A Coffin for Charley (15 page)

‘I do. In a way. I think Titus has seen us.'

Coffin nodded. ‘He has.'

‘You meant him to?'

‘I was just interested to see what happened when he did. He's coming over.'

Titus, dressed in the jeans and sweater he wore when visiting his constituency, smiled. ‘Chief Commander? I didn't expect to see you here.'

Coffin stood up, he didn't like being loomed over. Upright, he was eye to eye with Titus. ‘Do you come here often?'

‘I've been here before. As I expect you remember. A number of the men and women here voted for me, and all of them are my constituents. I like to show solidarity with them.'

‘You've got Eddie Creeley there.'

‘I wanted to talk to him. This seemed a good chance, after my weekly surgery. I don't have a lot of time when the House is sitting. Eddie and I have something in common. We've both lost someone we liked—and I did like Marianna, and we're both under suspicion. We both know it, too.'

He smiled at Stella, who smiled back. Definitely more charming than he had to be, he was turning it on. He won votes, didn't he? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a faint scowl on her husband's face.

‘And you've got Tom Ashworth there,' said Coffin. ‘Know who he is?'

‘I know. He's watching us too.'

While they were talking, Tash had moved across to talk to Eddie Creeley.

It was interesting, Stella thought, that he and Eddie looked completely out of place here, while Titus, and possibly
she herself and Coffin did not. It said something about them. All three adept at dissembling, perhaps?

‘Come and join us,' said Titus.

The lights turned pink but the two faces turned towards them were pale. Eddie looked tired, Tash looked ill.

‘I don't have to introduce you, do I?' said Titus. ‘You both know the Chief Commander. And Miss Pinero.'

‘I'm working,' said Tash. ‘Not here on a visit. Working for a client.'

Eddie managed a weak smile and took a deep breath. ‘Didi liked you a lot, Miss Pinero.'

‘I know. I am sorry. But they'll find out who killed her.'

‘It's to be hoped,' said Tash in a deep voice.

As they walked down the hall, moving through the dancers, Stella said: ‘I'll tell you something for free. None of those three is Charley.'

‘No? Never thought one of them was.'

‘So what did we come for?'

‘I wanted to watch them. Titus and Creeley have some guilt to share between them. And Ashworth is working on them.'

Stella was slowing down. She pushed through the door and leaned against the wall. Her face had gone pale so that her lipstick stood out, blue-red and cold. The lighting out here was harsh above the urn.

‘He's been here.'

Coffin put his arm round her. ‘What's that?'

‘He's been here. May not be here now. But I could smell him.'

But all Coffin could smell was the passage of many sweaty bodies, some wearing scent.

Outside, Stella got into the car with speed. ‘You drive. You didn't drink much.' She had watched him hardly touch his drink, careful as ever, she thought, because he knows that sometimes he can be madly rash. She leaned back in her seat. Without a word, Coffin backed the car into the street. A police patrol car saw them and slowed down, silently watching.

Then the patrol man recognized the car and its driver and drove away. ‘What's he up to?' he said to his mate. A bawdy joke passed between them.

Preoccupied with his wife, Coffin barely noticed them. Her colour was coming back. ‘I feel better now. Sorry, I was probably imagining it.'

It looked real enough to me, thought Coffin as he drove through the night streets.

Think about it. When did she get close enough to smell Charley? Look at her file and check. Don't ask her. In the mood she's in, she'll come up with wrong answers.

He set himself to amuse and relax his wife.

If she had been another sort of woman he would have tucked her up in bed with a drink of hot milk, but that would not do for his Stella. So he drove to Max's Deli which was still open.

Here he would feed her a cup of coffee and one of Max's rich, imported Belgian cakes. Max claimed that these cream-filled delicacies were flown in from Brussels daily but Coffin thought they came from Slough in a specially chilled van. He fancied he had seen it arrive in the small hours. Challenged, Max said: And wasn't Slough near to Heathrow?

One of the Feather Street ladies was giving a birthday party in a corner of the small inner room. She hailed Stella with delight and offered her a drink and a slice of special chocolate cake.

Coffin watched Stella join them and start to be happy again. The Feather Street ladies could be very exhilarating. For himself, he went to order some coffee.

Max served him himself and wanted to talk about his sister, Letty. ‘Have you seen Mrs Bingham lately?' Max sounded worried. ‘I've put in my bid for the catering in the Drama School, but I just get silence.'

I'd like to know where Letty is myself, thought Coffin.

‘I don't like to worry Miss Pinero.' Although Coffin could see that Max would do just that if need be. ‘It's not really her job. She's the Artistic Director.'

‘She keeps her eye on things.'

In the night the wheels slowly turned, and the report from the community policeman who had checked Caroline's flat on the top floor of Annie's house was read and digested and a certain importance seen in it. It was passed to Archie Young, who gave it thought.

In the morning, John Coffin saw the fax on his desk.

Where the river runs backwards

On their way to Max's Deli the pair were observed by another patrol car who reported on the radio that W
ALKER
and M
ISSUS
were nearing home. It was always as well to know where the boss was. Very little about the Chief Commander's life escaped his sharp-eyed Force.

In the patrol car, getting a strictly unofficial lift home, was the community officer who had called on Annie Briggs, searched Caroline's flat for a man, and had initiated the information about a ‘suspicious character' seen ‘loitering' which was now on Coffin's desk.

The two men were friends, although their careers were taking a different shape. Both were called James, so they were known as Jim and Jimmy. Jim was the driver. The third person in the car was a silent WPC, Jim's partner.

‘There he goes,' said Jim, observing Coffin. ‘He's been a lot easier since he got hitched.'

‘Think so? He doesn't come my way much.' In fact not at all. Jimmy had never spoken to the Chief Commander, although he would have welcomed the chance and thought he could have told him a thing or two. He was deeply sceptical of the bureaucracy of the Force and wondered if any notice was taken of the careful reports he sent in. Straight in the bin was his bet.

Rarely did they talk about police matters. Crime you can
live with, you don't have to talk about it. But the current two murders certainly did interest them.

The two men soon got down to discussing Didi's death and comparing it with Marianna Manners's. The same killer for both, they agreed. It happened, not often, sometimes. They avoided the fashionable term of ‘serial killer.'

After coffee and a slice of Max's special plum and almond cake Stella had recovered her spirits and wanted to forget about smells and so on. She decided it was time to worry about Letty.

‘Where is she when I need her?'

‘Gone missing,' said Coffin. ‘Like her mother. It's in the blood.'

‘I hope you won't.'

‘No, I'm tethered.' He took her hand and gave it a pat. ‘Let's go home.'

She stood up. ‘On the way. Your place or mine?'

He was glad she was in an upbeat mood because he was going to have to ask some more questions about the smell; he couldn't leave it alone.

On the way from Max's they met Tiddles the cat, also on his way home. So they followed him and he positioned himself outside Coffin's front door in the Tower and waited.

‘Do you know, I've never been quite sure of Tiddles's sex,' said Coffin as he felt for his keys. ‘I suppose he's got one.'

‘As much as any cat that's been spayed.'

Coffin gave her a wary look. ‘Spayed?'

‘Yes, Tiddles is a female masquerading as a male. I know you always call her he.'

‘I'm not good on sex in cats,' said Coffin humbly.

‘I expect you've seriously confused her.'

‘Maybe we should send her down to the Karnival Club.'

He had the door open and Tiddles, unsexed but happy, bounced in before them. Bob, the dog, whose sex had never been in question since he was willing to mate with anything that moved, was the other side of the door.

‘We ought to talk about this sense you had of Charley
being present or having been present at the Karnival.'

‘If Charley is this chap who is obsessed with me.'

‘I'm just using that as a name,' said Coffin patiently.

‘Or if he has anything to do with the killings.'

‘I'm not saying so. Just speculating. We can't rule anything out.'
And if he's going for you next, then I want all the details I can get.
But he hoped Stella would not read that thought.

Stella sat down on the big yellow sofa which had been her contribution to his furnishings. ‘Come on then, get the questions in and get it over.'

‘First, when were you close enough to the fellow to get any personal …' He hesitated, fumbling for the words. ‘To get any sensation about him.'

‘When did I smell him, you mean?' said Stella bleakly.

‘All right, yes. When was he close enough for you to get a whiff of him?'

Stella let her gaze go distant. ‘Only once. Near St Luke's. Near the Workshop Theatre. I'd been at a meeting. And this figure was in the courtyard,. I had to pass through the archway to get home.'

‘So what did you notice?'

If he was hoping for details like alcohol, drugs or meths or even shoe polish and cigarette smoke, he was disappointed.

Stella shook her head. ‘You know, I didn't notice anything special then. It was only when we walked through the Karnival that I thought I am reminded of something …' Her voice tailed away. ‘It seemed very close then, his presence.'

‘Perhaps I should have taken you back and made you look at every person there.'

Stella smiled. ‘I had had a good look round and no, I didn't recognize anyone. Not to look at. I'm not being a lot of help, am I?'

‘We'll dig away at it.'

Stella nodded without enthusiasm. ‘I'll go on thinking about it and if anything comes to mind, then I'll tell you.'

But you'd rather not.
He could read her face. She was more troubled by all this than she was willing to admit. He didn't
want Stella to suffer in any way. He was very protective of her now, more than ever. She was his Stella.

So there was possession there, too. Jealousy as well if it got the chance to raise its head. Which it could do with alarming speed: he had seen Job Titus looking at her.

‘What did you make of that little group, Titus and Eddie Creeley? Tom Ashworth too for that matter, he made up a third.'

‘He was there on business, I suppose. It's always business with him. We ought to have asked him about Letty. He's in everything, that young man.'

Coffin was glad to hear her call Tom Ashworth ‘that young man', it seemed to diminish any threat he might be. He had noticed Tom Ashworth, too, looking at Stella, who had looked back.

He would have to live with that side of Stella, he couldn't keep her on a string. He was not sure where strict faithfulness came in Stella's canon of wifely duties, while being uneasily aware that he had better not ask.

‘But I like him better than Job Titus,' continued Stella. ‘Did you see Titus eyeing me? He's a swine, that man. But I don't see him as a killer. He might hire someone to do it for him, but not Eddie Creeley. He's got more sense than that. Anyone could see Eddie Creeley is a no-hoper and probably the whole family always were.'

‘They usually got caught,' admitted the Chief Commander. ‘But they made a living by it. At least, the old generation did. Eddie's got a job in a local hospital, so I'm told. I don't see him as a killer somehow.'

‘It's only because of his uncle and aunt,' said Stella. ‘But you don't inherit murder like a disease. There isn't a gene for it.'

There might be, thought Coffin. But he had always been puzzled by the elder Creeleys' murder. He had never heard of an adequate motive for it. A little money had been stolen, yes, but surely not enough?

He looked back into the past. ‘I never knew why they did it.'

‘You mean they were innocent?'

‘No, not exactly that,' he mused. ‘But something never came out.'

Stella stood up. ‘I'm going to bed. I've got a heavy day tomorrow.' She passed her image in a big wall looking-glass and gave an experimental smile. Awful. She'd have to do something about her face. Major cosmetic surgery, possibly. She studied her lips. Or perhaps a new lipstick would do it. Cheaper, certainly.

‘About the group of three in the club tonight. Were you just asking my opinion to take my mind off the other thing, or did you really want to know?'

It had been a bit of both. ‘Really wanted to know,' he said.

‘Well, I'll tell you: they stood out like a sore thumb, didn't they? What were they doing there? What a place to meet.'

‘I've been wondering about that. Job Titus called Eddie Creeley there and Ashworth followed them. So it all comes from Titus.'

At the door Stella paused. ‘There's something I have to tell you … Job Titus and I, a couple of years ago, before you and I really took up again … There was nothing in it. Not really.'