Cold Coffin (3 page)

Margaret looked at her with a frown.

‘I'll put the car round the corner. I saw a space,' said Natasha. There was no garage nor space for one; motor cars had not been envisaged when this house was built. You owned a horse, and possibly a carriage, or walked.

While Natasha parked the car, Margaret ran into the house. ‘Dave?'

He was not there.

‘Damn you, I'll kill you,' she said aloud just as Natasha walked in.

‘Parked the car. Got the last gap, cars are terrible round here. Who are you going to kill? No, don't tell me, I can guess, he has two legs and lovely hair.'

‘He said he'd be here. He promised – we were going out to dinner. It's our anniversary.'

‘Your wedding?'

‘No, when we met.'

‘I should think you'd go into mourning for that.' Natasha went into the kitchen. ‘He's been here. I can smell him. That aftershave . . . Not here now, though, probably out killing someone. You know, he does a lovely scissor cut.'

She found Dave attractive herself, but would never betray Margaret with him, in spite of temptation. There were other ways of working out frustration, as she suspected Dave knew.

‘Oh, you get back to your own husband,' snapped Margaret.

‘And you go looking for yours.'

She found herself thinking: Don't get into trouble, Margaret. She could hear herself saying to her husband that she was worried about Margaret.

Coffin went home to Stella to tell her the story of the skulls.

‘Yes, nasty, but it's a long while ago.'

‘I'm not sure how much that ought to count,' said Coffin thoughtfully.

Stella did not answer. She knew he was still grieving for the death of his young assistant, DI Charlie Young, the son, the only son at that, of the Chief Superintendent with whom Coffin had worked for years. Worked gratefully, because Archie Young was hard-working and efficient. And a good man; you could trust his integrity. Archie Young had recently moved to become Chief Constable of Filham in Essex, just north of the Second City.

Charlie had died while dealing with an armed robbery in Spinnergate. He had taken a shot right in the face and never came round. His wife, Sally, was also a policewoman, a CID officer. They had recently found out she was expecting their first child. Not a good time to lose your husband.

Stella too had liked Charlie. She looked with sympathy at her husband, but decided that silence was best.

The room they were using in the tower where they lived, the oldest part of the former St Luke's Church, was a beautiful, calm place. Usually it worked its magic on Coffin, but tonight it was not doing the job. Stella believed that Coffin was quite unconscious of how the room affected him in this way: he thought he had no aesthetic sensibilities. ‘Blue's blue and yellow's yellow. How could they make a difference?' She answered that it was a good job he wasn't a surgeon; he'd know the difference between red blood and no blood. Not the right thing to say to a copper – he'd seen plenty of blood in his time. She gave him an affectionate smile. She was softer on him these days.

‘And then there is the later skull in there with them. Dr Murray says that it is many hundred years old, but I am not so sure.'

‘Oh, she'd know.'

‘Would she? Yes, if she'd examined it carefully, but as far as I know she hasn't done that yet: just had a look.'

‘You've got enough to worry about, love, as well as dwelling on the dead of hundreds of years ago.'

‘I don't think that skull is so old. It worries me. I want to find out more.'

‘No one is in a better position than you to do so.'

He nodded. He felt better already. ‘I'll set Phoebe Astley on it. She'll sort it out if anyone can.'

This was true. Phoebe was like a terrier searching for a rat when she started into anything.

‘If this skull is recent, modern in fact, yet placed there with the other skulls, then someone must have known the Neanderthals were there already.'

‘Yes, I've thought of that. It's a puzzle. The site was being prepared for our new building when one of the workmen, just a lad, caught a sight of the top of the pit, a layer of stones and earth. It looked different to him, clever lad, and he told the foreman. The foreman took advice and got the area cleared. Work was stopped when they saw what they'd got, it's still stopped. The archaeologists have taken photographs.'

‘Observant, that workman.'

Coffin nodded. ‘Turned out he was a student earning a bit of money. And interested in the past. He got more than he expected. But he says he isn't going to waste it . . . going to write it up.' He poured himself a drink. ‘I had a talk with the lad himself, asked to see him.' He turned to his wife. ‘Says he knows you.'

‘No! What's his name?'

‘Eddy Buck.'

Stella raised her eyebrows. ‘Yes, I know him . . . Or I know his mother, she works in our wardrobe. She's clever too. He's done some holiday work there too. I believe he can't make up his mind whether to be a doctor or an actor.'

He could tell she liked him. Well, he was a good-looking, taking lad.

Stella studied her husband's face. He looked tired. ‘You miss Archie Young.'

Archie had been gone about six months.

Coffin smiled. ‘I'm glad he got the promotion he deserved. I wanted him to have it.'

‘Nice man,' said Stella reflectively. ‘Tough, though.'

‘We had to be,' said Coffin.

‘I know that. I was alive then, too, remember.'

‘And I don't know that times have changed, either. May have got worse.' He looked towards Stella. ‘I might need your help through this, Stella. You will help me, won't you?'

She nodded. ‘It's the child, isn't it?'

Coffin nodded. ‘All the children, but that later one especially.' He stood up. ‘Something terrible lies behind that head, and it didn't happen thousands of years ago, either.'

‘That's just a guess.'

‘I'm a good guesser. It comes with experience.'

Stella watched him carefully for a moment. ‘Dearest . . .'

Coffin stirred. She wasn't great at endearments. The love was there, but she didn't put it into speech. He thought that acting had cured her of showing love with words. Real love, not the stage variety.

‘Dearest, this couldn't have anything to do with the Minden Street murders. They were too recent.'

Slowly Coffin said, ‘I've always thought, I've known, there was another generation of death behind Minden Street.'

Stella, no cook – after all, you can't be a performer and a cook, and I am, she said to herself, a performer – had ordered in from their favoured restaurant a fine meal of roast duck, green peas and salad.

‘Let's eat.'

They went through to the small dining room, whose window overlooked the theatre. Three theatres in fact, one of which was dark at present. The other two had big successes and royalty was coming to one for charity. Tickets were sold out.

This was an agreeable room, with white walls and golden curtains. Stella studied herself in the large looking-glass on the wall opposite, where she could see that her latest extravagance, a silk trouser suit from a tailor who had worked at Prada, was probably a success. You had to be cautious, because you had to grow into clothes. The important thing, after a certain age, possibly any age, was to control waist and bottom. The bust didn't matter, because a good bra controlled it. Good meant expensive, she meditated. Her gaze flicked towards her husband, sitting there, face caught in a frown. Husbands had a risk factor too: waists were the trouble there. Fortunately, owing to the stresses of his life. Coffin lost weight rather than put it on, lucky thing.

There was a pucker on his mouth now.

‘Wine all right?' she asked a little nervously. The wine was a claret; Coffin always said he was just a London copper who knew nothing about wine and had no palate, but he could be very testy if the wine did not come up to some invisible standard he had set for himself.

‘Not bad at all.'

‘I wondered about boiling it,' said Stella.

‘Good idea,' said Coffin absently.

Stella started to laugh.

Coffin apologized. ‘Sorry. The wine is splendid although perhaps better not boiled . . . I'm worried.'

‘That much I had grasped.'

‘I am sure I saw blood. Or a trace of it.' He got up.

‘You're not going to look,' she protested.

He shook his head, taking out his mobile phone which he kept in his pocket; he liked to feel it was close. A neurosis? Probably. His responsibilities did weigh on him.

Stella shook her head. ‘I never know if that thing is a good thing or a curse.' It sometimes seemed almost an extension of his body.

‘You use yours often enough.' He was dialling a number. Stella watched him.

While he waited for the answer to his call, he studied her trouser suit. ‘That's new, isn't it?'

Stella nodded. Well cut, expensive and made for her, that was the way to get good clothes, she thought. Anyway, after a certain age. She knew this splendid tailor for women (you had to have one who understood the female figure, or they got the legs and bottom wrong) and as a bonus there was a little shop nearby where you could buy a thick, rich, violet essence. Rose too, if you preferred rose, which she hardly ever did herself.

‘I like it. If you'd told me before, I would have taken you out to show it off.' He put out his hand to her. There had been times in the not so distant past when their relationship had been troubled. Two hard-working, ambitious people, both pushing careers forward, sometimes left love aside.

There was a pause. ‘The duck can wait. Won't spoil,' said Stella softly.

Then Phoebe's voice, deeper and huskier than usual, floated out of the telephone.

‘Sir?' And into the silence, ‘Sir? Phoebe Astley here. You called?'

Behind they could hear a female voice proclaiming it was a wrong number and not to answer.

‘Is she still living with that girl who used to run a dress shop and then took a job in the theatre wardrobe?' Stella allowed herself this query, although she knew the answer was no.

‘Oh, it's none of our business,' said Coffin irritably, in an aside.

‘Can you hear a cat crying?' asked Stella.

‘No,' said Coffin briefly. ‘Phoebe? The Chief Commander here.'

As if I didn't know, thought Phoebe swiftly. And CC too, not just, ‘Coffin here.' It's serious then. But it always was, one way and another, with him.

The voices in the background on both sides died away.

‘I want you to get the forensics team down to the skulls under water. Also a photographer and SOCO.'

‘But I thought,' began Phoebe . . . She could almost hear

Coffin saying, ‘Don't think, just do as I say.' ‘I thought the archaeologists wanted to be first,' she persevered.

‘The forensics first, please, Phoebe. I think there may have been a crime.'

The conversation was over, as Phoebe recognized.

‘No sex,' she said, turning towards her companion. ‘No sex till morning.' And possibly not even then. ‘Crime first.'

2

Thursday, on to Friday. Not Christmas yet, maybe never
.

Phoebe Astley said to the chief of forensics, Dr Hazzard, that yes, she often thought that the Chief Commander had precognition.

It was late evening, two days since she had passed on Coffin's request. She had done her bit, but she thought forensics had been slow.

‘You took your time.'

‘I had a lot on hand. If you remember there was a bad fire in a supermarket – several bodies could not be identified. All comes our way. Also, I had a moral obligation to let the archaeologist have a brief look to draw, map and photograph before anything was touched.'

But the forensics expert on what might now be called late-night duty, Dr George Hazzard, had delivered a tentative judgement. Dr Hazzard and Phoebe met professionally with some regularity. There had been a short but intense relationship between them when Phoebe first came to the Second City, the memory of which still hung over them like a cloud. A thundery one.

Almost put me off men for life, she thought. Almost. The question was still open, she was working on it. She did not count the Chief Commander as a man. He was
sui generis
, himself, unique. And just as well, possibly, as the possessor of precognitive powers.

Or the Chief Commander might just be a good guesser.

Without inspecting it closely, he had guessed that the ‘different' skull was not as old as the others.

‘Not by a long way,' said Dr Hazzard. ‘I can't give a precise date. We'll need the pathologists and the medical chaps to help there.'

He was staring down at the skull, which had been carefully abstracted, under the watchful eye of one of the junior archaeologists, who took photographs and drew diagrams, leaving the other skulls in situ. The water was slowly draining away. And yes, Coffin had been right, there was a touch of blood on it, caught in a crack in the bone and therefore not washed away.

‘Medical?' Phoebe was surprised. ‘How new is it?'

Dr Hazzard smiled and shrugged. He liked to see his police colleagues taken aback.

Phoebe sought for words. ‘Not contemporary?'

He shrugged again. ‘It's an interesting question. Age and provenance. Where did it come from, and how? I like that sort of a problem.'

‘It's not a game.'

‘Who said it was?'

‘You know what I mean: if the skull is beyond a certain age, then there's no case to worry CID.' She looked hopefully, then speculatively, at Hazzard who appeared to be thinking. Provoking bugger, she thought.

After a quiet second, taking a deep breath, he said: ‘I think CID might have a case.'

‘What was the age of the owner of this skull? It is a baby's skull, I suppose.'