She refused to be met at the airport and drove herself home in her own car.
‘I hope you had it in the long stay car park,’ said Tom Blackhall.
‘I won’t even answer that one.’ Victoria Blackhall travelled light, just one bag suspended from her shoulder.
‘Cost a fortune otherwise.’ This was about the level of their communication at the moment. If they got in too deep there were things that might be said that were better left unsaid.
‘You need therapy, Tom,’ she said, going into the hall. It was long and spacious, with an impressive stretch of carpeting and a few good pieces of furniture, all of which belonged to the university, but the pictures on the walls, a Freud and a Sturrage, belonged to Victoria and were probably worth more than all the furnishings put together. She disliked the furniture, calling it fake Georgian, which was unfair as one or two of the pieces had scraps of authentic old woodwork melded into their carcasses. ‘Speech therapy.’ She dumped the big soft piece of Louis Vuitton on the floor. ‘And if it had cost a fortune, it would have been my fortune.’ She knew it irked him that her income, all earned, was considerably larger than his. In the Blackhall household, money spoke. It defined status and pecking rights.
‘Can we have a truce?’
‘Done.’ She held out her hand. She was always the less aggressive of the two, though quick to defend her rights.
‘How was the conference?’
‘What I want to know about,’ said Victoria carefully, ‘is Martin. But since you’re asking, the meeting was great and I was great.’
‘Martin …’ Her husband hesitated. ‘No news.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
He hesitated again. ‘I don’t think it’s good.’
‘I don’t either … What do the police say?’
‘They don’t say.’
‘I must get unpacked. I need some clean clothes … I bought you some German brandy … it’s probably horrible but you used to like it.’
A long time ago that had been, before the honours and horrors of his position had fallen upon him. Fallen? No, not fallen like the gentle dew from heaven, but bitterly and fiercely struggled for. Part of the trouble, really.
The autumn sun poured into their bedroom. ‘Damn those thin curtains, they don’t hide a thing.’ Victoria yanked down a blind which had been installed at her own expense. Curtains in this house were a sore point with her. A later generation would discover that the handsome pair of red silk damask curtains in the large reception room downstairs were a fake, just for show, they could not be pulled together, money having run out when the decorators got to the curtaining. The light revealed the shadows under her eyes and the lines and hollows a sleepless night had brought her. Victoria was older by a little than her husband and the years had treated her less well.
As she unpacked, Victoria said: ‘He could be suicidal … I have wondered about it.’
‘Martin is quite normal,’ said Tom fiercely. ‘You’re not a psychiatrist.’
‘You learn to observe in my job.’
‘I know much more about students than you do, my dear. You think you do, but you don’t.’
‘I don’t want to believe he’s dead, but I just do. I think Martin is dead.’ She put her hands to her face. ‘Oh God, I can’t bear this. I do love him.’
‘I know you do. So do I.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and drew her head on to his shoulder. The truce was holding.
Suddenly she raised her head and looked. ‘You’re keeping something back, I can tell. What is it?’
‘Suicide might be the best of it,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Martin is suspected of doing away with the girl.’
‘She may not be dead … Who suspects him?’
‘James Dean for one … Probably the police too, but they aren’t saying.’
Or if they didn’t think it now, then they would as soon as they remembered about Virginia Scott. They must have remembered now, the police were good at remembering that sort of thing, their computers told them—would tell them—that Martin had been her friend too.
But for the police, it was a matter of reason. Evidence and reason, these were their tools … James Dean now, that was different. Emotion there.
‘I’ve half a mind to phone Dean, see what he knows. More than I do, I suspect.’ He had that feeling about Dean, that knowledge of some sort was tucked away inside him.
He reached out for the phone by the bed and dialled.
‘No, don’t,’ said Victoria, her voice sharp. ‘Leave it, just leave it.’
Jim Dean also went about his business. He had no wife, so he turned his anxiety upon himself. He could quarrel with himself, hate himself, easily enough, no trouble there.
He could also hate Martin Blackhall, that too presented no difficulty. His suicide, if it had taken place, he would have regarded as a positively good step. He considered the possibility of killing him.
But to do that, it would be necessary to find him. The police would be of no use there, a private detective must be found. No trouble there either, he knew one, if not two. Use of them came his way in business at times. But he also had an underground link to a CID officer in the Second City Force.
But he hesitated.
He toyed with a gold propelling pencil, decorated with his initials by Asprey’s, which had been one of his first purchases for himself when he started to make money. He wanted to handle gold, just as he wanted to wear soft leather.
He could pick up the telephone and say, ‘Hello, Harry, how are things?’ and get a response. But it would mean going behind John Coffin’s back and he had a healthy respect for that man’s acumen.
The telephone rested on an alabaster stand set with gold. It matched a pen which matched the pencil.
He liked everything about him to be of the highest quality and massive, made of quantities of the best possible materials, whether gold, silver, silk or wood, but actual design he left to the professionals so that his office, as with his home in Chelsea Bank, looked beautiful and expensive but unlived in. There were no looking-glasses in his house except in his bathroom where he shaved, and even that one was small and could be folded up to put away. No photographs around either, but he had a drawerful which he did look at occasionally.
All the same, his office reflected his personality much more clearly than his home: in the window, which was a sheet of shining glass, he sat at a large pale wood desk, gleaming and polished, but with its surface covered by a layer of papers and files, while he faced the green screen of a computer. Attached at right-angles to this desk was a matching work surface with a small filing cabinet on top, and with three telephones hitched on to faxes and answering machines. He worked in a self-created nest of business equipment.
No pictures on the walls of this office, no flowers, but a group of soft leather armchairs stood round a low marble table.
It was late in the afternoon, everyone else—secretaries, assistants and receptionists—had all gone home, but he still sat there. The telephone on his desk rang once, but stopped ringing before he could pick it up.
Not the CID then with news, or they would have gone on ringing. Why hadn’t Amy been found?
Then the white telephone on his right hand did ring. He let it ring out for a few minutes, then he answered it. He knew it must be the police. Call it telepathy or precognition or just a good guess, but he knew, and almost knew what it was. They had found something.
‘This is Sergeant Donovan here, sir. CI Young wondered if you’d be good enough to come down to Spinnergate … Yes, the Lower Dock Road entrance. Yes, something’s turned up … Been found.’ Donovan knew he was doing it badly. ‘Yes, an article of clothing … No, I don’t know more, sir.’ He knew more but had been instructed not to say.
Dean took a deep breath. Here we go, this is what you wanted. ‘I’ll drive over at once.’
He was relieved to be going. Action at last. He couldn’t credit this step forw
ard to John Coffin, things turn up as they will, although sometimes human hands can help. As a former policeman he knew that much. But he wanted movement.
He parked his car round the corner from Lower Dock Road in Spinnergate, using Malmaison Street which he thought he remembered of old as a street of low repute. He had been born round here and surely he remembered his mother (who had had social aspirations which, in a way, he had justified for her) saying he must not play with the children of Malmaison Street? But Malmaison Street had had a lift in the world and he had to squeeze his relatively modest Rover between a Jaguar and a Rolls, though there was a battered old lorry three hundred yards down towards the river, which suggested that Malmaison Street was struggling to hang on to its old reputation.
Sergeant Donovan was waiting for him by the door. No need for introductions, Dean thought, he seemed to be known, and he allowed himself to be led straight into the room where two men were waiting for him.
One came forward. ‘Chief Inspector Young. I’m in charge of this investigation.’
‘I’m glad there is one,’ said Dean. ‘Thought there never would be …’
‘No, it’s always been a case, sir,’ said Young smoothly, ‘but things move slowly sometimes.’ He gave a nod to the other man in the room, never to be introduced, who led the way to a table in the window.
On it lay the blue and white sweater retrieved from the mud of the Thames.
‘We think this might be your daughter’s.’
Dean stared down at what he was being offered. ‘Where was it found?’
‘On the river bank, not far from the Old Leadworks Wharf.’
There was a long pause while Dean looked and considered. He knew what he had to say, but he found the words hard to get out; they stayed in his mouth like pebbles.
‘It could be Amy’s,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know all her things. But yes, I think she had something like this. Seem to remember it.’
‘I thought you’d say that, sir,’ said Archie Young, quickly whisking the cover back over the table. ‘I think that settles it. I’m pretty certain in my mind it belongs to your daughter.’
‘Have you showed it to Thomas Blackhall?’
‘No. Doesn’t seem to concern him as yet.’
‘Who found it?’
‘A constable on his beat.’
‘I’d like to speak to him.’
‘Later, if you don’t mind.’
‘How did it get where it was found?’
Archie Young shook his head. ‘No idea. Could have been dropped in the river elsewhere and been washed up there. It is a place where the river deposits what it’s got. One of them. Well known to be.’
Dean nodded.
‘Or it could have been dropped there in the first place,’ went on Young.
Dean asked the difficult question: ‘Do you think it means that Amy is in the river?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Young. ‘I don’t see that at all.’
‘Where is she, then? I want her found.’ He didn’t say alive or dead, but both men understood he meant it.
Young said: ‘These were found in a pocket.’ He pointed to two objects laid on a small plastic tray on his desk.
One was a small white handkerchief. The other was a sodden piece of paper that had been straightened out and dried.
‘I don’t know about the handkerchief,’ said James Dean. ‘One white handkerchief looks like another.’
‘No initial on it and no laundry mark.’
‘I suppose it is hers, has to be … And that’s a bus ticket.’
‘That’s right, sir. You can just make it out. Route 147a, run by an independent operator. This route runs through Spinnergate and out towards Essex.’
Dean frowned. ‘But she has a car. I don’t see her using a bus. Perhaps it’s an old ticket?’
‘The stampings on it show it was bought on the day she went off, and from checking the number, it looks as though it was purchased between eight and ten on the evening she was missing.’
‘Someone else may have bought it, and she just picked it up.’ He didn’t believe that, or even sound convincing to himself.
‘Could be, but it was in the pocket of her sweater, wedged underneath the handkerchief.’ CI Young went across to the wall opposite the window and drew down a map. ‘Come and have a look at this.’ He pointed. ‘We can tell from the ticket that whoever bought it got on at the stop at Heather Street. Here.’ He put his finger on the map. ‘That’s just beyond the university … and the ticket would take that person through to the end of the line. But the route passes Church Street and a few yards up the road takes you to Star Court House where she worked.’
‘So she might have been going there? But the ticket would have taken whoever bought it much further?’
‘Yes, but there’s no conductor on these buses, you put in the right fare yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘If you haven’t the right change, then you overpay and get more of a trip than you use.’
‘I never wanted her to work in that place,’ said James Dean. ‘I hated it and all it stood for.’
Then he said: ‘Does the driver remember her? Did anyone see her? One of the passengers?’
‘We are inquiring. The driver doesn’t remember. It was late in the day. One of the last buses out on his shift and it was crowded.’
‘Bunch of drunks,’ said Dean viciously. ‘What would they see?’ He started to walk up and down the room. ‘Can I ask you about the Blackhall boy? Any sign of him?’
‘Not so far. He might have been on the bus, we asked about him too, but no result.’
‘Flush him out. You won’t find him lying dead anywhere.’
‘We don’t know your daughter is dead yet, sir. We mustn’t jump to conclusions.’
‘She’s dead. I’m telling you.’
He had moved on from his first demand that she be found, CI Young observed.
‘What about the car? What’s that telling you?’
‘Forensics are working on it.’
‘That was my car. I drove it for a few weeks, then I gave it to her. That was because she didn’t like taking valuable presents, I had to persuade her it was a car I didn’t want and wouldn’t use. She had that sort of conscience.’
‘I’ll pass on to Forensics that you have used the car,’ said Archie Young gravely. ‘They’ll need to know.’
‘Yes. Is that all you want from me?’
‘For now, Mr Dean.’
‘Have you got a daughter?’
Archie Young shook his head. ‘No, no children.’
‘You’re probably lucky.’
Archie Young said: ‘She may not be dead, sir.’
James Dean paused at the door, looked at Archie as he spoke and gave him a bleak half smile. She’s dead, the smile said.
Young said: ‘If you receive a ransom demand, I hope you will tell us, sir.’
‘There has been no demand to me. I’d be surprised and glad if there was one.’
‘Amy could walk in the door tonight and wonder what we were making a fuss about.’
When Archie Young reported this afterwards to John Coffin, as requested, he said: ‘He looked at me as if he didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘He probably didn’t,’ said John Coffin. ‘Did you believe it yourself?’
‘Half and half. I was just trying to sell him a bit of hope.’ He added: ‘He’s really wild. I don’t like the look of him.’
‘What do you think he will do?’
Young considered. ‘Bash something up, that’s what he’d like to do. Either the university or Star Court.’
Yes, the old Jem Dean had been that sort of a man. Too soon to say what the new Jim Dean was like.
‘What do you make of the bus ticket?’
‘Don’t know. Someone bought that ticket, and it was in her pocket. Miracle it was still there after being in the water.’
‘It is surprising, but you do get luck occasionally.’ If it was luck, so far it didn’t seem to have
helped. He was keeping an open mind on the bus ticket, it needed thinking about. ‘What about the Blackhalls?’
‘Sir Thomas telephones regularly to ask for news. Nothing to tell him, no sighting of either the boy or the girl. He doesn’t like that. I think he’s nervous that somehow Dean will find the boy first.’
‘Better keep an eye open,’ Coffin advised. ‘Watch the university campus and Star Court.’
‘I’ll be around myself, asking questions,’ Young assured him. ‘I want to see both of the missing students’ rooms.’
But Dean did not go to either of those places. Or not on that day, whatever he was going to do later. After leaving the police headquarters, he got into his car and took a ride. Not unnoticed, as it turned out later. There were one or two people in Coffin’s area who also seemed to notice everything and one of them, indeed the best, was Mimsie Marker who sold newspapers from a stall by the Tube station at Spinnergate. If she didn’t see events herself, and after all even Mimsie could not be everywhere although it sometimes seemed as though she had been, she had contacts and friends to pass on the news. Mimsie was a kind of sieve, through which all local information could pass.
Coffin had other things on his mind, not only this case and the security for the Queen’s visit, but he had a sister, Letty Bingham; he had his late mother’s memoirs which he had edited and which Letty wanted published; and he had Darling Stella. And there was always the cat, Tiddles.
Stella also wanted his mother’s memoirs published, because she had a TV producer lined up who would turn them into a four-parter with Stella as his mother.
Coffin found the idea gruesome … Stella as his mother? Considering all that had passed between them, it was incestuous. Obscene. Stella didn’t see it that way, of course. It was work. Acting.
‘I don’t like to think of you as my mother,’ he had said uneasily.
‘Oh, don’t be silly. I’d be your young mother.’
Exactly, Coffin had thought, but he could not drag his mind away from Amy Dean and Martin Blackhall. Gone, both of them. There was a nasty odour of death and decay in the air.
Stella too took a keen interest in the case: the university, and Sir Tom in particular, were patrons of St Luke’s Theatre, and she herself had helped in an appeal for money for Star Court House. Naturally she was on the side of women, she said. She didn’t know either of the two missing students.
Cracking Open a Coffin Page 4