Cracking Open a Coffin

‘That’s right, sir. You can just make it out. Route 147a, run by an independent operator. This route runs through Spinnergate and out towards Essex.’

Dean frowned. ‘But she has a car. I don’t see her using a bus. Perhaps it’s an old ticket?’

‘The stampings on it show it was bought on the day she went off, and from checking the number, it looks as though it was purchased between eight and ten on the evening she was missing.’

‘Someone else may have bought it, and she just picked it up.’ He didn’t believe that, or even sound convincing to himself.

‘Could be, but it was in the pocket of her sweater, wedged underneath the handkerchief.’ CI Young went across to the wall opposite the window and drew down a map. ‘Come and have a look at this.’ He pointed. ‘We can tell from the ticket that whoever bought it got on at the stop at Heather Street. Here.’ He put his finger on the map. ‘That’s just beyond the university … and the ticket would take that person through to the end of the line. But the route passes Church Street and a few yards up the road takes you to Star Court House where she worked.’

‘So she might have been going there? But the ticket would have taken whoever bought it much further?’

‘Yes, but there’s no conductor on these buses, you put in the right fare yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘If you haven’t the right change, then you overpay and get more of a trip than you use.’

‘I never wanted her to work in that place,’ said James Dean. ‘I hated it and all it stood for.’

Then he said: ‘Does the driver remember her? Did anyone see her? One of the passengers?’

‘We are inquiring. The driver doesn’t remember. It was late in the day. One of the last buses out on his shift and it was crowded.’

‘Bunch of drunks,’ said Dean viciously. ‘What would they see?’ He started to walk up and down the room. ‘Can I ask you about the Blackhall boy? Any sign of him?’

‘Not so far. He might have been on the bus, we asked about him too, but no result.’

‘Flush him out. You won’t find him lying dead anywhere.’

‘We don’t know your daughter is dead yet, sir. We mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

‘She’s dead. I’m telling you.’

He had moved on from his first demand that she be found, CI Young observed.

‘What about the car? What’s that telling you?’

‘Forensics are working on it.’

‘That was my car. I drove it for a few weeks, then I gave it to her. That was because she didn’t like taking valuable presents, I had to persuade her it was a car I didn’t want and wouldn’t use. She had that sort of conscience.’

‘I’ll pass on to Forensics that you have used the car,’ said Archie Young gravely. ‘They’ll need to know.’

‘Yes. Is that all you want from me?’

‘For now, Mr Dean.’

‘Have you got a daughter?’

Archie Young shook his head. ‘No, no children.’

‘You’re probably lucky.’

Archie Young said: ‘She may not be dead, sir.’

James Dean paused at the door, looked at Archie as he spoke and gave him a bleak half smile. She’s dead, the smile said.

Young said: ‘If you receive a ransom demand, I hope you will tell us, sir.’

‘There has been no demand to me. I’d be surprised and glad if there was one.’

‘Amy could walk in the door tonight and wonder what we were making a fuss about.’

When Archie Young reported this afterwards to John Coffin, as requested, he said: ‘He looked at me as if he didn’t believe a word of it.’

‘He probably didn’t,’ said John Coffin. ‘Did you believe it yourself?’

‘Half and half. I was just trying to sell him a bit of hope.’ He added: ‘He’s really wild. I don’t like the look of him.’

‘What do you think he will do?’

Young considered. ‘Bash something up, that’s what he’d like to do. Either the university or Star Court.’

Yes, the old Jem Dean had been that sort of a man. Too soon to say what the new Jim Dean was like.

‘What do you make of the bus ticket?’

‘Don’t know. Someone bought that ticket, and it was in her pocket. Miracle it was still there after being in the water.’

‘It is surprising, but you do get luck occasionally.’ If it was luck, so far it didn’t seem to have helped. He was keeping an open mind on the bus ticket, it needed thinking about. ‘What about the Blackhalls?’

‘Sir Thomas telephones regularly to ask for news. Nothing to tell him, no sighting of either the boy or the girl. He doesn’t like that. I think he’s nervous that somehow Dean will find the boy first.’

‘Better keep an eye open,’ Coffin advised. ‘Watch the university campus and Star Court.’

‘I’ll be around myself, asking questions,’ Young assured him. ‘I want to see both of the missing students’ rooms.’

But Dean did not go to either of those places. Or not on that day, whatever he was going to do later. After leaving the police headquarters, he got into his car and took a ride. Not unnoticed, as it turned out later. There were one or two people in Coffin’s area who also seemed to notice everything and one of them, indeed the best, was Mimsie Marker who sold newspapers from a stall by the Tube station at Spinnergate. If she didn’t see events herself, and after all even Mimsie could not be everywhere although it sometimes seemed as though she had been, she had contacts and friends to pass on the news. Mimsie was a kind of sieve, through which all local information could pass.

Coffin had other things on his mind, not only this case and the security for the Queen’s visit, but he had a sister, Letty Bingham; he had his late mother’s memoirs which he had edited and which Letty wanted published; and he had Darling Stella. And there was always the cat, Tiddles.

Stella also wanted his mother’s memoirs published, because she had a TV producer lined up who would turn them into a four-parter with Stella as his mother.

Coffin found the idea gruesome … Stella as his mother? Considering all that had passed between them, it was incestuous. Obscene. Stella didn’t see it that way, of course. It was work. Acting.

‘I don’t like to think of you as my mother,’ he had said uneasily.

‘Oh, don’t be silly. I’d be your young mother.’

Exactly, Coffin had thought, but he could not drag his mind away from Amy Dean and Martin Blackhall. Gone, both of them. There was a nasty odour of death and decay in the air.

Stella too took a keen interest in the case: the university, and Sir Tom in particular, were patrons of St Luke’s Theatre, and she herself had helped in an appeal for money for Star Court House. Naturally she was on the side of women, she said. She didn’t know either of the two missing students.