her face as she had looked at that odd little skull with the water washing over it. She had been troubled. No, not exactly troubled: thoughtful, knowing. She had known something about that infant skull.
Coffin knew nothing about infant craniums, and some of those encircling Margaret Murray’s head looked very, very small, and others looked odd.
He knew nothing, but there were those that did.
‘Get a doctor, preferably a paediatrician, to look at these heads and tell me what he says.’
Joe said, ‘You don’t need a doctor.’ But once again he was invisible.
Stella had been left sitting in the car. For a while she was patient, but this patience did not last. She took a deep breath, got out of the car, remembered to lock it, and marched into the hospital building.
She didn’t know where her husband was, nor did she know her way around. One hospital may be much like another one, but you still have to know the signs: no, not the signs that tell you this way to Ear, Nose and Throat Department, or Pharmacy This Way, or Operating Theatre X, Third Floor, but the flow of people, the sense of urgency. A hospital was in a way like a theatre, she thought: the cutting edge, those in charge, otherwise the surgeons and nurses, and the audience, otherwise the suffering, the patients.
I must have drunk more than I realized, she thought. Surely not, I drank very little, and anyway on occasion I have a stronger head than my husband. Depends on emotion. If you are really down, you drink the bottles empty but never get high, but if you are happy half a glass can do it.
So she must have been happy; it was one way of telling.
A hand touched her shoulder. She swung round. A large young woman, fat really, but pretty, carrying a folder of documents or they might have been photographs; you were always getting photographed or X-rayed in hospitals. Or so it seemed in the sort of films and TV soaps that Stella watched, when she watched. Or acted in.
‘Oh, Joanna.’
‘Yes, Joanna. You were looking down at your shoes so hard that you didn’t notice an old friend.’
‘I was trying to make up my mind about them. Someone said they were kinky.’
‘Kinky?’
Joanna studied what Stella was wearing: the shoes were black patent, shiny, high-heeled, with just a hint of something in the white line that ran round the toe.
‘That person was not a friend,’ said Joanna severely. ‘Stella, you could never be called kinky, nor anything you wear. Even by putting them on, those shoes ceased to be kinky.’
Stella looked at Joanna with caution. She was never sure when Joanna was laughing at her. She probably was doing so now, but never mind, she was glad to see her. If surprised.
‘You work here now?’
‘In accounts.’
‘Oh yes, you always were into figures.’
They looked at each other and laughed. The two had met in the early days when Stella was working in Greenwich and Joanna Kinnear was taking her final exams in accountancy, and they met again when she had discovered that Joanna was doing the accounts for the private hospital that had attended to Stella’s facial requirements (mention not the words ‘uplift’ and ‘beauty surgery’). And now here she was in a big hospital, wearing a white coat and looking important. She probably was.
Joanna saw her look. ‘Even hospitals have bills and accounts to keep,’ she said with amusement. ‘In fact, they are big spenders.’
‘Why are you wearing a white coat, though?’
‘Oh, I just like to look a big shot.’
Stella accepted the explanation while not believing it. She knew enough about modern hospitals to know that white coats were out of fashion, laundry costs presumably. No, there was more behind it than Joanna was saying, but not for Stella to enquire.
‘I’ve lost my husband.’
‘Medically, or emotionally?’
‘Practically. He came in to see a skull . . . a baby’s skull.’
‘Oh, the dead babies’ room.’ A nerve twitched in her cheek, as if it wanted to be scratched. Stella felt she wanted to scratch it for her, but you don’t scratch anyone’s face for them.
‘What?’
‘That’s what we call it.’ She put out her hand. For a moment, Stella thought she was going to scratch that itch, which was still twitching away, but no, the hand was being offered to her.
‘Come, I’ll take you there.’
Down a long corridor, and then a right turn, and across a courtyard.
Of course, museums are always in bloody awkward places, thought Stella, picking her way across the uneven paving stones. If she broke an ankle, as seemed likely, at least she was in the right place to get it fixed.
A uniformed constable stood outside double glass doors, surveying them blankly. He was a new recruit, fresh in the Second City; he thought he might know Stella’s face, which reminded him of a television drama he had watched, as indeed it might, since Stella had performed in it. The other woman he definitely did not know, but in his opinion she was too tall to be a woman, although well built.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Joanna. ‘Trouble. Might have guessed it, since your husband is here.’
‘Thank you,’ said Stella.
She addressed herself to the constable. ‘I am Mrs Coffin. I want to speak to my husband.’
The constable’s blank expression did not change. Intensified rather.
‘She is,’ said Joanna. ‘I can swear to it.’
Now there was doubt in his face.
‘I’ll be off,’ said Joanna. ‘Give me a ring.’ Over her shoulder, she called. ‘Take my advice: break in.’
The alarmed young officer advanced towards Stella. She was saved by the door swinging open to let Sergeant Dawlish pass through.
‘Hello, Mrs Coffin. Can I help you?’
‘Can I see my husband?’
‘He’s a bit tied up at the moment.’
A comment that Stella rightly interpreted as meaning her husband did not want to see anyone, not on the job. Not even her.
Coffin called, ‘Is that Dr Merchant?’
When he saw Stella, his face changed.
‘You forgot me.’
‘No.’ He took a step forward. ‘Don’t come in, love.’
But she was already level with him at the great swing doors and could see beyond. Her view of the body was blocked by the police photographer busily
