Coffin’s Ghost. Gwendoline Butler

Stella said: ‘My dinner.’

      Stella, although out of work, was temporarily rich: the theatres were doing well, while a TV series she had done was endowing her with money for repeats from North America, Germany, Australia and from what Stella called the Monkey Islands. She used to complain that her TV series travelled much more than she did. A false complaint, since Stella hated to travel except in the greatest luxury.

      ‘If I am going to be an expense item, I accept.’

      ‘You are all right, are you, love?’ This time the affection was genuine. ‘You sound a bit strained.’

      ‘Just the first days back at work.’ And digging myself up. I may have a confession to make to you, Stella. ‘And a rather tricky murder.’

      A set of limbs, anyway, we have to assume the body and the murder.

      ‘Don’t, love,’ said Stella solemnly. ‘You are too important to worry about the odd murder.’

      He laughed. He never felt important.

      ‘You’re uneasy, though, I can tell, and that means you are involving yourself. Take my advice: work out what is bugging you, find it, and then leave it. You don’t need it.’

      She put the telephone down gently.

      ‘I need the face,’ Coffin said aloud. ‘Where is the head?’

      Phoebe Astley was thinking this too. ‘We had better find the head and quickly. If it’s not in a freezer or such, it will be deteriorating rapidly. Wasn’t there a killer who boiled the heads to keep them what he called “nice”.’

      She was having a conference with Chief Superintendent Young, if you could call their conversation such: she was tacitly seeking support and advice from this so much more senior figure. They were meeting in his office, which was tidy and very neat, with a potted plant, small and tidy too, on his desk. She thought his wife had provided the dark blue primula. Her own office was not tidy.

      ‘That was Dennis Nilsen,’ said Archie Young. ‘I believe he did cook bits of bodies, but I don’t know about heads. I should think the hair might make a difficulty there.’

      Phoebe, who had dropped her observation in to see how Archie reacted (she knew that immensely experienced and tough as he was, he still had his squeamish side), had to admit that he had capped her.

      ‘How are we going to give her a name? Fingerprints?’

      ‘I don’t think so. Not unless she has a record and even then …’ He said no more. No need. The computer might go through all the fingerprints of all the females with criminal convictions, but even that would take time. Could be done, no doubt.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘We need her doctor. With all those drugs inside her, she was on someone’s list. We just have to send out a letter to all GPs in the locality of Barrow Street and hope one of them holds up his hand.’