Coffin on Murder Street. Gwendoline Butler

done it himself?

      But no, that was a wicked thought, although in her experience kids could be wicked. But still, he certainly couldn’t have buried the plaster hand and he didn’t look old enough to have written his name.

      ‘Can you write your name, Tom?’ she asked.

      His mother answered for him. ‘He can’t,’ she said coldly. ‘No more of that, please.’

      ‘I had to ask.’

      She put a few questions about the plaster hand, but Nell Casey knew nothing more.

      Mary Barclay did not pass on the information about the arrival in the district of the child murderer.

      ‘Keep a watch on him, Miss Casey. Probably nothing to worry about. But if anything does alarm you, you can always call me.’

      Why did she have the distressing notion that she and Nell Casey would be seeing a lot of each other?

      As well as the alleged child murderer who had just moved in, they had their own authenticated, fully certificated bunch of child molesters all on the register.

      They had names, addresses and records. These were the lads who had been caught, sentenced and served their term.

      In addition, there were all those undesirables they did not know about, who still moved murkily about the undergrowth. Life was full of joy, Coffin thought.

      What the local mob were calling The Missing Bandwagon had still not turned up. By now the Press had heard about it and were besieging the Headquarters by Spinnergate with requests for information. There were two good pubs there, one a free house and the other with an excellent cuisine (best bangers and mash in London), so it was not a hard beat to walk.

      The coach had been missing for almost twenty-four hours, and the coach-driver’s wife, normally the most permissive and relaxed of women, was anxious. She was used to her husband being away a great deal, it was the job, but he was good about telephoning if he was going to be delayed. This time nothing. Silence.

      She had spoken twice on the telephone herself to her brother-in-law, the other partner in the firm.

      ‘Gert, I know no more than you do: nothing. At first, I didn’t think much of it, I’ve had tours go missing before, temporarily. But never in London, and never for so long. I’m real worried about the coach.’

      ‘I’m worried about my husband.’

      ‘Of course you are, Gert, of course you are,’ he said hastily. ‘So am I.’

      Somehow, he felt this was not quite enough, and the silence at the other end of the telephone reinforced this impression.

      So he added, by way of explanation: ‘But it’s the insurance, you see, if anything’s gone, well—’ he sought for a word—‘what you might call wrong, I have to put in a claim within twenty-four hours. The policy says so … Is Alf insured? Personally, I mean.’

      ‘My God, what a terrible thing to say to me just now. And no, he isn’t. You know him better than that.’

      Unfortunately they both did.

      ‘The police are out looking.’

      ‘He won’t like that, you know he won’t,’ said his wife with conviction.

      They both did.

      All over London, police units were keeping an eye out for any sign of the missing group. Naturally, the search was sharpest in the Second City of London where the tour had last been sighted. The Force commanded by John Coffin had the keenest responsibility.

      Comments among the police ranged from the bawdy, making frank suggestions about where the coachload had gone and with what activity in mind, to the idea that a spaceship had come for them and they had gone off in it, a bunch of elderly ETs.

      But underneath there was worry: it was beginning to look less good with every hour that went by with no sighting. The Force was stretched because of the fire in the Tube, but the blaze was out and so that particular crisis was now over, but it’d taken a lot of men off other duties. But they had the usual patrol cars out.

      One patrol car had paid particular attention to a group of deserted Dockyard buildings, an empty office block and an old warehouse down by the Bingley canal. The canal itself was due to be turned into a marina with a hotel complex beside it, but planning permission was being disputed so that no work had been done.