Coffin's Ghost (22 page)

‘Even George Freedom didn’t qualify. I don’t like him, but I don’t see him as guilty.’

Knowing that the media was yapping at their heels, Coffin ordered Phoebe: ‘Get a notice in the papers saying we are pursuing an important line.’

‘And hope for an announcement soon?’

Coffin was a realist. ‘No, that would be pushing our luck.’
He gave Phoebe a sharp look, and to her that look said, Get on with it.

He had given her quick promotion and now he wanted results.

Phoebe Astley went back to her office, she felt lonely and lost, she had few friends in the Second City and now it looked as if her career was going down the drain fast.

In the big incident room she had two separate teams working, one searching for the torso and head, still missing. The second team was working on the shootings. The break-in at the Chief Commander’s home, and the depositing of the head of the cat, was shuttled between the two as officers completed one task and reported on it and moved on afresh. The third team sat at desks and computers and collated everything.

The total result so far was a pile of reports and photographs, all carefully studied by Phoebe who also discussed them with the officers concerned.

She was summarizing her thoughts aloud, bemoaning Freedom’s regrettable way of giving information. ‘You can tell he writes comedy,’ she complained.

‘I’ve had some good laughs from him on TV shows he’s put on,’ said a constable, handing her yet another bundle of reports.

‘Chopping Tree Lane.’ A voice spoke up from the table in front of Phoebe. ‘Cheap and easy eating there. And everything else,’ the young woman added thoughtfully. ‘Samuel Pepys said it had the most liberal stews and pimps and whores in the whole of East Hythe. The lane that runs between Drossers Lane Market and where Freedom lives is the old Chopping Tree Lane.’ She stood up to face Phoebe, a tall, solid girl, not beautiful but taking. ‘I don’t think its character has changed all that much. It’s called Pepys’ Alley now.’

‘I thought that was Inches Street,’ called a cheerful baritone from across the room.

‘It was until that Know Your Own History Month last year and then it was changed to commemorate Pepys.’ She added thoughtfully, ‘He called it Piss Alley.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it, Liz,’ came from the baritone. ‘Go there a lot, do you?’

‘No, clever clogs. I’m just interested in the past. More your sort of scene than mine.’

Phoebe was remembering that where the child’s body had been buried and where George Freedom lived in the old warehouse were close together too, both near Chopping Tree Lane and both near Drossers Market.

She made a decision: ‘Concentrate on that triangle; Drossers Market, Pepys’ Alley or whatever it is called and the road where the child was found. Question people, search it, photograph it, dig it up.’

The room went quiet.

‘Anything from pathology about the child yet?’

‘Natural death . . . report is on the way,’ called a voice. ‘It’s being faxed. Coming through now.’

Phoebe walked across to pick up the pages as they appeared. Her eye fell on the comment that DNA specimens would be necessary if there was an attempt to prove paternity.

Back to Freedom again, then.

A few hundred yards from Chopping Tree Lane was the canal, now unused, built by Irish labourers before the railways came. It had had an industrial life until after the last war when the factories along its banks closed one after another and fell empty or were converted into luxury apartments. The canal then became a selling point and the word Venice was mentioned. Freedom and Gilchrist had debated using the scene for a television comedy:
Watermen at Play
. . . provisional title only. Both of them could see the canal from their bedroom windows.

Now it was occasionally used by pleasure barges, and there was talk of ‘kind of a marina’ being constructed further down the canal towards the Essex coast, but at the moment children played on the canal path and rats lived there in some peace. It was a health and safety hazard by any standard.

This being so, a police constable patrolled the path at irregular intervals. Irregular because if the kids knew the time you were coming, they stopped whatever wrongdoing they were up to. It was a favourite police walk because you could stop and have a fag.

WPC Winifred Darby was just about to do that when she saw a cluster of kids on the canal bank. Experience suggested she go to look. WPC Darby was a sturdy, matronly lady with a family of her own.

‘What have you got there?’ Once a bag of drugs had surfaced. As she walked towards them, she did just hope it wasn’t that head they were all being encouraged to find. She didn’t fancy a decomposing head when she was hungry. (Lose some weight, Win, her husband had suggested, I like an armful of woman in bed but not a sackful. Hurtful but true.)

But not this evening.

‘It’s a gun,’ said the leader of the troop, a boy like a bright-eyed monkey. ‘I reckon we ought to get a reward . . .’ He read the newspapers and watched the TV news. ‘I reckon it’s the one that killed that woman.’

Win Darby knew what to do. ‘Leave it where it is, don’t touch it.’ And she got on her mobile to phone in the news.

She hoped the incident room would be pleased and give her and the young monkey a good mark.

A long working day over, Coffin went back home, walking to give the dog some exercise. He let himself in, checking that the new alarms system was working. Certainly made enough noise, he thought as he switched it off, and if the noise went on beyond three minutes then Police Headquarters were alerted.

Today there was a police car parked outside. That mustn’t go on, police money must not be used too freely on him.

Stella was at home, waiting for him. She seemed more cheerful than he had expected in view of the fact that she might be losing George Freedom’s money and possibly also the comedy sketches he and Gilchrist were going to produce, using the small Theatre Workshop, and selling it to one of the big television companies, with possibility of US transmission.

‘Sorry about all this, upset your plans with Freedom and Gilchrist.’

‘I couldn’t use him or his money if he has behaved the way he seems to have done.’

‘He may not be the killer.’

Coffin had underestimated Stella’s cool practical good sense. ‘I’ll miss the money the comedies might have brought in, but on the other hand, TV writers don’t always transfer well to the stage. And it wouldn’t do me or the theatre any good to be mixed up with him. He’s bad publicity whether he murdered anyone in the Second City or not.’

‘No, I agree. Robbie Gilchrist is out of it.’ Had never really been in view as the killer; the police investigation was floundering. Soon the media – the newspaper and the television commentators would pick it up, and then the roof might fall in.

Mimsie Marker had summed it up: Blind Man’s Buff, that’s what it is, and no one knowing the tune. They need a leader and the Chief is keeping his head below the parapet. She hated having to put it like this, she had admired Coffin, called him ‘One of us’, but on the other hand, selling newspapers was her business and a sparky comment helped to sell them.

Very gently, Stella said: ‘And I hope you manage to keep your feet clear too.’

He sat in silence, this was settlement time.

‘If things go down, I may have to resign.’

Stella remained silent, watching his face.

‘Would you like me to do it now?’

She was still silent. Was that a smile, kindly or mocking, just moving her lips?

‘It’s time I put us, you, first,’ he said. He had the uneasy feeling that he was sinking, deeper and deeper, water over his head soon. Oddly enough, he was still breathing and not feeling too bad.

She was laughing. No doubt about it.

‘You fool. Of course you mustn’t resign. If there’s a war on, then I fight on your side. Always, you know that.’

This was where, Coffin thought afterwards, we should fall into each other’s arms and passionately embrace.

What happened was that the telephone rang, and so conditioned were they both, that both moved to answer it. They collided, rolling together on the floor in each other’s arms.

Coffin managed to reach out to get the telephone.

There was another diary written some time after Samuel Pepys’s visit with his friend Dr Williams to East Hythe. This was the diary of Margery Loveheart, actress and widow.

August 3, A Sunday

Last night, being a Saturday and after visiting my daughter Sarah who is playing at the new St Giles Theatre where she is Lady Macbeth, I walked home together with my servant John through Chopping Tree Lane.

As we walked I saw that we were walking among a herd of dead cows. I knew they were dead because they were being carried in a great cart which was freezing cold. The cart was closed in with no windows but somehow I could see inside.

The cart itself was mighty and horrible, unlike to any cart I had seen before since it moved on its own strength with no horse or animal pulling it.

And behind me came another cart, this time full of sheep, bleating and moving about, which was not to be believed because they were already jointed, legs and shoulder.

I turned to John and asked him what he made of this, but he stared at me and said he saw nothing but the street and our house ahead. And then he said he was frightened for me for there was the Plague about and what I saw was a warning that I was ill.

He would not walk beside me then but moved forward to march in front.

It is true that the carts faded away as he spoke and my head ached mightily and all I saw was a couple of black and white cats.

I believe I shall be ill, but I have good girls in my house and they will look after me.

Editor’s note: Three pages of this diary were found, bound up in a book of housewifery and cookery which is dated 1703. The paper is old, the writing looks genuine, but some doubts must remain
.

From the magistrate’s record of East Hythe court at this time it is clear that the ‘house’ of which Mrs Loveheart spoke was a bawdy house which she owned and her girls were whores
.

It is a strange vision she saw of frozen meat trundling through seventeenth-century East Hythe
.

Editor: Dr E. Marting.
Stories of East Hythe
.

Phoebe’s voice was quick and anxious. ‘Glad you’re there, sir, thought you might not be. I thought Miss Pinero said she was taking you out for a meal.’

He looked at Stella, now tidying her hair. Had she said that? Phoebe was not likely to have got it wrong. So was it to have been the last meal before the execution or a friendly meal because she loved him?

‘We might be off later.’ He looked at his wife, no expression other than gentle interest on the lovely face, but who can trust to an actress’s expression. He took heart from what she had said: I fight on your side. ‘So what is it?’

‘Earlier today after questioning George Freedom, and getting nothing from him and nothing circumstantial from forensic, I thought he really was out of the picture. Now I am not so sure.’