Читать книгу A Cold Coffin - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 8

3

Friday evening.

Joe stood waiting quietly for the arrival of the Chief Commander. Phoebe Astley, whom he knew – they bought their meat and sausages from the same butcher, of whom there were not many left around, even in the Second City – had told him to wait. He stood looking out of the window on to the street lights below. It was raining, but it had its own romance.

‘I love London,’ he said to himself. ‘I am a Londoner. Perhaps I’m not an Englishman.’ Too much mixed blood. ‘But I am a Londoner.’

This part of London too, the Second City – not Knightsbridge nor Piccadilly, you could have that bit – this was his London.

He was not ambitious, although his daughter was, which he thought was as it should be. It was all right for men like him to slop around in old clothes and take undemanding jobs – you didn’t need a degree in engineering to dust a floor. He was a man, anyway, and that had to count for something. Women had to try harder.

‘Mustn’t get too sentimental, Joseph,’ he told himself. There’s a dead woman in this room and she didn’t put herself there.’ He had never been so close to a dead person before, not one untouched by medical hands and neatly trussed up so that they became someone you had never known.

He had known the dead woman too, and had even heard her dying words.

* * *

Phoebe Astley came back into the room, bringing the Chief Commander with her. Inspector Dover followed behind. His usual spot. She nodded at Joe.

‘I know who you are, sir,’ said Joe quickly, before Chief Inspector Astley – hard to think of her as that and not as rump steak, ostrich liver if you have any, and some pork sausages – could give him another of those quick nods and get rid of him. Although he was not an ambitious man, he had a link-up with the local newspaper who printed any little items of news and gossip he sent to them. Working where and how he did, he picked up quite a lot. Behind a Hoover, you were not there.

Coffin was not listening.

Joe took a step back. He didn’t even need a Hoover to be invisible, he told himself.

Coffin studied the woman. This terrible task didn’t take more than a minute. ‘It’s Dr Murray.’

Phoebe nodded. ‘It is.’

‘Anyone had a look at her?’

Dover answered. ‘The police surgeon who certified her death.’ He nodded towards Joe. ‘And Joe here found her. He called the university security office, who called the police. Sergeant Fermer came, and I followed.’

Coffin looked at Phoebe with a question.

‘I came into it because I had been interested in the Neanderthal skulls. She was interested in the skulls

He nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Anyway, she had my name and rank on a bit of paper in her handbag.’

Coffin went to stare again at the body. He knelt down, but did not touch her. A band of blood, like a red ribbon, ran down the face, spreading out to cover the nose and then the chin. The hair was clotted with blood. Her grey tweed skirt and matching jacket were stained too. Blood had even spattered her shoes.

‘She could have been hit on the head.’ He got up. ‘First, before the rest, but I don’t think so. The medics will tell us.

It looks as if someone took her by surprise.’

‘No weapon found,’ said Phoebe tersely. ‘Just in case you wondered.’

‘She never came in here. No one did,’ said Joe, not loudly but suddenly, as if he had just thought of it. ‘In all the years I’ve cleaned this place, I’ve never seen anyone. It’s kind of forgotten, this place.’ He turned his short-sighted blue eyes on the Chief Commander and CI Astley. ‘She asked for you, sir. With her dying breath, she asked for you.’

Coffin took it in but did not know whether to believe it: people caught up in violent death had such fantasies.

Probably the worst fantasy of all was that he would be of any use.

He looked around at the floor, at all the skeletal remains that lay about which the killer had abstracted from the cabinets and then thrown all over the floor, except for the skulls, where a pattern had been made.

Or had the dead woman herself taken them out?

No, the little skulls, babies’ skulls, were arranged round her own head. Certainly she had not done that herself.

‘What the hell do the bones and skulls mean?’

Phoebe didn’t answer.

‘No, you don’t know it any more than I do. But whoever did this was angry.’

The SOCO team arrived.

‘You took your time,’ Coffin said crisply.

‘Traffic, sir, sorry,’ said the team leader, far from pleased to see the Chief Commander there. Traffic as an excuse was the first thing he could think of. Not strictly true; a bit of an argument between two of the team had slowed them down. He could see by the look in the Chief Commander’s eyes that he was not believed. If I’d known it was you here waiting for us, I’d have been quicker. But the top brass never knew how those down below felt. There had been a lot of irritation lately, partly because of the new building works, which had meant shuffling people around. The skulls were objects of interest, and yet of disquiet too. The water had drained away so that the archaeologists had been at work, measuring and photographing. Then some other police teams had arrived. Men from the scientific side.

Coffin said, ‘It’s now early evening. I want to know when she was killed. Also, how anyone could get in here. Was it usually kept locked or not? And anything that forensics can turn up.’

‘Are you taking over, sir?’ Phoebe kept her voice polite, although she was irritated by him.

‘No. You are. But I will be behind you.’

Behind and in front and in the air above, thought Phoebe. No one who has worked with him has ever exactly been left alone. And yet we all like the bugger. Did I really call him that in my mind? I shouldn’t have done, because he is always polite, sometimes gentle, even at his most ruthless.

‘Check these skulls . . . what is known about them, who uses them and for what purpose.’

‘A medical purpose, I judge,’ said Phoebe.

‘Dr Murray was not a doctor but an archaeologist.’ But he had answered his own question. Archaeologists dealt in bones too.

He remembered her face as she had looked at that odd little skull with the water washing over it. She had been troubled. No, not exactly troubled: thoughtful, knowing. She had known something about that infant skull.

Coffin knew nothing about infant craniums, and some of those encircling Margaret Murray’s head looked very, very small, and others looked odd.

He knew nothing, but there were those that did.

‘Get a doctor, preferably a paediatrician, to look at these heads and tell me what he says.’

Joe said, ‘You don’t need a doctor.’ But once again he was invisible.

Stella had been left sitting in the car. For a while she was patient, but this patience did not last. She took a deep breath, got out of the car, remembered to lock it, and marched into the hospital building.

She didn’t know where her husband was, nor did she know her way around. One hospital may be much like another one, but you still have to know the signs: no, not the signs that tell you this way to Ear, Nose and Throat Department, or Pharmacy This Way, or Operating Theatre X, Third Floor, but the flow of people, the sense of urgency. A hospital was in a way like a theatre, she thought: the cutting edge, those in charge, otherwise the surgeons and nurses, and the audience, otherwise the suffering, the patients.

I must have drunk more than I realized, she thought. Surely not, I drank very little, and anyway on occasion I have a stronger head than my husband. Depends on emotion. If you are really down, you drink the bottles empty but never get high, but if you are happy half a glass can do it.

So she must have been happy; it was one way of telling.

A hand touched her shoulder. She swung round. A large young woman, fat really, but pretty, carrying a folder of documents or they might have been photographs; you were always getting photographed or X-rayed in hospitals. Or so it seemed in the sort of films and TV soaps that Stella watched, when she watched. Or acted in.

‘Oh, Joanna.’

‘Yes, Joanna. You were looking down at your shoes so hard that you didn’t notice an old friend.’

‘I was trying to make up my mind about them. Someone said they were kinky.’

‘Kinky?’

Joanna studied what Stella was wearing: the shoes were black patent, shiny, high-heeled, with just a hint of something in the white line that ran round the toe.

‘That person was not a friend,’ said Joanna severely. ‘Stella, you could never be called kinky, nor anything you wear. Even by putting them on, those shoes ceased to be kinky.’

Stella looked at Joanna with caution. She was never sure when Joanna was laughing at her. She probably was doing so now, but never mind, she was glad to see her. If surprised.

‘You work here now?’

‘In accounts.’

‘Oh yes, you always were into figures.’

They looked at each other and laughed. The two had met in the early days when Stella was working in Greenwich and Joanna Kinnear was taking her final exams in accountancy, and they met again when she had discovered that Joanna was doing the accounts for the private hospital that had attended to Stella’s facial requirements (mention not the words ‘uplift’ and ‘beauty surgery’). And now here she was in a big hospital, wearing a white coat and looking important. She probably was.

Joanna saw her look. ‘Even hospitals have bills and accounts to keep,’ she said with amusement. ‘In fact, they are big spenders.’

‘Why are you wearing a white coat, though?’

‘Oh, I just like to look a big shot.’

Stella accepted the explanation while not believing it. She knew enough about modern hospitals to know that white coats were out of fashion, laundry costs presumably. No, there was more behind it than Joanna was saying, but not for Stella to enquire.

‘I’ve lost my husband.’

‘Medically, or emotionally?’

‘Practically. He came in to see a skull . . . a baby’s skull.’

‘Oh, the dead babies’ room.’ A nerve twitched in her cheek, as if it wanted to be scratched. Stella felt she wanted to scratch it for her, but you don’t scratch anyone’s face for them.

‘What?’

‘That’s what we call it.’ She put out her hand. For a moment, Stella thought she was going to scratch that itch, which was still twitching away, but no, the hand was being offered to her.

‘Come, I’ll take you there.’

Down a long corridor, and then a right turn, and across a courtyard.

Of course, museums are always in bloody awkward places, thought Stella, picking her way across the uneven paving stones. If she broke an ankle, as seemed likely, at least she was in the right place to get it fixed.

A uniformed constable stood outside double glass doors, surveying them blankly. He was a new recruit, fresh in the Second City; he thought he might know Stella’s face, which reminded him of a television drama he had watched, as indeed it might, since Stella had performed in it. The other woman he definitely did not know, but in his opinion she was too tall to be a woman, although well built.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Joanna. ‘Trouble. Might have guessed it, since your husband is here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Stella.

She addressed herself to the constable. ‘I am Mrs Coffin. I want to speak to my husband.’

The constable’s blank expression did not change. Intensified rather.

‘She is,’ said Joanna. ‘I can swear to it.’

Now there was doubt in his face.

‘I’ll be off,’ said Joanna. ‘Give me a ring.’ Over her shoulder, she called. ‘Take my advice: break in.’

The alarmed young officer advanced towards Stella. She was saved by the door swinging open to let Sergeant Dawlish pass through.

‘Hello, Mrs Coffin. Can I help you?’

‘Can I see my husband?’

‘He’s a bit tied up at the moment.’

A comment that Stella rightly interpreted as meaning her husband did not want to see anyone, not on the job. Not even her.

Coffin called, ‘Is that Dr Merchant?’

When he saw Stella, his face changed.

‘You forgot me.’

‘No.’ He took a step forward. ‘Don’t come in, love.’

But she was already level with him at the great swing doors and could see beyond. Her view of the body was blocked by the police photographer busily taking pictures of the dead woman and the place of her death. Although she could not see the face, she could see the shoes and knew it was a woman lying there.

‘Who is she?’

Coffin did not answer.

‘That means it’s someone I know.’

Coffin gave a little shake of his head.

That didn’t say yes and didn’t say no,’ complained Stella sharply, but inside herself she was saying, By God, yes it did. I know this dead person, dead woman, I know it’s a woman . . . But who is it?

Ignoring her husband, she pushed past him into the room. ‘Who is this doctor you thought I was?’

Coffin muttered something about skulls, a paediatrician.

Stella had taken a pace within the room. She could see the half a dozen or so skulls that had been made into a macabre ring round the dead woman’s head.

‘Doctor . . .’ she said scornfully. ‘You don’t need a doctor. I don’t know what this doctor will tell you, but I would have thought you could have seen for yourself.’

‘Each of these little creatures was malformed . . . no normal baby has a skull like that.’

Dr Merchant came strolling up with the ease of one who knows that there is no hurry. All his specimens were dead.

‘Mr Coffin, I am sorry if I kept you waiting . . . I had to come across from the university, a committee meeting.’ He looked around him. ‘I am the curator of this little museum, one of my subsidiary jobs. The Jordan Jones Museum, a Victorian doctor and donor. Not much used now, ways have changed, but he left a bit of cash too.’ He gave a half-smile, ‘But I see you managed all right without me.’

Coffin said tersely, possibly with a touch of grimness, ‘We managed.’

Merchant advanced to look. ‘Poor soul, poor soul. How was she discovered?’

Joe had found her in fact and called security, but Phoebe preferred to put it her way. ‘We had arranged to meet here.’ Phoebe Astley was short.

Merchant looked his question.

‘She was helping me with my enquiries.’

‘Poor woman, poor woman. And yet, you know, you could almost have predicted a violent death for her. There are some people like that. And if they miss it one way, then they get it another.’

‘You know who she is?’

Dr Merchant almost gave a friendly smile. ‘Of course. There is no more efficient gossip mill than a hospital.’ He added, half thoughtfully, ‘Her husband cuts my hair.’ He ran his hand over his designer trim, layered and shaped. Everyone has his own vanity.

‘You know him?’ asked Phoebe Astley.

‘He does some private work, out of the Mayfair salon. Just the cut and the styling. Calls himself a man with a knife and a pair of scissors.’ Then he realized what he had said, and added hastily, ‘I’m sure it was a very happy marriage and he will be devastated. Does he know yet?’

Phoebe did not answer. She had no idea. Somewhere in Spinnergate, no doubt the uniformed men would be dealing with that part, might already have done so.

‘He might not be there, of course,’ went on Ken Merchant. ‘He’s away a lot. Demonstrations and photographic sessions.’

You seem to know a lot about him, thought Coffin, who had been silently observing the scene and realizing that Phoebe not only knew Dr Merchant, or of him (he’d have to think that one over), but also didn’t like him. Might be worth finding out.

This view was confirmed when, moving forward to thank Dr Merchant for coming, he gave him the polite dismissal and said that Chief Inspector Astley would be taking his statement. He saw the look of satisfaction flit across Phoebe’s face. What had he done to her?

‘Statement?’ No pleasure there, instead surprise and hurt dignity.

‘Just routine,’ Phoebe assured him. ‘Anyone who has access to the museum.’ She murmured something about fingerprints with some satisfaction.

He must have either spumed her or raped her, thought Coffin. He did not usually form such wicked witticisms about a colleague and friend, but even he sometimes had a thought better not expressed that he pressed firmly down, and this one had escaped.

He realized he was in shock.

Stella meanwhile had performed the well-known theatrical trick of disappearing while still being there. (She could do the opposite too: not being there but seeming to be present, while really being at the hairdresser’s having a tint.)

‘I’ll clear off,’ said Dr Merchant. ‘Leave you to it. I’ll be in my room working, if you want me. I am preparing a lecture for tomorrow. Room 3A in the Bedford teaching block.’

Thank you,’ said Coffin, his eyes on the group round the body. However often you saw it and however tough you were, there was something final about the journey to the pathologist’s table.

‘Ready to move her now,’ said Phoebe Astley.

Something rolled from the body, out of a pocket in her jacket.

Golden, round and shining. It was a wedding ring.

‘Were the clothes searched?’ Coffin found himself unable to say ‘her’ clothes . . . too personal, better keep it neutral.

‘Not really, sir,’ said Dover. ‘A quick search to establish identity . . . The rest will be done by forensics when the clothes come off.’ Subdued hint of reproof here: You know the ropes, sir.

Coffin knew them. To Phoebe Astley, he said, ‘Keep me up to date.’

‘I will, of course.’

Underneath, they were conducting a different dialogue. Coffin was saying that this was a particularly bloody murder in which he had been named and called in, and he wanted to know why.

From Phoebe, proving that great minds do not necessarily think alike, came the thought that she was irritated by this and wished he would keep out. She would call him when it was necessary.

Coffin picked up the irritation as he watched the body removed.

‘What about the MO?’ he asked Phoebe. ‘Does it remind you of the Minden Street murders?’

Phoebe shrugged. ‘We don’t know if she even knew where Minden Street was.’

‘Minden Street may have known where she was.’ He was pacing the area where the body had rested.

Plenty of blood. Too much. Amazing the way the heart keeps pumping it out when it would be better to stop. Even if help had got there earlier, she would probably still have died.

And she had asked for him, allegedly. By name.

Coffin. Get Coffin. Sounded like a Hitchcock film.

To Phoebe he said, ‘Get the blood tested.’

Surprised, Phoebe nodded. ‘We always do, sir.’

Coffin walked round the room. The police technicians, still at work, moved aside as he came past.

It was a small museum, showing not only heads. Whole skeletons, exposed in the old-fashioned cabinets, had not been disturbed.

‘It’s the heads that are important,’ he said, coming back to Phoebe.

Looking at the ring of tiny skulls, Phoebe thought she had worked that out for herself.

‘Question the man Joe thoroughly. I get the feeling he may know something.’

‘That will be done, sir.’

‘I’ll go to the post-mortem with you,’ said Coffin. He felt he should; the dead woman had asked for him as she died. It was the least he could do for her.

‘Thanks. I hate that place.’

‘So do I.’ Who didn’t? As a young policeman he had attended post-mortems as duty demanded. He hated the ice cabinets, with their freight of bodies, the trays on which they emerged to lie on metal tables with drip trays underneath.

Coffin looked round for Stella, only to find that she had done a disappearing act, and not a theatrical one; she was nowhere to be seen.

She was outside in the car, reading.

‘I shall always bring a book with me when you take me out to dinner, then I can read it when you go off.’

‘You seem to have got one.’

‘I found it in the car.’ She held it up: David Copperfield