Coffin’s Ghost. Gwendoline Butler

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      a suicide attempt

      2. Damaged bone on left ankle

      3. Scarring on the right leg

      Blood Group: O

      He hadn’t known what blood group Anna was, but O was about the most common.

      Drugs in blood: Desmethyl-Diazepam traces were found which is a drug breakdown product from several tranquillizers such as Cloraazepate (found in Tramene) or Chlordiazpaxide (found in Librium and Tropium) and Diazepam (found in Valium)

      Anna might have been on drugs even then. These were all sedative-type drugs. Some of the details matched with Anna, but without the face, how could you be sure?

      Neither of them had made any attempt to keep in touch. Coffin knew danger when he saw it and he had seen it then in Anna.

      It was possible that the remains left on the steps in Barrow Street were those of Anna.

      One of the three telephones on his desk rang, this was what he called his private line and was the only one which Stella used. She was careful, scrupulous even, about breaking into his working life.

      Stella wasted no time. ‘Darling

      That meant business, it was the theatrical darling, meaning nothing, except here I come and I have a request to make.

      ‘Yes?’ Coffin was cautious.

      ‘Robbie’s very worried about his daughter. His stepdaughter, really, but he loves her and she took his name.’

      ‘I gathered that last night.’ Was it last night? No, it was a bit longer ago than that. He had been so deep in the past, that the present was hard to hold on to.

      ‘Yes, but more worried … She’s missing, really missing, not just playing. She hasn’t got a very high IQ. Learning difficulties, they call it, don’t they? She’s lovely to look at, by the way, a beautiful girl, but a simple soul. I had her working in the theatre, in the wardrobe and so on, that side of things, she did well enough while they kept it simple. Then she went off without a word. She’s an innocent and he thinks she’s in real trouble.’

      ‘He can tell, can he?’

      ‘He thinks so. He’d like your advice.’

      ‘Well,’ began Coffin.

      ‘He’s important to me.’ She didn’t say darling again, but it was there in her voice. ‘And the limbs found on the house in Barrow Street … well, he’s wondering if they could be his stepdaughter, Alice. That’s her name … her mother married George Freedom next … not with him now.’

      What a lot, Coffin thought. ‘Where does the girl live and how long has she been missing?’

      ‘She lives in a room her mother found for her in the Second City. She works three times a week. I gave her the job here. She is seventeen, and innocent.’ Stella hesitated. “That’s one reason for worry, she may not be able to protect herself.’

      ‘Stella, that unlucky woman was older and more battered than the young Gilchrist girl. It cannot be her.’ Not if she was young and lovely.

      ‘But, if there’s a killer out there –’

      He interrupted her.

      ‘What is it you want?’

      ‘Could you meet us for a drink in Max’s, about six? We might eat there afterwards if you feel like it.’ Max and his restaurant was the favoured eating place for those working in St Luke’s Theatre Complex who could afford his prices, which had risen sharply in the last year. Max also ran the various bars and eating places in the three theatres.

      Coffin, whose income had not risen as sharply as Max’s prices, was thinking about it, when 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.’

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