Coffin Underground

‘Sal says you need a new blue shirt. The cuffs are frayed and it’s not worth the trouble of ironing.’

Sal obviously had high standards. He bought a couple of new blue shirts.

‘Sal says could you try not to get lipstick on your collar.’ This message was delivered with a slight smirk. ‘She says it’s hard to get off.’

‘It’s red ink,’ said Coffin, lying.

Living as a bachelor, and at the moment wifeless, he was not celibate. But he felt it was his business and not Sarah Fleming’s. Sal, he decided, could look after her own affairs, if she had any apart from laundry, and leave his alone. Old witch.

Two weeks had passed. There was no news of either William Egan or his son-in-law but the daughter had taken herself off to Spain. It might mean something, or it might mean no more than that she had had enough of both father and husband. The general feeling was that she had a right to such a reaction.

But the Pitts had arrived home and No. 22 was looking lively. Windows opened to let the sun in, new curtains and a big car parked outside the door. John Coffin had not met them again yet, but had seen them once or twice as he passed and given a wave. Whether he was remembered or not he was unsure, but diplomacy and good manners prevailed, so that he got a wave back. Edward Pitt was tall and handsome, every bit the diplomat. With white hair he looked older than he probably was, just as his wife looked younger. Irene Pitt was still youthful, a pretty, curly-haired woman with bright eyes and skin with a shine on it. But the beauty of the family was the daughter, a slender, leggy creature of fifteen years. She had joined a smart London girls’ school and disappeared on the train every day to her studies. There was a younger boy who had been recruited to the local public school, and heaven help him there, said Mrs Brocklebank. She added the information that Mr Pitt, although retired from the Foreign Service, was going to join the foreign bureau of a London newspaper, and that Mrs Pitt, who was an economist, intended to find some work too. She was a lot younger than her husband. There were also a dog and a cat to join the household but they were at present in quarantine.

That concluded her head count, but she added the news that the Pitts would be giving a party for friends and neighbours to celebrate their return.

Nothing was said about the bad character of the house, but Coffin felt it hung there like a grim smile on the face of a friend.

No sign anywhere of William Egan, but his son-in-law had been spotted once down by the river. He had got on a bus and disappeared in the direction of Woolwich before he could be stopped.

The contact who claimed to have seen him, a GBH man of many violent episodes and many incarcerations, now going straight, said he was just standing by the river staring at the Cutty Sark.

Thanks,’ said Coffin over the telephone to Bernard Jones. ‘I’ll keep my eyes open for him myself. I think I know his face. Red hair with a matching moustache on Place, as I remember, and a bit of a bent nose.’

‘You’ve got the man. And it was his wife who bent the nose. With her handbag. Like father, like daughter.’

Bernard Jones was his hot line to what was happening inside Greenwich; it was always useful to have one, especially as he himself had more than one case on his hands. Crime was really bubbling in South London.

His career was at an interesting point. He had recently been appointed to head a small group of detectives based in South London and charged with the overall investigation of all serious crimes in the area. The Tactical Activity Squad it was called, known as TAS. It was a period when such bodies bearing impressive initials were appearing on all sides. He and TAS were a part of the times. He was assisted by a chief inspector, who was his deputy, and by a very young and sharp inspector, and by three even younger detective-sergeants. He found himself relying more and more on Inspector Paul Lane. The authority of TAS overrode the local CID structure, which had lately been the subject of an inquiry. He was well aware that he and his team were not popular and that to see him rubbed out by a man of known violence would cause very few tears.

‘Thanks, Bernard. What about a drink at the Painted Parrot at the weekend?’ An arrangement was made. It was Wednesday and he was home early for once.

He went to look out of his window. Not very likely that either Egan or his son-in-law, Terry Place, would be walking down Church Row, but you never knew. His luck might be in.

Round the corner from Queen Charlotte’s Alley came a girl, tall and slender, with bright auburn hair tied in a ponytail with a white bow; she was pushing a pram and was accompanied by a young boy who was holding her hand. He was hanging on to the skirt of a small girl. Behind them came a youth, also red of hair, clearly related, carrying a bundle.

There was something about that bundle that looked familiar to John Coffin.

The whole procession came to a stop outside No. 5. Then the lad approached the house, and he heard the bounding of feet up the stairs and the noise of something bouncing against his front door.

He counted up to ten, then went to look.

Yes, his washing. The girl pushing the pram was Sarah Fleming. She had a bright, clever face, with the promise of beauty, she looked about sixteen, but was no doubt older. Her clothes were simple, jeans and a shirt, but she wore them with style, yes, that was it, she had style.

And if the rest of the bunch, the little ones, were not her own offspring, then they were her brothers and sisters.

Queen Charlotte’s Alley was a short cul-de-sac bounded at the end by Deller’s soap factory. Deller’s no longer made soap on the premises; thus the air was not so noisome as previously, but it was still a working concern with heavy lorries rumbling in and out of the yard all day. Queen Charlotte’s Alley was not a quiet street, and never had been throughout its two hundred years of life, because the little workmen’s cottages had housed the large families of the times, many of whom had worked in the foundry which had stood on the site where Deller’s was built. In those days there had been access straight through from the alley.

Now there was only one large family in the street and that was the Flemings. The other houses, and there were but six, were nearly all occupied by young couples who liked to say they had bought an eighteenth-century house in Greenwich and were renovating it. Which usually meant putting in a new kitchen and a bathroom and brass fittings on the front door. There were a couple of elderly survivors from the old days, living on in their unreconstructed cottages. The Fleming family belonged in this party since the house had been rented by the family for at least three generations. To their despairing landlord they seemed like sitting tenants in perpetuity.

‘I don’t like you doing his washing.’

‘Oh fiddle. The money’s good.’ She was more or less working her way through the Polytechnic A-levels course, with a firm eye on Oxford. She was bright and knew it. ‘Old Brocklebank did us a good turn. Besides, I only take it down the laundrette, and then iron it. He could do it himself if he thought about it.’ From John Coffin she had earned enough money to buy two books she badly wanted: she created a kind of study for herself in a corner of the kitchen, with a table and bookshelves where she could work in peace. Like everything Sal did, it had a kind of imaginative elegance.

Now she was setting the table for a meal, moving briskly about. A kettle was humming on the old gas stove with a big brown teapot hung over the spout to get warm. In a little while there was toast on the table, a pot of jam, and a row of six cups to fill.

‘Call the kids.’

‘We’re here waiting, Sal,’ said a soft small voice.

‘Yes, you are, Weenie, but not the others.’

Weenie was the little girl whose skirt had been so firmly grasped. Food was Weenie’s delight, she was always hungry.

‘They’re under the table, Sal.’

Weenie lifted the cloth to reveal her three brothers crouched there. Their ages went up in steps. Then there was a big gap until Sal and her sibling, Peter. Mr Fleming had been away at sea for a good spell after their births, then he came back and the family progression started again. Mrs Fleming never seemed to get the hang of birth control, to Sal’s fury. Even in those days, she had known what would be best for the family. Less of them, far less. Preferably just her and Peter.

At the table, watching them eat, she felt this even more strongly. They were a responsibility.

‘You certainly eat well, Weenie, but you don’t grow on it.’

Something had gone wrong with the genes, she felt, when it came to Weenie and the others. She and Peter were all right. She knew herself to be clever and there were times when she felt beautiful, and Peter was certainly good to look at and he was very practical if not scholastically inclined. But the others, well, it was hard to be sure, she was watching them and trying to make up her mind. Not like me, she felt.

She knew she was doing what was right, but she didn’t have to like it. The little ones could go into care, the social worker had said when their parents died, but Sarah had turned this down. It wasn’t that she loved them so much, probably she didn’t, but she had the feeling that there was something strange and secret about them as a family that was better kept private. So a special arrangement had been made with the social services.

‘Give me some money,’ she had said, ‘we’ve got the house. We’ll manage, thank you.’

They were a burden she had hoisted on her own back and it was heavy there.

Weenie, Tom, Lester, and Eddy.

‘Where have you boys been putting your feet? Black marks all over the carpet,’ she said, then pressed on without waiting for an answer. ‘Your turn tomorrow,’ she said to Peter. ‘I’m at the Poly.’

She had had to leave school before her A-levels, but she was continuing her studies at the Local Polytechnic College. It was her intention to get a place at Oxford. Balliol, she believed, would suit her as it seemed a radical place. She was left-wing in her politics.

He grunted assent; he never argued with her.

‘The Pitts are back,’ he said. By which he meant he would rather be with them than her, wanted to be invited by them and hadn’t been.

‘I noticed.’

‘Nona’s home.’ But he hadn’t seen her. That was what he meant.

‘Three years is a long time, Pete.’ A long time for a girl like Nona; she had been twelve when the two had been inseparable and Peter only fifteen. Now she was fifteen, nearly sixteen. She would have changed. Sal knew how a girl could change. Especially a girl with Nona’s background. But Peter had not changed. People like Peter don’t. They become what they have it in them to become at an early age and stay that way. Possibly for ever.

‘You couldn’t expect things to be the same.’

‘It was her mother’s fault. I blame her. Everyone knows she was having an affair with that MP. And because Mr Pitt was angry he took it out on me.’