The Coffin Tree

He handed round the drinks: whisky with ginger – he ought to shudder and his Edinburgh half-brother – lawyer William – would certainly do so, but it seemed to be what Alfred Rome wanted.

‘Sir Alfred.’

‘Ferdie, please.’

Sir Alfred, Ferdie to his friends, he must remember that, was the warden – he preferred the title to vice chancellor or president – to the very new university tucked away in the east of the Second City, in the Bad Lands, not hitherto considered educable, but no doubt Ferdie Rome would change that. He was of the new breed, educated at Ruskin College, Oxford, then at Birkbeck College in the University of London, then a short period in the Cabinet office. The unusually rapid promotion suggested to Coffin that this was a political appointment, which made Sir Alfred all the more formidable. Tough, square-shouldered and completely bald in his late thirties, he looked fit for anything. Coffin now had two universities in his area and had to protect both from the rebels and the lawless.

Coffin carried two glasses across the room to where two of the women, Jane Frobisher, banker, and Professor Edna Halliday, economist, stood talking. Edna’s stocky figure was in skirt and shirt but Jane, usually impeccable, was wearing a long-sleeved silk dress – she looked hot.

‘Jane, gin and tonic; Professor, white wine.’

Three other members of the group were senior policemen, two from this force: Chief Inspector Teddy Timpson, CID, and Superintendent William Fraser, from the uniformed wing, and the third. Chief Inspector Clare Taylour, from the Thames Valley. The extra figure, there to keep the balance, was a figure from the outside world, a journalist and barrister: Geraldine Ducking. When you said outside world, that was with reservations because Geraldine came from a family deep rooted in the old Docklands. It was for this reason Coffin had called her in. Geraldine was the tallest and largest woman there, but she dressed well, so that her size was unnoticed, and she had small, neat hands and feet.

Clare Taylour had refused wine and spirits and was drinking mineral water; she was a calm, forceful woman who intimidated most people, but not John Coffin, who had known her for years. Today she had a bandage wrapped round her ankle and was limping. ‘We’re all walking wounded today, look at Geraldine and Jane – she says she’s been sunburnt.’

Coffin carried whisky round to all the others, including Geraldine whose favourite tipple it was, she was a self-proclaimed deep drinker, but managed to stay remarkably sober. She was also one of the cleverest people Coffin had ever met. She held out her hand, on her arm was a dressing. ‘Wasp bite,’ she said.

Among this group of people were some of his closest friends and colleagues; outside of Stella and his sister Letty, these were the people he liked and trusted.

And there had been Felix, the happy man, aptly named. Twenty-eight years old, ambitious but friendly, and now dead.

Dead for a month. One young friend gone by violence.

He looked round at them: Sir Alfred he knew less well but he was beginning to enjoy the sight of that sturdy figure always wearing what looked like, but surely couldn’t be, the same suit and the same grey suede boots. He had small feet and delicate hands. Jane Frobisher, talking away with her usual animation, but she did not seem as happy as usual in her lovely clothes that Coffin, under the tutelage of Stella, could recognize as couture. Of course, bankers earned that sort of money, even in these days of recession. Professor Edna Halliday, by contrast, looked as if she had got out of bed and put on whatever was to hand. Skirt and striped shirt were clean but creased, her hair pinned back with a casual hand so that bits of it were escaping. But it would be wrong, he thought, to describe her as unattractive. On the contrary, she was full of life and humour and he knew for a fact that she had a string of lovers, usually two at a time. He had never been invited to be one himself (the list was by invitation only), she liked them younger, much younger. This did not seem to be held against her by other women and she got on with everyone. Clever lady.

You never noticed what Clare Taylour was wearing and that was probably part of her own skills and why she was such a success as a detective.

The two policemen had the right anonymous clothes as well, although Teddy Timpson was young enough to wear a sharp tie. Fraser was in uniform and putting on weight.

Coffin felt sympathy there; his hand strayed to his own waistband. Marriage seemed to be fattening; accordingly, Stella had put him on a starvation diet. He didn’t get enough exercise, that was the trouble.

Coffin was on the committee but would not be chairing it; that task fell to Teddy Timpson. He would also withdraw when one of the candidates whom he knew appeared.

‘Important looking lot, aren’t we?’ said Sir Ferdie jovially. For such a tiddly little job – he did not say this aloud but Coffin could read his thoughts.

‘I’ve been lucky to get you all,’ he said. ‘But it’s an important job, more important than it looks.’

An innovation of his own. The officer appointed would have the rank of chief inspector or superintendent, according to age and experience, and would liaise with all the important institutions in his bailiwick.

There was too much what Coffin called ‘loose crime’ floating around.

The unit would be small but hand-picked.

As had the committee been; it had been carefully put together whether the members knew it or not. At least one of them was beginning to suspect and to wonder if acceptance had been wise.

‘You ought to look after us, though,’ said Sir Alfred, ‘important we may be, healthy we are not. Now there’s me, on tablets for my blood pressure, there’s Geraldine who’s had collagen injections –’

‘Oh, surely not.’ Geraldine was not famous for her beauty but she had kept what looks she had and glowed with health. Coffin hoped she could not hear what was being said. Geraldine was younger than the other women there, in her early forties, whereas they were in their fifties. She had the careless charm of someone who always got her own way. She was generous, cheerful and interested in men. She had made one careful advance to the chief commander, more as an experiment than anything else, but she had not been annoyed when he did not respond. She was younger than the others but a little bit older than she admitted.

Coffin knew all the ages. Among other things. ‘Oh yes, I recognize the shine. And one of us has just had an operation for cancer and we’re probably all on tranquillizers. Not you, of course.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘By keeping my eyes and ears open. You ought to do the same.’ Perhaps I do. Coffin thought, perhaps I do. I don’t know everything, but I always know something – that’s my job.

Years as a detective had made him observant of friends and foes alike. It was automatic with him. For instance, he had seen Sir Alfred travelling to London from Oxford (where they had both been attending the same conference) on a second class ticket in a first class coach. Naughty or just absent-minded? He had seen Geraldine entering the block of buildings in East Hythe which housed a doctor, a solicitor and on the top floor, an inquiry agent.

Josh Armer, the solicitor, was not the most respectable lawyer in the business and was friend to more criminals than Coffin cared to think about. Professional friend, of course, Josh always sent in a bill. The phrase ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’ might have been invented for him. A plump, gently spoken man, Josh was a classical music fan and supposed to be an expert on Rachmaninov.

Arabella Hammer, the female inquiry agent upstairs, was his equal and they were reported to be lovers.

Then he had remembered that Josh Armer belonged in this district, one of the families that had lived here for decades in a vast kindred. There weren’t so many of them left now, but they popped up occasionally. Geraldine’s family was such another.

You had to remember that some of these dockland areas were like villages where kids married to live near mum, just as mum and dad had in their generation. There was a lot of intermarrying and probably a bit of incest as well. Such a way of life was dying out of course, but pockets still remained. Kindred loyalty went back to the Anglo-Saxons and earlier, when an eye for an eye meant just that.

‘What’s the name of this new unit?’ asked Sir Alfred, examining his papers. ‘Seems to have escaped me.’

Coffin let his eyes flicker round the room before he answered. Teddy Timpson had married a local girl and that meant he was sometimes biased. The trouble with being a detective was that you automatically suspected everyone of having secrets.

Especially when you had one or two yourself.

Coffin said, ‘The provisional name is Unit AN, but it hasn’t got a settled name yet,’ he went on. ‘Perhaps the committee can think of one.’

‘Leave that to Geraldine, shall we?’ said Ferdie. ‘She’s the word girl.’

‘Long time since I was a girl,’ called Geraldine over the top of her whisky, ‘but thank you for the name.’ She took a swig of her drink, but actually, as Coffin observed, drank very little. ‘When are you going to let me have a look at your mother’s memoirs? I could make a lovely TV series out of them.’

He laughed. ‘That’s what worries me.’

‘What a lady!’

A lady, in the genteel, white gloves and carrying-a-handbag style, his mother had never been, thought Coffin. A wanderer, an adventurer, and several-times-married lady, probably several times a bigamist and probably a liar into the bargain, leaving behind three abandoned siblings who only discovered each other late in life. There was John Coffin himself, his beautiful sister Letty and industrious William in Edinburgh and goodness knew who had sired him.

‘I think Stella wants to get her hands on it.’

‘I bet she does … Where is she now?’

Coffin hesitated. ‘In New York at the moment …’

‘I thought it was Spain.’ He saw the glitter in her eyes which was not drink nor sympathy. ‘It was Spain.’ Damn you, Geraldine, for being so well informed. ‘But she flew straight on to New York.’

He let them linger with their drinks for one more minute, then he caught Teddy Timpson’s eye and nodded. Time to begin.

Round the table, they shuffled the papers in front of them. Why did a committee always fidget? But they always did, some worse than others; this lot were moving the papers as if they were about to play a hand of cards with them … In a way they were – poker – but they didn’t know it.

‘We have three candidates, whom we will see in alphabetical order,’ began Chief Inspector Timpson. ‘Two men and one woman.’

He had their names in front of him: Simon Daly, from the Met, a very strong record and destined to go high; James Wood, who was from his own force, ambitious, pushing, a difficult character but able.