Cold Coffin (15 page)

‘They might have seen something.'

‘Oh, I don't want them questioned,' said Nancy promptly. The school's finances were on a knife edge, so any rush of parents to take children away would have been a disaster.

‘Don't worry,' said Win. ‘Any questioning would be done very tactfully, parents present and everything.'

Nancy groaned inside. Parents were the last thing she wanted around, asking questions, fussing, some of the mothers crying, provoking similar tears in their offspring.

‘We did report it at the time. You know we did.'

‘Yes, I know, but then it was called just a silly, childish prank.'

‘I never called it that,' said Nancy hotly. ‘I always knew it was dangerous . . . and I was right.'

‘Where is the bus now?'

‘Where we garage it; at Steve Overshot's . . . he drives it for us sometimes.'

‘I know his garage.' Win hoped he was not likely to hose it down because forensics would want to look at it. ‘Did he repair the glass?'

‘Yes.'

So his fingerprints would be all over the broken pane. But then no one had suggested that the gunman had come up to the bus close enough to touch.

‘Do you think he will come back? Have another try?'

Win shook her head. ‘It's nothing personal . . . the CID think he's just one of those chancers, no personal motive, just takes an opportunity when it offers.' She patted Nancy's hand. ‘You leave it to me.'

‘I sent her off happy,' Win said to Tony Davley. ‘Well, happier.'

The two were meeting in the canteen by arrangement. Win had set up the meeting for the first hour of her return to duty. She had let Tony know that she had something to show her that might be very important.

She handed the bullet over, saying where it had come from, then she took a drink of coffee while she waited for the detective's reaction.

Tony did not leave her waiting long.

‘I'll get the bullet checked to see if it could be a match to the ones that killed the Jackson family.' Already a mist of anonymity was descending over the dead Jacksons; just ‘the family' now, nothing more personal. ‘And Dr Murray.'

Win tried to probe. ‘Any new developments?'

Sergeant Davley shrugged. ‘We have a case meeting every morning, but nothing much so far. Forensics are moving at their usual pace but they seem to confirm that the same gun killed all the Jacksons and also Dr Murray, but why and how they were picked on . . .' She shrugged again. ‘What is it? What's the connection? Is there one?'

Win waited. She sensed that Davley had something she wanted to say.

‘She was killed in the museum of medical specimens. She was surrounded by a circle of skulls . . . infants' skulls. I don't know about you, but I don't like that.'

‘Don't like the idea.' Win thought about it. ‘Nasty picture. I didn't see it, of course, glad I didn't.' She studied Sergeant Davley's face. ‘I suppose you did.'

For answer, Davley pushed a black and white photograph across the table. ‘I'll deny that I ever showed you this.'

Win saw the body of Dr Murray lying spreadeagled on the floor of the museum. A pool of blood, which someone, Tony Davley she supposed, had outlined in red. Also outlined in red was the circle of tiny skulls. There was another bloody area nearer to the wall. This too had been circled in ink, black not red.

‘Different blood,' said Davley. ‘Believe it if you can.'

‘Oh, I do . . . From the killer?'

Davley shrugged. ‘Who knows? We don't. Not yet. When you've got a suspect, then you can try to match blood to him. Or her. But we haven't got a suspect.'

The process the CID team were doing at the moment was known as ‘trawling', trawling the ground, as with a net, to see who and what they could pick up. Trawling sometimes dragged in likely characters, sometimes not.

‘Where did you get this photograph?'

‘Scrounged it from the SOCO photographer. He wasn't satisfied with it, as the background is blurred. He did another set, but from a different position. I thought they didn't show the position of the body so well.'

‘So you helped yourself to the good one?'

‘Sort of.'

Win wasn't quite sure if she believed that explanation, but she wasn't going to argue. The background of the photograph was certainly blurred. Behind the body, to the side of one of the display cabinets, there was a pair of glass doors. A shadowy figure could just be seen peering through the window.

“Who's that?'

‘I don't know. A hospital worker, I expect. The death caused quite a sensation. Whoever it is just wanted a look, I suppose.'

Win nodded. ‘Hang on to that photograph.'

‘Oh I will.'

‘Who took it?'

‘Eddie Chanlon, I think,' said Tony, still vaguely. ‘I think.'

Sally Young patted her son's cheek dry. The infant stopped howling, and Coffin drew in a deep breath.

‘That's done,' he said to Stella.

‘Were you as bad as this with your own child?'

Coffin thought about it. ‘I don't think we had him done. Just as well really, because I don't think any Christian god was interested in him; more likely one of the darker Egyptian deities would have suited him.'

‘All these years together, and I'm still never sure when to take you seriously.'

‘Always and never.'

‘There you go again.' She was laughing, used to their familiar joking interchange. ‘Noel Coward here we come. But better shut up, the rector may not find the joke funny.'

‘Who said it's a joke?' said Coffin, but he said it silently, to himself.

His mobile phone rang in his pocket, and he dragged it out. ‘Can't speak now.'

It was Tony Davley. He had to admit that she didn't fuss about nothing. ‘You ought to hear this, sir. We've found a bullet that matches with the bullets in the killings.'

‘Tell me later,' Coffin snapped.

They still stood in that same half-circle round the font; Sid and his wife moved up as well. All were staring towards the child with his mother, all had their backs to the door.

The organ was playing a happy anthem, above which the noise of the shot was almost inaudible. It came across like a passage of air.

Coffin spun round, turning towards the west door. ‘Get down, all of you.'

Stella moved to protect her husband, putting her own body in front of him. ‘Get down yourself.' Of course, it would be Coffin they were shooting at.

But it was Marie Rudkin who slid to the ground, her breast covered in blood.

9

Thursday onwards
.

The Chief Commander and Stella Pinero were welcomed back in the Second City with a hushed, nervous enthusiasm, as if they had returned from a war.

On the way back, Coffin had telephoned the hospital to check on Marie Rudkin's condition; she was alive, but her condition was precarious. ‘Still alive,' he said briefly to Stella, stuffing his mobile phone in his pocket.

A conference was called by CI Phoebe Astley, expeditious as always, in the Record Room, in which the leaders of the CID could meet in quiet surroundings with only files and video reels and tape-recordings, all neatly packed away and totally passive until disturbed by human action into giving up what they knew. In itself the Record Room was neutral.

Sergeant George Cummins was in charge today, Harry Darby being on leave, Both liked a quiet life, and usually got it. George had started out as a uniformed officer in Cutts Street Station, which was always in trouble, caused, so the police there complained, by the proximity of Nean Street, whose stocky, barrel-chested inhabitants were a tribe on their own. Very early on he had formed the ambition to move into the plain clothes side of police work and to establish a base in the HQ. He was a quiet, introspective man, who knew his limitations. He also knew that someone like him had a place in modern police work.

‘I'm a documents man,' he told himself. ‘I can do my thinking best at the computer or with a folder of papers.' So he got himself a degree in social history at the Open University in his spare time. (Spare time? queried his long-suffering wife; tell me what that is.) He had made himself proficient in the world of the computers a decade ahead of his fellows, advised therein by his tutor at the Open University.

As Sergeant Cummins, BA, he was treasured as a unique specimen by his colleagues.

Into his quiet world poured a procession. First came Chief Inspector Phoebe Astley, and after her Inspector Paul Masters, Sergeant Tony Davley and other supporters. Other officers had stayed behind in the Incident Room.

‘Sorry to break in,' said Phoebe. ‘Can we park ourselves on you?' Not pausing for an answer, she sat down at a table in the window where a big computer was located, and nodded to her followers to do the same. ‘Find the chairs.'

‘You know why we are here: I wanted a quiet place to talk. Before we talk to the Chief Commander. He's had a bad time at the christening. Mrs Rudkin may survive, but we think the bullet was meant for him.' She turned to George. ‘All right there, George?'

CI Astley was known for her trick of gathering up a congenial group of fellow officers to talk over a case with them. The Chief Commander was supposed to know nothing of this trick, but was alleged to have commented that he knew more that went on than she thought.

However, at this moment, he was still on the way home.

George nodded. ‘The new shooting? Want me to clear off?'

Phoebe shook her head. ‘No, stay.'

‘Well, I won't interrupt.' But he said this to himself, turning away to pick up some of the folders that Phoebe had knocked off the table as she sat down. ‘Clumsy cow,' he thought, again not aloud. In spite of this comment, he liked and admired Phoebe as a good officer. Tidy too; a set of documents sent out to Phoebe came back neat and in the correct order, not pulled to bits with coffee spilt on them. Also, she knew how to use the computer. She was literate in all the languages George admired, among which English was by no means the chief. His wife too admired CI Astley, saying that she would be the one to run to in any crisis, but then his wife had recently joined a women's group, which he suspected Phoebe was behind. His own feeling was that if there was any sort of crisis that involved being lost on a desert island it was Stella Pinero he would go to every time. He admired the Chief Commander, who had certainly created a highly efficient Force (after all, it employed George), but he had picked up comments that he took over in CID matters a touch too often . . . Or did he? He was a first-class detective. Anyway, he had got to the top, and George intended to do the same himself.

‘I heard within the last few minutes that the Chief Commander is on his way back.'

A murmur of satisfaction or relief greeted her.

‘He's okay.' Another murmur of pleasure. ‘This shooting does not come within our patch – it's Southern Counties territory – but I'm sure we'll be co-operating.'

Another murmur. Yes, yes, yes.

‘Stella is all right too. And we don't know yet if . . .' she paused, searching for the name, ‘Marie Rudkin is going to pull through.'

The CI is really upset, Tony Davley thought. She's the one who never loses a name.

‘We have had a run of murders by shooting: four. I think there may have been an attempt to kill a child or a teacher in a school bus – a bullet has been found that matches with those used in the killings. And now today we have this sixth shooting.'

‘And it's all by the same man?' said Paul Masters, hardly making a question of it.

‘I think so. It looks like it. Could be a copycat killing, except for the matching bullet. I have no doubt that this new attack is one of a series.'

‘And does the gun used on Marie Rudkin match?' This was Tony.

‘Don't know yet.'

So what are we doing here, Tony thought. In the main Incident Room a team of officers had been left behind. Sergeant Williams, WDC Peters, several others on computers taking messages and logging in others.

‘I believe that the Chief Commander was meant to be the victim of this new shooting.'

Paul Masters spoke first. ‘Is there any evidence of it?'

‘Not yet, but I am sure we will get some. This run of shootings has been Second City only. Marie Rudkin was not Second City, so I think she was hit instead of the Chief Commander.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' said Paul Masters. ‘What does the Chief Commander think?'

‘I haven't discussed it with him.'

Masters said thoughtfully, ‘It could be Stella. She could have been the intended victim. In fact, it's more likely; this killer seems to go for women.'

‘Don't forget Jack Jackson.' Jack was still alive, but only just. Death was round the corner with an open hand and beginning to grasp. Even as they spoke, Jack died.

‘And then there's the school bus . . . children as victims?'

Phoebe said irritably. ‘It's not a strict pattern, I'm not saying that.'

‘The latest shooting was at a christening,' pointed out Tony. ‘And a policeman's child. Sally's an officer, too, for that matter.'

‘Not touched,' said Phoebe seriously.

‘Either the killer's aim is bad or he's not into killing mothers with children.'

‘You're not taking this seriously,' said Phoebe.

‘Did you believe all that?' Tony said to Paul Masters as they filed out.

‘I don't know.'

‘One of Phoebe's gabfests. She has them sometimes.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Oh you know: every so often she gets an idea in her head and wants to share. We made a captive audience.'

‘So you don't believe the Chief Commander was meant to be shot?'

Tony shrugged. ‘I don't know. Let's ask him.'

Coffin and Stella had come back together, both of them tense. Coffin spoke to Phoebe Astley on his mobile, asking her to set up a meeting for him. She had already created one meeting, but she kept quiet about that.