Coffin and the Paper Man. Gwendoline Butler

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      ‘I didn’t do it, Mother.’

      ‘Of course, not. You don’t have to tell me.’

      I’d believe you even if you had done it, she thought. Mothers always do. My son is innocent, that’s what they always said, didn’t they? He is a nice boy. That was the other thing they said.

      ‘About the poems—they didn’t mean anything. You understand, Mum, don’t you? It was just a kind of experiment, the sort of thing you have to do.’

      ‘Of course.’ She’d said it again, she really must find a different way of expressing herself. And she was driving much too fast, she’d nearly shaved that cyclist off his wheels.

      ‘And we never did anything much, Anna and I, if you get me. And if we had, would it have mattered?’

      No, it wouldn’t have mattered. Anna had not been a virgin anyway at the time of her death. Some sexual experience, the medical grapevine said, and why not? Who expected otherwise? …

      ‘Why didn’t you get me out before? Why did I have to stay in there all night? It was foul.’

      ‘The police had a right to question you, Tim. You aren’t a minor any more.’

      In fact, she had wanted to try to get him home last night, to go round there and make a fuss. But Leonard wouldn’t do it.

      ‘Let him stay. After all, he has something to answer. He knew the girl. Wrote her poetry.’ That’s what he had said.

      Sometimes, I feel like killing you, Dr Zeman, she thought. Quite possibly you feel the same about me, and being doctors we both have the means to do it efficiently.

      Now she negotiated the turn into Feather Street, drove past the dairy, hit the kerb but then parked the car with some neatness.

      ‘I’ve made some coffee,’ she said, ‘and I’ll cook you breakfast. I’ve taken the day off from my clinic.’

      The home which Felicity Zeman had created in Feather Street was warm and buoyant and full of light. It rested on the hill like a ship, quite unlike the solid household of Kay Zeman with its heavy antiques and dark curtains.

      The family lived on the first floor, leaving the lower rooms for Dr Zeman’s consulting rooms.

      The small white peke Arthur emerged to greet them with a fury of enthusiastic barks.

      ‘You’re home now, love,’ Felicity said, putting her arm round her son’s shoulders. ‘It’s over.’

      Or that bit was.

      Leonard Zeman heard their voices and came up from his consulting room below. ‘Glad you’re back, Tim. You got him all right then, Fe?’ He poured himself some coffee and took a piece of the toast she had made. ‘Any press around? Any photographers?’ He was holding on to his son’s arm as if he didn’t want to let go.

      ‘Some. But I drove past them fast.’

      They had got a picture through the car window, though, of her furious, intent face and Tim staring straight ahead. Tomorrow it would be in some newspaper.

      ‘Any here?’

      ‘No. All clear.’

      He hung around, wanting to stay with them to offer love and reassurance but not finding the words, as alas, he so often did with his patients whom he treated and sometimes cured, but could not love. Of course, you weren’t obliged to love your patients, only work for them. Better not to love, in fact, but family you were obliged to love. Damn it, he did love them. He took another piece of toast and shared it with Tim.

      Felicity became irritated, tried to hold it back and failed. ‘Haven’t you got any patients?’

      ‘A queue of them.’ Some of them ill, others there to view the father of the Zeman boy, so that they could say, ‘I was in there yesterday and he looked all right, you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong.’

      Funny thing, family, he reflected. Tim whom I love, Felicity whom I also love, and Val whom I actually want. Want quite a lot.

      ‘I think I’ll have a bath,’ said Tim. ‘Wash the smell a way. Then I suppose I’d better get down to some work. Catch up with things. I’ve got an exam coming up.’

      ‘Use my bathroom,’ said his mother. ‘It’s looking rather good at the moment. There’s a bowl of lily of the valley that just matches the curtains.’ Things mattered to her, helped her if necessary. Her spirits could be raised by a nicely arranged breakfast table with the right china.

      ‘Lily of the valley bath oil, too?’ asked Tim, trying to get up a smile.

      ‘Of course,’ said Felicity, hoping not to show that she thought him pathetic and brave.

      The telephone rang, the private line, as Tim went upstairs.

      ‘Wonder who that is?’ said Leonard Zeman.

      Felicity made no move to answer the bell. ‘At a guess, Val.’

      The Zeman family were all getting back to normal. Or trying to, well aware that it was not going to be easy, but trying to pretend otherwise.

      Soon the news spread around that Tim was back home. When Val heard she told her aunt. Soon Harold and Phil Darbyshire knew, and the Annecks, all of them even the dog, and the dog-walker, Jim Marsh.

      They were all trying to hang on to normality in very difficult circumstances. Working, watching television, going to bed. Cooking meals, even eating them. Hanging on.

      Harder for some than others.

      Fred Kinver had retired to his home after his interview with John Coffin, where his wife watched him nervously, and waited for results. He was confident. There would be an arrest.

      None came. Presently, he realized that it was never going to come. The police were not going to arrest Tim Zeman.

      They had no evidence.

      Fred Kinver sat crying, watched anxiously by his wife, who cried inside herself only.

      In the neighbourhood feelings began to run high. It was known that a man was still in detention. He now had a name: Solomon Wild, and a medical history but no police record. Word about this seeped out. Why was he not being charged? With something, with anything?

      The questioning of Tim Zeman and then his release had provoked angry comment in certain quarters. Too middle-class to get charged, was the feeling.

      This police inaction speedily produced another outburst from the Paper Man. He was soon to give himself this name.

      Two identically phrased letters went off this time, one to John Coffin’s office and another to his home in St Luke’s Mansions. The Paper Man was making doubly sure his message got through.

CHAPTER FIVE

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