Cracking Open a Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Of course, we’ll get to her,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt, having had dealings with Our General before. ‘And if it’s not her, then it’s one of her lot. A girl wearing dark clothes belted off on a motorbike before the police got there. It has to be her. Exactly what she was up to isn’t clear. Whether she was part of the break-in gang or whether she stepped in to protect the girl.’

  ‘You’ll question the gang?’

  ‘Sure. But it’s hard to lay hands on them.’

  ‘How is Blackhall?’

  ‘Recovering. The doctor says we will be able to question him soon.’ Whatever soon meant, he thought cynically. ‘The Blackhalls will have their lawyers all round him by then, though.’

  Coffin nodded. He accepted that would happen.

  ‘And the girl shop assistant? What’s her name?’

  ‘Helen Foster. They say she can’t be questioned yet either. But naturally we’re anxious to get what she knows. If anything. The medicos say her memory of what went just before her injury will have gone.’

  ‘Met that before,’ said Coffin. Two girls in the case now. Amy Dean, already dead, and the other, Helen Foster, in a state of shock.

  And now there was this suggestion that the case really began with the girl Virginia Scott, who had been dead for over a year.

  The first report on the finding of the tin was already available to the men in the room.

  ‘Now there is this photograph … torn up,’ said John Coffin.

  Or, as the forensic scientists were about to tell him, sliced up with a knife.

  Down at Star Court House, there was no conversation on Martin Blackhall or what he might have been up to, they had other troubles there. A quarrel had broken out among two residents, so that Maisie had had to intervene; the supper had been burnt and was almost uneatable, and money was short. Also, they were threatened with a visit from the local councillor they liked least. Tempers had been strained and Josephine had gone home, glad of the relative peace of George Eliot House. Perhaps she had had enough of other people’s troubles, they no longer took her mind off her own position but made them worse.

  Josephine at home was different from the Josephine to be met with outside. At home, she took off her fluttering finery, removed her turban to reveal grey braids of hair, and put on a loose white shift of the sort that models wear between fittings in a couture salon. She had several of these, one of which was always fresh. This was in summer and autumn; in the real, cold winter, she wore a sort of black robe, belted at the waist.

  Her flat, on the third floor of a tall block, was austere and clean, no clutter and no litter. It smelt empty. The furniture, such as it was, had been bought in Greenwich market or off a barrow in Peckham, she knew where to find the cheap old furniture that was also good. A sofa, two armchairs and a little bureau, made up her home, and she had stripped them down herself and repainted them white or ash grey. No colour here. Josephine was good with her hands, so the work was well done. She used to say she could have built a house if she had to.

  She had never had to. In her time she had lived in a smart flat in Mayfair, a country house in Perthshire (only not for long, dogs and country were not for Josephine), and dwelt in an apartment overlooking Central Park, New York. She had also dossed down in a slum in Bermondsey, spent several nights in a cell in Holloway, and lived out of a box under Waterloo Bridge.

  Good times, bad times, but helped by Maisie Rolt and Stella Pinero, she had struggled up again.

  The doorbell rang. She was expecting a visitor.

  She let Our General in. They were friends, not ordinary friends, they were not ordinary women, and they had nothing in common except their sex and a certain view of life. And some similar experiences.

  The General liked fighting: it was a pleasure to her to find a side and battle for it. Josephine did not like fighting, but for women in trouble, because she had been one, she would always fight. She had almost, but not quite, learnt to fight for herself too.

  ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘A pleasure.’ Rosa Maundy was a sturdy young woman with mighty muscles which she worked on, and a badly blotched face which she blamed on her father. No love lost there.

  Josephine had the kettle on already. ‘Coffee or tea?’

  ‘Caff, please.’

  They sat opposite each other, Josephine drinking herbal tea while Rosa Maundy stirred the sugar into her coffee. For a time they did not speak.

  Then Rosa said: ‘I’d like to kill that policeman.’

  ‘Which one?’ It was a fair question, Rosa having had many a brush with the law one way and another, usually getting the better of them, but going to prison once. It was where she had met Josephine. Then sought her out under Waterloo Bridge and directing Maisie Rolt to her. Maisie had then told Stella. It was a chain.

  Rosa didn’t answer. But she gave Josephine a look which said: You know whom I mean.

  ‘I don’t think of him as a policeman,’ said Josephine.

  ‘That’s the way to think of him. It’s what he is. He ought to have it marked on his collar like a dog.’

  Josephine gave a hoot of laughter. She could still laugh at some things. Just. No longer at herself. ‘He’d love that.’

  ‘I’d have a shot at doing him, if I thought I’d get away with it.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Rosa. I don’t like it.’

  Rosa leaned forward. ‘For you, I won’t.’

  Josephine put her hand on Rosa’s wrist and held it for a moment in her cold, dry fingers. ‘You’ve done your bit, Rosa. You helped me.’

  ‘It was a two-way thing. You pushed, I pulled.’ Rosa finished her coffee, swirled round the few dregs. ‘You didn’t get me round here just for a cup of coffee.’

  For answer Josephine got up and went to the bureau where she opened a drawer to take out a wrapped package. ‘I want you to take this away and keep it safe for me.’

  ‘Isn’t it safe here?’

  ‘You know what it’s like in this block. I could be broken into any day. Only luck this wasn’t taken before … I’m protected by you, I know that, but it may not work for ever.’

  Rosa raised her eyebrows. I’d like to know why not, she was saying. ‘So I just keep it? That’s all?’

  ‘Open the box when you think fit. Use your judgement.’

  ‘What will tell me?’

  ‘Circumstances,’ said Josephine, ‘circumstances. You never know.’

  ‘What’s in it? Don’t say if you don’t want.’

  ‘Just personal things. Keep them for me. You’ve got somewhere in your father’s office.’ Rosa managed the office in her father’s haulage firm when he was away. He was away a lot, encouraged so by his daughter.

  Rosa considered. She didn’t trust her father not to poke around, so Star Court House might be safer. Maisie Rolt could be trusted.

  ‘Right. I’ll do it for you. Do more than that.’

  ‘Well, haven’t you?’

  Rosa punched her friend jovially on the shoulder. ‘Gotta go, that crazy woman wants me to sing in opera!’ and went away. Josephine washed the mugs they had used and put them away. Next to a half-bottle of whisky, which was there just in case.

  CHAPTER 7

  The next day

  All the reports came flooding on to John Coffin’s desk, together with reports from committees, memoranda for future committees, petitions, pleas, and protests. All the materials which made up his working day.

  He took up the forensic report on the car: of little value. Plenty of traces of the girl and the father but nothing of Martin Blackhall except a handprint on the door and the wallet that had been found in the car.

  Some blood traces, but her blood and not his.

  There was an additional report on the wood used for the coffin: the wood was elm, machine cut into planks. These planks had then been cut, by hand with a small-toothed saw, then nailed together roughly.

  Not the job of an expert carpenter but done neatly enough to suggest
someone good with their hands. Probably a man, the nails had been driven in hard.

  Coffin was thoughtful as he put this sheaf of papers down: he knew that the experts could identify by the cut of the saw and the grain of the wood the source of the planks.

  If they could find the source.

  Two officers had interviewed the driver of the 147a bus on which the ticket found in the blue and white jersey had been issued. He remembered nothing and no one. Pressed, he said Yes, there were a few regulars.

  Names: Mrs Howard

  Jack Edwards

  Someone called Coney … might be a nickname.

  Mrs Howard and Jack Edwards had been tracked down and remembered nothing of the other passengers on that night.

  This left Coney who had yet to be found.

  Coffin put down this report and went on to the next one. Two female officers had gone to Star Court House to interview Mrs Rolt.

  He read what they had to offer: nothing much there.

  A male officer had gone to the haulage firm where Rosa Maundy worked. Rosa was ‘away on business’. He noted that they had been dealing with a consignment of wood, a few planks of which remained. He made a note of this in case, the source of the wood for the girl’s coffin not having yet been traced.

  In the university a team of officers was interviewing all students and teaching staff, while another team was talking to all those workers in the kitchens, cleaning and security departments. There were also typists and secretaries to be seen. It was a big task and not yet complete.

  Here too was a source of wood. A pile of planks rested outside the Works Department. This was noted, and specimens taken. There might be a match.

  In the hospital Martin Blackhall was recovering, but had not yet been subjected to more than a token questioning. Paul Lane had attached his own comment here:

  I think we will have enough to hold him for questioning. We have the attack on the girl in the shop. He was certainly involved but we need the girl’s evidence here, which we will get. (Lane had underlined this bit.) And we have his own words to his mother: ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’ Which girl, I ask myself? And where did he go in the river, and why?

  There was yet another paper for him to study. An additional forensic report on the photograph found under the floorboards in Armitage told him that the picture had been sliced up with a sharp knife.

  He was conscious of having to absorb too much detail. He needed time for the important things to become apparent.

  Coffin put down the papers on his desk. He set in motion all the answering machines and faxes which operated all night, repressing the desire to silence them for ever, and went home. He was early for once.

  But there was one positive action he advised: Question Amy Dean’s friends about the slashed photograph

  St Luke’s Mansions, where he lived in the tower, had changed a little in the years he had lived there. White paintwork had dulled down to London grey, plants and bushes newly planted four-odd years ago, had grown. Everything had a settled look, the years had been kind.

  He and Stella Pinero were the oldest inhabitants. Dwellers in the middle apartment seemed to come and go. Some places are like that: tipping out their residents every so often.

  He let himself in his front door and went up the winding staircase, meeting Tiddles coming down. He turned back to let the cat out.

  ‘Got shut in, old chap? Mrs Fergus forget to let you out?’ Mrs Fergus cleaned his house once a week, leaving some of his possessions gleaming while others collected dust, and everything that would move just a little out of place.

  He went into his sitting-room, adjusting one picture as he passed, and moving a bit of Venetian glass back to where it should have been. It was amazing how she did it, the woman had no sense of balance at all.

  But she had a strong sense of what mattered, and had left a note on the kitchen table.

  Sir,

  You are out of all cleaning materials, soap and lavatory paper. These I will shop for. There is no milk in the fridge and no cat food, and these you must buy.

  F. Fergus.

  She writes a good note, Coffin thought, well put together and to the point.

  He turned dutifully to the door to start on the shopping. He had found it paid to heed Mrs F. Fergus’s little notes. Max in his delicatessen would welcome a customer, even providing food for Tiddles, and he could take the chance to mention the matter of the key, which had been handed out to facilitate the delivery of wine and groceries, not to let in stray visitors.

  He rounded the corner to where Max’s store had spread now into two shops, beating the recession and proving without doubt that people round here in Upper Spinnergate loved to eat.

  The left-hand shop, or the north-west shop if you had a sense of direction, was now a neat little eating place which you reached through an inner door in the shop proper. Several tables were taken, including the big round one in the window usually reserved for St Luke’s Theatre staff and performers, most of whom he knew by sight. But he didn’t recognize this tableful of weary-looking faces, except for Philippa Darbyshire’s. He decided what she had there were a clutch of Valkyries and a few Nibelungs. A post-rehearsal discussion group, he decided, and not looking too happy about it either. Did one of the men recognize him? The tall one in the middle, he had an aware look.

  To his surprise, Stella Pinero was hunched over a cup of coffee at a table in the corner, with Bob crouched at her feet. Bob was allowed in on sufferance (Only Guide Dogs for the Blind and Hearing Dogs for the Deaf, said a notice on the front door) because he was a local hero for services rendered.

  Stella looked as if she had been crying. No tears or anything like that, but a redness round the eyes and a kind of pinched look to her mouth. She raised her head, smiled sadly and drank a sip of coffee. Bob gave a little moaning whine, he was a sympathetic dog.

  ‘Hello, Stella, didn’t expect to see you. I’m just doing some shopping.’

  ‘Come and join me.’

  ‘Let me do the shopping first.’ When he returned with his big recycled paper sack full of food that he could eat and so could Tiddles, he sat down with his back to the room so that he could get a good look at Stella who might be in trouble. He nodded to the group in the window. ‘What’s going on over there?’

  Stella managed a smile. ‘Bad rehearsal, I think, and Marcus threatened not to work with them any more.’

  Coffin raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Professionals don’t really like working with amateurs.’ Stella herself, tolerant as she was, would be wary of such an arrangement. It might be wrong but there it was. So easy to lose status in the performing arts. ‘And of course, Lydia can be a handful.’

  Coffin turned round to study the table behind and met the interested gaze of the man who seemed to know him. The chap smiled, Coffin smiled back. ‘I don’t see their Brunnhilde.’

  ‘Lydia was here, but she stormed out … I think that’s the way to describe it, she looked thunderous enough. Some trouble with her breastplate, she said she wouldn’t be able to Hail the Sun adequately if she was wearing it.’

  Coffin nodded. He knew the scene from The Ring, one of the most moving and beautiful, yet also the most richly comic unless well done.

  He finished coffee. ‘What’s up, Stella? Because something is, I can tell. Is it me?’

  A quarrel did rumble between them occasionally, but he had thought that at the moment they were all clear.

  ‘No, it’s the new TV series. I think I’ve just lost the part … Jack Tickell is producing and he’s never liked my work. He savaged me at rehearsal today.’

  ‘I’ve heard he always does that.’

  ‘No, he wants me out. He’ll manage it, Equity rules or not.’ Her voice dropped. ‘It’s an age thing.’ She turned her face towards Coffin, she looked piteous. ‘It’s bloody when it happens.’

  For a moment words of comfort froze on his lips, he was stopped by the genuine pain of the moment. It is hard on actresses. Afte
r a certain age, parts dry up. Not many around for those in the middle. Once you get into the nineties, there are plenty, but the bit in between can be difficult.

  And then he thought: But this is Stella! She is marvellous, it can’t happen to her. He reached out to take her hand.

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ she said. ‘Walk home with me.’

  They went out into the dark street, accompanied by Bob who frisked ahead, intent on getting what pleasure he could out of the night.

  ‘You could be wrong, Stella. Tickell would be silly to lose you.’ She did panic over things, but she was a shrewd professional judge.

  ‘I hope he thinks so … he’s got a girl he wants to put in,’ she said savagely. ‘I don’t think they’re living together and from all I heard of her, they never will be, she likes to keep her options open.’

  She must be hurt. Stella often made jokes about her colleagues and rivals but she was rarely catty and never about a younger actress.

  She sighed. ‘Oh dear, I can remember being the rising young star … Remember! And it doesn’t seem so long ago.’

  ‘I never look back,’ said Coffin. ‘Not if I can help it.’

  Bob, trotting along, had seen a Dalmatian across the street. He hated Dalmatians with the passionate dislike of a mongrel for a dog of breeding. He hurled himself forward.

  A car approaching swerved and braked and skidded towards Bob. Stella gave a cry and leapt forward to grab Bob by the collar. The car struck her a glancing sideways blow before she could reach him. She fell backwards on to the road.

  Coffin rushed forward to pick her up, her eyes were closed. He held her for a moment, trying to control his own breathing. The driver, white-faced, helped him carry Stella to the pavement. ‘I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it,’ he was muttering. Coffin ignored him.

  Then Stella opened her eyes. ‘If I’ve broken my leg, I’m going to kill that damned dog.’

  Across the road, Bob, unscathed by traffic, had just been dismissed with contempt by the Dalmatian and was about to limp back.