Coffin’s Ghost

She swung round and made her exit, wrapping up the whip as she went.

‘You’re not worth a flick,’ she threw over her shoulder as she closed the door behind her.

They never met again. He made cautious enquiries about her and knew that she had left her post on the local paper … or been sacked, stories varied, and disappeared. She might be around still, if so he did not know where. Just as well.

She couldn’t come walking out of the past without her legs, he thought dryly.

He took another drink of coffee, which was still hot, so he could not have been far away in another world, another time, for long. Then he opened the file that Phoebe Astley had handed him and studied the medical report on the limbs found in Barrow Street.

You should go to your grave with all your limbs attached, he thought. But many didn’t.

Sex: Female

Colour. White

Age: Between 25 yrs and 45 yrs

A bit of guesswork there, he thought.

Height: 5’ 8”

Weight. Nine stone

Shoe size: 7

Hair on legs and arms: Light brown to ginger

Fingernails: bitten

A tall thin woman, probably a redhead, and large feet.

Anna had been tall but not thin; still, women changed, lost weight. A woman heading to the sort of death this woman had had, yes, she might well have lost weight.

She hadn’t bitten her nails, nor dyed her hair, but who could tell what time and trouble did for you.

Identifying marks: 1. Scars on left wrist, possibly the result of

a suicide attempt

2. Damaged bone on left ankle

3. Scarring on the right leg

Blood Group: O

He hadn’t known what blood group Anna was, but O was about the most common.

Drugs in blood: Desmethyl-Diazepam traces were found which is a drug breakdown product from several tranquillizers such as Cloraazepate (found in Tramene) or Chlordiazpaxide (found in Librium and Tropium) and Diazepam (found in Valium)

Anna might have been on drugs even then. These were all sedative-type drugs. Some of the details matched with Anna, but without the face, how could you be sure?

Neither of them had made any attempt to keep in touch. Coffin knew danger when he saw it and he had seen it then in Anna.

It was possible that the remains left on the steps in Barrow Street were those of Anna.

One of the three telephones on his desk rang, this was what he called his private line and was the only one which Stella used. She was careful, scrupulous even, about breaking into his working life.

Stella wasted no time. ‘Darling

That meant business, it was the theatrical darling, meaning nothing, except here I come and I have a request to make.

‘Yes?’ Coffin was cautious.

‘Robbie’s very worried about his daughter. His stepdaughter, really, but he loves her and she took his name.’

‘I gathered that last night.’ Was it last night? No, it was a bit longer ago than that. He had been so deep in the past, that the present was hard to hold on to.

‘Yes, but more worried … She’s missing, really missing, not just playing. She hasn’t got a very high IQ. Learning difficulties, they call it, don’t they? She’s lovely to look at, by the way, a beautiful girl, but a simple soul. I had her working in the theatre, in the wardrobe and so on, that side of things, she did well enough while they kept it simple. Then she went off without a word. She’s an innocent and he thinks she’s in real trouble.’

‘He can tell, can he?’

‘He thinks so. He’d like your advice.’

‘Well,’ began Coffin.

‘He’s important to me.’ She didn’t say darling again, but it was there in her voice. ‘And the limbs found on the house in Barrow Street … well, he’s wondering if they could be his stepdaughter, Alice. That’s her name … her mother married George Freedom next … not with him now.’

What a lot, Coffin thought. ‘Where does the girl live and how long has she been missing?’

‘She lives in a room her mother found for her in the Second City. She works three times a week. I gave her the job here. She is seventeen, and innocent.’ Stella hesitated. “That’s one reason for worry, she may not be able to protect herself.’

‘Stella, that unlucky woman was older and more battered than the young Gilchrist girl. It cannot be her.’ Not if she was young and lovely.

‘But, if there’s a killer out there –’

He interrupted her.

‘What is it you want?’

‘Could you meet us for a drink in Max’s, about six? We might eat there afterwards if you feel like it.’ Max and his restaurant was the favoured eating place for those working in St Luke’s Theatre Complex who could afford his prices, which had risen sharply in the last year. Max also ran the various bars and eating places in the three theatres.

Coffin, whose income had not risen as sharply as Max’s prices, was thinking about it, when Stella said: ‘My dinner.’

Stella, although out of work, was temporarily rich: the theatres were doing well, while a TV series she had done was endowing her with money for repeats from North America, Germany, Australia and from what Stella called the Monkey Islands. She used to complain that her TV series travelled much more than she did. A false complaint, since Stella hated to travel except in the greatest luxury.

‘If I am going to be an expense item, I accept.’

‘You are all right, are you, love?’ This time the affection was genuine. ‘You sound a bit strained.’