‘Any news?’ She stirred a cocktail, she was learning to make them now, they were the smart thing, and anyway she wanted to get into the Coward mood.
‘Don’t make that thing too sweet, will you?’ Coffin stared at what she was doing disapprovingly. ‘I can’t bear sweet drinks. About the murder? No, nothing much.’
‘This brew will be as bitter as hell.’ Stella handed over the drink.
He had seen all the usual reports, of course, forensic, technical, photographic, made a point of it, so his comment was not strictly true, but there was no news that counted. Not what she meant. No strong suspect in sight.
‘I miss Mrs Kinver. She came in to work today, but she wasn’t really with us, I sent her back home.’
‘She might have been better working.’
‘I thought of that, of course, but her husband turned up, was walking up and down outside, frightened to let her out of his sight. That worried her. Worried me, too. He’s in a bad way, John, taking it worse than the mother, really, although you can never be sure what’s going on inside.’
Coffin frowned and sipped his drink. Repulsive, he thought, and looked for somewhere to pour it away. ‘He needs help. I can probably get him some. We have a psychiatrist on the Force who specializes in helping victims of violence.’
‘Is he good?’
‘I think so. He helped me.’
Stella gave Coffin a surprised look, but he did not explain his words.
‘I think Kinver’d like to kill someone,’ she said. ‘Anyone, but preferably the murderer of his girl.’
‘Is that what his wife thinks?’
‘I bet it is.’
‘Then she needs help too.’
The telephone rang.
He managed to slip his drink into Tiddles’s saucer while Stella’s attention was diverted. Tiddles took a sip, then looked at him with a baleful green stare. Poisoning me, are you? the stare said. Well, I know what to do about that. Tiddles stepped in the saucer, overturning it.
She turned round from her desk. ‘It’s for you. How did they know where to find you?’
He shrugged. ‘They always know where I am.’
He took the telephone. His old friend Superintendent Paul Lane passing on a report from Archie Young. He listened. ‘Yes, that is interesting. Good. Keep me up to date.’
He returned to Stella. ‘Swinehouse have picked up a man with dried blood on his clothes. And a knife.’
Stella stared. ‘Wouldn’t he change his clothes? If he was the killer?’
‘Yes. If he could. This man could not. He couldn’t, didn’t have any.’
A vagrant. Living rough.
Next day was the day on which they had the first letter from the Paper Man.
It was sent straight to John Coffin himself, as if the writer wanted to be sure he got it.
Wednesday to Thursday, May 31
When they parted that evening, John Coffin to see an exhibition of designs of uniforms for his new Force and Stella to make a speech at a Charity dinner about ‘Theatre in the New City’, in a reversal of their usual roles, she said to him fiercely:
‘Go and see this man they’ve detained. Go yourself. Don’t feed me that stuff about it not being your job any more. It’s all your job. Take a look yourself. The Kinvers deserve that you should.’
‘Would you like me to make your speech for you?’ he observed mildly. ‘Then you can do my job and choose the uniforms.’
‘Do what I ask. You always do what I ask.’
‘Not always.’
‘Oh, come on, you love me.’
‘Like a brother.’
‘I have heard of incest,’ she said hopefully.
‘Times have changed.’
‘It’s not times, it’s people.’ She put on her sad face and walked to the window, carrying Tiddles and her cocktail glass.
Beautifully done, he thought. ‘Shall I clap?’
‘Pig.’
‘I’ll see the man.’
‘Not so changed, then.’
‘I was going to anyway, you’re not the only one with a personal interest.’ He hadn’t known the girl, nor her parents, but a long while ago he had been involved in a series of similar murders of women, and the scar of that terrible case remained.*
Stella, who had known him in those days, and nearly been a victim herself, nodded. ‘We go a long way back, you and I. Go and select your uniforms. I’ll be here when you come back. If you choose, that is.’
Outside the door, he leant hard on it so that Tiddles could not follow. ‘I’m learning. How many years, and I’m learning at last.’
The man in the cell had been reluctant to change his bloodsoaked clothes for the fresh ones provided by the police. They didn’t fit, he said, too long in the arm and short in the leg.
‘I’m not a bloody gorilla.’
He had been in police hands for over twenty-four hours when Coffin saw him and in that time had said little else. But he had been picked up wearing bloodstained clothes and carrying a knife of the kind which could have slashed Anna Mary Kinver.
Forensic tests were now going on to determine if the blood was hers. (No wound on the man, who would not give his name, so the blood was not his.) The knife too was being examined.
A witness claimed to have seen a man like him hanging about in the neighbourhood of Rope Alley for some hours on the day of the murder.
As Coffin arrived an identity parade was just about to take place. Not to his surprise, an old friend, Mimsie Marker, who sold newspapers outside Spinnergate Tube Station, was the witness. She was known as the eyes and ears of Leathergate, Spinnergate, East Spinnergate and Easthy-the. The district of Swinehouse was just a bit too far away even for her excellent sensory perceptions. People had been known to move there, just to get away from Mimsie. But those were her enemies, most people admired Mimsie. Liking was harder. Coffin was one of those who managed both.
Mimsie went slowly down the line. She took her time. It was not her first exploit of this sort and she knew the ropes.
‘A job lot, you’ve got here,’ she said in a judicial manner. ‘I wouldn’t say you matched them up any too well. Still, there’s not many like him. That’s him.’ She nodded. ‘Number Seven.’
Number Seven, who had not wanted to be number seven, protesting that it was an unlucky number, was a tall, thin man with a face that looked as if the dirt had worked in over the years and would now never wash out. It was probably the case, Coffin thought.
The line-up of men were returned to their own lives, and No.7 back to his cell.
‘There all day, he was,’ declared Mimsie. She gave John Coffin a nod as from one old friend to another, both equal, which they certainly were, and more since Mimsie was reputed to keep a sock of gold under her bed.
‘All day, Mimsie?’ asked Detective-Inspector Young, who knew his Mimsie.
‘Perhaps not all day, not every bloody hour, what do you expect, he’s only human whatever he looks like. Most of the day.