Cracking Open a Coffin. Gwendoline Butler
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it much further?’
‘Yes, but there’s no conductor on these buses, you put in the right fare yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘If you haven’t the right change, then you overpay and get more of a trip than you use.’
‘I never wanted her to work in that place,’ said James Dean. ‘I hated it and all it stood for.’
Then he said: ‘Does the driver remember her? Did anyone see her? One of the passengers?’
‘We are inquiring. The driver doesn’t remember. It was late in the day. One of the last buses out on his shift and it was crowded.’
‘Bunch of drunks,’ said Dean viciously. ‘What would they see?’ He started to walk up and down the room. ‘Can I ask you about the Blackhall boy? Any sign of him?’
‘Not so far. He might have been on the bus, we asked about him too, but no result.’
‘Flush him out. You won’t find him lying dead anywhere.’
‘We don’t know your daughter is dead yet, sir. We mustn’t jump to conclusions.’
‘She’s dead. I’m telling you.’
He had moved on from his first demand that she be found, CI Young observed.
‘What about the car? What’s that telling you?’
‘Forensics are working on it.’
‘That was my car. I drove it for a few weeks, then I gave it to her. That was because she didn’t like taking valuable presents, I had to persuade her it was a car I didn’t want and wouldn’t use. She had that sort of conscience.’
‘I’ll pass on to Forensics that you have used the car,’ said Archie Young gravely. ‘They’ll need to know.’
‘Yes. Is that all you want from me?’
‘For now, Mr Dean.’
‘Have you got a daughter?’
Archie Young shook his head. ‘No, no children.’
‘You’re probably lucky.’
Archie Young said: ‘She may not be dead, sir.’
James Dean paused at the door, looked at Archie as he spoke and gave him a bleak half smile. She’s dead, the smile said.
Young said: ‘If you receive a ransom demand, I hope you will tell us, sir.’
‘There has been no demand to me. I’d be surprised and glad if there was one.’
‘Amy could walk in the door tonight and wonder what we were making a fuss about.’
When Archie Young reported this afterwards to John Coffin, as requested, he said: ‘He looked at me as if he didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘He probably didn’t,’ said John Coffin. ‘Did you believe it yourself?’
‘Half and half. I was just trying to sell him a bit of hope.’ He added: ‘He’s really wild. I don’t like the look of him.’
‘What do you think he will do?’
Young considered. ‘Bash something up, that’s what he’d like to do. Either the university or Star Court.’
Yes, the old Jem Dean had been that sort of a man. Too soon to say what the new Jim Dean was like.
‘What do you make of the bus ticket?’
‘Don’t know. Someone bought that ticket, and it was in her pocket. Miracle it was still there after being in the water.’
‘It is surprising, but you do get luck occasionally.’ If it was luck, so far it didn’t seem to have helped. He was keeping an open mind on the bus ticket, it needed thinking about. ‘What about the Blackhalls?’
‘Sir Thomas telephones regularly to ask for news. Nothing to tell him, no sighting of either the boy or the girl. He doesn’t like that. I think he’s nervous that somehow Dean will find the boy first.’
‘Better keep an eye open,’ Coffin advised. ‘Watch the university campus and Star Court.’
‘I’ll be around myself, asking questions,’ Young assured him. ‘I want to see both of the missing students’ rooms.’
But Dean did not go to either of those places. Or not on that day, whatever he was going to do later. After leaving the police headquarters, he got into his car and took a ride. Not unnoticed, as it turned out later. There were one or two people in Coffin’s area who also seemed to notice everything and one of them, indeed the best, was Mimsie Marker who sold newspapers from a stall by the Tube station at Spinnergate. If she didn’t see events herself, and after all even Mimsie could not be everywhere although it sometimes seemed as though she had been, she had contacts and friends to pass on the news. Mimsie was a kind of sieve, through which all local information could pass.
Coffin had other things on his mind, not only this case and the security for the Queen’s visit, but he had a sister, Letty Bingham; he had his late mother’s memoirs which he had edited and which Letty wanted published; and he had Darling Stella. And there was always the cat, Tiddles.
Stella also wanted his mother’s memoirs published, because she had a TV producer lined up who would turn them into a four-parter with Stella as his mother.
Coffin found the idea gruesome … Stella as his mother? Considering all that had passed between them, it was incestuous. Obscene. Stella didn’t see it that way, of course. It was work. Acting.
‘I don’t like to think of you as my mother,’ he had said uneasily.
‘Oh, don’t be silly. I’d be your young mother.’
Exactly, Coffin had thought, but he could not drag his mind away from Amy Dean and Martin Blackhall. Gone, both of them. There was a nasty odour of death and decay in the air.
Stella too took a keen interest in the case: the university, and Sir Tom in particular, were patrons of St Luke’s Theatre, and she herself had helped in an appeal for money for Star Court House. Naturally she was on the side of women, she said. She didn’t know either of the two missing students.
‘Can I do anything to help?’
Coffin didn’t think so, police work was police work. But Stella helped them in recreating the scene when the two students were last seen, standing by Amy’s car. A WPC was found, sufficiently like Amy to play her part, but they had trouble with a double for Martin, no police officer was a match and none of Martin’s fellow students was willing to volunteer. So Stella discovered a young actor who was a match in height and colouring, and after talking with Lady Blackhall and studying photographs, she coached him in the walk and mannerisms of the young Martin. As luck would have it, he was young Darbyshire, Philippa’s son, who had just got his Equity Card. He was also, with suitable make-up, going to be one of the non-singing Valkyries. This had infuriated Our General (who had been approached for help), who thought it was all right for women to act like men but wrong for men to invade their territory.
‘It’s the golden thread,’ Stella explained to Coffin. ‘Haven’t you noticed it in life, there is a golden thread linking event to event … that’s what Josephine has taught me. Josephine is a bit of the golden thread here, isn’t she?’
Josephine, the Valkyries, Our General, some thread, Coffin thought. ‘Thanks for helping with the reconstruction scene,’ he said.
They were in Stella’s living-room in the apartment which had been created out of the ground floor and old vestry of the former St Luke’s Church. There was an ecclesiastical touch to her kitchen which had strong oak rafters in the ceiling, but her living-room had been nicely secularized. Not much cooking was done here as Stella had long since mastered the art of proxy cooking, buying in what she wanted from Max at the Delicatessen or Harrods and putting it in the microwave.
Because they shared the ownership