Coffin's Ghost (27 page)

Sergeant Grimm was still on his travels. Home soon, though.

Coffin and the royal beast entered the tower of St Luke’s together. It was calm and quiet. Security was still about but being tactful.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs listening for any sound of Stella, but all was still. She was not a noisy person but somehow you always knew when she was there. Or he did.

Once again, he thought that it was empty without her. Protective urges, and more urges than that, ran through him. He stood there in the hall, bags dumped about him, dog sitting on the stair looking at him, and thought about her.

Then he heard a car draw up, the door slam and Stella talking and laughing. She was alive, bless her.

She threw open the door and dropped her own deposit of bags on the floor to line up with his.

‘That was Vi bringing me back,’ she said.

‘Good.’ He had no idea who Vi was but if she brought Stella home to him then she had a place in his own private pantheon of gods worth bothering over.

Stella studied the bags on the floor. ‘You’ve brought work back and so have I . . . discussing two new productions . . . Robbie is corning in with me. But we can work together and listen to music and have a glass of wine. After we’ve eaten.’

A vague look came into her face. ‘Except, I don’t know what we’ve got to eat.’

‘A woman’s work is never done,’ said Coffin. ‘Fear not, I ordered a meal from Max, cold, and it should be in the fridge now. And something nice for Gus.’

Gus wagged his tail. He was good on signals, this one said: Food soon, please.

‘Max delivered it himself.’

‘You let him have a key? After you know . . .’

‘I trust Max, but no, the security guard let him in.’ Otherwise the alarm system would have sprung into instant and noisy action. ‘I gave him the keys and he returned them. You have to trust your own men.’

Then he remembered one or two of his own men whom he did not trust and wished he had been less vehement.

The food produced by Max was good and the wine even better. ‘You’ve been extravagant,’ said Stella as she spooned up the syllabub.

‘Comfort food.’

‘That’s what you wanted?’

‘It’s been a bad day. Can’t pin anything on Freedom. Doesn’t look as if it was he who went to the Gun Club, just someone acting as him. Interesting in itself, but I’m not sure what it tells us.’

‘An actor?’

‘Any candidates?’

Stella shook her head. ‘If I think of any, then you will be the first to know.’

Stella made some coffee and cleared the dishes away. She could be very efficient domestically when she chose. Then both settled down with their papers.

Once more Coffin went through the list beginning with the limbs outside the Serena Seddon. There had been a handbag too. He sat back thinking, trying to remember if Anna had had a handbag like it.

Forensics had not been able to pick up anything from it, except to say that the bag was old, from the styling about ten to twelve years old, and that the newspaper cutting had no fingerprints on it.

No fingerprints on anything. They had taken prints from the hand but they were not on the record. Not a criminal, then.

Then there was the death of Etta; she had rung up to say she was frightened and she was leaving. Before she could do so, she was shot.

The women at the Serena Seddon had said that Etta was
mixing in bad company and had hinted a police officer’s involvement. He thought he had a name there, or possibly two. Ryman-Lawson, who had got in with Mack Mercer and Tolly Lightgate. Tim Radley, friend of Ryman-Lawson, and Sergeant Grimm. If Etta knew that lot and the people they went with, then she was in bad company.

But had one of them killed her?

Next, Albie, who thought that he was the one that the shot was for, and Coffin thought that it was for him. Someone could have been waiting for him and mistaken Albie for him. They were much of a height.

Did he believe that? He shook his head.

One thing I do believe, he said to himself, is all that has happened is aimed at me.

Whoever is behind it wants me either out or dead. Perhaps it would be better to resign now, before gossip and public pressure force me out.

He looked at Stella sitting happily at work, and knew he did not want to leave the Second City.

She looked up. ‘I love our tower, don’t you?’

Coffin looked about him, there were times in his life when he had come close to hating the place, now it was, quite simply Home. His Home.

‘Yes. You made it what it is, Stella. I couldn’t have done it. And the theatre, all your work.’

‘Your sister put money in,’ she protested. ‘I don’t forget it.’

‘You’re a good investment,’ said Coffin fondly. ‘Letty knows where her money will earn for her. But it’s all you. The Second City owes you a lot.’

‘Hey, this is beginning to sound like an obituary.’ Stella was laughing.

‘I owe you a lot, Stella. Everything, really.’

‘It works both ways.’

Coffin continued working after Stella had gone to bed. He read through the reports once.

A figure was beginning to walk out of the pages, building itself up out of details like that Green Man of the woods who was made up of branches and leaves and twigs.

First, a misty figure that might be real and might not, then becoming more solid, first arms, then legs as well. They could move fast, those legs. Drive a car. Strong hands that could aim a gun, seize a cat, then cut off its head.

Not a nice person at all.

At last a face began to take shape. A face known in Albie’s prison.

Not the one he had expected.

It was dawn by the time he had finished, not eager to believe his own thoughts. ‘Only half an answer,’ he told himself. ‘Why? Why did this person kill?’

He was not the only person to have a disturbed night. In one of the empty factories behind Drossers Market and only a few hundred yards from Chopping Tree Lane on the one hand and The Argosy block of expensive flats in Rickards Passage, a business meeting was going on.

This factory, formerly the home of a freezer firm which had tried to undercut foreign markets and failed, was not as empty as it looked. Nor was it without an owner, but the owner preferred his outfit to be anonymous. He specialized in moving on fast. Which indeed was a trait built up and inherited over the centuries, since before Sam Pepys’s time and after, among some of the traders and businessmen of Drossers Market.

Two men were sitting round a rough table, one on each side, both were wearing thick overcoats since the establishment was cold. Freezing cold. A light was suspended from the ceiling and several white cabinets lined the walls and stood in rows around the table.

Commercial-size freezers, all plugged in and working, which would have been a surprise to the Second City Electrical Power Company, who believed the place to be empty and disconnected from the mains with no meters working. In fact, it had been tapping in illegally for some months. Ever since the present occupant had moved in. Illegally and rent free too.

‘Of course, this is good Scotch beef, Hamish?’

‘The best from Fife, Ed,’ Hamish assured him. He poured
Ed a large whisky and himself another large one – he was already into his third, and the whisky was one product of Scotland that he did not muck about with. Why improve the best?

In fact, his beef had never seen Scotland, its provenance was obscure, except that it came from cows, or beef cattle that should have been slaughtered as a protection to the public against disease.

Hamish knew this, as did his buyer.

‘Hamish, Hamish, my dear chap, that’s far too much whisky. You’ll have me drunk.’

Fancy that, Hamish thought, as if I didn’t mean to. He took another nip himself. It was precious cold in here.

‘Not a bad time to do business,’ he said. ‘The middle of the night is so quiet.’ Not that it was ever truly quiet in the Second City. ‘Got the van nicely parked, have you?’

‘Just down the road and I can drive in, load up and be off.’

‘Of course you can.’ Hamish himself had suggested the right place to park and then ease into the warehouse and back out for a quick exit. The police were pretty decent round here near Drossers Market, he had good relations with at least three of them, but you had to go along with foibles like not putting yourself where you could be caught.

Darren patted his pocket. ‘Let’s get down to business. My bird expects me back. If I’m not back in two hours, ring the police.’ He grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. ‘Joke.’

It was not a joke, but his primitive security – I have someone who will tell the police if I don’t make it back.

Lovely boy, thought Hamish, he hadn’t done business with Darren before and they might never meet again, but for the moment they had bonded.

Beef and money did the bonding.

‘You’ll be back with Lorraine,’ he said, smiling. ‘Come and look at the goods . . .’

They went along the row of cabinets, all full of neatly jointed beef. It looked like beef anyway. Darren prodded the odd joint as they passed.

It looked all right to him, and he already had a buyer lined up.

‘We’ll have to load it ourselves but I have a mate coming in.’

The truth was that Hamish, to use his trade name which was not one his mother would have recognized, although he liked beef cooked, could not stand the sight of blood.

The business side was soon done, and the money handed over. A satisfactory sum. He felt inspired to do some more business with this nice chap.

‘I’ve got some lamb just come in. Are you interested?’

Darren expressed keen interest, and patted his pocket again. ‘Knew to come with some spare cash. Show me what’s on offer.’

Hamish threw open a freezer full of legs of lamb. Darren bent over to examine what was there while Hamish moved on to the next cabinet.

Darren heard a strange noise from Hamish and then a crash. He looked round to see Hamish slumped on the floor. Then he took a look in the cabinet.

‘My my,’ and he took out his mobile.

DC Geoff Little and WDC Eleanor Brand were the first lucky arrivals after the squad car had radioed in to get to the Felix Freezers.

They knew at once what they had got there. ‘This is too big for us,’ said Eleanor, reaching for her mobile.

The news sped up the chain of command fast, and reached Coffin as he was drinking some coffee before having a shower. He had taken Gus for an early-morning walk and felt ready for action.

Perhaps he hadn’t expected it quite so fast.

‘We have the torso, sir.’ Phoebe Astley tried not to sound triumphant. ‘There’s no doubt it’s the right one, arms and legs gone, but the pathologist is on his way.’

‘Who else have you told?’

‘Chief Superintendent Young, sir, he’s on his way too and I am just about to leave.’

‘I’m coming.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’ She nearly said, There’s no need, but prudence held her back.

‘Tell me where.’

Back of Drossers Lane, just off Chopping Tree Lane, easy to find, the old warehouse with the word Felix Freezers painted on it. But she would send a car.

‘We’ve had worries about the place and the Health and Food people passed on their suspicions. It was one of our men who phoned us. He was pretending to be a buyer . . . there’s more, sir.’

‘Tell me when I get there.’

He took Stella a cup of coffee, and put it on her bedside table. She opened her eyes. ‘You’re going out?’

‘Yes, I know it’s early.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘The body has been found . . . the torso, I mean.’

‘And the head?’

‘I don’t know.’ For the first time, he realized that Phoebe had not said whether the head was there with the body or not. ‘No, I think it isn’t.’

Stella sat up to drink her coffee. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it?’

‘Everything about this case’ – if it was one case and not a trio of cases – ‘is odd.’

Phoebe Astley, together with Archie Young, was waiting for him outside Felix Freezers.

The police surgeon had been and gone, certifying that the woman was dead, not a difficult diagnosis since she was frozen and headless.

‘I’m glad,’ said Coffin at once.

‘Not all good news, no head, so identity is still tricky.’ Archie Young was frowning. ‘We’ve had our eye on Hamish Scott for some time, hence the fact we had our man in there . . . He was the one who telephoned in. Hamish fainted. I don’t think he’s our killer, seems as shocked as anyone.’

They were walking forward into the big room lined with freezers. Hamish was sitting on a chair, his face white. Darren was talking to a uniformed constable and laughing as he did so. Hamish looked at his betrayer morosely. ‘Heartless git.’

‘Something else you won’t be pleased about, sir,’ said Phoebe. ‘We’ve had a quick look at some papers here and it looks as though some police names come into it.’

‘How many?’ said Coffin in a sharp voice.

‘Three . . . Radley, Ron Ryman-Lawson and Grimm.’ Phoebe was not pleased herself to issue that roll call. ‘All from Cutts Street.’

Bloody Cutts Street, always a trouble, and one he thought had cleaned up. ‘Right, well, lay into them hard. They are suspended from now.’