Sheila Heslop had been with him for six months now, more or less taking charge of the outer office and organizing Gillian, who was about to take study leave. In a quiet way, she organized the Chief Commander, too.
‘He rang me first to see if you were in, sir,’ she said carefully. ‘I suggested that he speak to Inspector Masters, but he said he wanted you. I think he had something he wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Oh, well, I expect I will be here.’
‘I rather think he might be ringing again,’ she said, with what might have been a touch of nervousness. This made Coffin answer her sharply.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Just a feeling, sir.’
Coffin looked at his watch. Still early, still time for Stella to ring.
He took up the report on the bombings in the Second City, which came with photographs and a video of the bombers.
In two seconds the phone went. Coffin picked it up eagerly to hear Archie Young’s hesitant voice. ‘Something you ought to see, sir. A body … Percy Street.’
‘I’ll drive you round, sir,’ Archie Young had said. ‘Unless you would rather use your own driver?’ He could see someone had better drive the Chief Commander. Coffin had a new driver – not a member of the Force; police officers cost too much to train to be used as chauffeurs.
‘He’s away,’ said Coffin. ‘Thank you, Archie, you drive.’
So tense he felt sick, Coffin let Archie Young lead him into the house in Percy Street. There was a ring of fellow officers there, the SOCO team, the police surgeon, and Inspector Lodge.
With automatic good manners he nodded towards them all, but did not speak. He looked at the body lying on the floor, the terribly damaged face staring upwards. He saw the handbag lying on the floor.
He walked forward, forcing himself to study well what he saw. He stared for some minutes before turning away. ‘No, that is not my wife. Yes, she wore jeans like that; yes, she had such a handbag, but the body is not hers.’
Inspector Lodge met Coffin’s eyes with a meaningful stare: I hope you know what you are doing.
Archie Young muttered something about the material in the handbag.
‘I don’t care what is inside the handbag. That is not my wife,’ said Coffin in a quiet voice. ‘It is not Stella.’
Archie Young and Coffin were back in the Chief Commander’s office. Coffin had watched with an expressionless face as the body, which he refused to own, was packed into a black bag to be transported to the mortuary. The police used the one in the University Hospital where a special room had been allocated to them.
Archie picked up the blue leather handbag, now packaged in a piece of plastic. ‘I think you should look at what was found in this bag.’
Coffin gave it a bleak look. He was not sure, but he thought he was angry with Archie. For certain, anger from somewhere, caused by someone, was welling up inside him. Perhaps it was from the pain, for there was pain all right. He said nothing but continued to stare at the bag.
‘You thought you recognized the bag.’
The bag was dark leather, very soft and quilted with a gold chain and gold emblem on the front. Even Archie Young had seen similar ones around, swinging from the shoulders of the fashionable. Some were genuine, others imitation. This one looked the real thing.
‘Stella has one like it. I gave it to her. Chanel, she chose it herself. But there must be many others, they are so fashionable.’ Which was why he had given one to Stella, who had a taste for what was fashionable and expensive.
He studied the soft blue leather object, reluctant to open it, even to touch it.
‘Better open it, sir. Or shall I do it for you?’ A thin pair of transparent plastic gloves was held out, ready. Still reluctant, Coffin smoothed on the gloves; he knew the rules.
‘No.’ Coffin stretched out his hand, now masked, and lifted the tiny gold fastening. The bag yawned open in front of him. ‘It’s been damaged, the bag should open more slowly.’
‘Yes, I reckon it’s been wrenched apart. Not malice, I don’t think. Whoever did it wanted to be sure that it fell wide apart. So you could see what was inside. At a glance.’
Coffin looked at Archie Young sharply. ‘You meant something by that.’
‘Take a look, sir.’
Coffin frowned as he drew out a photograph. He laid it on the desktop in front of him. Archie, watching the Chief Commander closely, saw the colour melt from his face to be replaced by a pallor and then a flush that spread to his throat and touched his temple. Coffin put out his hand and covered the picture. He looked up at Archie Young: ‘That photo is a fake. Stella is not mad, bad and dangerous.’
‘No,’ said Archie. ‘Of course not.’ But he said it awkwardly, half defensively.
‘Stella does not eat human flesh. God, no. That woman –’ he tapped the picture – ‘is eating an arm, I can see the wrist. A bleeding human arm.’
‘Bit of,’ said Archie even more awkwardly. And it wasn’t actually dripping with blood. The blood, if that was what it was, looked dry.
The picture, of course, was a fake, but why? And the face, and the body, what you could see of it, was certainly Stella Pinero’s.
Archie felt miserable: it was a bloody awful thing to have happened. No, he mustn’t keep using that word, there was too much blood around as it was. He looked with sympathy at the Chief Commander, who seemed suddenly older.
‘The dead woman is not Stella,’ said Coffin. ‘And this photograph is not of Stella.’
He’s a good man, Archie said to himself, whatever she’s done to him, he doesn’t deserve this.
The devil got a hold of his tongue because he heard himself say: ‘Some anthropologists think that kissing developed from biting.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a pause during which Archie Young tried to think of something sensible and wise to say, before he decided that silence might be best.
Coffin shook himself, like a dog coming in from the rain. ‘Let’s get down to this. We are policemen, investigators. Who is the dead woman, and how did she die?’
‘We don’t know the answers yet to the first question. As to the second, it looks as though she was strangled. The face was beaten after death.’
‘And the next thing, after establishing identity …’ Coffin started the sentence.
If we can, said Archie Young silently to himself. He had dread feelings about this dead woman.
‘Is to find out how and why she was carrying my wife’s handbag. If indeed it is Stella’s and not a replica,’ Coffin pushed on. ‘And that in itself is a strange thing. Why?’
It’s all strange, Archie thought, mighty strange. ‘Of course we will find out who she is,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt. He grappled with another problem: how to refer to the Chief Commander’s wife in the embarrassing present circumstance.
He compromised. ‘Miss Pinero might be able to throw some light on it when questioned.’ Coffin looked at him gloomily, even apprehensively. Archie floundered on. ‘The bag might have been lost or stolen.’
‘With the photograph in it?’
Wonder if he’ll have a breakdown, Archie thought. He looks as though he could. On the edge. But no, he’s a strong fellow, mentally and physically.