Cracking Open a Coffin. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t think she ever used a bus,’ said Maisie. ‘Always came in the car.’

      ‘Someone bought that ticket. And on the day she disappeared. It was wedged beneath a handkerchief.’

      ‘She never used a handkerchief, always bits of tissue crammed into her pocket.’

      ‘It was clean. Might have been just decoration.’

      ‘I don’t think so. I’d say it wasn’t hers.’

      ‘Her pocket in her sweater,’ he persisted.

      Mrs Rolt shrugged. ‘You asked me.’

      Darren put his head round the door. ‘There’s ever such a smell of burning in the kitchen.’

      ‘I’d better get back,’ said Maisie Rolt. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t helped. Just pushed your questions back at you.’

      ‘At the beginning of an investigation like this, questions are as valuable as answers.’

      ‘Thank you for saying that … Would you like to stay for supper? I dare say it won’t all be burnt.’

      To his surprise, he heard himself say yes, he would, thank you, but not tonight, some other time?

      Suddenly she said: ‘I’ll tell you what I feel: we weren’t using her, she was using us. She was getting something, we were giving her something, and I don’t know what it was.’

      Darren burst in again, and said: ‘Our General says she won’t bloody be a Valkyrie and nor will any of her girls. The lads can please themselves if they want to act bloody women.’

      At the same time the telephone rang, and as Coffin left, he heard her dealing with a call from someone called Angela, temporizing on whether Angela could help at Star Court.

      As he walked down the garden path a figure dressed in black leather swept along, nearly knocking him over. He saw the gleam in her eye as she flew past.

      Second time of asking, he thought. She meant to get me if she could.

      Our General. Rosa Maundy, a rose with many a thorn, he thought. Maundy was an old Spinnergate name, you got them on the records way back to the first Elizabeth when they had been Thames watermen. Our Rose. He knew a bit about her now, she worked for her father who ran a small haulage company, it was her power base. A story there too, and he would find out when it suited him, which might be quite soon if she kept trying to kill him.

      He walked to where he had parked his car and drove westward. Sometimes you can walk just so far and no farther.

      At the Tube station in Spinnergate, where he stopped to buy an evening paper, Mimsie Marker was packing up to go home.

      ‘Saved you a paper.’

      ‘You always do.’

      She folded it up in the professional way, as taught her long ago, pocketed the money in the leather bag that hung in front of her like a kangaroo’s pouch and became confidential.

      ‘About those kids that have gone missing, pair of students.’

      Coffin waited.

      ‘Saw Jim Dean today.’

      ‘Oh, you know him, do you?’

      Mimsie didn’t answer that as not being worth comment, she knew everyone. ‘He bought a paper, just like you, then he waited for the bus, but he didn’t get on it. Had his car parked and he got in and followed the bus.’

      ‘What number bus was it?’

      ‘147a. But you know that, or you wouldn’t have asked.’

      A good example of Mimsie’s maddening hit-the-nail-on-the-head way of thinking.

      ‘I thought you ought to know. Wonder what he was up to?’

      ‘Did you see him come back?’

      ‘No, I reckon he went all the way to the end.’

      ‘And what’s at the end, Mimsie?’

      ‘Nothing much. Depends what you want. Woods and marsh mostly.’ Her eyes were bright and alert. ‘Used to test the big guns there once when Woolwich Arsenal was alive.’

      ‘Thanks, Mimsie, that’s interesting.’

      ‘Thought you’d say so.’

      He hadn’t disappointed her. She watched him sit in his car till the right bus came along, and then drive slowly behind.

      He followed it out, past the road which led to Star Court House, out through the dingy inner suburbs to where they lightened, grew more pleasant with pretty gardens, then beyond that to where the houses were scattered, past a cemetery and a crematorium and finally to a cluster of houses round a bus stop. At this point, the bus turned round and came back. End of the road.

      Coffin stopped his car and got out. Across the road from a parade of houses, newly built, isolated and windswept, was a stretch of scrubby, empty land with a belt of trees.

      He paced it slowly, looking at the ground. There were signs of the passing of a car along a muddy track at the side. On the grass itself were tyre marks.

      Hard to say how recent these were. It was probably an area where lovers came. It had that look about it, not to mention the odd spoiled condom lying about.

      Under the trees several years of leaf fall lay thick and mushy. He thought he could detect signs that the layers had been disturbed so that here and there the darker, decayed deposit had come to the top. He moved the leaves with his foot.

      The earth underneath had been opened, then pressed back. Something or someone had been buried here.

      Coffin went back to his car where he made a telephone call, then sat waiting.

      When the police van arrived, he took the team of diggers to the spot he had found. He watched while a canvas barrier was set up to protect the area, then he stood back. Very soon he was joined by Chief Superintendent Paul Lane, not pleased to be taken away from his evening at home. Coffin could imagine the grumble going on inside: One more of the Boss’s flights of fancy.

      ‘Nice evening, isn’t it, sir,’ said Paul Lane. It was, in fact, beginning to rain. ‘For digging, that is,’ he added morosely. For standing about it was damp and cold.

      The two men watched in the rain which began to grow heavier. A small crowd of spectators had appeared, as they always did on these occasions, alerted by some underground set of signals.

      ‘Have to get lights up if we don’t finish before dark,’ said Lane. It was dusk already. ‘No problem, of course,’ he added without conviction. Then he said: ‘They’ve got something.’

      A muddy figure was heading towards them from out of the enclosure. ‘A buried dog, sir. Sorry.’

      ‘That’s it, then,’ said Paul Lane, putting up his collar against the rain. ‘Might as well be off.’

      Coffin СКАЧАТЬ