GWENDOLINE BUTLER
Coffin on the Water
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1986
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1986
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006176305
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007544646 Version: 2017-04-25
To J.K.M.
Contents
Chapter 2: The Shape of the Murderer
Chapter 3: The Stance of the Murderer
Chapter 4: The Feet of the Murderer
Chapter 5: Following the Feet of the Murderer
Chapter 6: The Neck of the Murderer
Chapter 7: The Neck Feels the Rope
Chapter 8: The Hands of the Murderer
Chapter 9: The Work of the Murderer’s Hands
Chapter 10: A Sight of the Murderer’s Hands
Chapter 11: The Way the Murderer Walked
Chapter 12: The Face of the Murderer
The Delivery
It was the biggest feast since the feeding of the five thousand, or so it was felt locally in Greenwich, and their outliers, the Hythe and the Wick. In the spring of 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations was entertained to a banquet in the Painted Hall of the Royal Naval College. Premier Attlee welcomed them. The feast was austere, in tune with the rationed times: a soup, game, and a pudding, but the wines were good.
Present, in a purely professional capacity and not eating, were Chief Superintendent Dander, and Inspectors Warwich and Banbury. Also there were a troupe of young detectives-in-training, and among them John Coffin and Alex Rowley.
Also present was a murderer-to-be, like a bridegroom in waiting.
The bodies came later.
The bodies came drifting in, delivered by the river, bearing a greeting card as if they were a birthday present. The river is a part of this story; the river supported the bodies, carrying them on the tide to their appointed destination. A body dropped on a rising tide in the river somewhere as yet unknown, between Deptford and Greenwich, to be carried up river, then back by the ebbing water towards Fidder’s Reach where it will be deposited on the mud on schedule. Or so the killer thought.
Looked at later, as through the eyes of John Coffin, young detective still on probation, it was a hell of a journey they made for the hell of a purpose.
What a case to test the nerve. He was on the edge of things in that first big case and he knew it. Yet the fact that he was so, helped in the end. Indeed, led to its solution. If you can call a solution what was so terrible a resolution.
At that time he had a world to discover and a life: his own. Once in June 1944, he thought he had lost it, and once nearly had, but the shell from the Ruhr didn’t quite do it. He came back from the dead, as we do occasionally. Now he had to find out what that life was worth and make something of it. The world was London, 1946. He joined the police.
Why the police? He wasn’t widely known among his pals as an idealist or a law enforcer, but he must have had something there. One of his fellow police-cadets had wanted to be a ballet dancer. You could never tell where your feet will lead you. Give him ten years or so and he might know the answer. And when he