Читать книгу Coffin Underground - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 8

Terence Place was certainly to be looked for, but he was nowhere to be found. The police investigation into the death of Billy Egan slithered around, not taking hold anywhere. Egan had been first strangled with a tight cord, then stabbed repeatedly. The knife had not been found. But one peculiar fact emerged from a study of Egan’s clothes. He had mouse droppings in his jacket pocket.

Meanwhile the Pitt family held its Welcome Us Back party to which everyone who was invited went and quite a few who were not.

John Coffin attended, but he was among those asked. For years afterwards he regarded it as one of the best parties he had ever been to. Even taking into the account all the things he later perceived as springing from it. The reason he found it such a good party was that no one there, apart from his host and hostess (but with one exception), knew that he was a policeman. There was no denying that if you were known to be a policeman the conversation became stilted and full of boring jokes, all of which he had heard many times before. He resolved to be anonymous ever after. The other reason was that there he came across his half-sister Lætitia; she was the exception, of course. She came into the room in company with a well-known back-bencher MP.

He ought not to have been surprised to see her, after all the Pitts were part of the world she moved in. He knew she’d been living in New York. He was not at all surprised not to see her husband with her. Marriage was a movable feast to his sister.

‘Nice to see you,’ he said, giving her a kiss. ‘But surprised.’

‘I came because I hoped you’d be here.’ A kiss from her in return and a breath of what he guessed to be the newest scent. ‘You know Chris Court?’

‘By name, of course.’ He might have said by reputation, because he thought he knew something of that too. Christopher Court was a clever and energetic man who was known to be ambitious to lead his party. His friends said he might do it, if he could keep clear of scandals. He had fallen into minor trouble once or twice.

‘I’m kind of a gatecrasher here. Chris was coming anyway and I asked him to bring me along.’ She spoke with the supreme confidence of one who had never been unwelcome anywhere. ‘But I knew Eddie and Irene in New York, of course.’

The Pitts occupied the whole of No. 22, all three floors, whereas most of the other houses in Church Row had now been subdivided into flats such as that into which John Coffin had now settled. The party was being held in a large ground-floor room which opened into the garden, where a few guests were already strolling.

Lætitia’s confidence was justified. She was received with a cry of delight from her hostess, who pointed out where Edward Pitt was and said he would ‘just love to see you’. Lætitia looked as if she knew it. She was wearing a cream silk pleated dress with a long rope of pearls; Irene was floating in chiffon of ivory and ice-cream colours; the two women matched, as if somehow they were meant to stand together and be photographed. But Irene moved away with Christopher Court while Lætitia stayed talking with her brother.

‘Come into the garden?’

‘Too cold. Damp as well. I’m not as English as you are, John. English gardens are all right to look at, but not to take a drink in.’

‘I call it quite warm tonight.’

‘Exactly what I mean.’

They were standing by a great gilt wall mirror in which all the room was reflected. The room was part library with one wall entirely covered with books. An ebony stand with a cascade of flowers filled one corner, and in another corner was a bronze head of Irene on a similar stand. Through an open door into another room he could see Mrs Brocklebank carrying a platter of food towards a table. The boy helping her and the tall young creature behind, also carrying food, must be the Pitt son and daughter.

Chris Court and Irene were standing at the door to the garden, poised as if they might walk out. Irene always looked gracefully ready for movement, like the dancer she might have been; she had a natural elegance, with her sculptured profile and creamy skin, which she had groomed and refined to a beauty it might not otherwise have possessed. Above all, she looked intelligent and alert.

They were talking softly, but audibly.

‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Three years. What I promised Edward.’

‘I kept my word. Didn’t try to see you. Although I wanted to. By God, I wanted to. Now Edward’s retired and the bargain is called in. We’re free.’

Irene did not answer. She was staring into the garden. Then she turned to Christopher. ‘Anything to tell me on that business of the student that I asked you to find out about?’

‘Not yet. There will be. I’ve put my chap on to it. I can’t see why you are worried, though.’

‘It’s because she didn’t say anything. Ever. Not to me, not to her father. That alarms me. Come into the garden.’

And in the mirror Coffin watched Edward watching them.

He turned to Lætitia with a question in his eyes. She shrugged.

‘So that’s really why you came? You’re a kind of a chaperone.’

‘I’m very fond of both Chris and Irene. Edward too, for that matter. And also,’ she added deliberately, ‘of my brother whom I came to see, and who never comes to see me.’

‘Poor coppers can’t travel the globe finding you.’

But it was an excuse, and he knew it. He had not tried hard enough. She had a right to be angry if she wanted to be. He had got stuck into his own life, his own problems, and had not looked outside them.

‘I’m coming back to this country to settle. Bought a house on Chelsea Embankment, with views across the river.’

Did it mean another marriage was unfastening itself? She did step out of relationships so easily. She was more like their mother than he cared to admit.

‘How’s Harry?’

‘He will be there too.’ She smiled. ‘You thought not, didn’t you.’

‘Wondered.’

‘There is a reason. Can’t you guess? I am going to have a child. Since I was born in this country I have kept my British passport; my child, if born here also, will have dual nationality, British and American. We thought it a good idea he should be born here.’ She was serenely sure of herself. ‘The place not to be born if you are a boy is France, then you have to do military service, whoever you are. Or keep out of the country. And that might seriously damage his career. One can’t tell.’

He was pleased. His family was growing. Now there would be three of them and a hidden fourth. ‘It is a he? You are sure?’

‘I already know. It is quite possible to know.’

Her life was so much more sure and full of certainties than his own was. That had to come from her father’s side of the family. Nothing like it seemed to exist on what he knew of his mother’s. He didn’t know much about his own father, except that he had been an unlikely chap. It had been a surprise when Lætitia had turned up in his life, so much younger, prettier and cleverer than he had dared to expect. Also a woman; he had been on the search for a brother. That brother still existed somewhere.

‘Of course, I am already a little old for a first child,’ she said calmly. ‘One can run into trouble, hence all the tests. But all is well.’

A budget of news.

When he turned back into the room, now crowded with people, he saw that Chris Court and Irene Pitt had drawn apart, the MP to talk to a man John Coffin recognized as a television personality, and Irene to supervise the laying out of the food in the other room. His sister was talking to Edward Pitt, who was giving her some wine, then going on to pour some for Court. He did it with a flourish.

Suddenly Coffin felt sorry for the man. Not much fun to lose your wife after years of marriage. If I was him, he thought, I’d feel like dropping poison in Court’s drink.

Of course you’d have to choose your poison, or someone like himself, some eager beaver policeman, would soon be on your trail.

He enjoyed the party, but left early. His sister had left even before he did. She came across to speak to him before she went.

‘Can I drive you home, Letty?’ They were, after all, well out in South London, well away from Cheyne Walk. He felt sure her new house was on Cheyne Walk, nothing less would do for Lætitia.

‘No, I have a car.’

‘Sure?’

‘I am perfectly fit,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t fuss. There’s something I want to say. You remember the advertisements we have been running in the papers asking about our missing sibling?’

‘I remember.’ He hadn’t wanted the advertisements inserted, it was making public something he still preferred to keep private, but he had deferred to her.

‘We’ve had an answer. Some woman who thinks she may know something. From Glasgow, of all places. Can one of us really have got to Glasgow?’

‘You got to New York.’

‘But I had help.’ She questioned: ‘So what do we do? Do we go to Glasgow?’

‘One of us ought to.’

‘Then I will send you the letter and all the information I have. I think you will find it interesting.’

As he followed her to her car he saw that Court was already standing by it with the door open.

‘He’s in a hurry, isn’t he?’

‘There’s a Division tonight. A three line whip, he has to get back to the House to vote. Besides, better not to hang around.’

‘Perhaps he’d have done better still not to come.’

Letty shrugged. ‘There’s something worrying you. What is it?’

‘I’ve got a nasty murder case boiling up,’ Coffin admitted. ‘It’s on my mind a bit.’ He told her about the discovery of Egan’s body, just hinting at his personal involvement.

‘Is it a very horrible murder?’ She knew that there were certain types of killing that he found hard to stomach.

‘Bad enough. But I’ve known worse.’

‘Then is it you don’t know which way to go? You have no idea who did it?’

‘Oh I think we do. Probably won’t be too hard to prove, either.’

‘Then you’re home. It’s at an end.’

Slowly Coffin said: ‘That’s just it. It doesn’t feel like the end. More like a beginning. And I’ve got the nasty feeling that it’s not the right murder.’

‘You mean the wrong man was killed.’

‘No, I’m sure the killer meant to get Egan. If he hadn’t, Egan would have got him.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Yes, I know I’m being unreasonable.’

He saw her drive off, then made to leave himself. It was a warm evening for the time of year, with a big yellow moon hanging in the sky. He stood for a moment on the doorstep enjoying the evening. The noise from the party floated out to the street, laughter and happy voices mixed with the sound of music. A good party but now was the time to leave it, you should always leave a party while it was still happy. A good recipe for life.

He walked down the street. Just for the moment he fancied he could get a whiff of the old Deller’s smell, but that must be fantasy. Deller’s, once the boast of the district, had not smelt for over ten years now, vanquished, as it had been, by the Clean Air Act.

It was a night for memories and he had plenty centred on this district. A mixed bag, as memories tend to be, but all of them worth hanging on to. That was something he had learnt over the years, that painful memories could be very valuable, marking a place in your life where you had gone wrong but need not do so again.

As he got to his front door he looked back. To his surprise he saw the tall Fleming boy, he thought Mrs Brocklebank had told him he was called Peter, standing across the road from No. 22.

Poor lad, he thought. Listening to the party, but not of the party. Hearing the gaiety but not invited to it.

Then he saw a figure flit up from the basement and run across the road to the boy. He recognized the daughter of the house.

He let himself into the house and walked up the stairs, half sorry for the pair, half envious. Lucky young beggars, he thought. You’ve got it all to go through and it’s a pain as well as a pleasure, but you’ll miss it when it’s done.

A bit later he took another look from the window. Yes, they were still out there under the street lamp. Just parting under the tree. The boy was hanging on to the girl’s hand, letting go reluctantly, then slowly walking away.

Romeo and Juliet, no less, he thought.

When the party was over Edward and Irene were alone in the kitchen, and both of them knew that something had to be said, was going to be said, but were reluctant to be the one who began.

‘Sandwich?’ Irene examined an open sandwich which still had its piece of smoked salmon adhering to it.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Just as well probably, it’s drying out.’ She put it aside. ‘There’s something unpleasing about a dried-out bit of smoked salmon, isn’t there? Mrs B. didn’t manage badly though. Good marks for her.’

‘There’s one thing you can’t do, couldn’t do in New York and can’t do here where there’s less excuse, and that’s get good servants.’

‘Mrs B.’s all right.’ Irene was both surprised and defensive. It was not like Edward to be hostile. Or rude to her. Angry sometimes, yes, but not unpleasant.

‘She’s an old soak.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ Now Irene was really taken aback. ‘Not her.’

‘If the pile of whisky bottles I found neatly hidden away in the basement is anything to go by, she is. I don’t know who else could have left them there.’

‘The Leggetts … ?’ began Irene. ‘We let them the house,’ before she remembered what the Leggetts, vegans and into yoga, were like. No, it couldn’t be them. And anyway they would have left the bottles around. Hiding or even tidying up was not their style. ‘No, I can see it would not be them. But I dispute Mrs B., I don’t think she drinks at all.’

‘Then she’s got a boyfriend who does.’

‘Edward! Why are you being so nasty? What’s the matter with you?’

‘Do you need to ask?’

‘It’s because Christopher came here.’

‘Yes, I could have done without that. He wasn’t asked. Or was he?’

‘I sent an invitation,’ admitted Irene. ‘I wasn’t sure if he’d come.’

‘You were sure.’

‘I knew we’d meet sometime. But we’ve kept our word. I agreed to wait for a divorce until you retired. You agreed.’

‘I don’t have to like it, though, and I don’t have to like him. And I don’t.’

‘I hate you being like this.’ Irene stood her ground, not giving anger back for anger, but she was unhappy. ‘You seem less than yourself. Not worthy of what you are.’

‘You don’t really understand, do you?’

Irene shook her head silently.

‘Ask Othello,’ he said under his breath. ‘He knew all about jealousy.’

Irene turned her head away. She shovelled all the unfinished food into the waste-bin. Who wanted to see cold sausages on sticks and soggy pastry with bits of caviare on it in the morning? And clearing up the mess of the party seemed the right and only thing to do in the circumstances.

Edward stood watching her, but not helping.

‘Where’s Nona?’

‘In bed, I expect.’

‘She’s not. I just looked.’

‘Around somewhere.’ Irene was casual. She did not hang over her daughter.

‘You’re a lousy mother.’

‘That’s not true.’ She was hurt. Not only was it not true, but Edward had never shown signs of thinking it before.

‘You ought to know where a child of fifteen is.’

‘Nona is quite grown up.’

‘All the more reason.’

Irene said nothing, just pushed some more rubbish from the party into the bin.

‘There’s been a murder around here, you know.’

‘I do know. Mrs Brocklebank told me.’

‘I don’t want Nona out on her own after dark.’

‘She’s not likely to be killed.’

‘Don’t even say it.’

Then they both heard the careful, quiet closing of the front door.

Nona came into the room, then stopped in surprise. She had returned home expecting them to be in bed. She would certainly have preferred them to be. She had long had her own ways of entering and leaving No. 22 in private, she remembered them from of old. Which to her meant before New York.

‘Hello.’

She was taller than her mother, with Irene’s dancer’s grace turned to athleticism, but she was going to be just as beautiful in a more extrovert way, with a kind of flourish to her that Irene had not. She was very thin at the moment because she hated the idea of putting on weight. Muscles curved gently beneath her skin and she distrusted them also. That was not the way she wanted to go. ‘Hello. Still up?’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Oh Dad! I’m allowed out, you know. Do I have to say?’ She looked from parent to parent. ‘Oh, all right. I was talking to Peter.’

Edward relaxed. ‘I don’t mind you being with him. He’s a nice boy. Not very clever, not particularly well educated, but a nice lad.’

‘You told me never to see him again before we went away last time,’ said Nona, who did not forget easily.

‘That was then. You were only a child.’

‘And this is now?’ Nona had an adult amusement in her eyes. Her mother saw it, and made her own assessment.

‘Haven’t you outgrown him?’ she asked. ‘I thought you might have done.’ She understood her daughter better than her husband did, had watched her and seen the signs.

‘I was kind of saying goodbye,’ said Nona. ‘Of course, I’ll go on knowing him, he’ll always be my friend. But, well, I’ve got a lot of work in front of me if I’m going to get to Girton or it might be Vassar, I haven’t decided. I’m not going to have the time to go around much. And then I’ve just got keen on paintings. I want to go to all the galleries, and look. The National, and the Tate and the Victoria and Albert. I don’t think Peter would want to trail around all those after me. Not his thing.’

‘No,’ said Irene. How grown-up she was, how wise and sophisticated. Aware that two worlds had grown wide apart and it was time to be off. And how much wiser than she herself had been at that age. A wise child now but still one who had to be protected. It was better if she kept away from the boy. If only she had told me, Irene thought, and not allowed me to find out from a teacher’s report. That made it important. An episode like that in a child’s life ought to have been talked about. ‘Well, be careful how you do it, that’s all. Don’t hurt his feelings.’ More than you can help; they were going to be hurt, anyway.

‘Your mother will teach you how to say goodbye gently,’ said Edward, just audibly.

Irene heard him but said nothing. Bridges were being torn down, but would have to be built again. Somehow.

Nona said, ‘Oh, I’m being slow about it. We’re going out for a walk in the park. He wants to show me the sailing ship, the Cutty Sark. That’ll be interesting. And did you know there had been a murder? A man, stabbed to death.’

She was interested but untouched. Death, violent death, was so far away from her.

Later that night, Chris Court was on the telephone to his party agent in his constituency. The vote that night had not gone well for the Government and it was likely that there would be a General Election. Chris’s seat was one which, if the swing was large, would be marginal. He had worries.

As they finished their business, Chris said carefully, ‘I think there might be a divorce coming up. I’ll be involved. Of course there’s no question of anyone being labelled a guilty party these days, but will it matter, do you think?’

‘No,’ said his agent confidently. ‘Just try and get it well over before the Election.’

‘Yes. Right.’ He would have to talk over the dates with Irene, but she would be reasonable. ‘It’s my second divorce, you know.’

‘That’s all right. A friend of mine is agent for a chap who’s just about to have his fourth. In the Labour Party, too. That’s trouble. But he’ll probably get in all the same. The voters aren’t what they were.’

He was always optimistic, a bouncy man, like a cuddly bear with hidden claws, able to override worries; he would not be a political agent otherwise.

‘By the way, that inquiry you wanted me to make for you, about the missing students. I put one of your research assistants on to it, the little Scot, Fiona Graham, and she picked up something in the local paper down there in Greenwich. Yes, there was a story about three students but nothing much to it, they weren’t really missing, soon turned up and it never made the London papers. But she did pick up the story that one of the same students was later found dead. A keen little researcher, our Fiona. Suicide, but a bit of a puzzle because they never found the poison. Or the bottle. Or something like that.’

‘Thanks, yes, that is a help. I just wanted to know what there was in the story.’

‘A something and nothing. Want Fiona to go on?’

‘No.’

‘I’d try the police if I were you. There seems to have been a feeling they knew a bit more than they were saying. They had an idea a child was involved somewhere. If it’s that important.’

‘Someone wanted to know.’

‘Otherwise I’d leave it alone. It’s always dangerous digging up old stories.’

He spoke out of a full knowledge of the world, but without expecting anyone to believe him and without any certain information to go on.

Although it was late, Chris sat by the telephone waiting for the call, and when it came he answered it quickly and quietly, as if it mattered his end as much as it did the other.

‘Irene? Yes, there was a child involved. But I don’t know any details.’ He listened. ‘Yes, love, I’ll try. And you try not to worry, I think you are fancying things.’

He really believed what he said.

Later that night, John Coffin was still up and reading, when his bell sounded. He listened on the entryphone.

‘Oh, Paul, come on up.’ He released the front door and waited. In a short while he heard feet on the stairs and opened his door. ‘You’re around late.’

Inspector Paul Lane was shorter than the ideal height for a policeman but compensated for it by a solid square frame and hard muscle that made his ability to look after himself never in doubt. He was young for an inspector and wrote a very good report, the product, no doubt, of having taken a sound degree in history at York University. He was reputed to have a very happy marriage, but if so, his wife was a patient woman who made do with not much of his company, because he was always working. As now. This was no casual call.

‘I saw your light was on.’

Since Church Row was not on any route that Paul Lane might have been taking to home or work, there had to be more to it than a social conversation. Coffin waited.

‘Nice to see you. Have a drink? This is whisky, but you could have anything.’ He thought about what he had apart from water and orange juice and probably a can of beer in the refrigerator.

‘Any coffee?’ Lane put down his briefcase.

‘If I open a jar.’

Lane pulled a face. ‘You ought to learn how to cook.’

‘I’ve never been able to notice the difference between one sort of coffee and another.’

‘That’s because you don’t treat the stuff properly. I bet you open a packet and then leave it around going stale for weeks. I’ll take the whisky.’

After a moment of silence, he said, ‘We’ve found a bike. That is, a lad exercising his dog found it dumped in some bushes in a park around an old people’s home in Charlton. It’s always a boy with a dog, isn’t it? He shouldn’t have been there, of course, with his dog and it’s not clear why he was, looking for his grandfather, he says, but his grandfather doesn’t live there, is only thinking he might go in one day. Anyway, the lad found the bike the day before yesterday and told his dad and they went out and wheeled it home. After a close inspection, they decided they didn’t like the look of it and that it might not be the bit of buckshee good luck they’d thought at first. So the man told a pal of his who was a copper. He took it to the local nick. After a bit, it occurred to them there that it might be of interest to us.’ Lane took a long drink. ‘It had a lot of blood on it, you see. All over. The boy had taken it for rust, but the father knew it for what it was.’

‘The blood group?’

‘Same as Egan’s. It has to be his. The killer used the bike to get away.’

‘Could be,’ observed Coffin moderately. ‘They took their time letting us know. Malice deliberate, do you think?’

Lane shrugged. ‘No, just a natural slowness. They don’t love us, though.’

‘I think we were created as a group because someone hated us.’ Coffin was half serious. He had enemies as well as friends. If he failed in what he was doing, bringing up to efficiency this whole sluggish CID area, then his career could be at a dead end. But he had picked his team deliberately and well. ‘Any fingerprints on the bike?’

‘Place is too cunning a bastard for that.’

‘If it is Place that killed Egan.’

But they both thought it was. He had disappeared from public view and his contacts and such friends as he had were keeping silent.

‘Until we are sure let’s call him X,’ said Coffin. ‘Any forensics?’

‘Still waiting. But with my naked eye I saw a bit of cloth caught in the saddle bar. Also a shred of plastic in the handlebars. The killer could have had a bag there, with the knife in it. We haven’t found the knife; he’s probably got it.’

‘Pity he didn’t leave it with the bike,’ said the still sceptical Coffin. ‘If the bike was all over blood he must have been covered with it himself. Quite a sight riding through the streets.’

Paul Lane ignored this sally. ‘It was late at night. And I don’t suppose he went out of his way to meet people. Either coming or going. And we have got a bit from the forensics. About Egan himself. There were shreds of grass on his shoes.’

‘So he walked to his rendezvous in the park. He’d have to do that. Even Egan. Not much of a walker, our William, as I remember.’

‘There were also traces of asphalt, or some sticky, tarry stuff on the soles and uppers of his shoes. It looks as though he’d tried to rub it off with a bit of newspaper and hadn’t succeeded.’

‘Yes, he always was a dressy man. Well, all the pavements around here seem to be under repair.’ Coffin looked down at his own shoes. Even Church Row.

‘Not all, but quite a few around the park,’ said Lane in that reasonable voice that could infuriate his peers. ‘I think he may have walked to his meeting. And if he did that, then he must have been hiding out somewhere not too far away. Not being, as you rightly say, much of a walker.’

‘Could be.’

‘So we might be able to find out where that was.’

There was silence between the two men as they considered William Egan coming out of his hiding place and then walking to meet his death.

‘The time of death has finally been agreed upon as about midnight,’ said Lane, coming across with another piece of information. ‘The medical lot didn’t want to come across with that yet, still doing tests on the gut or something, but I prised it out of them. The park is locked by that time, but I can think of at least three ways of getting in, and if I know them then Egan knew them.’

‘I wonder who issued the invitation to that particular meeting? And how it was set up?’

‘When we know that we will know the lot.’

‘If I know Egan and his son-in-law there was either a woman or money in it.’

‘A bait? Yes. I’d put Egan as the inviter. It has his mark on it somehow. But he walked into something he didn’t expect. He walked and X cycled. That makes them both living locally.’

‘Yes, I can accept that. If the bike is right,’ added Coffin cautiously.

‘This was my patch once, remember,’ said Lane.

‘I know.’ The bright boy from Guildford Grammar School and York University had started his career in the Force in an unsmart part of South London.

‘Where the bike was found is not far from where X’s sister lives.’

‘Why are we still calling him X? We both know we mean Place. I give you best on that. I think you are right,’ said Coffin. ‘But it’s still guessing.’

‘I went to call on his sister. Went to her house in Abinger Road. Just dropped in. I took as much of a look round as I reasonably could. He wasn’t there, of course.’

‘That would have been lucky.’

‘But he had been there. I swear it. I could almost smell him.’

‘Perhaps he was still there.’

‘No, I don’t think so. There’s not many places to hide in those little houses.’

He paused. ‘And there’s something else, something that worries me. His sister was frightened. She’s a tough little body, Roxie Farmer, but she was really scared stiff.’

The two men looked at each other.

‘You’re thinking of the way Egan was cut up,’ said Coffin slowly. ‘I wondered about that myself.’

‘Terry Place is either high on drugs or else he’s gone off his rocker. Perhaps both. He’s dangerous. His sister knows it and I reckon we know it.’

‘Then we’d better find him fast.’

‘He’s living locally,’ said Paul Lane. ‘I swear it.’ He bent down to get a package. ‘I found this rolled up in a cupboard in the Farmer house. I persuaded his sister to let me take this tweed coat away. She didn’t want me to have it, but it looked to me as if it matched the scrap of cloth caught on the saddle of the bike. I think it is Place’s. I believe there is blood on it.’

He was holding out an old grey tweed jacket which had seen better days. It was wrapped in a big plastic bag to protect any evidence. There were dark stains up the front and on the sleeves.

‘Mad to leave it around.’

‘I think he might be mad. Or near enough. But in any case, he might not have expected me to go to Abinger Road.’

‘Any mice about? Egan had mice droppings on him.’

‘I don’t think they had Egan in Abinger Road. And from what I know of Roxie Farmer, no mouse would stand a chance. No, Place didn’t have him there.’

‘I suppose I ought to be grateful to him for killing Egan, seeing Egan was after me,’ said Coffin.

‘I found this in the pocket.’ Lane held out a scrap of paper enclosed in a plastic envelope. He had done that himself. Standard practice. ‘It’ll have to be tested for traces. But he’s got your address on it.’

Coffin studied it. The piece of paper had been much folded so that the pencil scrawl was hard to read, but he could make out Church Row well enough. ‘That’s Egan’s writing.’

‘I think so.’ Lane nodded.

‘So he knew where I was.’

‘And now Place knows. Took this off Egan’s body, and he meant something by that.’

‘I hope I’m going to go on being grateful,’ said Coffin grimly. ‘Got anything else, or is that the lot?’

‘There is this ticket to the Cutty Sark. He’s been there, and quite recently too. He’s always loved the river. He’ll be down that way now. I’ll take a bet on it.’ He spoke with the utter conviction of someone who knew he was right. ‘Why don’t we look for him down there?’

Paul leaned forward and became urgent. ‘Why don’t we pour men in? Flood the place with searchers. Flush him out quick.’

‘Going to take a lot of overtime,’ said Coffin, somewhat sourly. You always had to think about money now.

But they agreed to try. If they could get the manpower. The TAS squad was small and its demands not welcome. But it could be done.

‘Leave that stuff with me,’ said Coffin, motioning towards the jacket and the paper in its plastic envelope. ‘I’ll take responsibility.’

Coffin saw his visitor to the front door. As he closed it behind Lane and walked up the stairs he had the feeling he got sometimes that wheels were moving. It was never a wholly pleasant feeling, unsettling and worrying.

Mrs Brocklebank would have called it ghosts, the spirits operating. But Coffin recognized it as human relationships interlocking and interacting and setting the machine in motion.

When you thought about it, it all came down to people.

He picked up the piece of paper again and held it to the table lamp. ‘Wait a minute. I didn’t look at this properly before and neither did Paul. Paul misled me and he misled himself. Not my address here. My number is 5 …’

He looked again. He could just make out that there was a faint number written there.

‘No. 22.’