Читать книгу Coffin’s Game - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 12

Coffin and Phoebe Astley met over a drink in Max’s. It was late, but Max never closed when there was custom; he stayed behind the bar, serving their late meal and drinks himself and listening to the gossip. Except for Mimsie Marker, who sold newspapers outside Spinnergate tube station, he was the best informed man in the Second City.

‘I didn’t ring, so who the hell did? But the girl stuck at it, apparently keen to remind me of what I had not done.’

‘So what will you do about it?’

‘Don’t know yet. Doesn’t seem much point in banging on about it to the health place, any more than grumbling at the Algonquin. What she meant by booking in, I don’t know.’ Coffin was eating a ham omelette. He had found to his surprise that he was hungry. Phoebe had a large sandwich in front of her.

Max was watching them with interest from behind his long counter which was covered with a white linen cloth. He had been dealing with an exuberant wedding party, and was presently working out his profit margins while he kept an eye on Phoebe Astley and the Chief Commander, an old friend.

Phoebe put her hand on Coffin’s. ‘Look, don’t worry too much … Stella is good at looking after herself. And she’s a fighter.’ Phoebe was one herself, and she recognized another. ‘She’d fight for you, too. Perhaps she is doing that.’

‘Think so?’ Coffin finished his mouthful of omelette. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

Phoebe took a long, thoughtful drink of coffee, then said: ‘That photograph, however contrived, means trouble for Stella and, by transference, for you. And if she thought that, then she’d be out there doing something about it.’ She took another drink of coffee and nodded towards Max, who came hurrying over with the pot, showing no sign that he wanted to close up for the night. Probably been reading my lips, Phoebe thought, and wants to know what is going on. She had long suspected Max of supplying news to the media. In the nicest possible way, of course – he was a nice man – but for money. Money and Max had a close and old relationship. ‘That’s all, just an idea, something or nothing.’ Then she lit a cigarette.

‘Thanks, Phoebe.’ Coffin knew support when he heard it. And it was true enough, a happening like the dead body with Stella’s bag containing that photograph would do no man’s career any good. He hoped a lid could be put on the news, but while his close colleagues would probably keep their mouths shut, there was no hope the story would not get around. With embellishments. ‘In a way, I hope you’re right. But I wish she had not just cleared off. She could have told me where she was going.’

‘She did.’

‘But it wasn’t true.’

‘Give her a break. It’s not much of a lie. May even be what she intended to do, until something happened. Came in the way. So maybe she tried the health place, perhaps to hide, and it didn’t work out.’

Coffin gave her a measured look. Things must really be bad if Phoebe was being so kind. He thought about it for a moment. ‘So what else have you got for me?’ he asked.

‘You could tell, could you? I must have a more revealing face than I ever knew.’ She frowned. ‘Something I picked up in the car park back at Headquarters … it’s about the body found in Percy Street. It looks as if there is some doubt about the identity.’

‘But I thought the identification as one of Lodge’s young men was positive.’ God knows that had been bad enough, but in a way, out of his hands.

‘The clothes were identified,’ said Phoebe. ‘Not the man.’

Coffin said, slowly and heavily, ‘There are, of course, many ways of identifying a man other than through his underclothes.’

‘You’ve got it. Once Garden got down to work on the body, he could see that it didn’t fit any of the details provided by Lodge: age, body weight, length of bones, even hair colour … all wrong.’

‘What is Lodge doing about it?’

‘Archie Young has taken over, it no longer being entirely within Lodge’s sphere.’