The Thirteenth Coffin (7 page)

‘Well, it looks like we’ve found out how our tramp and Gepetto the puppet-maker got in.’

Bradbury nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

The passage was oval in shape, about six feet tall and four feet wide. It was crudely made of what seemed to be house bricks. They were damp, and covered with mould. Along the length of the tunnel a row of lamps had been screwed to the wall, all linked by a looping cable.

Bradbury spotted a switch just inside the tunnel. She pushed it up and down a few times but nothing happened.

‘So,’ Lapslie asked, ‘are you game?’ He gestured to the depth of the tunnel.

Bradbury nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

Lapslie began to move into the darkness. ‘Follow me then?’

Bradbury obeyed.

The tunnel was so high that Lapslie did not have to stoop, but managed to walk forward upright, scanning the beam of the light all over the tunnel, searching for anything that might do him or Bradbury harm, or
might be of some interest, but there was nothing apart from beetles and other insects that scuttled out of the way of the light as if it touched them. Apart from the insects, there was just dirt and the overwhelming smell of damp and rot.

After about a hundred yards they came to a set of concrete stairs and began to ascend them slowly, Lapslie counting each step as they went. He didn’t know why, but he always counted things like steps, or paces from one place to another. Maybe it was connected to his neurological condition, maybe not, but he’d done it since childhood. After he had counted eighty-seven steps they came to a halt. Above them was a large metal manhole cover. Lapslie pushed at it hard with both hands for a few moments, and it gave way. Then, slipping one hand around the edge of the cover, he pushed it sideways until blinding sunlight streamed in and there was room enough for a person to climb through.

Lapslie climbed the few steps that took him to the edge of the hole, and scrambled out. Once in the open he turned off the lamp, and took several deep breaths of the blessedly fresh air before offering his hand to Bradbury. As soon as they were out, they looked around. They were in the middle of a small copse, and just beyond it
spread a large field full of lavender. So that explained the lavender smell, Lapslie considered. It hadn’t been sparked by any object in the bunker, it was a real smell from outside. Although the copse was overgrown, there was an obvious path leading from the field. It was too big, too well marked to be one made by badgers or foxes. Lapslie assumed that it had been made by the comings and goings of the tramp, and perhaps also the doll-maker.

Bradbury gave a shout. ‘Over there, sir! Look over there! I think it’s the entrance to the bunker!’

Lapslie looked in the direction of her pointing finger. She was right. About three hundred yards on the other side of the wood he could see Thomson’s SOCOs moving around the scene. So now they knew how the tramp and the doll-maker had got in and out of the bunker without being detected.

He looked across at Bradbury and chuckled. ‘Have you seen yourself?’

Bradbury’s face was black with dirt, and her hair and clothes covered in dusty, sooty cobwebs. She made a vain attempt to brush herself down, and then looked at Lapslie and returned the compliment. ‘Have you seen
yourself
, sir?’ He looked down at his own clothes and found he was in a similar state, if not slightly worse. He
smiled broadly. ‘What do you think – some sort of emergency exit in case the bunker was attacked?’

Bradbury wasn’t so sure. ‘Or maybe if things got unpleasant inside.’

Lapslie nodded. ‘Maybe. We need to get Thomson and his troops over here to do a proper job on the tunnel and the woods. Our doll-maker must have got here somehow – I’m guessing by car – so a search for any tyre marks might be a good start. Also anything that might have been dumped from the car: cigarettes, cans of drink, general rubbish. Let’s get Special Ops down here to do a fingertip search of the entire wood. You never know, they might turn something up. Can you get that sorted?’

Bradbury nodded.

‘Also, get those two uniformed goons over here. I want them to keep an eye on the tunnel until the SOCOs turn up. Oh and get a dog. Let’s put one inside the shelter, see if it can find anything else we have missed.’

Bradbury nodded with a ‘Yes, sir,’ and made her way towards Thomson and his team.

But Lapslie stayed where he was for a moment, looking back towards the lavender field, pondering just why this site might have been chosen.

*

Ten down; two to go.

It had taken years, but had been worth it. It was all in the planning. The police had no idea that eight of the ten of them had been murdered. It was his little secret.

He giggled to himself as he sat in his kitchen, sipping at a cup of tea: an uncontrolled noise bubbling up from deep inside. All those detectives, all those pathologists, and not
one
of them had ever come close to realizing what he was doing. The girl he’d shot earlier today was only the second they had ever detected; but then that one had a specific purpose set aside from the others. Eight deaths still remained listed on the books as accidents.

The first one, the Nurse, he remembered like it was yesterday. He could still see that confused ‘Why me?’ look on her face as he choked the life out of her. He treasured that look. It kept him warm at night just thinking about it.

She had died quicker than he imagined she would, but then he had never choked anyone to death before, so maybe it was normal. He had listened to the profiler they had brought in – Eleanor Whittley. Her theories had amazed him, they were so totally wrong, but that had the advantage that it did much to stop the police getting anywhere close to him. So a big thank you, Doctor Whittley.

He wondered how many more people had got away with
murder because of that woman’s clumsy theorizing. Dozens, he conjectured.

Still, he now needed to concentrate on the last two. They would also have to be tragic accidents, of course: he couldn’t chance another murder and too many links being made too quickly; that might work against the links he hoped they’d follow. He also knew they would have to be carried out quickly. This had been going on for long enough, and he was getting tired, but he couldn’t rest until his task was completed.

There were two problems he had to overcome. One was the fact that the police had discovered his dolls. He hadn’t wanted that to happen until after his task was complete. It was that bloody tramp’s fault – and to think he’d left the tosser alone. The second problem was the involvement of Detective Chief Inspector Lapslie. Lapslie was an odd man and, from what he understood, an ill man, but he also knew that Lapslie was supposed to be the best investigator the Essex Constabulary had. Still, he’d suspected Lapslie might become involved at some stage, thus the choice of location so close to the lavender field – to hopefully work against Lapslie’s synaesthesia; conflicting aromas to throw off his focus. Though if Lapslie became too much of a problem, he would have to be dealt with.

He picked up the two dolls from the kitchen table. Which next? The Teacher or the Major? Seemed like a simple decision,
but nothing had been simple so far. Killing wasn’t simple. Killing so many people, and making sure that no one had any idea that most of them had been murdered, as well as obscuring and misleading where necessary, was innately difficult – but he was up to the task and so far it had all worked out well. The Teacher or the Major? He moved the two dolls up and down in his hands. He felt like God weighing the fate of two of his creations.

His eye was caught by the local paper sitting on a corner of the table. It was open at an inside page: he’d been looking for the crossword earlier, before making his cup of tea. The headline on the most prominent article on the page read
Teachers Diet for Charity!
He remembered glancing through the text: it was about a group of overweight teachers at the local comprehensive who were planning to lose weight on a sponsored diet in order to raise funds for a local charity, but the way he had left the paper folded obscured half of the words.
Teachers Die,
the headline now read.

Teachers Die. Yes, of course. It was as if God was sending him a message, telling him that not only was his cause a justified cause, but also pointing him in a particular direction. Helping him to see which way to go.

Yes, the Teacher would be next.

Now all he had to do was to work out where, when and how.

*

Lapslie had no respect for his boss. He had formed the opinion, early in his career, that most people in any organization – and the police force was no exception – either desperately wanted to be the next grade up or desperately yearned to return to the easier life one grade down. Alan Rouse had always had his eye on higher things. The two of them had worked together as constables in Brixton, more years ago than Lapslie liked to recall, and even then Rouse had always been less interested in solving crimes and protecting civilians than in looking for opportunities to advance his status, make himself known, attach himself to the officers he thought were going to make it to higher things. Now that he was near the top of the slippery pole of police politics he seemed, on the surface, to be affable and avuncular, everyone’s best friend, but Lapslie knew that he was always on guard, waiting for the officers beneath him to plot to usurp his authority, and he wasn’t above wrecking an officer’s career if he thought they were becoming too ambitious. He wasn’t in any hurry to relinquish his position.

Rouse’s attitude towards Lapslie was ambivalent, which suited Lapslie right down to the ground. On the one hand, Lapslie was no threat to him, but on the other
he knew where Rouse had come from, and the things he had done to get promoted, and that made Lapslie a walking time bomb in Rouse’s mind. Now he only brought Lapslie in on the most difficult of cases, the theory being that if he dropped the ball – which he was bound to do one day, because everyone did – then Rouse could get rid of him and put it down to his synaesthesia. Lapslie’s view on the world was that he would rather be hated for who he was than be loved for who he wasn’t. Rouse didn’t quite think that way.

His office was on the top floor at the Essex Constabulary HQ. Lapslie hated going there. Too many voices, a melange of flavours, and not all of them very pleasant. It was a bit like having tinnitus of the mouth, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

Entering Rouse’s outer office he was greeted by the great man’s personal assistant, or ‘secretary’ in old money. She was pleasant enough, and Lapslie quite liked her. On the other hand he had once locked her in Rouse’s office, following a slight disagreement, and every time she saw him now she took a step backwards and her gaze darted around as if in search of escape routes.

As he opened the door she looked up at him from behind her desk, an inquisitive smile on her face which
quickly melted into apprehension. ‘Chief Inspector Lapslie. How are you?’

‘Very well, Helen, thank you.’

‘Good. The superintendent is expecting you.’

She pressed the intercom button on her desk and announced his presence. ‘DCI Lapslie here to see you, sir.’

Rouse’s voice came straight back. ‘Send him through, would you, Helen? Oh and could you arrange for some coffee and biscuits? I think the Chief Inspector is partial to custard creams.’

Lapslie wasn’t, but he knew that Rouse was. The man couldn’t stop being devious even when ordering biscuits.

‘You can go right in, Chief Inspector.’

Lapslie nodded, walked past Helen and into Rouse’s office.

Rouse was waiting for him. ‘Mark, how are you?’

He put out his hand and Lapslie took it. He pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Sit you down, Mark, sit you down. So, how are things? How’s the problem – any better?’

Lapslie shook his head. ‘No, not really. The cognitive behavioural therapy sessions at the hospital are a waste of bloody time. My consultant’s suggested a new course
of medication, some experimental drug or other, but I’m not sure. I think I may just have to live with it.’

‘Seeing much of the children?’

Lapslie shook his head again. ‘No, not much. They’re busy, I’m busy, Sonia’s awkward as hell. Difficult situation.’

With Jamie and Robbie now in their teens, it was true that his sons’ social schedule had become more hectic; and between his wife’s busy schedule and his own demanding workload and irregular hours, time with his kids often slipped through the gaps between. He’d seen them only three times in the past year, when the original arrangement had been every month. But he couldn’t help thinking that Sonia had engineered part of that, coming up with last-minute emergencies for her own work, or a skateboard or camping outing for Jamie or Robbie with friends that had suddenly come up. Perhaps getting her own back for his own past quality-time-with-family negligence.

Rouse gave an understanding nod. ‘I see.’

‘Ironically, she’s now doing aromatherapy, so I dare say she likes to rub it in.’

A faint curl of the lips from Rouse, so Lapslie wasn’t sure whether he’d got the joke or was simply offering a
strained smile to shield his concern that Lapslie was still troubled by the split. Strangely enough, it had been his ex-wife’s aromatherapy work which had led her to suggest that drugs would have limited effect on his synaesthesia, so it had become yet another ‘I told you so’ argument between them. What he hadn’t told Sonia was that he took his prescribed thorazitol minimally, not just because of the regular dose’s hallucinatory side-effects, but because it took all the edges off his other senses too, made them less sharp. A strange sort of subdued inner hue, as if he was mentally and emotionally just treading water. Otherwise he feared his days as a detective would have been numbered: in no time he’d have been used for no more than an internal, desk-bound, pen-pushing job – like Rouse’s, in fact.

He pushed his own cramped smile in response. ‘So why is it you wanted to see me, sir?’