Coffin’s Game

‘Even the thumb has gone … Whoever did it was taking precautions about identification … But don’t worry too much, science is wonderful, something might emerge that helps.’

But he was glad it was not Stella’s body they were discussing. He was skilled in morbid anatomy; he taught it, even enjoyed doing so, but one does not want to cut up one’s friends. Although there is always pleasure in a job well done. Already he had it in mind that he would identify this body for the police. No one got the better of Dennis Garden. Anyway, damn it, the face – he knew how to reconstruct the face. He had a sense of knowing that face.

He saw the Chief Commander to the door. What was she doing though, the beautiful and talented Stella, wandering away without warning to her husband when their marriage was supposed to be a notable success?

Not a man you could play around with, he considered, watching the Chief Commander’s retreating back. There was something to the set of Coffin’s shoulders that suggested he might not be easy.

Coffin summoned Inspector Lodge to see him. Lodge arrived with speed, suggesting to Coffin’s anxious mind that he had been expecting a call.

‘You went round to Percy Street very fast. Was there any special reason?’

The Todger took it quietly. ‘I wondered if we might have a terrorist there.’

‘Any other reason?’

The Inspector became even quieter. ‘Always interested when something like this turns up … it’s my job.’

Coffin waited.

‘In confidence, we have had an insider working here, I thought it might be my plant.’

‘And is it?’

Lodge shrugged. ‘No identification yet.’

‘Is your insider a man or a woman?’

‘A man,’ he said with reluctance. How he hated to part with information. Coffin thought.

‘So it could be the dead man?’

‘I am waiting to find out more, see who’s missing, run checks, but yes, I think, yes.’

‘And why was he dressed up like my wife? With a handbag containing a photograph of Stella? Any views?’

Lodge looked away, then back so that his eyes met Coffin’s bleak gaze.

‘Ah,’ said Coffin, understanding what he saw. No need to make mysteries here, he told himself, least of all to yourself. This man has been told what was shown to me with relative delicacy … yes, I have to say they tried to be humane.

No more was said on that secret subject. Lodge departed murmuring that he would keep the Chief Commander in touch, but it looked at the moment that this was a terrorist killing. How his man had been flushed out, he did not yet know, but it was vital to find out.

‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who got on to him or how, but by God I am going to find out.’

‘A traitor in our midst,’ said Coffin sadly.

‘I hope not, but we may have to face it.’

‘Let’s meet for a drink sometime soon,’ said Coffin. There was a hole here that needed mending, patching up, and it was his job to do it.

After Lodge had gone, Paul Masters came in with a tray of coffee and file of papers.

‘Hot and strong. And this is today’s list: a CC and Accounts meeting at midday. A delegation from Swinehouse … ethnic problems. And Anthony Hermeside from the Home Office is inviting himself to lunch …’

Coffin groaned.

‘Yes, good luck, sir. I have all the notes you will need to brief you on him in the folder. Oh, and Hermeside doesn’t drink.’

He departed in polite good order. He had arranged what he could, smoothed Coffin’s path and now it was up to the Chief Commander.

Coffin drank his coffee, which was, as Paul had said, hot and strong, there was cream to go with it and a new sort of chocolate biscuit, all confirming once again that everyone knew everything and quite possibly more than could be known – rumour always magnified a story – and he was being offered comfort.

He drank some more coffee, gazing at a corner of the room where it seemed to him a part of his own mind was circling.

‘Ever been betrayed?’ he asked this self.

‘Many times and oft,’ Old Sobersides up in the corner, who seemed to know more about his life than he did himself, came back with. ‘And you just have to get on with it.’

He had asked for a report on the body in Percy Street to be delivered quickly, and it was now on his desk.

The report, put together with speed by Sergeant Mitchell said:

The body is that of a white male, probably aged between thirty-five and forty. He was not dirty, he had not been living rough, nor was he undernourished. His hair, beneath the wig, was dyed.

Cause of death was a neat stab wound which had not bled profusely. We will know more about this when the pathologist reports.

It appears that he had been killed in the room where he was found. Blood traces, cleaned up but still to be seen, indicated this. Forensics are working it now.

Also, it is clear that he had walked there, wearing the clothes in which he was found. A video of him rounding the corner out of Jamaica Street shows him on the afternoon of the day within twenty-four hours of which he died. He was alone.

A first search of the rest of the house has turned up nothing except bomb-damaged furniture. Bed linen and towels in a cupboard in the upper bedroom, along with some old clothes.

A copy of the relevant part of the video is attached.

It was a blurred dark picture but one in which a figure, wearing jeans, swinging the Chanel bag over a shoulder, could be clearly seen turning the corner.

Good work, Mitchell.

He studied the picture again. Yes, there he was, centre picture, clearly shown. The end of the street was more blurred.

Well, that was it, for the moment.

Taking advice from his darker, grimmer self, Coffin did as he was told and got on with the job, following the appointments laid out in his diary and pointed to by Paul Masters.

Used as Coffin was to the dead times in an investigation when nothing seems to move forward, he found it hard. In a way, it was Inspector Lodge’s case if the dead man was indeed his man. Equally, because of the involvement of Stella, Coffin ought to keep out. He did not intend to do so.

He worked through the day, keeping his head down to avoid the interested eyes and hints of sympathy, but his temper was not improved by either.

Paul Masters had accompanied him into one committee meeting to keep the notes.