Archie Young was silenced. From the outer room, Coffin could hear Paul Masters chatting away cheerfully. Too cheerfully, he thought sourly, and there was a woman laughing. For a moment, he thought it might be Stella, but it was one of the secretaries. He knew the voice, there was a brassy ring to it which today he found irritating. She laughed again, damn her. He wondered if he could institute a no laughing rule like a no smoking rule.
‘I don’t know where she is,’ Coffin heard himself saying. ‘I have not the least idea in the world where Stella has gone.’
That, thought Archie, is one of the comments you are better off not hearing. He liked and admired the Chief Commander, he liked and admired Stella Pinero, too, but he wanted to keep out of their relationship. Let them sort it out. She would turn up. You had to allow actresses their freedom. ‘She’ll get in touch,’ he heard himself saying.
Coffin looked at his old friend and colleague and suddenly realized he was being offered sympathy. He laughed and pulled himself together.
‘I am sure she will, Archie, and it had better be soon.’ There was a note in his voice which suggested that Stella, when she returned, would have some questions to answer. He stood up. ‘I’d better get back to work.’
The Chief Superintendent rose too. ‘Anything new on the bombers?’
Coffin shook his head. What he had learnt on his trip north was confidential even from Archie Young. ‘Nothing much,’ he said in a noncommittal voice. ‘Inspector Lodge was first in to inspect the body in Percy Street, I suppose?’
‘Pretty smartish,’ agreed Archie Young. ‘Asked to come with me as soon as he heard about it. He was told, of course.’ Anything to do with the bombed area was for him to know about, he was their expert, the local, middle-range one. All the foremost terrorist watchers had probably been in Edinburgh or wherever it was the Chief Commander had really gone. On this point, Archie had his reservations. Edinburgh first, and then on to – where?
‘I suppose he hoped he’d got a dead terrorist.’
‘I don’t know what he hoped. He doesn’t show his mind, that one.’
The two looked at each other. They would be glad to be rid of the Todger, but life was not so simple.
‘He’s very good at what he does,’ Coffin allowed. Not a loveable man, but who would be in that job. He could not regard himself as a totally loveable person. He heard Stella’s voice: ‘No, darling, not a cuddly person. Many good qualities and I love you madly, but not cosy.’
Was that why she had gone away? Was she running away from him?
Did Stella love him? He had never felt totally sure. You had to remember that she was an actress.
And where was she, damn her.
‘I’ll take the bag with me,’ said Archie Young, reaching out a hand for the bag in its plastic container. ‘Forensics, and all that.’
Coffin nodded.
‘If I could suggest, sir, you might have a look round at home to see if Miss Pinero’s bag is there or not.’
‘I will, I will.’ He would get round to it when he felt less sore.
‘Or she might say herself …’ Archie left the rest of the sentence delicately unsaid.
‘When we speak again, I will certainly be asking,’ said Coffin. He watched the Chief Superintendent depart with careful, depressing tact, closing the door quietly and not smiling.
Feeling unloved and out of sorts, Coffin slumped back in his chair and went to work on the mound of papers in front of him. Word processors, far from reducing this load, added to it daily. A truism, of course, but he was not in the mood to be original.
He wondered where Stella was and why she had said nothing which was true; but he shrank from the painful thought that perhaps it was better he did not know more. A lie had to hide something, didn’t it?
‘I would not have this feeling if it were not for that terrible photograph. Which was not a joke. A fake, but not a joke.’ And also because of the information gently passed over to him in Scotland. At the time he had tried to reject it, shrug it off as a case of mistaken identity, or a computer error, or someone’s genuine mistake, which did happen even with the men he was being briefed by. Now he did not know.
He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. From inside, he withdrew a bundle of letters. Underneath was yet another, smaller bundle, older and grubby, as if much opened and read. All the letters were from Stella, he had kept every letter she had written to him: the older packet dated from when they first met, before they quarrelled and parted. The more recent letters were since they met again, and were written by Stella when away filming or on tour. He had asked her to write as well as telephone and he had written back.
‘My secret hoard,’ he said aloud. He never asked if Stella kept his letters.
There were no photographs. ‘I hate being photographed except in the way of publicity business,’ Stella had said, adding with a giggle: ‘Besides, photographs are dangerous.’
Yes, Stella, they certainly are.
He packed the letters in his briefcase to take home where he could study them to see if they could tell him who took that photograph of Stella and, more importantly, who doctored it.
Who did you know, Stella, who could treat you in that way? Who wanted to make you look half-woman, half-beast?
He picked up the telephone. Paul Masters answered promptly, as if he had been awaiting the call.
‘You know what’s been going on?’
‘Just a bit, sir. If I may say so, sir, don’t worry.’
He’s sorry for me. Coffin accepted the gift with resignation. No doubt there was sorrow and pity all around him at Headquarters, seeping out into the whole police division which he commanded. Many a laugh and a joke too.
But the photograph was not to be laughed at. Some strange fish had swum into his pool and must be accounted for, and, if necessary, caught.
‘Get me Chief Inspector Astley, Paul, please.’
‘She’s here actually, sir. Outside. Shall I send her in?’
‘Yes, do.’ So had it been Phoebe laughing?
She swung into the room a second later, her face grave. She had not been laughing. But she smiled when she saw him. ‘I was on my way to you. I knew I had to see you to tell you what the latest was.’
‘You know about the body in Percy Street? Of course you do.’
Phoebe advanced into the room with the confidence of an old friend and ally; she perched herself on the windowsill. She invariably dressed soberly for work; today she wore black trousers with a cream silk shirt, but there was always the impression with Phoebe that underneath was lace and silk, probably in red. It was a tribute to her impact on her colleagues because, as she confided to her friend Eden when she heard the rumour going around about her red knickers, in fact they were white cotton, ‘from my favourite high street store, and made in Israel’.
‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Yes. I thought you’d given that up.’ In an early brush with what might have been but was not something malignant, Phoebe had given up all sins of the flesh from food to sex. Rumour had it that those days were over. Rampantly, cheerfully over.
‘I’ve started again.’ She lit up. ‘When under stress.’
‘And you are under stress?’
‘I’m catching it from you.’
‘Right,’ said Coffin. For a moment he said no more. He trusted Phoebe, to whom he would probably speak more openly than to anyone else. Except Stella. The Stella he had lived with and loved, but it looked as though there was a Stella he had never known. I won’t allow