A Coffin for Charley (22 page)

Archie Young studied the whisky at the bottom of his glass. ‘Forgive me for asking, but is money involved?'

Ah, so you've heard about that too? ‘Yes.'

‘Opens up possibilities.'

‘And all of them nasty.' Blackmail, ransom, or just plain doing a bunk with her money.

But he was sure that Letty had never run away from anything in her life.

They finished the drink in silence. Then the Chief Inspector stood up. ‘Thanks for the refreshment. I'll push off and see what's going on. Nothing much is how I feel. Unless the Met comes up with something on the body they've got, we're in dead water.'

But life has its own momentum.

There is a mathematical theory of cluster which can be tested any day on a motorway exit. Life knows all about it, too. Events hang together.

Two days passed during which the Chief Commander attended to routine matters: he had an interview with the deputy spokesperson from the Second City Equal Opportunities Group who was tough but eventually friendly and accepted a drink before departing, the next major engagement was to be guest speaker at a bankers' luncheon, before returning home to see the dress rehearsal of the Christie play for which Marianna and Didi, among many others, had been auditioning. It was interesting, that link.

He was with Stella. In the audience, which was packed with friends and relations of the performers, he saw Annie Briggs in the company of Alex Edwards.

He looked around for Job Titus. ‘Asked but couldn't come,' said Stella, examining her programme with a professional air.

But to his surprise he saw Eddie and Lizzie Creeley. Lizzie looked happy and excited as if this was a good night out. She seemed to change as each day passed.

When they moved at the interval to seek a drink at the bar, he saw Tom Ashworth sitting in the back row.

Stella raised an eyebrow. ‘What's he doing here?'

‘Likes the theatre. Didn't he try for a part?'

‘May have done. He's got the face, very mobile.'

Coffin said carefully: ‘But what I think he is doing is watching.'

‘Whom?'

‘Probably Annie and Alex Edwards.'

‘On the job?' Stella sounded exasperated. ‘That man must know all there is to know about quite a lot of us.'

‘He may be worried about Edwards.'

Stella was horrified. ‘You don't mean that?'

‘I may do.' The killer had known details about his victims that could not come by chance. And after all, who knew more about certain people and was in a good position to find out more than a social worker with access to personal files? ‘And no, before you ask, we don't seem near to finding the killer.'

‘I guessed that for myself,' she said as they sat down.

‘Stella, I know that Annie hung around you, was watching you, and she says she loves you … but don't trust her. She may be wicked.'

‘That's an old-fashioned word.'

‘Wickedness is always with us.' He reached out and took her hand. They sat, hand in hand, watching the play. It was a comfort to them both.

He thought that Didi's murder had not cast a gloom over the performance, the cast was enjoying itself as amateurs always did, but Stella said no, they were just being brave and more than one of them had been in tears.

At the end of the performance, and as the applause died away, a great wreath of roses was quietly laid on the stage as the curtain fell.

‘For Didi,' said Stella.

Next day movement began.

‘News just in,' said Archie Young cheerfully. ‘Things may be on the roll. The girl is identified. Nothing on the body, except underneath her was found her library card. In a plastic case, so that it was not too damaged. Must have fallen out of her bag or pocket. Bit of luck, isn't it?'

‘Yes, very lucky,' said Coffin thoughtfully.

‘Even has her address on it.'

‘Really useful.'

‘Well, it's a start.'

‘So who was she?'

‘Mary Andrews, Seven Larch Court, Selly Oak. That's her ID. Has to be her, sounds right.'

‘Any idea what she was doing in Dulwich?'

‘If Wally Watson knows, he isn't telling,' said Young regretfully.

But it was just what we need to know, Coffin thought, if any way forward was to be found.

The murderer too was beginning to sense moving water, which did not please him. He was the fish who swam in deep still water.

He had a kind of mantra that he said to protect himself: Caroline, Annie, Letty, Stella.

The police finding Caroline so soon had been a nuisance, she could have stayed lost.

That same day, the technician entrusted with the tape bearing Letty's voice telephoned.

‘We have brought the sounds up … Seems to be a railway station. The background voice is a public announcement system, as you guessed.'

‘So?'

‘Echoes are bad and the voice itself not clear but …' He read out what it said and Coffin wrote it down on the pad in front of him.

Thirteen-forty train for Dudley and Wolverhampton will leave from platform 4.

‘So which station?'

‘At a guess: Birmingham.'

Coffin's guess too. So Letty had telephoned from a large and very busy station at the centre of a huge conurbation. Not easy to locate her. And she could have been changing trains.

‘Shall I return the tape to you?' At the back of the technician's voice was a hint of amusement which caused John Coffin to remember that on the tape would be several loving messages from him to Stella.

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Just one more thing. Not this tape, but I've been working on the other tape. The Didi Dunne tape, and I think it's interesting that it is a completely new tape. Never been used … It'll be in my report.'

‘Thanks for telling me.'
Like the rest of them, you know I am
passionately interested and interfere all the time. Only you aren't saying.

He worked on, talking to his deputy, reading reports, making several telephone calls, but underneath it all he was rolling over and over his two problems till they seemed to become one.

Letty and Didi, Didi and Marianna, Marianna and the new girl to join the band: Mary Andrews.

He was surprised when the telephone rang on his private line, jerking him out of his thoughts.

‘Stella, anything wrong?'

She rarely phoned when he was working.

‘I decided that I must talk to Tom Ashworth at Tash to see what he knew about Letty. He was looking for Elissa … He thinks she's in trouble.'

‘The girl or Letty?'

‘Both of them.'

‘Does he know where they are?'

‘No, but he got something that helped Letty. A card from the girl telling him to fuck off. Lovely, wasn't it? She realized he was searching for her. The card was postmarked Birmingham. He thinks Letty may have heard herself and have gone after her. We must find her.'

‘She's a grown-up lady.'

‘Please! I got the impression that some scandal might break, there was great stress in her voice. I don't want that, and neither do you. Do you?'

No, any scandal that involved his sister could so easily rub off on him, which would give all those people looking for a reason to attack him just what they needed. He had his enemies, as had all heads of police forces at the moment, they were not popular men. He was as respected as most, possibly more popular than some, but his nature, his way of work, his very career had attracted criticism.

He sat at his desk. It looked as though someone ought to go to Birmingham and find Letty. That person had better be John Coffin in person and alone. Letty was his private problem.

But to find her he would need help. The right sort of help.

For a second he considered Tom Ashworth, but he knew that on the desk in front of him, discreetly tucked away among other papers, was the invitation from Phœbe. So far unanswered.

He could go and see her, unofficially, and she would help. Just in a friendly way.

Next morning, having told his office he was not about and given instructions to his deputy, he packed an overnight bag while Stella watched murmuring words of encouragement.

‘Do you think you'll find her?'

‘I don't know, but I shall try.'

‘Do you want me to come with you?'

‘You've got rehearsals all day, haven't you? And other business.' Stella nodded. ‘There you are, then.' And there was Phœbe to see; he had not mentioned her to his wife.

He was throwing things into his bag. ‘You'll leave something behind,' said Stella.

‘It won't matter.' He kissed her warmly, affection when parting being absolutely essential in marriage, he had decided. ‘I'll keep in touch, of course, and I will be back tomorrow anyway, earlier if I can. I must be.' It didn't seem much time in which to find Letty.

He drove westwards out of London, towards Oxford and Banbury and thus finally into Birmingham, that huge, sprawling industrial complex. The day was fine and sunny so that after Oxford he got off the motorway and took the country route which lay through gentle, wooded hills. He was a city dweller, could never be anything else, but he enjoyed the countryside with the pleasure of someone who did not work in it or expect it to provide him with a living. He began to feel happy. Whatever happened to him once he got to Birmingham, the journey was a holiday.

He switched on the radio, turning it high so that the joyous Beethoven chorus sung by the prisoners emerging into the sunlight in his opera
Leonora
filled all his space.

And behind in St Luke's Mansions, Stella had picked up the card from Phœbe which he had dropped.

On the outskirts of Birmingham John Coffin stopped to consult a map, buy a drink, then consider how best to talk to Phœbe. He drank weak lager while he consulted his memories. Phœbe was a direct, energetic, and clever woman, attractive without being beautiful. She had that innovating spark that created the best police work, but he knew that her sex precluded her from the highest positions.

Ah yes, sex, for in that sphere too, Phœbe had been direct, energetic and innovative. He would have been glad to be assured, as Miss Austen might have said, that she was happily married and bedded.

He looked around for a telephone; Phœbe was not the sort of woman that you called on unannounced. He did not know this part of Birmingham, in fact he knew the city very little, but he could tell from his map that he was not far from Phœbe's office. If she was in it.

‘Is there a telephone?'

The elderly barmaid ceased from polishing a glass and blew on it, then she looked at Coffin. ‘Payphone round the corner,' she said, and went back to her blow and polish technique. ‘But it won't take money, you'll need a
CARD.
' She spoke as if phone card was some strange animal that might bite.

He had one, and the phone, in a niche between the bar and the lavatory, worked. ‘Hello, Phœbe.'

She recognized his voice at once. ‘Ho, John … you're coming to my party.' A statement and not a question.

‘Lovely invitation.'

‘Thought you'd be glad to have it.'

‘Can you help me, Phœbe?'

‘Ah, I knew something was coming.'

There was no need to lie to Phoebe and perhaps better not. ‘I'm looking for my sister.' He held back most of the details but in a few words he explained the situation. He wanted to find Letty Bingham, his sister.

Phœbe took a grasp of the situation at once. ‘She doesn't sound the sort to take rooms or live in a caravan.'

‘If she's here, then she'll be in a hotel.'

‘Plenty of them,' said Phœbe.

‘I've considered that fact and, knowing Letty, I know that whatever her state of mind, she will go for the best.'

‘Quite a number of those too, remember we have the National Exhibition Centre here. Come round and we'll talk … Wait a minute, name and description first and I can make a start.'

‘Thanks, Phœbe. Well, I think she'll be using her own name. She's tall, about five foot eight, about a hundred and twenty pounds, dark eyes, dark hair worn long, creamy dark skin; she wears big earrings, real jewels.'

‘Doesn't sound much like you.'

‘We had different fathers,' he said briefly. ‘Younger than me and looks younger still.'

As he left the pub, he read the headline on a newspaper that someone had left behind.

SERIAL KILLER LOOSE IN SOUTH LONDON
, he read.

Phœbe was unchanged, except perhaps a little fatter. She shook his hand briskly and then planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘She is not at the Albany, the Holiday Inn or the Grand. Not as far as a few telephone calls can tell. No one of that description. But cheer up, I have more on the list.'

He was pleased to see her, there had always been an exhilarating quality about Phœbe, she had so much energy and inner happiness that some of it rubbed off on her friends.

He could see that he would have to watch himself.

‘Sit down and have a sandwich and a drink.' There was a tray on her desk. ‘You're convinced she'll only be in a four star hotel?'

They drank, ate and gossiped while other hands made the calls. As he had expected, the subject of the series of murders in the Second City and South London came up soon.

‘Heard about the latest,' said Phœbe, putting mustard on a ham sandwich. ‘We had a case like it when I first started here. Four women, one after the other, always on Wednesdays in successive weeks. Soon got the man, though, he worked in an old people's home and Wednesday was his day off. One of the residents fingered him, said he always smelt of women on Thursday mornings. Useful, that was. We do get lucky sometimes.'

‘And did the man smell?'

‘I didn't try sniffing myself. Have another sandwich? No, I will, looks like being a long day. An officer from the Met is coming up today and I shall have to show him round. Just got the word.'