He walked to where he had parked his car and drove westward. Sometimes you can walk just so far and no farther.
At the Tube station in Spinnergate, where he stopped to buy an evening paper, Mimsie Marker was packing up to go home.
‘Saved you a paper.’
‘You always do.’
She folded it up in the professional way, as taught her long ago, pocketed the money in the leather bag that hung in front of her like a kangaroo’s pouch and became confidential.
‘About those kids that have gone missing, pair of students.’
Coffin waited.
‘Saw Jim Dean today.’
‘Oh, you know him, do you?’
Mimsie didn’t answer that as not being worth comment, she knew everyone. ‘He bought a paper, just like you, then he waited for the bus, but he didn’t get on it. Had his car parked and he got in and followed the bus.’
‘What number bus was it?’
‘147a. But you know that, or you wouldn’t have asked.’
A good example of Mimsie’s maddening hit-the-nail-on-the-head way of thinking.
‘I thought you ought to know. Wonder what he was up to?’
‘Did you see him come back?’
‘No, I reckon he went all the way to the end.’
‘And what’s at the end, Mimsie?’
‘Nothing much. Depends what you want. Woods and marsh mostly.’ Her eyes were bright and alert. ‘Used to test the big guns there once when Woolwich Arsenal was alive.’
‘Thanks, Mimsie, that’s interesting.’
‘Thought you’d say so.’
He hadn’t disappointed her. She watched him sit in his car till the right bus came along, and then drive slowly behind.
He followed it out, past the road which led to Star Court House, out through the dingy inner suburbs to where they lightened, grew more pleasant with pretty gardens, then beyond that to where the houses were scattered, past a cemetery and a crematorium and finally to a cluster of houses round a bus stop. At this point, the bus turned round and came back. End of the road.
Coffin stopped his car and got out. Across the road from a parade of houses, newly built, isolated and windswept, was a stretch of scrubby, empty land with a belt of trees.
He paced it slowly, looking at the ground. There were signs of the passing of a car along a muddy track at the side. On the grass itself were tyre marks.
Hard to say how recent these were. It was probably an area where lovers came. It had that look about it, not to mention the odd spoiled condom lying about.
Under the trees several years of leaf fall lay thick and mushy. He thought he could detect signs that the layers had been disturbed so that here and there the darker, decayed deposit had come to the top. He moved the leaves with his foot.
The earth underneath had been opened, then pressed back. Something or someone had been buried here.
Coffin went back to his car where he made a telephone call, then sat waiting.
When the police van arrived, he took the team of diggers to the spot he had found. He watched while a canvas barrier was set up to protect the area, then he stood back. Very soon he was joined by Chief Superintendent Paul Lane, not pleased to be taken away from his evening at home. Coffin could imagine the grumble going on inside: One more of the Boss’s flights of fancy.
‘Nice evening, isn’t it, sir,’ said Paul Lane. It was, in fact, beginning to rain. ‘For digging, that is,’ he added morosely. For standing about it was damp and cold.
The two men watched in the rain which began to grow heavier. A small crowd of spectators had appeared, as they always did on these occasions, alerted by some underground set of signals.
‘Have to get lights up if we don’t finish before dark,’ said Lane. It was dusk already. ‘No problem, of course,’ he added without conviction. Then he said: ‘They’ve got something.’
A muddy figure was heading towards them from out of the enclosure. ‘A buried dog, sir. Sorry.’
‘That’s it, then,’ said Paul Lane, putting up his collar against the rain. ‘Might as well be off.’
Coffin stood where he was. ‘No. Go on looking. There will be an indication of a disturbance somewhere. Find it, then dig again.’
He took pity on the Chief Superintendent. ‘Come and sit in the car and tell me what’s been going on.’ He himself had had to cancel a dinner engagement with Stella Pinero, who had not been pleased. ‘I hope something has.’
Earlier that day, Chief Inspector Young had received the first forensic reports on the girl’s car. Nothing very helpful, he had thought: traces of the clothes of the girl herself, fingerprints, possibly hers, her father’s (he had acknowledged using the car), and possibly prints of the boy, Martin Blackhall. It would all need to be worked on and checked.
But later, during that afternoon, Chief Inspector Archie Young in company with a woman detective had entered and searched the student room lived in by Amy Dean. This room had been locked for days now, so that when they went in it smelt stuffy. Even sour. Young wondered if there was the smell of drugs; there was certainly stale cigarette smoke.
On the outside it seemed the room was orderly and tidy, but when the drawers and cupboards were opened, there was a different story.
Sordid, dirty, beneath apparent order.
The drawers and cupboards were full of soiled, crumpled clothes. Underclothes, tights, sweaters and jeans, all pushed in the drawers and shoved into the cupboards, not hung up, all disorder and dirt which spilled out in front of them.
Young looked at the woman detective with him who raised her eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Bit of a slut.’
Or mute signs of a confused, unhappy girl, who wanted to be dirty?
The diggers ceased their work and came across to the car.
‘Found something, sir. I think you’d like to look.’
The two men got out of the car to hurry across the grass. The diggers had gone down several feet into the Essex clay.
Under the soil was a roughly made coffin.
‘Better get it opened.’ Lane spoke gruffly, more moved than he had expected.
‘No.’ Coffin was abrupt. ‘No, let’s wait until Dean and Blackhall get here.’
‘It’ll mean waiting some time.’
‘No, they should be here any minute. I telephoned earlier.’
‘My God, you were sure,’ said Lane.
‘Yes, I was sure.’
They watched as first one car and then another drew up, from which Sir Thomas and then Jim Dean got out. They watched in silence as the two men approached. Coffin walked over to them and murmured something. Lane saw them nod, then the whole party moved to the edge of the pit to look down at the coffin.
Ropes were fitted and slowly the coffin was drawn up. ‘Open it,’ said the Chief Commander.
Behind them a girl got out of one of the cars and came running towards them.
Tall, slender, in jeans, fair hair floating over her shoulders. Sir Thomas muttered under his breath that she shouldn’t be here, not his idea.