Coffin in Fashion. Gwendoline Butler

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      The two uniformed policemen both knew him, and nodded. ‘Glad you got here. Been trying to get in touch.’

      ‘I was out on a job.’

      ‘Haven’t seen you since that Wimpy Bar murder. Not round here, anyway.’

      ‘Only just moved in. Well, not long anyway.’

      ‘How long, John?’

      ‘A few weeks.’

      ‘Well, you’re in luck there.’

      They both moved over side by side and looked down the hole from a better point. The sunlight through the window showed how dark and stained the bundle was, bursting through its paper wrapping. It was unmistakably human, and yet … ‘Been there some time,’ said Coffin.

      ‘I think so. Now, if you’d been living here for the last year …’

      ‘You’d be asking me questions.’ There was a grim humour in their interchange.

      They still stared. Coffin spoke first.

      ‘Small.’ It was small.

      ‘Might not all be there.’

      ‘Cut up, you mean?’

      ‘Well, in bits.’

      Joints in wrapping? No, it was a complete thing in itself.

      Coffin shook his head. ‘That’s not the way it looks to me.’ He turned away. ‘It’s a whole thing, whatever it is.’ He knew without realizing why that it was somehow worse than that.

      As he walked away he understood why: he had seen a tiny, tiny little finger protruding from one end of the bundle.

      It was a kid down there, a little shrivelled-up kid.

      Once before in his professional life, early on when he was just starting out, Coffin had been involved with a child case. Well, there had been others, but that first one had been the marker. That first child had turned up safe, as it happened.

      With a sigh, he could foretell all that was going to happen to him and his house now. They were going to be invaded. Uniformed policemen, plainclothes detectives, all together with forensic scientists and other laboratory workers would be made free of his house. The whole scene of the crime outfit would have a passport. As would the photographers, and possibly their partners if they could manage it. The only person who was likely to be kept out was John Coffin.

      ‘The place has been empty for nearly two years,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’s why I got it cheap.’

      Now he knew what part of the price might be it did not seem so cheap. But he still wanted to live in it. Everyone had to have a home and this was going to be his.

      ‘Well, I’ll just go outside and have a smoke.’ There was a minute front garden with a red brick wall. He could sit on the wall in the sun and make a public spectacle of himself. ‘Who’s coming down, do you know?’ He meant: which officer is going to head the investigation team? He knew most of the local men and had worked with some. With none was he specially friendly, they were a clannish lot round here.

      ‘Jim Pedler, I think.’

      He certainly knew Jim Pedler and had some respect for the Inspector. Or at any rate for his power of rising through the ranks. Whether he could see further into the wood than anyone else was another matter.

      ‘He knows how to use a team,’ he assessed.

      ‘He’s the boss,’ said the young policeman. His tone said: and one I have to live with.

      There was the sound of a car door banging and a brisk voice announced the arrival of Inspector Pedler and his associates. Coffin quietly withdrew.

      As he had planned, he sat on the wall in the sun and smoked a cigarette. He was experimenting with Turkish cigarettes, on the grounds that they represented a kind of luxury and he ought to know about luxury. He could not afford any other kind.

      ‘I’ll be around for a bit if you want me,’ he said as he left the house. ‘It’s my evening class tonight.’

      He got the baffled look of incomprehension he expected. This would have been intensified if he had said, not: Yes, it’s woodwork; but: Actually, it’s genealogy.

      To take his mind off the small body in the house behind him, he thought about his genealogy class and his reason for taking it.

      He had a good sound practical reason, or so he told himself, but it might have been self-deception, he might just have been indulging a private fantasy.

      Several years ago he had been searching for a long-lost sibling. About whom he had been told by an elderly relative. Another and younger child of his mother who had been put out to adoption. Or lost. Sometimes he thought deliberately lost. He had been on the hunt for this lost brother or sister. At one time he thought he had a good lead through a friendly butcher’s, one of whom might have adopted this child. But that had come to nothing. He had gone on with the search to no purpose.

      Now he had a new approach: he would dig back into the family history and see if something emerged that way. To teach him how to do this basic research he was attending classes on the subject at the local Adult Education Centre on Charlton Hill. Mrs Lorimer believed his real reason was that he fancied the class teacher.

      He did like the girl, it must be admitted, but his heart was still locked in a love-affair of long ago. Long to him, that is, a matter of six years, although when he worked on his genealogy it counted as but yesterday.

      As he sat there smoking, he looked down the road to where the Belmodes factory was just visible. Old inhabitants, of whom he was beginning to know a few, had told him that before it was Belmodes making clothes, it was a furniture factory that did not survive the war.

      One cigarette and then another. He took a stroll up the road and then back again, vaguely seeking entertainment. He could have thought about the case he was working on, but there had been three fruitless days on that and he wanted a change. He could have thought about his evening class, but even that did not attract at the moment.

      The working day was over at Belmodes, but there were still women about, popping in and out of the shops. He was bound to say that they looked cheerful and not toilworn. Whatever it was Belmodes was clearly not a sweatshop. A small crowd of onlookers was standing to stare curiously at his house with the sinister activity within. Somehow, they knew there was a body found.

      Walking on her own was a girl he recognized. He had seen her only that morning at the bus stop where he changed buses. As a matter of fact he saw her every morning. She was an exceedingly pretty girl and she wore the short skirts he liked. So this was where she came.

      He stood up, not without the hope of attracting her attention. As she drew level their eyes met. She looked first surprised, then pleased.

      ‘Hello.’

      ‘Hello.’

      Gabriel blushed. ‘I’ve seen you at the bus stop.’

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