Cracking Open a Coffin by Gwendoline Butler

Author:Gwendoline Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The day rolls on

Not a female voice he knew, he thought, playing the tape again, the intonation was not familiar, nor could he hear what it was saying. Just a flash of background noise. Nor could he identify the man sending the message, but the chap was deliberately distorting his voice. Which must mean, Coffin thought, that he knew the speaker.

Well, of course. He knew that what was going on was treachery among friends. The very people you could not trust were the same ones you had trusted most.

Soon now he could expect the call to an informal meeting with the Chairman of the Police Committee. What would be dragged up? His sister Letty and her activities as a property developer?

He poured a drink and pondered whether it had been a mistake to buy this flat from her in St Luke’s? But it hadn’t come cheap, Letty had done him no favours. Letty would make a statement clearing him, if anyone believed it. A check at Companies House would clear him, but by the time they got to doing that, it would be too late, the mud would be stuck all over.

He took the drink to the window to stare out at the view over the rooftops to the river which he loved.

Or would they attack him on his relationship with Stella?

That looked likely, and he was more vulnerable there. He was ashamed of himself for minding. He ought to stand and shout to celebrate knowing Stella, for being able to love Stella and claim her love back. Unluckily life wasn’t always like that.

It was raining and the slates were shiny. The sky was darkening. He turned back into the room to switch on a lamp. This room, with the carefully chosen small carpet with its touches of deep coral, the two pictures which had been bought first and which had, in a sense, dictated the carpet, and the big brown leather sofa which was there for comfort, here was his hideaway. A shell into which he retired from the world outside. He had put it together consciously. One or two books he could crawl into, one or two pieces of music, but mainly it was this room in which he hid for comfort.

Not Stella?

The answer was no. The years, the pattern of life, had forced him to be solitary and now it was too late to change.

He sat down on the leather sofa to finish his drink. Whisky. He had hidden that way once, but mercifully not for long, and seen it in time as no true saviour.

But tonight his sanctuary seemed empty. Even Tiddles, that occasionally baleful companion, was not home. Poor Tiddles, neglected like Stella.

There still was no food in the place. He had a picture of the inside of his refrigerator as containing a heel of cheese which might once have been Brie and a bottle of mineral water.

Suddenly he was hungry. A hunger that could only be satisfied by fish and chips. The nearest

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