A Cold Coffin

‘When he was up to it.’

‘Oh, he will be again.’ Gus was the dear old dog who had just undergone a triple bypass in the local pet clinic, his heart attack brought on, so they thought, from shock at finding the body of their cat, who died peacefully and quietly in Gus’s bed. Coffin’s bed too, as it happened.

‘They liked him and brought him his special meal on a special dish. And he could eat under the table if he was quiet. They’ll remember us.’

They’ll remember you all right, thought Stella. The last time you were in there you went away to a quiet corner and on your mobile phone arranged the arrest of one of our fellow diners. He went quietly too, no trouble to anyone.

‘If I see you pick up your mobile, I shall scream. Loudly.’

Coffin smiled at her. He knew Stella had a good, strong, theatrical scream. Learnt, so she said, from Edith Evans.

‘I’d forgotten that episode.’

‘No, you haven’t. You never forget anything.’ Except anniversaries and my first nights. ‘But it’s why we haven’t been there for some time.’ But he grinned; they knew each other well enough and had loved each other long enough to know when to laugh. It was one of the reasons their union had survived.

‘I will now admit that I hoped that man, Jordan, would be there when I suggested we eat there.’

Stella absorbed this, but said nothing until they were on the way there, driving through the tunnel. ‘So, what’s planned for this evening? Don’t tell me it’s just the pleasure of my company?’

‘Trust me.’

‘Did you book a table?’

‘No. They’ll squeeze us in, I’m sure. Let’s go for a drive first.’

This was the second occasion he had mentioned going for a drive through South London, but Stella did not say so.

The streets were not crowded with traffic, but there were delivery lorries, the odd bus, private cars, none very new or smart, all edging forward.

Through Greenwich and into Deptford, down Evelyn Street and towards Rotherhithe.

‘I miss the docks,’ said Coffin. ‘And the sound of the ships on the river.’ He was driving slowly. ‘Of course, it’s not a working river any more, not upriver anyway.’

Stella kept silent.

‘It was all flooded down here once . . . Every twenty-five years they fear a flood.’

‘Should be due one soon,’ said Stella. ‘Who was it said that this part of England sinks a centimetre every year?’ She sounded comfortably unbelieving.

‘There’s the Thames barrier now. With that in place, statistically it should be one thousand, five hundred years before a huge tide comes over the top.’

‘You can’t believe in figures,’ said a sceptical Stella. ‘Après moi le déluge . . . Who said that? Some king, wasn’t it?’

‘He must have been a French king,’ Coffin answered absently. He had turned the car before it got into Bermondsey and was driving back. ‘I used to live down here once . . . Just wanted to look around. All changed. Great big housing blocks instead of little streets.’

‘What is all this about, love?’

‘I had a feeling I wanted to see all these streets again. Nostalgia, I suppose.’

And something else, she thought. You are sad about something. Those infants’ skulls?

Across the river, in the streets that they had left behind them, the University of the Second City had all its lights on because a number of its students worked all day and studied at night. The Second City now had three universities, but the USC (which was how students and staff spoke of it) was the most crowded. As with the police Headquarters, it was made up of older buildings and very new ones. Cleaning was done on a shoestring because money for books was accepted as more important, which meant that some of the older buildings, if they had a voice, would have cried out: Remember me, here I am, give me a dust.

Also attached was the Second City University Hospital, which had an important role since it was an old establishment with a long history of teaching and training doctors and nurses. It was very academic.

Joseph Bottom, deputy head cleaner, did a lot of extra work, some in the hospital, some in the university proper, without worrying about it. He was proud of working in the University Hospital, so close to the university itself, where his elder daughter was now an assistant professor. Joe was a tall, thick-set man in whom so many nationalities had come together over the generations, London near the docks and the ships in the old days being that sort of city; he used to call himself a walking advertisement for the United Nations. His daughter Flora had creamy dark skin, red hair and bright blue eyes, and was one of the beauties of the university, much loved by her students. She liked work, as did Joe, and both of them worked as many hours as they chose to get the job done. They were death to union rules.

Joe, a great colonizer, had turned a cupboard-like room into the rest room for him and his assistants. He had painted it white but his helpers had covered the walls with graffiti and advertisements that took their eye. Some advertisements tactfully or blatantly (depending on the publication) offered high wages for anything up to and including what sounded like gun-running or the odd quiet murder.

It was, of course, recognized that professors and doctors worked all hours and no one questioned it, but when Joe took his cleaning equipment into what he called the ‘museum of bones’ it was a bit on the late side. On a less busy day he might have been having a drink in his local or cooking his wife a supper. She was a nurse who worked even harder than he did and for less pay.

All the same, he would have been glad to have had the help of his assistant Sam, who hadn’t shown his face.

‘Not here, as usual . . . bloody loafer.’ When Joe had said he could have this job, Sam had replied that there was always work for a man, which Joe knew to be only half a truth.

Sam was efficient when he turned up, but he claimed bad health. Big, dark-skinned and burly, and not much of a talker. Not Joe’s favourite chap, but he felt he must look after him, goodness knows why, it was just the effect Sam had on some people. ‘Ask him to supper and get the wife to cook one of her meat pies. Don’t think Sam feeds himself.’ Sam Brother lived in a small flat, built by the local council, in almost sensuous disarray. Joe would swear the cooker was never used. He drove himself around on an ancient motorbike that he kept in good repair; he was said to love it more than any woman. Not that Joe had ever seen him with a woman. Only dogs and the odd cat. He had a way with animals.

He threw open the door of the museum of bones, which was, in fact, a smallish room lined with cabinets that exhibited human bones illustrating medical conditions.

It was not much frequented, since medics don’t do things that way any longer; they have scans, and X-rays and hardly need to look at the human frame any more. But he supposed the odd medical man came in sometimes. He had a key himself, of course.

As he advanced into the room, he gave a shout and seized his broom, his only weapon of defence since a vacuum cleaner is no help at all. Someone had broken open the cabinets, shattering the glass doors and throwing bones and skulls all around. There was glass on the ground and a body at his feet. A circle of small skulls had been arranged around the head.

‘They didn’t get there by accident,’ decided Joe.

Joe was a great reader of detective novels and he knew he wanted the police. More, he wanted John Coffin, whom he had heard give a lecture on Crime and the Second City. A policeman who had a wife like Stella Pinero was the one for him.

‘Get John Coffin,’ he said aloud, looking down at the victim.

There wasn’t a female version of victim, like ‘victime’ or ‘victima’, but this one was definitely a woman.

He saw her lips move. ‘Coffin,’ she seemed to say. ‘Yes, yes.’ An echo of his words, or her last wish?

Then she stopped. Death had silenced her.

Mr Jones of Farmers Restaurant received them with a smile and showed them at once to a table in a corner. In spite of what he had said Coffin must have rung up and booked a table.

Stella shook her head at her husband. Mr Jones saw it and looked anxious.

‘You prefer somewhere else?’

‘No, this is just right,’ said Stella.

‘I thought it was what Mr Coffin wanted.’

‘It is,’ said Coffin speedily. ‘Just what I wanted. Have you got a bottle of that good Sancerre?’ Then he responded to Stella’s raised eyebrows. ‘When you were putting on fresh lipstick and some more scent.’

‘I didn’t think you noticed.’