Coffin's Ghost (14 page)

The bed, thought Stella, who had a sense of joy inside her
in spite of the worry over Albie. Bed and lovemaking do truly help. I am glad it happened.

The very shock and sadness of what had happened had wiped out everything except pleasure in being alive and with each other. Nothing else managed such a feat.

Out of pain, joy.

Of course, in the morning, all the pain for Albie came back, but between the two of them there was a kind of peace.

‘About what I was saying last night,’ began Coffin as he poured some coffee.

‘Forget it,’ she had said.

Stella now touched her husband’s arm. ‘Is Albie behind one of those’ – she sought for a word – ‘sort of shelters?’

‘No, you only get one of those if you’re really on the edge . . .’ He nodded towards the end of the ward by a window. ‘That’s Albie, I can see his face.’

The shape of it, he meant, and that was a guess because the features were masked in bandages which seemed, at this distance, to be yellowish rather than blankly white. Soaked in something, perhaps.

A uniformed police constable sat on guard a tactful distance away. He stood up when he saw the Chief Commander.

‘I shouldn’t have brought these.’ Stella indicated the bunch of roses she held.

‘No, he might come round and see them.’

A pretty young nurse came up to them. She had soft brown eyes in a golden face.

‘I’ve come to see Mr Touchey,’ said Coffin.

‘I know.’ She had a nice smile too. ‘Chief Commander Coffin, isn’t it?’

Coffin nodded.

‘And Miss Pinero?’

Stella said, ‘I think the roses were a mistake.’

‘No . . . he can smell them. The sense of smell is very sensitive even in a state of deep unconsciousness.’ She was leading them forward. ‘At least I think so . . .’

‘How is he?’

‘You will have to ask the doctor,’ she said tactfully. ‘But he is stable.’

That dread word, Coffin thought, the preamble to a gentle sliding away.

She was drawing up a chair. ‘You’ll need one more. I’ll get one. If you want to see Mr Fairlie . . . he’ll be along soon. And Mr Touchey might be able to listen to you . . . I wouldn’t be surprised.’ She held out her hand: ‘Let me take those, Miss Pinero, I’ll get them put in water.’ As she went off she said: ‘My sister is one of yours, Chief Commander: Sergeant Carmel Edwards, Ditton Street.’

Stella rolled her eyes at Coffin. ‘She wouldn’t make a bad detective herself. Do you know her sister?’

‘Know the name.’

He could see a tall, thin, tired-looking man wearing a pale-blue shirt with no tie approaching. Mr Fairlie, I presume? You had to be a distinguished surgeon to look so tired and dress so casual. What had happened to the consultant from the past in a long white coat, cold and a controlled expression? Gone with the snows of yesteryear.

Gone too the remoteness from the nursing staff. Mr Fairlie put his arm round his pretty, dark nurse, told her to hurry back with the flowers, because he would need her help.

A consultant needing help from a nurse? Depends on the nature of the help, Coffin thought cynically.

Stella seemed to pick up his thoughts because she frowned, a particularly effective theatrical frown that she had perfected in
The Importance of Being Earnest
. (‘I started out as Gwendoline,’ said Stella, ‘now I am her Ladyship.’)

Mr Fairlie took Coffin’s hand, murmured something polite. Coffin flinched at his grip, which was at once neat and powerful.

‘Mr Touchey . . . Albie . . . well, we both know him, don’t we?’ and he gave Coffin a gentle smile. Clever fellow, was Stella’s thought. ‘Albie Touchey is a well-known local figure. As you are yourself, Chief Commander.’ Was there a hint of a bow? ‘He is still deeply unconscious.’

‘He is going to come round?’

Mr Fairlie did not answer Coffin directly. ‘We are investigating the head injury . . . a scan . . . the neurologist is going to investigate.’

‘Do you mean open up?’

‘I mustn’t say what Dr Paston thinks of doing, but he will certainly want to do an X-ray or two . . . Then he may decide to operate.’

By now they were at the bedside and the nurse had returned with the flowers. She still wore her pleasant smile which she donated to everyone, not forgetting the young police constable who dared not, in Coffin’s presence, allow himself to smile back.

Coffin watched as Fairlie made a swift check of Albie, who showed no signs of consciousness. His lips moved, his eyelids fluttered, once he opened them wide to stare forward but without comprehension.

And then, for a second, before the eyelids went down, there was just a flash of the old Albie. The blue eyes had that hint of amusement with which they usually regarded Coffin.

Coffin stepped forward. ‘Albie, old thing . . . Coffin here.’ But Albie had gone again. But at least he had been there, was still there, even if locked up.

Mr Fairlie shook his head. ‘He may have heard you, probably did, but don’t expect an answer just yet.’

‘He’s an important man.’

‘I know.’

‘The attack on him was meant for me.’

‘He may have something to tell you on that when he comes round,’ said Fairlie in a soothing voice.

‘I wish it was me there.’

Stella, selfishly – I’ll put the show on at Christmas whatever happens – did not. She held on to her husband’s arm.

At this point, cautiously but interestingly sure of herself, the nurse said: ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but Mr Touchey’s brother is outside and wants to see him.’

Coffin said suddenly: ‘He hasn’t got a brother. No one, he’s alone.’

‘A journalist,’ said the knowledgeable Stella.

‘Stay here.’ And Coffin walked towards the door of the ward. He stepped into the corridor.

A couple of nurses walking together, talking. A male nurse
pushing a wheelchair, empty. A man with a trolley piled with what looked like bedpans.

Further down the corridor, in an alcove, protected from the light from the window, was a tall thin man with a big black hat that seemed too big for him.

Coffin moved forward. ‘Hi, there!’ But the man was faster, he turned, and ran down the corridor and out of the swing doors.

Coffin pulled out his mobile phone. Thank God for this, he thought.

Not that they’d get the man with all the description he had been able to give them. He had a fleeting vision of his force arresting all the men in the Second City unlucky enough to be wearing black hats. Or any hats, for that matter.

Back at the bedside he said to the man on duty: ‘Stay with Mr Touchey all the time.’ He could feel medical protests rising up at this but he put out his hand, brushing them aside. ‘And if he says anything, anything at all, let me know at once.’

Coffin drove Stella back to the theatre where she had a meeting with Georgie Freedom and Robbie Gilchrist.

‘Don’t let them beat you up,’ he advised Stella as she got out of the car.

‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

Neither did he, except a vague warning. ‘I don’t know either, but they both look hungry men to me.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

He then drove on to his headquarters where an incident room had been set up to deal with the Barrow Street body. Or the bits of it.

Presumably by now, another incident room was dealing with the attack on Albert Touchey.

Over the years since he had arrived, Coffin had managed to get sufficient high-class equipment – computers, telephones, faxes and printers – to make for heightened efficiency. He remembered the primitive conditions which had prevailed when he had been a young detective and contrasted it with what he saw now.

But the past would not be put down. It had a voice, his own voice: we did good work, though, in the old days; it’s hard work, intelligence and cooperation that counts.

He stood for a moment outside the glass swing door through which he could see Phoebe Astley talking to a slim young woman whose face he knew and about whom Phoebe had been talking. DS Tony Davley, an up-and-coming officer, one to watch, a future star. Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Cambridge, father a judge. Or was it the mother who was the High Court judge?

Yes, truly one to keep an eye on for more than one reason, she was remarkably handsome in a well-bred English way, which, as it often did, had that hint of something warmer underneath.

In one corner of the room, a woman detective was tapping information into a computer. In another a young man, jacket off, was talking into a telephone and making notes. A door in the opposite wall swung open at intervals to let in messengers whose function seemed to be to deposit papers on a central table.

It was near this table that Phoebe and Tony stood, arms akimbo.

Phoebe seemed to be doing most of the talking.

‘So, it’s not two cases but one.’

‘I always did think that, didn’t you?’

Two shootings so close together? Yes, it looked as though there was a connection . . . May not be two cases into one, though.’

‘Is there a difference?’

Phoebe left this question of semantics. ‘Think a bit deeper.’

‘I see what you are getting at, and the thought did come to me. Maybe not two into one but three into one. It’s all one case with one killer.’ She paused. ‘I’m still trying to think it out.’

‘It’s like a bit of knitting, you think it’s a muddle, all tangled up, then you see what you’ve got is in fact the pattern.’

‘I don’t think I’ve quite got the pattern yet,’ said Tony humbly.

She had seen the Chief Commander push through the door and humbleness seemed a wise precaution.

Phoebe went forward. ‘How is Mr Touchey, sir?’

Coffin did not ask how she knew where he had been because he was aware that all his movements were known.

‘Not good.’

‘He’s going to come through, isn’t he, sir?’

‘Yes, I believe so. The doctors say so as much as they allow themselves to say anything. I wish he could talk, but he can’t as yet . . . he’s not in this world at the moment. But we need something.’

Phoebe Astley looked at Tony. ‘We’ve got something. You may be surprised. I don’t know. I wasn’t altogether. Puzzled, yes . . .’

‘Come on, out with it . . . It’s the bullet, isn’t it?’

‘You’ve guessed.’

‘Not difficult, couldn’t be anything else. Not at this stage of the game . . . It’s the same gun that killed Henriette Duval.’

She leaned forward. ‘He was after you, sir.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘It has to be so. Outside where you live . . . he thought it was you.’

It echoed in his brain: it’s you he’s after.

Well, plenty of people had been after him in the past. Maybe one would catch up with him.

Albie may say something. If the poor sod ever speaks again.

Stella was enjoying her meeting with George Freedom and Robbie Gilchrist this morning, she had the feeling that money was in the air. Or flowing into her pocket.

– Keep ‘em talking, her moneywise sister-in-law, Letty Bingham (Laetitia had had several surnames but had chosen to stay with this one) always said. You get more money out of a man when he thinks he is being clever.

Stella poured out coffee and added whisky with a lavish hand and laughed happily at all Freedom’s jokes.

You didn’t have to give much of a laugh when Georgie cracked his jokes, but something he expected: it was his due.

‘Bad about Albie,’ volunteered Robbie. ‘Is he going to be all right?’

Is he going to live? he meant. Not will he be able to walk, speak, think. To Stella all those seemed doubtful.

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Have to hope. He asked me if I would put on a show at the prison at Christmas. I’ll do it come what may.’

‘One of three: the limbs in Barrow Street –’ began Robbie.

‘No, no,’ said Freedom. ‘Can’t be connected. Who says so?’

Robbie went on: ‘The shooting dead of the girl in the car park and now Albie. The way the girl was killed, that makes him a good shot.’

‘Not such a good shot,’ protested Freedom. ‘He missed Albie.’

‘Oh yes, I forgot you knew about shooting. Belong to a club, don’t you?’

Freedom picked up his coffee cup and held it out to Stella. ‘Drop more, please, ma’am . . . I don’t shoot seriously.’

‘Not any more?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Haven’t I seen a silver cup and platter in your library?’

Stella gave a pleading look at Robbie while offering him some more whisky.

‘All right. Joke over. You are an ex-gunman . . . Mind you, George, wouldn’t this make a good film . . . no, correct me, a good TV three-parter. Limbs first and end first part with the shot girl, second part find the attack on Albie, third part find the rest of the body and solution.’

‘Sounds easy,’ said Stella.

Robbie grinned. ‘As I am writing it, it is easy. Not for your husband, I daresay.’

‘No. Never is. He’s hoping Albie may remember something. Say something when he comes round.’

‘I know how he feels,’ said Robbie with feeling. ‘I wish my missing stepdaughter would get on the blower and tell us where she is.’

‘She will when she wants,’ said George Freedom. ‘You fuss. Kids these days like their freedom.’

‘OK, OK.’ It was Robbie’s turn to look to Stella for help.

Stella moved the conversation deftly on to what she wanted for the theatre. As she did so she had the uneasy thought that in all the anxiety about Albie there was something she had forgotten to do.

Or wasn’t someone going to remind her about something?

Dave, sitting in the car and feeling cold, said: ‘It’s your fault. You were supposed to remind her.’

There they were outside the St Luke’s Tower, home to Coffin and Stella. It was cleaning day, an extra built in because Stella thought the windows needed cleaning.

‘No, it was you.’

Dave smiled. ‘I must be getting old.’

‘Not you, me old mate, ageless, you are.’

‘OK, so I forgot to tell the lady to be there to let us in. Why can’t we have keys?’

‘Security, security.’

‘On which point, the security guard is giving us a dirty look.’ Dave started the car. ‘Let’s go and have a cuppa at the café and you can telephone and ask Miss Pinero to come round. And before you say anything, you can phone because she likes you better and you are the boss. I just work for you, I’m the hired help.’