‘It’s a good unit down there,’ he said absently. And of course they could always ask for assistance from the Serious Crime Group, headed by Paul Lane, which he had set up at his headquarters, but Paul had plenty going on there, what with the Dean investigation and the new big arson inquiry starting up. ‘I want you to find out at what stage they are and what they’ve got so far.’
‘Certainly.’ Andrew rose to his feet briskly. Coffin got down to the work on his desk. Even as he attended to the business of the day, a dream was forming inside his head. He would resign from his position, let someone else carry on what he had started (and he had created well), and he and Stella would marry, or not marry according to how they felt, but they would move out of London. To the country perhaps, find a house near enough to London for Stella to work on the stage and do TV work, while he would cultivate his garden. No, he hated gardening. But there would be Tiddles and Bob, so a garden there must be. But he might take a degree from the Open University.
But definitely he would not write his memoirs (although he had had some newsworthy cases), he had had enough trying to edit the life-history of his itinerant mother. For all his early life he had thought of himself as an orphan soul, with no blood relations left in the world. Then, suddenly, life had presented him with a half-sister, Letty Bingham, and a half-brother in Edinburgh, a Writer to the Signet, no less.
He loved Letty, a beautiful and clever woman, brother William he cared for a little less (distinctly less, if he was honest); both of them were richer than he was. There would be some money for him and Stella. Letty, now divorced again and embarked on a career of feminist independence (how like she was to their mother, after all), had offered to employ him in her theatre. But that had been a joke.
Too old to go on the stage, but he could collect the tickets at the door. He started to laugh.
Fiona put her head round the door. ‘Mr Chambers is away until the weekend. So I have settled for Monday of next week. In his office, but he’d like to meet you for a drink first. At the Rackets Club.’
Nearly a week before execution day, then. And the condemned man will be given a strong whisky first.
He nodded at Fiona. ‘Accepted.’
As she withdrew, Andrew Fletcher reappeared. He was breathless as if he had been hurrying.
‘No need to run,’ said Coffin mildly.
‘Thought you wanted to know.’
‘So I do. So?’
‘The first SOCO examination and photographs completed.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘The Fire Service wanted to carry out certain checks to see if the floor was safe. Also to confirm arson. Although it sounds as if it must have been a deliberate fire.’
‘And the body?’
‘Taken away to the police mortuary for the usual, sir.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Ask Ted Amesbury to meet me there.’
‘Now, sir?’
‘Now.’
He passed Fiona on his way out, enjoying the faint air of disapproval on her face. He felt like someone escaping. But even as he walked by her desk he noticed Fiona’s eyes give a quick flick at the inner door. He had observed her taking an interest in Andrew. He also knew her nickname: Fickle Fiona, only the word used when he was not around was not fickle.
She might or might not get anywhere with Andrew, but now was a chance. Take your time, Fiona, I shall be gone some time. And cheer up, I might soon be gone for ever.
The air outside was cool and fresh, it had rained in the night, and the streets of his Second City smelt fresher than usual. But it was no time for walking.
Nor for driving himself. He sat behind the hunched back of his official driver, wearing his own official face. Ted Amesbury would expect to be treated with due formality, and in any case, by now all systems would have been alerted to what he was doing. He was not an anonymous man.
As they drove through the streets he realized what pain it would give him to leave this city in someone else’s hands. It was his place. He hadn’t created it: many centuries and many hands, from Bronze Age immigrants through to the Roman, Saxon and Norman invaders, had done that, setting up wharves and docks to be inherited by their descendants. He had taken over their territory and their law. He was just one in a long line. But he valued it.
He knew already that the fire in the shopping complex had been dealt with; that the attempted kidnapping linked with the robbery of a local bank was nearly wound up—the kidnappers had been caught; but he also knew that at any moment the car radio might inform him of another crisis. They had a royal visit coming up (unless Sir Thomas had asked for a postponement because of his own crisis) and that usually provoked some action somewhere.
But it was a quiet ride, the driver the silent sort. Coffin had never been to George Eliot House before but the driver knew the address and the sight of the uniformed constable standing on the third floor walkway told him where he had to go. It was not a very tall block, and there were lifts, which sometimes worked, but it was more pleasant if you walked up the stairs. They smelt slightly fresher. Amesbury was there before him. A woman poked her head out of a door three places away, but the doors on either side of where Josephine had lived were quiet.
‘We had to move the neighbours on either side out,’ said Amesbury, ‘just in case, but the fire didn’t spread. Both families will be back this morning. May be a bit smoky but nothing else.’
Inside Josephine’s flat, the windows of the sitting-room had been broken by the firemen, the room was damp and smelt of burning. The furniture, what there was of it, had been pushed to one side.
Coffin stood in the middle of the room.
‘The worst damage is in the bathroom,’ said Amesbury. ‘That’s where it started.’
Coffin nodded. ‘I’ll have a look in there.’ He was moving round the room. ‘What’s the judgement on the fire? They’ve finished, have they?’
‘Yes, it’s all ours now. The Fire Service people say it’s certainly arson. Looks as though she started it herself. That’s what they think and they usually get it right.’
The room did not yield much information to Coffin. As a case goes on, a detective has to think himself into other minds. In his life, Coffin had been inside many skins, he had been a swindler, a rapist, a murderer, several times over. He had tried them all on for size, noted where they fitted and where they pinched. It was disconcerting to find how the skin of the most depraved fitted you at some points.
But you need a little material to get the imagination going. Josephine had not left him a lot. A few sticks of furniture, no books, no papers, no photographs. A ballpoint pen on the table to show that she could write but no evidence that she ever had. Even the pen might have been left behind by someone else.
‘Not much to see here.’
‘I don’t think she had much. It was the way she lived. But even so, it looks as though she cleared things out before she died.’
‘How do you know?’
‘One neighbour reports seeing her carry bags of something down to the waste bin the day she died.’ Before Coffin could say anything, Amesbury went on: ‘Of course we’ve checked, but the bins were emptied that day and already on the way to the tip.’
Coffin understood the implication: if this had been a major murder inquiry, then the bins would have been traced; for a routine, straightforward investigation to an unimportant, if nasty, suicide case it wasn’t worth it. A dirty business which might bring no returns.
‘I think it might be an idea to see what can be salvaged at the tip,’ he said. ‘You never know.’
‘I’ll get someone down there.’
Coffin knew what Amesbury really wanted to say: What are you doing down here? Why are you bothering about this unimportant case?
He walked to the bathroom door and looked inside. ‘Some interesting aspects though,’ he said, answering the question that had not been asked. ‘The fire, for instance.’
‘It happens. Suicides do funny things.’
‘No note?’
<
br /> Amesbury shook his head. ‘Not as far as we’ve discovered. She may have said something. We shall be asking her friends and neighbours.’
‘So what would be the motive for killing herself?’
‘I think she was at the end of her tether … There’s hardly any food here, she didn’t have much of anything. Nowhere to go, sir. That’s often when people take this way out.’
And they do it without warning, Coffin knew this as well as anyone.
The fire had burned fiercely in the bathroom, the lavatory pan and the handbasin were cracked with heat and smoky brown. The bath itself was less touched. The floor looked dangerous.
‘We photographed everything before we let the Fire Squad have their turn,’ said Amesbury, on the defensive.
Josephine was gone, but the bath was still half full of bloody water. Pinkish, rather than deep red. Coffin studied it.
‘Cut her wrists, did she?’
‘Yes. But she did more than that. She took some whisky, and put her head in a plastic bag. She may have taken sleeping tablets, we’re waiting for the PM to see about that.’
Coffin withdrew silently into the living-room.
‘Have you got the photographs?’
‘I’ll send a set round, sir.’
The room was chill and very damp. Probably someone else would try to make a home here when it had all been repaired and repainted. Would someone tell them what happened here? Of course they would. Stories like that were always handed on. It might not even be the first death here. George Eliot House was ten years old, Josephine was unlikely to have been the first tenant.
‘I know some of her friends,’ he said, half to himself, ‘I knew her. Slightly.’
‘Thought you might have done, sir,’ said Amesbury, who was beginning to sweat. Somehow, although the room was cold, he felt hot. There was unacknowledged tension here.
‘Nasty business.’ Coffin handed out the platitude to stop himself thinking. The presence of Josephine was strong in this room.
‘The damage could have been worse, a lot worse, the Maundy girl got here before the water was cold in the bath.’ He knew all about Rosa, all the police units did; he did not like her, but regretfully he had to decide she had done nothing but good here. Also, she had been crying, which surprised him.
‘Oh, she was here?’ This was the first intimation Coffin had had of the presence of Rosa Maundy.
‘Yes, with one of her girls.’
‘How did she get in?’
‘Broke in. Close to the dead woman, apparently. Says she’s her executor, whatever that means. Not what it usually means, I shouldn’t think.’
‘Did she say why she came?’
‘I don’t think it was just a social call. She said she was worried about Miss Josephine—that’s what she was always called round here. Her real name was Day. Peggy Day. Miss. She wasn’t married.’ But everyone was allowed to change their name if they wanted.
‘You got on to that fast,’ said Coffin approvingly.
‘No secret about it, that’s how she appears on the list of Council tenants. And the DHSS confirm it.’
‘Yes. Still, you got it.’
‘They don’t know anything more about her. She wasn’t in debt. Her rent was paid up to date. But she didn’t have much money, her handbag survived the fire, just a few pounds in it.’
Once again, Coffin wondered what Josephine had lived on.
‘No pension book, not yet of age,’ said Amesbury, confirming that he too had wondered. ‘I think it might have been money worries. I got her NHS number and located her GP. Haven’t seen him yet, though.’
‘I think you’ve done a lot in a very short time.’
Amesbury looked pleased and suddenly felt a whole lot cooler.
‘Let me have the photographs and Rosa Maundy’s statement, will you?’
‘Fastest, sir,’ said Amesbury. He escorted Coffin to his car with relief, and, now it was over, with a good feeling that he had made contact with the Chief Commander, not let himself down and made a good score. Life was not all bad, after all.
Before he got into the car, Coffin paused and looked up at the windows on the top floor of George Eliot House. Several faces were now staring down at him, his visit had not gone unrecorded.
‘What did she burn? How did she start the fire?’
‘Rolled-up newspapers. And a bit of paraffin.’
‘Well, it’s one way to start a fire. You could always use firelighters, of course.’
‘She had it planned, sir, must have had.’
Coffin nodded. He was driven off as Amesbury watched, and was thoughtful.
From the upstairs windows came a shout: ‘Bloody murderers.’ Something soft and squashy came down, missing the Chief Commander’s car which had gathered speed away but landing on Amesbury’s left shoe. He lifted his foot and shook it like an angry cat, he felt like raising his fist and swearing, but revolutions have been started that way and he was not about to start one now.
The police were not popular in George Eliot House.
The photographs and Rosa’s statement arrived on Coffin’s desk before the end of the morning. He was on his own, Andrew and Fiona had both taken an early lunch. Together?
He spread the pictures of the flat out on his desk. The one to which his eyes were drawn pictured the body in the bath. It was in colour. How long had police photographs been in colour? Certainly not when he had been one of the youngest and newest Scene of Crime Officers in South London.
Josephine was lying back in the bath, her arms limp in the pinkish water, her features looking filmy and indistinct behind the plastic bag as if the process of decomposition had already started. She was a chrysalis, getting ready to turn into something else.
He read the statement that Rosa Maundy had made. She had said little, long practised in not giving anything away to the police. She had wanted to call on Josephine, she had seen the light of the fire, and had found her friend. Yes, Josephine was her friend. She was proud to be her friend and her literary executor.
He supposed that it was the literary executor, or one of her girls, who had put the note through his door.
He put the papers aside and dialled the number of Stella’s hairdresser. He knew the place, having collected her there once or twice. He might just catch her.
He could hear voices from the salon and the music that was always flooding through the rooms. It sounded gentle and Italian today, which was unusual.
He could visualize the telephone being carried past the washbasins and up to the table where Stella would be unobtrusively studying what was being done to her hair, while pretending to read a magazine. Or she might be having her nails manicured. A darker, brighter red perhaps?
‘Hello?’ Stella sounded alarmed. ‘What is it? You never ring me here?’
‘I wanted to tell you that I took a look at George Eliot House myself. The first judgement is that it was suicide. Josephine did kill herself. It looks a very deliberate, planned affair. I don’t think I could have stopped her. She may just have wanted to see me to tell me what she planned to do.’
‘You would have tried to stop her,’ said Stella swiftly.
‘Yes, of course. And perhaps she did want to be persuaded to live … that’s something I shall have to live with.’
‘Was it—’ Stella hesitated—‘an easy death?’
Coffin chose his words, the picture still vivid in his mind: the face in the caul, the naked body slumped in the discoloured water. ‘I don’t think she suffered.’
He could hear her saying something to another person, then she came back to him. ‘Sorry, I was talking to my stylist … he was cutting too much, my neck can’t stand it, you see.’
‘Stella, have you any idea why Josephine did it?’ In spite of what he had said to Stella, there was a sense of self-mutilation about the death, almost of punishment.
Again Stella hesitated. ‘There must have been many times in Josephine’s life when it could have happened.’
<
br /> ‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ And some event, possibly trivial, just tilted her spirit so that this was the day.
‘So sad,’ Stella’s gentle voice carried across to him her grief. ‘She was a lovely woman. But there was a blackness in her, one knew that. The work at Star Court House can’t have helped, nor the murder.’
Yes, an accident of life, he thought. Sad for Josephine. She had collided with a horrible event and she had cracked. She had got caught up in the tragedy of Amy Dean which had nothing to do with her and it had killed her. ‘I’ll see you tonight, Stella. That is, I’d like to. Can we?’
She muttered something soft, but it sounded like a yes, and was certainly affectionate.
He would tell her tonight what hung over him.
No lunch. He worked on. Andrew and Fiona reappeared, not together, a tactful interval between their arrivals. He felt like shaking his head at both of them, but he contented himself with giving Fiona the look she well understood. He knew he ought to speak to her about the way she went on, but a man who lived in a glass house … There you were. Perhaps he should resign before he was pushed.
He considered telephoning Maisie Rolt but decided to leave it until the evening when he and Stella could do it together. She probably knew already all that she ought to know and maybe some more that she would be happier without. Our General had been there in the room, had seen it, and would pass it on. In the end, someone would tell Stella too, but it wasn’t going to be him. I can be a coward too, he told himself. And for some reason that satisfied him.
The afternoon had passed, Fiona murmured her goodbyes (it would be Lysette tomorrow), and Andrew had departed soon after.
He looked in his diary at the entry next week for the crucial interview. It seemed to innocuous: just the time and the name and the place.
A breath of air was what he needed. He went to the window to open it. Across the inner court, he saw a group of five: Beenie, Mick, Archie Young, one of his sergeants, and a WDC he did not recognize.
Josephine’s death had pushed other matters to the edge of his mind. Temporarily, only temporarily.
There was something about Archie Young’s back and the way he was walking that expressed anger. The experience that angered the Chief Inspector most was not getting answers when he wanted them.
Cracking Open a Coffin Page 19