Coffin walked away from the window, saying as he did so, in a conversational way: ‘Martin Marlowe’s outside on the pavement looking up. I’ve been watching him. I was looking down and he was looking up. He saw me, I think.’
Darcy went over to the window. ‘Wonder what he wants?’
‘Let’s go down and find out.’
They met him on the staircase. ‘What do you want?’ asked Darcy. Coffin kept silent. Martin stared back at them with unfriendly eyes.
‘Not to see you,’ he said. ‘I came to look … She died here, and I want to know why.’ He staggered backwards, grabbing at the stair rail to stop himself falling.
‘No reason to believe that she was killed here.’ Coffin put his hand on Martin’s arm. ‘We don’t know where she was killed, not yet, although we will find out. Come and sit in the car if you want to talk.’
‘He’d better not be sick in the car,’ muttered Darcy.
‘He won’t be.’ This man is not drunk, Coffin said to himself, or not on alcohol but on raw emotion. He could see from Darcy’s face that he was thinking: This bloody actor.
‘Let’s establish one thing: were you here last night?’
‘Yes.’ Martin’s voice was thick. ‘And the night before that and the night before that.’
‘Before the performance or not?’ asked Coffin.
‘After, you fool.’
‘Did you try to break in?’
‘No …’
‘Someone tried to.’
‘Not me … it’s her coffin, her shroud …’
This was not endearing him to Darcy. ‘Did you ever have a key?’ he demanded.
‘I had one once, but Jaimie didn’t like me using it. It was her private place. Jaimie did not like invaders.’
Once inside the car, Martin became quieter. ‘I want to know what you are doing to find her killer. I don’t think you are doing much.’
‘We are working on it,’ said Darcy, still irritated.
‘You think it’s me, don’t you? Written all over your face. Or my poor sister. Killed once, easy to do it again. I’ll tell you who killed her, I know. That old pervert, that Grand Old Man, and if you don’t get him, I will.’
‘Are you accusing Richard Lavender?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s very old and feeble.’
‘Somehow he did it. Hired someone, he wanted Jaimie silenced. I don’t know why, but he did.’ He was sweating. ‘Open the car window, will you?’
Coffin wound it down. ‘Why do you call Richard Lavender a pervert?’
‘There was something rotten about him, and Jaimie knew. In the past. I don’t know, perhaps not even that. She didn’t trust him, she said you couldn’t. Wanted to maul, I expect, probably all he could manage. She wouldn’t like that.’ His voice was getting thicker. ‘She was straight about sex, Jaimie, plenty of it, but straight.’
He started to cry. This irritated Darcy even more. ‘I am not satisfied with all you are saying. I am going to take you down to the station for questioning.’
Surprisingly, this steadied Martin. ‘All right, but let me tell my sister first.’ He looked at Coffin for support.
‘Are you staying with her?’
‘No. She has a hospital flat, I can’t live with her there, not allowed. So she is with me.’
‘Will she be there now?’
‘Yes, she’s waiting for me.’
Good sister. Coffin thought. He gave Darcy the look that meant: when we get there, you stay in the car and I will go in with him.
Dr Clara Henley opened the door herself. Coffin thought she had missed the stigmata which many long-term prisoners acquire: she was neither wary nor aggressive, she was neither anxious to please, nor dismissive; she looked lively and cheerful, but she looked older than her years, which he could understand. She was indeed older than her brother. His dependence on her showed at once, he rushed towards her and hugged her.
‘Are you all right, Clara?’
‘Of course I am all right. It’s you that seems not to be.’ She looked over his shoulder; she was cool, and it seemed she could talk. ‘Good morning, Chief Commander, or is it afternoon?’
Coffin stood in the doorway, through which he could see the kitchen and the living room, both of which were, he guessed, tidier than at any time in the tenancy of Jaimie and Martin. They had lived here together and quarrelled; Martin had loved her, but he was probably right in thinking that the girl was only after his ‘story’.
Looking into Clara’s cold eyes, he wondered if she would have been capable of killing Jaimie to stop her doing just that. It was judged that Jaimie had died in the late afternoon or early evening, hard to be precise. She had been operating, of course. Presumably that had been checked. He wondered how easy it might be to walk out of an operating theatre, commit a murder and then come back. Didn’t some operations go on all day?
‘I’ve got to go in to be questioned again,’ Martin was saying.
‘I think we had better get you a lawyer.’
‘It would be a good idea,’ agreed Coffin.
Clara patted her brother’s shoulder. ‘You get off, I will find you a lawyer. There’s a woman I knew from college.’ She looked sardonically at Coffin. ‘A real college, where I started my medical training, not a cover name for prison.’
Martin drew away from his sister. ‘I will go then. Thanks, Clara.’ He had taken strength from her, he sounded calmer.
‘I had come to that conclusion myself.’ Coffin motioned to Martin to get into the car where Darcy sat, scowling. ‘Doctor, what did your brother pass to you when he was hugging you?’
She kept silent.
‘I saw, you know. In fact, I was looking out for something of that sort. I expected it.’ He stood in front of her, his face stern. ‘Come on, hand it over. I could take you down to be searched.’
‘Give it to him,’ said Martin from the car. ‘Sorry, Clara.’
Silently, she drew a short, stubby but sharp knife from her pocket.
‘What was that for? Or were you going to use it to break into the flat?’
‘I wanted it for self-protection, I have been carrying it for days,’ was all Martin said.
***
At the end of that day, Coffin went into the theatre to find Stella. ‘I want to take you out to dinner. Let’s drive, get out of the Second City.’
Stella was sitting behind her desk once again, studying the theatre accounts which always made her nervous.
‘You have taken away my new young juvenile,’ she complained. ‘It is very awkward for us here. I only heard just before the curtain went up.’
‘Is he in this production?’
‘No,’ Stella admitted. ‘But he might have been, you lot ought to remember that theatre is not like a factory or an office: we have a duty towards the audience.’
‘You do put on a marvellous act,’ Coffin said with admiring affection. ‘I shouldn’t worry, he’s probably safer where he is now, than elsewhere.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Coffin soberly and with conviction.
‘Is he in danger?’
‘He might be … anyway, his sister is getting him a solicitor, so I expect he will be out on police bail, after a while.’
‘You think he is the killer?’
Coffin did not answer.
‘But if he is, then he himself cannot be in any danger.’
‘Grow up, Stella. If you kill someone who is loved, then you are in danger of revenge.’
Stella thought about it. Who was a candidate for a revenge killing? ‘Jack Bradshaw?’
‘Silence on that one.’
‘So they are both under suspicion … Silence on that one too, I suppose. I am glad I don’t have to write the dialogue for any play you might perform in.’
‘Unluckily it is not a play,’ said Coffin, turning away.
Stella walked round to face him. ‘Let me look at you … you are worried, aren’t you?
Anxious. Or is it guilty?’
‘All of that.’
‘What do you think is going to happen?’
Slowly, he said: ‘I think it is already happening. And yes, it is my doing.’
Into the silence, Stella said: ‘If we are dining out, I ought to go and change.’ She looked down at her jeans and silk shirt.
‘Don’t change, you look lovely as you are. I have booked a table at that restaurant in Basil Street. I think it’s a night for being very extravagant and detached.’
Stella looked at him, and was frightened.
For him, not of him.
‘If this was a play,’ she said, ‘you would put your arms round me and say: “Don’t shiver, just think of it as a play,” and the audience would nod as the curtain came down and wait for the next act. But this isn’t a play and you aren’t that sort of person.’
‘No, my darling,’ he said sadly.
The restaurant was not in Basil Street itself but in a little cul-de-sac just off it called The Pens, the origin of this name was not clear, but perhaps, a hundred and so years ago when all this was fields, sheep had been penned there.
They had a table in the window overlooking the back garden, which was tiny, paved but full of greenery which seemed to be surviving the winter weather. It was gently floodlit.
Stella settled herself at their table, and adjusted her scarf before looking around the room. She knew that her jeans, silk shirt and cashmere jacket matched the rest of the diners, who were dressed with expensive casualness.
She turned to her husband, who was thinking about the wine; not a natural wine buff – having been brought up in a world that took a pint of beer – he wanted to be intelligent about it and not just go by price.
‘So why did you bring me here?’
‘I thought you liked it?’
‘I do. But usually I am taken here by those who want me to put on a play for them or, if I am lucky, to offer me a part in a film. TV people take you somewhere less expensive.’
‘What a cynic you are.’
‘Just full of experience. So why are we here?’
Coffin looked thoughtful. ‘My idea was that you deserved to get out of the Second City for a while and to have some food and drink in a pleasant ambience … Also, I wanted to show you off a bit. You are quite a person, you know.’
Stella accepted the compliment, looked round the room again, saw that there was no one there she knew except a woman she had worked with years ago and whom she hardly recognized. Satisfying to see someone age so thoroughly. ‘That’s Aileen Alleen over there,’ she said happily to Coffin. ‘I only just recognized her. Wouldn’t know her, would you? Marrying that millionaire just did for her.’
‘Has she still got the millionaire?’ Coffin was looking at the very young but exceedingly good-to-look-at young man who was dining with Aileen.
‘I don’t know if she’s still got him, but I understand she has quite a few of his millions.’
‘Envy her?’
‘No, I would rather have my policeman, my theatre and my figure.’
They drank some wine and ate the smoked salmon. Stella thought about some of the meals they had had together, from fish and chips in Greenwich to chicken Marengo in Max’s restaurant. Not to mention some of the food they cooked together in their own kitchen; in many ways, because neither could cook, the most memorable.
‘Where’s Augustus?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Did we bring him or leave him at home?’
‘In the car.’
‘He’ll hate that.’
‘Passionately.’
Stella leaned forward. ‘We are talking about nothing, aren’t we? What are you hiding?’
Coffin sighed. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to mention this tonight, but I think you might be losing an actor.’
Stella leaned back in her chair. ‘Martin? You are arresting Martin for the murder of Jaimie.’
‘I’m not arresting anyone … and no, not Jaimie. Your new actor just recruited … the police in the city he came from want him back … He has a taste for little boys. Not recommended.’
Stella took a draught of wine and prepared to be philosophical. ‘Worse things have happened. Now I know why he didn’t bargain but took what I offered.’
‘I expect he knew things were getting hot, yes.’
Stella began to eat, relaxed, she felt she knew the worst now and could enjoy her evening. It was a pity about her latest recruit but there you were, these things happened. She doubted if he restricted himself to little boys; her impression was that, sexually, he was omnivorous.
She smiled at her husband, and he smiled back.
He saw no need to tell her that he had thought it best to get them both out of Spinnergate that evening.
I think I have alerted the killer. I have turned on the tap marked violence, he said to himself. And I don’t know when it will start to pour out or who will get splashed.
They ate their meal, talking quietly now, Stella enjoying the wine, Coffin drinking very little because he would be driving home.
Just as they were leaving. Coffin’s telephone rang.
‘Oh dear,’ said Stella.
Coffin took the telephone from his overcoat pocket. He listened to Darcy explaining that both Marlowe and Bradshaw had been released.
‘Not much else you could do,’ agreed Coffin.
‘No forensic evidence as yet to tie in to either of them. And smooth talkers both of them. Bradshaw is a clever man and Marlowe had his solicitor on hand. Fat Louie Armstrong,’ obliged Darcy, who had clashed with the lady before. ‘And she’s clever enough for both of them.’ Heavily and sadly, Darcy said: ‘I will see you tomorrow evening then, sir, at the E and B?’
‘I will be there,’ agreed Coffin. It was one of the functions he had to attend.
Coffin drove them home to the Second City, advising Stella to lock the car door on her side and when she protested, advised her just to do it.
He was tetchy, and tense.
13
It was a cold bleak night. Richard Lavender was being prepared for bed. Like a package, was how he put it when in a bad mood.
In the evening, Janet Neptune was free, or regarded herself as so, although her great-uncle (if that was what he was) still called upon her for a hot drink, or a new book to read if he felt like it. But Janet Neptune’s place was taken by a nurse who came in every evening to get the GOM (the nurse called him that: Come on, Grand Old Man, the bath is ready, and this infuriated him) bathed and put to bed.
Nurse Flint was a large, plump, pretty woman whose appearance belied her name, but was supported by the great firmness of her nature.
‘Come on, dear, bathy time.’
Dick Lavender showed his teeth. ‘Fussy bitch, you wouldn’t have spoken to me like that when I was PM.’
Flint helped him towards bed, her hands gentle, he knew and appreciated her touch. ‘No, certainly I would not. But I wasn’t born then.’
The bath water was softened with soothing oils, and afterwards Nurse Flint would rub unguents into those joints where the skin was thin and likely to crack into sore spots. She was delicate about this, even as her tongue was sharp.
‘You ought not to sit around on your bottom so much.’
‘Where else can I sit?’
‘I mean you should move around more. You can, you know, but you don’t like to admit it. You could run if you had to.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘I bet you would if there was a fire.’ She rubbed some cream into his thin flanks. ‘You don’t deceive me, I know you can nip around if you want to … I can feel the muscles.’ She gave a snort. ‘You pinched me.’
‘I thought you might enjoy feeling my muscles. And your bottom asks for it.’
She rolled him over, but taking care not to be rough. ‘You’re an old devil, I wouldn’t like to be shut up in a dark room with you.’ She gave a low rumble of a laugh. ‘Now you ought to get out more, that’s my advice. Get Janet to drive you about a bit or a
sk that nice Dr Bradshaw.’
‘Oh yes, everyone likes Jack Bradshaw,’ Dick Lavender growled. He could growl. It was a low rumbling in the back of his throat like an aged lion.
‘Jealous, are you now? At your age. Say to yourself it’s an addiction, like smoking.’ She sprayed him with a sweet-smelling talcum. She liked her patients to smell sweet, more for her own sake than theirs. ‘Give it up. Cure yourself.’ She added half humorously, half sardonically: ‘Grow up.’
‘Old age doesn’t cure everything.’
‘Don’t I know it.’ She patted him with a tissue. ‘Never did anything for me.’ How old was he? Ninety? Ninety-six more like it.
Soon she had him in his dressing gown, leaning against a pile of pillows.
‘Tea or coffee, or I could make you some cocoa?’
‘Whisky, please.’
‘Right you are. And I’ll join you.’
‘Did I ask you?’
‘No, but I have to have some reward for looking after you.’
The theory was that this sparring between them was enjoyed by both parties, but the truth was that Dick Lavender had tired of it. He no longer wanted to be jokey or the butt of jokes. The well of humour had long been dried up inside him, and he felt himself full of bitter memories which seemed to have an odour. A rank smell filled his nostrils in the day, and at night he smelt bodies, always bodies, sour and sweaty. Probably it was his own body, full of the odours of old age, but that did not make him love it more.
They drank the whisky neat and with quiet pleasure.
‘Leave me the bottle.’
‘I ought not. What will Janet say?’
‘I will deal with Janet.’ The growl came out again. Janet might have feared to hear it, but she was not one who understood all the sounds she heard.
Miss Flint obliged, leaving the bottle enough out of his reach so that he would have to get out of bed to get it, which might deter him or might not. He could move when he wanted to.
‘Look,’ she said at the door. ‘I know you are still a lion but don’t take risks. Don’t roar too often.’
‘God shield us,’ he quoted to himself. ‘A lion among the ladies is a most dreadful thing.’ He felt the growl beginning and the rank smell rose inside him. ‘Shakespeare is my god, you know, he educated me: Macbeth, King Lear, and of them all. Bottom, the great bottom with the donkey’s head.’
A Double Coffin Page 17