The Coffin Tree

‘I’ll get round there.’ He might take Stella if she ever came home again which he sometimes doubted. She was good on such occasions, other women liked her.

Coffin looked down at his plate of chips. Not my mother, vanishing lady, my mother, you’d be home alone. She’d be long dead now. Or was she? His mother seemed just the sort to read you could live to be a hundred and sixteen and decide to do it. He pushed his plate away; the chips didn’t appeal so much.

The two men talked for a while longer, then Archie Young went off – still flushed with the news of his promotion, and wishing his wife was at home so that he could tell her – soon after the meal was finished. Promotion had come very quickly; he knew he owed a lot to the chief commander, but he also knew he was a good officer.

He didn’t have the older man’s imagination, and sometimes he thought the Big Man let the parameters of his imagination spread a mite too far. He was thinking that now.

Coffin had not told Archie Young all his thoughts even though he trusted him. He never did tell anyone everything. He had seeded the corn and must now await events.

Later, on the day of her interview, while Phoebe prepared herself for it and then went through it and got a hint of her success; and while Coffin sat thinking of his own problem – all this while the fire burned in the rough ground beyond the old Atlas factory.

When did it start? It must have started in the early afternoon because such fires burn slowly. The fire burned the mound of wood and leaves which a sexless figure put together, which he or she had lit and upon which, so a watcher said later, he or she had climbed. Hard to believe and the witness did not have good eyesight. Not climbing, perhaps, but dragged?

First smoke, then flames.

The body burned, the hair smouldered, the body fats caught and melted, the skin crisped.

Phoebe, who knew she had interviewed well, who was sure she had got the job, waited for Coffin to telephone her, and when he did not, tried to telephone him at home. He was not there so she left a message on his answering machine.

Phoebe came back into the picture and Stella returned to the fold on the same day, which was a complication. Both of them left a message on his answerphone.

Flying back today, fondest love, Stella. Get out the champagne. That meant she was in a good mood. Not necessarily forgiving (what was there to forgive, he asked himself), but certainly loving.

Phoebe Astley made her plea. Can you give me a bell? I am staying with a mate who has a place near the Tower. We could meet for a drink. I mean we’d better, hadn’t we? We’ve got to talk.

Coffin smiled wryly as he put down Tiddles’s food and pushed the dog’s nose out of the way. Phoebe always had rotten timing, that was one thing he now recalled about her. Stella, on the other hand, had the impeccable timing of a top actress.

Well, he would ring Phoebe, but in his own time; Phoebe had to learn about timing, and now it was Tiddles and the dog who came first.

He fed them both, washed his hands, because cat food (they both ate cat food, fortunately the dog could not read) smelt.

‘The thing is, Tiddles,’ he said. ‘To be quiet but not furtive.’ He considered the problem while he fed the dog.

‘I know: we’ll go to the Half a Mo.’ He was pleased with Phoebe and his own plans. As he left the interview room – without speaking to her – he had seen her talking to his assistant. She had a carrier bag from Minimal at her feet. Good girl, he had thought. Instinct, that’s what she’s got. Without knowing it, she has started work for me.

The pub, called Half a Mo by its regulars was placed on the junction by Halfpenny Lane and Motion Street, outside Coffin’s bailiwick and into the City of London.

Small and dark, it had always been popular with those seeking privacy. Coffin had arrested more than one villain there in the old days. Its real name, shown on the board swinging above the door, was the King’s Head, and there was a bearded head wearing a crown and clutching a glass to be seen, although wind and rain had weathered it. Only strangers to the district called it by that name.

The Half a Mo had changed since Coffin’s last visit. It had been brightened up, more lights, more paint, more noise. It had never been noisy, as he remembered it; people had muttered quietly over their drinks. Usually because they were up to no good. Now music blasted from several sources, but, as he reflected, this too was a good protection against conversations being heard.

In fact, he could hardly hear what Phoebe was saying; she had kept him waiting, which just confirmed what he thought about her timing.

She was sitting opposite him, looking bright-eyed and alert, and a good deal thinner than when he had seen her last year in Birmingham, where she had helped him through a difficult patch. She looked thinner, but that might be due to a smart-looking silk dress she was wearing.

‘How are things now?’ She lifted up the gin and tonic which had always been her tipple.

It was a routine question to which no answer need be given.

‘Fine,’ he said. Which was half true and half not true. He had survived a board of inquiry, some hostile media criticism, and been told that he could be sure of a KBE in the next Honours list. Also, he still had a wife, at least he thought so; he would know more about that when he met Stella off the plane tomorrow morning. ‘And what about you?’ Their past relationship meant that there was real feeling in the question.

‘Oh well, as you say, fine …’ She sipped her gin and looked away.

‘I was surprised when you put in for the job.’

‘I heard about it on the grapevine and thought it was one for me … Of course, I didn’t know much about it then, it was just a whisper.’ Now she did know. Or as much as he had told her and as much as she had guessed.

‘What about your husband and the children and the dog – do they like the idea of your working in the Second City?’

Phoebe looked away. ‘Do you like my dress? It’s new, I bought it to celebrate getting the job. I know I have got it; I was tipped the wink.’

‘Come on, Phoebe.’

‘They don’t exist; there is no husband, no children, not even a dog. I made them up. But I expect you know that.’

‘I did check.’ He looked at her without a smile. ‘Why, Phoebe, why?’

She shrugged. ‘Well … I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after you swung into my office that day in Sparkhill, you hadn’t answered my party invitation. You just came in because you wanted help. And you looked so married.’

‘I didn’t know that. I didn’t know being married changed the looks.’

‘Well, it’s changed yours. And for the better, I may add.’

Coffin just stopped himself looking at his reflection in the wall mirror. ‘But you were doing very well in the West Midland force.’

‘You checked that too?’

He was silent.

‘Of course you did, you’re a thorough man, John, always were … I suppose I will have to call you Chief Commander and Sir now.’

‘You needn’t call me anything.’

‘I have called you some names in my time.’

‘Sorry, Phoebe. I expect I deserved them.’

‘I’ll tell you one day how much you deserved them.’

Coffin felt his spirits sinking. ‘I hope we are going to be able to work together.’

Phoebe moved sharply. ‘Will we be? I’ll be heading my own little unit and you are the big boss.’

‘I’ll explain.’

‘Perhaps you had better … When you telephoned in Sparkhill after I applied for the position, I knew you wanted me. I don’t say you fixed getting me the job, although you could have done, but you didn’t do it for love of me, so what else is there?’

First of everyone, she had caught on to the hidden agenda.