Coffin’s Ghost

‘Just checking.’ Phoebe came into the hall, sniffing the air. ‘I always wonder how you manage to keep this place smelling so fresh when …’

‘You mean when we don’t wash enough here.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that and you know it. I mean you have a very mixed and floating population here, and yet it never seems institutional.’

She does mean it doesn’t smell. Mary grinned.

‘I work on it, it’s meant to be pleasant. We all like a hot bath or shower and there’s always hot water. And I provide lavender bath soap … they don’t have to use it, they may prefer their own, but it’s there.’

Phoebe looked trim and brisk, her dress sense had tightened up; she carried a neat black notebook, the successful detective officer.

I admire you, Phoebe, Mary said to herself. But what would you say, if I said: I could read what was written on the two terrible bundles and I saw the initials J.C.?

What would you make of that, Phoebe?

Not the signature of the sender, you would say at once, but a suggestion of the recipient?

All she said was: ‘I suppose you want to talk to everyone here?’

‘Not me in person, but a couple of WDCs will be in.’

‘Don’t upset them, please. All the women have been through a lot. They need to be treated with care.’

‘That’s why I am sending women officers. They have been carefully chosen.’

‘Good.’

‘Just whether they heard or saw anything in the night or early morning. You too will be asked, Mary.’

‘I saw nothing,’ said Mary quickly. ‘Heard nothing. I don’t think anyone here will be able to help you. It can’t be anything to do with current residents.’

Phoebe nodded but did not commit herself.

‘And the bag?’

‘May have nothing to do with the remains of the body.’ Phoebe was still being cautious.

Suddenly, Mary said: ‘I know what was written across the bundle. I did go out to look when Evelyn came running in. I couldn’t make it out.’

Phoebe allowed herself a shrug. Who can, it said.

‘I send it back from me to you, although it was yours before … Sounds like a quotation.’

‘We’re working on it.’

‘And J.C.? What does that mean?’

Phoebe did not answer. Not even a shrug this time.

‘Some of the girls here think the body or what there is of it might be from Etta … she worked here for a bit. I thought she’d gone home, but it seems she’s been seen around the district … She had some risky friends, the sort that might use violence.’ Mary let the next words drop out slowly, as if she had just thought of them: ‘And she went about a bit with a few local coppers.’

Phoebe could have said that she had heard this, but she did not. Never divulge information unnecessarily was a dictum she had been taught. Especially in a case like this. ‘We’ll work it out,’ said Phoebe patiently. ‘Trust us.’

But trust, as she knew, was always in short supply in the Second City.

And she wasn’t too sure how much she had of it herself. She nodded to PC Ryman-Lawson as she left, acknowledging that he was wet and cold.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_75ac22bc-d968-56cd-af9d-71c8f1d2a7ec)

Because Coffin had once lived in the house in Barrow Street (which was attracting intense if discreet media attention), he was being kept informed of the investigation as it went on. Reports of all important crimes in the Second City always went to him as a matter of course, but this was different. Archie Young had decided he must see and hear of everything.

The message scrawled on the two bundles was being kept quiet although rumours went around the watchers.

Coffin knew of them, had seen a photograph of the bundles, although not the bundles themselves. He knew what was written there, and understood why Archie Young and Phoebe Astley were keeping an eye on the investigation.

Keeping an eye on him too, he thought with some irritation.

The initials J.C., taken in conjunction with the fact he had once lived in the house was giving them pause for thought.

And they were probably thinking also, quietly to themselves: And what about the woman?

The House in Barrow Street – he thought of it as The House that belonged in a sensitive part of his memory when he had lived there alone. Alone, new to the Second City, wondering if he was going to regret leaving the Met, a time when Stella was in New York and the marriage was rocky. Or seemed to be so.

I love you, Stella, he thought, but you can be difficult.

This is the point where you laugh, he said to himself, because probably she says the same about you. Bound to. It was always mutual, that sort of complaint, wasn’t it?

He went to the window to look out. He had returned to work, against his doctor’s advice, earlier than that luminary thought wise. He had a deputy and an assistant, but work was piling up and he wanted to get on with it himself. He did not find it easy to delegate.

Outside it was raining; the Second City did not look at its best when the sky was grey and heavy with rain.

He returned to his desk where a tray of coffee had been put ready for him by his secretary with a look of sympathy. The way he felt at the moment he did not want sympathy, it irritated him.

A kind woman but too full of sympathy. What the pot of coffee and biscuits said was: You were stabbed by that maniac, he wanted attention and attacking you was his way of getting it. You nearly died.

It was the second knife wound he had suffered. This time it had got to his liver.

I must watch out for knives, he thought. I seem to attract them, and some in the back too.

He drank some coffee. His first secretary in the Second City had been one of his mistakes: efficient, but hostile, wanting him to know that he was a newcomer, an intruder, here.

There were other mistakes, but she was his first, and at the time, all subsumed in his feeling that his coming here at all was one big mistake.

He had been promoted beyond his powers. The feeling niggled away inside him, taking away all pleasure at his new position – well, nearly all, he had to admit, some pleasure remained, he couldn’t help that. It was marvellous to have power, to feel the lad from the London Docklands but south of the river was now part of the Establishment. Albeit one with more than a dash of the revolutionary in him. But he had already realized that you needed this in the Second City, which was never going to be docile. The population of the Second City had lived through wars and depressions, been bombed, and was now rebuilt, had seen old industries fade away and been replaced by bankers and journalists, had seen the great River Thames lose trade but become more beautiful; he was moving into a city of change and he was part of the change.

But in this changing city, where he had to make his mark, he had enemies. Within the police team were men well-entrenched who had worked their way up and resented the arrival of the newcomer.

Flashy, playing to the media, talks too much, thinks too much, not one of us. These were the comments flung about, some made a hit, as some always will, and hurt.