A Grave Coffin

Of course, Coffin thought crossly. ‘How did he die? Anything new there?’

‘Blow to the head … then cut up when dead. Freshly dead.’ That was the kind of detail that Davenport relished.

‘Would it have taken a lot of strength?’

‘Well, no, but a frail old lady couldn’t have done it. What there would have been was a lot of blood. All over the place, and we are keen to find that place. Haven’t yet.’

Like Devlin in the Second City, thought Coffin, a nasty parallelism, but police work could be like that.

‘How did the body get to the park, and then to the bandstand?’

‘Must have been by car, not something you could carry through the street wrapped in brown paper … it was wrapped, by the way, but in a sheet. The park gates are open all night, in fact, I think it’s years since there was a gate. The bandstand is derelict, never used. As for the rest … well, there are urban foxes round there, a real, rough breed down by the river. I heard they had mated with wolves from Russia.’ He laughed heartily at his own joke.

‘I’ll keep in touch.’ Coffin did not laugh.

Paul Masters came back with Augustus, both of them refreshed by their walk. Augustus bustled up smelling of dog, and grass and earth.

‘Had a good time, did he?’

Augustus answered for himself with a feathery wagging tail, and positioned himself at Coffin’s feet ready for another walk.

‘Oh Paul, I may be away from the office for about two days, but I will get back sooner if I can. You can always get me on my mobile … And I will phone you as and when.’

Paul Masters was too discreet to ask any questions, but having copied the files for Coffin could make a guess what it was about.

He also had his own private theory: he gets fidgetty when She is away.

‘I’ll see you get to know everything important, sir.’

‘And nothing that is not.’

Goes without saying. But he did not say it aloud, contented himself with his polite, enigmatic smile (Go on smiling like that, his wife had said, in that tart voice that occasionally made him feel like straying, and they will think you are hiding the secret of the Third Man, or was it Fourth and Fifth) and went away. He knew his smile, which he had worked upon before perfecting it, was a good, workable professional tool which would see him through many a crisis.

‘And you can wipe that smile off your face,’ said Coffin, as the door closed behind Masters. ‘I’m getting fed up with it.’ He too had watched its progress during the last few months.

He gathered up his papers, put Augustus on the leash, then walked homewards at such a pace that Augustus began to lag behind, pointing out that he was a peke with little legs, not a bloody Great Dane.

Back at his home in St Luke’s, he fed the dog, and considered making himself a meal. He was a passable cook if the frying pan and the grill were used. Then he stopped, changed into something more casual than his dark working suit (Makes you look like a coroner’s favourite pathologist, Stella had said once, which had rankled) and prepared to go to Max’s restaurant. Not the one in the theatre, but the bigger and grander one round the corner. Max, as chef and proprietor, had started small and was getting bigger every day.

He went down his winding staircase with Augustus following him at every step. He manoeuvred himself to the door before shutting in a protesting peke face.

‘Don’t go on like that, Gus, or I will buy you a cat to keep you company.’

In Max’s newly redecorated restaurant, the proprietor stood in a welcoming way at the door. Max had got plumper and greyer and more prosperous in the years since he had set up; over these same years, his family had shrunk, then grown again. The daughter they called the Beauty Daughter had married and gone away, then another daughter had departed, leaving numbers seriously low, but now both girls were back without husbands but with several offspring.

Max approached Coffin with a sympathetic smile. He knew that Stella was away, everyone knew, and he let Coffin see that he understood loneliness. Not that he suffered much from it himself, especially at the moment with four grandchildren taking up what felt like unofficial residence, but still … a man could imagine.

He led Coffin to a table nicely placed near the window. ‘Miss Pinero not back yet?’ he said, as he handed Coffin the menu.

As if you didn’t know. Coffin muttered inside, as he took the menu. He pretended to study it, but he always ate the same thing here: that which Max recommended – it was wisest.

‘The brill is very good tonight.’

‘Right, brill it is.’ Coffin closed the menu. ‘Salad with it, please, and claret to drink.’

Max looked sad at the choice of claret with brill, an expensive Montrachet would have been better, but he sped away to serve the fish.

‘The chef has poached it with a little basil,’ he confided as he offered it to the Chief Commander.

Coffin ate the brill, thinking wistfully of the days when fish was fried and served with chips. You could still get such meals in the right places, but not where the Maxes of this world ruled the menu. He wondered what Stella was eating in Los Angeles, or if she was eating at all, since she might now be under the surgeon’s knife. She had refused to let him know when the operation was to take place because she didn’t want him to worry.

Strange idea of worry she must have, he decided, since I am worrying about her all the time. Not the nose, Stella, he said again over a mouthful of salad, nor the mouth: I love both of them.

As he ate, he mulled over the two big problems on his mind: the pharmaceutical affair which Ed Saxon had delivered to him, and the missing boys. Since one had been found dead, he had to assume the others also were.

What was the list

Charles Rick, missing since mid-May, the second boy to go and not yet found.

Dick Neville, a fortnight earlier, he was the first, and he went the first week in May. May Day, in fact. Was that important?

Archie Chinner, the last week in June, the last to go and the first to be found.

Matthew Baker, last week in May. A month before the next boy went. Was that important?

Who knows, he thought to himself, with some anger. You never know until it is too late.

Across the room he could see a table of the cast of the play now in rehearsal at the Stella Pinero Theatre in the St Luke’s complex of the theatres. This was the main theatre, created out of the old church, but in addition there was now the much smaller Experimental Theatre and the Theatre Workshop. The last two theatres received grants from the local university in return for allowing its drama department to use both theatres.

He knew from Stella that the play under rehearsal was one of Pinter’s: The Homecoming. She had had it in mind for a long while, but had handed the production over to a friend, Alec Macgregor, always known as Mac. Mac was at the table too, and waved to Coffin, whom he had got to know well over the years. He was a tall, slim man with a mop of grey hair and bright, dark eyes. A fond parent had left him a pleasant fortune, so it was likely that he was paying for the dinner, and not the cast who probably could not have afforded it, since Max’s prices had risen with his success. Coffin knew that Stella was not a lavish payer, although Equity rules did not allow too much stinginess.

As he waved back, he saw that Mac was getting up and coming over to him.

‘How are things going? Heard from Stella since you got back?’

‘She rang up and I spoke to her yesterday.’ He thought it was yesterday, with all the pressures on him events began to run together. He was beginning to worry about his memory. Could you get Alzheimer’s through stress? No, it was congenital, wasn’t it, and the one thing he knew about his mother was that she was both long-lived and articulate. About his father he knew much less, and that was down to his mother too, since she had never been quite definite about who his father was. Give birth and move on, had been the name of her game. ‘Stella’s enjoying herself, going to the theatre every night.’ That was more or less true. ‘How are you and the production?’