Coffin waited.
‘Inspector Devlin had spoken to him before, and she felt she had taken him seriously, but with caution. Knowing that Jeff Diver had gone missing, she felt perhaps I could get more. I am not sure if I did, sir. Louie hung on to what he had said. As far as I could tell, he repeated it word for word … I can remember hanging on to a story as a kid, and when I did, the more unsure of what I was saying, the more I clung to the word-for-word technique.’
‘You mean he was lying?’
‘No, I am not saying that, but I don’t think he’s as sure as he sounded. He’s still young, very young, I reckon he is anxious to oblige, to say what is expected of him. But that doesn’t mean it is not true. DC Harden had the same feeling, sir.’ He gave Coffin what was almost a pleading look. ‘I may just have muddied the waters.’
‘So now tell me about Mrs Diver, and in particular, what she said to you that sent you off to churn up the water.’
This prolonged interview with the admired, much-feared Chief Commander was proving a strain to Tony Tittleton. He felt that if at this point he could quote something wise and strong from a poet or a philosopher, as had sometimes happened to a policeman in some of the detective stories he read when staying with his mother, if he could have done this then he would have been strengthened. But alas, as a schoolboy he had liked football (never rugger), swimming and pop. Reading of any sort had come well down the line. As indeed had education of any sort. You might say he had been educated in spite of himself.
He hesitated.
‘Think for a minute,’ said Coffin kindly. That is, he meant it kindly, but a suggestion like that is always unnerving.
The sergeant thought: Mrs Diver had met him at the door without surprise.
‘Thought you’d be round. I’m glad it’s you, Tony. You know him.’
He had nodded, no comment.
‘We haven’t seen you for some time.’ She had looked towards the window, he noticed her eyes were puffy and red, with crying, he had thought. ‘I’m glad you didn’t come in a car, flashing with lights, I don’t want the neighbours wondering too much … It’ll come, of course.’ Her tone had been savage. ‘You’re looking for him, I hope.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘No news yet, I’m afraid.’ He had sought for her name and ended lamely, ‘Belle.’
‘I’ve been out looking myself … places he went to like the library and the sports centre … no sign, no news.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be back,’ Tony had said, admitting to himself that he was far from sure.
‘Yes, that’s what your Chief Superintendent Young said, and he didn’t sound as if he meant it, either. And before you ask, I’ll tell you what I told him: my husband should never have written that letter, he never would have done if he had thought what it would mean to me – he was having a nervous breakdown.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Not sleeping, talking in his sleep, going off like that.’
‘Had he asked for help?’
‘This is asking for help,’ Belle Diver said fiercely.
‘Yes,’ said Tony. ‘I reckon it is.’ One way and another it was, probably. ‘But what was he asking for help about?’
‘He may have heard what that little liar said about seeing a policeman with the Neville boy.’
Tony Tittleton looked at John Coffin. ‘I didn’t answer her there, but she looked at me and said everyone knew what was being said and did I think Louie’s mother was keeping quiet even if we were … Inspector Devlin had said to keep quiet till we knew more.’
‘So then you went to see Louie?’
‘Yes, sir, and really got nowhere much.’ Then he said: ‘Belle Diver had just come in from somewhere, just walking around looking for her husband, I guess. Her coat was thrown over a chair, it had been raining a bit and the coat was wet and so was her hair. She said she’d been to talk to his friend Martin at the swimming pool … I don’t know why, but I didn’t believe her. There was something …’ He shook his head. ‘She knows something, sir, that she isn’t telling us. Or not me. Inspector Devlin will be seeing her, of course, but Mrs Diver wants to see top brass. She said she went to headquarters to report her husband missing and show his letter, and she wants someone who will understand.’
‘What does she mean by that?’
‘I don’t know, sir. She wasn’t going to say more to me, that was clear.’
Coffin remembered what Archie Young had said when he telephoned: I saw the wife, and I didn’t handle her well, she started to cry.
‘Maybe she would tell you.’
Or perhaps you could get it out of her, you’re well known for being able to do that.
‘She was beginning to cry.’ Then he added slowly: ‘I think she was putting it on, sir. I’ve got a sister, and I’ve seen her do it, and I recognized it.’
‘What about DC Harden, what did she make of it?’
‘She didn’t get much chance, sir. Mrs Diver wouldn’t let her stay in the room … she had to watch from the hall through an open door.’ Amanda Harden hadn’t liked that very much. As they left, Belle had called out: ‘I don’t want to see another one of you today. And if you see any of those kids skateboarding outside here, tell them to go away too.’
There were none, as it happened, but Amanda picked up a woollen glove that she said might have been worn by one. She put it on the garden wall before giving as her opinion that Belle Diver was on the edge of a breakdown, or perhaps break-up might be a better word, as it was going to be explosive, and she for one did not blame her. But they got out before the storm burst.
‘You are beginning to give me a very clear picture of Belle Diver. Thank you.’
Tony Tittleton considered and then said: ‘I shouldn’t like to leave her alone with Louie.’
Coffin was startled. ‘I hope I don’t understand what you are saying. She knows that Louie told the story about seeing one of the missing boys with a policeman? Do you see her as a threat to him?’
‘She’s bitter, sir. There’s been a lot of gossip, I think she minds that a lot. Word gets around … after all …’ He paused again. ‘Diver himself knew what was being said.’ As did almost everyone, he thought to himself. Who doesn’t know by now? Spinnergate could be a village. For instance, I know that your madam, the lovely Stella, has gone to Los Angeles to have her face lifted. And how do I know that? Because Mimsie Marker selling newspapers outside Spinnergate tube station told my wife when she was having her hair washed. And dyed. There is something about a darker shade of red that loosens the tongue. He looked at Coffin and smiled: Of course, the Chief doesn’t know what I am thinking.
Coffin saw the smile: What’s that young devil laughing at?
‘I’ll go and see Mrs Diver.’
Tony hesitated. ‘I don’t think she wants to see anyone else tonight.’
‘She may have to.’
Better you than me, sir, Tittleton said to himself, because if Amanda is right you will come in for the explosion. The tears I saw might have been phoney, but that doesn’t mean the emotion isn’t there.
‘Does this mean we give up on the bus driver and the others, sir?’
‘No.’ Coffin was decided. ‘Keep after the lot.’
‘Right, sir.’
Sooner than he expected, he was on the corridor walking into the canteen where Mandy still sat. ‘I’m not sure I handled that too well,’ he told her. ‘I talked too much … too wordy.’
‘Stop talking about yourself, and start thinking about me. The Crown tonight? It does a good chicken in a basket, or we could go to the Boozy Arms.’ The Boozy Arms was called after Charles Dickens who had had the pseudonym Boz. The Boozy part was a Cockney corruption of Boz.
‘Everyone’ll be there,’ complained Tittleton with some truth, for the Boozy Arms was popular with CID and Uniformed alike. ‘I can eat chicken at home.’ His wife was cooking it.
‘You can ignore them and concentrate on me.’
‘I heard there
was always a dog,’ Tony said absently. ‘I didn’t see a dog.’
Augustus, dog in chief, and, if the arrangement was left with him, only and forever sole dog, was at home in the tower of the old and now secularized St Luke’s Church. Coffin with Stella lived in the tower, which was now a pleasant if unusual home, while the rest of the church was subsumed into the theatre. There were now three theatres on the site: on the old church, and two smaller ones, Max also had a restaurant there.
When Coffin got back, his mind still divided between Harry Seton dead in London and the dead boys in Spinnergate, he heard Augustus barking.
His excited bark, a crescendo of little yelps with a high whine at intervals.
Coffin’s first thought was burglars, but no. Gus was happy, not frightened or aggressive. Then he noticed a smart leather travelling bag from Vuitton and got a whiff of l’Heure Bleu. Then he was leaping up the stairs.
‘Stella, you’re back.’
She came forward, tall, beautifully dressed in something pale and suede (new, too, he was rational enough to notice, almost certainly expensive and New York). She kissed him, with delicate precision, on the cheek.
‘You came up those stairs like a rocket.’
‘Didn’t know I had it in me,’ he said, panting. He put his arms round her and kissed her back with more energy. ‘Come on, no more stage kisses.’
Stella laughed. ‘You noticed?’
“Course I bloody noticed. Just let me get my breath back.’
A bottle of rye whisky. Southern Comfort, her usual transatlantic present, was on the table, together with a small gilt packet.
‘I’m only home for a few days, break in the schedule, and I am utterly broke.’
Augustus was leaping up and down with pleasure, in his mouth was his present: a chocolate-covered bone.
‘It’s called Chocobone,’ Stella said. ‘I don’t know whether they eat it or bury it.’
Coffin was unobtrusively studying her face. It looked the same. So had she not been ‘fixed’? And if she had, would it be wrong to ask.
‘You look lovely, dearest,’ he said, taking the easy option.
‘I’m still swithering about having the face job – it is expensive.’
‘So it is,’ he said happily.
‘But I could claim it on expenses for the tax man, that is the best of being an actress, he’d accept that, and there’s no denying you photograph better with a less decided nose than mine.’ She was studying her face in the big looking glass on the wall. ‘Do you think I have an aggressive nose?’
‘No, dearest Stella, occasionally your tongue is sharp and your temper can flare, but your nose gives me no trouble at all: a very good nose.’
‘Thank you for that vote of confidence in my nose.’
‘And now, Stella, tell me why you really came home?’
The phone rang; Coffin considered not answering it while he looked at Stella.
‘I was missing you terribly. I just wanted to see you.’ Her voice was soft.
‘That’s a lovely answer, Stella, and almost makes me leave that phone ringing. But I can’t, there’s too much going on here at the moment.’
He began to move towards the telephone.
‘No, let me,’ said Stella. She stretched out an arm. ‘Hello … Oh, of course …’ She offered the telephone to Coffin. ‘It’s a woman, she wouldn’t give her name, but she wants to talk to you, must do, she said.’
Her voice was husky and controlled, my best drawing-room-comedy voice, she called it.
Coffin gave her a cautious look – Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward, with a touch of Lady Macbeth, he thought as he took the telephone from her. Or wasn’t there some Greek queen who specialized in killing husbands? Skinning them first, probably.
‘This is Margaret Grayle,’ announced a voice, not as soft or carefully produced as Stella’s, but just as clear and well modulated. A woman of education. But with just a hint of something rougher behind. It was interesting how certain tones always came through. Even darling Stella, who was always reserved about where she came from, sometimes let a hint of her native Dundee slip through. The past was always with you.
‘I’ve heard you were looking for me?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘These things get around.’
‘I do want to see you, Ms Grayle. I am planning to come to Oxford.’
‘That’s good, because I want to see you. There’s something you ought to know.’
‘What is it?’ Out of the corner of his eye he could see Stella was watching him. She was stroking Augustus and listening to him.
‘Not now, not on the telephone. Tomorrow I shall be in the Station Hotel in Oxford at one o’clock. Join me there.’
‘How shall I know you?’
‘I will know you.’
The telephone was put down. He knew he could get the number, but it was probably a public call box. Or in the hotel she had named. The Station Hotel? He ought to find that easily enough.
Stella watched him gravely but said nothing.
He returned to her side. ‘A case.’
‘You didn’t look too pleased.’
He shrugged, not wanting to talk about it.
‘I know I can’t help,’ said Stella.
‘You don’t usually want to,’ he said, surprised.
‘Well, that’s true.’
‘There is something you could do. If you really mean it.’
‘I do, I do.’
‘I have to see the wife of a man who is missing, who may be a suspect in a murder case.’
‘You are talking about the dead boys?’
‘You know about it?’
‘I was across the Atlantic, John, not on the moon … Anyway, I read the London papers on the flight back.’
‘If you would, I’d be glad if you came with me.’
‘You think she will faint or something?’
‘Or something.’ He looked at Stella, a pale suede suit made in Italy, bought, possibly, in Bergdorf Goodman’s, was not the best thing to wear when encountering a woman whose husband might be a pederast and multiple murderer.
Stella read his mind with her usual skill. ‘I will just change into jeans and a sweater. And when I come back, I’d like a few more details about this case and that one …’ There was a delicate emphasis on the last reference. Coffin guessed she meant the woman caller. ‘Nothing confidential, of course, I wouldn’t expect that’ – a touch of heavier irony than Stella usually allowed herself here – ‘but enough so that I know where not to put my foot.’
‘Right. Glad to, it’ll give me a chance to think things through.’
Stella gave him a loving, sceptical look as she sped up the stairs to her dressing room. Coffin called it the bedroom, but as Stella’s clothes filled a wall cupboard whereas his were exiled to an attic room, Stella was not without justification. But it was good for him, he accepted, working in his macho world, to find himself and his clothes skyed.
Stella reappeared in jeans that did her legs justice, but were still suede, and with a heavy cashmere sweater – Italian again, he guessed.
‘I’ll talk as I drive … You know this because you’ve read your newspapers on Concorde.’ He gave her a sideways look.
‘It wasn’t Concorde.’
‘From your reading,’ he went on, only half believing her. If the film company was paying, then it was Concorde. ‘You will know that four boys, much of an age, have disappeared over the last two months. The last boy to disappear was found first … or his body was: Archie Chinner, son of a police surgeon. Also the godson of Archie Young.’
‘I wondered about that … the name.’
‘Yes. Archie is very, very cut up, so he is keeping his distance on this one. Inspector Paddy Devlin and a lively young spark, Tony Tittleton, are handling it. Paddy is experienced in pederasts and similar cases … she’s handled plenty over the past few years, unhappily.’
‘I have met her, I think. Tall, handsome rather t
han pretty. Very strong minded … needs to be in your lot.’
‘Thanks,’ he said dryly. ‘Devlin manages very well, she’s going up the ladder fast, but this case is important for her. For all of us: we have to catch this killer. I saw the first grave, and a few days later I saw the three other bodies crammed together. Monstrous, I want that monster.’
They stopped at the traffic lights.
‘Seems funny to be in the car without the dog. What have you done with him?’
‘I shut him in the kitchen.’
‘He’ll hate that.’
‘He couldn’t come on this visit. What you don’t know, because we kept it quiet, was that Max’s grandson, Louie, claims he saw the first boy to go missing walking off with a policeman.’
‘Ah.’
‘And today, a woman, Belle Diver, reported her husband, DC Diver, was missing. He had left behind a note, apparently, claiming guilt for something nameless … She went straight to Archie Young because she wanted top brass … her phrase. That’s me.’
He had turned the corner into the quiet street, still peaceful, he was glad to see, although he knew the discreet white van parked down the road was a police van, keeping surveillance on the Diver house.
‘And I wanted a woman with me.’
‘You think I will cheer her up?’
‘You’ll cheer me up,’ said her husband. ‘Also, if I don’t go in with a policewoman she won’t think I’m going to take her in for a thorough questioning.’
‘And you won’t be doing that?’
‘Later, yes. Have to. Devlin will. But not tonight.’
‘Belle Diver,’ said Stella with a frown. ‘I think I remember her, she had a job in the theatre … No, not the theatre, for Max, helped in the restaurant. Pretty woman.’
‘Is she?’ said Coffin absently.
He parked the car under a tree. A cat was sitting under it too, looking at them as if they were of some remote interest.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Stella. ‘What’s this other case, the one that is taking you to Oxford tomorrow? Oh, don’t worry, I just heard that word.’
‘Oh, that’s something completely different.’ Or so he hoped. The most ill-disposed of deities surely could not make the two cases run together. ‘London-based. You won’t remember Ed Saxon, but it’s a do of his.’ And Harry Seton, but he was dead.
A Grave Coffin Page 11