A Grave Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘The last is the vicar, but we don’t rule the cloth out, do we?’

  Coffin shook his head.

  ‘Then we added Arthur Killen to the list. We knew already that the boys went swimming, and that Peter Perry drove the bus to the pool once a week. A private arrangement, the boys paid extra. But attached to the pool is a very fine small skating rink, and a group of the boys went there after a swim. Arthur Killen also skated.’

  She handed him the second list, much shorter.

  Edward Brother, Oliver Deccon, Robert Mackay, Peter Perry, Alan Rinten, John Salmon.

  ‘The vicar is a keen swimmer and skater. But he has no other connection with the school or the boys. Nor was he ever in any police force, not even as a cadet. All the names here had some connection with the swimming pool or the skating, as had Arthur Killen, but when we added the police connection …’

  Coffin said: ‘We are left with Peter Perry who is on the list, on every list that touches the boys, and Oliver Deccon, once a police cadet, then moved over to the physical training side till he retired early.’ Or was retired, there might be a story there.

  Inspector Devlin nodded.

  ‘What does Deccon do now?’

  ‘Drives a bus as replacement, helps in the pool, and assists in the skating rink. He was a champion as a kid but fell away afterwards. Still skates and teaches. Perry, even although lame, was learning.’

  ‘Get them both in,’ ordered Coffin.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Like Dracula we go for their blood.’

  15

  ‘He didn’t say and do it pretty damn quick,’ said Inspector Devlin to Sergeant Tittleton. ‘But I got the message.’

  ‘Cut every corner,’ advised the sergeant sagely.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘He’s pretty twitchy. I heard his wife has left him. Taken a job at the National Theatre and is moving out.’

  Gossip about Coffin and his illustrious wife sped about the Second City all the time.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Devlin, ‘but I am taking Perry and Deccon in and you can come with me to do it.’

  Peter Perry was cleaning out the school bus when they arrived in the early evening. He had done his school trips and was looking forward to a quiet evening watching television.

  ‘Oh, leave me be,’ he groaned, ‘I haven’t done anything. You’ve asked me questions and I’ve answered them. Don’t forget I’ve been one of you and I know you are just dredging around because you haven’t got a strong lead or any evidence.’

  ‘Have you got a dog?’ asked Tittleton, who had been staring at the wall of the shed where the bus and other vehicles were housed.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ snapped Perry.

  ‘So what’s that dog lead doing there, hanging on the wall?’

  ‘I had a dog once.’

  ‘It looks like a new lead.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know anything about it.’

  But he made not much fuss about being taken into the Spinnergate headquarters where Devlin had set up her incident room, only saying he must let his girlfriend know or she would wonder where he was.

  ‘We’ll tell her,’ said Tittleton brusquely. ‘You just come along with us.’

  Devlin had not said much, but had prowled around the garage, inspecting the cars and showing some interest in the white van parked behind the second bus.

  ‘Whose is that van?’

  ‘Communal,’ said Perry. ‘All of us own it. And use it.’ His mood was sour, changing him from the jolly figure the boys knew as he drove the school bus to someone darker. ‘Three of us: me, my brother and Ollie Deccon. Also, anyone we might lend it to. So put that in your pipe, Inspector, and smoke it.’ He had never liked women in the police.

  But he was quiet as he limped out to the car and was driven away.

  Ollie Deccon was taken in next. He did not know that Peter Perry was there before him, nor was he told. He had been working at the sports centre, taking a group of ladies in their first swimming class. He was a popular teacher because he was kind, quiet and seemed virtually sexless. ‘Which is what you want with someone who is in the water with you showing you breaststroke.’

  The girls – Ollie called them his girls, although their average age was usually nearer thirty – gathered around him protectively in the water like a circle of swans as Inspector Devlin summoned him out.

  ‘See you back soon,’ they called after him, before retiring to shower, sauna and dress while discussing with interest what their teacher had been taken in for.

  But he did not answer the shout of support, seeming more depressed than cheered by it, but he went with Devlin and Tittleton quietly enough, pointing out that he only did the school run as a relief driver.

  The sergeant watched him while he dressed. ‘Nasty bruise you’ve got there.’ A long streak of purple stretched down Deccon’s leg. He shrugged. ‘Did that ages ago, weeks – had a fall.’

  ‘Must have hurt.’

  ‘Still does at night.’ He was shrugging himself into jeans and sweater.

  ‘Your face as well … you might have cracked your cheekbone, now I bet that hurt.’

  ‘So what?’ Sympathy from Tittleton was not needed; he had worn the uniform himself and knew what sympathy meant: nothing, it was meant to make you talk more freely.

  ‘What’re those things?’ Tittleton pointed to a pair of leather tubes, like leggings only much shorter.

  Deccon barely looked at them. ‘Should wear them when I skate, I don’t always and that’s how I got the bruise … ankle went over.’

  ‘You might have broken it.’

  Ollie did not answer, but followed the sergeant out to where Devlin was waiting in the car.

  All she said as they drove off was: ‘You were quick. Good.’

  ‘I deserve more than that,’ said Ollie. ‘An apology or an explanation would not come amiss. I don’t know what you are after.’

  ‘Among other things, your blood,’ returned Devlin. ‘I know you will be glad to give us a drop. Or more.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then you are a bloody vulture.’ And Deccon sank back in the car seat, saying he wanted a lawyer.

  You can have one, thought Devlin, but let’s get that blood from you first.

  ‘It’s my blood,’ he called after them as he was shut into the interview room, ‘and I’ll keep it to myself.’

  ‘He’s not too pleased with us,’ observed Sergeant Tittleton as the door closed.

  ‘No, it’s not him I’m worrying about. Let’s get the ball rolling.’

  She knew this case was important and one she must tidy up and quickly too. Those children deserved a quiet rest now which they could only get when their killer was found.

  Apart from anything else, the man was a danger and might kill again. She saw this every time she met Chief Superintendent Young, who called in regularly to get the latest news. Dr Chinner was another caller, the most persistent of the parents whom he had organized into a group.

  There was also the Chief, John Coffin, whose approval was very important to her. She did not agree with Tony Tittleton that his wife was about to leave him, although that story was spreading, but she could see he was troubled.

  Coffin was troubled, not about Stella whose love he counted upon, whether she was here or across the Atlantic, although she could be delightfully, maddeningly elusive, but about the Ed Saxon-Harry Seton business.

  So far he had not heard from Ed Saxon, but it would come and he must decide what to do. He had never admired Saxon but he had certainly respected his skills as a policeman. Yet his career had stalled.

  Where was it now? It was hard to call his present appointment anything but a dead end. What had gone wrong? He had probably irritated a lot of the wrong people, but Coffin himself had done the same and he had come through, never drowning but swimming to the surface.

  I must have a lot of my terrible old mother in me, he thought: the mothe
r who had given birth to him, then dumped him and moved on, always making fresh worlds for herself. I am the same, he told himself, a fish, not a bird, I just swim on.

  But Ed? Some men when disappointed dry up or join a club, but Coffin sensed in Ed some fire still alight.

  ‘I think it’s having you that’s kept me afloat,’ he said to Stella over breakfast the next day. ‘Kept me right.’

  ‘Because I’m always right?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact you are nearly always wrong.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’

  ‘But there’s an essential rightness about you.’

  Stella was perplexed. ‘Oh, but I am an actress and we just take colour from where we are.’ She poured him some coffee. ‘I like having breakfast together. Why are you so morbid today?’

  ‘Not morbid … it’s just that today I think I am about to find out that a man I thought a decent sort is a multiple murderer and that another man, whom I have certainly respected, is …’ He did not go on. Leave Saxon alone for the moment.

  There was much confusion and anger at the Clement Attlee School as the bus driven by Peter Perry did not arrive and assorted parents were obliged to drive their offspring to school.

  The friends of Louie came together as a group and talked of what had happened. Something, they agreed, must be done.

  Coffin took the call he was expecting from Paddy Devlin in the early afternoon.

  ‘We have the blood-test result. Negative for Oliver Deccon, although they share the same blood group, but strongly positive for Peter Perry. His blood was loaded with the drug found on clothes of Archie Chinner. No wound on Perry but we conclude it healed.’

  ‘I am coming in to see him.’

  Inspector Devlin met the Chief Commander on his way. ‘He admits taking painkillers for what he calls “the screws” but denies killing the boys. He would, of course.’

  ‘Have you found the drug on him?’

  ‘No, but we searched the house and have found an unlabelled bottle with tablets which are being examined now. I don’t know where he got the drug and he isn’t saying. But possibly from Mr Barley who seems to have a liberal attitude to drugs. But you know all about that, sir.’

  ‘I do. Anything else?’

  ‘We had already been over his car but a fresh forensic test is being made on the white van where he garages the buses … I think we are getting something.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘We haven’t charged him yet, of course, and his girlfriend is outside complaining noisily.’

  ‘Only to be expected.’

  ‘She says he’s an innocent man.’

  Coffin sighed. He had met so many defensive wives and girlfriends of deeply guilty men.

  Archie Young was waiting for Coffin. ‘Can I come with you, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The three of them, Coffin, Archie Young and Paddy, walked in together.

  Perry was sitting, indignant, and dejected. Denial personified. Sergeant Tittleton was leaning against the wall; he straightened up rapidly as the trio came in.

  Perry too stood up. ‘That’s right, three of you, four if you count him.’ He nodded towards Tittleton. ‘Four against me, but it won’t get you anywhere. I don’t admit to anything. I didn’t do it and you can’t prove I did. I don’t confess.’

  ‘It’s a powerful drug you took.’

  ‘And I had a powerful pain. Look …’ He hobbled round the room. ‘That’s the best I can do and that hurts. And it’s one of my good days, no credit to you.’

  They talked to him, but he stuck to what he had said about his innocence, and after a bit, he would not talk at all.

  ‘We can hang on to him for a bit to see what forensics can come up with, but we can’t charge him with what we’ve got.’

  ‘No,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘No, we can’t.’

  Archie Young said nothing, just shrugged and walked away.

  ‘He’s upset,’ said Devlin.

  ‘Of course he is. We all are.’

  Coffin hovered at the door, still talking to Paddy Devlin on the matter of the drugs, but he was near enough to the constable on duty whose loud voice could be heard informing someone that he could not believe it of Peter Perry. ‘Not boys,’ he was saying. ‘Never saw that his taste lay that way. Now if it had been girls, yes. The biggest womanizer in the unit, we used to say.’

  Coffin heard and noted.

  Back in his office, he rang up his own doctor, a distinguished physician with a title.

  ‘Powerful drug, morphine solution. It’s given to you for the sort of pain that makes you want to shuffle off this mortal coil. And frankly, if he was lame as you say …’

  ‘He was hobbling. I suppose I noticed it. But not enough!’

  ‘I don’t believe he could have carried the bodies around.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me. Stella says to say she wants you to come for dinner soon.’

  Archie Young came into the office. ‘I don’t think he’d confess if we gave him fifty lashes.’

  ‘He might,’ said Coffin. ‘I would myself, but it wouldn’t mean he was guilty.’ He stood up. ‘Come round to St Luke’s and have a drink. I don’t know if Stella will be there. But there’s me and Gus.’

  As they walked across the car park to where Coffin’s car stood in the shade, there came that rattling, gliding, banging sound that Coffin had got to know.

  A group of rollerbladers came up, made a wide circle around them twice, then sped away.

  They were silent and polite, but they carried a home-made banner which read: Pete Perry is innocent, Pete Perry we like.

  Then they sped off. But when Coffin and Archie Young got to St Luke’s there was another group, about six this time with Louie among them, waiting. They too had a banner with, this time, what looked like a photograph pinned on it.

  Once again they circled round the two men, this time chanting: ‘Not Pete, not Peter, not Pete.’

  ‘Bloody kids,’ said Archie Young. ‘Clear off.’

  ‘We’ve got rights,’ one of them called out.

  ‘No, not this time,’ said Coffin. ‘This is private land. Hop it. You’ve made your point, now go.’

  Stella was there and kissed them both warmly. ‘I hear everyone says I am leaving you so I must make a display of love.’

  Coffin was annoyed. ‘How did you hear that?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs James let me know as she was hoovering. She’s back on the job. She hears everything. Tells it, too.’

  ‘I must remember that.’

  Stella began to assemble the drinks, still talking away. ‘She says Peter Perry couldn’t have done it, she used to see him in the Rheumatism Clinic at the University Hospital when he could hardly walk … that’s why he stopped being a policeman. She saw Ollie Deccon there too when his wife was dying … something nasty, she doesn’t know where.’

  ‘There are limits to her knowledge then.’

  ‘A bit; she says Maggie Deccon went home to die.’

  Coffin said thoughtfully: ‘I ought to have spoken to Mrs James before.’

  They had one drink, but Archie refused to stay. ‘I promised to drop in on Geoffrey Chinner to tell him how things went.’

  Coffin went with him down the stairs.

  ‘He’s not happy,’ said Stella.

  ‘Can you blame him? He wanted Perry hung, drawn and quartered.’

  ‘And did you?’

  Coffin shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’

  ‘It’s a photograph. Someone dropped it through the door.’ Stella stretched out her hand. ‘Can I see?’

  ‘Not yet. Later.’ He finished his drink. ‘Can I leave Gus with you? I don’t want to take him where I am going.’

  Oliver Deccon lived in a small, modern house, with two garages and several sheds, next to the sports centre, which had been built to house the groundsman, but he owned a house nearby and preferred to call that home without living there. It was a
good investment, he said.

  Ollie was not pleased to see John Coffin. ‘So it’s you lot again. Top brass this time. They let me out, didn’t you know? I’m innocent. It’s Peter Perry that’s for it.’

  ‘Supposing he is innocent?’ said Coffin.

  ‘Then we are both innocent. Thank you for coming, goodbye.’ He prepared to shut the door. But Coffin put his foot there.

  Ollie stood back, still holding the door. ‘Trust a copper to put his big foot in it.’

  ‘You were one yourself once.’

  ‘Cadet only. So, what is it you want?’

  ‘I thought if I came to see you myself, it might clear my mind. You know, of course, that you and Peter Perry are the two chief suspects for the murders?’

  ‘Always have been, I suppose.’

  ‘Very nearly always.’ He advanced through the door. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘You already are.’

  ‘It seemed to me that some of the young boys you helped to skate don’t think Perry is guilty. And Killen is out of it too, you just found it handy to use his name. You’ve always used other people, haven’t you? I think I would call you a devious chap. I believe the boys sensed that much.’

  ‘What do boys know?’ There was contempt in his voice.

  Coffin looked at him. ‘Only you know that, Ollie.’ He handed him the snapshot. ‘This is one of those quick pop-up photographs. Take a look.’

  Deccon took it delicately with the fingertips of his right hand, as if touching it was dangerous. It showed a man wearing a policeman’s uniform holding the hand of a boy.

  The picture was blurred, as if taken from a distance, possibly even through a window.

  The man’s face was that of Ollie Deccon.

  ‘You didn’t know about this photograph, did you, Ollie? I think your mate Perry took this, as an insurance policy for himself.’ Or possibly for a bit of blackmail. ‘I think his girlfriend decided it was time for me to see it.’

  Ollie was silent, but he stared at the photograph. He had always hated himself in that bloody uniform. Police!

  ‘Who’s the boy, Ollie? An early seduction scene, or one of the boys you killed?’

  Ollie dropped the photograph, his face was changing. ‘I didn’t hurt him, only gave a little … stroking, asked nothing back.’