The Coffin Tree

And Phoebe Astley.

‘The woman is good,’ he had said to Timpson. ‘She was doing a very fine job where she was. I was surprised when she put in. She deserves serious consideration. You’ll know when you see her.’

And that is where I will go out, Coffin nodded to himself, partly because I know Phoebe – she is a friend and for a time was more than that so I don’t want to seem prejudiced – and partly because I am absolutely determined she is chosen.

And also because I have fixed it that you will, Phoebe.

I want you here, Phoebe, and I want you now.

He looked across at Teddy Timpson who stared back. Both of them were skilled at communicating without words. They were both remembering a conversation that they had had earlier in the month, and behind that conversation was a train of events which explained why he wanted Phoebe on his team.

He had spoken to Teddy Timpson two weeks ago. Not a man with whom he felt wholly at ease or wholly safe. He had a lot to tell him; information that Timpson had to be told, but all the same, Coffin had edited it carefully. Placed as he was, at the top of an uneasy pyramid, he kept a lot quiet inside him. Some topics were hotter than others.

Security, for instance, where he was in communication with various government agencies. Sometimes he was obliged to pass on all he learned to the responsible units in his force; at other times, he kept details to himself.

For a few months now he had had meetings in the old City of London with a committee made up of men from the Treasury, the Bank of England, the City of London, the Inland Revenue and the hard boys from Customs and VAT, a man from Scotland Yard and Coffin; the major clearing banks were represented also.

The committee was called the Resources (Police: London) Committee – RPC for short – and a man from the Treasury kept the minutes, in his head presumably, since no one ever saw them again. Too secret. Coffin made his own notes of what went on. There was never an agenda, the Chair, Althea Adams from the Bank of England conducted the meeting in her own terrifying way.

The resources of the three London Forces, the Met, the City of London, and his own, it did not discuss. Money, it did.

They were a group of men of influence and power who were really looking into what one member called ‘dirty money’.

Coffin found these meetings, which took place at irregular intervals and in different rooms, both stimulating and alarming. He enjoyed meeting all the trained, tough-minded professionals.

Earlier in his career, he would have found them intimidating, products as they were of schools and universities he had never entered; the Treasury man, Winchester and New College (of course); the two men from the clearing banks, Eton and Trinity, Cambridge (again, of course) and Althea, Cheltenham Ladies College, Girton and Harvard (this time, not of course, but predictable). Now he took them as he found them: clever and hard-working.

Besides, he had done his homework: he knew that Althea had a sick child whose care preoccupied her, that the Treasury mandarin was about to divorce his wife, and one of the men from the clearing banks had just come through a gruelling treatment for cancer.

He hadn’t been able to get much about the Inland Revenue and Customs chaps, which he regretted because he suspected them of being the prime agents behind this committee.

What the committee made of him, he did not examine, but he kept quiet and took it all in. He was not surprised at his own self-confidence, but he did remember the thin youth with the dark hair who would once have been ill at ease in such company. Anyway, what could they have said of him? There’s John Coffin who’s having a bad time with his missus?

It was with all this in his mind (and when he already knew that Phoebe would be up for the new job), that two weeks ago he had suggested that Teddy Timpson meet him for a drink in the pub near Spinnergate tube station, a comfortable establishment too far away from police headquarters to be used by the local coppers. He sat waiting in the Black Dog where they had no air conditioning on this hot day so that the ice in his glass was melting fast. It was not like DCI Timpson to be late, he was a brisk and cheerful man.

But he found himself glad of the quiet time. It wasn’t the best of days. He was alone in his home in the tower of the old St Luke’s church, now converted into the three flats with the theatre complex adjacent. Stella was away, filming in Spain, leaving him in charge of the cat and the dog. The dog, Bob, who answered to any name and the cat, Tiddles, who never answered at all unless it suited, were his sole companions.

His sister Letty was in Scotland visiting brother William, probably with a view to extracting some money from him for her reeling property empire. She’d be in for a disappointment there, he thought, as William was a tight man with money. Still, it would be an interesting meeting – Greek joining battle with Greek. On the whole, he backed Letty but you could never be sure.

Then, like someone probing a sore tooth, his mind went back to Stella. She had telephoned from the airport in Madrid to announce she would not be home just yet, love, but was flying into New York, stop-over in Paris.

Not even Heathrow, London, he had noted glumly, as if she couldn’t bear to be on the same island. And to be called ‘love’ – that was bad, very bad. No one really close to Stella was ever called love in that way; it was what she called a fellow actor for whom she had small regard, or a bad director.

What had he done? Or not done? They had parted on warm, even passionate terms; he remembered it well, that night before she left, now it had all gone cold.

He would find out in the end; Stella never kept anything to herself when she was angry which he had to suppose she was, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He didn’t enjoy these ups and downs with Stella. He had thought all that sort of thing was in the past, when, God knew, they had enough of them. They had met when young, too young probably, loved and parted, met again briefly before moving away from each other, and then coming together when his sister Letty had created her St Luke’s Theatre complex.

Happy ever after, he’d thought. He watched Teddy Timpson come through the door.

‘Sorry, sir. Got held up.’ The man looked flustered and hot.

‘Have a drink before you say another word.’

‘Thanks … lager, please.’

Teddy didn’t drink a lot, unlike some of his colleagues, but he probably had other vices. ‘I got held up. A double stabbing in Cock Street, in the Little Cockatoo pub.’ He drank thirstily. ‘It’s always been a bad place … it’s the landlord.’

‘Stabbed?’

‘No, he did it. His wife and the barman, they were having it off and he found out. Well, he always knew, I reckon, but only took off today. I blame the weather.’

‘At least you’ve got it tied up.’

‘Not on your life: he denies it, says some man walked through the door and knifed them both.’

‘Where was he?’

‘Hiding in the cellar.’

‘What about the knife?’

‘We can’t find it. And no witnesses, the pub was empty.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘It is round there,’ said Timpson gloomily. ‘They know when to run. Anyway, he had a bright idea, he set the place alight.’ He lifted his sleeve to his nose. ‘I still stink of smoke.’

‘Did the whole place go up?’

‘No, no, he didn’t make a good job of it.’ He grinned. ‘Mind you, it wasn’t a bad idea. Fire does destroy.’

‘I’ve said a bit already as regards what I want to talk to you about. I won’t procrastinate any more.’

‘Yes,’ said Timpson cautiously. ‘You’ve said a bit. Not a lot.’ Procrastinate … He’s an intellectual, my guvnor; he doesn’t know it, but he is. Timpson thought about an earlier chief who might have said: This is the business, boys. Or, in a jokey mood: Up boys and at ’em.

‘It’s about the new unit.’

‘Yes, the one that’s going to be liaising with all City institutions and all police units as well.’ The word was that there wasn’t much money and it was going to have to work hard. ‘A political invention to keep critics happy,’ was what someone had said. ‘It’s going to be smallish, isn’t it?’

‘Money,’ said Coffin, then sat thinking about how he should put it to Timpson, whom he had used before as a go-between because Timpson’s negotiating skills were well known. ‘Money’s short.’ He had every reason to be thinking about money. At the back of his mind, not to be discussed now with Chief Inspector Timpson, was a big money problem. He would be seeing Archie Young, now CID supremo, later.

Timpson waited. Money came in everywhere. Who knew better than he did?

Coffin looked at Timpson, wondering what the gossip was and how much he knew. ‘There’s quite a lot going on at the moment.’

Timpson kept a careful opaque look on his face.

‘You guessed?’