Читать книгу Cracking Open a Coffin - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 7

October. The first two days

A girl’s sweater, striped blue and white, lay on the edge of the River Thames near where Herring Creek and Leadworks Wharf looked across the water to each other. It was stained and muddy. On the front was an initial which might have been a D or a C but some small river creature had nibbled away at. No one had noticed the sweater yet, but it ought to be found soon.

‘The trouble with opera is the singers,’ said Philippa Darbyshire gloomily. She shook her head so that the slightly greying fair curls bobbed around her face; she was large but pretty and enjoying her middle years more than she would admit to her women friends. She had banned the word menopause, women didn’t have it now, you had hormone replacement. A smile lightened her face. ‘It would really be better without them.’

‘But not nearly so much like opera,’ suggested John Coffin. The two of them were seated in the bar of St Luke’s Theatre late on the chill October morning. This theatre was the creation of his talented sister, Lætitia Bingham, who had taken a derelict church in the old docklands beyond the Tower of London and turned it into a theatre with a theatre workshop attached. The main theatre was due to be opened officially this summer by the Queen, but of course it had long since been opened and running unofficially, operating at a handsome profit. Recession, it seemed, was not hurting the theatre.

John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London police force, lived in one of the three apartments which had also been formed from the old St Luke’s Church. He had come through a difficult three years since his appointment to this new command and the lines around his eyes had deepened and the once dark hair was neatly silvered at the temples. He had fought his way up the career ladder to the top and now wondered whether and when he would fall off.

But he liked heights. He had a flat in the tower of the old church with a fine view across his troublesome bailiwick. Hard by, in another apartment, lived the actress Stella Pinero, the love of his life or the bane of it, depending how their relationship was going.

He was waiting for her now. Stella had been playing in a West End revival of Mourning Becomes Electra. It had not gone very well, although she personally had had delightful reviews, and she was now back at St Luke’s Theatre of which she was Director and guardian spirit. It had been created around her.

Philippa had seized on him with the joy of one who needed to talk, beginning with a brisk: ‘I suppose you’re waiting for Stella? She came in, said you were late and went out again.’

I wasn’t late, Coffin thought sadly. I’m never late. Or if I am, it isn’t my fault. What he was, was not there much. As a serving police officer of high rank, he had a crowded life. But Stella herself was often absent and her excuses were nebulous and vague.

‘But she left you Bob,’ Philippa had added.

‘I know.’ Bob, a mongrel of loving disposition, had already pressed his head on Coffin’s foot. You are my friend and half-owner, the pressure said, and now I can look after you and you can look after me. ‘Move over, Bob.’ Coffin tried to lift his left foot which was going numb. Bob growled. He believed fiercely in physical contact. Coffin patted his head which was rough and wiry, he knew that there would now be gingery hairs all over shoe and trouser leg. ‘Good dog,’ he said.

He sipped his coffee and looked at Philippa, whom he liked and admired and somewhat feared: she seemed capable of everything, and had once persuaded him to take part in a play production. But he would have nothing to do with singing. Not even as a goblin.

His mind moved back to his own purely personal and private problem. Several weeks ago he had had a telephone call. A man who did not announce himself.

The call came through in the early morning, at home, in his sitting-room, which outraged him even more. This place was his sanctuary, his refuge.

‘Copper, watch your back. They’re gunning for you. Better get your answers ready.’

It was repeated several times.

‘Copper, watch your back. Watch your back. Watch your back.’

He had slammed the telephone down without answering it, shrugged and gone back to drinking his coffee. Not exactly forgotten it, but taking not much notice of it, either. He was used to the odd mad call.

A week later to the very day, to the hour almost, came another call. Someone who knows when I drink my morning coffee, he had thought wryly. Same message, not exactly word for word but close enough.

Some days later he came to find a message on his answering machine. More of the same. He thought he recognized the slight cough that prefaced the advice.

But it was different this time.

‘This is a message from a friend: tidy up your private life or you will be in trouble. Serious trouble. No joking.’

He turned the machine back, slowly and carefully.

The letter came several days later, as he had always supposed it would, and it was now festering inside him like a bad boil.

His unknown caller had had good information. All this was at the back of his mind while he listened to Philippa.

Philippa was still going on about singers: ‘Oh, we have to have them, but off stage, that’s the place for them. Where we can’t see them. Just their voices. On stage we would have actors, dancers, who would look right. Singers have the wrong shape. They can’t help it, they need it to produce the voice, but we shouldn’t have to look at them trying to be Tosca or Mimi. Not to mention Siegfried and Brunnhilde.’ Mrs Darbyshire gave a feeling shudder. ‘And the Valkyries … Overweight, all of them. How can you dress them as warriors, I ask you?’

Coffin looked his sympathy and tried again to shift Bob from his foot. Bob sank deeper down.

‘And I’m having such trouble with the students from the university. Such sharp little critics. Must think things through, they say. Just sing, I say.’

Coffin offered sympathy again. ‘You’ll manage.’ In his experience of the ladies of Feather Street, of whom Philippa was one, they managed all they wanted. Even this production of extracts from The Ring would work out.

‘I think it’s university life. They’re spoilt, those kids.’

‘They have their troubles,’ he said softly.

He knew something she didn’t.

He knew that two students were missing. A boy and a girl. Whether together or otherwise was not yet clear. They had last been seen standing by her car.

Gone two days. Not long, but in the circumstances, long enough.

In the new university there were three residential blocks in which the students had rooms. The rooms were tiny, but each had its own bathroom and tiny slip of a kitchen. This was not so much for ease of student living as because in the long vacation there was much lucrative letting for conferences.

The three blocks were named after benefactors, they were Armitage, Barclay and Gladstone. Each block had its own character, or was thought to have, and which was perhaps self-perpetuating: Barclay was rowdy and thus attracted the drinkers and the rugger players; Gladstone was near the library and the science buildings, so the industrious and the scientists settled there; Armitage was the fashionable and social block, the smartest place to live, and it attracted as well as the party-goers, the drama and music students.

The missing students had lived in Armitage. Their group of friends there were among the first to be worried by their disappearance.

In Angela Kirk’s room a small meeting was taking place.

‘It’s horrible.’ This was Mick Frost, tall and thin.

‘Don’t exaggerate, Mick, we don’t know that anything’s happened.’ Beenie was a year older than Mick and inclined to slow him down.

‘We know what’s been happening,’ said Mick. ‘We’ve seen, we’ve known the state she was in even if we haven’t talked about it.’

‘It wasn’t easy to talk about it. That sort of thing isn’t easy to talk about, and anyway part of it was us guessing.’

‘Pretty clear,’ said Mick. ‘Pretty clear. Sex and violence.’

Angela said: ‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Mick’s right,’ said Beenie from the floor where she was stretched out. ‘We should have done something … After all, there was Virginia last year.’

‘We don’t know about Virginia.’ Angela again.

‘I think we do,’ said Mick.

Beenie shifted uneasily. ‘OK, OK, so let’s do something.’

‘I’m frightened,’ said Angela. ‘I don’t want to go that way.’ She was scared and yet excited.

‘Oh, come on,’

‘No, I tell you, it’s evil, talking like this.’ The word dropped into the room, cold and hard.

Angela bent her head to let a long fall of shining blonde hair cover her face. She stretched her thin white arms and imagined them with blue bruises and saw herself as victim.

It can’t happen to me, she thought. If I keep quiet perhaps it will all go away … Beenie’s all right, she’s brown and tall and strong. She crossed her arms across her chest, protecting herself.

Aloud, against her will, she heard herself say: ‘We owe Amy something. I could go down to Star Court, offer to help.’ It was as if she wanted to be a victim, that was what she had chosen and it would do.

‘Don’t let her, Beenie,’ said Mick. ‘Stop her.’

Beenie shrugged.

There was silence in the room.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Mick, standing up. ‘I’ve got to audition for some creepy amateur performance of Wagner.’

‘Why do you go, then?’ asked Beenie.

‘Sucking up to our dear Professor,’ said Mick with a ravishing smile. ‘Also, we get paid, not much but something and if you are aiming at a professional singer’s career (and I might be) you have to learn to take the money where you can find it.’

At the door, he turned and said: ‘While I am singing Wagner, look after yourself, Angie. Wagner, here I come.’

The Friends of St Luke’s Theatre, a group of local ladies important in Coffin’s life for all sorts of reasons, who put on an amateur performance once a year, were attempting an opera. Not the whole opera, just a scene or two. The choice bits, as they said. They had considered Rosenkavalier, The Marriage of Figaro, and La Bohème (a strong lobby for this last opera), but they were long-time supporters of the rights of women and the Ride of the Valkyries seemed just to fill the bill.

There was an added motive: they had a vibrant dramatic soprano among their ranks, Lydia Tullock, and Lydia was also rich. Others among them had good voices. So they had joined up with the Spinnergate Choral Society and the very strong Music Department of the local university, the University of the Second City, to launch their production.

Mrs Darbyshire was the designer for costumes and sets for this ambitious enterprise; in her youth she had been an assistant to Motley and then gone on to work for Douglas Duguid. She had retired to marry Harold and bring up her family in their Victorian house in Feather Street, but now in middle age she had gone back to work, and had been hired by the Friends of St Luke’s. Of course, she was a Friend herself, but she was a professional, as she pointed out fiercely when they suggested she should do the job for nothing, and women must be paid. She would have done it for nothing, she loved her work, but standards had to be maintained. Also, Lydia was rich and could afford anything and Philippa was poor, but she had her problems and was being vocal about them.

‘Our Siegfried now, Turnwall Taylor, he’s a lovely man, I have nothing against him personally, but he is frankly fat. Imagine dressing him up in brown leather togs and getting him to woo Brunnhilde. She’s outsize too, and every one of the Valkyries has a weight problem.’

She sighed heavily. ‘You never get everything. I remember saying to Larry once what a lovely Wotan, King of the Gods, he would make. He had the majesty, you see, but he hadn’t the voice.’

She probably had known Lord Olivier, Coffin thought, or at least met him. Philippa did not lie, but she had the trick, familiar to him from his theatrical friends, of slight exaggeration.

‘He’d have brought in the customers. Bums on seats, we need that, money is so short, and opera costs. I hoped to get more out of the university, but …’ She shook her head.

‘Money’s short all round,’ said John Coffin. He had budget problems himself. In the few years that he had been Head of the Force in the Second City of London, he had never had enough resources to do all that was required in the turbulent area for which he was responsible. The old villages of Spinnergate, Swinehouse, Leathergate and Easthythe that were bound together in his Second City were expensive to police.

‘But they have been very generous with help, the Drama Department there, so vital, isn’t it? And such a vigorous Music Department.’ The Music Department was providing the orchestra, musical director and conductor as well as a few singers to audition. Philippa Darbyshire was half in love with the conductor, a beautiful young man, some sixteen years her junior and none the worse for that, she thought.

My goodness, she said to her inner self, how times have changed. My mother wouldn’t have dreamt of letting herself be attracted to a man so much younger than herself, wouldn’t have admitted the possibility, but I’m not only admitting it, I’m enjoying it.

She even enjoyed the fact it was not reciprocated. It might have been awkward indeed if it had been, for Harold might not have liked it. Well, wouldn’t have done. Harold was her husband. Once a banker, now enjoying early retirement, he was doing a course at the nearby university. Not in drama or anything dangerous like that, thank goodness, she thought (she was the one allowed temptation, not Harold), but in fine art.

The university had been put together out of a Polytechnic and College of Advanced Technology, when it was decreed that the new Second City of London must have its own university.

This Second City had several great hospitals, one of which had a history going back to a monastic foundation of the thirteenth century, three museums, two art galleries and an assortment of old and new industries. It was represented in the House of Commons by two MPs and in the House of Lords had one recently ennobled peer who bravely called himself Lord Brown of Swinehouse.

Many of the old warehouses of the former docklands had been converted into smart apartment blocks, but old streets and grimy old housing estates still supported the old poor who eyed their new rich neighbours without love.

It was no easy area to police, with violence never far below the surface and always threatening to break out. A large garage attacked only yesterday. A few days ago a robbery with savage violence in a shop in the Tube station in Spinnergate, two badly injured, a crime that was still being investigated, no leads.

On the two large housing estates which were separated by a railway line and a belt of expensive upper-class apartments, gangs formed, fought each other, and the police too if they could, then melted away as fresh and younger outfits took their place. The Dreamers, once the most powerful group, had gone into decline when several members had been sent to prison and another couple had married, which as far as active gang life went came to the same thing. This had left the field to their rivals, who called themselves The Planters after the Planter estate where most of them lived. But somehow, without the competition, The Planters too had gone into decline. With no one to fight, what was the point to being? There was a short-lived revival of Dreamers Two, but it failed to inspire. Either the police were getting quicker to stamp out trouble-makers or the gangs were getting weaker. Who could say?

At the moment there were no big gangs, but Coffin had heard stories of a new one forming itself around a female leader. He believed it.

He had not met her yet, but no doubt he would if she became powerful enough. He had heard she was called Our General.

Such was the Second City where John Coffin held the Queen’s Peace and in which he lived.

‘You can’t think,’ said Philippa, ‘how hard it is to find women warriors who can sing.’

Wonder if I should suggest she tries Our General, thought Coffin.

‘I’m not sure if I like the Valkyrie concept anyway,’ said Philippa. Under the influence of the Drama Department, whether she admitted it or not, she had started to intellectualize her reactions to plots and story lines. ‘I mean, I don’t know any.’

They exist, thought Coffin.

Philippa finished her coffee, looked regretfully at a plate of chocolate croissants, but she mustn’t, she really mustn’t, that last inch on her hips since she had given up being a vegetarian was one inch too many, and got to her feet. ‘I must be off. Got an appointment with the Head of Drama at the university, he’s going to help me find some extra Nibelungs. I could do with some really short, dwarflike men with good voices.’ The Head of Drama was a handsome man too, she was looking forward to the half-hour together. She picked up her bags, Philippa always travelled with a full complement of shoulder-bags, clutch bags and the odd plastic carrier. Her mood was good in spite of the difficulties with the Valkyries. She would see her beautiful young musician, he had promised to be there, bringing a few young male singers to audition. It was wonderful how a family growing up and leaving home emancipated you. I am a New Woman, she announced to herself.

‘I’ll hang on a bit longer,’ said Coffin. He watched her departure with indulgence and a touch of sympathy; he could guess her motives. There was one thing about being a policeman: you often knew more about your friends and neighbours than they guessed. He knew about the young conductor, Marcus Deit. He even knew more about Marcus than she did, but that would be telling. ‘Goodbye.’ He was glad to sit thinking.

‘They have been gone two days. This is day two and we are into day three, and nothing, not a word. With students, you never know, just gone off, you say to yourself. But she’s my child, my child.’ He could hear the man’s voice, rough with worry. ‘And her car has been found.’

John Coffin would not normally have been concerned with the story of the missing students. Or not so soon. The Chief Commander of the Second City Force had access to all information about what was going on in his difficult and lively territory. He was responsible for all and was meant to know all. That was the theory. As with the Queen, all important documentation came his way for signature but it took time. Reports were filtered through subordinates, prepared and then presented on his desk. His secretaries might do a bit of selection here too, he was protected and had to keep a wary eye on that protection. He knew that things were kept from him.

So he had developed the habit of just dropping in on departments. Of prowling round and asking questions. The CID inevitably got a lot of his attention. He couldn’t give up the habit; once a detective, always a detective. Also inevitably, this interest did not meet with the total approval of the CID teams, and although obliged to grin and bear it, they had ways of getting their feelings across.

Coffin had noted with amusement and understanding the tactics of Chief Superintendent Paul Lane and the wily manœuvring of Chief Inspector Archie Young. Young’s tricks were cleverer but Paul Lane got away with more: experience did tell, Coffin had told himself wryly while furthering the recent promotions of both men. The nominal head of the CID was Harry Coleridge, but he was a quiet, efficient administrator who would soon be retiring.

Jockeying for Coleridge’s position was already going on, but John Coffin was considering bringing in an outsider. What about a woman? Was there one? Yes, there was, he knew a name. Keep quiet, he told himself, and watch events. He had learnt politics, willy-nilly, in his job.

But in the matter of the missing students he had not had to go out and ask: he had been dragged in on Day Two of their disappearance. In person.

He got a notebook out of his pocket and put a photograph of the missing girl on the table before him.

There she was: small, dark-haired, not really pretty but interesting, a good face. Amy Dean, nineteen years, with a birthday coming up next week if she was still alive to enjoy it.

She had been snapped against a background which he recognized as the University Senate and Library, she was sitting on the steps in the sunlight with a bag of books at her side and the columns of the portico showing behind her.

The older buildings of the university were undistinguished, having been taken over from the earlier establishments from which it had been put together. Utility was all they aimed at, but the new blocks had higher artistic ambitions.

A grant from Whitehall, a subsidy from the Corporation of the Second City (which was fully alive to the prestige of its own university) and several private donations, had enabled a competition to be held to produce the best design.

The winner of the competition, which had been fierce and bitter, was a young American architect who had survived the battle between modernist architects, neo-modern architects, post-modern architects, classicists and the neo-classical men, and come out with what his critics called ‘nostalgia’ architecture. His building was pretty and much loved by the students. Oddly, since the whole was built of pale stone and wide open, the new building had not suffered the ravages of graffiti writers or vandals. Perhaps it really was too nice to touch.

A telephone call from the Rector’s office had got through to Coffin yesterday; he was on his own in his office, working late.

‘Tom Blackhall here.’ The Rector of the University (this was his preferred title as opposed to Vice Chancellor or Principal) had a pleasant, deep voice. He was Sir Thomas, recently knighted, but to John Coffin he said Tom, they were two heads of mini-states meeting on equal terms. John and Tom.

Then he got down to it, with the briskness that he was famous for displaying: Would John come round, there was something he wanted to consult Coffin about?

Coffin was cautious. ‘I’m just finishing off a piece of work.’

‘I’d appreciate it.’

It was important, then. A small prickle of apprehension started at the back of his neck and ran down his spine.

Students, trouble.

Once the words had been synonymous, but that had been some time ago, all had been peace lately, students were keeping an eye on their future, jobs and income alike. There hadn’t been a student riot, march or sit-in for years now, so perhaps they were due for one.

But no, the anxiety he had picked up in Tom Blackhall’s voice had sounded personal. Like someone threatened with a terrible illness.

‘I’ll walk round.’

‘Let me send a car.’ The university had several official cars, Coffin had one himself, which he avoided as much as possible, preferring to walk or drive himself.

‘Rather walk.’ His security code name was WALKER.

‘My house then, not the office. You know where it is?’

‘Yes.’ You asked me there not six months ago, to a dinner-party where your wife was, for once, present. You’ve plainly forgotten.

‘Come straight in, then, I’ll leave the door unlocked. My study’s on the left.’

In the days when he had been a uniformed copper on the beat, at the very beginning of his career, he had thought wistfully about those of his contemporaries whom he knew to be at their university studies. In those days he had thought of dons and students as living civilized, intellectual days, engaged in reading, studying, passing their days in a solid manner, then drinking fine wine at college dinners while engaged in good conversation. Nothing trivial, nothing mean.

He knew better now. University life as life in an ivory tower did not exist, had possibly never existed except perhaps for a few people in one or two places for a short time in the settled period between the wars. Now the centres of learning were centres of hard, competitive work, with as much rivalry and edging for position as anywhere else. And they had to fight for money with all those other institutions like the arts, the hospitals, and the police.

Mind you, they were doughty fighters and Sir Tom one of the best. Coffin had learnt to respect the way he and his like operated.

He had walked fast through the streets, enjoying the air and the movement. Soon, he saw the stone archway of the university buildings ahead of him.

As he came through the archway a motorbike shot past, just missing him. The rider was a girl wearing black leather and a black crash helmet. She had a lean, muscular face without much expression, but he was almost sure she had known how near she had come to hitting him and was enjoying it. Damn you, he thought, as he walked on.

Tom Blackhall had come forward with hand outstretched as Coffin walked into the room. ‘Glad you could make it. Decent of you to come.’

There was another man in the room, looking out of the window, his back to the door. He swung round at that moment, and Coffin took a step backwards in time.

For a second he could not speak, this was a face from the buried part of his life, his unhappy, married, struggling youth. This man had walked a beat with him, been a partner, but left the Force, and been heard of as from a distance as a very successful business man. He had vague memories of hearing of a marriage that had failed. Well, that made two of them, he thought.

‘Jem, Jem Dean.’

‘That’s me all right. I use James more now, but I’ll answer to Jim.’ Jem was dead and buried, it seemed, no doubt wisely. Change your name, change your status.

They looked at each other, seeing reflected in their eyes that past they had shared, not all of it good. Jim Dean moved his thin, rather beautiful hands in a way Coffin remembered. Wonder what habit I’ve still got that he recalls, Coffin thought. What empty shell hangs on me?

‘Still the same old way of coming into a room,’ said Dean, answering him. ‘As if you were going to conquer it.’

‘Rubbish.’ But he was aware of being gently flattered. That was another thing he remembered about the man: he could smooth the waters. He had pale blue eyes that seemed to whiten and widen as he spoke: yet one more memory. He wore spectacles now and that shrouded the eyes a bit. He’d gone grey, but the crest of hair was still as strong and curly as ever. Well cut now, as was the dark blue suit. Shirt by Turnbull and Asser, tie by Hermès, gloves by Hermès.

Suddenly, Dean tore away the spectacles to show the pain in his eyes. ‘That’s my kid that’s missing, my girl.’ The eyes were wider and paler than ever.

Tom Blackhall put a hand on his arm. ‘Steady on, Jim. I’m in this too, remember.’

He turned to John Coffin: ‘Two students of this university are missing. One of them is Jim’s daughter, Amy.’ He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘We informed the local police after the first day. This may have been a bit quick, but you may remember that we had a student murdered on campus last year and this has made us extra careful.’

‘I remember.’ Coffin also recalled, and with some bitterness, that it was one of the police failures, they had never caught the killer. Or not yet; but the file was not closed.

‘The police told us it was a bit too soon to do much, these being two young adults who might have taken themselves off for their own reasons.’ He paused again. ‘I think they did something, ran a few checks, but not much.’

‘I’ll find out.’

The Rector ignored this and went on as if he hadn’t heard. ‘They must have sent out some sort of alert, because today I got a ’phone call telling me that Amy’s car had been found, empty. Across the river in Rotherhithe.’

Not my area, thought Coffin automatically. That’s the Met.

‘No sign of her. But her handbag was in it and her coat.’

Jim Dean made a noise like a groan.

‘That looked bad,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘Even to them.’

We don’t come well out of this, thought Coffin. ‘What about the other student?’ he said. ‘Any sign of him?’

‘My son,’ said Sir Thomas, his voice suddenly heavy. ‘Martin. There was a relationship there, but I don’t know much about it. No sign of him either, but his wallet was found in the car. We don’t know if they started out together, or when they parted, if they did, but on that evidence they were together at one point.’

There was silence in the room.

‘Whichever way you look at it,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘it doesn’t look good.’

Coffin said slowly: ‘They still could be somewhere, anywhere, together or not. In spite of the way you feel, two days is very little time, and people do turn up.’

‘Three days, nearly three days,’ Jim Dean spoke sharply. ‘That’s too long.’ He reached into his pocket to pull out a small photograph. Black and white, not new, a little battered as if it had been carried around. ‘That’s my Amy. Look at her.’

Coffin looked. ‘Can I take this away?’

‘Not that photograph, I’ll give you another …’ He reached in his pocket. ‘Have you got a child? No, of course, I heard, tragic … I want her found, she’s got to be found. Your lot can do it. You and I know how it goes, you can see they make a push.’ Coffin saw his eyes were bloodshot. ‘It’s day two, into day three, and she’s my child. I want her found.’

Sir Tom said: ‘That goes for me too, I want my son found.’

Coffin turned towards the door. ‘I’ll see things get started.’

‘I’ll walk you across the campus, the gate may be locked now.’

At the gate, which was closed, a security man stood. The Rector nodded and got out a key. ‘I’ll do this, Bill, thank you.’

‘Right, sir.’ The man stood back, but he studied John Coffin’s face as if he meant to remember it.

With the key in his hand, the Rector said: ‘Dean thinks my boy has killed his daughter. I don’t believe Martin did it. That’s another reason I wanted you here. Dean wasn’t so keen.’

He put on a good act then if that’s so, but Coffin did not say this aloud. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

He walked back through the streets to the big new police buildings in Spinnergate. Not much of a walk but an interesting one, with plenty to observe. He passed the Great Eastern Dock, once the place where furs and timber from Russia and the Baltic arrived and now a wall of new apartments, well lit up on this autumn evening. On his right was the new hospital, an ambulance going in and another speeding out with all lights flashing.

He walked on, there was the Old Leadworks Art Gallery, said to be prospering in spite of the recession. Past Rope Alley, scene of a notorious killing of a girl, avoiding the turn to Feather Street and the junction which led to St Luke’s Mansions where he lived himself, walking fast to the unpretentious but efficient blocks of his own headquarters where he would find someone on call in the CID rooms.

And they would certainly know he was on the way, the message would have been flashed ahead that WALKER was coming.

It came back to him with a shock then that he had seen Dean not so long ago without taking in who it was. A figure in a pub (the Lamb and Lion, much patronized by his Force), talking to a face he knew. Yes, Harry Coleridge. Not one of his admirers. Dean had left with a laugh, slapping Coleridge on the arm and calling, ‘Keep me in touch with the barnyard.’ Just a flash of memory but it was interesting. Yes, that was the authentic Dean touch, friendly, bantering but sharp.

He was still studying the photograph of Amy Dean, a sensitive face but possibly a troubled one, and weighing up the interview with the two fathers last night, while waiting for Stella to arrive. He was thinking too about that earlier case of the death of a student around which there had hung an unpleasant smell as of people not telling all they knew; he had called for the file on this before leaving his office last night. One of the good things about his now automated life was that he could summon material on his screen at any hour of the night or day. No waiting about as in the old days.

On the screen he had read the details: Virginia Scott, twentyish, a third-year student of sociology, her body had been found outside the departmental library, partly concealed from view by bushes.

She had been badly beaten up, and had died from shock. The post-mortem had turned up the news that there were old bruises as well as new on her body. No one had been charged, but there were rumours she had been beaten up by her boyfriend. The name of the student was Martin Blackhall. Nothing could be proved against him. She had had other boyfriends, in and out of the university, and she liked older men.

He was mulling this over and drinking his now tepid coffee when Stella Pinero walked into the bar.

Bob got up, nearly heaving over the table the better to let off a stream of happy barks and embrace his beloved mistress.

‘Down, Bob.’

Stella Pinero kissed John on his cheek and patted Bob’s head, all one lovely flow of motion that only an actress could have achieved. Coffin felt that if she had patted his head and kissed Bob it would have looked as elegant and meant as much. Kisses were not tokens of affection to Stella but a sign that she knew you were there and could speak later. Her turn first. Relations between them were still strained.

He knew better than to deliver more than a modest peck back nor to praise her appearance although she looked lovely, she had cut her hair short and tinted it red for a part she was rehearsing on TV and it suited her. He suspected she had known it would or a wig would have been ordered for the television series. A flourish of Guerlain came with her. Over the years he had learnt with some amusement that she wore Mitsouko with jeans and Chamade with skirts: it was a Mitsouko day.

With her was a tall, thin figure draped in what looked like rags and tatters until you saw the rags were of jewel-like colours and glittered here and there with gold thread. Then you realized you were looking at a carefully put together composition. A turban of soft chiffon scarves framed a thin face with huge brown eyes.

A striking face, so bony and yet so strong that it was hard to say if it was beautiful or ugly, it could be both.

Coffin stood up.

‘This is Josephine,’ said Stella, as if this explained everything: her late appearance, and the slight fluster in her manner now. ‘She knows you, of course.’

Josephine held out a long, thin hand, heavy with rich jewels, every one of them false.

‘She wants to talk to you, she has something to tell you.’

‘You don’t know me, no need to pretend,’ said Josephine, ‘no one knows me now.’ Her voice was deep and sweet with the remains of strong cockney accent overlaid with something transatlantic. ‘I was in New York and San Francisco far too long, but I’ve come back to my roots now.’

Life with Stella had trained his nose to scents. He knew a Chanel from a Dior, and he detected Josephine’s: oddly enough, she was wearing pine disinfectant.

Not a doctor, he thought, and definitely not a nurse. She was tall, he was tall himself and her eyes were level with his; Stella only came up to her shoulder. She appeared to be very thin, but with every movement she made he was becoming aware that inside that flutter of draperies was a body that knew how to move.

As well as the pine disinfectant he had caught the whiff of distinction which, like decay, has its own particular smell. Josephine was or had been Someone, but who? Stella acted as if he ought to know.

‘Josephine works at Star Court House,’ said Stella.

‘Ah.’ Coffin knew Star Court House, it was well known as a home for battered wives and children. He walked past it occasionally, just to see how it went on, but one did not enter unless invited. Not if you were a man and especially if you were a police officer. No one had so far asked him to Star Court House. ‘You do good work, but you’ve had your troubles.’ There were outbursts of violence in and around Star Court House at intervals; it attracted the very physicality it dealt with.

‘Haven’t had nearly so many incidents since one of the local gangs took us under their protection … No, since “Our General” started looking after us, we’ve felt safer.’

‘Oh, she’s down there, is she?’ Star Court was well south in his district, right down the bottom of Swine’s Hill and near the river. He hadn’t known Our General’s territory stretched so far, he had placed her in Spinnergate, that was gangland.

‘Been a real good friend. We owe her.’

Certainly interesting, he thought, but he was stepping carefully, because Star Court House did not welcome police interference, and he was surprised to be invoked. ‘Shall we all have a drink?’ He could see Max, who ran the bar, eyeing them hopefully. ‘Or we could have lunch, Stella?’ He managed to keep reproach out of his voice, because the arrangement had been a picnic lunch together.

Stella raised an eyebrow at Josephine, who shook her head so that the chiffons moved and waved about her head.

‘I have to get back. I promised. We’re short of help today. There’s a court case and that always drains us.’ Then she gave a smile. ‘On the other hand, a cup of Max’s coffee would be nice.’

Behind the bar, Max, a well-known local figure and owner of the nearby delicatessen (but this was recession and you needed as many jobs as possible), heard and started moving the cups. ‘Espresso, Miss Josephine, as usual?’

So he knew her, Coffin thought, but Max knew everyone. Still, it was his own job also to know everyone, how had he missed Josephine?

Josephine sat down but did not wait for the coffee before beginning. ‘I’m a volunteer worker at the hostel, most of us are, the hostel can’t afford much trained staff. We all muck in. It works mostly …’ She paused. ‘We had a girl, a student from the university who came in one day a week, she helped in the office, typed letters, saw that bills got filed if not paid, that sort of thing. She cooked if necessary, we all do everything … She’s gone … We’re worried about her, we think she’s missing and might be dead, and the girls, that is all of us who work there or live there, have sent me round to say.’

‘What was the name of this girl?’

‘Amy Dean, Amy to us.’

The coffee arrived and Max, who had certainly heard every word spoken because he always did, set the cups down carefully.

‘I know about Amy Dean,’ said Coffin.

‘Ah, I suppose that’s something. We thought the police were being shifty. So what are you doing?’

‘Action’s being taken, you can count on that.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ said Stella, leaning forward eagerly, as if Coffin was her pet and deserved a pat on the head. Like Bob.

‘Because it’s the second time.’ Josephine picked up her cup. ‘Another girl who helped at the centre was killed. Last year. She was murdered. And we don’t like it.’ She drained her coffee. ‘We think that’s two too many.’

Coffin absorbed what she had said, then he said: ‘One would be.’

‘I agree there.’

‘But Amy could turn up any minute.’ Only, like Josephine, he did not think she was going to.

Josephine was silent. ‘No,’ she said.

‘But thanks for telling me.’

Josephine drew her flutter of clothes around her, touched Stella lightly on the shoulder. ‘Thanks for helping,’ she said, and departed.

Coffin leaned forward. ‘I see your part in this, Stella, you brought her in. Don’t tell me you are also a helper at Star Court? No? Well, tell me, who is Josephine?’

Stella’s eyes grew round with surprise. ‘She’s Josephine. You don’t know Josephine? You mean you didn’t recognize her? She was the great model of the ’fifties and ’sixties, everyone knew her, her face was on everything.’

He thought he did recall the name and now he considered it, he could see it explained the way Josephine held herself and moved. ‘So what’s she doing at the Star Court?’

‘Oh well, she’s been down, you know, right down, touched the bottom … she had a bad time, drugs, drink, she went through it all, got beaten up herself once or twice.’ Perhaps more often than that, from all Stella had heard. ‘And I think she’s paying back all the help she got herself.’

‘So she doesn’t work any more?’

‘I don’t know what she lives on,’ said Stella, answering the unasked question. Not much, she feared.

‘She’s right, though, we ought to look into the case of the other girl.’

‘She’s got a conscience, has Josephine.’

‘You’re not suggesting that she had anything to do with it?’

‘Of course not. I mean she cares about people.’

‘It’s more complicated than she realizes.’ He drew a pattern on the cloth with his spoon. ‘Do they have lads, male students, working at Star Court?’

‘Shouldn’t think so, they avoid the male down there and you can understand it. Even the security staff is female.’ Ah yes, Our General, Coffin thought, no doubt supplied by her, wonder how they’d perform as Valkyries. Stella went on: ‘Why? Is a male student missing too?’

‘Could be,’ said Coffin. ‘It’s complicated.’ He could tell her that Martin Blackhall was missing, but he decided not to. Stella could be discreet, but not always.

He meditated the problem: a university and a refuge for battered women, two institutions at opposite ends of the social picture, yet reaching out touching hands to each other. Bloody hands.

He sat silently for a moment, his own problem sitting on his shoulders. Who knows how long he’d be able to help anyone? Stella looked at him with big, soft eyes. For once she seemed in a sympathetic mood.

He was badly in need of someone to go to for advice, but unluckily she was the very last person he could ask.

‘What’s up?’ said Stella. ‘Feel like more coffee? Or a glass of wine?’

Yes, definitely in a sympathetic mood, but it was no good.

‘Sorry,’ he said to Stella. ‘I’ve got to get back to work.’

‘Me too, I have a board meeting: your sister’s trying to cut our money.’ Letty Bingham kept the theatre on a rolling budget. Funds were tight at the moment, the theatre was doing well, but this was a recession, and Letty had other interests, other responsibilities. Stella liked and admired Letty Bingham, a beautiful, well-groomed woman whose clothes and way of life she admired and even envied, but Letty was sharp about money. They had battles; sometimes Letty won and sometimes Stella. No bones broken, but you had to struggle. ‘I have to fight it.’

‘You’ll fight.’

They both stood up. Stella reached down for the dog’s collar. ‘I’ll take Bob.’

‘He’s yours.’

Philippa, hurrying home, after what had been a very satisfactory and heart-warming meeting with Marcus (she called him Marcus and she was Philippa), went into Max’s the Deli on Old Church Street, hard by the theatre and St Luke’s, where she walked into her Brunnhilde.

Lydia Tullock was buying smoked salmon roulade and a half-bottle of champagne.

‘Just bucking myself up. I felt I needed it after what I’d been through.’

Philippa knew what was required of her, there had been a raid on a shop in Spinnergate Tube station and Lydia had been there. ‘Is that the Spinnergate thing? I heard you saw something.’

‘Saw something! I was there, my dear. I was just walking up to buy some tights in that little boutiquey place as you come up the escalator when I heard the noises and saw the assistant trying to fight off a youth, with another boy just coming up to attack.’

‘How awful for you. What did you do?’

‘Just stood still. One youth pushed past me, that one got away and the other would have done, but he was absolutely fallen upon by the most splendid girl in a kind of leather tracksuit, she hit the second boy and knocked him right down. Skull-cracking,’ said Lydia with some pleasure. ‘Ambulances and bodies all round.’

‘It must have been exciting.’ Lydia had all the luck.

‘Of course, I was worried for my voice.’ She touched her throat, draped in a silk scarf. A Dufy print in pink and blue, Philippa noted, and therefore probably from Hermès. Lydia always had the best. ‘That’s where the strain always shows. Otherwise, I should have run after our defender and offered her a lift home. But she cleared off … motorbike. Lovely young creature … not beautiful, plain of face, but a marvellous flow of muscles.’ Lydia gave the beaming smile that suited her plump face. ‘I shan’t say I saw her hit him, though, she might get into trouble if he dies, and she was such a creature.’

Philippa listened: her friends’ sexual inclinations were always a subject of interest to her, but she decided now, possibly with a shade of regret as she herself admitted with shame, that Lydia’s emotion was purely æsthetic.

‘I wonder if she can sing?’ she asked, her chorus line of Valkyries being always on her mind.

‘Shouldn’t think so, dear,’ said Lydia, ‘but I saw some marvellous soft leather jeans in Bond Street that would just do for Siegfried.’ Except that he was about six feet round the waist. ‘I must take my little snack home. What are you getting, dear, something nice?’

‘Pretty nice,’ said Philippa, not willing to admit to an economical choice.

From the back of the shop, Max called, ‘Here is your vegetarian terrine, Mrs Darbyshire.’

‘I thought you’d given that up, Phil,’ said Lydia, clutching her luxuries to her ample bosom. ‘Mustn’t stint on food, you need building up.’

Philippa ground her teeth and watched her Brunnhilde depart. Tired, she walked home. On the way she nodded and smiled at a passing young constable on the beat. You never knew, and with searching eyes like that he would make a very visual Hagen, and with such a chest, he must have a voice. She gave herself a shake, she was getting obsessed with Wagner.

That evening, that same young, sharp-eyed constable saw the blue and white sweater as he walked on the river path by the old foundry works. It was a well-known spot for the river to deliver its burdens.

The young man picked the garment up, saw the label and recognized it for an expensive article. Missoni, said the label, and a discerning girlfriend (she was a barrister and they had met in court) had educated him about the value of that name.

He knew at once it was something that could be important. When he saw the initial on the front, he connected it instantly with the missing girl Dean.