Читать книгу Cracking Open a Coffin - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 8

Day Three to Day Seven

Time passed, a slow, and painful passage for those closely concerned with the two missing students. Sir Thomas kept his appointments and tried to avoid the sympathetic comments of his colleagues as the story got out. He preferred not to discuss it. His wife, a distinguished physician, flew home from Berlin where she had been giving a series of lectures. He would have preferred not to discuss it with her too, but that was not to be.

She refused to be met at the airport and drove herself home in her own car.

‘I hope you had it in the long stay car park,’ said Tom Blackhall.

‘I won’t even answer that one.’ Victoria Blackhall travelled light, just one bag suspended from her shoulder.

‘Cost a fortune otherwise.’ This was about the level of their communication at the moment. If they got in too deep there were things that might be said that were better left unsaid.

‘You need therapy, Tom,’ she said, going into the hall. It was long and spacious, with an impressive stretch of carpeting and a few good pieces of furniture, all of which belonged to the university, but the pictures on the walls, a Freud and a Sturrage, belonged to Victoria and were probably worth more than all the furnishings put together. She disliked the furniture, calling it fake Georgian, which was unfair as one or two of the pieces had scraps of authentic old woodwork melded into their carcasses. ‘Speech therapy.’ She dumped the big soft piece of Louis Vuitton on the floor. ‘And if it had cost a fortune, it would have been my fortune.’ She knew it irked him that her income, all earned, was considerably larger than his. In the Blackhall household, money spoke. It defined status and pecking rights.

‘Can we have a truce?’

‘Done.’ She held out her hand. She was always the less aggressive of the two, though quick to defend her rights.

‘How was the conference?’

‘What I want to know about,’ said Victoria carefully, ‘is Martin. But since you’re asking, the meeting was great and I was great.’

‘Martin …’ Her husband hesitated. ‘No news.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

He hesitated again. ‘I don’t think it’s good.’

‘I don’t either … What do the police say?’

‘They don’t say.’

‘I must get unpacked. I need some clean clothes … I bought you some German brandy … it’s probably horrible but you used to like it.’

A long time ago that had been, before the honours and horrors of his position had fallen upon him. Fallen? No, not fallen like the gentle dew from heaven, but bitterly and fiercely struggled for. Part of the trouble, really.

The autumn sun poured into their bedroom. ‘Damn those thin curtains, they don’t hide a thing.’ Victoria yanked down a blind which had been installed at her own expense. Curtains in this house were a sore point with her. A later generation would discover that the handsome pair of red silk damask curtains in the large reception room downstairs were a fake, just for show, they could not be pulled together, money having run out when the decorators got to the curtaining. The light revealed the shadows under her eyes and the lines and hollows a sleepless night had brought her. Victoria was older by a little than her husband and the years had treated her less well.

As she unpacked, Victoria said: ‘He could be suicidal … I have wondered about it.’

‘Martin is quite normal,’ said Tom fiercely. ‘You’re not a psychiatrist.’

‘You learn to observe in my job.’

‘I know much more about students than you do, my dear. You think you do, but you don’t.’

‘I don’t want to believe he’s dead, but I just do. I think Martin is dead.’ She put her hands to her face. ‘Oh God, I can’t bear this. I do love him.’

‘I know you do. So do I.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and drew her head on to his shoulder. The truce was holding.

Suddenly she raised her head and looked. ‘You’re keeping something back, I can tell. What is it?’

‘Suicide might be the best of it,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Martin is suspected of doing away with the girl.’

‘She may not be dead … Who suspects him?’

‘James Dean for one … Probably the police too, but they aren’t saying.’

Or if they didn’t think it now, then they would as soon as they remembered about Virginia Scott. They must have remembered now, the police were good at remembering that sort of thing, their computers told them—would tell them—that Martin had been her friend too.

But for the police, it was a matter of reason. Evidence and reason, these were their tools … James Dean now, that was different. Emotion there.

‘I’ve half a mind to phone Dean, see what he knows. More than I do, I suspect.’ He had that feeling about Dean, that knowledge of some sort was tucked away inside him.

He reached out for the phone by the bed and dialled.

‘No, don’t,’ said Victoria, her voice sharp. ‘Leave it, just leave it.’

Jim Dean also went about his business. He had no wife, so he turned his anxiety upon himself. He could quarrel with himself, hate himself, easily enough, no trouble there.

He could also hate Martin Blackhall, that too presented no difficulty. His suicide, if it had taken place, he would have regarded as a positively good step. He considered the possibility of killing him.

But to do that, it would be necessary to find him. The police would be of no use there, a private detective must be found. No trouble there either, he knew one, if not two. Use of them came his way in business at times. But he also had an underground link to a CID officer in the Second City Force.

But he hesitated.

He toyed with a gold propelling pencil, decorated with his initials by Asprey’s, which had been one of his first purchases for himself when he started to make money. He wanted to handle gold, just as he wanted to wear soft leather.

He could pick up the telephone and say, ‘Hello, Harry, how are things?’ and get a response. But it would mean going behind John Coffin’s back and he had a healthy respect for that man’s acumen.

The telephone rested on an alabaster stand set with gold. It matched a pen which matched the pencil.

He liked everything about him to be of the highest quality and massive, made of quantities of the best possible materials, whether gold, silver, silk or wood, but actual design he left to the professionals so that his office, as with his home in Chelsea Bank, looked beautiful and expensive but unlived in. There were no looking-glasses in his house except in his bathroom where he shaved, and even that one was small and could be folded up to put away. No photographs around either, but he had a drawerful which he did look at occasionally.

All the same, his office reflected his personality much more clearly than his home: in the window, which was a sheet of shining glass, he sat at a large pale wood desk, gleaming and polished, but with its surface covered by a layer of papers and files, while he faced the green screen of a computer. Attached at right-angles to this desk was a matching work surface with a small filing cabinet on top, and with three telephones hitched on to faxes and answering machines. He worked in a self-created nest of business equipment.

No pictures on the walls of this office, no flowers, but a group of soft leather armchairs stood round a low marble table.

It was late in the afternoon, everyone else—secretaries, assistants and receptionists—had all gone home, but he still sat there. The telephone on his desk rang once, but stopped ringing before he could pick it up.

Not the CID then with news, or they would have gone on ringing. Why hadn’t Amy been found?

Then the white telephone on his right hand did ring. He let it ring out for a few minutes, then he answered it. He knew it must be the police. Call it telepathy or precognition or just a good guess, but he knew, and almost knew what it was. They had found something.

‘This is Sergeant Donovan here, sir. CI Young wondered if you’d be good enough to come down to Spinnergate … Yes, the Lower Dock Road entrance. Yes, something’s turned up … Been found.’ Donovan knew he was doing it badly. ‘Yes, an article of clothing … No, I don’t know more, sir.’ He knew more but had been instructed not to say.

Dean took a deep breath. Here we go, this is what you wanted. ‘I’ll drive over at once.’

He was relieved to be going. Action at last. He couldn’t credit this step forward to John Coffin, things turn up as they will, although sometimes human hands can help. As a former policeman he knew that much. But he wanted movement.

He parked his car round the corner from Lower Dock Road in Spinnergate, using Malmaison Street which he thought he remembered of old as a street of low repute. He had been born round here and surely he remembered his mother (who had had social aspirations which, in a way, he had justified for her) saying he must not play with the children of Malmaison Street? But Malmaison Street had had a lift in the world and he had to squeeze his relatively modest Rover between a Jaguar and a Rolls, though there was a battered old lorry three hundred yards down towards the river, which suggested that Malmaison Street was struggling to hang on to its old reputation.

Sergeant Donovan was waiting for him by the door. No need for introductions, Dean thought, he seemed to be known, and he allowed himself to be led straight into the room where two men were waiting for him.

One came forward. ‘Chief Inspector Young. I’m in charge of this investigation.’

‘I’m glad there is one,’ said Dean. ‘Thought there never would be …’

‘No, it’s always been a case, sir,’ said Young smoothly, ‘but things move slowly sometimes.’ He gave a nod to the other man in the room, never to be introduced, who led the way to a table in the window.

On it lay the blue and white sweater retrieved from the mud of the Thames.

‘We think this might be your daughter’s.’

Dean stared down at what he was being offered. ‘Where was it found?’

‘On the river bank, not far from the Old Leadworks Wharf.’

There was a long pause while Dean looked and considered. He knew what he had to say, but he found the words hard to get out; they stayed in his mouth like pebbles.

‘It could be Amy’s,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know all her things. But yes, I think she had something like this. Seem to remember it.’

‘I thought you’d say that, sir,’ said Archie Young, quickly whisking the cover back over the table. ‘I think that settles it. I’m pretty certain in my mind it belongs to your daughter.’

‘Have you showed it to Thomas Blackhall?’

‘No. Doesn’t seem to concern him as yet.’

‘Who found it?’

‘A constable on his beat.’

‘I’d like to speak to him.’

‘Later, if you don’t mind.’

‘How did it get where it was found?’

Archie Young shook his head. ‘No idea. Could have been dropped in the river elsewhere and been washed up there. It is a place where the river deposits what it’s got. One of them. Well known to be.’

Dean nodded.

‘Or it could have been dropped there in the first place,’ went on Young.

Dean asked the difficult question: ‘Do you think it means that Amy is in the river?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Young. ‘I don’t see that at all.’

‘Where is she, then? I want her found.’ He didn’t say alive or dead, but both men understood he meant it.

Young said: ‘These were found in a pocket.’ He pointed to two objects laid on a small plastic tray on his desk.

One was a small white handkerchief. The other was a sodden piece of paper that had been straightened out and dried.

‘I don’t know about the handkerchief,’ said James Dean. ‘One white handkerchief looks like another.’

‘No initial on it and no laundry mark.’

‘I suppose it is hers, has to be … And that’s a bus ticket.’

‘That’s right, sir. You can just make it out. Route 147a, run by an independent operator. This route runs through Spinnergate and out towards Essex.’

Dean frowned. ‘But she has a car. I don’t see her using a bus. Perhaps it’s an old ticket?’

‘The stampings on it show it was bought on the day she went off, and from checking the number, it looks as though it was purchased between eight and ten on the evening she was missing.’

‘Someone else may have bought it, and she just picked it up.’ He didn’t believe that, or even sound convincing to himself.

‘Could be, but it was in the pocket of her sweater, wedged underneath the handkerchief.’ CI Young went across to the wall opposite the window and drew down a map. ‘Come and have a look at this.’ He pointed. ‘We can tell from the ticket that whoever bought it got on at the stop at Heather Street. Here.’ He put his finger on the map. ‘That’s just beyond the university … and the ticket would take that person through to the end of the line. But the route passes Church Street and a few yards up the road takes you to Star Court House where she worked.’

‘So she might have been going there? But the ticket would have taken whoever bought it much further?’

‘Yes, but there’s no conductor on these buses, you put in the right fare yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘If you haven’t the right change, then you overpay and get more of a trip than you use.’

‘I never wanted her to work in that place,’ said James Dean. ‘I hated it and all it stood for.’

Then he said: ‘Does the driver remember her? Did anyone see her? One of the passengers?’

‘We are inquiring. The driver doesn’t remember. It was late in the day. One of the last buses out on his shift and it was crowded.’

‘Bunch of drunks,’ said Dean viciously. ‘What would they see?’ He started to walk up and down the room. ‘Can I ask you about the Blackhall boy? Any sign of him?’

‘Not so far. He might have been on the bus, we asked about him too, but no result.’

‘Flush him out. You won’t find him lying dead anywhere.’

‘We don’t know your daughter is dead yet, sir. We mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

‘She’s dead. I’m telling you.’

He had moved on from his first demand that she be found, CI Young observed.

‘What about the car? What’s that telling you?’

‘Forensics are working on it.’

‘That was my car. I drove it for a few weeks, then I gave it to her. That was because she didn’t like taking valuable presents, I had to persuade her it was a car I didn’t want and wouldn’t use. She had that sort of conscience.’

‘I’ll pass on to Forensics that you have used the car,’ said Archie Young gravely. ‘They’ll need to know.’

‘Yes. Is that all you want from me?’

‘For now, Mr Dean.’

‘Have you got a daughter?’

Archie Young shook his head. ‘No, no children.’

‘You’re probably lucky.’

Archie Young said: ‘She may not be dead, sir.’

James Dean paused at the door, looked at Archie as he spoke and gave him a bleak half smile. She’s dead, the smile said.

Young said: ‘If you receive a ransom demand, I hope you will tell us, sir.’

‘There has been no demand to me. I’d be surprised and glad if there was one.’

‘Amy could walk in the door tonight and wonder what we were making a fuss about.’

When Archie Young reported this afterwards to John Coffin, as requested, he said: ‘He looked at me as if he didn’t believe a word of it.’

‘He probably didn’t,’ said John Coffin. ‘Did you believe it yourself?’

‘Half and half. I was just trying to sell him a bit of hope.’ He added: ‘He’s really wild. I don’t like the look of him.’

‘What do you think he will do?’

Young considered. ‘Bash something up, that’s what he’d like to do. Either the university or Star Court.’

Yes, the old Jem Dean had been that sort of a man. Too soon to say what the new Jim Dean was like.

‘What do you make of the bus ticket?’

‘Don’t know. Someone bought that ticket, and it was in her pocket. Miracle it was still there after being in the water.’

‘It is surprising, but you do get luck occasionally.’ If it was luck, so far it didn’t seem to have helped. He was keeping an open mind on the bus ticket, it needed thinking about. ‘What about the Blackhalls?’

‘Sir Thomas telephones regularly to ask for news. Nothing to tell him, no sighting of either the boy or the girl. He doesn’t like that. I think he’s nervous that somehow Dean will find the boy first.’

‘Better keep an eye open,’ Coffin advised. ‘Watch the university campus and Star Court.’

‘I’ll be around myself, asking questions,’ Young assured him. ‘I want to see both of the missing students’ rooms.’

But Dean did not go to either of those places. Or not on that day, whatever he was going to do later. After leaving the police headquarters, he got into his car and took a ride. Not unnoticed, as it turned out later. There were one or two people in Coffin’s area who also seemed to notice everything and one of them, indeed the best, was Mimsie Marker who sold newspapers from a stall by the Tube station at Spinnergate. If she didn’t see events herself, and after all even Mimsie could not be everywhere although it sometimes seemed as though she had been, she had contacts and friends to pass on the news. Mimsie was a kind of sieve, through which all local information could pass.

Coffin had other things on his mind, not only this case and the security for the Queen’s visit, but he had a sister, Letty Bingham; he had his late mother’s memoirs which he had edited and which Letty wanted published; and he had Darling Stella. And there was always the cat, Tiddles.

Stella also wanted his mother’s memoirs published, because she had a TV producer lined up who would turn them into a four-parter with Stella as his mother.

Coffin found the idea gruesome … Stella as his mother? Considering all that had passed between them, it was incestuous. Obscene. Stella didn’t see it that way, of course. It was work. Acting.

‘I don’t like to think of you as my mother,’ he had said uneasily.

‘Oh, don’t be silly. I’d be your young mother.’

Exactly, Coffin had thought, but he could not drag his mind away from Amy Dean and Martin Blackhall. Gone, both of them. There was a nasty odour of death and decay in the air.

Stella too took a keen interest in the case: the university, and Sir Tom in particular, were patrons of St Luke’s Theatre, and she herself had helped in an appeal for money for Star Court House. Naturally she was on the side of women, she said. She didn’t know either of the two missing students.

‘Can I do anything to help?’

Coffin didn’t think so, police work was police work. But Stella helped them in recreating the scene when the two students were last seen, standing by Amy’s car. A WPC was found, sufficiently like Amy to play her part, but they had trouble with a double for Martin, no police officer was a match and none of Martin’s fellow students was willing to volunteer. So Stella discovered a young actor who was a match in height and colouring, and after talking with Lady Blackhall and studying photographs, she coached him in the walk and mannerisms of the young Martin. As luck would have it, he was young Darbyshire, Philippa’s son, who had just got his Equity Card. He was also, with suitable make-up, going to be one of the non-singing Valkyries. This had infuriated Our General (who had been approached for help), who thought it was all right for women to act like men but wrong for men to invade their territory.

‘It’s the golden thread,’ Stella explained to Coffin. ‘Haven’t you noticed it in life, there is a golden thread linking event to event … that’s what Josephine has taught me. Josephine is a bit of the golden thread here, isn’t she?’

Josephine, the Valkyries, Our General, some thread, Coffin thought. ‘Thanks for helping with the reconstruction scene,’ he said.

They were in Stella’s living-room in the apartment which had been created out of the ground floor and old vestry of the former St Luke’s Church. There was an ecclesiastical touch to her kitchen which had strong oak rafters in the ceiling, but her living-room had been nicely secularized. Not much cooking was done here as Stella had long since mastered the art of proxy cooking, buying in what she wanted from Max at the Delicatessen or Harrods and putting it in the microwave.

Because they shared the ownership of two animals, one cat, one dog, the two of them had regular what they called ‘interchange’ meetings when Tiddles was forcibly returned to the Tower and John Coffin, and Bob was repatriated to Stella. Both animals would emigrate again as food and prospects looked better in the other place. Tiddles was suspected of having yet a third home, so far unidentified but strongly tipped to be the kitchen of the bar-restaurant in the theatre. He had been seen carrying a chicken leg from somewhere.

Stella’s living-room had recently been refurbished on the strength of the contract signed for her TV series. ‘Should be good repeats,’ she had said as she chose a set of expensive Italian leather furniture, soft and quilted so that you could tell every chair cost as much as a diamond. Of course, she had had new rugs, Spanish these, and thick natural linen curtains with that unironed, crumpled look that was so valuable and sought after at the moment. ‘We ought to be sure of a Christmas showing, maybe more.’

The film about the two missing young people went out on all the main TV news programmes. With any luck they would get some hard information; there would certainly be some loony responses from those who had seen the couple on the Shetland Islands, in New Zealand or embarking on a space ship for Mars.

Some other traveller on bus 147a that night might remember the girl or the boy, or both of them together. A slim chance, but possible.

The report of Archie Young’s interview with the staff at Star Court House arrived on Coffin’s desk the day after the TV filming. Young reported that the trio of women in charge (the place was a kind of cooperative, self-governing as far as possible, with one paid and trained social worker) had been polite but not helpful.

Coffin dropped into Archie Young’s office to speak to him. Not a popular habit, he knew, but one he meant to continue. Apart from anything else, he was always interested to see Young’s office, a tiny slip of a room, but with a long window-sill which got the sun and on which he was always growing seedlings and small pot plants. Today he had some elderly-looking tomatoes, running up the window on frames, heavily fruited, but unripe.

‘Isn’t it time you picked those?’

‘I’m waiting for them to ripen.’

‘They look past it to me,’ said Coffin judicially. They were unhealthy, infected with some mould, but he wasn’t a plant man himself, and if he had set himself up with plants in pots, then his resident cat Tiddles would have done something unpleasant to them. ‘So how did it go at Star Court? You didn’t seem to get much.’

‘Didn’t get anything. They wouldn’t open up.’

‘Being deliberately obstructive, are they?’

‘Not really, just naturally prickly and difficult, I think.’ Archie Young sounded as if he was still assessing what they had said. They were a strange bunch, living a kind of communal life while fiercely preserving every inch of privacy that could be managed. He respected them for that, but had found Mrs Rolt, the administrator, polite but distant and the one who wore rags and tatters with such an air a puzzle.

‘Are they protecting someone, then?’

‘I don’t think so. They just don’t believe in men. And particularly the police. They’ve got their own protection down there.’ He looked at his Chief. ‘You know about that? I sort of probed around there but they wouldn’t talk.’

‘Our General? Oh, certainly. I can see she might be a conversation stopper from all I’ve heard.’

‘I didn’t meet her, I gather she keeps her distance, but I think she might have been in the house. Just the way they acted.’

‘I think I will go down there myself. Find an excuse. After all, that bus route does pass very close. Amy Dean could have been there.’

He called early that evening, after a committee on Policing in the Community had ended a perplexed and anxious session. This particular committee which, mercifully, he was not required to chair, never got anywhere and never would in his opinion in spite of high motives and good will all around. There must be something like dyslexia of the soul, he thought, that impeded people of different groups when they talked of certain matters: you just couldn’t read each other right. He thought that contact with an outfit of women trying to get on with their lives in their own way might be just what his spirit needed.

And he wanted to ask questions about Amy and Virginia.

Star Court House could have been a slum. As it was, it came very close to being one, a battered old house that seemed to match its function, but it was saved by the fresh paint on the front door, a strong defiant red, and the row of fierce orange geraniums that lined the windows. No pot plants could be put outside or stood by the door, they would be stolen or vandalized. Unluckily, it was that sort of neighbourhood, a kind of no man’s land between three tall housing blocks and a sad, undernourished-looking park made up of a circle of grass and a children’s paddling pool which was empty.

But it was on a good bus route and near a busy main road. So it was accessible, a place you knew how to get to, although not the sort of place a taxi-driver would happily take you to. But then few of the women who arrived could afford a taxi, most of them walked from the bus, even if at home they had a choice of cars, or had been prosperous, coming here they seemed to prefer the anonymity of the bus.

There was no obvious sign of the protection of Our General and her gang, but he was reliably informed that if you made a nuisance of yourself not many minutes passed before you regretted it.

Watch your back, his informant had advised him, but he didn’t expect to be attacked: his help had been sought. Star Court might not like him or his sex but they trusted him as a person.

He rang the bell. After a wait, he was inspected through a hole in the door, and then the door was opened.

It was Josephine.

‘I thought it was your eye,’ he said.

‘We knew you’d come.’ A large white overall covered her fine-coloured flutter, and she had toned down her make-up a little, this was her working garb. ‘You’re the second. We had an inspector down here.’

Chief Inspector Young would not like being downgraded.

‘All right if I come in?’

She opened the door wider. ‘Enter.’

The house was not quiet, he could hear women’s voices down the hall, laughter, a child calling out, music, but it sounded friendly.

‘Come into our interview room.’

‘Oh, do you have one?’ He was interested in knowing how they worked.

‘Have to have, can’t bounce people straight into the kind of madhouse that we sometimes have here.’

They went into a small room, with several armchairs and a dilapidated sofa. Someone had been smoking in here not so long ago, leaving a strong smell of cigarettes and a deposit of ash on the floor.

‘I’ll call Maisie, Mrs Rolt, she wanted to talk to you.’

He knew the name: Maisie Rolt had got the centre running single-handed in the face of a lot of opposition. ‘Is she all right?’ He had heard that she had been attacked by an unpleasant form of cancer.

‘Fighting back,’ said Josephine with a smile. ‘That’s our Maisie.’

Left alone for a moment, Coffin occupied himself with opening a window to empty the laden ashtray. The grass underneath the window was thick and uncut, more than a match for any nicotine.

Maisie Rolt came into the room quietly, but without Josephine. She was wearing blue jeans, a dark blue sweater and bright red beret drawn down low on her forehead. She looked cheeky and alert and she smelt strongly of onions.

‘Sorry about the smell, onions do whiff, don’t they? But we’re having sausages and mash for supper tonight and a fried onion does liven it up.’

‘Sorry if I have interrupted the cooking.’

‘Jo’s carrying on. Sit yourself down.’

Curiosity impelled the next question. ‘Does Josephine live here?’

‘Of course not. She’s got a flat in one of the tower blocks on Planters.’

‘Is she all right there? Any trouble?’

‘She did have a bit at first, got mugged, and her TV stolen, but she made powerful friends and they look after her now.’

Ah yes, Our General again. ‘Protection?’

‘You could call it that, but not for payment. But you didn’t come to talk about Jo.’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

Mrs Rolt smiled. ‘There’s a story there, and one day I might tell you, or she might.’

‘Or it might come out.’

‘Things do come out in the end,’ agreed Maisie Rolt.

‘I thought you would be glad to know that a solid investigation into Amy’s disappearance is under way.’

‘I am. She hasn’t just gone off, she wouldn’t do that. She was very regular in coming here. We didn’t count on her; help is always useful but we can manage; but it was just not in her character for her to drop out. She’d arranged to take a party to the swimming pool, the kids were all ready, she would never have let them down.’

‘Yes, I see that.’ He hadn’t known about the swimming pool trip, and it did carry some weight with him, although with students, he thought, you can never be sure. ‘So you had no warning she might not turn up?’

She shook her head. ‘No message, nothing, just silence. I found that disturbing. It upset the whole household. And I take that seriously. If some of the women here think it’s bad, then it is bad.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They learn to smell trouble.’

‘You don’t ask me if I have any news.’

‘Because I know you haven’t, you would have said straight off, you’re that sort. Besides—’ she smiled—‘I have my own sources, I know there’s nothing.’

Ah yes, Our General, he thought, and possibly Mimsie Marker down at the Tube Station, she was the great communicator.

The door swung open and a small child appeared, a boy probably, although it was hard to be sure, his or her outfit was unisex: longish hair and a kind of kilt with pants.

‘Hop it, Darren,’ said Maisie. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

‘The soup’s boiling over.’

‘Tell Jo, or your mother, or anyone you can find. On no account touch it yourself.’

‘If it is boiling over,’ she said as the door closed. ‘Just wanted a look at you, I expect. His mother probably sent him in, she has fantasies about what goes in this room.’ Maisie gave a hoot of ironic but friendly laughter. ‘And so would I if I’d had her life. Ask no questions because I’m not telling you.’

‘What can you tell?’ He was beginning to see what Archie Young had meant. Not so much difficult as baffling.

‘I never tell much about anyone really, that’s what I’m good at, keeping quiet. It helps here. Essential. If I was a gossip I’d have been killed by now and this place would have gone up in flames … But it was the two of them, Virginia and now Amy. I talked it over with Josephine and she felt the same.’

Coffin kept quiet.

‘I didn’t want to think it was our fault.’

‘How could it be?’

‘You don’t know, do you? You never know when one thing leads to another until it’s too late. But the girl came to us here, said it was part of her course. I checked, and it was, so all right, but she did more than she need have done, and so did Virginia.’

‘Just kindness of heart?’

‘Could be, but it worried me then and it does now. They didn’t come together, but they knew each other. I don’t like coincidences that end in disappearance and death. Was it something they got into because of coming here? I don’t know. We’re clean here, no drugs, nothing of that sort. I watch for it. I didn’t ask them why they came, beyond the first query, which is standard. I mean, I have to look out, we do have some dubious characters whose motives are not very nice. I can suss them out. These girls were not like that. I’m glad of help and I don’t dig into people. I’d go mad if I did. We have enough trouble here as it is.’

It was quite a speech and he wondered what emotions lay behind it.

‘We had a man round here asking questions. No, not one of your lot, I can always tell them.’

‘A nuisance, was he?’

Mrs Rolt smiled. ‘He was seen off. We had a couple of guardian angels who dealt with him … Debagged, I think it was called once. Anyway, he left without his trousers and he hasn’t been back.’

Powerful ladies, Coffin thought.

‘How often did Amy come here?’

‘Once a week regularly, and other times as we needed more help. She did office work, typed letters, filed them, kept an eye on the accounts. Talked to anyone who wanted to be talked to, some don’t. She seemed to know by instinct. She was good. Good at what she did and a good girl.’

‘Did the boy, Martin, come down here?’

‘Once or twice but we didn’t encourage it. He was awkward.’

‘We are still trying to form a picture of what might have happened. You know Martin is missing too? His wallet was found in Amy’s car.’

‘She loved that car.’ It was not an answer but he concluded she had known about Martin, and possibly that was part of her alarm. Did she think he was guilty of violence?

‘In confidence—’ he almost stopped there, no question of confidence, soon it would be known everywhere—‘I can tell you that a sweater that has been identified as Amy’s has been found. There was a handkerchief inside it, and with it a bus ticket. A ticket on the route that runs at the bottom of this road.’

‘I don’t think she ever used a bus,’ said Maisie. ‘Always came in the car.’

‘Someone bought that ticket. And on the day she disappeared. It was wedged beneath a handkerchief.’

‘She never used a handkerchief, always bits of tissue crammed into her pocket.’

‘It was clean. Might have been just decoration.’

‘I don’t think so. I’d say it wasn’t hers.’

‘Her pocket in her sweater,’ he persisted.

Mrs Rolt shrugged. ‘You asked me.’

Darren put his head round the door. ‘There’s ever such a smell of burning in the kitchen.’

‘I’d better get back,’ said Maisie Rolt. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t helped. Just pushed your questions back at you.’

‘At the beginning of an investigation like this, questions are as valuable as answers.’

‘Thank you for saying that … Would you like to stay for supper? I dare say it won’t all be burnt.’

To his surprise, he heard himself say yes, he would, thank you, but not tonight, some other time?

Suddenly she said: ‘I’ll tell you what I feel: we weren’t using her, she was using us. She was getting something, we were giving her something, and I don’t know what it was.’

Darren burst in again, and said: ‘Our General says she won’t bloody be a Valkyrie and nor will any of her girls. The lads can please themselves if they want to act bloody women.’

At the same time the telephone rang, and as Coffin left, he heard her dealing with a call from someone called Angela, temporizing on whether Angela could help at Star Court.

As he walked down the garden path a figure dressed in black leather swept along, nearly knocking him over. He saw the gleam in her eye as she flew past.

Second time of asking, he thought. She meant to get me if she could.

Our General. Rosa Maundy, a rose with many a thorn, he thought. Maundy was an old Spinnergate name, you got them on the records way back to the first Elizabeth when they had been Thames watermen. Our Rose. He knew a bit about her now, she worked for her father who ran a small haulage company, it was her power base. A story there too, and he would find out when it suited him, which might be quite soon if she kept trying to kill him.

He walked to where he had parked his car and drove westward. Sometimes you can walk just so far and no farther.

At the Tube station in Spinnergate, where he stopped to buy an evening paper, Mimsie Marker was packing up to go home.

‘Saved you a paper.’

‘You always do.’

She folded it up in the professional way, as taught her long ago, pocketed the money in the leather bag that hung in front of her like a kangaroo’s pouch and became confidential.

‘About those kids that have gone missing, pair of students.’

Coffin waited.

‘Saw Jim Dean today.’

‘Oh, you know him, do you?’

Mimsie didn’t answer that as not being worth comment, she knew everyone. ‘He bought a paper, just like you, then he waited for the bus, but he didn’t get on it. Had his car parked and he got in and followed the bus.’

‘What number bus was it?’

‘147a. But you know that, or you wouldn’t have asked.’

A good example of Mimsie’s maddening hit-the-nail-on-the-head way of thinking.

‘I thought you ought to know. Wonder what he was up to?’

‘Did you see him come back?’

‘No, I reckon he went all the way to the end.’

‘And what’s at the end, Mimsie?’

‘Nothing much. Depends what you want. Woods and marsh mostly.’ Her eyes were bright and alert. ‘Used to test the big guns there once when Woolwich Arsenal was alive.’

‘Thanks, Mimsie, that’s interesting.’

‘Thought you’d say so.’

He hadn’t disappointed her. She watched him sit in his car till the right bus came along, and then drive slowly behind.

He followed it out, past the road which led to Star Court House, out through the dingy inner suburbs to where they lightened, grew more pleasant with pretty gardens, then beyond that to where the houses were scattered, past a cemetery and a crematorium and finally to a cluster of houses round a bus stop. At this point, the bus turned round and came back. End of the road.

Coffin stopped his car and got out. Across the road from a parade of houses, newly built, isolated and windswept, was a stretch of scrubby, empty land with a belt of trees.

He paced it slowly, looking at the ground. There were signs of the passing of a car along a muddy track at the side. On the grass itself were tyre marks.

Hard to say how recent these were. It was probably an area where lovers came. It had that look about it, not to mention the odd spoiled condom lying about.

Under the trees several years of leaf fall lay thick and mushy. He thought he could detect signs that the layers had been disturbed so that here and there the darker, decayed deposit had come to the top. He moved the leaves with his foot.

The earth underneath had been opened, then pressed back. Something or someone had been buried here.

Coffin went back to his car where he made a telephone call, then sat waiting.

When the police van arrived, he took the team of diggers to the spot he had found. He watched while a canvas barrier was set up to protect the area, then he stood back. Very soon he was joined by Chief Superintendent Paul Lane, not pleased to be taken away from his evening at home. Coffin could imagine the grumble going on inside: One more of the Boss’s flights of fancy.

‘Nice evening, isn’t it, sir,’ said Paul Lane. It was, in fact, beginning to rain. ‘For digging, that is,’ he added morosely. For standing about it was damp and cold.

The two men watched in the rain which began to grow heavier. A small crowd of spectators had appeared, as they always did on these occasions, alerted by some underground set of signals.

‘Have to get lights up if we don’t finish before dark,’ said Lane. It was dusk already. ‘No problem, of course,’ he added without conviction. Then he said: ‘They’ve got something.’

A muddy figure was heading towards them from out of the enclosure. ‘A buried dog, sir. Sorry.’

‘That’s it, then,’ said Paul Lane, putting up his collar against the rain. ‘Might as well be off.’

Coffin stood where he was. ‘No. Go on looking. There will be an indication of a disturbance somewhere. Find it, then dig again.’

He took pity on the Chief Superintendent. ‘Come and sit in the car and tell me what’s been going on.’ He himself had had to cancel a dinner engagement with Stella Pinero, who had not been pleased. ‘I hope something has.’

Earlier that day, Chief Inspector Young had received the first forensic reports on the girl’s car. Nothing very helpful, he had thought: traces of the clothes of the girl herself, fingerprints, possibly hers, her father’s (he had acknowledged using the car), and possibly prints of the boy, Martin Blackhall. It would all need to be worked on and checked.

But later, during that afternoon, Chief Inspector Archie Young in company with a woman detective had entered and searched the student room lived in by Amy Dean. This room had been locked for days now, so that when they went in it smelt stuffy. Even sour. Young wondered if there was the smell of drugs; there was certainly stale cigarette smoke.

On the outside it seemed the room was orderly and tidy, but when the drawers and cupboards were opened, there was a different story.

Sordid, dirty, beneath apparent order.

The drawers and cupboards were full of soiled, crumpled clothes. Underclothes, tights, sweaters and jeans, all pushed in the drawers and shoved into the cupboards, not hung up, all disorder and dirt which spilled out in front of them.

Young looked at the woman detective with him who raised her eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Bit of a slut.’

Or mute signs of a confused, unhappy girl, who wanted to be dirty?

The diggers ceased their work and came across to the car.

‘Found something, sir. I think you’d like to look.’

The two men got out of the car to hurry across the grass. The diggers had gone down several feet into the Essex clay.

Under the soil was a roughly made coffin.

‘Better get it opened.’ Lane spoke gruffly, more moved than he had expected.

‘No.’ Coffin was abrupt. ‘No, let’s wait until Dean and Blackhall get here.’

‘It’ll mean waiting some time.’

‘No, they should be here any minute. I telephoned earlier.’

‘My God, you were sure,’ said Lane.

‘Yes, I was sure.’

They watched as first one car and then another drew up, from which Sir Thomas and then Jim Dean got out. They watched in silence as the two men approached. Coffin walked over to them and murmured something. Lane saw them nod, then the whole party moved to the edge of the pit to look down at the coffin.

Ropes were fitted and slowly the coffin was drawn up. ‘Open it,’ said the Chief Commander.

Behind them a girl got out of one of the cars and came running towards them.

Tall, slender, in jeans, fair hair floating over her shoulders. Sir Thomas muttered under his breath that she shouldn’t be here, not his idea. ‘Get back, Angela,’ said James Dean.

‘You promised, you promised! I want to know.’

Jim put his arm protectively around the girl. ‘Go back. I promised you could come. I promised I would tell you. But you can’t look.’

A chisel levered at the wood, the coffin opened with a crack.