Coffin’s Game

‘Better open it, sir. Or shall I do it for you?’ A thin pair of transparent plastic gloves was held out, ready. Still reluctant, Coffin smoothed on the gloves; he knew the rules.

‘No.’ Coffin stretched out his hand, now masked, and lifted the tiny gold fastening. The bag yawned open in front of him. ‘It’s been damaged, the bag should open more slowly.’

‘Yes, I reckon it’s been wrenched apart. Not malice, I don’t think. Whoever did it wanted to be sure that it fell wide apart. So you could see what was inside. At a glance.’

Coffin looked at Archie Young sharply. ‘You meant something by that.’

‘Take a look, sir.’

Coffin frowned as he drew out a photograph. He laid it on the desktop in front of him. Archie, watching the Chief Commander closely, saw the colour melt from his face to be replaced by a pallor and then a flush that spread to his throat and touched his temple. Coffin put out his hand and covered the picture. He looked up at Archie Young: ‘That photo is a fake. Stella is not mad, bad and dangerous.’

‘No,’ said Archie. ‘Of course not.’ But he said it awkwardly, half defensively.

‘Stella does not eat human flesh. God, no. That woman –’ he tapped the picture – ‘is eating an arm, I can see the wrist. A bleeding human arm.’

‘Bit of,’ said Archie even more awkwardly. And it wasn’t actually dripping with blood. The blood, if that was what it was, looked dry.

The picture, of course, was a fake, but why? And the face, and the body, what you could see of it, was certainly Stella Pinero’s.

Archie felt miserable: it was a bloody awful thing to have happened. No, he mustn’t keep using that word, there was too much blood around as it was. He looked with sympathy at the Chief Commander, who seemed suddenly older.

‘The dead woman is not Stella,’ said Coffin. ‘And this photograph is not of Stella.’

He’s a good man, Archie said to himself, whatever she’s done to him, he doesn’t deserve this.

The devil got a hold of his tongue because he heard himself say: ‘Some anthropologists think that kissing developed from biting.’

‘Thank you.’

There was a pause during which Archie Young tried to think of something sensible and wise to say, before he decided that silence might be best.

Coffin shook himself, like a dog coming in from the rain. ‘Let’s get down to this. We are policemen, investigators. Who is the dead woman, and how did she die?’

‘We don’t know the answers yet to the first question. As to the second, it looks as though she was strangled. The face was beaten after death.’

‘And the next thing, after establishing identity …’ Coffin started the sentence.

If we can, said Archie Young silently to himself. He had dread feelings about this dead woman.

‘Is to find out how and why she was carrying my wife’s handbag. If indeed it is Stella’s and not a replica,’ Coffin pushed on. ‘And that in itself is a strange thing. Why?’

It’s all strange, Archie thought, mighty strange. ‘Of course we will find out who she is,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt. He grappled with another problem: how to refer to the Chief Commander’s wife in the embarrassing present circumstance.

He compromised. ‘Miss Pinero might be able to throw some light on it when questioned.’ Coffin looked at him gloomily, even apprehensively. Archie floundered on. ‘The bag might have been lost or stolen.’

‘With the photograph in it?’

Wonder if he’ll have a breakdown, Archie thought. He looks as though he could. On the edge. But no, he’s a strong fellow, mentally and physically. Except he loves that woman, that’s always dangerous. ‘It’s a joke that photograph,’ he said.

‘The dead body is not a joke,’ said Coffin savagely.

Archie Young was silenced. From the outer room, Coffin could hear Paul Masters chatting away cheerfully. Too cheerfully, he thought sourly, and there was a woman laughing. For a moment, he thought it might be Stella, but it was one of the secretaries. He knew the voice, there was a brassy ring to it which today he found irritating. She laughed again, damn her. He wondered if he could institute a no laughing rule like a no smoking rule.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ Coffin heard himself saying. ‘I have not the least idea in the world where Stella has gone.’

That, thought Archie, is one of the comments you are better off not hearing. He liked and admired the Chief Commander, he liked and admired Stella Pinero, too, but he wanted to keep out of their relationship. Let them sort it out. She would turn up. You had to allow actresses their freedom. ‘She’ll get in touch,’ he heard himself saying.

Coffin looked at his old friend and colleague and suddenly realized he was being offered sympathy. He laughed and pulled himself together.

‘I am sure she will, Archie, and it had better be soon.’ There was a note in his voice which suggested that Stella, when she returned, would have some questions to answer. He stood up. ‘I’d better get back to work.’

The Chief Superintendent rose too. ‘Anything new on the bombers?’

Coffin shook his head. What he had learnt on his trip north was confidential even from Archie Young. ‘Nothing much,’ he said in a noncommittal voice. ‘Inspector Lodge was first in to inspect the body in Percy Street, I suppose?’

‘Pretty smartish,’ agreed Archie Young. ‘Asked to come with me as soon as he heard about it. He was told, of course.’ Anything to do with the bombed area was for him to know about, he was their expert, the local, middle-range one. All the foremost terrorist watchers had probably been in Edinburgh or wherever it was the Chief Commander had really gone. On this point, Archie had his reservations. Edinburgh first, and then on to – where?

‘I suppose he hoped he’d got a dead terrorist.’

‘I don’t know what he hoped. He doesn’t show his mind, that one.’

The two looked at each other. They would be glad to be rid of the Todger, but life was not so simple.

‘He’s very good at what he does,’ Coffin allowed. Not a loveable man, but who would be in that job. He could not regard himself as a totally loveable person. He heard Stella’s voice: ‘No, darling, not a cuddly person. Many good qualities and I love you madly, but not cosy.’

Was that why she had gone away? Was she running away from him?

Did Stella love him? He had never felt totally sure. You had to remember that she was an actress.

And where was she, damn her.

‘I’ll take the bag with me,’ said Archie Young, reaching out a hand for the bag in its plastic container. ‘Forensics, and all that.’

Coffin nodded.

‘If I could suggest, sir, you might have a look round at home to see if Miss Pinero’s bag is there or not.’

‘I will, I will.’ He would get round to it when he felt less sore.

‘Or she might say herself …’ Archie left the rest of the sentence delicately unsaid.

‘When we speak again, I will certainly be asking,’ said Coffin. He watched the Chief Superintendent depart with careful, depressing tact, closing the door quietly and not smiling.

Feeling unloved and out of sorts, Coffin slumped back in his chair and went to work on the mound of papers in front of him. Word processors, far from reducing this load, added to it daily. A truism, of course, but he was not in the mood to be original.

He wondered where Stella was and why she had said nothing which was true; but he shrank from the painful thought that perhaps it was better he did not know more. A lie had to hide something, didn’t it?

‘I would not have this feeling if it were not for that terrible photograph. Which was not a joke. A fake, but not a joke.’ And also because of the information gently passed over to him in Scotland. At the time he had tried to reject it, shrug it off as a case of mistaken identity, or a computer error, or someone’s genuine mistake, which did happen even with the men he was being briefed by. Now he did not know.