Coffin and the Paper Man

Archie Young shook his head. ‘Waiting for forensics.’

‘Anything from the man? Identity, past record?’

‘He hasn’t got a record,’ said Young regretfully. ‘As far as we know, he is baby-clean.’

‘What about Interpol?’

Young gave his chief a sharp look. ‘He has got a foreign look, I picked that up too, but I think it’s just dirt. His clothes seem to be English. But we are trying Amsterdam.’ He considered it for a moment. ‘I dare say they won’t know him, he looks nameless to me. You get an instinct about these things, and that’s how I feel about him.’

No.7, when brought in for questioning, elected to remain silent. He did not deny being in Rope Alley nor admit it, but just let the questions wash over him like the water to which he seemed so alien.

He was a man whose eyes roamed round the room all the time, but never resting on a face. Narrow brown eyes with large violet stains beneath them. Still quite a young man, he had plenty of hair and his teeth were white, not broken or jagged. His hands were the worst thing about him, worse even than the perpetually moving eyes; they were long-fingered with chewed nails and scarred and stained. The wrists had their own set of scars, some dark red and new, others old and puckered as if these parts of him had led a battered life of their own.

Somewhere some mental hospital must have known him, possibly even now some anxious social worker was wondering where he was, speculated Coffin. But possibly not, he looked like a man who would manage everything on his own, even his own death. It might be very hard to track his passage through the world.

While Coffin studied him, he started to walk about the interview room with big, fast steps. Young sprang to his feet.

‘Leave him,’ said Coffin.

No.7 paced up and down the room.

Finally, as he was led away, he said: ‘Of course, I did it, but you’ll never prove it.’

‘Won’t we, by God,’ said Young. ‘If he did it, then we will prove it.’

‘But you don’t think he did?’

Archie Young was silent. Then he gave a shrug. ‘Doesn’t look so good somehow. I’m beginning to think not. The forensics will help. Maybe decide.’

‘I don’t think so, either,’ said Coffin. ‘I think he’s just having a bit of fun at our expense.’ But he didn’t look like a character with a whole lot of fun in him.

‘Heartless as a shark,’ said Young.

‘What else have you got going?’

‘I’m still working on the girl’s friends. Looking into the lot. Every one she knew. Kids at the disco she went to every week. Even her father.’

‘There’s something else. Don’t know what to make of it yet.’

He went to his desk, removed a manilla folder from a drawer and handed it over to Coffin.

‘I went over her room at home. Found these tucked away under a pile of tights.’

A roll of writing paper. Three pages. Each page had faint typewritten lines on it.

What he had before him were three short poems. He read them with a frown.

‘Love poems,’ he said aloud. ‘Faintly pornographic, but fairly harmless.’

‘Shows something,’ said Archie Young. ‘Shows something about her. Don’t know what yet, but I hope to find out. Don’t know who wrote them to her either, but I’ll find that out too.’

‘Any idea?’

‘I’m thinking of the people in Feather Street,’ he said. ‘They’re an educated lot. I showed these poems to my wife. She writes poetry. She says they are good poems. In their way. Not what she’d write, but good.’

The Zemans, the Annecks and the Darbyshires were the names in his mind.

‘The poems may not have anything to do with her murder, of course,’ said Coffin.

But he agreed it was something to work on.

*

When Coffin got home, he found the letter from the Paper Man waiting for him.

The letter was correctly addressed to him.

Chief Commander John Coffin, OBE. And the right address in St Luke’s Mansions. He had been accurately researched.

The communication was built up of letters cut out of newspapers and magazines, a kind of job lot, all sizes and colours and shapes.

The message was short:

The man you have in custody is not the right one. If you don’t get the right one, I will do the job for you.

This letter had no address, not to be expected, and no signature. The name Paper Man came later.

The police were still optimistic of an early conclusion to their investigation.

No.7 was still on their books, not entirely in the clear, far from it, he kept saying he had done it, and he had described her killing. He had seen it, if nothing else. But the blood on his jacket was animal blood, source unknown, while the knife could not have been the weapon: the blade was the wrong shape. Nor did his body secretions match those found on Anna’s body.

They had the poems. They were looking for the silver shoe. They were still hopeful.

But as time went on, it all went cold on them.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_7910391d-cbc1-5288-8e39-15df00cff292)

The days of Friday to Wednesday, June 2 to 7

Fred Kinver was building his own paper palace at home in Elder Street. He had collected all the newspaper reports of the killing of his daughter which he had stuck on a board in the kitchen. They lived for most of the time in the kitchen, so they were under his eyes as he ate and worked. The distress they caused his wife was ignored by him. Two sturdy piles of newspapers with their coloured supplements stood on a table by the door. On them was a handwritten sign: NOT TO TOUCH.

She did not touch. Wouldn’t have dreamt of it. She turned her eyes aside every time she went past.

Nearly two weeks after the killing, with the police investigation stuck, these reports were naturally less frequent, but Fred Kinver was pursuing his research in other channels.

‘Just off,’ he called to his wife who was making the bed upstairs. ‘I’ve washed the breakfast things.’ Not quite true, he had held them under the tap and left them on the side to drain, tea stains and marmalade marked them still, his wife would have to do them again. But she was prepared for this, and did so every day. The thing is to keep him occupied, she told herself, and not to let him know he does not do things well.

‘Where are you going?’ She didn’t really like him out of her sight just now. He had to protect her. She had to protect him.