An innovation of his own. The officer appointed would have the rank of chief inspector or superintendent, according to age and experience, and would liaise with all the important institutions in his bailiwick.
There was too much what Coffin called ‘loose crime’ floating around.
The unit would be small but hand-picked.
As had the committee been; it had been carefully put together whether the members knew it or not. At least one of them was beginning to suspect and to wonder if acceptance had been wise.
‘You ought to look after us, though,’ said Sir Alfred, ‘important we may be, healthy we are not. Now there’s me, on tablets for my blood pressure, there’s Geraldine who’s had collagen injections –’
‘Oh, surely not.’ Geraldine was not famous for her beauty but she had kept what looks she had and glowed with health. Coffin hoped she could not hear what was being said. Geraldine was younger than the other women there, in her early forties, whereas they were in their fifties. She had the careless charm of someone who always got her own way. She was generous, cheerful and interested in men. She had made one careful advance to the chief commander, more as an experiment than anything else, but she had not been annoyed when he did not respond. She was younger than the others but a little bit older than she admitted.
Coffin knew all the ages. Among other things. ‘Oh yes, I recognize the shine. And one of us has just had an operation for cancer and we’re probably all on tranquillizers. Not you, of course.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘By keeping my eyes and ears open. You ought to do the same.’ Perhaps I do. Coffin thought, perhaps I do. I don’t know everything, but I always know something – that’s my job.
Years as a detective had made him observant of friends and foes alike. It was automatic with him. For instance, he had seen Sir Alfred travelling to London from Oxford (where they had both been attending the same conference) on a second class ticket in a first class coach. Naughty or just absent-minded? He had seen Geraldine entering the block of buildings in East Hythe which housed a doctor, a solicitor and on the top floor, an inquiry agent.
Josh Armer, the solicitor, was not the most respectable lawyer in the business and was friend to more criminals than Coffin cared to think about. Professional friend, of course, Josh always sent in a bill. The phrase ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’ might have been invented for him. A plump, gently spoken man, Josh was a classical music fan and supposed to be an expert on Rachmaninov.
Arabella Hammer, the female inquiry agent upstairs, was his equal and they were reported to be lovers.
Then he had remembered that Josh Armer belonged in this district, one of the families that had lived here for decades in a vast kindred. There weren’t so many of them left now, but they popped up occasionally. Geraldine’s family was such another.
You had to remember that some of these dockland areas were like villages where kids married to live near mum, just as mum and dad had in their generation. There was a lot of intermarrying and probably a bit of incest as well. Such a way of life was dying out of course, but pockets still remained. Kindred loyalty went back to the Anglo-Saxons and earlier, when an eye for an eye meant just that.
‘What’s the name of this new unit?’ asked Sir Alfred, examining his papers. ‘Seems to have escaped me.’
Coffin let his eyes flicker round the room before he answered. Teddy Timpson had married a local girl and that meant he was sometimes biased. The trouble with being a detective was that you automatically suspected everyone of having secrets.
Especially when you had one or two yourself.
Coffin said, ‘The provisional name is Unit AN, but it hasn’t got a settled name yet,’ he went on. ‘Perhaps the committee can think of one.’
‘Leave that to Geraldine, shall we?’ said Ferdie. ‘She’s the word girl.’
‘Long time since I was a girl,’ called Geraldine over the top of her whisky, ‘but thank you for the name.’ She took a swig of her drink, but actually, as Coffin observed, drank very little. ‘When are you going to let me have a look at your mother’s memoirs? I could make a lovely TV series out of them.’
He laughed. ‘That’s what worries me.’
‘What a lady!’
A lady, in the genteel, white gloves and carrying-a-handbag style, his mother had never been, thought Coffin. A wanderer, an adventurer, and several-times-married lady, probably several times a bigamist and probably a liar into the bargain, leaving behind three abandoned siblings who only discovered each other late in life. There was John Coffin himself, his beautiful sister Letty and industrious William in Edinburgh and goodness knew who had sired him.
‘I think Stella wants to get her hands on it.’
‘I bet she does … Where is she now?’
Coffin hesitated. ‘In New York at the moment …’
‘I thought it was Spain.’ He saw the glitter in her eyes which was not drink nor sympathy. ‘It was Spain.’ Damn you, Geraldine, for being so well informed. ‘But she flew straight on to New York.’
He let them linger with their drinks for one more minute, then he caught Teddy Timpson’s eye and nodded. Time to begin.
Round the table, they shuffled the papers in front of them. Why did a committee always fidget? But they always did, some worse than others; this lot were moving the papers as if they were about to play a hand of cards with them … In a way they were – poker – but they didn’t know it.
‘We have three candidates, whom we will see in alphabetical order,’ began Chief Inspector Timpson. ‘Two men and one woman.’
He had their names in front of him: Simon Daly, from the Met, a very strong record and destined to go high; James Wood, who was from his own force, ambitious, pushing, a difficult character but able.
And Phoebe Astley.
‘The woman is good,’ he had said to Timpson. ‘She was doing a very fine job where she was. I was surprised when she put in. She deserves serious consideration. You’ll know when you see her.’
And that is where I will go out, Coffin nodded to himself, partly because I know Phoebe – she is a friend and for a time was more than that so I don’t want to seem prejudiced – and partly because I am absolutely determined she is chosen.
And also because I have fixed it that you will, Phoebe.
I want you here, Phoebe, and I want you now.
He looked across at Teddy Timpson who stared back. Both of them were skilled at communicating without words. They were both remembering a conversation that they had had earlier in the month, and behind that conversation was a train of events which explained why he wanted Phoebe on his team.
He had spoken to Teddy Timpson two weeks ago. Not a man with whom he felt wholly at ease or wholly safe. He had a lot to tell him; information that Timpson had to be told, but all the same, Coffin had edited it carefully. Placed as he was, at the top of an uneasy pyramid, he kept a lot quiet inside him. Some topics were
