Читать книгу A Grave Coffin - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 9

An old schoolmaster of John Coffin, who had had a great deal of influence on him although Coffin never liked to admit it, had been in the habit of pronouncing: Life is real, life is earnest. He usually said this at exam time, which was perhaps why Coffin geared himself up grimly and got good marks. He wasn’t an exam man, they were not things he thought about often, but just the word ‘Life’, pronounced the right way, could spur him into action even now.

But at the moment he did not need it: the juxtaposition of two cases, their lifelines crossing, was enough to make him only too aware of the seriousness of life. His life in particular at the moment, and without Stella here to laugh and ease him into happiness, it was going to be bad.

Without Stella, he thought, so why was she figured in the file on Harry Seton’s PC? Not good news. So perhaps it was as well she was safely out of the way across the Atlantic. He felt like going back there himself, but life over here had a firm grip on him. It had a firm grip on Archie Young, too.

What was more important: the mission wished on him by Ed Saxon (and others higher in the chain of command), and apparently suggested by Harry himself with the words ‘Ask Coffin’, to find out who was doing the dirt in the pharmaceutical world, with special reference to Ed Saxon’s outfit, or the murder enquiry on a child in his own Second City.

All policemen get used to dealing with two cases, or more, at once. In his time, Coffin had handled as many as ten, carrying all the details in his mind and yet keeping them distinct, so why was he getting the feeling that there were parallel lines here which converged in the distance?

Of course, Harry had been murdered too, but that was the Met’s job, and if the message on the word processor was from them, they were not too pleased to have him walking on their ground.

Territory, there was a lot of territorial feeling in this job. Always had been and always would be. Probably Sir John Fielding’s officers in those distant days in the mid eighteenth century when he invented their force had had strong feelings about where they operated and who might interfere with them. The Peelers of a century later had carried on the tradition, because Dickens’s portrayal of Inspector Bucket did not suggest a man who would welcome intruders.

Coffin took a deep breath and pulled towards him the files he had brought down from London, already photocopied by the industrious Paul Masters.

He now had two stacks of files: the photocopies and the originals. Now why did I want copies, he asked himself, and came swiftly back with the answer that he wanted them in case there was another fire.

Or the equivalent – theft. Whoever had killed Harry, had tried to get the files destroyed. True, the Met had had a look at them first, and might have been coming back for more, but someone had tried, not too efficiently, to burn the lot.

He looked from the photocopies to the scorched originals.

In the outer office, Paul was packing up to go home; he worked a long day, getting in before the Chief Commander, rarely taking a lunch break, and usually still at work when John Coffin left. Coffin saluted an ambitious man. But tonight, Paul was leaving early since he was off to the opera. Coffin suspected he had a new girlfriend who liked Mozart. Or his wife, there was one, but who knew what went on in Masters’s private and somewhat secret life?

Inspector Masters put his head round the door. ‘Want me to take the dog for a walk before I go, sir?’

Augustus looked up and wagged his tail hopefully. He got up and shook his body, he was a shrewd psychologist and knew how you did it. Generations of his ancestors had wagged their way into comfort and pleasure, and the genes were still working.

‘Go on with you, then,’ said Coffin, and to Paul Masters: ‘Thank you.’

When the pair had gone, he turned back to his papers. The photocopied files were offering sparse information.

There was a map of Coventry with some street names marked in pencil. One area had a ring drawn round it. Attached to this were some scribbled notes which seemed to be of times and routes. It looked as though Harry had set off early and driven there.

Against the name H. Pennyfeather, he had put a query. And Coffin had a question mark in his own mind there. Did he know that name or not? Half a dozen further names were just recorded and given a tick.

Did this mean they were passed as all clear, whereas Pennyfeather was not? Or did the tick mean that they had been interviewed and Pennyfeather had not been at home.

Or did it mean something else altogether? Coffin ground his teeth and worked on.

A photograph was attached to one of the pages. It was the photograph of a woman.

It was not a photograph of Mary.

He saw a youngish, smiling face, with a smart, short haircut and large earrings. The woman was wearing a dark business suit. It was not a posed, studio photograph, but appeared to have been taken at a meeting of some sort, since he could see figures in the background. M. G. was written there.

Coffin worked through the papers, assessing them quickly. There was a similar group with a map of Oxford, and another of Newcastle. In each case, the map was marked, and it came with a list of names, some ticked and one or two with a question mark.

Thrupp in Coventry, and Weir in Newcastle, each had a question mark, as had Fox in Cambridge and H. Pennyfeather, but with no place name. So that made four in all. Sex not clear, but Ed Saxon had said he had a few women working for him. Possibly M. G. was one of them, although he hadn’t named her.

He sat thinking about TRANSPORT A and its problems which high authority thought stemmed from the Second City, curse it. Thus was I lumbered, he thought.

When the phone rang, he had a premonition it was going to be Ed Saxon, and so it was.

‘How are you getting on?’

‘I haven’t got far yet.’ Not anywhere, really. ‘It looks as though I’ll have to go to Coventry first … You know about the fire?’

Ed Saxon admitted he knew about the fire. ‘I had Mary in here.’

‘What did she want?’

‘She said she’d met you. You seem to have made an impression. Not easy on that one, she’s a hard case. What she wanted was what you’d expect, to find how near we were to getting Harry’s killer. Not too near, I had to tell her. She didn’t take it well.’

‘I can’t blame her.’

‘Who’s talking about blame? But she was casting plenty of it around, she blames me in particular. And she isn’t far wrong. After all, I chose him for the job.’

‘It may have nothing to do with that, you know.’

‘You’ve got an idea? What? What is it?’

There was silence. Coffin could hear Ed striking a match for a cigarette, the man was in a pressured state.

‘Have you any idea, something you’re not telling me?’

‘No, Ed. And the Met are investigating Harry’s death, remember? Not me. But I shall have to make contact with them.’

‘Yes,’ said Ed, as if the idea did not please him.

‘I am beginning to get the feeling that Harry knew he was about to be killed.’

‘Oh God, is that your great thought for the day?’

‘It’s a start.’

‘Where did you get it from? Out of the air, I suppose?’

‘No. From you.’

‘Don’t get you.’

‘Oh, come on, Ed. I’ve known you a long time and you don’t change. I think he told you he was frightened, that he knew there was a threat. And he knew who it was from; it was from the figure in your outfit who is profiting from the sale of phoney medicines and drugs. That was why you wanted an outsider like me to carry on the enquiry.’ There was another reason, of course, why I actually got the job, but you may not know of it. The Second City is involved.

Wouldn’t Ed know this? Why did he not know? Perhaps he was not fully trusted himself. Wheels within wheels, he didn’t like. Touch dirt and you get dirty, he thought.

Ed was staying silent.

‘And perhaps you thought my investigating skills might have got rusty with the years and I wouldn’t turn up what you feared.’

There was still no answer from Ed.

‘Who was it he suspected? Not you, by any chance, Ed?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Come on, Ed.’

‘He was just guessing, in my opinion … there was a woman … she had been working for us, not in a high capacity, but on this pharmaceutical case – she was investigating likely medical contacts, she’d been a nurse and knew the language. He suspected her. Called her bad. I said, “Don’t go Gothic on me, Harry.”’

The one in the photograph. Coffin thought.

‘He thought she was dangerous, I thought he was wrong.’

‘Does she have a name, this woman?’

‘Margaret Grayle. You might as well know … we had an affair. Over now, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Coffin, half ironically. In his experience, whenever anyone, man or woman, admitted to an affair it was always claimed to be over. It might be or it might not. It was in his mind to be wary and sceptical of this lady. ‘You had better give me her address.’

‘Oxford. But you should find it in Harry’s papers.’

‘In case I don’t.’

A sigh came across the line. ‘If she’s still there, it was Owls House, Raven Road, Oxford.’

Not sure if I believe that address, thought Coffin, but he wrote it down.

‘And have you told the Met about Miss Margaret Grayle?’

‘Did I say Miss? She is married. And no, I haven’t said anything. The Met have good men on the case, they will find Harry’s killer. And it won’t be Margaret.’

Not in person, Coffin thought, but she might have hired someone. Or been pressured to help get rid of him by associates she might have in the pharmaceutical racket. The body cut into five pieces, that sounded like a professional job.

‘Was Harry having an affair with her too?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Ed gloomily.

‘We’d better meet sometime and you can tell me what it is you do know.’ Coffin tried to keep the irony out of his voice. ‘Meanwhile, I have a very nasty murder on my hands here in the Second City, so I can’t give your affair all my attention.’

Then he moved the conversation back a step. ‘Wait a minute … you said as far as you know, Margaret was not having an affair with Harry … Does that mean you think she was but can’t prove it?’

‘It was just an idea I had, can’t put it any stronger, and it could have been wrong at that.’

‘And did Mary know?’

Silence for a minute. ‘She might have done.’

‘You mean you know she did,’ said Coffin bluntly.

‘She might have guessed … she’s a clever woman.’

‘Don’t tell me you are having an affair with her too?’

‘As soon have an affair with a piranha fish,’ said Ed bitterly.

Perhaps both women had joined together to kill Harry. Now that was a picture.

Let me read myself a scenario, thought Coffin. Mary got to know about Margaret, who didn’t love Harry so much after all. (Or had a lot to hide and wanted him out of the way.) So she got together with his wife and they did the job. Wasn’t there a French film with that theme? Was it Les Diaboliques? He had seen it with Stella. But the body being cut into five bits still worried him. It didn’t sound like a female killing.

Still, it wouldn’t do to be sexist.

He must find out if it was physically possible for the two women to have done it. Check on the physical force required, check on where they were at the relevant times. It would explain Mary’s strange need to get into her dead husband’s office. She might want to know what was there that could incriminate either of them.

Not a bad scenario; it needed working on, though.

Wait a minute, he told himself, this is the Met’s job, not yours.

The telephone was bleating away. ‘Are you still there?’ Ed was saying.

‘Yes, I’m still here.’

‘You’d gone dead quiet. I thought I was talking to myself.’

‘No, I was listening.’ Didn’t hear a word, however. ‘Tell me, who is in charge of the investigation?’

‘Larry Davenport. That was what I was telling you. Nice chap, he’ll get in touch,’ said Ed gloomily. ‘Although some of his juniors are a pushy lot.’ Could have been one of those who left me the rude message on the computer, thought Coffin. ‘He remembers you.’

Paths do cross, Coffin admitted to himself, sometimes to your advantage and sometimes not.

‘He says he grew up in East Hythe and his sister still lives there.’ He added with relish. ‘He’s a useful chap, he’s one that knows where all the bodies are buried.’

Coffin thought that he knew the burial sites of more than a few bodies himself. He pointed this out to Ed Saxon. ‘I’ve always had thoughts about the Cassington murder and what happened to Maisie Deeds … I bet you have too.’

‘Yeah.’ The sound was almost a wince. ‘Well, keep in touch. You’re off to Coventry, did you say? It’s a Tim Kelso there, remember.’ He wanted to get away.

‘Hang on,’ said Coffin. ‘What are the names of the women you have working in this organization?’

‘Felicity Fox in Cambridge, Leonie Thrupp in Coventry and Margaret Grayle is what I call a mobile … lives in Oxford, works where required.’ Ed Saxon put the receiver down hard.

Two of those names had earned a question mark: Fox and Thrupp.

Coffin heard the bang. ‘I hit a nerve there. Can’t be the Cassington lad or Maisie, so what?’ he asked himself. ‘He’s hiding something, I’m sure of it, and it isn’t just a tumble in bed that his wife doesn’t know about.’ He considered what Saxon had said. ‘I must take a look at Thrupp in Coventry. Then there was a question mark for Fox in Cambridge which was the centre for the Anglia outfit of TRANSPORT A. So one of the ancient university towns had a question hanging over it. Ancient but not innocent?

He thought for a moment about Stella, perhaps even then undergoing surgery. Hope she doesn’t have her nose altered. I like that nose.

He looked at his diary. He could go to Coventry almost at once. It would mean a shuffling of appointments, but Paul Masters would do that for him, and he could spend some of the time beforehand studying the records left behind by Harry, which would not be a long job.

He could tell already that either Harry had not kept many or he had destroyed them.

The names of those with question marks were made a note of and he would be checking on them. In Coventry he would be seeing Leonie Thrupp and the man operating in that area. What was it now? He turned back to his own notes:

Tim Kelso in Coventry.

Peter Chard in Oxford.

Felicity Fox in Cambridge, which was the East Anglia area.

Joe Weir in Newcastle, which Ed Saxon, more romantic than Coffin could have guessed, had wanted to call by the area’s old-English name of Deira.

He did not know any of them, but none had won a question mark, whatever it might mean, good or bad, from Harry.

Just as he was thinking that he ought to get in touch with Inspector Larry Davenport, who was investigating the murder of Harry, the man himself was on the telephone.

‘Hello, sir. Remember me, Larry Davenport … Inspector, CID now.’

Ed Saxon must have telepathy, Coffin told himself, or else he knew you were about to ring.

‘We both have an interest in Harry Seton.’

‘So we do.’ Coffin was brief. Let Davenport be expansive if he liked.

‘Thought we ought to get in touch, sir.’ You help me, I’ll help you, the breezy voice hinted. ‘We’ve got East Hythe in common, too, sir. Nasty business about the boy.’

‘It is. Not too good about Harry Seton. How are you getting on?’ Bet you won’t tell me.

Neither did he. ‘Not much to say, unluckily, at the moment … Have you got any help for me, sir?’

‘Not yet.’ After all, this was not his case.

‘We ought to keep in touch, don’t you agree, sir?’

Of course, Coffin thought crossly. ‘How did he die? Anything new there?’

‘Blow to the head … then cut up when dead. Freshly dead.’ That was the kind of detail that Davenport relished.

‘Would it have taken a lot of strength?’

‘Well, no, but a frail old lady couldn’t have done it. What there would have been was a lot of blood. All over the place, and we are keen to find that place. Haven’t yet.’

Like Devlin in the Second City, thought Coffin, a nasty parallelism, but police work could be like that.

‘How did the body get to the park, and then to the bandstand?’

‘Must have been by car, not something you could carry through the street wrapped in brown paper … it was wrapped, by the way, but in a sheet. The park gates are open all night, in fact, I think it’s years since there was a gate. The bandstand is derelict, never used. As for the rest … well, there are urban foxes round there, a real, rough breed down by the river. I heard they had mated with wolves from Russia.’ He laughed heartily at his own joke.

‘I’ll keep in touch.’ Coffin did not laugh.

Paul Masters came back with Augustus, both of them refreshed by their walk. Augustus bustled up smelling of dog, and grass and earth.

‘Had a good time, did he?’

Augustus answered for himself with a feathery wagging tail, and positioned himself at Coffin’s feet ready for another walk.

‘Oh Paul, I may be away from the office for about two days, but I will get back sooner if I can. You can always get me on my mobile … And I will phone you as and when.’

Paul Masters was too discreet to ask any questions, but having copied the files for Coffin could make a guess what it was about.

He also had his own private theory: he gets fidgetty when She is away.

‘I’ll see you get to know everything important, sir.’

‘And nothing that is not.’

Goes without saying. But he did not say it aloud, contented himself with his polite, enigmatic smile (Go on smiling like that, his wife had said, in that tart voice that occasionally made him feel like straying, and they will think you are hiding the secret of the Third Man, or was it Fourth and Fifth) and went away. He knew his smile, which he had worked upon before perfecting it, was a good, workable professional tool which would see him through many a crisis.

‘And you can wipe that smile off your face,’ said Coffin, as the door closed behind Masters. ‘I’m getting fed up with it.’ He too had watched its progress during the last few months.

He gathered up his papers, put Augustus on the leash, then walked homewards at such a pace that Augustus began to lag behind, pointing out that he was a peke with little legs, not a bloody Great Dane.

Back at his home in St Luke’s, he fed the dog, and considered making himself a meal. He was a passable cook if the frying pan and the grill were used. Then he stopped, changed into something more casual than his dark working suit (Makes you look like a coroner’s favourite pathologist, Stella had said once, which had rankled) and prepared to go to Max’s restaurant. Not the one in the theatre, but the bigger and grander one round the corner. Max, as chef and proprietor, had started small and was getting bigger every day.

He went down his winding staircase with Augustus following him at every step. He manoeuvred himself to the door before shutting in a protesting peke face.

‘Don’t go on like that, Gus, or I will buy you a cat to keep you company.’

In Max’s newly redecorated restaurant, the proprietor stood in a welcoming way at the door. Max had got plumper and greyer and more prosperous in the years since he had set up; over these same years, his family had shrunk, then grown again. The daughter they called the Beauty Daughter had married and gone away, then another daughter had departed, leaving numbers seriously low, but now both girls were back without husbands but with several offspring.

Max approached Coffin with a sympathetic smile. He knew that Stella was away, everyone knew, and he let Coffin see that he understood loneliness. Not that he suffered much from it himself, especially at the moment with four grandchildren taking up what felt like unofficial residence, but still … a man could imagine.

He led Coffin to a table nicely placed near the window. ‘Miss Pinero not back yet?’ he said, as he handed Coffin the menu.

As if you didn’t know. Coffin muttered inside, as he took the menu. He pretended to study it, but he always ate the same thing here: that which Max recommended – it was wisest.

‘The brill is very good tonight.’

‘Right, brill it is.’ Coffin closed the menu. ‘Salad with it, please, and claret to drink.’

Max looked sad at the choice of claret with brill, an expensive Montrachet would have been better, but he sped away to serve the fish.

‘The chef has poached it with a little basil,’ he confided as he offered it to the Chief Commander.

Coffin ate the brill, thinking wistfully of the days when fish was fried and served with chips. You could still get such meals in the right places, but not where the Maxes of this world ruled the menu. He wondered what Stella was eating in Los Angeles, or if she was eating at all, since she might now be under the surgeon’s knife. She had refused to let him know when the operation was to take place because she didn’t want him to worry.

Strange idea of worry she must have, he decided, since I am worrying about her all the time. Not the nose, Stella, he said again over a mouthful of salad, nor the mouth: I love both of them.

As he ate, he mulled over the two big problems on his mind: the pharmaceutical affair which Ed Saxon had delivered to him, and the missing boys. Since one had been found dead, he had to assume the others also were.

What was the list

Charles Rick, missing since mid-May, the second boy to go and not yet found.

Dick Neville, a fortnight earlier, he was the first, and he went the first week in May. May Day, in fact. Was that important?

Archie Chinner, the last week in June, the last to go and the first to be found.

Matthew Baker, last week in May. A month before the next boy went. Was that important?

Who knows, he thought to himself, with some anger. You never know until it is too late.

Across the room he could see a table of the cast of the play now in rehearsal at the Stella Pinero Theatre in the St Luke’s complex of the theatres. This was the main theatre, created out of the old church, but in addition there was now the much smaller Experimental Theatre and the Theatre Workshop. The last two theatres received grants from the local university in return for allowing its drama department to use both theatres.

He knew from Stella that the play under rehearsal was one of Pinter’s: The Homecoming. She had had it in mind for a long while, but had handed the production over to a friend, Alec Macgregor, always known as Mac. Mac was at the table too, and waved to Coffin, whom he had got to know well over the years. He was a tall, slim man with a mop of grey hair and bright, dark eyes. A fond parent had left him a pleasant fortune, so it was likely that he was paying for the dinner, and not the cast who probably could not have afforded it, since Max’s prices had risen with his success. Coffin knew that Stella was not a lavish payer, although Equity rules did not allow too much stinginess.

As he waved back, he saw that Mac was getting up and coming over to him.

‘How are things going? Heard from Stella since you got back?’

‘She rang up and I spoke to her yesterday.’ He thought it was yesterday, with all the pressures on him events began to run together. He was beginning to worry about his memory. Could you get Alzheimer’s through stress? No, it was congenital, wasn’t it, and the one thing he knew about his mother was that she was both long-lived and articulate. About his father he knew much less, and that was down to his mother too, since she had never been quite definite about who his father was. Give birth and move on, had been the name of her game. ‘Stella’s enjoying herself, going to the theatre every night.’ That was more or less true. ‘How are you and the production?’