purchased by the buyer, a hirsute woman with blue hair and long red nails who had been in the rag trade for decades and Agnes was on the accounts side, but it was a game they played between them, that one day, they would open a shop and buy from all the best houses. You needed a fair bit of capital for such a venture. ‘Money, money, money,’ hummed Eden as she drank her coffee.
On her way to her crucial interview, Phoebe wound up the car window to keep out the smoke.
The fire was burning and the smoke was blowing John Coffin’s way.
He felt the fire too. There had been a fire in his life for a few weeks now, and on the day of Phoebe Astley’s interview for a job in his force, he began talking about it openly to a group meeting in his room.
They were the interviewing board being entertained for drinks and coffee, all carefully selected men and women.
They would be interviewing the shortlist of three candidates.
He poured out drinks, letting his eyes wander out the window, wide open because it was so hot.
The Second City of London shimmered in the heat. In the distance was the river, but all he could see was the roofs of Spinnergate with – far away – the tower blocks of Swinehouse, and beyond, the factory tops of East Hythe.
For some years now, John Coffin had been chief commander of the Second City’s police force, responsible for maintaining law and order in this most difficult and rowdy of cities with a millennium-long tradition of being obstructive to authority. The Romans had suffered from its citizens as her legions had landed at the dock now being excavated by the archaeologists from the New Docklands University, digging up camp sites where the soldiers had been gulled and robbed by the locals. The English folk who settled when the Romans went picked up the same tricks and became as bad, worse really, because, being English, they kept a straight face and made a virtue of it. Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor: this part of London was not controllable, it kept its own laws. They withdrew behind the walls of London and its tower and left the villages and hamlets along the river to get on with it. And, with the river for their thoroughfare, so they did.
With every generation, the population grew, so that by the time Victorian notions of morality arrived, there was a dense population obstinately reluctant to be evangelized.
The hot air came heavy with the smells of the living and the long dead that came floating in through the window and hit Coffin in the face. He hoped he wasn’t going down with one of the odd viruses which were on the move in the Second City this summer. He couldn’t afford to be ill with Stella in the state she was in over her theatre (or was it his sister Letty’s theatre? It had been Letty who had helped put together the St Luke’s Theatre complex, now renamed the Stella Pinero Theatre).
He handed round the drinks: whisky with ginger – he ought to shudder and his Edinburgh half-brother – lawyer William – would certainly do so, but it seemed to be what Alfred Rome wanted.
‘Sir Alfred.’
‘Ferdie, please.’
Sir Alfred, Ferdie to his friends, he must remember that, was the warden – he preferred the title to vice chancellor or president – to the very new university tucked away in the east of the Second City, in the Bad Lands, not hitherto considered educable, but no doubt Ferdie Rome would change that. He was of the new breed, educated at Ruskin College, Oxford, then at Birkbeck College in the University of London, then a short period in the Cabinet office. The unusually rapid promotion suggested to Coffin that this was a political appointment, which made Sir Alfred all the more formidable. Tough, square-shouldered and completely bald in his late thirties, he looked fit for anything. Coffin now had two universities in his area and had to protect both from the rebels and the lawless.
Coffin carried two glasses across the room to where two of the women, Jane Frobisher, banker, and Professor Edna Halliday, economist, stood talking. Edna’s stocky figure was in skirt and shirt but Jane, usually impeccable, was wearing a long-sleeved silk dress – she looked hot.
‘Jane, gin and tonic; Professor, white wine.’
Three other members of the group were senior policemen, two from this force: Chief Inspector Teddy Timpson, CID, and Superintendent William Fraser, from the uniformed wing, and the third. Chief Inspector Clare Taylour, from the Thames Valley. The extra figure, there to keep the balance, was a figure from the outside world, a journalist and barrister: Geraldine Ducking. When you said outside world, that was with reservations because Geraldine came from a family deep rooted in the old Docklands. It was for this reason Coffin had called her in. Geraldine was the tallest and largest woman there, but she dressed well, so that her size was unnoticed, and she had small, neat hands and feet.
Clare Taylour had refused wine and spirits and was drinking mineral water; she was a calm, forceful woman who intimidated most people, but not John Coffin, who had known her for years. Today she had a bandage wrapped round her ankle and was limping. ‘We’re all walking wounded today, look at Geraldine and Jane – she says she’s been sunburnt.’
Coffin carried whisky round to all the others, including Geraldine whose favourite tipple it was, she was a self-proclaimed deep drinker, but managed to stay remarkably sober. She was also one of the cleverest people Coffin had ever met. She held out her hand, on her arm was a dressing. ‘Wasp bite,’ she said.
Among this group of people were some of his closest friends and colleagues; outside of Stella and his sister Letty, these were the people he liked and trusted.
And there had been Felix, the happy man, aptly named. Twenty-eight years old, ambitious but friendly, and now dead.
Dead for a month. One young friend gone by violence.
He looked round at them: Sir Alfred he knew less well but he was beginning to enjoy the sight of that sturdy figure always wearing what looked like, but surely couldn’t be, the same suit and the same grey suede boots. He had small feet and delicate hands. Jane Frobisher, talking away with her usual animation, but she did not seem as happy as usual in her lovely clothes that Coffin, under the tutelage of Stella, could recognize as couture. Of course, bankers earned that sort of money, even in these days of recession. Professor Edna Halliday, by contrast, looked as if she had got out of bed and put on whatever was to hand. Skirt and striped shirt were clean but creased, her hair pinned back with a casual hand so that bits of it were escaping. But it would be wrong, he thought, to describe her as unattractive. On the contrary, she was full of life and humour and he knew for a fact that she had a string of lovers, usually two at a time. He had never been invited to be one himself (the list was by invitation only), she liked them younger, much younger. This did not seem to be held against her by other women and she got on with everyone. Clever lady.
You never noticed what Clare Taylour was wearing and that was probably part of her own skills and why she was such a success as a detective.
The two policemen had the right anonymous clothes as well, although Teddy Timpson was young enough to wear a sharp tie. Fraser was in uniform and putting on weight.
Coffin felt sympathy there; his hand strayed to his own waistband. Marriage seemed to be fattening; accordingly, Stella had put him on a starvation diet. He didn’t get enough exercise, that was the trouble.
Coffin was on the committee but would not be chairing it; that task fell to Teddy Timpson. He would also withdraw when one of the candidates whom he knew appeared.
‘Important looking lot, aren’t we?’ said Sir Ferdie jovially. For such a tiddly little job – he did not say this aloud but Coffin could read his thoughts.
