opened. Still there, one last letter, which he did not want to open at this time full of murderous thoughts.
The Minden Street murders, Jack Jackson and the missing Mrs Lumsden. If she was missing. Pray God, she might yet come back. Phoebe Astley was in charge of the Minden Street murders, and Sergeant Drury was attending to Arthur Lumsden and his missing wife. Why not let them get on with it?
He was alone all day in his office in the big dusty building in the Second City. In the outer offices, of which there were two, were his secretaries – he had two of them, as well as his personal assistant, Paul Masters. There was a constant staff turnover. The days of devoted assistants who stayed for ever were gone; ambition brought people to work with him (he was the source of power, wasn’t he?) and then dragged them on and up. He was never sure what this building had been before the Second City and his Force were created. Sometimes he had thought it must have been a school, one of the solid, typecast Victorian erections in which the poorer classes were imprisoned to be educated: babies on the ground floor, then mixed-sex older children, then senior girls on the top. Senior boys, being dangerous, were weeded out at this stage and sent off to a separate building.
In addition there was the blunt-faced, architect-designed new building where most of the staff worked. He preferred the old part, liking the sense of history, even the dust of ages that came with it. Whatever history it was.
Or was he imagining all this? Possibly the building had been the head offices of some shipping company from the days when the docks were full of ocean-going steamers.
He had once asked Sir Harold Bottome, the Chief Administrator of the Second City, a kind of perpetual Lord Mayor, a gentle but much harried man. Sir Harold had looked vague. ‘Don’t know, my dear chap, the present of this bloody Second City is as much as I can keep up with, but I will send you some of the history books with pictures.’ He had done so and Stella had read them and said there was nothing about Coffin’s HQ being a school and she guessed it had always been a police building. If not a prison.
Of course, now he knew that a group of Neanderthals had lived and died here, it helped him have a feeling for the place.
‘Is Hazzard sure of this?’
‘No, not sure, he wants to take advice.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Give me news, when you get it.’ What a world. ‘Makes you feel sick, doesn’t it?’
Then he thanked Phoebe. Clearly, she expected something.
‘We can’t leave it there,’ she said.
‘No, indeed.’ He was going to put the job on her shoulders but he was thinking of a way to tell her. Issuing orders to Phoebe, which as her chief he was certainly able to do, could make her very awkward indeed.
‘I haven’t said anything, but somehow the local paper has got hold of it.’
‘It’s a good story, you can’t blame them . . . Makes the flesh creep a bit. Or is your flesh too strong?’
Phoebe laughed. ‘No, creeps with the best.’
‘Phoebe, you are the only person I can think of at the moment who can handle this.’
Phoebe knew blandishment when she heard it. ‘I’ve got a lot on, you know. It’s not just the Minden Street killings.’
‘Who knows that better than I do? But it’s the job, Phoebe. Crimes don’t come just when it suits us and we are free to handle them. You know what Bernard Shaw said about Romeo and Juliet? He said it was “all butchers and bones”. Crime is like that, hard but true. You know it as well as I do. All working policemen know it.’
The Force in the Second City had grown since Coffin had taken over, but it was now under financial pressure. It had expanded, but must now contract, and do all the same work, if not more.
Blood and bones, thought Phoebe; the Minden Street murders were like that. She had gone to inspect the dead with the SOCO before they were moved. She closed her eyes for a second, shutting out Coffin’s worried face (he was wearing spectacles for the first time, she noted, and distantly she thought she could hear him explaining how pressed they were), and seeing the dead sisters. Amy and Alice, on the floor of the hall, blood everywhere, and the bones . . . For a moment she could hardly bear to recall it . . . the bones of arms and legs showing white where a bullet had torn through the flesh. The mother had had her throat penetrated by a bullet so that her backbone showed. Who had hated them so much?
‘You all right, Phoebe?’ Coffin’s voice cut into her.
‘Yes, sure,’ Phoebe answered quickly. ‘It was just the thing about bones.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Yes, I’ll do it. Or do what I can. The rape business is almost tidied up. I think the girl was lying, and it was sex by consent, and she is on the point of admitting it. But I will need some more hands with the the Minden Street case.’ Grab what you can, when you can, a hard little voice inside her said.
‘I’ll see what we can do,’ said Coffin, almost humbly for him.
‘You do realize we may never learn about the baby? In fact, most likely not.’ She decided to get on to Dr Murray to see what help she could give.
He nodded. ‘Let’s do what we can for the poor little soul . . . the Neanderthal babies . . . well, that’s too far away and long ago.’
Phoebe looked down at her shoes, noticing that she had put on odd black and brown ones. It showed her state of mind: busy and overworked, and more than lightly involved with a new love.
‘I’ll be off.’
Coffin nodded and saw her to the door, still talking. ‘You know, all these cases touch me in my own person: the baby, the Minden Street murders . . . that’s because of Stella, and Arthur Lumsden, because I’ve been a copper and plodded the street and had trouble with a wife.’
Had he said all that aloud to Phoebe? He hoped he hadn’t.
On his desk there was the one last letter that he had not yet opened. The envelope, crisp and white, was handwritten.
He now opened and read it. Then he made a telephone call.
‘Archie? Glad to get you. The letter you told me about has arrived. And the answer is yes.’
He bought some flowers for Stella from Mimsie Marker on the way home.
Mimsie’s stall outside Spinnergate tube station had expanded over the last year.
‘You could live off all this, Mimsie,’ he said looking around at hot coffee, cold drinks from a mini-fridge, hot dogs, sandwiches, croissants and delicious-looking cakes. ‘The newspapers are getting squeezed out.’
‘People don’t read like they used to,’ said Mimsie sadly. Then she smiled radiantly. ‘But they eat, so I diversified.’
Coffin chose roses and irises and big narcissi; he had no idea where Mimsie got her flowers – possibly she went to the New Covent Garden Market herself – but her flowers were always fresh and lovely.
He hesitated, wondering whether to talk to her about the Minden Street killings. She’d have an opinion,
