and approachable. No mean feat as a professional working on the Attlee Estate.
‘I will tell you anything I can, answer any questions, but get on with it, please.’
Coffin hesitated. ‘I don’t have a question, Doctor. I just came to offer my sympathy. I am very, very, sorry. We will do all we can to get the man who did it.’
Thank you. Thank you.’ There was a bare admission in his tone that he recognized it for an act of kindness, and that he knew the Chief Commander.
He had not asked them to sit down, nor did he now. He had never even quite closed the door to his surgery.
Coffin looked at Archie, who went forward and patted his friend on the shoulder. ‘I’ll come round to see you later. Or you can come to us … what about a meal?’
Dr Chinner nodded, but it was not exactly a yes, or a no. ‘Thanks for coming. I think I am better on my own just at the moment, Archie.’
He held the door for them, and as they went out, he said: ‘Next patient.’ And the dog got up and trotted in.
‘So what did you make of that?’ asked Archie as they drove away. He had sensed a query behind Coffin’s polite goodbye.
‘Well, he’s good with dogs.’
‘Seriously.’
Coffin shook his head. ‘I know we start with the family, but I don’t think he killed his son.’
‘No,’ said Archie fiercely. ‘So?’
‘But don’t let friendship blind you – I think he knows something.’
Archie said nothing as he sat hunched over the driving wheel. ‘Drive you back, sir, shall I?’
They parted with not much more said. Archie was disconcerted, angry and uneasy.
At the school, the Royal Road Comprehensive, the day had ended, but small groups hung around the playground, skateboarding, rollerblading, or just talking and scuffling in the dust with a football. It was not encouraged that they should do this, but not forbidden either.
One group were skateboarding but coming back together to talk. Just a quick comment, they were not into long conversations, dialogue was an adult skill not altogether mastered. This group was well informed, picking up scraps of information and assessing them. To be well informed, you have to be interested, and this group, four boys and two girls, were very interested.
‘We have to be,’ said one to another. ‘It’s up to us. And we ought to do something.’
‘What?’ said his friend, the same age more or less, but female.
‘I’m thinking.’
‘My parents stop talking when I come into the room,’ the girl said, and she laughed.
‘Tell you what,’ her companion said: ‘We ought to get someone to say something.’
Coffin went to his office, and collected Augustus. ‘You missed something, pal,’ he said. ‘You could have had your leg bandaged.’
There was a message from the wizard, John Armstrong, an old friend, who was looking into Harry’s computer. ‘I think I ought to be able to get most of the deletions back, they were not deleted by an expert. But I can’t promise. If you don’t hear from me then it is, No.
‘One left alive, anyway, and I think you ought to know of it.
‘It is a file on you, complete dossier of life and career, with present address.
‘It lists strengths – pertinacity, imagination, sharp mind.
‘Weaknesses: likes to be right.
‘I don’t know who put this together or why,’ went on John Armstrong, ‘but someone doesn’t like you.’
Coffin dialled his friend, his answerphone was on also, so the Chief Commander left a message:
‘Fax me that file, please. And to my home.’
His friend must have got back to his desk very speedily, (if indeed he had been away and not just sat there listening as the message came through) because the fax was waiting for Coffin when he got back to St Luke’s.
He flipped through it quickly, noting without pleasure that Harry had left something else.
There was a short, accurate profile of his wife, Stella Pinero, including the fact that she was now in Los Angeles.
Somehow, he did not like it.
But then he remembered the sort of man Harry had been and what he had said once.
A bit drunk, words spilling out, he had said: ‘I want to get all I can on you, Coffin, because you hide a lot, you’ve got plenty going on that I would like to know about. Your past career, too. You’ve been in trouble, but look at you now. Yes, you are worth a study. And that lovely wife of yours. To know her is to know you.’
Coffin shook his head. That was Harry. Friend or enemy, who knew which?
Did Harry know himself?
But what Coffin knew was that he would always protect Stella.
An old schoolmaster of John Coffin, who had had a great deal of influence on him although Coffin never liked to admit it, had been in the habit of pronouncing: Life is real, life is earnest. He usually said this at exam time, which was perhaps why Coffin geared himself up grimly and got good marks. He wasn’t an exam man, they were not things he thought about often, but just the word ‘Life’, pronounced the right way, could spur him into action even now.
But at the moment he did not need it: the juxtaposition of two cases, their lifelines crossing, was enough to make him only too aware of the seriousness of life. His life in particular at the moment, and without Stella here to laugh and ease him into happiness, it was going to be bad.
Without Stella, he thought, so why was she figured in the file on Harry Seton’s PC? Not good news. So perhaps it was as well she was safely out of the way across the Atlantic. He felt like going back there himself, but life over here had a firm grip on him. It had a firm grip on Archie Young, too.
What was more important: the mission wished on him by Ed Saxon (and others higher in the chain of command), and apparently suggested by Harry himself with the words ‘Ask Coffin’, to find out who was doing the dirt in the pharmaceutical world, with special reference to Ed Saxon’s outfit, or the murder enquiry on a child in his own Second City.
All policemen get used to dealing with two cases, or more, at once. In his time, Coffin had handled as many as ten, carrying all the details in his mind and yet keeping them distinct, so why was he getting the feeling that there were parallel lines here which converged in the distance?
Of course, Harry had been murdered too, but that was the Met’s job, and if the message on
