Coffin on Murder Street

‘Ah.’ Reluctantly he met her eyes. Brown, sympathetic eyes. Both of them had read the item about the suspected child murderer thought to have moved into the area. And the Sergeant had lost a child last year. His son had gone out to play and never come back. He had been found afterwards, in the canal. Drowned. Not foul play, exactly, they said. Murder by his peers. Three six-year-olds, having a game.

Mary Barclay drove off, glad to get away from Sergeant Jeremy Kay, she was so sorry for him that it felt painful.

On the other hand, she thought, if I’ve got to face an anxious mother that’s not so good, either. But it’s the job. She had only been a CID officer for six months after a tough apprenticeship in the uniformed branch. But she liked her work and liked the district where she had grown up. To know so many people and have them know you was both a help and a hindrance; it made them tell you some things and hold back on others.

Nell Casey? She knew that name, she had seen one or two of the episodes in the soap Destiny in which Nell had appeared, although it was tripe. Ripe tripe. But the clothes had been lovely; she had read that Nell was out of it now, and had come back to England to be made legitimate on the stage.

A uniformed constable was already covering an area of earth and grass under a big tree when she got to The Albion.

Coffin met her in the hall.

‘We’ll talk here.’

Upstairs, Nell Casey and Stella were looking out of the window, down to the garden.

‘What’s happening?’

‘A policeman in uniform is pegging down a sheet of plastic.’

Nell shivered; she still looked white. ‘It was horrible.’

‘Are you feeling better now?’

‘Oh yes.’ She looked across the room to where Tom was playing with a train, but he had Bonzo by him and was keeping a protective eye on the animal. An attempt to remove Bonzo from his custody was likely to produce a storm. ‘As long as he is.’

‘No one touched him. You nearly fainted down there, you know.’

‘You knew it wasn’t a real hand, didn’t you?’

‘Not straight away. But at a second look.’

‘I didn’t take a second look,’ said Nell with a shudder. ‘It looked like real blood, though.’

‘I think that was real,’ said Stella thoughtfully.

But the hand was of plaster, the very perfect model of a child’s hand. Not exactly a museum piece, but a good piece of work. The Victorians had liked that sort of thing. Some loving mother had had that piece made. Perhaps of a dead child.

Better not think on those lines.

‘Queen Victoria had models of all her children’s hands. Of their feet too, for all I know.’ Not much of a joke, but it might lighten Nell’s mood of doom. Not unjustified, she must admit. And a small smile did touch Nell’s lips. ‘We had one as a prop when we did Housman’s Victoria Regina.’

‘Is that where it came from, do you think?’

‘We borrowed ours from a local antique shop, as I remember. He got a credit in the programme and a couple of free seats.’ A wide boy name Les Llywellyn who knew as much about antiques as you could read on the back of a postcard but knew how to make money. ‘I suppose it went back.’

The young policewoman detective, who said her name was Mary Barclay, came up into the apartment and asked gentle questions, taking statements from both women, Nell Casey first because she was the mother of Tom, and then Stella, making notes as unobtrusively as possible. Downstairs, John Coffin had told her to handle the whole thing with tact. She had meant to do that in any case, but she was also observing Nell Casey and Stella Pinero with passionate interest. They both looked a bit pale and beaten up, not that you could blame them, and smart clothes were not in evidence, but, yes, a definite glamour hung around them.

Sylvie, who was in charge of Tom, had also been spoken to but seemed to know nothing. But you couldn’t be quite sure of that, thought Mary, who was better able to judge a girl so near her own age. Sylvie might know something. She saved that thought up for future use.

Stella Pinero took herself off to her own apartment, protesting she wouldn’t go if she didn’t have a meeting.

WDC Mary Barclay saw her to the door.

Time for Tom also had to have his minute with her, sitting on his mother’s knee, clutching Bonzo.

‘I think he’ll have to give Bonzo up for a while,’ Mary whispered to Nell Casey. ‘Tests, you know.’ Coffin had instructed her to get possession of the stuffed animal. Peaceably if you can, he had said, but by brute force if you have to. Not the easiest of her jobs.

Nell shook her head. ‘Not a chance.’

‘He’ll have to, Miss Casey.’ Was she Ms, Miss or Mrs? Mary Barclay did not know but took the safest route, actresses were always Miss, the days of Mrs Siddons were long over. ‘Either I shall have to take it off him or you will. Better you, really.’

But getting the dog away from the boy went better than Mary expected, surprisingly easy, in fact. The boy didn’t have much of a vocabulary but what he had he was efficient with.

His mother had sat down on the floor and asked straight out for the dog. And straight out, she had set a price.

‘A pound if you let me have him.’

No response.

‘All right, two pounds. And you’ll get him back. He will, won’t he, Mary?’

‘You will get him back,’ Mary had promised, not knowing if he would or not.

‘More,’ Tom had said with a winning smile. ‘More dollars.’

‘The deal is in pounds,’ his mother reminded him.

‘Is that more?’

‘It is.’

‘Yes, Tom will.’ But he still held on to the animal. ‘Each day.’

‘What, each day Bonzo is away? Come on, Tom.’

‘He won’t be away long,’ said Mary hastily. He might never come back, who could tell what Forensics would get up to, but it was a lie in a good cause.

‘All right,’ said Nell, ‘you’ve got me over a barrel.’

As she took the toy away from the boy and put it in a plastic bag, Mary thought: Wonder if he could have done it himself?

But no, that was a wicked thought, although in her experience kids could be wicked. But still, he certainly couldn’t have buried the plaster hand and he didn’t look old enough to have written his name.

‘Can you write your name, Tom?’ she asked.

His mother answered for him. ‘He can’t,’ she said coldly. ‘No more of that, please.’

‘I had to ask.’