A Grave Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  Coffin wandered off on his own.

  The market was arranged in three aisles with no cover from the weather. Fish and meat shared one aisle, with fruit and vegetables on a second. The third aisle was a glorious jumble of clothes, china, fake jewellery and pretend antiques which deceived no one and were never intended to. One stall was piled high with shoes and handbags hanging pendant from the side. Next to this stall was one with sweaters and shirts, fake Italian, he speculated. At the end was a stall of scent and make-up with a substation of medicines and health foods.

  Coffin approached this stall with circumspection. Out of the comer of his eye he could see that Stella had reached the fake jewellery stall and was bargaining energetically for a necklace which looked like amber.

  As was fitting, a woman was in charge of the make-up stall. He came up close and the smell of scents and powders drifted towards him. Nothing expensive here, he told himself, having learnt much in marriage with Stella.

  The name above the stall said Flora Love, make-up that is good for you, take her advice.

  He saw that Flora was observing him with sharp black eyes which twinkled at him, but there was amusement without friendliness in their glint.

  Also a hard observation; he would not be able to pretend with this woman who had weighed him up for what he was as soon as he came within her vision. No pretending with this one.

  She didn’t speak but gave a long look and waited. Canny woman, Coffin thought. He was silent because he did not know how to begin.

  At last he found his voice: ‘I see you sell a range of natural-cure medicines, if I can call them that.’

  ‘You can.’ Her voice was clear and yet soft with a slight accent. West Country, he thought.

  ‘What have you got that is soothing, relaxing?’ He could do with some of that himself.

  ‘Lavender oil, rubbed in, is very good.’

  She was laughing at him. Almost certainly.

  ‘I don’t know about rubbing it in, anything by the mouth?’

  ‘Valerian is said to be good.’ She held out a packet. ‘Quiet Time sells well.’

  He pretended to consider. ‘Give me a packet, worth a try.’

  He noticed a stack of aspirin on an upper shelf.

  She barely turned her head to look. ‘Oh, just samples. I’m not selling them.’

  He held out his hand. ‘I won’t offer to pay then.’

  She sighed as she handed over a packet. ‘I guessed what you were as soon as I clapped eyes on you, but I thought I’d chance it … if I’d moved those packets when you came along that would have been a dead giveaway. You’re one of those inspectors, aren’t you? And not from round here.’

  ‘That’s right. Tell me how you get these drugs – you do realize they are fake?’

  ‘No, not fake, genuine drugs. I wouldn’t sell anything that could harm a customer, no, they are real, but source a bit iffy.’ She turned her head to the shelf behind. ‘Some lovely scents too, not quite what they pretend to be but not bad at the price.’

  ‘So how do you come by them?’

  ‘I buy them, of course, nothing’s free in this world.’

  ‘From whom?’ She was willing to talk, but not ready with information; she would give as little as possible, any time, any question.

  She sighed. ‘I’ve answered these questions before, at least twice. Feels like more but my memory gets worse and worse.’

  ‘Try it. Where do you get them?’

  ‘They are good value … a lot of my customers need drugs they can’t afford … for asthma, arthritis, gut trouble, painkillers …’

  ‘You sell all those?’

  She shrugged. ‘I bought what came in. It varied, sometimes one drug, sometimes another. Nothing hard, you understand, that wasn’t the business at all.’

  Coffin was rolling the packet of aspirin in his hands: it was a neat job of packing and labelling, but done on the cheap. Like the drugs.

  ‘I wasn’t the only buyer, plenty were at it round here, not just chemist’s but your friendly corner shop.’

  ‘Good profits.’

  ‘Well, of course, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t stand around here in all weathers for my health.’

  ‘So where did the stuff come from?’

  She sighed. ‘You do stick at it. I’ll tell you what I told the others and much good may it do you: a white van would come in, and the customers would follow. I got a telephone call and I guess they did.’

  ‘Simple.’

  ‘It shifted around, you’d get used to one selling point and then it would disappear; not safe, I suppose, although it wasn’t illegal.’

  ‘Deception can be illegal.’

  ‘Seen from where I stand it was no fraud, just good value.’

  ‘Go back to the white van … it disappeared, did it?’

  ‘Yes, supplies dried up. But they came back. I have several stalls, several different places, and after a bit, I noticed a van, not the white one, doing the same business …’

  ‘No telephone calls?’

  ‘I didn’t need it, I knew the way of it: see what was there, cash and buy.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, they moved on, saturate one area then go to another. Safer too.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yeah, because there were people like you nosing around, checking up, drug inspectors, or from the big pharmaceutical companies, but they were always on the late side, white van or dark blue, it had moved on and not come back. It had its own information service, I reckon.’

  ‘Could be.’

  She was pretending to be uneducated, but she wasn’t, might even know about pharmaceuticals herself.

  ‘Is Flora Love your real name?’

  ‘Flora is, not the Love part, not too much of that in my life.’

  ‘Have you got scientific training yourself, Flora?’

  She laughed. ‘You need it, you learn it.’

  ‘I shall need to talk to you again, Flora.’

  ‘How will you do that? I’m not handing out my telephone number.’

  ‘I won’t have any trouble finding you; if you come here regularly then you have a name registered with the local police. Hard to disappear, Flora.’

  She looked at him silently, then said in a low voice: ‘Not while I am alive, easier when I’m dead.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The last chap that came talking … he’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I recognized his face on the TV … I would recognize you, and know your name. I know it now.’

  She laughed. ‘When you took the packet of aspirin, your coat opened …’ She waved a card in front of him, it was one he carried in his pocket when he wanted quick identification. ‘I used to work in the circus, doing tricks … you were easy, not thinking, you see … Here, you can have it back, Mr Coffin.’ She tossed his card back across the counter. ‘You better watch out for yourself, you know.’

  It was at this moment that he realized how important Oxford was in this case; he should have understood this before. You’ve been slow, Coffin.

  Even as this thought came, another burned into his mind: Margaret Grayle’s clothes were too bloody good.

  She could be on the tape.

  Watch your back, he had been told in Oxford. Here the warning came again, and from another woman.

  He walked back towards the car where Stella and Gus were sitting on a bench. Stella was nursing a brightly coloured paper bag.

  ‘What did you find to buy?’ Although he knew Stella well enough to know she would find something to buy on the North Pole.

  ‘An amber necklace and a nice old Worcester bowl.’ She produced it, dark blue and white in a fluted china.

  ‘Old? How old? Is it genuine?’

  ‘No, probably not, but it’s pretty and I shall keep potpourri in it. I bought some of that too.’ She produced a small bag from inside the larger one. ‘Mostly lavender and dried roses, but I like the smell … And I bought a drink for Gus, h
e was thirsty.’

  Gus was asleep, worn out by his day.

  ‘What did he drink?’

  ‘Tea, he likes it with milk and sugar.’ She patted the dog’s head. ‘Are we going home now?’

  They got into the car, put the sleepy dog in the back and drove off.

  ‘Did you get anywhere? Any ideas?’

  Coffin drove for a moment in silence. ‘Yes, I got an idea.’

  Stella looked at him in silent query, waiting.

  ‘It’s a chimera.’

  ‘A chimera?’

  ‘Yes, and now I am going to drive fast.’

  Back to Never Never Land.

  THE DOOR OPENS

  8

  Never Never City looked much as always as they drove home through Spinnergate, perhaps an extra layer of litter on the pavements. And it was raining.

  Even in the rain there was a little clump of skateboarders and rollerbladers on several street corners. The skaters were riding up and down on metal poles, grinding. Dangerous work. You had to wonder what the casualty rate was.

  ‘I enjoyed my day in the country.’ Stella sounded cheerful, ‘And so did Gus, he’s worn out with the day’s excitements, poor fellow. But I suppose for you,’ she studied her husband’s profile, ‘it was a waste of time.’

  ‘Not a waste at all.’ Coffin was abstracted, watching the road where the traffic was heavy, usual at that time of day. He was driving in past Spinnergate tube station where Mimsie Marker sold papers from a stall. There she was, arms waving a paper, talking away to a group of people: she was the greatest disseminator of gossip in the Second City.

  ‘Mind if we don’t go straight home? I’d like to take a tour of the city.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just fancy a look round. Revive my memories of it.’

  ‘It won’t have changed since this morning.’

  ‘The Second City changes every hour, it’s never the same.’ He sounded serious.

  He was making a circuit of the inner city. ‘That’s the new Central Library going up over there.’ It was a biggish, white building. ‘There’s going to be a whole room devoted to drama. I expect they will call it the Pinero Room if you ask nicely.’

  ‘Culture City,’ said Stella.

  ‘Now, now.’ He grinned at her.

  ‘Let’s move out of the tower. Buy a place in the country. Gus would like it.’

  ‘There’s no real country within miles of here.’ But he was following a road that ran up a hill, towards what open, rough ground the Second City possessed. Stella sometimes drove up here to walk old Gus, who, if lame and worldly, had never wanted to be walked, preferring his solitary roams.

  Shadly Woods, the small, ravaged remnant of what had been the old hunting forest of the Norman kings. Known in certain circles as Shady Wood, where you could find a sheltered recess in the trees to make love, or get high, or hang yourself if that was the way it took you. It was across the road from where the old factory had stood, but not far away from where the boys had been buried.

  ‘I’ve just got a feeling …’ He turned to look at her.

  ‘I hate your feelings.’ He had the look in his eye, distant, intent, that she had seen in the eyes of their old cat when she set out on a hunting expedition, a look that saw the future and not the present.

  But he had found what he was looking for. On the slope of the hill he could see two police cars parked and another just drawing up.

  He turned to Stella. ‘I shall get out, then you can take the car and drive home with Gus.’

  Stella nodded. ‘Yes, all right, but phone me, please. Don’t leave me too long without a word.’ She might be a well-loved actress with her own theatre but on occasion she still got the same treatment as all police wives: silence, absence. She was used to it and accepted it, but she did not like it.

  Coffin did not even say: I promise, but kissed her cheek and got out of the car. Stella would have liked him to look back as he strode up the hill, but he did not, and she knew that she was not exactly forgotten, but put aside to be considered later. No use fretting, it was work, and, after he went off, she smiled at the thought of her new nose.

  From out of the bushes emerged Inspector Devlin. Some leaves and twigs had got stuck in her hair, disarranging her usually carefully immaculate appearance. She looked distressed. Behind her came Sergeant Tittleton. And behind him one of the police surgeons whom Coffin knew by sight only.

  A man called Kilpatrick, he thought. Kilpatrick was shaking his head.

  Coffin felt as if he had blundered into a scene that was not on his programme, an extra act in an unpredictable play. He felt a new pain down in the guts – first sign of some mortal illness? First pain of the season.

  He stopped himself muttering such rubbish; he had noticed before he had a tendency to ramble to himself when his thoughts were really elsewhere.

  Now he was saying to himself: Something bad there, don’t cover it up.

  He quickened his pace, marching up the slope until Devlin turned round and saw him. Tittleton and Dr Kilpatrick caught up with Devlin, all three stood waiting.

  ‘I don’t know how you knew, sir,’ said Devlin, ‘but I am glad you did.’ She walked towards him, leaving the other two behind.

  Another body? A fifth boy? Or a young policeman called Diver?

  Devlin answered the question before he asked it. ‘Not a boy this time, but a young woman … or what’s left of her.’

  ‘How was she found?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve had a search going on over all this ground. Just looking. And there she was.’

  Coffin followed Paddy Devlin towards the group, where Sergeant Tittleton stood silently by Dr Kilpatrick, who was murmuring that he had to be off soon.

  ‘She’s been dead some time, we don’t know how long yet, of course. Dr Kilpatrick could only make a guess at this stage … decomposition and so on … he thinks six to eight weeks.’

  Devlin led the way into a thicket of brambles fringed by young self-seeded trees.

  ‘Not a nice sight.’ Devlin sounded apologetic. ‘Some animals have got at her.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Coffin tersely, thinking of Harry Seton. He pushed his way through to the middle of the tangle of greenery. At the centre, the ground fell away into a small hollow and this was where she lay.

  ‘I’m thinking that it may be her leg that got buried with Archie Chinner, it was quite a small leg.’

  ‘She’s small,’ said Coffin. Small, young and chewed up.

  The head was there and the face battered and decomposing but still somehow young and innocent. A traveller in life who had got lost. By the head was a leather bag.

  ‘It may be suicide,’ said Kilpatrick, who was ill at ease. ‘Can’t tell yet. Whoever does the postmortem will find out.’

  ‘Nothing has been touched as yet, sir.’ Devlin liked to have procedures exact and right. ‘But the photographers and the SOCO team is on the way.’ She looked: ‘In fact, I see them arriving now.’

  ‘She doesn’t wear a wedding ring.’

  That doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘No.’ Coffin nodded. ‘No rings of any sort, but a watch and the remains of one earring in the left ear.’ None of them were expensive but the hands of the watch still told the time. ‘She wasn’t killed for her jewellery.’

  ‘There’s that handbag by her side, with any luck it will help with her identity. If there is any money in it, it will rule out robbery, which I pretty well do anyway, sir. Doesn’t have the look. Murder or suicide.’ She added doubtfully: ‘It could be natural death.’

  ‘You mean she came up here and sat down and died?’ said Tittleton.

  ‘No, not likely, I agree.’

  Coffin withdrew through the bushes. ‘It’s not so far away from where the boys were buried … explains the leg, I suppose … if anything can. We don’t know how it got there, though.’

  ‘It may have been carried that way by a fox or a dog …’ Or a human, but she didn’t like to think t
hat, but it was heavy for a dog. A fox might do it.

  ‘Well, she’s missing from somewhere. Someone will know she’s gone.’

  ‘She might be on the missing persons list,’ said the inspector doubtfully.

  ‘The bag looks interesting.’

  ‘I thought that, sir.’ A girl, and perhaps she was no more than that, often carried half her life around in her bag.

  ‘If she’s got her name or an address in her handbag that will be a start … a credit card, a bill.’

  Coffin started to walk away.

  ‘Do you want me to carry on with this too, sir?’ asked the inspector.

  Coffin stopped. ‘No, you’ve got your hands full, I’ll speak to Chief Superintendent Young, he’ll sort it out. But keep in touch just in case it touches on the death of the boys.’

  ‘It is connected in a way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Coffin, ‘but I don’t know how.’

  ‘We will find out who she is and it might become clear.’

  ‘I can see you are an optimist, Inspector,’ said Coffin, as he trudged away. ‘Oh, and any news of Jeff Diver?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Coffin stopped. ‘You don’t want to let go of this, do you?’

  Paddy Devlin walked up until she was level with him. ‘No, sir. I feel that somehow there is a link between this poor girl and the boys.’

  ‘And what about Jeff Diver?’

  ‘I don’t know about him, sir. No firm opinion yet.’

  Coffin moved on again. ‘Right. Good. Carry on then, but you will need a bit more help. Ask for what you want.’

  Inspector Devlin watched him walk away down the hill. A nice man, she thought, perhaps too nice. If he said she could ask for what help she wanted, it meant she would get it, something not universally true. She already had DC Amanda Harden. She was aware of Tony Tittleton’s interest in Amanda, and she was a friend of both the Tittletons, but people had to look after themselves in that respect, she thought. Amanda was good and clever, Amanda was the one she wanted. Her own sex life was peaceful, being nonexistent, at the moment. Not that you could count on that going on; in her experience, things hit you when you least expected them.

  Absently, her eyes traced Coffin’s descent down the hill. Nice shoulders, a pity he was so thoroughly spoken for.