A Dark Coffin. Gwendoline Butler

removed his overall and gloves, washed, then went into his office. His secretary. Alma Flint, who had been taking notes, had once worked in Coffin’s office, which he felt made a link with the Chief Commander. He found him attractive but tried not to make it too obvious. A little touch of the obvious was not a bad idea, the most surprising people responded on occasion, but one did not stick one’s neck out.

      He looked at the clock, a pretty little ormolu thing he had picked up at an auction. Nine o’clock, he had started early, having a midday lecture to undergraduates to give. ‘Bring me some coffee, Alma.’

      The carpet beneath his feet was a rich confection of colour made for him in Portugal. On the wall was an oil painting he had done himself. Coffin had never been here. Yes, he should see it.

      ‘Alma,’ he said, as he poured the coffee from the thin china pot. ‘Get the Chief Commander on the line. I want to see if he could come round here. It’s about the PM on the couple found dead in his wife’s theatre.’ He liked Stella too, but no bedding her!

      Coffin had been at work for a couple of hours, engaged in routine administration, when the call came through. His secretary filtered calls as a rule with a fine discrimination, but she let this one through.

      ‘Have you got time to come round? It’s walking distance. But quicker if you drive, of course.’ This was Garden’s notion of a joke. ‘Drink before lunch. Have a light lunch, I can lay it on. I thought you might like the PM report in person.’

      ‘Can’t you fax it?’ Somehow I never like the idea of a meal in a mortuary.

      ‘In my room in the new wing, of course,’ said Garden as if he read his thoughts. ‘I think you will find this one interesting. And bring that nice Inspector Trent with you. Did I get the name right?’

      ‘You did,’ said Coffin without emphasis, but he took in the interest. ‘But I am not sure if I know where he is at the moment.’

      In fact, he knew very well; Stella had called in on her way to an audition to ask Harry if he wanted anything, there wasn’t much food in the flat – and reported that he was stretched out on the bed, dead asleep, with a whisky bottle on the floor beside him. ‘But it wasn’t quite empty,’ she had reponed with careful honesty.

      ‘I don’t know what to make of him,’ Coffin had said, and Stella had replied: ‘Why don’t you find out?’

      ‘I might ring Greenwich and ask, I still know a few people there.’ Even though the old friends had gone, dead or retired. This one of cancer, this one gone to live in Spain. What do old coppers do, he asked himself, they don’t retire, they just disappear.

      He must have repeated that he was ‘Not sure’ because he heard Garden say: ‘Oh, what a shame. I thought you were friends.’

      ‘We worked together once. It was a long time ago.’

      ‘I thought he had such an interest in this case.’

      ‘Where did you pick that up?’ The thing was not to react to Garden, but he could not always manage to hold back.

      ‘Oh, I hear things, words get passed on. I thought he knew the old couple.’

      ‘I believe he did, once. A long while ago.’

      ‘I think he would be interested in what I have found.’

      There was no denying a kind of sneaky laughter there. It was true what people said of him: a real bastard. Death was not a subject for humour.

      ‘Of course, the report will be going out to the investigating team, but you know yourself, that takes time.’

      So it wasn’t just a double suicide?

      ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

      ‘Fine, lovely, after one, then?’

      The conversation was over.

      Coffin went to his window to look out at the scene below. It was something he had done often in his years as Chief Commander of the Second City of London, where he was responsible for keeping the Queen’s Peace in a stretch of old Docklands. Spinnergate, Swinehouse and East Hythe made up his territory. He had lived in Spinnergate for some years now, ever since he took up his present position; he loved his tower dwelling, it seemed his first real home. Perhaps this was because he shared now with Stella, at last his wife. Close by was the theatre complex created by Stella in the church itself. The old churchyard remained, but was now a pleasant garden with flowers and shrubs around the graves bearing the names of long-dead parishioners: Ducketts, Cruins, Birdways, Deephearts and Earders, families still to be found on the school rolls and among the ratepayers of the area. Also among the criminal fraternity, for the Second City had always had its violent side, its inhabitants not easy to control as the Romans and the Normans had found in their day. There was a deeply ingrained Them and Us mentality which Coffin still confronted.

      The injured child had been a Birdways, Thelma Birdways of Pomeranian Street, Swinehouse.

      It was a name he was not going to forget. Birdways – a good old Anglo-Saxon name imbedded in there, he thought, just as with Earders, but Cruin he felt might be a corruption of an early Celtic name.

      They had been there a long time, a lot of the people in his bailiwick, nor had successive waves of invaders and immigrants moved them on.

      He liked the view, liked his office, liked having a large staff, it had to be admitted: and liked his position. It was a long way from that earlier basement office of his in Deptford which was reputed to have rats and certainly had mice. Good days, though, in many ways – young, energetic, thrusting days.

      Drunker days too, a little voice inside said, that’s behind you and you owe that to Stella, so whatever she does now or has done, you owe her.

      He turned away from the window. What had to be done, had better be done.

      He picked up the telephone. He knew the man in Greenwich CID that he wanted.

      ‘Fergus? Is that you?’ But he knew it was, he recognized the gravelly smoker’s voice, even if unheard for some years.

      Chief Inspector George Ferguson admitted that it was indeed he, and to whom was he speaking.

      ‘Your grammar has improved since the old days … you would have said who were you speaking to once.’

      There was a silence, and then, ‘Coffin, by God, haven’t they knighted you?’

      ‘Not done the actual deed. Coming up soon. I’m a kind of honorary knight at the moment … but as they say: it comes up with the rations. How are you?’

      ‘I’m fine. Looking forward to my retirement.’

      ‘Don’t say it.’

      ‘Oh, I’ve a way to go yet. I only said I was looking forward to it. So would you round here.’

      ‘Bad, is it?’

      ‘Well, it doesn’t get any better.’

      All that said, Ferguson sounded cheerful enough. ‘So what can I do for you? I take it there is something?’