voice made Coffin look at him. ‘So? So what?’
‘One neighbour said she saw a person she thought was Albert, climbing on to the pyre. Albert says no.’
‘Well, he didn’t get burned to death which bears that out. And he’s not a liar; inventive, yes; mad, yes, and often a nuisance, but not a liar.’
Phoebe in her turn had walked round the bonfire site. The ground all round was muddy and trampled down. But she spotted something lying further away on the grass.
‘There’s a shoe here.’
Coffin nodded. ‘I know, I saw.’
Young said: ‘It’s left there till we’ve photographed everything. That’s about to be done; just waiting for us to clear away.’
‘It’s a woman’s shoe. Neat, high heeled. Looks expensive.’
‘Doesn’t mean the body is that of a woman,’ said Archie Young carefully. ‘The witness we’ve got said she saw a man. Or she thought so, wearing trousers.’
‘Women wear trousers.’
Young didn’t bother to answer that. His wife wore trousers, Stella Pinero wore trousers, half the women he worked with wore trousers. ‘When the body is examined we shall know the sex.’
‘I wonder what sort of trousers they were,’ said Phoebe. ‘The sort of trousers can tell you a lot about a woman. I mean, tight jeans, flares, jodhpurs, Turkish trousers, caught at the ankle.’
‘She just said trousers, I think that was all she could see. Ask her if you like, she lives next door to Albert Waters – she made a statement.’
Phoebe looked at Coffin. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll have that word I promised Albert.’
‘Right.’ She could read his face: Be my eyes, he was saying, be my ears, then report back. I want to know.
‘Number six. Fashion Street,’ said Young. ‘I think you’ll find her there, I saw her looking out of the window. She’ll probably enjoy a visit, I think she’s hoping to be on the evening TV news.’
Phoebe walked away while Coffin turned towards Albert Waters who was leaning against the fence and smoking a pipe.
‘I haven’t smoked a pipe for years, but I needed it today and one of your chaps let me go and get some pipe tobacco … It isn’t what it used to be, I think the tobacco leaf has changed. You hardly ever smell a decent pipe smoke now.’
‘Not many people smoke them these days.’
‘Not in public, in private maybe.’
Coffin leaned against the fence beside the old man whose hands were trembling. ‘You’re talking too much, Albert,’ he said kindly.
‘I always do when I’m nervous; you should have known me in the war, Hitler’s war, even I’m not old enough for the Kaiser. Talked a blue streak, I did then.’
‘What did you do in the war?’
‘Gunner. Not in the air, thank God, that was the killer, I did have a tank all round me.’
‘So what’s making you nervous now?’
‘What do you think? I did light a fire there, this morning. I thought I’d get rid of some rubbish. It smouldered all day but I didn’t take any notice; it couldn’t harm anyone, I thought.’
‘Didn’t the smell worry you?’
‘I had some old mattresses on them filled with horse hair, I thought it was that.’ Albert looked tearful. ‘You don’t think of bodies … then I saw the flames, and I thought: Here you are, better have a look at that … Then I saw what was burning up there. It was me called the police. Police first, fire brigade next.’
‘You knew it was a body?’
Albert chewed at his pipe. ‘Smelt it. I knew that smell. Told you I was in a tank, didn’t I? Smelt a jerry like that. One of ours too, mate of mine.’
‘All right, I understand. The smell reminded you of too much.’
Albert kept quiet for a moment. ‘I could do with a drink.’
‘Later, Albert. I’ll stand you one myself.’
Albert grinned – he had a pleasant grin, and Coffin could see the cheerful young cockney who had gone to war. What ever happened to him in that tank in that desert?
‘You built the bonfire?’
That roused him. ‘No, I did and I didn’t. My bonfire wasn’t the size of what this one was. I had a few planks of wood out there. I was going to build the Ark but I couldn’t seem to get going. The invention drained away. Does sometimes. So I left it there, what I’d done, and waited for inspiration.’
‘How long?’
Albert considered. ‘Week or two. Might have been. Inspiration’s been a bit slow lately. You can’t call it up to order, you know. Wish you could. The Greeks had a special god they used to call up when they needed help. I wish we had one, I could do with one like that.’
So could I, thought Coffin. I wonder what the right god for detection would be? Bacchus, Thor? Wrong pantheon, of course, but Norse or Greek, he didn’t expect an answer.
‘Anyway, this morning I thought I’d have a burn up, bits of this and that, like I said. It raises the spirits.’
Coffin wondered who or what spirits he was hoping to raise. ‘If you didn’t build the fire up, then did you see who did?’
‘No, not to notice.’
‘Your neighbour says she saw a man – you, she thought – piling it up and then someone – a man, perhaps you – climbing up on it.’
‘Think I’d burn myself?’
Coffin shook his head. ‘No.’
‘She can’t see anyway, not Mrs Thorn, can’t rely on her.’
‘And you saw nothing? Sure of that?’
Albert said: ‘These last days, I’ve been working on my construction in the front.’
‘Oh yes, I heard about that, the Tower of Babel, isn’t it?’
‘Mini,’ said Albert with dignity. ‘Mini Tower of Babel. You have to keep yourself within your own limits.’
Coffin looked towards the remains of the bonfire which was now being photographed. The full police operation was in action; two big vans had arrived, one of which would be the incident room and the other, if he knew his friends, would be the canteen.
‘Come and have a drink,’ he said to Albert, ‘there’ll only be tea or coffee in the van, but I keep a flask of whisky in the car in case.’
‘I’m a case,’
