A Coffin for Charley. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ 1969 he was a superintendent and nine years later became Chief Superintendent.

      There was a bad patch in his career about which he is reluctant to talk. His difficult family background has complicated his life and possibly accounts for an unhappy period when, as he admits, his career went down a black hole. His first marriage split apart at this time and his only child died.

      From this dark period he was resurrected by a longish period in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when, in the late 1980s as the Second City of London was being formed, he became the Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, very happily, to an old love, Stella Pinero. He has also rediscovered two siblings, a sister and a brother.

CHAPTER 1

       Monday. Towards the river

      Darkness.

      The two people stood facing each other. The girl with her back to the wall, the man looking at her, legs apart. He held out his hands.

      ‘I never like being killed,’ said the girl. She moved her hands forward as if to protect herself. She had long beautiful nails, painted bright red; on her left hand was a deep, diamond-shaped scar. Almost as if she had been branded.

      ‘It’s happened to you before?’

      ‘Several times. I’m the type, I suppose, and I never enjoy it. It’s so awkward. They never get it right.’

      ‘They?’

      ‘The killers.’

      ‘Oh, I will get it right. Think of all the things I’ve been doing … Watching you, admiring you, loving you, hating you. I’ll get it right.’

      ‘You will?’

      ‘I’ll get it so right you’ll never know you are dead.’

      Quite a promise.

      Darkness absolute.

      ‘Shall we move in for the kill?’

      But he wouldn’t be killing her just yet. For that, she would have to wait. Wait in hunger, wait in darkness.

      Light.

      One light, a spot above the dressing-table, focused on the lovely face of Stella Pinero, actress, now for a single rocky year Mrs John Coffin. An up and down year. But she forgave her husband. As always, she had contributed her share.

      I must put a bit more lipstick on; I’m looking pale. I blame last night. Possibly blame was the wrong word, not one to be associated with the evening before. Sex was good for you and improved the complexion, but sometimes fatigue made you pale.

      The dressing-table had its full equipment of make-up, sticks of colours, pots of creams, tubs of powder, sprays of scent, Stella took a professional interest in her looks.

      She smiled reminiscently as she considered the night. That was a bit of the up and down. A quarrel and a reconciliation.

      It had been her fault. Probably her fault.

      A rocky year. Right to marry, of course, but they had difficulties.

      All the same, she’d enjoyed the twelve months and she rather thought he had too. Not a man to want a quiet life was John Coffin. He thought he did, thought of himself as the reserved scholarly type more interested in editing his rakish mother’s rakish memoirs than anything else, but in truth he liked a battle. Or anyway, a bit of a skirmish. Wouldn’t have become a policeman else, would he?

      Well, he had had one big battle but not with her, and won it. His management of his Police Force in the Second City of London had come in for criticism on various grounds—not of inefficiency, it was agreed that he was very competent, but because with some people he was too friendly and with others too remote.

      And then there was his relationship with her (well, that had sorted itself out) and his connection with his highly successful sibling Letty Bingham, property tycoon and owner of St Luke’s Theatre Complex which contributed handsomely to Stella Pinero’s income.

      Or had done. This recession was biting sharply into Letty and so into Stella. It had taken a year or two for the slump to hit the theatre but it had done so now.

      Property developers were not popular in the Docklands of the Second City where they had erected great office blocks and compounds of luxury flats which the local population resented. This had counted in the whispering campaign against John Coffin, but he had faced up to it, and also to the overt criticism of his Police Committee, and he had won.

      But it had not made for an easy first year of marriage.

      I was sensible to keep on my own flat, Stella decided. If the Queen can have a separate bedroom, then I can have a separate flat. Somewhere to hide when things got too hot. Also, she was performing this season in St Luke’s herself as well as producing two plays and she liked to have her friends in after a performance or after a particularly gruesome rehearsal and her friends did not always fit in well with the murder and mayhem that was part of her husband’s life.

      They loved it, of course, but she found their questions difficult.

      She lived in St Luke’s Mansions which had been converted from the tower of an old Victorian church which had fallen into disuse. The St Luke’s Theatre Complex was adjacent. The main theatre in the round was in the old church itself while a theatre workshop had been built across a small courtyard.

      I am attractive, she told herself, and I am a well known, if not exactly a famous, actress. Which is why that man watches me.

      Hangs around, follows me, watches me.

      Like all actresses, she had had followers, men who called with flowers, met her at the stage door, wrote little notes. It was part of theatrical tradition, the Stage Door Johnny. She had liked it, even found some of the men attractive; she was no prude.

      But this was different.

      She went to her window to look out. The dark-coated figure was not to be seen but he was probably there. She never got a good look at his face because he wore a hat which he pulled low, and dark spectacles.

      Not a pleasing sight.

      So that’s it, she said to her reflection. I’m a femme fatale. The fatale bit did not please her.

      She could tell her husband who would certainly act. What was the point of being married to a policeman if you could not call upon him when you were alarmed.

      She was alarmed.

      John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City Police Force, looked out of his window in his office. He got a better view from the sitting-room of the tower in St Luke’s Mansions, where he lived, sometimes with Stella and sometimes without her, but his view had improved since one tower block of council flats had been knocked down before it fell down so that he got a distant view of the river. He enjoyed looking out …

      It was something he did quite often. Partly because it gave him pleasure to СКАЧАТЬ