Coffin’s Game. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ graduate doing a thesis on economic history, and a seaman without a ship. His son and a nephew – his sister’s son – he employed all the time.

      ‘I’ll be round the corner in Percy Street.’ He picked up his jacket as he departed.

      Bill Archer’s son, George (they went in for royal names), was in charge and his cousin, Phil, was doing most of the work.

      Number five Percy Street was the third house in the row and had been empty and up for sale for six months or so. This was known by both George and Phil who had been given the key by the house agent and told to get on with the roof and the windows and ceiling in the top floor front room.

      Phil ran up the stairs cheerfully, his first job of the day and a light one. It was very early in the morning; he liked to get a good start. He was a thin and eager man. Behind him came Tom McAndrew, taller, heavier and older, he it was who was working on a thesis and looking for a university job. Any job. But he was a good brickie and could turn his hand to anything electrical. Woodwork and plumbing, no.

      Phil pushed open the door. The wind blew through the shattered windows and shivered up to the rafters through the torn ceiling. If it had not been for the wind, he reckoned, there would have been more of a smell.

      On the floor, face in profile, was a body.

      ‘Don’t touch,’ said Tom, putting out a restraining hand, ‘better not.’

      Bill, who had been talking to his son in the street outside the house, could be heard coming up the stairs. He was not going to be pleased.

      A call from George Archer in his capacity as works foreman on the job brought a police patrol car to inspect 5 Percy Street and then two more senior officers to take another look.

      Sergeant Mitchell and Detective Ellis Rice arrived before the police surgeon and before the Scene of Crime team. They stared down at the body lying on the floor of a room where the ceiling was half down and the windows out. They made a quiet, delicate, gloved inspection of the corpse and her possessions. She had a short fall of fair hair, she wore jeans, a white shirt, tucked in and belted, and on the hands were bloodstained white cotton gloves. There was a handbag on the floor. Mitchell carefully put on plastic gloves, then opened the bag and looked inside. He raised an eyebrow. Silently, he let Rice see what he had been seeing.

      ‘That bag hers?’ asked Archer, who had come up the stairs with them. They had told him to stay behind, but he had ignored this advice.

      ‘Could be.’

      ‘It’s a good bag.’

      It was; soft leather with an initial in gold.

      ‘That is no bomb injury,’ said George Archer, staring at the corpse. ‘Not the face.’ He said this sadly; he was a former soldier who had served in the Falklands, he knew what wounds were and how they were made. Hands had done this work. Brutal, determined hands.

      ‘No,’ said Mitchell. ‘Not disputing that.’ He crouched down to replace the woman’s handbag on the floor beside her. He turned in query to his colleague. A meaning look passed between them: a question wanting an answer.

      ‘It can’t be,’ said the other. ‘Can’t be her.’

      ‘There’s the handbag,’ said Mitchell. ‘That means something. Could have been stolen, I suppose.’ He walked away. ‘This is too much for us.’

      ‘SOCO will be here soon.’

      Mitchell had made up his mind. ‘That’s not enough,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I am going to telephone.’

      Within the hour, two very senior detectives had arrived. The first to march up the stairs, quickly and lightly, was Chief Superintendent Archie Young. Behind him, climbing with that soft creeping movement that had won him the nickname of the Todger, was Inspector Thomas Lodge, a man of specialized knowledge and many tongues. He was an outsider who ran his own game.

      The two men walked into the room together, one tall and burly although quick moving, and the other several inches shorter, while the recently arrived SOCO team stood back.

      Archie Young surveyed the body, then knelt down for a closer look. ‘I can’t say; I ought to be able … I knew her – know her,’ he amended. ‘I simply can’t say, the face has gone.’ He looked at Inspector Lodge. ‘Any views?’

      ‘That can probably be reconstructed. To some extent. In the long run it will be of use. Fingerprints also.’

      ‘You are looking at this from your point of view,’ said Archie Young with some irritation. As you usually do, he muttered to himself. ‘I can’t go round collecting fingerprints to check if this is the body of the woman we think it is. Not this woman.’

      ‘The circumstances are unusual,’ said Inspector Lodge calmly.

      ‘They bloody are.’

      Lodge drew his lips together. He rarely swore, but when he did he had a wide-ranging vocabulary in which to do it, from Russian to a couple of Chinese dialects, picked up in Soho.

      ‘There’s nothing for it: we have to get the Chief Commander himself.’

      ‘He’s away, isn’t he?’

      ‘Back today, here now.’ Archie Young looked at his watch. Still early, but he reckoned the Chief Commander would be in his office.

      ‘In situ?’

      ‘Yes, here and now.’

      Lodge nodded gravely, watching as Archie Young drew his mobile phone from his pocket. ‘I hope that phone is protected,’ he said.

      ‘It is, as you know very well. All mobiles are in this Force, no one can eavesdrop.’ And to himself, Archie Young said: No wonder they call you the Todger. I wouldn’t have you with me now if I didn’t have to; you are the king of this particular territory. ‘Sir,’ he began, when John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City Police, answered on his private reserved line, and found himself stumbling, wondering how to go on.

      Four days after the explosions, Stella Pinero had gone away.

      Before her going, there had been a moment of confusion and despair. And in the theatre, too.

      Stella Pinero was lost. She had stood centre stage and realized she had lost her words, lost where she was in Act One (that bit she could remember), and very nearly forgotten what play it was.

      Tension, that was the cause. Fear, yes, she could say that too.

      A voice prompted her: ‘What letter?’

      Stella came to herself. ‘You thought the letter had been destroyed. How foolish of you. It is in my possession, it was a swindle, Sir Robert.’

      An Ideal Husband, she said to herself, that’s the play. Why on earth did I choose to produce that play here in my own theatre, when I had a free choice? Because it is popular with my audience, and I serve that audience.

      And because I have husbands on my mind; I am terribly, terribly worried about my own husband.

      At last a voice got through to her: СКАЧАТЬ