A Grave Coffin. Gwendoline Butler
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team from when you were in the Met.’
‘Probably younger than I am.’
‘Oh, they stay with us a long time in this business.’
Coffin considered: ‘So you decided that he must have been getting close to the corrupt officer and therefore killed, in this particularly revolting way?’
Saxon stirred in his seat. ‘I had one reason which I have not yet mentioned … We had established a hotline so that he could talk to me. He never did use it except to set up meets. I had hoped it would be more use to us, he wasn’t much of a talker, Harry. It had its good and bad sides. But two days before he probably died he rang, asking me to turn up at the Fisher’s Arms off the Strand. I did and he did not.’
‘Did it worry you?’
‘From then on, I worried.’
‘You didn’t do anything even then?’
‘No. I sat and waited. About the worst thing I could have done. I just left it.’ He added: ‘I had a lot on my mind at the time; there’s never just one worry, is there?’
‘No.’ Probably not, we both have a lot of experience on those lines.
Ed Saxon suddenly clenched his hands and banged on the table. ‘Bloody, bloody business.’
Coffin studied Saxon’s face, tight and drawn: you are full of anger.
Saxon pushed a small bunch of keys across the table. ‘Harry had a room here, but he hired a special place, just off Fleet Street; three, Humper Place. Top floor. These are the keys.’
‘Thanks. Right.’
‘The forensic boys have been there, of course, couldn’t keep them out, but they were required to leave everything as they found it … They got nothing out of it, by the way. You may do better.’
Coffin drew the files on the table towards him. ‘What have I got here?’
‘Apart from the forensic and medical stuff, which I mentioned, you have a complete list of all the people in the unit, whether based in the Wessex, Mercian, Newcastle and Anglian teams. With it comes the evidence of corruption and why I thought it came from the unit. Read it for yourself and make up your mind.’
‘I will do, of course.’
‘You may find Harry had left records in his office in Humper Place, nothing in his room here, and he did his own typing.’
Bet it was a word processor, thought Coffin, the days of penpushing and typing are gone. Harry might have been vulnerable if his machine could be read.
In Saxon’s face, he read the same thought. ‘I’ll check the computer.’
‘I miss the old days when I wrote a report, typed it out and then someone lost it in the files forever. Suited me. Now you know the words are there forever, even if you had deleted them.’
Ed Saxon was still uneasy. ‘And what will you say you are doing here today? You will be noticed.’
Coffin smiled. ‘Never apologize and never explain.’
‘Good.’ Saxon was still uneasy.
‘Now, in my turn, a question: why did you pick on me for this job?’ This tiresome, probably dangerous, bloody job?
‘I knew you were safe, which is more than I can say for all my colleagues … We always did call you the pea-green incorruptible.’
‘Sea-green, I think. And it was from Thomas Stearns Carlisle, and he was writing about Robespierre.’
‘Oh.’ Saxon nodded. He never had read much, Coffin remembered. But someone in his circle must have done … Jason Hull, Coffin suddenly remembered the man, he’d been a reader. Where was he now? Retired, dead?
‘How’s Jason Hull?’ he asked. ‘Do you ever see him?’
‘Dead. Lung cancer, he always did smoke too much. Good man, though.’
‘So, what other reason did you have? There was one, wasn’t there?’
‘Sharp of you. Yes. In that file of papers, you will find a note in Harry’s own writing. He wrote, capital letters: ASK COFFIN. So I have asked you.’
‘And how long have I got?’
‘I could say: As long as you need. In fact, hurry, please, we are under pressure.’ He moved his hands together as if washing. ‘Just get a whiff, we will do the rest … and don’t forget you will have back-up from the Met. Well, in theory, anyway,’ he ended doubtfully.
Coffin picked up the files on the table. ‘Right. I’ll take these, see what I make of it. Then I will come back to you.’ He held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Ed.’
Ed Saxon watched him go, then sat down at his table, and stared at his hands.
Coffin walked out into the sunlight. What do you make of all that, Coffin, my boy?
And how much of it did you believe?
Ed Saxon wants something from me, and somehow I don’t think it is just who killed Harry Seton. A difficult character, old Ed, I was never quite sure when I was with him when we worked together, and I don’t feel any more sure now. An ambitious and successful man. He had been successful himself, head now of the police in the Second City of London. Married to a well-known actress and as happy as it was in his nature to be.
What Stella would say when she heard was: Why was he doing it?
Why had he accepted the investigation into corruption, which might involve old colleagues? He had already recognized a few names in a first quick run-through of the list before he left.
Just curiosity, he told himself. Not a complete answer, but it would do for now. He had also, although he was not sure if Ed Saxon knew this, received a request, order really, from on high to undertake what he was asked to do. This he had queried.
‘Why, sir, why me?’
‘It does seem a relatively unimportant job … I say relatively, as it has its own importance,’ the voice had said smoothly. They were talking on Coffin’s private line. Untapped as far as he knew. ‘But we want you to do it.’
‘Don’t think about that now,’ he told himself. ‘Enjoy the walk.’
He was walking, just walking, enjoying the air and the sun. He was on Waterloo Bridge, walking south before he realized it. He loved the view down the river and up the river, he even enjoyed the massive block of the National Theatre. His own Second City had some good views of old docklands but nothing to compare with this.
Coffin stood for a moment looking at the water running fast beneath him. The Thames was supposed to be a clean river now, but it seemed pretty murky to him. It must be several millennia since it had been a clear, leaping stream. Perhaps the Romans had seen it that way, but it must have been changing even then. The same river ran through his Second City of London, but his London, once bombed and battered, was now full of old warehouses containing new businesses of the sort that was not dreamt of when St Paul’s was built: computers, mobile phones and video recorders for midget television sets. There were health farms, slimming clinics and teachers of Chinese medicine, as well as small factories which were busy one day and gone the next. Life moved on in the Second City.
He had cut short his visit to Stella, and the reason for this was that he had his own problems back home in the Second City. In particular, a number of missing children. Four now. There was no rest for anyone in the Second City till the children were found. Dead or alive.
And what about the children who aren’t missing but who must be sheltered from the knowledge of this?
He had pointed out this investigation in the Second City to the man from the Home Office when he was requested to agree to what Ed Saxon would be asking of him, and had been told to get on with it. Deal with both investigations, he could have what help he needed.