doing some house decoration. Anyway, repairs. Perhaps clumsily. You know – household fragments. The wood was stained and waxed.’
There was definitely a something in Jordan’s voice, but Coffin couldn’t make out what it meant. Household fragments? He was thinking it out when Jordan stood up.
‘Here, wait a minute,’ Coffin said hastily. ‘What about Rose Hilaire?’
‘That lady hasn’t been reported missing, and she is definitely fully adult. If you can find her, good luck to you, but there’s nothing I can do.’
‘Unofficially.’
‘Unofficially, I’ll see what I can find out. And equally unofficially, it’s a pity you’ve got to know her.’
‘Why are you in such a hurry?’
‘I do have a home to go to.’
‘Yes,’ said Coffin sadly.
And he hadn’t. Or rather the house in Mouncy Street had been taken over by a succession of dead bodies. He really minded about the house.
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