A Dark Coffin

‘Joe, do we know someone called Merry? He wants to come round. Left a message on the answerphone.’

Coffin sat over his wine with Harry while Stella tactfully took herself off for a theatre gossip with some cronies across the room. She knew when to make herself scarce.

‘They were decent enough people, the Macs, although they had a tough side, you kept their rules. They ran a small ice-cream van in the summer and fish and chips in the winter.’

‘I think they still do something similar,’ said Coffin thoughtfully.

‘Do they? Thought they might have retired by now.’

‘No, not yet. Gone upmarket, I’d say.’

‘Really? You surprise me. Didn’t seem that sort.’

Coffin leaned forward. ‘Your brother, what do you want done?’

Harry looked thoughtful. ‘Dunno.’

‘I could bring him in, I suppose. If he’s been in the riot, have him charged.’

Harry had sorted himself out a bit. ‘I think I just want to lay hands on him before he does something terrible … I know I am a grown man, and so is he, and we are both responsible for our own actions, but I feel as though I am responsible with him. as if he is a part of me. Or I am of him.’

He looked at Coffin and spread out his hands. ‘Twins are different.’

‘They must be. Does he feel the same about you?’

‘No, I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. It may be because I went into the police, he became what he is, perhaps couldn’t help himself. You don’t believe that?’

‘And I don’t think you do.’

‘Some of the time, oh yes, I do. The worst times.’

‘What’s his record? Come on, you can tell me. I can find out.’

Harry trotted a sad, bitter little list of shoplifting, robbery, succeeded by robbery with violence.

‘Has he ever killed anyone?’

Harry took a deep breath. ‘I think he did once. The girl that I told you about, but it was never proved and he always said No, not him.’

‘That’s the worst, is it? There’s nothing else I ought to know?’

Harry seemed to debate inside himself. ‘We’re still close, not telepathy or anything like that, but I like to know where he is and what he’s up to. And sometimes I pick up feelings, sensations … I don’t know if he is the same way with me, it was so when we were kids, but that was a long time ago.’

He waited for Coffin to laugh or crack a joke, which was why he never admitted any abnormal closeness with his twin in the society of policemen in which he moved. Probably wouldn’t admit them anywhere, he told himself, but it seems necessary now.

‘And now you have a bad sensation?’

‘Horrible,’ said Harry frankly. ‘Like knowing you’ve got a mortal disease … I think he is my mortal disease.’

Coffin stood up. ‘I think we need a stronger drink, both of us. I will see what Max can do, and I ought to make a telephone call.’

Trent nodded. ‘I suppose I ought to call the wife.’

‘There are two phones here. A fax as well. Max has everything. How is Louise?’ He had to work to remember her name.

‘Fine,’ said Harry without notable enthusiasm.

‘How are things?’

Harry pulled a face. ‘Not one of those failed police marriages, if that’s what you mean … It works, she goes her way and I go mine.’

Coffin remembered that Louise was a career woman. ‘She’s not in the Force too?’

‘No, nothing like, miles away. She’s a solicitor.’

‘Not such miles.’

Harry laughed. ‘Don’t you believe it. She’s part of what’s called a Citizens’ Legal Agency, me and mine are the people she fights against. We’re dirt in her book.’ He gave Coffin a wry look. ‘Businesswise, of course. Nothing personal.’

Not a lucky man. Coffin thought. He nodded towards the end of the room. ‘Phone’s over there.’ As he did so, he caught Stella’s interested gaze. She had probably been doing some lipreading.

They went off to their separate telephones to stand, side by side, backs to the room.

Stella looked at them and shook her head. You could see they were both coppers, she thought, from the way they stood. Coppers or villains. The steam of the world in which they moved had blown over them both. She went over to them.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Do you remember anyone called Merry? He wants to come round. He’s left a message with Max.’

Merry, as he walked, was thinking: he’s close, somewhere around here, I can smell him. He’s coming out, that’s what it is. It’s like an old familiar smell. I suppose I hate him. Or does he hate me? Maybe the same thing. I’ll track you down, Harry, we have a score to settle, and we will. That’s a promise. From me to you.

And then he said aloud, so that all of Shambles Passage could have heard if it wished: ‘Doesn’t he realize what a sham his marriage is?’

Back at the theatre, the electrician had finished his work and gone home.

The lights in the box on the prompt side worried him. They were working tonight, but dim.

There was too much darkness altogether in that box, he didn’t understand it, but he didn’t like it.

‘I’m a practical man,’ he said to himself. ‘But there is something wrong here.’

Coffin finished his telephone call first and went back to his table. Stella walked over.

‘Good news or bad?’

‘Middling. Jim Tanner is in charge and says he’s controlling it, and I’d better keep away.’

Superintendent Tanner of the uniformed police was a good and efficient officer. And also tactful.

‘He didn’t put it like that.’