Читать книгу A Double Coffin - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 8

Phoebe Astley was a senior police officer who had been brought into the Second City by John Coffin to head a special unit. Since one of the purposes of this small and secretive unit was to check on the performance and behaviour of the local force, he had taken Phoebe from another county. Phoebe was a forceful, dark-haired woman with great energy. Charm too when she chose to use it, but because of the delicacy of the tasks she was given, she preferred a smooth neutral manner. Archie Young was her nominal chief but she reported directly to the Chief Commander.

Underneath, however, she was never neutral, as Coffin knew well. Their paths had crossed in the past, tangled together, you might say, and the memory of their past relationship was something they chose to bury. What remained was trust and friendship, and that was good. In his career Coffin had found that you needed a colleague you could trust, and there were not too many of them. In Chief Superintendent Archie Young he had such a one, and he was coming to feel that his young assistant Paul Masters was another.

He considered Phoebe for the task; in the past, the joke had been that work was her love and sex was her hobby. These days she seemed to be keeping that side of things discreetly in the background. He doubted if she had turned into a nun, but there were no tales and no gossip. Yes, he could use Phoebe Astley without the fear that she would meet the scholarly Jack Bradshaw and eat him up. The old Phoebe might have tried a nibble or two, because there was no denying that Dr Bradshaw was attractive, if dry and occasionally pompous. A scholar, he said to himself, probably cannot resist having that manner.

Phoebe’s office was tucked away, hidden almost, on the top floor of the new police building. She had three anonymous-looking rooms, which suited her, finding she did not mind in the least that the furniture was standard equipment with little charm but very practical. The great pleasure was the splendid view from windows over the Thames and the Second City. Phoebe drew strength from the panorama stretched out below her which she stood looking at when she had a problem to solve. The shifting light on the Thames seemed to illuminate her mind.

Her home, if you could call it that, because she never seemed to settle, was at present in a one-room flatlet on the Isle of Dogs from which she commuted by means of the Dockland Light Railway. Her flat was minimum care and since she never did anything but sleep in it, eating always on the job and drinking black coffee as soon as she got to work, it suited her. She said her only virtue as a housekeeper was that she did not smoke. Even this had not been true a few years ago when a bad health scare had put her in hospital and given her pause for thought. Now she ran and swam as often as she could.

She had a staff of two, a man and a woman, who managed the computer and the equipment added to it, and unobtrusively worked with her. To be unnoticed was part of the job. Coffin knew her well enough to be sure that Phoebe maintained an active social life in districts well beyond the Second City.

She was always at work early, so that she was there when Coffin telephoned her the morning after his meeting with Richard Lavender and Jack Bradshaw.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Is it a job?’

Yes, one for you alone.’

‘Aren’t they always?’

‘It’s an odd business. One you may not care for. Or you may be greatly interested. Either way it needs careful handling. It might be as well if you did not involve Gabrielle or Leander.’

‘That might be hard to do.’

‘As little as possible then.’

‘I’ll be over, if it’s that confidential you’d better send Sylvia and Gillian out.’ Coffin was silent, his two secretaries did not listen at doors, but Phoebe must be allowed her jokes, she was often a bit sharp about other women. (It worked the other way too; Stella for instance treated Phoebe with friendly caution.) ‘Will Archie Young be there?’

‘No.’

‘It is secret then.’ Phoebe gave herself an invisible pat on the back. Although she liked Archie Young, who never got in her way, she was a natural competitor who liked to outscore others. Every case to which she was privy alone, she regarded as a top mark. But she was fair and did not regard this as one of her better traits, only a natural one.

She walked into Coffin’s office, passing Paul Masters, who was talking to Gillian, with a wave. He moved quickly to get to Coffin’s door but Phoebe was quicker. ‘Expected,’ she said blithely.

Paul turned to Gillian. ‘I’m supposed to check everyone who goes in.’ But he said it without rancour: he liked Phoebe.

‘Take a tank to stop that one,’ said Gillian.

Coffin stood up politely as she came in. ‘Thank you for coming round straight away.’

‘You’re the boss. I have plenty of work on hand, the Pickles case to begin with, but I walked right across.’

‘It’s something I have promised to do myself.’ He paused. ‘But I need help.’

He told her the story, complete with names and personal impressions. She knew the name Lavender, she said, it was in her schoolbooks, and she knew he wasn’t dead, but she had never thought of him as a live person moving around the London scene, somewhere between a ghost and a memory.

Now it turned out he had a secret. Either that or he was nursing a little madness.

‘I believe I have met Dr Bradshaw … He gave a lecture at the John Evelyn Public Library on the writing of history.’

‘Sounds incredible, doesn’t it? Can you believe it?’

‘Yes, I think I can. People do have family secrets. Traumas buried deep. I am not saying I believe it was all as Richard Lavender said – he may not remember accurately, he may be indulging in a fantasy, hanging on to a false memory. It happens.’ She thought about the story, then said:

‘But something is there.’

Coffin trusted Phoebe’s judgement. ‘I believe you, I feel the same. But whatever is there is bloody, murky and deep-buried.’

Phoebe said: ‘But I can’t think why he wants to dig it up. He knows all sorts of things come out in a murder case.’

‘He wants to repent, to make amends,’ Coffin explained. ‘Also, there is a young journalist going round asking questions as if she knew something.’

‘Now that is interesting.’

‘And the Grand Old Man wants to get his story in first. He still has a lot of political sharpness.’

‘I wonder what part Jack Bradshaw has in all this? Could he have fed this story to the old man?’

‘I don’t know what his purpose could be.’

‘He’s writing Lavender’s life: a tale of murder would certainly take it to the top of the bestseller list. But who’s to know about motives?’ She added thoughtfully: ‘He looks to me like a man who could keep a secret.’

‘The old man trusts him.’

Phoebe said: ‘Well, we will do what we can. An interesting problem, quite different from anything I have ever done before. I think I might enjoy it. No idea where to start.’

‘I’m damned if I know either.’ He got up and started to walk round the room. ‘I don’t know why I said yes, but he still has power to command, that old man.’ And then he said guiltily, ‘And I have to admit the idea of tracking down a multiple killer from the past had its attraction for me. Can you understand that?’

‘Yes, sure. I’ve always understood you more than you knew.’

There was a silence between them.

‘We could have ruined each other once, Phoebe, you know that? We nearly did.’

‘But we didn’t.’ She smiled.

‘No. We drew back. I wonder why?’

‘Natural sense of preservation, I suppose,’ she said lightly.

‘No, I think it was something other … we didn’t want to lose what we valued in each other.’

Phoebe smiled again. ‘I would remind you that we didn’t meet for about ten years after that. Small value.’

And when he just gave a smile back: ‘How’s Eden?’ she asked.

Coffin shifted his mind away from this dialogue with Phoebe to consider Eden. Phoebe had shared a flat with Eden in her first weeks in the Second City. Eden had then managed a shop selling expensive fashion clothes; when it folded she had taken a job in the theatre in the costume department. ‘Oh, doing well, as far as I know.’

Eden was small and very pretty. The theatre gossip was that she was in love with Martin. Not difficult to believe.

‘She’s happy working in the theatre. Did you know her name was really Edith?’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Phoebe. ‘I met her mother once and she did not look the sort of woman to call her daughter Eden. Come to think of it, I heard her call her daughter Edie. Of course, I thought it was short for Eden.

‘Has it occurred to you that you yourself might be at risk? That you have been drawn into this investigation to drag you into trouble?’

‘Yes, it has occurred to me,’ Coffin said soberly. ‘I always look for things like that. A suspicious nature after years on the job.’

‘So?’

‘I am going ahead.’

‘I thought you would say that.’ Phoebe hitched her shoulder bag over her right arm and gathered up her document case with her left. It was raining outside so there was a raincoat as well. ‘And you want me to make a start? Not sure where I do that, never done this sort of case before. You could call it historical research.’

‘I hope we can continue to think of it that way …’

‘I might enjoy it. I have always liked thinking about the past.’

‘Think of it as writing one chapter on “Death in the Old East End of London before the first Great War” … Begin with the written records.’

‘Death certificates?’

‘And the old local newspapers … Most of them have folded, so see what the Second City Public Library can do for you.’

‘You need a scholar not a police detective,’ said Phoebe, giving her bag another hitch, she seemed to be treating it like a weapon.

‘Pretend to be one.’

‘I can’t give all my time to it. I have plenty of other work on hand.’

‘Wouldn’t expect you to. I’d call it important but hopeless … You may never get anywhere.’

‘As long as you know.’ They eyed each other. ‘I will make a start.’

He handed over his folder with all the notes he had made. He did not say to her that he had identified the woman journalist who was on the prowl as Jaimie, a girlfriend of a promising young actor, partly because he wanted to think about that and partly because he wanted her to make the identification for herself.

‘Come and have dinner with us tomorrow night, tell me what you’ve got.’

‘Will Stella like that?’ Phoebe had no illusions of how and why Stella was not too fond of her; she liked Stella, admired her, but had no desire to get closer.

‘She will.’

Stella would not be there, though, he knew very well she would be in the north, seeing a possible new production and that he would take Phoebe to Max’s restaurant and talk to her there. To make sure, he rang up and booked a corner table for tomorrow night. Less easy to be overheard in a corner. Also, Max understood about corners and he had some nice private ones where you could hardly be seen at all.

It was nothing to do with him and Phoebe in the past, or any possible relationship now, there was none, but he did not want any questions about this piece of investigation floating around the Second City.

Once again, he found himself thinking about the girl Jaimie, she struck him as a clever, pushy young woman.

After leaving Coffin and Stella the evening before, Jaimie and Martin had quarrelled, or rather, let the anger surge up again. It was one of their better quarrels in as much as after a certain amount of pummelling and throwing of china, accompanied by the shouts that sooner or later one of them would kill the other, they ended up in bed. But the resentments between them were still there.

‘You knocked me over,’ said Jaimie, examining her bruises.

‘You fell,’ said Martin in a tired voice. He was not unscarred himself. He put his arm round her and nuzzled her head. He was all for peace now, spent, worn out.

Jaimie rolled over on her back and looked at the ceiling.

‘Every time you touch me, I feel as though you are touching your mother.’

Martin shot away, his skin tingling. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn.’

Although it was in the small hours, he got up and banged out of the flat.

‘Goodbye, Jaimie, or whatever you call yourself.’ He shouted it out over his shoulder.

‘It’s true,’ she shouted after him. ‘True, true, you think about your mother when you make love to me. Run away if you like, you always run away.’

‘I’ll come back and kill you,’ he shouted back at her. Then he slammed the door and walked through the rain to his sister.

His sister lived in part of a house near the hospital where she worked which she shared with another doctor. She had the ground floor and a dark basement which led on to a tiny garden where she grew plants in pots. Her rooms were painted white and sparsely furnished, there was no untidiness; you got the impression that every object had been chosen with great care. She said herself it was the only way to live after her years in a controlled world. Another sort of person might have burst out into wildness, but she had come to like the idea of smallness of choice. It was not without significance that she specialized in microscopic surgery. Knives hardly came into it.

Clara was as tall as her brother, as blonde as he was and almost as tall. She was always beautifully if casually dressed, with her hair cropped short. She remembered her parents and knew that she looked like both of them.

She came to the door to let her brother in. ‘I knew it was you. Only you, Martin, could ring the bell at three in the morning … I am on call, so if I have to leave, you are on your own. What’s the trouble now? But need I ask?’

He came in, shaking the rain off his hair like a dog.

Clara tossed him a towel. ‘Here, dry yourself.’

‘One of our worst rows … Jaimie really is the end. It’s terrible to love someone you cannot stand.’

Clara kept silent. She remembered her mother and wondered what else you could inherit besides hair colouring and blue eyes. Was there a gene for loving the wrong person?

‘She thinks I want to kill her,’ said Martin, rubbing his hair.

‘And do you?’

‘No, consciously, no. What do you think I am?’

‘I don’t know, my dear,’ said Clara, sitting down and looking at him. ‘I don’t know what either of us are.’

‘Oh Clar, darling, don’t go all philosophical on me. I just need a bit of home comfort.’ He had finished drying himself. ‘She brings out the worst in me, that’s all. I’ll get over it. Can I stay the night?’

‘Just for one night … I don’t want you staying here. I have enough watchful looks to contend with without them adding incest to the list.’

She did not hide her identity from those who wished to know, but she had changed her name, thinking, and rightly, that here patients might not care for a surgeon so handy with a knife. She was Miss Clara Henley, FRCS. Henley had been her maternal grandmother’s name. She was training herself to speak freely.

‘Don’t,’ said Martin, flushing, remembering what Jaimie had said about his mother. ‘Clar, there’s something I ought to tell you about Jaimie … You know she’s a journalist? Well, she’s been researching some story, but she wouldn’t say much about it. I thought it was about some long dead-and-gone figure … well, maybe it is, but maybe not. I think she’s been researching us, and that’s what she is going to write about.’

There can’t be much left to say.’ Clara took a deep breath.

‘She’ll find something,’ said Martin with conviction. ‘I think that’s why she moved in with me. She’s going to make a story out of it.’ He looked at his sister’s face. It wouldn’t do him much harm, and the publicity might even help him, but Clara, that was another matter. He knew how hard she had struggled to get where she was, and how even now she was working in a lower position than her age and qualifications merited, but she had started from a low base. ‘I’ll kill her, I really will kill her.’

‘Oh, go to bed,’ said Clara wearily. ‘You can kip down on the sofa. Good night.’ At the door, she turned back. ‘Don’t worry if you hear me go out, it’s just that I am on call. I will take the phone through so it won’t disturb you.’

He thought he did hear her later, the door seemed to open then close quietly, and in the morning she was dressed as if she had been out. ‘Yes, I had a call. One of those emergencies which call me out but not my consultant. I hope I didn’t disturb you.’

Martin had not been disturbed by any noise, but he had had bad nightmares on and off through the night.

Coffin knew nothing of Martin’s disturbed dreams, although later he was to hear of them.

He worked on routine matters all the rest of the day. There was an arson case in an electrical factory that was getting a lot of attention, and a police officer had been shot at, not hit, thank God, but lucky to be alive; the newspapers were giving both cases the big treatment and were not full of praise for the Chief Commander.

Perhaps Phoebe was right, he reflected as he drove home, and he was being conspired against. He knew he had enemies. It seemed a roundabout way of doing it though, and it wouldn’t put a gloss on the name of GOM Lavender. There must be easier methods of bringing down John Coffin.

He could think of at least three. He allowed himself a smile as he parked the car. Someone who had lived his sort of life had left plenty of strings for enemies to pull upon. He had lied at various times, knocked one man unconscious and killed another, all in the cause of duty, of course, but you weren’t supposed to do it. No malice. That is one thing you can say about me, he said to himself, as he opened the door, there is no malice in me. Anger, yes; resentment occasionally; jealousy at odd times; and the other lusts of the flesh as the occasion called out for.

Tiddles met him at the door.

‘She’s out, is she?’ Coffin knew the signs.

The dog came down the staircase more slowly, since his short legs found the risers taxing.

At their silent but earnest request, he went into the kitchen to open tins for both. Both were eating dog food tonight; sometimes they both ate food marketed for cats, but they never seemed to notice the difference.

A savoury smell coming from the oven hinted that someone, probably not Stella, had been preparing an evening meal. He opened the oven door to make an inspection. A large casserole was simmering away.

‘I didn’t know we had one of those,’ he said aloud.

From the door, Stella said: ‘We don’t. One of Max’s assistants from the restaurant comes round to do it, this is chicken and ham.’

‘Smells like it.’

‘It’s a very good new service that Max is thinking of starting up. Kind of luxury meals on wheels. You can choose from three menus and Max says they will change from week to week, according to what is in season.’

‘How long has it been going?’ asked Coffin suspiciously.

‘Just started, we are the first to use it. Max suggested it to me. If it’s a success, he will build it up.’

‘We are an experiment then. He’s trying it out on us.’ Coffin liked Max and appreciated his food, but he also saw that Max aimed his arrows at Stella. Celebrated, fashionable, much-photographed Stella who brought in the smart customers.

‘Well, you know Max, he’s very adventurous.’

Some years ago now, when Coffin had first come to live in St Luke’s and Stella had only just started the theatre in the old church, before they were married, in fact. Max had opened his first eating place. He and his daughters, the Beauty one and the Clever one and the Married one, had run it between them. Since then he had prospered and taken on the catering in the theatre. Max’s restaurant was now a smart place to eat in the Second City, which was not famous for good food.

‘He ought to pay us,’ he protested.

‘This meal is a present,’ said Stella, showing that she too had a business head. She had learnt a lot from Coffin’s half-sister, Letty, who always knew where a bargain was to be negotiated. She was at present in Hong Kong, where she was doing business. Letty was a backer of the theatre, for which Stella was grateful. She was expected back in London soon, which gave Stella another reason for gratitude since the season was not doing too well and she was pressed financially; Letty would see her through, she hoped.

She was fussing round the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and then closing them again. ‘Oh, you’ve fed the animals.’

Coffin said he had.

‘What sort of a day?’ she asked.

‘Oh, this and that. What about you?’

‘Trouble with Twelfth Night. Martin came in with a black eye, nothing much, just a mark under one eye, but someone gave it to him – the love of his life, I suppose – and a bruise right down the side of his face. That wouldn’t matter, make-up could deal with it, but his wits seem to have gone too. The rehearsal was bad, very bad, and mostly due to Malvolio – the part is quite as crucial as Sir Toby, you know, and he buggered the whole thing up … I don’t think I can get away tomorrow. Must stay around and steady their nerves.’

‘You’re not directing though?’

‘No, I brought Archie Tree in for three productions of which this is the first. It’s his nerves I must steady.’

‘Won’t it be a pity not to see the boy in Edinburgh or wherever?’ asked Coffin, thinking of his dinner with Phoebe.

‘St Andrews … no, I’ve seen a tape he sent me, and I saw him at Chichester in a Pinter play. I’ll get him, I think. He’s not a name.’ So she would get him cheap. He would be a name, and she would have got in early, and that was all to the good. ‘You know, I’m beginning to wish you hadn’t got into this weird hunt for a dead woman. There’s something odd about it. I don’t like it.’

‘I feel the same, but I think I have to do it. Not in person – I’ve put Phoebe Astley in charge.’

‘Oh.’

‘She’s good,’ said Coffin defensively.

‘I wish she dressed better, but among all you men it’s probably as well not to.’

‘We’re not that bad.’

‘Yes, you are, a lot of chauvinist pigs.’ Stella had had a role recently in a police series on TV and said she had learnt a lot, not from her fellow performers but from the police expert checking the show.

‘It’s not all like television,’ protested her husband. ‘I’m changing things. Anyway, Phoebe dresses to suit herself.’

Beneath the words they were throwing at each other there was amusement and affection. It was an argument, not even a discussion, they were enjoying each other’s company.

One of your better moments. Coffin decided as he got out a bottle of wine.

They ate the casserole in companionable ease at the kitchen table.

They had finished when the bell rang below.

‘I’m not going to look out of the window,’ said Stella, covering her eyes, although she knew that she could not see their front door from the kitchen, ‘but something tells me that it is Martin.’

‘I’m afraid you are right,’ said Coffin, going over to the window. ‘He is invisible … although still ringing the bell … but there is the old bike you say he goes about on propped up against the wall.’ He looked at the TV viewer fixed on his porch as a security aid. Yes, there was Martin; no one was really invisible.

He went down the stairs.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Martin, as he came into the kitchen. ‘I came to apologize for my behaviour today.’ The bruise under his left eye was a dark evil streak, while on the other side of his face a long bruise stretched from cheekbone to jaw. He looked pale and thin.