Coffin's Ghost (11 page)

He repeated the story. There was a van there which drove away fast, and there was a Post Office van which stayed. This was his van.

He was a short and sturdy figure with a crop of dark curly hair. Bright blue eyes behind spectacles took in DS Davley and flicked round to the scene behind her where the body of a woman lay on the ground.

The police surgeon had arrived and certified her dead, and the pathologist was this moment making a careful, preliminary investigation before taking the body off to his laboratory for a closer investigation.

It was murder and not suicide, that was clear.

‘So there was someone there: the other van, the one that drove away fast, and your van.’

‘Now don’t you start griping at me, miss. I waited there till the ambulance came, but she was dead. I knew she was. And I knew she was shot.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I heard the noise and I saw the blood on the side of her face.’

‘And you didn’t see who shot her?’

‘No, sorry.’

‘What about the van that drove off?’

‘Wasn’t from the van. I had my eye on it because it shouldn’t have been here. I am allowed to bring my van in
because it is PO business, but otherwise private vehicles only.’

‘Well, thank you, Mr . . .’ She hesitated.

‘Terry Jones.’

‘You’ll have to come into the station to make a statement, Mr Jones.’

‘It’ll have to be when I’ve finished work, I’m all behind now.’

DS Davley longed to say: It’ll be when we want you, sir, but she restrained herself and said nothing. She longed to have been able to snap out the sort of sharp remark that DCI Astley excelled in, but she was still too junior (and ambitious, the two went together) to allow this to herself. So she contented herself with a nod and the suggestion that it was always best to get things over, wasn’t it?

By which she meant, You are bloody coming with me, chum, if I have to drag you there.

In the event, a stand-in driver (complaining bitterly that he was off duty and needed the rest) arrived to take over Terry Jones’s duties for the day, thus allowing Jones to come into the central police station and give his statement.

She despatched them in a police car herself. All the while he was insisting that he had not seen who fired the shot. Nor did he know what the woman was doing in the car park, but he thought the fairest assumption was that she was taking a short cut across it from Victoria Street to the tube station to get a train.

He muttered that he could be no possible help.

‘Don’t be long,’ he grumbled.

‘You’ve got the day off.’

‘It’s my day,’ he shouted after her.

Can’t deny that, she thought.

Tony Davley took the statement herself, having handed over the scene in the car park to the SOCO team and the forensic scientist. A gun expert was on the spot to work out the angle of fire, using the latest laser equipment, and hence the most likely place from which the shot had come.

On one side of the car park was a patch of roughish ground, and on the other a low block of flats due for demolition, while
the back of a row of shops formed the third side. The fourth side was huts and sheds belonging to various associations like the Scouts and the Sea Cadets and the Bottle Banks.

‘Check the flats,’ Davley had said as she left. It seemed likely that the shot had come from there.

She had waited till the woman’s body had been photographed, and then taken off to the pathologist’s department.

Murder had its rituals and rites which had to be observed.

Even though it was still early there was a crowd by that time watching and listening. One of the crowd was Mimsie Marker who sold newspapers from her stall hard by the tube station. She had abandoned her stall to take a look. The body was hidden beneath a white sheet, but as it was lifted to be taken away, the corpse’s feet peeped out.

She went back to her stall where she sold a copy of that day’s London
Times
to Robbie Gilchrist on his way to an important meeting in London, passing on to him the news of the dead girl in the car park.

‘Quite young, poor kid.’ She didn’t really know this, it was a guess. Not everyone listened to Mimsie, since she was a well-known gossip, but they were well advised to because she was right.

Robbie did listen, and then worried all the way to London that this dead girl was his lost stepdaughter. She might well be her, he said to himself.

Terry Jones did not change his statement when Davley eventually got back to him.

‘I was sitting at the wheel, checking what I had to do, as I always do, I like to get things right. I saw the woman, wearing a bright red coat. She was crossing diagonally towards the tube station.’ He paused.

‘And then?’

Terry put his head on one side. ‘I can’t say I heard the shot, shut in the van as I was; I may have heard something, perhaps even been aware of the passage of the bullet, because I looked up and saw the woman. One minute she was standing. Next she dropped to the ground. Like a stone. You’re dead, I thought. And I wasn’t wrong, was I?’

‘No.’ This chirpy fellow irritated Tony Davley and she would like to have told him he was wrong, but this comfort was denied her. ‘So you didn’t see where the shot came from?’

‘No, I’ve said so, haven’t I?’

‘Not from the white van that drove away so fast?’

‘No, couldn’t have. Because if it had come from the van then the wound would have been on the left temple, and it wasn’t. The hole and the blood were on the right side of the face. I was there, remember.’

‘On the right temple,’ repeated Tony.

‘Yes, and it wasn’t me that shot her. There are security cameras in that car park and if you look you will see a picture of me in the van and getting out and running across to her.’

There were security cameras but they were not working, an economy measure on the part of the owners of the car park, who thought a threat was as good as an actual picture.

‘No,’ said Terry Jones. ‘That shot came from the block of flats. Empty, they are, we all know that. Someone got in and fired at her from there. Hit her. On the right side of the head.’

There was an exit wound on the other side, though, much larger than the entry wound, commented Tony Davley silently, but he would not know that, not having touched the body. There usually was in a head wound, so both pathologist and forensic expert had agreed, unless the bullet was deflected by bone and coming in at an angle.

Not so in this case.

‘A nice clean shot,’ the forensic man had said, half admiringly.

The ground and the bushes beyond were now being searched for the bullet. The soft, blancmange-like tissue of the brain often deflected the bullet more than the hard bone of the skull. This might be the case now.

She ran Terry Jones through everything once again, but he did not change his story.

A first forensic test of his van had been made already, which showed nothing that pointed to the shot having come from him.

Reluctantly, Tony told him that after his statement had been typed, he could read it and then sign it. Then he could go.

Still grumbling, he was offered, and took, a cup of tea. No biscuit, he noted that and gave a black mark.

He said goodbye to DS Davley without regret. The two of them were not sorry to part, he did not like what he called lady policemen and Davley wanted to hand this business over and get back to the Barrow Street affair. Chief Inspector Astley was a good boss and easy to work for, but she was also one of those who thought you could produce results on two cases at the same time and just as fast. Perhaps
she
could, Tony knew she could not. Accordingly, she wanted to get back to what was her priority.

She had no idea of the gold about to drop into her hands.

By the time he got to London, Robbie was so disturbed and worried that he went to a telephone booth on Charing Cross Station. For a moment, he was undecided whom to telephone. His estranged wife or the police?

Coffin, the Chief Commander, Stella Pinero’s husband. That was the man.

He caught the Chief Commander at his desk, checking letters and reports.

‘Coffin? Robbie Gilchrist here.’

‘What is it?’

‘You know about the dead woman in the car park?’

‘I do,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘Just about.’

‘Is her identity known yet?’

‘I think not. Not as far as I know.’ His report had mentioned a handbag but no identification in it.

‘I’m worried it’s Alice.’

Coffin looked at what he had in front of him. ‘She was a young woman between twenty and twenty-five years. Long curly hair. Blue eyes.’

Robbie groaned. ‘Could be, could be.’

Coffin hesitated. ‘Where are you speaking from?’ He could hear noises, voices, people moving around, an announcer proclaiming something difficult to pick up.

‘Charing Cross Station.’

‘You could come back and see for yourself.’

‘You mean identify her?’

‘Don’t jump in. If it is her.’

‘I will come back.’

‘You can cross Barrow Street off your worries: that victim was a much older woman.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gilchrist. He hesitated, then made one more call, this time to his former wife. ‘Liz, it is possible, just possible, that Alice has been killed . . .’ He listened to her outburst of shock and anger. Liz was always articulate. ‘No, of course I’m not sure, but I must check.’ Then wearily: ‘No, George Freedom is not my closest friend, I have known him a long while and we work together. If you want to know, I don’t trust him. And you were the one who married him and that was how he met Alice.’ He eats young girls, and she was ripe for him. ‘And I am going off to see who this poor dead bitch is.’

He just caught the train back to the Second City.

Mary Arden stopped her work in time for a cup of coffee with Evelyn in the mid-morning.

She pulled a face. ‘Better hear my messages before I enjoy my coffee.’ She switched on the answerphone.

The first message was from the plumber with an estimate for repair to the washing machine. And yes, he was afraid the price was high but someone had put football boots in the washer and that did the damage.

Mary groaned and took the next message, which was from her mother, recommending a good hairdresser’s just off Bond Street and why not have a tint, dear, like I do?

There was a bit more about how important it was to ‘look good’, as Mother put it, and to keep her weight down because you really needed a waist this summer, the bust wasn’t so important any more.

‘I laugh,’ said Mary to Evelyn. ‘I really do laugh. If I didn’t I might cry. I can get my hair cut in the Second City, this is not Timbuktu.’

Those two messages had come in the course of the morning, and so had the next message.

‘Mary . . .’

Mary jumped and gave Evelyn a surprised look.

‘Hey, Mary . . . I am sorry I did not get in touch when I got home. Well, the reason is I never got home. Love can take you like that and with me it was swift and strong. I knew you wouldn’t approve, not that you would have said anything, but I would have felt it, anyway. Somehow I wanted to hide, take myself and this delicious feeling into a secret face. It didn’t stay that way, I haven’t been too lucky. Two lovers and both turn out bad. But you don’t like policemen, do you?’

Mary protested aloud. ‘I don’t dislike policemen. I never said that. Only some of them.’

‘But I am off home back to France. To tell you the truth, I think I will be safer there. I have seen and heard something I was not meant to have seen – I might be in bad trouble here. Bad company, bad trouble. And I have heard I am supposed to be dead. But I am alive and planning to stay that way. Etta.’

By the time that Mary Arden heard those words, Etta was lying dead in the car park by the tube station.

Some time later, DS Davley found a passport and a mobile telephone in the jacket the victim had worn. There was also a number.

She telephoned and got Mary Arden, whose voice she knew at once.

She identified herself. ‘Miss Arden, do you know someone called Henriette Duval?’

‘Yes, I’ve just been speaking to her.’

‘You have?’ Tony was surprised.

‘Well, that is, I had a message on my answerphone.’

‘When was this?’

‘It was left on it this morning, but I was late in hearing it.’

‘I see. Is Duval a red-haired young woman, about five foot seven, with blue eyes?’ Well, they had been blue, one eye at least was shattered and bloody.

She did not have to ask much more.

‘I am afraid your friend is dead.’

And Mimsie Marker was thinking to herself: My goodness, I know those shoes.

So she knew the dead person. And she said quietly that she was not surprised, she was one of those girls who does get into trouble.

‘At least this one hasn’t got my name on,’ said Coffin with gloomy satisfaction. He was speaking to his two trusted allies (only did one trust anyone in this game?), Phoebe Astley and Archie Young.

It was late morning, and the room, his inner office, was full of a reluctant sunshine, with the rain clouds still hanging in the sky. Earlier Stella had sent round two bowls of sweet-smelling flowers, carnations and roses, to give him pleasure when back at work.