A Cold Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  Into the silence that followed, he said, ‘Now you know why we are here. I thought we would all meet here to talk it over.’ His voice was gentle.

  ‘You could call it a protest meeting,’ said a voice.

  It’s insubordination, thought Geoff Little, it’s insurrection, it might be a revolution. Not the French Revolution, because that began on the streets, but the Russian Revolution, put together by a devious and clever mind. Lenin Larry Lavender, step forward. Little was doing a degree in historical studies with the Open University. He had said once that if you were just a copper there was no hope for you; you had to make something else of yourself, even if it was only bee-keeping. Joke. See Sherlock Holmes.

  Larry Lavender was speaking again, his voice ever more gentle. ‘In several of the most recent important cases, the Chief Commander has come in and interfered. Now we know he is moving into this serial killer. We don’t want that, do we?’

  He might have been moving a vote of thanks.

  That was the thing about old Larry, thought Little, who had worked with him once or twice, he could make the direct threat sound like an invitation to the vicar’s tea party. Because it was a threat to John Coffin. And to everyone in that room, if it failed.

  He couldn’t make up his mind whether to run for the door or stay there. But his legs would not move.

  12

  Monday. The days get blurred.

  What remained of the Walkers held a small sad meeting in Letty’s house to talk about the death of Lia. Letty’s house was a good meeting place, because it was in central Spinnergate, on a quiet side road. Letty’s house was decorated by her husband, who liked being a good houseman, so the paint was always fresh and the wallpaper new. He liked strong colours, so visitors sometimes blinked at the vivid blues and orange reds. Perhaps on this account, Letty usually entertained in the kitchen, over whose colour scheme she had had control; it was white and pale grey. She made good coffee and offered homemade shortbread.

  Even Natty came this time, apologizing for being absent so often. Unlike the other two, she looked tired and untidy, in pale blue jeans and a dark shirt.

  No one wears jeans now, not this season, not that colour or shape, Letty thought. And she might have combed her hair.

  ‘Oh we understand, love,’ said Sheila. ‘Of course we do.’

  ‘And I hadn’t got a pram to push,’ said Natty sadly. ‘Well, I’ve got the pram. I never sold it, but it’s empty.’

  ‘Perhaps not for ever,’ said Sheila.

  ‘I think so. You can’t fight the gods.’

  Sheila thought you could if you chose. ‘Depends which god you are talking to.’

  ‘Oh, talking,’ said Natty. ‘What about Lia, she was a talker and look what’s happened to her . . . What did she say, by the way?’

  Sheila shrugged. ‘Not much, just hints of what she said her husband had told her. But she always did exaggerate. And he’s such a liar too, anyway, we told her that, or we tried to.’ Had they? She couldn’t now remember. She certainly had thought Lia’s husband was a stranger to the truth, and often claimed knowledge he did not have. Look at the time he had spread the story that he had joined the Montjoy gang as the electronics expert and they had raided the Bank of England but it had been kept quiet, hushed up, because the authorities were ashamed. A fool if you believed that, but many did.

  Letty came in with a jug of coffee and a plate of chocolate biscuits, not homemade this time. To please her husband she was wearing a tight orange-red skirt, but to please herself she was wearing a crisp white shirt. ‘I know we are all on diets but choccie biccies are cheering and we need cheering up. I’m terrified as well as miserable. How are you?’

  ‘I think a strong gin might help me more than coffee,’ said Sheila. ‘Letty, that skirt makes me blink.’ She herself had on a blue and white jersey dress. Neat and not conspicuous.

  Letty was ever practical. ‘We can have that afterwards.’ She passed over the comment on her skirt.

  ‘Good job you’re not still feeding the kid,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Lord no, that’s long past. Just as well, ruins the figure.’ She drank her coffee. ‘Nice to see you, Nat. How are you?’

  ‘Lousy,’ said Nat. ‘This is a bloody business.’ She took a deep breath, then, ‘And with my cousin being killed too . . .’

  Letty and Sheila exchanged glances. Although they had discussed it already, they did not know what to say, or whether to say anything. Natasha was never easy to read, sometimes lively and witty, at other times morose.

  ‘She has secrets, that girl,’ Sheila had said.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Letty had answered. ‘I’ve got a few, and I bet you have.’

  ‘I think it’s gin time,’ said Letty, producing a bottle. ‘Or whisky. I believe there is some if my husband hasn’t drunk it all. He doesn’t drink gin, calls it a woman’s drink.’ She was prattling on, anxious to keep the mood light. Jolly they could not be, since this was, in a sense, a wake. ‘So choose, gin or whisky, friends.’

  Natty took a good long drink of gin and lemon. ‘I think I know why my cousin went to look in the museum of old bones.’

  Letty coughed.

  ‘Oh well, you know what I mean . . . part of the forensic outfit in the hospital, its skulls of interest. My cousin knew it, but no one went there much. Science is different now.’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘She said so. It’s true not many people bothered with it. Yet she went there . . . So why?’

  ‘You’ll never know, will you?’ said Letty solemnly; the gin was getting to her too.

  ‘I met her with the car, as I very often met her from work . . . I used to help her out all the time . . . kind of like a secretary, chauffeur and homehelp combined. She was rich, richish anyway, and we weren’t. Anyway, she left me a legacy, but naturally most of her money has gone to her husband . . .’

  Letty began to wonder if she had been wise to pour out the gin. I gave her too much, she thought. She’s had a bad time, her cousin and everything; she’s disturbed.

  ‘She had seen the deposit of infant skulls just uncovered . . . Chief Commander John Coffin was there too. She told him they were infant Neanderthal skulls, decapitated babies, probably sacrificial victims, the flesh eaten.’

  Letty swallowed hard.

  ‘I don’t think he liked the idea . . .’

  ‘Nice man,’ said Sheila soothingly.

  ‘I think that’s what took her to the museum . . . she wanted to check up on something.’

  ‘Perhaps she thought there was a colony of Neanderthals living near here . . . There is Nean Street, isn’t there?’

  She is drunk, thought Letty. I overdid it there.

  ‘Little short men with big hands.’

  ‘I expert there’s some of them about.’ She wanted to add that they would be harmless, but she couldn’t quite say so, because who knew? She saw such a specimen doing his shopping at irregular hours and she believed he lived in Nean Street, so if anyone could be called a modern-day Neanderthal it would be him. But surely a man who did his own shopping and bought frozen fish pie must be harmless?

  ‘Poor Lia did mix with a bad crowd, thanks to Boston,’ said Sheila. ‘The police must be looking at her husband.’

  ‘He’d never kill his own children.’

  ‘You just can’t tell.’

  Letty tried to decide whether to offer more coffee or more gin, but Nat stood up and said she must go. ‘I do have a husband, and I’m even looking after my cousin’s husband too. We go round every day, or he comes to us. And of course, the police keep coming around asking us all the questions they can think of.’

  ‘We’ve had a bit of that too,’ said Letty. ‘Haven’t we, Sheila? It looks as though we were the last people to see her, so naturally the police keep thinking about us. I wouldn’t say they suspect us, but they certainly think we could help them. “Who are her friends? What people was she in contact with?” That sort of thing . . . I suppose they thi
nk if they ask often enough we might come up with something.’

  ‘I thought I might go into the church round the corner and say a prayer for Lia and light a candle,’ said Sheila.

  ‘She’s past all that,’ said Natty, sadly. She kissed each cheek. ‘End of the Walkers.’ They were all part of it, the Walkers.

  ‘Fraid so,’ said Letty. ‘Already over really, anyway, wasn’t it? But fun while it lasted.’

  ‘Over for me before it began,’ said Natty.

  When she had gone, the other two looked at each other. ‘I’m glad we’ve got our kids, aren’t you?’ said Letty. ‘Makes even having a husband worthwhile.’

  Then they both began to laugh and advise each other to have some more gin.

  This was their little holiday, their morning off. Sheila had taken her two children to a nursery school in Spinnergate and Letty had got her mother to look after hers. ‘Can’t afford the nursery school. Wish I could.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Sheila, ‘but I told my husband that if he didn’t do something about it, I would go mad. Since he didn’t want a mad wife, he agreed. They only go twice a week, but it’s enough.’ She had been an extremely efficient computer expert and hankered to go back, but she had given it up to look after the recalcitrant babies.

  ‘You’ll go back,’ Letty assured her. She had not been so high-powered herself, and had no hankering to go back to selling bras and pants.

  ‘In that business,’ said the computer whizz kid gravely, ‘you get out of date so soon. I’d have to be reborn almost.’

  Letty felt it would not be past her.

  ‘I wish we could have helped Lia.’

  ‘She had plenty of money.’

  ‘Crook money.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And it killed her in the end. Anyway, that’s what I think, but who cares, no one will ask me for my opinion.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Letty gravely.

  Sheila studied her face; this was not the gin talking. ‘You know something I don’t?’

  Letty lowered her eyes. ‘My sister-in-law works in the Chief Commander’s office. Only the outer office, you understand, but she’s in charge of the telephones and the faxes . . . She told me that the Chief Commander is very worried. He’s taking charge himself and will be interviewing all friends and contacts.’

  ‘Us,’ said Sheila.

  They drank a little more gin, then Sheila put down her glass with decision. ‘Let’s go and light that candle for Lia.’

  ‘And say a prayer?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sheila seriously. ‘That must come first. Can’t do one without the other.’

  The church across the road was small, dark, quiet and empty. No parson, no other worshippers, but there were some candles.

  ‘You’ve been here before,’ Letty accused.

  ‘Yes, I often pop in. I find it helps.’

  ‘I wish it was easy as that for me,’ said Letty.

  ‘Oh, it’s not easy. Doesn’t come automatically, like eating chocolate.’

  ‘No?’ Strange comparison, Letty thought.

  ‘You have to work at it.’ Sheila bought them each a candle, handed one to Letty and lit both, since Letty was strangely clumsy.

  ‘We ought to say a prayer for ourselves too,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yes, if you think so.’ Letty was doubtful, but willing. ‘But we’re outside it all, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Sheila. ‘Bad crimes have a kind of a circumference. Make a circle. And I think we are inside.’

  ‘And I think you are frightening me.’

  ‘Not on purpose.’ She added, ‘Brian would agree with me if I talked about it to him.’

  ‘Brian?’ said Letty absently.

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course – it’s just that you usually call him Bri.’

  ‘Not when I’m talking seriously. He knows then I’m in earnest. Don’t you have words like that?’

  Letty thought about it. ‘No.’

  Brian was an ambitious young man on his way up; she wasn’t sure what he worked at, but it was something in advertising, and he probably did need two languages. Her own husband taught in a large comprehensive school in the Second City, where he said that life was a fight for survival. He did survive though, and on a visit to a school concert Letty had observed that he was on good terms with his pupils, whom he clearly liked. Not such a bad life after all, she had decided.

  ‘And anyway,’ said Sheila with resolution, ‘we aren’t outside it, not with Natty’s cousin being killed and now Lia.’

  ‘But that’s just coincidence.’ Letty tried to sound cold and intellectual about it. ‘These serial killers just go for who’s handy.’

  ‘Nothing personal, you mean?’ Sheila was sceptical.

  ‘Nothing personal,’ said Letty dolefully.

  ‘God, I hope not,’ said Sheila.

  Natasha had been glad to escape from the Walkers’ party. As she left the house she had sighted another former Walker, pushing her pram, but not in the direction of Letty’s home. An ex-Walker, then.

  Innocent of us, really, to think that once we’d had the babies we’d be able to keep up the same comradeship, she thought. Not that I ever got the chance to find out, she added to herself with a shrug.

  She gave Maisie (it was Maisie?) a wave and hurried on. Trailing along with her, like one of those fashionable pashminas that every one was wearing a summer ago, came misery. It hung from her shoulders, sagged near her waist, then went off to drape her feet. Misery made breathing and walking difficult.

  In the distance she could see the roof of the hospital building where Dr Murray’s body had been found, certified dead, and then investigated in the post-mortem.

  Oh coz, how could you be a victim? You didn’t act like a victim, you didn’t talk like a victim. Added to which, she added with a bitter humour that surprised her, you paid a large part of my wages.

  A mixture of wrath and repentence rose in her throat so that she had to lean towards the gutter to be sick.

  ‘Drunken whore,’ said an old man, as he hobbled past.

  ‘Fuck yourself,’ said Nat, lifting her head to glare at him. ‘No one else will.’ But since she was still vomiting, if he heard it was no more than a mutter. He had a bony, red-skinned face with a large nose.

  She straightened up. She felt better and realized that the sickness and the words had been a joint act of cleansing.

  She passed the tube station and looked at it longingly. A trip to central London would be so refreshing, purging almost, but she must get back to her own household. In it she had two men in need of her support, one her own husband and the other the widower of Margaret Murray.

  There was a big poster advertising Stella Pinero in her latest production at the St Luke’s Theatre on the hoarding by the Spinnergate tube: The Jasmine Summer.

  Lucky thing, thought Natty, she’s got everything.

  Mimsie Marker saw Natasha walk past. She knew who she was because she knew everyone of interest, which Natasha was at the moment, since her cousin’s murder.

  Stella Pinero had just bought a paper from Mimsie to read on the underground journey to London. She had disappeared down the escalator, even as Natasha passed by.

  Mimsie frowned. One of her informants had told her something that would worry Stella if she knew. Perhaps she did know, but her informant had told her that not even the Chief Commander knew. ‘Buzzing around him like a lot of wasps,’ the informant had said.

  Stella Pinero also had her informants. It pays in show business to know all the gossip. This particular buzz had been passed to her by a girl who worked in the hair, wigs and makeup department at the theatre. It had not come directly but Edwina (christened Edna, but you don’t stay with a name like that if you work in the theatre) had filtered the tale through Stella’s secretary, a woman adept at passing on whatever she thought Stella ought to know. About this tale she had hesitated, since it was not the
atre gossip although certainly doing the rounds.

  ‘Like wasps,’ she said to Stella as she finished.

  ‘You can drive me to the station,’ was all Stella said. ‘Never anywhere to park there.’ But she muttered her thanks as she got on the escalator, well aware that the Eyes and Ears of the Second City in the shape of Mimsie Marker had observed her. Apologetically, she added, ‘I know, these murders are terrible; I was fond of Alice Jackson, and Amy too.’

  ‘Buzzing round,’ she muttered resentfully as she went down and down, clinging on to the escalator rail: Her purpose in going to the other London, to Knightsbridge, was to discuss with the designer the costumes for her next project for millennium year: The Widow of Windsor.

  ‘A musical of all things. How have I got the courage?’ thought Stella as she got out of the train, having changed lines twice. She could have taken a taxi but she was in a determinedly frugal mood. Since she was going to spend so much money on a show that might lose a great deal (and Coffin had raised his eyebrows sceptically when it was projected, which made Stella even more resolute for success), economy had to be practised elsewhere.

  She cast a guilty look at her new Prada suit, but that was last week. From now on she would be very economical. The thing about good clothes, she affirmed, with the conviction of the true fashion addict, was that they Supported the Spirit, so they were never Money Wasted.

  The designer, Edward Crowne, whom she was about to see, was a well-known couturier who had been chosen for his name and fame, and also because the real work would be done by his assistant, Emily Woodhouse, who was very talented.

  After greeting Edward Crowne, Stella retired to another room to look at Emily’s sketches.

  ‘Brilliant, Emily, I knew they would be.’

  ‘Come and have lunch with me, and we can talk.’

  ‘I would love to, Emily, but I must get back.’

  ‘I understand . . . you’re having a bad time in the Second City.’

  ‘Won’t do the theatre any good. Nothing like a serial killer to put people off a night at a show,’ said Stella trying to make light of it. ‘It’s worse for my husband.’

  ‘Must be. Look, if there’s anything I can do, if you want a hole to hide in at any time, you can always stay with me.’