‘You’ve got a nasty one here,’ said Coffin.
Paddy Devlin gave Archie Young a quick look. ‘Yes,’ she said to Coffin. ‘We are giving of our best, I can promise you.’
‘I just wanted to come and look.’
‘Glad you did, sir.’
He looked up the slope of the hill. ‘How was the body brought here? Or was he killed on the spot?’
‘No, it looks as though he had been dead a day or two before he was buried here. As for being brought here …’ She shrugged. ‘You could park a car on the road up there, it’s very deserted at night, then carry the body down, or use a market trolley. You wouldn’t have to pinch one, plenty of them left around the streets.’
Coffin took a few paces through the trees, looking towards the road. ‘I think you are right. There will be traces left.’
‘Forensic think they have found some … marks on the ground, broken branches on the bushes.’
‘Good.’ He looked from Inspector Devlin to Archie Young. ‘I would like to speak to the boy’s father myself. All right?’
‘I think Dr Chinner went back to work … It’s a one-man practice and he felt he must do. On the Attlee Estate, no one else will work there.’
‘I’ll drive you,’ said Archie.
Coffin still had his eyes on Inspector Devlin as they drove away. ‘I hope she’s up to it.’
‘She certainly is.’ Archie spoke out loud and clear. ‘One of the best we’ve got. I can’t say what state Chinner will be in; he had himself under control but it may not have lasted … and I wouldn’t blame him.’
‘What about the mother?’
‘She’s dead. Geoff and I knew each other at school, and we were neighbours … he always had this missionary, must-help-the-public, spirit, that’s why he works in the Attlee bunker. It is that … metal grilles on the windows, special locks on the door … broken into about once a week even then.’
‘I can imagine.’
Archie Young drove efficiently towards the Attlee Estate, straight up to the surgery which did indeed have an embattled air, but where the outside windows were newly painted and there was a flower in a pot on the outer windowsill.
‘I hope he’s got that geranium nailed down,’ said Archie as he parked. ‘Or perhaps he takes it home at night.’
‘He doesn’t live over the shop?’
‘No, would you? Got a nice house round the corner from me in Oakwood Drive … but neglected since his wife died.’
‘Keeps this place up, though,’ said Coffin, getting out of the car.
Archie did not answer, he was already striding forward to Dr Chinner’s surgery.
The waiting room was not crowded: an old man with a stick and bent back, a woman with a baby on her lap, and a dog that seemed to have come in for attention on his own – he had a bandaged leg.
‘Thank God I haven’t got Gus with me, he’d probably join the queue.’ He knew, as any dog owner does, that dogs are terrible hypochondriacs.
Dr Chinner appeared, ushering out the last patient, a woman with her child. ‘There’s that dog again,’ he said. ‘Why can’t he go home. Hop it, Jason.’
Jason did not.
‘He thinks he’s your dog, you see. Doctor,’ volunteered the old man.
‘I expect he will be in the end,’ said the doctor. He looked at Archie and Coffin, gave them a nod, and said that they could have five minutes and no more.
Coffin thought that he had never seen a man holding the pressure inside him down more strongly and dangerously: he might explode any minute … You’d think a doctor would know, he said silently. Dr Chinner was a short man with a crest of red hair and bright-blue eyes. Normally he must have looked friendly and approachable. No mean feat as a professional working on the Attlee Estate.
‘I will tell you anything I can, answer any questions, but get on with it, please.’
Coffin hesitated. ‘I don’t have a question, Doctor. I just came to offer my sympathy. I am very, very, sorry. We will do all we can to get the man who did it.’
Thank you. Thank you.’ There was a bare admission in his tone that he recognized it for an act of kindness, and that he knew the Chief Commander.
He had not asked them to sit down, nor did he now. He had never even quite closed the door to his surgery.
Coffin looked at Archie, who went forward and patted his friend on the shoulder. ‘I’ll come round to see you later. Or you can come to us … what about a meal?’
Dr Chinner nodded, but it was not exactly a yes, or a no. ‘Thanks for coming. I think I am better on my own just at the moment, Archie.’
He held the door for them, and as they went out, he said: ‘Next patient.’ And the dog got up and trotted in.
‘So what did you make of that?’ asked Archie as they drove away. He had sensed a query behind Coffin’s polite goodbye.
‘Well, he’s good with dogs.’
‘Seriously.’
Coffin shook his head. ‘I know we start with the family, but I don’t think he killed his son.’
‘No,’ said Archie fiercely. ‘So?’
‘But don’t let friendship blind you – I think he knows something.’
Archie said nothing as he sat hunched over the driving wheel. ‘Drive you back, sir, shall I?’
They parted with not much more said. Archie was disconcerted, angry and uneasy.
At the school, the Royal Road Comprehensive, the day had ended, but small groups hung around the playground, skateboarding, rollerblading, or just talking and scuffling in the dust with a football. It was not encouraged that they should do this, but not forbidden either.
One group were skateboarding but coming back together to talk. Just a quick comment, they were not into long conversations, dialogue was an adult skill not altogether mastered. This group was well informed, picking up scraps of information and assessing them. To be well informed, you have to be interested, and this group, four boys and two girls, were very interested.
‘We have to be,’ said one to another. ‘It’s up to us. And we ought to do something.’
‘What?’ said his friend, the same age more or less, but female.
‘I’m thinking.’
‘My parents stop talking when I come into the room,’ the girl said, and she laughed.
‘Tell you what,’ her companion said: ‘We ought to get someone to say something.’
Coffin went to his office, and collected Augustus. ‘You missed something, pal,’ he said. ‘You could have had your leg bandaged.’
There was a message from the wizard, John Armstrong, an old friend, who was looking into Harry’s computer. ‘I think I ought to be able to get most of the deletions back, they were not deleted by an expert. But I can’t promise. If you don’t hear from me then it is, No.
‘One left alive, anyway, and I think you ought to know of it.
‘It is a file on you, complete dossier of life and career, with present address.
‘It lists strengths – pertinacity, imagination, sharp mind.
‘Weaknesses: likes to be right.
‘I don’t know who put this together or why,’ went on John Armstrong, ‘but someone doesn’t like you.’
Coffin dialled his friend, his answerphone was on also, so the Chief Commander left a message:
‘Fax me that file, please. And to my home.’
His friend must have got back to his desk very speedily, (if indeed he had been away and not just sat there listening as the message came through) because the fax was waiting for Coffin when he got back to St Luke’s.
He flipped through it quickly, noting without pleasure that Harry had left something else.
There was a short, accurate profile of his wife, Stella Pinero, including the fact that she was now in Los Angeles.
Somehow, he did not like it.
But then he remembered the sort of man Harry had been and what he had said once.
A bit drunk, words spilling out, he had said: ‘I want to get all I can on you,
Coffin, because you hide a lot, you’ve got plenty going on that I would like to know about. Your past career, too. You’ve been in trouble, but look at you now. Yes, you are worth a study. And that lovely wife of yours. To know her is to know you.’
Coffin shook his head. That was Harry. Friend or enemy, who knew which?
Did Harry know himself?
But what Coffin knew was that he would always protect Stella.
3
An old schoolmaster of John Coffin, who had had a great deal of influence on him although Coffin never liked to admit it, had been in the habit of pronouncing: Life is real, life is earnest. He usually said this at exam time, which was perhaps why Coffin geared himself up grimly and got good marks. He wasn’t an exam man, they were not things he thought about often, but just the word ‘Life’, pronounced the right way, could spur him into action even now.
But at the moment he did not need it: the juxtaposition of two cases, their lifelines crossing, was enough to make him only too aware of the seriousness of life. His life in particular at the moment, and without Stella here to laugh and ease him into happiness, it was going to be bad.
Without Stella, he thought, so why was she figured in the file on Harry Seton’s PC? Not good news. So perhaps it was as well she was safely out of the way across the Atlantic. He felt like going back there himself, but life over here had a firm grip on him. It had a firm grip on Archie Young, too.
What was more important: the mission wished on him by Ed Saxon (and others higher in the chain of command), and apparently suggested by Harry himself with the words ‘Ask Coffin’, to find out who was doing the dirt in the pharmaceutical world, with special reference to Ed Saxon’s outfit, or the murder enquiry on a child in his own Second City.
All policemen get used to dealing with two cases, or more, at once. In his time, Coffin had handled as many as ten, carrying all the details in his mind and yet keeping them distinct, so why was he getting the feeling that there were parallel lines here which converged in the distance?
Of course, Harry had been murdered too, but that was the Met’s job, and if the message on the word processor was from them, they were not too pleased to have him walking on their ground.
Territory, there was a lot of territorial feeling in this job. Always had been and always would be. Probably Sir John Fielding’s officers in those distant days in the mid eighteenth century when he invented their force had had strong feelings about where they operated and who might interfere with them. The Peelers of a century later had carried on the tradition, because Dickens’s portrayal of Inspector Bucket did not suggest a man who would welcome intruders.
Coffin took a deep breath and pulled towards him the files he had brought down from London, already photocopied by the industrious Paul Masters.
He now had two stacks of files: the photocopies and the originals. Now why did I want copies, he asked himself, and came swiftly back with the answer that he wanted them in case there was another fire.
Or the equivalent – theft. Whoever had killed Harry, had tried to get the files destroyed. True, the Met had had a look at them first, and might have been coming back for more, but someone had tried, not too efficiently, to burn the lot.
He looked from the photocopies to the scorched originals.
In the outer office, Paul was packing up to go home; he worked a long day, getting in before the Chief Commander, rarely taking a lunch break, and usually still at work when John Coffin left. Coffin saluted an ambitious man. But tonight, Paul was leaving early since he was off to the opera. Coffin suspected he had a new girlfriend who liked Mozart. Or his wife, there was one, but who knew what went on in Masters’s private and somewhat secret life?
Inspector Masters put his head round the door. ‘Want me to take the dog for a walk before I go, sir?’
Augustus looked up and wagged his tail hopefully. He got up and shook his body, he was a shrewd psychologist and knew how you did it. Generations of his ancestors had wagged their way into comfort and pleasure, and the genes were still working.
‘Go on with you, then,’ said Coffin, and to Paul Masters: ‘Thank you.’
When the pair had gone, he turned back to his papers. The photocopied files were offering sparse information.
There was a map of Coventry with some street names marked in pencil. One area had a ring drawn round it. Attached to this were some scribbled notes which seemed to be of times and routes. It looked as though Harry had set off early and driven there.
Against the name H. Pennyfeather, he had put a query. And Coffin had a question mark in his own mind there. Did he know that name or not? Half a dozen further names were just recorded and given a tick.
Did this mean they were passed as all clear, whereas Pennyfeather was not? Or did the tick mean that they had been interviewed and Pennyfeather had not been at home.
Or did it mean something else altogether? Coffin ground his teeth and worked on.
A photograph was attached to one of the pages. It was the photograph of a woman.
It was not a photograph of Mary.
He saw a youngish, smiling face, with a smart, short haircut and large earrings. The woman was wearing a dark business suit. It was not a posed, studio photograph, but appeared to have been taken at a meeting of some sort, since he could see figures in the background. M. G. was written there.
Coffin worked through the papers, assessing them quickly. There was a similar group with a map of Oxford, and another of Newcastle. In each case, the map was marked, and it came with a list of names, some ticked and one or two with a question mark.
Thrupp in Coventry, and Weir in Newcastle, each had a question mark, as had Fox in Cambridge and H. Pennyfeather, but with no place name. So that made four in all. Sex not clear, but Ed Saxon had said he had a few women working for him. Possibly M. G. was one of them, although he hadn’t named her.
He sat thinking about TRANSPORT A and its problems which high authority thought stemmed from the Second City, curse it. Thus was I lumbered, he thought.
When the phone rang, he had a premonition it was going to be Ed Saxon, and so it was.
‘How are you getting on?’
‘I haven’t got far yet.’ Not anywhere, really. ‘It looks as though I’ll have to go to Coventry first … You know about the fire?’
Ed Saxon admitted he knew about the fire. ‘I had Mary in here.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She said she’d met you. You seem to have made an impression. Not easy on that one, she’s a hard case. What she wanted was what you’d expect, to find how near we were to getting Harry’s killer. Not too near, I had to tell her. She didn’t take it well.’
‘I can’t blame her.’
‘Who’s talking about blame? But she was casting plenty of it around, she blames me in particular. And she isn’t far wrong. After all, I chose him for the job.’
‘It may have nothing to do with that, you know.’
‘You’ve got an idea? What? What is it?’
There was silence. Coffin could hear Ed striking a match for a cigarette, the man was in a pressured state.
‘Have you any idea, something you’re not telling me?’
‘No, Ed. And the Met are investigating Harry’s death, remember? Not me. But I shall have to make contact with them.’
‘Yes,’ said Ed, as if the idea did not please him.
‘I am beginning to get the feeling that Harry knew he was about to be killed.’
‘Oh God, is that your great thought for the day?’
‘It’s a start.’
‘Where did you get it from? Out of the air, I suppose?’
‘No. From you.’
‘Don’t get you.’
‘Oh, come on, Ed. I’ve known you a long time and you don’t change. I think he told you he was frightened, that he knew there was a threat. And he knew who it was from; it was from the figure in your outfit who is profiting from the sale of phoney medicines and drugs. That was why you wanted an o
utsider like me to carry on the enquiry.’ There was another reason, of course, why I actually got the job, but you may not know of it. The Second City is involved.
Wouldn’t Ed know this? Why did he not know? Perhaps he was not fully trusted himself. Wheels within wheels, he didn’t like. Touch dirt and you get dirty, he thought.
Ed was staying silent.
‘And perhaps you thought my investigating skills might have got rusty with the years and I wouldn’t turn up what you feared.’
There was still no answer from Ed.
‘Who was it he suspected? Not you, by any chance, Ed?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Come on, Ed.’
‘He was just guessing, in my opinion … there was a woman … she had been working for us, not in a high capacity, but on this pharmaceutical case – she was investigating likely medical contacts, she’d been a nurse and knew the language. He suspected her. Called her bad. I said, “Don’t go Gothic on me, Harry.”’
The one in the photograph. Coffin thought.
‘He thought she was dangerous, I thought he was wrong.’
‘Does she have a name, this woman?’
‘Margaret Grayle. You might as well know … we had an affair. Over now, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Coffin, half ironically. In his experience, whenever anyone, man or woman, admitted to an affair it was always claimed to be over. It might be or it might not. It was in his mind to be wary and sceptical of this lady. ‘You had better give me her address.’
‘Oxford. But you should find it in Harry’s papers.’
‘In case I don’t.’
A sigh came across the line. ‘If she’s still there, it was Owls House, Raven Road, Oxford.’
Not sure if I believe that address, thought Coffin, but he wrote it down.
‘And have you told the Met about Miss Margaret Grayle?’
‘Did I say Miss? She is married. And no, I haven’t said anything. The Met have good men on the case, they will find Harry’s killer. And it won’t be Margaret.’
Not in person, Coffin thought, but she might have hired someone. Or been pressured to help get rid of him by associates she might have in the pharmaceutical racket. The body cut into five pieces, that sounded like a professional job.
A Grave Coffin Page 5