Coffin's Ghost (19 page)

‘In part,’ said Coffin. ‘I shall want to talk to her.’

‘No bullying.’

‘Do I ever?’

Stella shook her head. ‘You call it getting the right answers.’

‘It’s the job, the wrong answers are killers,’ he said absently.

‘We must tell Robbie the girl is safe.’ As far as she can be, Stella thought with some cynicism.

‘I will be seeing Gilchrist and Freedom this morning. They will both be told then.’ At the moment and in the way that suits me best.

Stella looked worried. ‘I think George was going to the airport, Robbie said something about New York.’

‘I’ll get him,’ said Coffin, with conviction.

He finished his morning coffee, avoided food, because when there was any digging up to do he preferred not to eat, and told Stella that she must have Gus for the day. His reasoning here was the same. He had no desire to see a white Pekingese help dig up a body. Or what was left of it.

‘Shall I tell Robbie you will be in touch?’

‘Leave it strictly to me.’

‘And if he rings here?’

‘Tell him . . .’ Coffin considered. ‘Tell him nothing. Just say he will hear from me.’ And he can sweat it out.

In the car, his mobile rang. He drew into a lay-by. ‘Hello.’

‘Phoebe Astley here, sir.’ Her voice was tense. ‘We’re digging up the potato patch . . . I think you’d better come, sir. We think we’ve got something.’

‘Hold on till I get there.’

Phoebe turned back to the small patch where Mr Jones had grown a few potatoes.

There was a brick wall with a door into the lane beyond, which was dominated by the blank wall of an old factory no longer in use but not yet turned into luxury apartments which was the fate of most of the early-nineteenth-century buildings in the Second City.

A narrow lane, one person wide, ran between this building and the next, equally tall and dead-looking. The map of the Second City which Coffin carried in his head told him that this lane must run out somewhere in the middle of the Drossers Lane Market.

If you wanted to bury a body then the garden was easy of access and at night would be quiet and dark.

And Mr Jones and dog had been away for over a month.

Phoebe Astley came up to him. She was one of the group standing by the patch of bare earth. He could see where the digging had begun.

‘The spade hit something,’ explained Phoebe, ‘which is why they are using those small spades and sieving the soil.’

He nodded. ‘Let’s get on then.’

Two men were digging, doing so slowly, and carefully watched by one of the forensic team. Every so often this man would ask them to stop while he got down to examine the soil they were moving. He was on his knees when he held up his hand.

‘Here we are.’

Mr Jones appeared at his back door, plus dog. The thin rangy mongrel, the dog who had started it all, lifted his head and began to howl.

‘Get that dog inside,’ snapped Phoebe. Mr Jones made a minimal movement of pushing the dog inside, but they both stayed where they were. However, the dog stopped howling.

Coffin moved nearer to the excavation, as did Phoebe. The diggers stopped, they all stood looking down at the small, plastic-wrapped object.

Must be the head, thought Coffin. He felt both excited and depressed at the same time.

Phoebe nodded at the photographer who came forward to take his careful pictures, then he stepped back and the forensic man slowly and meticulously undid the layers of plastic.

What was inside was looking smaller and smaller.

Not the head, must be the cat.

One last layer of plastic came away.

It was not the head. Not the cat. It was a baby, a small, very small bloodied foetus.

‘About twenty-two to twenty-three weeks, I’d guess,’ said the forensic man. ‘Born dead, probably. Not viable anyway.’ He got up from his knees. ‘Not been out in this hard cold world long . . . twenty-four hours, thirty-six . . . Postmortem will tell.’

The dog no longer howled but started up a melodious whine almost like singing.

From the door, Mr Jones was shouting: ‘This has nothing to do with me.’

Coffin looked at Phoebe Astley. ‘Nothing to do with us either, do you think?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

‘The Gilchrist girl is back . . . you do know that?’

‘Mary Arden phoned me just before I came out. She is worried about her.’

Coffin stood in thought. He could be all wrong about this, it was just guesswork.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where it all fits in. If it does, I’m doing one of those mad leaps that come occasionally.’ Then as he turned away to his car: ‘Get the girl into hospital. I think she may be in urgent need of medical attention . . . that’s how they put it, isn’t it?’

Phoebe said doubtfully that she would try.

‘But do it as a friend.’

‘And get Gilchrist and Freedom in. We will run a few things over them.’

The household at the Serena Seddon Refuge rose early, and there was already movement when Mary made a pot of tea and some toast to take up to Alice. Poor child, she thought, poor child.

On the stairs she met the boy Billy and realized that the quality in his eyes she and Evelyn had so meanly called evil was really sharp intelligence.

‘Morning,’ she said. ‘And look after yourself. That quality you have got there is dangerous.’

The lad put his head on one side and grinned. ‘Dunno what you mean, Mrs Arden. We’re moving out.’

‘I know.’ Mary had been instrumental in finding the new home. ‘And it’s
Miss
Arden.’

‘Mum says we’ve got a bit of luck at last.’ He grinned. ‘Miss.’

‘Hang on to it then,’ said Mary as she passed on up the stairs.

Without knowing it, she was about to do what the Chief Commander had asked. Not telepathy or anything such, each faced a question and found the right answer.

The nearest hospital to the Serena Seddon was the University Hospital. One way and another, Mary Arden had come to know it well. It was, alas, true that some of the women who came to her also needed medical help.

The Emergency and Accident Department respected and liked her because of the gentle and good-mannered way she dealt with her hurt and angry visitors. On occasion she had been the victim herself. Not all the scars she had come by showed on her skin.

Now she showed all the kindness and tact she had learned.

Alice sat up in bed as she came in. She looked better.

Mary planted the tray on her knees.
‘I’ve
brought you breakfast.’

She sat down by the bed and watched Alice and saw a little more colour come into her face.

‘Come on, Alice, we have to go and get you looked at. I could get a doctor here, but I fancy the hospital would be best. You are bleeding too much, and don’t tell me it’s your usual heavy period.’ She touched the girl’s hand. ‘I’ve had a child.’

‘What happened to it?’

Mary looked towards the window, towards light and air, and the living world. ‘She died.’ It was not something she talked about, although forgetting never.

‘So did mine,’ and Alice began to cry. Mary put her arms round her.

Evelyn arrived by the time they were ready to go to the hospital. Mary told her where she was going.

Evelyn nodded. ‘I’ll get on with things here. Anything to report?’

‘No, all quiet.’

‘That’s because we are almost empty. It’ll fill up again,’ she said philosophically. After all, she wouldn’t have a job if it didn’t and she needed to earn.

‘Any minute now,’ agreed Mary. ‘Goes in patches, doesn’t it? If anyone rings like the police or such, say I am at the hospital.’

Phoebe Astley got the message when she rang. ‘Right.’ She was relieved because it meant she could get back to some of the more routine problems of the day, like checking that the poor little scrap they had dug up was on her way to the pathology laboratory, that the reports on the search for the head and torso were coming in as they should do, and that no one but no one took any more time off than was strictly necessary. And what was necessary she would decide.

On the telephone, she despatched DC Geoff Little and WDC Eleanor Brand to call on George Freedom and Robbie Gilchrist and bring them both in.

Politely mind.

She anticipated no trouble in this quest.

After a moment’s thought, she decided to call at the hospital herself. A good career move, she thought. Coffin liked you to be hands on.

She went into the University Hospital just as the small body was being received in the pathology department, and while Alice Gilchrist was telling the story of her birth and death.

She was counted as an emergency and was being attended to by a young nurse and an equally young registrar. Mary Arden had not intruded but had left Alice to tell her own story.

Dr Martin had listened and examined Alice and then said that he would like her to see Dr Edith Brent who was the gynaecologist who would give her another thorough examination. His own examination was more superficial, he explained.

He did not explain that he found Alice puzzling. He could see she was a girl who would find the world puzzling, a girl who would accept the things that happened to her. But even so, he shook his head.

He was gentle and quiet so that Alice had found it easy to admit to the quick and unexpected early arrival of the child.

‘Were you alone?’ he asked.

‘I was with a friend. She looked after me.’

‘And the baby, the foetus? You are sure it was dead?’ From what he had gathered it was twenty-two to twenty-three weeks, and not viable. But there might be a worrying point here if the police asked.

There was a long pause.

‘My friend said she would deal with it.’

After a moment’s thought, he left it there. After all, he thought, I am a doctor, not a policeman or a social worker. Then he sent her with a nurse to see Dr Edith Brent. Alice had to wait some twenty minutes before she saw her.

Dr Brent was a large lady with a generous bust and a froth of white hair. A small nurse was in attendance. Once again, Alice was examined on a comfortable couch behind a tactful
screen. Dr Brent was slow, careful and gentle. She was silent at first, then asked Alice to get her clothes on and come and sit on the chair by her desk.

‘You seem all right, my dear. No damage done. There could have been . . . these quick births can be tricky. No time to get into hospital?’

Alice shook her head.

‘Which doctor are you registered with?’

Alice shook her head again.

‘You didn’t attend a prenatal clinic? You didn’t visit your GP when you thought you were pregnant?’ She already knew the answer to that question. One of those, she thought. Why, why? You don’t get sent to a nunnery these days.

But she knew also that there was always a background, a reason for secrecy like this.

‘I’ve been staying with a friend,’ said Alice quickly. ‘Here in the Second City. My own GP is in Kensington, I am registered there, but I have never seen him.’ She seemed to have it off pat like a learned lesson.

Dr Brent studied some notes that had been handed on to her. ‘So a friend was with you. Who was that?’

‘Katy Cameron. I was staying with her.’

‘And she dealt with the afterbirth and the baby? What did she do?’

Alice was quiet. Then she said: ‘She told me she would do what was right.’

‘I see.’

Dr Brent did not see, but at that moment, Alice was her patient. ‘I expect Katy can tell us.’

Alice licked her lips. ‘Well, yes. But she’s gone home . . . to Jamaica.’

‘Oh, is that the case?’ Dr Brent considered. It couldn’t be left there but she knew already, having spoken to Mary Arden, that DCI Astley was waiting in the wings.

She bent her head to the desk and wrote on a pad.

She rose and held out her hand. ‘I must see you again, my dear, but meanwhile Nurse here will take you out to the desk to make an appointment. She will take you to get these tablets. Is anyone with you?’

‘Miss Arden.’

‘Oh yes, I remember you are staying with her. Where is she now?’

Alice looked vague. The nurse answered for her: ‘In the private waiting room, Doctor.’

When the two had left, Dr Brent dictated some notes about the case on her machine, then she walked down the corridor to where Mary Arden was sitting.

The two women knew each other, having met in the past over the case of a resident at the Serena Seddon Refuge who had a difficult labour and produced twins, interestingly, of different colours.

Dr Brent outlined to Mary what she had learnt from Alice.

Mary nodded. ‘More or less what she told me.’

‘Did you believe all that?’

Mary considered. ‘No,’ she said.

Dr Brent said that she guessed that Alice had been classed as educationally subnormal. She looked at Mary with enquiry.

‘Alice, Alice, sit by the Fire. That was Barrie, wasn’t it? And Sam Pepys had a servant called Alice. Nice name, really, always sounds innocent.’

‘Our Alice is not a liar,’ said Mary at once.

‘No.’ A nod of acceptance.

Mary said carefully, ‘All the same, I don’t think it is quite the truth. She’s holding something back.’