Then Phoebe’s voice became audible again. ‘Yes, sir. I have Inspector Dover with me, this being his patch . . . There’s no need for you to come, but I thought you would want to know.’
Coffin put his mobile on the table, then looked at his wife.
‘Eat up, Stella,’ he said.
Friday evening.
Joe stood waiting quietly for the arrival of the Chief Commander. Phoebe Astley, whom he knew – they bought their meat and sausages from the same butcher, of whom there were not many left around, even in the Second City – had told him to wait. He stood looking out of the window on to the street lights below. It was raining, but it had its own romance.
‘I love London,’ he said to himself. ‘I am a Londoner. Perhaps I’m not an Englishman.’ Too much mixed blood. ‘But I am a Londoner.’
This part of London too, the Second City – not Knightsbridge nor Piccadilly, you could have that bit – this was his London.
He was not ambitious, although his daughter was, which he thought was as it should be. It was all right for men like him to slop around in old clothes and take undemanding jobs – you didn’t need a degree in engineering to dust a floor. He was a man, anyway, and that had to count for something. Women had to try harder.
‘Mustn’t get too sentimental, Joseph,’ he told himself. There’s a dead woman in this room and she didn’t put herself there.’ He had never been so close to a dead person before, not one untouched by medical hands and neatly trussed up so that they became someone you had never known.
He had known the dead woman too, and had even heard her dying words.
* * *
Phoebe Astley came back into the room, bringing the Chief Commander with her. Inspector Dover followed behind. His usual spot. She nodded at Joe.
‘I know who you are, sir,’ said Joe quickly, before Chief Inspector Astley – hard to think of her as that and not as rump steak, ostrich liver if you have any, and some pork sausages – could give him another of those quick nods and get rid of him. Although he was not an ambitious man, he had a link-up with the local newspaper who printed any little items of news and gossip he sent to them. Working where and how he did, he picked up quite a lot. Behind a Hoover, you were not there.
Coffin was not listening.
Joe took a step back. He didn’t even need a Hoover to be invisible, he told himself.
Coffin studied the woman. This terrible task didn’t take more than a minute. ‘It’s Dr Murray.’
Phoebe nodded. ‘It is.’
‘Anyone had a look at her?’
Dover answered. ‘The police surgeon who certified her death.’ He nodded towards Joe. ‘And Joe here found her. He called the university security office, who called the police. Sergeant Fermer came, and I followed.’
Coffin looked at Phoebe with a question.
‘I came into it because I had been interested in the Neanderthal skulls. She was interested in the skulls
He nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘Anyway, she had my name and rank on a bit of paper in her handbag.’
Coffin went to stare again at the body. He knelt down, but did not touch her. A band of blood, like a red ribbon, ran down the face, spreading out to cover the nose and then the chin. The hair was clotted with blood. Her grey tweed skirt and matching jacket were stained too. Blood had even spattered her shoes.
‘She could have been hit on the head.’ He got up. ‘First, before the rest, but I don’t think so. The medics will tell us.
It looks as if someone took her by surprise.’
‘No weapon found,’ said Phoebe tersely. ‘Just in case you wondered.’
‘She never came in here. No one did,’ said Joe, not loudly but suddenly, as if he had just thought of it. ‘In all the years I’ve cleaned this place, I’ve never seen anyone. It’s kind of forgotten, this place.’ He turned his short-sighted blue eyes on the Chief Commander and CI Astley. ‘She asked for you, sir. With her dying breath, she asked for you.’
Coffin took it in but did not know whether to believe it: people caught up in violent death had such fantasies.
Probably the worst fantasy of all was that he would be of any use.
He looked around at the floor, at all the skeletal remains that lay about which the killer had abstracted from the cabinets and then thrown all over the floor, except for the skulls, where a pattern had been made.
Or had the dead woman herself taken them out?
No, the little skulls, babies’ skulls, were arranged round her own head. Certainly she had not done that herself.
‘What the hell do the bones and skulls mean?’
Phoebe didn’t answer.
‘No, you don’t know it any more than I do. But whoever did this was angry.’
The SOCO team arrived.
‘You took your time,’ Coffin said crisply.
‘Traffic, sir, sorry,’ said the team leader, far from pleased to see the Chief Commander there. Traffic as an excuse was the first thing he could think of. Not strictly true; a bit of an argument between two of the team had slowed them down. He could see by the look in the Chief Commander’s eyes that he was not believed. If I’d known it was you here waiting for us, I’d have been quicker. But the top brass never knew how those down below felt. There had been a lot of irritation lately, partly because of the new building works, which had meant shuffling people around. The skulls were objects of interest, and yet of disquiet too. The water had drained away so that the archaeologists had been at work, measuring and photographing. Then some other police teams had arrived. Men from the scientific side.
Coffin said, ‘It’s now early evening. I want to know when she was killed. Also, how anyone could get in here. Was it usually kept locked or not? And anything that forensics can turn up.’
‘Are you taking over, sir?’ Phoebe kept her voice polite, although she was irritated by him.
‘No. You are. But I will be behind you.’
Behind and in front and in the air above, thought Phoebe. No one who has worked with him has ever exactly been left alone. And yet we all like the bugger. Did I really call him that in my mind? I shouldn’t have done, because he is always polite, sometimes gentle, even at his most ruthless.
‘Check these skulls . . . what is known about them, who uses them and for what purpose.’
‘A medical purpose, I judge,’ said Phoebe.
‘Dr Murray
