Cracking Open a Coffin. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ a distance as a very successful business man. He had vague memories of hearing of a marriage that had failed. Well, that made two of them, he thought.

      ‘Jem, Jem Dean.’

      ‘That’s me all right. I use James more now, but I’ll answer to Jim.’ Jem was dead and buried, it seemed, no doubt wisely. Change your name, change your status.

      They looked at each other, seeing reflected in their eyes that past they had shared, not all of it good. Jim Dean moved his thin, rather beautiful hands in a way Coffin remembered. Wonder what habit I’ve still got that he recalls, Coffin thought. What empty shell hangs on me?

      ‘Still the same old way of coming into a room,’ said Dean, answering him. ‘As if you were going to conquer it.’

      ‘Rubbish.’ But he was aware of being gently flattered. That was another thing he remembered about the man: he could smooth the waters. He had pale blue eyes that seemed to whiten and widen as he spoke: yet one more memory. He wore spectacles now and that shrouded the eyes a bit. He’d gone grey, but the crest of hair was still as strong and curly as ever. Well cut now, as was the dark blue suit. Shirt by Turnbull and Asser, tie by Hermès, gloves by Hermès.

      Suddenly, Dean tore away the spectacles to show the pain in his eyes. ‘That’s my kid that’s missing, my girl.’ The eyes were wider and paler than ever.

      Tom Blackhall put a hand on his arm. ‘Steady on, Jim. I’m in this too, remember.’

      He turned to John Coffin: ‘Two students of this university are missing. One of them is Jim’s daughter, Amy.’ He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘We informed the local police after the first day. This may have been a bit quick, but you may remember that we had a student murdered on campus last year and this has made us extra careful.’

      ‘I remember.’ Coffin also recalled, and with some bitterness, that it was one of the police failures, they had never caught the killer. Or not yet; but the file was not closed.

      ‘The police told us it was a bit too soon to do much, these being two young adults who might have taken themselves off for their own reasons.’ He paused again. ‘I think they did something, ran a few checks, but not much.’

      ‘I’ll find out.’

      The Rector ignored this and went on as if he hadn’t heard. ‘They must have sent out some sort of alert, because today I got a ’phone call telling me that Amy’s car had been found, empty. Across the river in Rotherhithe.’

      Not my area, thought Coffin automatically. That’s the Met.

      ‘No sign of her. But her handbag was in it and her coat.’

      Jim Dean made a noise like a groan.

      ‘That looked bad,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘Even to them.’

      We don’t come well out of this, thought Coffin. ‘What about the other student?’ he said. ‘Any sign of him?’

      ‘My son,’ said Sir Thomas, his voice suddenly heavy. ‘Martin. There was a relationship there, but I don’t know much about it. No sign of him either, but his wallet was found in the car. We don’t know if they started out together, or when they parted, if they did, but on that evidence they were together at one point.’

      There was silence in the room.

      ‘Whichever way you look at it,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘it doesn’t look good.’

      Coffin said slowly: ‘They still could be somewhere, anywhere, together or not. In spite of the way you feel, two days is very little time, and people do turn up.’

      ‘Three days, nearly three days,’ Jim Dean spoke sharply. ‘That’s too long.’ He reached into his pocket to pull out a small photograph. Black and white, not new, a little battered as if it had been carried around. ‘That’s my Amy. Look at her.’

      Coffin looked. ‘Can I take this away?’

      ‘Not that photograph, I’ll give you another …’ He reached in his pocket. ‘Have you got a child? No, of course, I heard, tragic … I want her found, she’s got to be found. Your lot can do it. You and I know how it goes, you can see they make a push.’ Coffin saw his eyes were bloodshot. ‘It’s day two, into day three, and she’s my child. I want her found.’

      Sir Tom said: ‘That goes for me too, I want my son found.’

      Coffin turned towards the door. ‘I’ll see things get started.’

      ‘I’ll walk you across the campus, the gate may be locked now.’

      At the gate, which was closed, a security man stood. The Rector nodded and got out a key. ‘I’ll do this, Bill, thank you.’

      ‘Right, sir.’ The man stood back, but he studied John Coffin’s face as if he meant to remember it.

      With the key in his hand, the Rector said: ‘Dean thinks my boy has killed his daughter. I don’t believe Martin did it. That’s another reason I wanted you here. Dean wasn’t so keen.’

      He put on a good act then if that’s so, but Coffin did not say this aloud. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

      He walked back through the streets to the big new police buildings in Spinnergate. Not much of a walk but an interesting one, with plenty to observe. He passed the Great Eastern Dock, once the place where furs and timber from Russia and the Baltic arrived and now a wall of new apartments, well lit up on this autumn evening. On his right was the new hospital, an ambulance going in and another speeding out with all lights flashing.

      He walked on, there was the Old Leadworks Art Gallery, said to be prospering in spite of the recession. Past Rope Alley, scene of a notorious killing of a girl, avoiding the turn to Feather Street and the junction which led to St Luke’s Mansions where he lived himself, walking fast to the unpretentious but efficient blocks of his own headquarters where he would find someone on call in the CID rooms.

      And they would certainly know he was on the way, the message would have been flashed ahead that WALKER was coming.

      It came back to him with a shock then that he had seen Dean not so long ago without taking in who it was. A figure in a pub (the Lamb and Lion, much patronized by his Force), talking to a face he knew. Yes, Harry Coleridge. Not one of his admirers. Dean had left with a laugh, slapping Coleridge on the arm and calling, ‘Keep me in touch with the barnyard.’ Just a flash of memory but it was interesting. Yes, that was the authentic Dean touch, friendly, bantering but sharp.

      He was still studying the photograph of Amy Dean, a sensitive face but possibly a troubled one, and weighing up the interview with the two fathers last night, while waiting for Stella to arrive. He was thinking too about that earlier case of the death of a student around which there had hung an unpleasant smell as of people not telling all they knew; he had called for the file on this before leaving his office last night. One of the good things about his now automated life was that he could summon material on his screen at any hour of the night or day. No waiting about as in the old days.

      On the screen he had read the details: Virginia Scott, twentyish, a third-year student of sociology, her body had been found outside the departmental library, partly concealed from view by bushes.

      She had СКАЧАТЬ