Coffin and the Paper Man

by Gwendoline Butler

  Jim lifted it out. Inside was a battered portable typewriter and folder of papers. A strong smell of disinfectant came with it, making him wonder what had been stored in it originally.

  Coffin looked at the typewriter in surprise.

  ‘Bought at a charity shop, I’d say,’ summed up Jim judicially.

  ‘Can Fred Kinver type?’ Coffin was already studying the papers, all covered with typed passages. Blocks of passages. All dated. It seemed to be a kind of diary.

  ‘One-finger stuff. You can tell when you look.’

  ‘You have looked, of course?’

  ‘Sure. Now you, it’s your turn.’

  John Coffin read:

  DEATH NUMBER ONE. Two days after Anna Mary’s death.

  I know now that Anna Mary is dead. This was hard to accept at first. I don’t think her mother has done yet. She seems too calm. I am not calm, there is an explosive feeling inside me, like a fire, like a volcano, I know I am full of energy that must burst out. How I did not know at first, but now I know what I am going to do, because I know what I am. I was not a good father, I admit it, I am guilty there, but I can clear my guilt.

  Justice. I am the hand of Justice.

  Day Three After. I do not say after what, because I cannot write it any more. Too much pain.

  I know what I should do. First I must become another person. If I am me, then I cannot act freely. As a new person, I am above the law.

  Day Three After, the night.

  God has told me how to become another person. I am to do it by writing. I shall write letters, letting people know there is a person out there. I must not let myself be revealed until my work is done, so my letters must be carefully prepared. There need not be many. A few will establish me.

  Now diary, I can tell you what I mean to do. God has told me to write it out. He tells me it will ease my pain. Nothing can ease Anna Mary’s pain. I don’t believe she has gone to any other and happier world. Her mother does believe this. Or perhaps she just pretends. We are both doing a lot of pretending. But not here, diary, you know my true heart and intention. I prepared the first letter yesterday. Shall I send it out? Is the time right? I know what I have done. It is not hard to kill, not if your cause is just.

  Justice is mine, says the Lord. Or is that Vengeance? Same thing, very often. Anyway, he hands the job out to us humans. Has to. Only reasonable.

  I have done one job.

  Over a week since Anna Mary was killed.

  I can’t think in days any more. They seem to run together. Sent off a letter.

  My letter got good publicity. The police wanted to keep it quiet but it got out.

  Did another job.

  There were several more entries on the same lines.

  Another job, an entry read. Two, three, if it works. Then it is over. I have done. Jobs jobbed.

  Dangerous stuff, Coffin thought.

  At the end of the book a copy of one of the Paper Man letters was pasted in. He saw that with interest. He had half expected it to be there.

  The diary of the Paper Man was in his hands, complete with a confession of identity. Well, more or less. Found where it was, there could not be much doubt.

  Fred Kinver, the Paper Man and multiple poisoner.

  He looked up to meet Jim’s curious gaze. ‘Read it all?’

  ‘As much as I can at the moment.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘I think I had the feeling that something like this was about to happen. You get to a point in a case when that feeling comes.’

  ‘What gives you that feeling?’

  ‘Hard work and attention to detail,’ said Coffin drily.

  ‘Not luck?’

  ‘The luck is when the feeling happens.’ Coffin’s voice was quiet and cool.

  ‘I reckon I’m your luck.’

  ‘You didn’t happen on these papers by chance, Jim, did you?’

  ‘’Course not. I’ve been watching him. I get lots of chances, out with the dogs.’

  ‘I wonder he didn’t see you were watching.’

  ‘Oh, he’s well away, I can tell you. Anyway, I was careful. I found these papers last night. Knew they must be there, so I hunted around. But I needed someone I could trust to show them too. Didn’t want anyone getting the wrong ideas.’

  ‘Let’s get the papers back where they were, Jim. I’ll give you a hand. Then I’ll send someone down to collect them.’ Archie Young and posse, probably, they would enjoy the job.

  ‘Shall I stay and guard them?’ asked Jim with enthusiasm.

  ‘No. I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. No one’s going to steal them.’

  ‘Fred might come down and remove them.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  They emerged into the open air of the allotments. Several gardeners gave them interested looks, but nothing was said.

  ‘I suppose Fred will be arrested now?’

  Coffin did not answer.

  ‘Well, he deserves punishing. And what about me? Will I get a reward?’

  ‘I don’t think there is one, Jim, but I promise to do what’s right for you.’ As they left the allotments, he said: ‘Better get home with the dogs.’

  When he got back to his office, he passed on what had been discovered to the investigating team.

  ‘I want that boy,’ said Archie Young promptly. ‘Where is he now, sir?’

  ‘Gone home with the dogs. He won’t run away; he’s too pleased with himself. Hoping to get his picture in the papers, I think.’

  ‘I’ll get the stuff collected, sir.’ Young was excited. ‘While you were away, some information came in that clinches it. Fits in with what you’ve found. A WPC doing the rounds of the chemists’ shops had the luck to come across an assistant who was at school with her. This girl was willing to talk and she came across with the information that Mrs Kinver had a prescription for Digoxin. It was a repeat prescription. Her GP is a one man band and known to be a bit casual. One way and another she’s collected a fair supply of the tablets. It’s all there in the records.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Isn’t it? So we’ve got our source for the poison. We know the motive: revenge for his daughter and we’ve more or less got a confession, I’d say, although not one Kinver expected us to read.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Coffin. ‘I think it was written to be read.’

  Archie Young stuck to his point. ‘I reckon we’ve got enough, one way and another, to bring in both the Kinvers.’

  Coffin said: ‘It had better be done. But I don’t like it.’

  It was a hot day and getting hotter.

  Young sitting at his desk felt the heat rising around his feet as if he was on fire. He was still limping.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘It won’t be popular. Since Anna Mary was killed those two have been kind of local saints. And now we’re bringing them in, when we haven’t cleared up their daughter’s murder. Some people will say that Fred Kinver was only doing what was right. We’ll handle it very carefully, sir. Later tonight, I’ll go round to them myself.’

  But later that day was too late.

  When the police drove around as quietly and discreetly as they could, Fred Kinver, met them at the door with a shotgun. Unlicensed, unlawful and highly dangerous.

  ‘Try to take me,’ he shouted, ‘and I’ll kill my wife first, then myself.’

  And to prove he had the means, he fired a shot in the air.

  A state of siege was declared.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Wednesday evening, June 28, before dark

  ‘Do you think he means it?’ asked Archie Young.

  The Chief Commander, and Inspector Young and Superintendent Lane were standing together, consulting with the Chief Superintendent of the uniformed branch. They were in front of the Kinver house and were visible to anyone looking from a window of that house.

  They were not alone, the police were gathered in force around
the Kinver home. Further down the road a police van with full radio and telephone communications was stationed, and tucked away round the corner was a vanful of armed policemen. Several armed men had already been placed at points of vantage on roofs or at nearby windows to cover as much as possible of the house. Round the back, in the garden, two men lay hidden in the bushes. All this had been done very quietly but at great speed.

  Completely out of sight were two ambulances.

  Beyond this again, and prevented by a police cordon from coming closer, was a crowd of onlookers and pressmen.

  ‘Do you think he’d really do it?’ said Archie again.

  ‘Certain of it,’ returned Coffin. He hadn’t liked the note in Fred Kinver’s voice at all.

  The Chief Superintendent started to move his feet restlessly. Lane took this for a sign of tension, which it may or may not have been.

  ‘We can’t let him kill any more people,’ he said.

  ‘I have the greatest confidence in Inspector Lee,’ said the head of the uniformed branch. ‘He’s had a lot of experience, he was down at the Docks when the SS Athena was under siege. He knows what to do. He knows what to say.’

  ‘But Kinver isn’t talking.’

  ‘He will in the end. This is what it’s all about: watching and trying and trying again.’

  All three men were aware of the Chief Commander’s presence and wishing he was safely tucked up in bed, or in New York, or in Brussels, anywhere but here.

  Lane, although no longer as close to the man as he had been once, still read him better than the others. He’s not with us on this, he thought. He’s seeing things differently. He had known that happen in the past with Coffin, and it always meant something explosive in the air. He remained watchful of his boss as well as the Kinver house: you needed four eyes in this business.

  Coffin stayed quiet. He too had been on these watches before and knew how to conserve his energies. He did not think Fred Kinver was murderous tonight, but he might very well be suicidal.

  ‘Is Fellaton coming down?’ Fellaton was the Home Office psychiatrist called in on these occasions.

  ‘Yes, sir. Lee asked for him at once. He’s on his way over. He was at the Barbican at a concert so he hasn’t got too far to come.’

  Far enough. Long enough, it seemed to those waiting as the time passed and Kinver did not appear or answer his telephone.

  When Professor Fellaton appeared, wearing a dark suit and looking serious he gave the quartet a bare nod and passed on to the radio car.

  ‘Hope he gets on with it,’ said Lane gloomily. ‘The longer it lasts, the worse it’ll be.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said John Coffin. He made his way over to Fellaton, a man he had met once before and on a similar occasion. A young man had shut himself and his young wife into his caravan, threatening to shoot them both if an attempt was made to arrest her. She was wanted for shoplifting. Professor Fellaton had concluded that she had sought arrest in order to escape from her violent husband. That episode had ended well, although the marriage, presumably, had not.

  ‘Anything you want,’ he said to Fellaton, ‘just let me know. Any back-up you need.’

  ‘Let you know.’ Fellaton’s famous gruff manner was well in evidence. ‘I’ve been briefed. Expect to manage. Ought to be able to talk him down.’ He was not precisely an optimist but he was a professional: he knew what he could achieve.

  Coffin stayed for a while, then returned to the trio of watchers. They had now withdrawn to the shelter of a tree where mugs of coffee were being handed round.

  Coffin took his mug, moving a few paces apart to lean against the comfortable tree-trunk. He remembered once, during that long-ago war, finding comfort in an air raid in the feel of the bark of a tree. It had smelt of continuing life and warmth in the face of a situation of considerable alarm and tension. He felt that way now; he needed to think.

  Presently his eye caught a movement at one of the windows of the Kinver house. Fred Kinver threw open the window and appeared in the opening.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Archie Young’s voice behind him.

  Fred Kinver was shouting something, the words difficult to hear. Professor Fellaton slowly came forward.

  ‘Now you lot keep quiet,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me and Jack Lee.’

  As Coffin watched the scene, saw Fred waving and shouting from the window, heard the quiet voice of Lee relayed on speaker urging Fred to calm down and take his time, they had all the time in the world, a uniformed constable touched his arm. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s a call come through for you.’

  The news he heard was bad: two gangs of youths, the Planters and the Dreamers, had appeared on the streets and were on the rampage. Windows had been broken, cars overturned, fires started in the gutters and left to burn. The fire brigade had been called out to two incidents already, others could be expected. One man injured, he had a broken leg, a woman had been burnt rescuing her cat.

  In addition, in what appeared to be a spontaneous but separate movement, the district of East Spinnergate which touched Leathergate down by Rope Alley was putting on its own passive but determined demonstration in favour of Fred Kinver. Citizens were flooding on to the streets, milling around, not yet aggressive, but angry. At any moment the whole scene could erupt.

  As the evening went on, the gangs of Planters and Dreamers split into smaller groups. One group of Dreamers broke into Boots the Chemists again in search of drugs that they could inject, sniff or drink. Four youths from Planters stole a car and drove themselves round the streets and then turned towards St Luke’s Mansions. They were singing as they went. Stella Pinero heard the singing.

  From the car stationed in Elder Street, Coffin had sent a message summoning the Chief Superintendent of the uniformed branch and they had gone back to the police headquarters to take control. Reserve units were called in, and a flying squad got ready to rush to crisis spots. Additional men were held back to be used as needed.

  It was all according to long-prepared plans. Coffin and Chief Superintendent Ward knew what had to be done and got on with it. For the moment, restoring the civil peace of East Spinnergate and preventing disorder spreading to Leathergate and Swinehouse and East Hythe must come first.

  Inspector Lee and the Professor were dealing with Fred Kinver and already the message had come back that it was going to be a long night.

  In the course of the evening, having toured the disaffected area, Coffin went back to his office. He read all the reports of the action that were arriving on his desk. He had done all that could be done, now it was his part to be the still, controlling centre.

  He drank some coffee. It was daylight outside, not much past the longest day of the year.

  On his table was the preliminary report on the Paper Man for which he had asked from the Forensic Department. He pulled it towards him. It might make interesting reading.

  He sat there, reading, while Stella was hearing the singing outside. She could not pick out the words, but she did not like the voices.

  Presently his secretary, one of the lay assistants, came in with a fresh supply of coffee. She had a serious look on her face.

  ‘Good of you to come in. Aren’t you supposed to be on leave?’

  ‘I felt I ought to be here, sir, with all this going on,’ she said gravely. Her long thin face seemed to drop several inches. ‘Must face it together.’

  Coffin took some more coffee. ‘We don’t have a revolution on our hands, Edith, although we may yet have a riot.’

  She nodded her head in a doleful fashion. ‘There’s a lot of sympathy for Fred Kinver. Oh, by the way, the material from the Pedloe Street Allotments has been collected. A message came in while you were out.’

  ‘Have any trouble, did they?’

  ‘I believe there was a bit of obstruction, but nothing to stop them.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know the details, although there’s talk about a diary, a sort of confession, wasn’t it, sir? Feelings are mixed about the poisonin
gs but there’s a lot of sympathy for the reason behind it.’

  Coffin took his coffee to the window. He could hear a police siren and then an ambulance.

  ‘I wonder if they would feel so sympathetic if they had read that diary?’ he said aloud.

  Edith looked puzzled. ‘You mean … not someone to sympathize with?’

  ‘I think that diary shows a devious and cunning mind at work.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Practical, too. Full of revenge, oh yes, and malice and hate.’

  Edith looked frightened, as if what she had heard was something she would prefer not to understand. ‘I’ll take the dirty cup. Would you like me to bring in a sandwich or two?’ Her instincts were always those of a kind nanny.

  ‘Yes, later, please.’

  ‘Ham or cheese? Or beef?’

  ‘Anything you like.’

  Coffin drew towards him the report on top of the pile. It was the forensic report on the dummy of the Paper Man. He had asked for it to be rushed through and accordingly this had been done. For once, he thought sourly.

  He ran his eye over it. Almost at once, his gaze fell on a passage about the contact traces. A criminal is at risk the minute he or she touches anything.

  The jacket worn by the dummy had been recently cleaned and there was a chemical residue to prove it. But in the pockets were minute shreds of tobacco together with flecks of paper, all of which had survived the cleaners. It looked as though the original owner had been a smoker who rolled his own cigarettes.

  But on the front of the jacket were vegetable traces, probably from leaves, so perhaps he had been a gardener too. Also on the front of the jacket were hairs. These had been identified as dog hairs. Grey, white, and tan. These hairs, distributed over the front of the jacket, bore no sign of having been subjected to cleaning fluids and so might be presumed to come from the person who had put together the dummy.

  There were plenty of dogs around, of course, thought Coffin. The Planter Estate and Dreamland were full of dogs, not to mention Feather Street.