The Coffin Tree

GWENDOLINE BUTLER

The Coffin Tree

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 1994

Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1994

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

The Author asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved. under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780006490289

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545506

Version: 2014–07–04

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Keep Reading

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

The Coffin Tree grew in London’s Second City. The upper branches had been struck by lightning several years ago, a blow that would have killed some trees, but this one struggled on, putting its strength into its lower branches.

There were three great, thick, heavy branches, each one that could be cut down and made into planks.

No one owned the tree …

1

That hot summer when the old Docklands of London sweltered in the great heat and drought was talked of and people made jokes about the saint who sat on the gridiron, this was the summer when John Coffin walked his Second City of London and felt that life was unravelling about him.

He was seriously worried about the death of two young men, two detectives. The deaths were said to be accidental, but two accidents were two too many.

He walked and observed and distrusted far too many people; this was his burden at the moment, he was lonely and perturbed. Something had to be done and it was for him to do it.

When a new, smart and very expensive shop called Minimal opened in Calcutta Street which was the busiest street in Spinnergate, the locals didn’t know what to make of it.

Phoebe, who had inspected the area a week or so ago when she considered moving to London from Birmingham, had noticed the shop at once. It was in her nature to look over a district before she moved there (and she was almost certain that she would be doing so) and the Minimal shop caught her eye.

She was now moodily running over a rack of high priced shifts, watched by the manageress who wasn’t sure what she had in Phoebe. Rich lady incognito or shoplifter? That was Phoebe’s dark outfit with a large shoulder bag because she planned to stay the night.

Minimal certainly did not apply to the prices of the clothes sold there, she considered, wondering how many sales were made. It might describe the decor which was white and empty.

‘Not even a chair to sit on,’ as one of the girls from the chorus in the musical currently running at the Stella Pinero Theatre complained. ‘Not even a curtain to draw when you try on. Just that little bamboo screen which hides nothing … I don’t want everyone seeing me in my bra and pants for free … Let them pay and buy a ticket.’ The musical was not playing to full houses.

‘There is a curtain of sorts behind, Philly,’ said her friend, Eleanor. Eleanor Farmer was older than Phyllis Archer by a few months but they resembled each other in their long fair hair, blue eyes and neat footwork; not strictly pretty, they were good dancers. They were known as Ellie and Philly and regarded as almost twins; they always worked together if it was possible.

‘Net, net and full of holes.’

The holes were embroidered and pretty but you were certainly visible through them.

In spite of these drawbacks, both Ellie and Philly tried on several garments each with little intention of buying, although Ellie was tempted by a short tunic and flared trousers with a distinguished label, and Philly would certainly have bought the off-white Donna Karan body and skirt if she had not overused her credit card and been overdrawn at the bank.

But each of them bought a white cotton shirt, so they went out carrying the black on white Minimal carrier bag in triumph. The bags looked good slung over the shoulder.

It was a hot summer’s day and as they stepped outside, they sniffed the air. It didn’t smell so good, but little Londoners both, they were used to the strange city smells.

Still, this was richer and sharper than most.

‘Something’s burning, Philly.’

‘Something not nice.’

‘Nice when it was alive, maybe, but I think it was dead.’

‘Put your hanky to your nose, Philly, and run for that cab.’ Cabs were few and far between in this part of Spinnergate so you grabbed one when you could.

They barely noticed Phoebe but Phoebe noticed the two girls because it was both her habit and training to notice people.

‘They’re girls from the show at the Stella Pinero Theatre.’ The manager spoke somewhat nervously; she was a jumpy young woman, stylish but on the alert. ‘I recognized their names from the programme: Phyllis and Eleanor, they kept calling each other Ellie and Philly. I was at the show – I didn’t recognize their faces, of course, but you could tell they were dancers. Stella Pinero lives near here. Do you know her?’

‘Of her,’ said Phoebe. ‘I do indeed.’

‘I had Miss Pinero in here the other day.’

‘Did she buy anything?’

‘A silk shift.’ She nodded towards a display of three shifts, one blue, one yellow and one black; they looked good, you had to admire the professionalism and skill of the establishment. Which made it all the more surprising in Spinnergate which was not a rich, upmarket area.

Here in the Second City of London where John Coffin was chief commander of the police force, responsible for the keeping of the Queen’s Peace in the turbulent boroughs of Spinnergate, Leathergate, Swinehouse and East Hythe, the rich inhabitants (and there were such in the new expensive residences lining the old Docklands) drove to Bond Street and Knightsbridge to shop and the poor sped towards charity shops and the large department store in Swinehouse which held regular mark down sales.

‘That one over there, but in cream. She has wonderful taste.’

I bet, thought Phoebe. But I’d better not buy a cream shift. Not that she was going to.

‘The black would suit you.’

Phoebe fingered the thick, lustrous silk, taking in the price with some amusement: Stella might afford it, she wouldn’t. (Although she had heard that the Stella Pinero Theatre was not doing too well financially just now. But Stella herself had a TV series going and had been filming abroad. Money there, no doubt.)

‘I’m trying to cheer myself up before an important interview,’ she confided. ‘I thought if I found something really good, I could call it a happy omen.’

The manager studied Phoebe. ‘Would you wear it to the interview? Do call me Eden, it’s more friendly.’

‘No, I wouldn’t wear it, just a cheer up thing really.’ Phoebe studied her face in a long wall mirror; she didn’t look as good as she would like. She rubbed her cheek thoughtfully. ‘That your name? Unusual, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a family name. The other one is Brown, so you can see my mother thought I needed something livelier.’ Eden was a small, neat blonde with tiny hands and feet and big brown eyes, her olive skin suggested that the blonde hair was dyed.

Well done, though, Phoebe decided, and no roots showing. Phoebe was tall and slender but she had good muscles and was limber and athletic.

‘No, I wouldn’t wear it,’ she said, turning away from her image. ‘This is my interview gear.’

‘What about this dress?’ Eden came from behind a white screen with a plain linen dress. ‘This is anthracite grey.’ Her customer seemed to go for dark colours. She did not understand about the interview. What was she being interviewed for, for heaven’s sake? A funeral parlour? Surely something cheerful and strong was the best bet? ‘Very nearly black … I have it in tangerine, too.’ She pointed to a flame-coloured dress.

‘I like it,’ said Phoebe, ignoring the grey linen and going towards the flame-coloured one. She studied the label and assessed the price from that particular Milan designer.

‘Try it on.’ Eden knew that once a customer had tried on a garment you were that much closer to a sale.

Phoebe held it up against her. ‘No, I won’t do that … Tell you what – keep it for me.’

‘Well …’

‘I’ll put down a deposit, and if I get the job, then I’ll come back and buy it.’ Then she had another thought. ‘No, I’m going to take both. And I’m going to take them with me.’

She had no doubt she would get the job, for which she was highly qualified, and John Coffin was head of the force in which she would be working. He would be on the interviewing committee. They had once been close, very close, but that might mean he would feel obliged to be neutral. But there were other factors …

Still, she was tense.

‘And if you don’t get it?’

‘Oh, to hell with it!’

‘It’s unusual,’ Eden said doubtfully, thinking of her deposit. Who was this woman?

‘I’m an unusual woman.’

You can say that again, said Eden to herself.

‘No, I think I’ll get it,’ said Phoebe absently. She stared at herself in the looking glass again and moved her finger down her cheek. ‘Do you know, I think it’s swollen … I’ve got bad faceache.’ It might be more than toothache and that was why she was taking two dresses. She had to opt for life.

‘It’s tension.’ Eden was sympathetic. ‘I get red blotches all over my face when I’m tense.’ But she was still worried about the bill.

More tension than you know, Phoebe admitted inside her head as she held the dress against her. More than I’m going to admit to. Her mind made pictures; this tension comes in packets, personal packets named Phoebe Astley and a more formal packet labelled Job Description.

Inside both packets was the name of John Coffin because he came into both bundles.

In the past they had known each other well, too well, he might now think since his marriage. They had met recently in Birmingham where she had been working, heading her own small unit. The case he had been engaged upon then had been both personal and painful, she had helped him, he would be the first to admit, but they had walked carefully around their past relationship.

She didn’t know what truths and lies he had told but she had let him have more than her average number of lies. He was going to find out now; the matter would not come up at the interview session, of course, although she could imagine the amused, informed stare from his blue eyes as the matter of her married status came up. Nothing much would be said, he had probably long since checked that particular untruth anyway, but later, ah, yes, later … she would be asked questions.

The truth will out, she said to herself, although as a serving police officer she knew that it did not always do so.

The maddening thing was that he would understand, and might not laugh. He had a kind heart beneath the steel.

Stella Pinero was lucky and Phoebe hoped she knew it. She had heard that Stella had tantrums, but then she was a beauty and a celebrated actress, and was entitled to her tantrums; they came with the job. And for all Phoebe knew, Coffin enjoyed the tantrums, she could see he might.

He would certainly know how to control them; the man she remembered had known well how to give as good as he got. Except that love did hobble you and the word had reached her that he loved Stella extremely.

She was going up for this interview for a position which she truly wanted and which offered interest and great responsibility as well as some danger, and it wasn’t going to help that she had once been in love with John Coffin.

Once or still? Be quiet, she told herself.

She had her own reasons for leaving Birmingham upon which she would certainly be questioned at the interview but she had already settled on the half-lie. Later, to John Coffin, she would have to be more truthful.

Phoebe dug into her shoulder bag. ‘I’ll give you a cheque, all right?’

‘Sure.’ Eden added cautiously. ‘Make it a third; please.’

‘No, I’ll pay for the two. How’s the shop doing?’ Phoebe was writing her cheque; she was calculating, a substantial sum by her standards.

‘Fine,’ said Eden. She was of the opinion that this was entirely too personal a remark. ‘We’re opening a branch in East Hythe next month.’

‘Is that so?’ Phoebe handed the cheque over and waited for her receipt. ‘How many does that make?’

‘Three. One other in Swinehouse. Horrible name, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t live locally?’ You couldn’t if you hate the name that much; full of history that name is, even Phoebe knew that. Pre-Norman, pre-Saxon and probably pre-Roman.

‘No, I drive through the tunnel. Still Docklands, though.’

The new Thames tunnel joining London north of the river and the Second City was a great link; Phoebe had driven through it herself this morning, fighting traffic all the way and had thought it a great death trap with poor lane discipline, but that was Londoners for you. A lawless lot. Still, no one dead by the roadside that she had seen.

‘I’ll be looking for a place if I get the post. What’s it like round here?’

‘Can be expensive. Depends. Spinnergate’s your best bet. I’ll be looking there myself soon. I’ll be looking for a lodger too; we might suit.’

‘I’ll remember what you say.’ I’ll remember everything. I usually do, it’s my job.

She rubbed her cheek. The pain in her cheek was not really bad but it contained just the hint that if could get to be nasty and that worried her. She knew she had cause for worry. There was pain and pain, and this could be a bad one.

Outside, a church clock sounded the hour. Forty minutes to her appointment. Just time to drive and park the car and take three deep breaths. She had reconnoitred the route earlier and knew where to go.

She smiled at Eden as she pushed the heavy glass door. ‘See you again.’

‘The dresses suit you. You’ll enjoy wearing them, I promise.’

Phoebe paused at the door. ‘Can you smell burning?’

Eden sniffed. ‘It’s some way off. Sort of strong, though. There’s an old chap round here has a lot of bonfires. And he’s not the only one.’

Albert Waters had had one fire already today, possibly that was what they could smell?

‘If I didn’t know better,’ began Phoebe, then stopped. ‘What does he burn?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ If I didn’t know better, then I would say it was flesh burning.

Phoebe walked to her car, parked just around the corner, this spot too had been prospected earlier; she sat still for a few minutes recalling the scene behind her, remembering Eden, the shop with its contents, and the outside in that busy street. On one side there was a grocery store and on the other a chemist’s shop: both old stores but with a certain prosperity. Further down the street was a bank, and a pet shop where a small white puppy slept in the window. He had a basket, a cushion, a bowl of water and a few hard biscuits. Phoebe had hoped that someone would buy him soon; it was no life for a dog in a hot window.

She fixed Eden in her memory: the pretty blonde with the small hands and feet, and the big ego. She felt sure about the ego. Once inside Phoebe, all these details would be there for ever, and would pop out whenever required without effort on her part. Press the button, the right button, and out it came. It was the way her memory worked.

Having fixed it all, Phoebe started the car and drove away. The car window was open so that the smell of burning came into the car and drove away with her. The smell bothered her.

Mortuaries burnt odds and ends of human remains, so did hospitals, but she had studied her map and there was no hospital near here.

It had been a quiet, ordinary shopping day; both women if questioned would have so described it, but there is always a subtext.

Eden took the opportunity of an empty shop to make a local telephone call. She dialled the number and hung on for some time waiting for an answer.

‘Oh, come on, Agnes. Where are you? Two days I’ve been ringing you and you know we need to talk.’ She went away to make herself a cup of coffee. ‘You do flutter around, Agnes, just when you ought to stay put.’ The two women were business acquaintances rather than close friends; they worked for the same organization, but Eden liked Agnes Page. ‘Probably popped over to Paris without telling me to look for clothes.’ Or New York or Milan or Hong Kong. This was fantasy as all the clothes were 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.