A Cold Coffin

‘I believe we have met,’ said Coffin cautiously. ‘Black Jack? Yes, he is a villain . . . never thought of him as a killer, though.’

Black Jack Jackson, which was his nickname and nothing to do with any American band leader, was up for any fraud and money-making enterprise that came his way. Son and brother to the victims. Murder in the family, all right. But although a suspect – there had been a quarrel and some violence from him – any proof was hard to find.

Coffin was riffling through the papers in the file. ‘Hard man to convict.’

At the suggestion that the lawyers might be right, Phoebe drew in a deep breath, so deep that Coffin thought she might blow up like an aggrieved toad and become twice her size.

‘There are three dead women in that house, and if he didn’t kill them, then I don’t know who did.’ She amplified this statement. ‘It looks as though whoever did it was either let in, or had a key . . . Mrs Jackson had fitted the flat up with one of those special keys.’ She repeated, ‘If he didn’t do it, then who did?’

‘Maybe that’s the answer,’ suggested Coffin. ‘We don’t know who did it.’ He shook his head.

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you are standing aside from this case.’

Coffin knew he was. ‘The two young women . . . the sisters were . . . are’ – how do you talk about the so recently dead . . . he settled for what seemed easier – ‘they are friends of Stella.’

He waited a bit, then said, ‘Black Jack? As killer? Not how I see him.’

‘He’s a friend, is he?’ Phoebe pretended to be surprised, but she was never surprised who rated as a friend of the Chief Commander. He trawled in dark waters when it suited him.

‘My friend? Black Jack is interested in and collects rare pornography, books, videos and manuals, all aspects: sadism, masochism, pederasty, bestialism, and he may well practise any of these that he can manage. I would be pleased to put him away for any of them if I got the chance. So, no, not a friend, nor a companion in bondage.’

‘Sorry.’

‘But I don’t think he’s a killer.’

Black Jack, his full name John Jackson, had come by his nickname because of his crop of dark curls and deep brown eyes. Also because he was a known criminal, not particularly violent, preferring to rely on cunning, which he had in abundance. He had the good sense to commit most of his crimes outside the Second City, which meant that Coffin’s investigators had only been after him twice, getting him inside once. ‘No hard feelings,’ he had said to Coffin. ‘You do your job, I do mine.’ And he had offered Coffin the run of his pornographic library.

Offer refused.

Unmarried, he had lived for a while with his mother and twin sisters in Madras House in Minden Street, moving out not long before the murders.

It was these three women who had been murdered. Shot.

‘I never knew Mrs Jackson, although she claimed to have known my mother.’ He had found this hard to believe, his long disappeared mother being a mythical figure by now to the son she had left behind before embarking on other marriages, other lives. ‘But the twins, Amy and Alice, were friends of Stella. They had worked together once. They were completely different from their brother, straight as a die Stella always said. And yet they loved him. It was their house, you know.’

‘He gave it to them,’ said Phoebe. She had had to admit to his generosity with his no doubt ill-gotten gains. He had offered her diamond stud earrings, which, thank God, she had refused, although her ears had ached for them, delicious glittery little objects that they were.

Coffin was silent. What do you know of people, after all?

Because of his position, which carried its own burden of responsibilities and worries, he had kept his distance from the Jackson household, although he knew that Stella enjoyed the company of the twins. He had always been too tactful to ask her what she thought of Black Jack.

‘So where is he now?’

Phoebe shrugged. ‘He can’t go back to the house in Minden Street. It’s a scene of the crime and still has forensics crawling all over it.’

This case was being handled by one of the Headquarters CID teams of which Phoebe Astley was a very active part. She was also handling one other case, that of a suspected abduction and rape, although it was coming to a successful conclusion.

‘Inspector Lavender is working with me.’

Coffin nodded. ‘Know him, of course.’ Larry Lavender, about whose name no one dared make jokes about sexual ambivalence, was a tough operator and came from a famous political family.

‘He’s got ideas, not all of which I agree with.’

Larry Lavender, yes, Coffin knew him as a man of ideas. He had helped his rapid promotion.

‘He says someone just walked in off the street and did it.’

‘Motive?’

‘He says first find the killer, and then you’ll find the motive.’

‘He could be right. So he doesn’t think it’s Jack Jackson.’

Phoebe shrugged. ‘I think he’d accept that it could be Jack. Whom we can’t find by the way. Never home.’

‘Are you looking?’

‘Not hard.’

Coffin nodded. ‘Well, I won’t weep for him. A man like Jack will have always a bolt hole. So where does he live . . . when he’s there?’

‘He used to live in the house in Minden Street. Not large, but smart. We’re coming up in the world in Spinnergate, you know. Then he bought a place in Watermen’s Row, near the river.’

Coffin nodded again. He did know. ‘Mimsie Marker will make a meal of it.’

Mimsie kept a newspaper and flower stall by the station; she was reputed to know all the gossip of the Second City and to pass it on with expertise, adding a little gloss where she thought necessary. She was also known to be a shrewd lady with a penny, acquiring substantial investments. The story had it that she walked round the corner in her shabby working clothes and then stepped into a Roller to get home. Coffin knew this was not true: it was one of the smaller Bentleys.

When Phoebe, still muttering crossly, had gone, Coffin got back to work on the papers on his desk. He had recently initiated a study of all the clubs in his bailiwick, some of which he suspected of being involved in drug offences and allied crimes. He thumbed through the report: the Cat Lovers’ Club sounded harmless enough, as did Tortoise Friends, but the Ladies of Leisure might need looking into. Several walking and hiking clubs – surely not much trouble there? But he knew from experience you could never be sure. Some were more sinister than others.

Then he put on a raincoat to go down to look at the flooded excavations.

The rain had stopped, but it was a damp, dark evening.

He looked down into the murk and wondered about the babies’ heads, once buried there, now uncovered. Although dark, the water was not quite opaque; reflections shimmered and moved in the lights from the building behind. You could imagine you saw shapes.

‘You could almost imagine that was a skull.’ He must have spoken aloud.

‘It is a skull.’

He felt a presence behind him and looked up. There was a tall, sturdily built woman in a raincoat but no hat. Her hair was wet, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was attractive, he found. Coffin moved forward, as if he would try to get the skull out. In fact he wanted to; he disliked intensely the thought of an infant head resting in the mud. He crouched down, trying to get at it.

The woman put her hand on his shoulder. ‘No, leave it. Let the archaeologists do it. Everything has to be mapped in situ.’

He stood up; they were about as tall as each other. ‘Dr Murray, I presume?’

She nodded. ‘And I know who you are, too. I know your wife.’

‘You know Stella?’