Cracking Open a Coffin

But for the police, it was a matter of reason. Evidence and reason, these were their tools … James Dean now, that was different. Emotion there.

‘I’ve half a mind to phone Dean, see what he knows. More than I do, I suspect.’ He had that feeling about Dean, that knowledge of some sort was tucked away inside him.

He reached out for the phone by the bed and dialled.

‘No, don’t,’ said Victoria, her voice sharp. ‘Leave it, just leave it.’

Jim Dean also went about his business. He had no wife, so he turned his anxiety upon himself. He could quarrel with himself, hate himself, easily enough, no trouble there.

He could also hate Martin Blackhall, that too presented no difficulty. His suicide, if it had taken place, he would have regarded as a positively good step. He considered the possibility of killing him.

But to do that, it would be necessary to find him. The police would be of no use there, a private detective must be found. No trouble there either, he knew one, if not two. Use of them came his way in business at times. But he also had an underground link to a CID officer in the Second City Force.

But he hesitated.

He toyed with a gold propelling pencil, decorated with his initials by Asprey’s, which had been one of his first purchases for himself when he started to make money. He wanted to handle gold, just as he wanted to wear soft leather.

He could pick up the telephone and say, ‘Hello, Harry, how are things?’ and get a response. But it would mean going behind John Coffin’s back and he had a healthy respect for that man’s acumen.

The telephone rested on an alabaster stand set with gold. It matched a pen which matched the pencil.

He liked everything about him to be of the highest quality and massive, made of quantities of the best possible materials, whether gold, silver, silk or wood, but actual design he left to the professionals so that his office, as with his home in Chelsea Bank, looked beautiful and expensive but unlived in. There were no looking-glasses in his house except in his bathroom where he shaved, and even that one was small and could be folded up to put away. No photographs around either, but he had a drawerful which he did look at occasionally.

All the same, his office reflected his personality much more clearly than his home: in the window, which was a sheet of shining glass, he sat at a large pale wood desk, gleaming and polished, but with its surface covered by a layer of papers and files, while he faced the green screen of a computer. Attached at right-angles to this desk was a matching work surface with a small filing cabinet on top, and with three telephones hitched on to faxes and answering machines. He worked in a self-created nest of business equipment.

No pictures on the walls of this office, no flowers, but a group of soft leather armchairs stood round a low marble table.

It was late in the afternoon, everyone else—secretaries, assistants and receptionists—had all gone home, but he still sat there. The telephone on his desk rang once, but stopped ringing before he could pick it up.

Not the CID then with news, or they would have gone on ringing. Why hadn’t Amy been found?

Then the white telephone on his right hand did ring. He let it ring out for a few minutes, then he answered it. He knew it must be the police. Call it telepathy or precognition or just a good guess, but he knew, and almost knew what it was. They had found something.

‘This is Sergeant Donovan here, sir. CI Young wondered if you’d be good enough to come down to Spinnergate … Yes, the Lower Dock Road entrance. Yes, something’s turned up … Been found.’ Donovan knew he was doing it badly. ‘Yes, an article of clothing … No, I don’t know more, sir.’ He knew more but had been instructed not to say.

Dean took a deep breath. Here we go, this is what you wanted. ‘I’ll drive over at once.’

He was relieved to be going. Action at last. He couldn’t credit this step forward to John Coffin, things turn up as they will, although sometimes human hands can help. As a former policeman he knew that much. But he wanted movement.

He parked his car round the corner from Lower Dock Road in Spinnergate, using Malmaison Street which he thought he remembered of old as a street of low repute. He had been born round here and surely he remembered his mother (who had had social aspirations which, in a way, he had justified for her) saying he must not play with the children of Malmaison Street? But Malmaison Street had had a lift in the world and he had to squeeze his relatively modest Rover between a Jaguar and a Rolls, though there was a battered old lorry three hundred yards down towards the river, which suggested that Malmaison Street was struggling to hang on to its old reputation.

Sergeant Donovan was waiting for him by the door. No need for introductions, Dean thought, he seemed to be known, and he allowed himself to be led straight into the room where two men were waiting for him.

One came forward. ‘Chief Inspector Young. I’m in charge of this investigation.’

‘I’m glad there is one,’ said Dean. ‘Thought there never would be …’

‘No, it’s always been a case, sir,’ said Young smoothly, ‘but things move slowly sometimes.’ He gave a nod to the other man in the room, never to be introduced, who led the way to a table in the window.

On it lay the blue and white sweater retrieved from the mud of the Thames.

‘We think this might be your daughter’s.’

Dean stared down at what he was being offered. ‘Where was it found?’

‘On the river bank, not far from the Old Leadworks Wharf.’

There was a long pause while Dean looked and considered. He knew what he had to say, but he found the words hard to get out; they stayed in his mouth like pebbles.

‘It could be Amy’s,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know all her things. But yes, I think she had something like this. Seem to remember it.’

‘I thought you’d say that, sir,’ said Archie Young, quickly whisking the cover back over the table. ‘I think that settles it. I’m pretty certain in my mind it belongs to your daughter.’

‘Have you showed it to Thomas Blackhall?’

‘No. Doesn’t seem to concern him as yet.’

‘Who found it?’

‘A constable on his beat.’

‘I’d like to speak to him.’

‘Later, if you don’t mind.’

‘How did it get where it was found?’

Archie Young shook his head. ‘No idea. Could have been dropped in the river elsewhere and been washed up there. It is a place where the river deposits what it’s got. One of them. Well known to be.’

Dean nodded.

‘Or it could have been dropped there in the first place,’ went on Young.

Dean asked the difficult question: ‘Do you think it means that Amy is in the river?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Young. ‘I don’t see that at all.’

‘Where is she, then? I want her found.’ He didn’t say alive or dead, but both men understood he meant it.

Young said: ‘These were found in a pocket.’ He pointed to two objects laid on a small plastic tray on his desk.

One was a small white handkerchief. The other was a sodden piece of paper that had been straightened out and dried.

‘I don’t know about the handkerchief,’ said James Dean. ‘One white handkerchief looks like another.’

‘No initial on it and no laundry mark.’

‘I suppose it is hers, has to be … And that’s a bus ticket.’