A Coffin for Charley

by Gwendoline Butler

  Here, watch it, he told himself, you’re getting above yourself, this is not the way to think. A little modesty here, please.

  There was a telephone in the hotel lobby and Phœbe answered at the second ring.

  ‘Phœbe? John Coffin here.’

  ‘I know who you are.’ That meant Phoebe in one of her more difficult to handle moods.

  ‘Anything to report about my sister?’

  ‘I can give you the latest: she had a message late last night: she’s to take what money she’s put together, stow it in a plastic carrier bag, Marks and Spencer’s for choice, she can go out and do some shopping if she hasn’t got one to hand.’

  ‘And where is the meeting?’

  ‘Coming to that: in the botanical gardens, where the birds sing in cages.’

  He ignored the touch of poetry. ‘Is it a good spot to catch him? Is it all laid on?’

  ‘If he turns up, then he, or she, will be captured … But they don’t think he will. It’s a try-on, testing her, watching to see who comes with her.’

  ‘Damn, I wanted it all tied up.’

  ‘You’re in a rotten mood. Bad night?’

  ‘No,’ he lied.

  ‘You know you’re behaving just like a relative.’

  ‘I am a relative.’

  ‘It’s going well, the way Evans expected. He’s quite happy. Just relax. You have to be patient with these operations, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘How is my sister?’

  Phœbe paused. ‘I’m told she’s in a bad temper just like you. I think she’s got more excuse.’

  ‘Sorry, Phœbe.’

  ‘I’d like to meet your wife. I think you must give her a bad time.’

  ‘I love Stella,’ he protested. And didn’t Stella give him a hard time? He hadn’t forgotten Job Titus, all in the past, of course. As far as he knew. Not that retrospective jealousy was any easier to bear.

  ‘And you think that makes it better? How like a man.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Phœbe, let’s forgive each other. I apologize for anything I did, past, present or future.’

  She laughed. ‘You’re a clever devil too, clever but fair. And here’s a bit of news. Sergeant Downey said to tell you if you rang and were interested.’ The ironic note in her voice could not be missed. One and all, they knew he was interested. ‘To tell you, if you were interested that it had been established that the girl did not put up a fight. Went willingly, as it were … Oh, and she was not sexually attacked. Mean anything to you?’

  It fitted in, the same pattern of docility as the other two. And no sex. Yes, it meant something to him.

  ‘And there’s more.’

  ‘Don’t hand it out in little parcels, Phœbe.’

  ‘Whoa there, I’m doing you a favour, remember … Her stomach was empty, she had not eaten for some time. I don’t know what that suggests to you.’

  Imprisoned, tied up possibly, a hostage to murder. It was the thing that separated this victim from the other two. She was the first in time, and the worst treated.

  He walked round the corner to where he had parked his car and set off. He had a fair idea of which way to go, but he wanted to take a back route. He liked small side roads, you learnt so much more about a neighbourhood than from the large busy arteries leading through the city.

  Pershore Road, Sellywick Drive, Eden Road, Roper’s Passage … You probably couldn’t drive through that last street, too narrow. Stetchly Road, Cat Street, and then, at last, Larch Court where Mary had lived.

  The unthinkable thought comes upon you when least expected.

  He started the car and found his way blocked by a big lorry. He groaned. It isn’t worth it, I should retire from the game and grow roses or keep bees like Sherlock Holmes.

  There, the word popped out, the forbidden word, under the guise of a joke.

  Retire.

  The lorry full of frozen meat moved away and Coffin drove forward. No roses, with him they would have greenfly from the word go. You couldn’t keep bees in his church tower apartment in Spinnergate.

  The traffic was slow and patchy but he found his way to where Mary Andrews had lived with her grandfather, Henry French, with no trouble except for a bad move down a one-way street.

  He drove round a corner, then stopped the car to sit looking. Sergeant Downey had prepared him for what he might find, but all the same it was a shock to see only one inhabited home in a row of deserted, empty houses.

  Henry French had lived in the middle of the terrace but the curtains were drawn here too, and for ever. He would not be back, nor would Mary.

  Behind the houses was a wasteland where a factory had once stood. Remains of the factory were stuck there still, so you could see the skeleton of a great red brick monster. The men and women who worked in the factory had probably lived in the streets around here. At the time when Reilly’s Ironworks had gone up, men walked to work from close at hand. Those days were over and the whole area was due to be redeveloped.

  A big notice said:

  CITY DEVELOPMENT AREA.

  NEW SHOPPING PRECINCT.

  There was the developer’s name which he recognized and the architect’s also, which he did not. It was going to be a big enterprise and Mr French’s reluctance to sell must be holding it up.

  While increasing the value of the houses. Don’t forget that, he told himself.

  Coffin parked his car in the dead street, walking down the garden to the house. This was dead too. The garden was not dead but was busy finding its way back to a primæval wilderness. It had been heavily planted with shrubs and bushes, all now in vigorous, unrestrained growth, he had to push his way between two rose-trees which had spread out towards each other. Nature, left alone, always overdoes it.

  The nylon curtains masking the windows had gone grey with dirt, they would never wash clean now; a line of dead flies lay on the inner window-sill. Even they had given up the struggle for life.

  As he walked back to his car, he imagined how Mary Andrews had lived with her grandfather. A small job somewhere, responsible for the cooking and laundry at home, watching television and going to the library. He might call there to see if they knew anything of her, but he already knew what he wanted to know.

  She was a girl with expectations. She could be a small heiress. When her grandfather died and the house was hers (if that was what he intended, but in Coffin’s imagination it was how it went: Mary was the next of kin and would inherit if there was a will or not), she could sell it for whatever the next developer would pay.

  Birmingham was the city of the future, everyone said so, and what Mary might inherit would be valuable, especially if you know how to play the game.

  Only an unknown had moved out of the shadows to kill her.

  Mary was different from the other two victims, this was what struck him. The first of the series to die, and the last to be discovered.

  But the very nature of her death and burial ruled out, in Coffin’s view, the idea of the serial murderer.

  Sex, obsession, madness, the drive to kill, he rejected those as motives in favour of something harder and more grasping. Somehow gain to the killer came into it.

  The drive to the Sheldon Park Hospital was not long. He found his way there and tucked his car away in a visitors’ car park. Several blocks of buildings spread out around him which were built of brick, solid and not handsome but serviceable. The hospital had the air of having once been something else and he would not have been surprised if he had been told it had started out as a workhouse or a barracks.

  But when he walked into the entrance hall it felt to him like a good hospital, one doing its best to heal. Among all the mingled smells of antiseptics, drugs, floor polish and the ghostly smells of departed patients, he smelt kindness.

  The feeling was reinforced when he was led into the small side ward where Henry French was in bed. Here he introduced himself to the nurse for what he was, a policeman.

  Henry French was in a corner bed with
a window behind him. A blue and white flowered curtain was drawn around the bed, separating him from the other two patients so that he had, in effect, a little private room. He was curled up, eyes closed, breathing quietly in short, shallow breaths. His hands on the counterpane were neatly manicured and his thick white hair had been brushed into a quiff. Blue pyjamas and a little soft shawl around his shoulders showed under the sheets.

  ‘He looks comfortable,’ Coffin said spontaneously. ‘Is he asleep?’

  ‘No, just very far away.’

  ‘Can I talk to him?’

  The young nurse replaced the shawl which had slipped a little. ‘He may be able to hear you, I believe he can, but he will not answer.’

  ‘I had hoped to ask him about his niece, and about some property he owns.’

  ‘You can try.’

  Coffin bent down, he took Henry French’s hand. ‘About your niece Mary,’ he began. ‘She lived with you, I understand.’ He felt a faint, a very faint, pressure on his own hand.

  ‘Did she go to London?’

  Was there a movement of a finger against his own?

  ‘Did she ever write? Did you have a letter?’

  A letter could mean an address.

  This time he could not feel a response, nothing. He tried again. Then he patted Henry French’s hand, said: ‘Thank you, sir,’ and moved a few paces away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the nurse. ‘I did warn you.’

  They were speaking quietly, but stood close to the bed. On a table by the bed on which were flowers and a comb and hairbrush, he saw two photographs in silver frames. One was of a girl, young, plump and pretty, the other of a very young man, and one judging by the flowing hair style taken a few years ago, for fashions change.

  Coffin thought: I know that face. Younger, hair different, even a different colour, but the same features.

  My God, to think of it being him. And yet in a way, always a likely candidate. Close to Annie Briggs, close to Didi. There with a chance to watch, and so respectable.

  He turned in question to the nurse. ‘His family?’

  ‘Yes, that’s his granddaughter and his grandson, all the family he has. I think he was proud of them both, especially the girl, she hoped to be an actress and he wanted to help. I had thought they would have come to visit him, but neither has.’

  No, thought Coffin, because one is dead and the other one killed her.

  He took Henry French’s hand again. ‘Goodbye, sir,’ he said. This time there was no answering pressure. Possibly he had imagined it the first time.

  As he drove away, he decided that a meeting must be set up between Archie Young and Wally Watson at which he would preside. He thought: Wally Watson has a fingerprint and I have the face. We’ve got him.

  He stopped in a quiet side street where there was one of those cafés in which Birmingham seemed rich to make another telephone call. He was in better spirits. Even the coffee tasted good, and the girl who poured it was polite about letting him use the telephone.

  ‘Phœbe, I’m off, I’ve finished my business here.’

  ‘I won’t ask.’

  ‘You’ll hear. But thanks for your help … What news of Letty’s affair?’ He was anxious, all the feeling about his sister that he had suppressed that day came raging back.

  ‘He didn’t turn up to the meeting. Or so your sister believes. In fact, a man was observed watching her and followed back. A house in Edgbaston, not too far from the hotel. It’s thought the girl, Elissa, is there. She’s been seen.’ Phœbe added: ‘And not as a prisoner.’

  ‘So she’s cooperating?’

  ‘Could be. Looks like it.’

  ‘Perhaps I should collect Letty, take her back to London.’

  ‘No, I’d leave her, let her see it through. From what I hear, I don’t believe she’d go. But she’s beginning to suspect her daughter.’

  Perhaps she always had done, thought Coffin, as he said goodbye to Phœbe. His second call was to Walter Watson in South London. ‘Wally, this is your job: get the Birmingham CID to seal the house in Larch Grove so that no one can get in. I’ll explain when I get back. I want to meet you in company with Archie Young and his team.’

  His next call was to Archie Young. ‘I’m on my way back, I think I have a result, but I’m uneasy, this killer is unpredictable, chancy, and there’s a lot of malice. Keep an eye on things.’

  ‘Can’t run a twenty-four-hour watch on them all.’ He totted them up in his head: Annie Briggs, Eddie, and Lizzie Creeley, Job Titus, Alex C. Edwards, Tash and others … What did the boss want? And Edwards, was that necessary?

  The Chief Commander’s other request to Archie Young was that he must fix a meeting with Chief Superintendent Watson in the Second City. On John Coffin’s territory.

  The last call was to Stella. It took some time to track her down since she was not at home, but he found her in Max’s at last, where she was having a late lunch.

  ‘I’m coming home. In fact, I’m on the way now. I’ll see you in a few hours. Will you be home?’

  ‘I’m working this evening: doing an interview on TV. And I’ve got one or two things set up, but I promise to hurry.’ But he could tell from her voice that she was glad to hear from him. ‘And Letty? What’s happening?’

  ‘I won’t talk about it now, but you can relax, Letty will be back, and she’ll have her money with her.’ Then he said: ‘And about the other business, the murders, I think that’s tidied up. I know now who killed the girls.’

  Stella went back into Max’s where she whispered to Alison who was there too that the murderer was known. Normally Stella was very discreet but her relief at the news was so great that she found herself wanting to talk about it.

  Their coffee was being served by one of Max’s daughters, the lovely one (but going off a bit already) whom they called Beauty.

  Beauty was a great gossip and heard this nugget of news with pleasure. She too had known Didi, had been at school with her.

  She passed the news round everywhere.

  ‘Stella knows, yes, I think she knows WHO, but she didn’t say. She couldn’t really, could she? But it will all come out soon. There will be an arrest, won’t there? We shall all feel a lot easier then, it’s been horrible here.’

  ‘But don’t go out after dark,’ was her joke.

  A lot of people came into Max’s that afternoon and heard what Beauty so willingly volunteered, then they in their turn went out into Spinnergate to pass on what they had heard.

  Job Titus heard all about it as he travelled home, so did Alex C. Edwards, who telephoned Annie, who told Tom Ashworth. Annie had been doing some digging on her own account since receiving Didi’s notebook with Eddie Creeley’s signed photograph. Didi had kept a rough diary of an intimate nature which told Annie more than she had expected. Lizzie Creeley heard the news while she was shopping in the chemist for some headache tablets and something to cure sickness. She hadn’t told Eddie yet because he wasn’t up to it.

  CHAPTER 19

  The river in flood

  The murderer was saying Relax to Annie; he suspected her of blackmailing him in an Annie-ish sort of way, in other words, mad and muddled. She couldn’t focus, that woman, but he was in charge; he had made his plans, wasn’t really here at all. Packed and on the way. Early retirement. You could call it that.

  It wasn’t that he liked killing, it was a business matter. Anyone might do the same for his reason, and a number had, but he had found it surprisingly easy to get women to agree to be murdered. Except the first one, Mary Andrews, the bitch; he had had to lure her south with a few lies, such as ‘I can help you with your acting career. I know it’s what you’ve always wanted, get you a foothold in the theatre down here.’ He did the same later with Marianna and Didi.

  All women are gullible when it is news they want to hear. Maybe they think: Well, he’s lying but let’s give it a go, and that’s their weak point. The window of opportunity. And by the time he had got them planting the false clues, Eddi
e, Eddie, they were dying without knowing it.

  Mary had to be imprisoned for a bit because Grandpa was not dead and she might get in touch. Food and drink had been a problem but he had solved that by not giving her any. She soon went quiet, damn her, let her eat her nails. She always had chewed them, he remembered those chewed hands that had slapped his face.

  None of this came out in his smooth flow of talk. ‘Annie, you’re a great girl, I love you.’

  Annie listened to his soothing words, and went on with her talk. ‘Like HER,’ she was saying, and then: ‘Did like HIM but he betrayed me.’

  ‘Never,’ said the killer sardonically. ‘Cops never do that.’

  ‘Can’t trust him. Can’t trust people. Can’t trust you. It’s because I don’t trust you, I can use you.’

  ‘Well, thanks. That is a vote of confidence. I always thought you were loyal. Loyal Annie, I called you.’ Stupid woman, stupid woman, I am a tiger in the undergrowth, you can never trust a tiger, especially a hungry tiger, because he waits and he watches, chooses his prey, then pounces. This tiger did observe his victims; if they thought they watched, then they were watched.

  ‘I’ve been pushed around too much,’ said Annie. ‘Now I want to get my own back on some people. They patronize you, HE did, SHE did, I won’t have that. You can help me.’ She did not say Revenge, but he smelt it on her breath like gin.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the murderer, with his false smile, ‘it’s not really my job. I’m supposed to be neutral.’

  ‘But you’d do it for me,’ said Annie beguilingly, ‘especially because of what I know.’

  Dangerous talk.

  ‘For instance, I know, you dye your hair.’

  ‘I do not dye my hair.’

  ‘I know what’s natural and what’s not. It’s a wig or dyed, you are dark, not fair, I can see it in your eyes. And perhaps I know even more about you than you think,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reading Didi’s notebook.’

  ‘So it’s turned up.’ Not good news.