Cold Coffin Read Online Free Page A

right?’ she asked a little nervously. The wine was a claret; Coffin always said he was just a London copper who knew nothing about wine and had no palate, but he could be very testy if the wine did not come up to some invisible standard he had set for himself.
    â€˜Not bad at all.’
    â€˜I wondered about boiling it,’ said Stella.
    â€˜Good idea,’ said Coffin absently.
    Stella started to laugh.
    Coffin apologized. ‘Sorry. The wine is splendid although perhaps better not boiled . . . I’m worried.’
    â€˜That much I had grasped.’
    â€˜I am sure I saw blood. Or a trace of it.’ He got up.
    â€˜You’re not going to look,’ she protested.
    He shook his head, taking out his mobile phone which he kept in his pocket; he liked to feel it was close. A neurosis? Probably. His responsibilities did weigh on him.
    Stella shook her head. ‘I never know if that thing is a good thing or a curse.’ It sometimes seemed almost an extension of his body.
    â€˜You use yours often enough.’ He was dialling a number. Stella watched him.
    While he waited for the answer to his call, he studied her trouser suit. ‘That’s new, isn’t it?’
    Stella nodded. Well cut, expensive and made for her, that was the way to get good clothes, she thought. Anyway, after a certain age. She knew this splendid tailor for women (you had to have one who understood the female figure, or they got the legs and bottom wrong) and as a bonus there was a little shop nearby where you could buy a thick, rich, violet essence. Rose too, if you preferred rose, which she hardly ever did herself.
    â€˜I like it. If you’d told me before, I would have taken you out to show it off.’ He put out his hand to her. There had been times in the not so distant past when their relationship had been troubled. Two hard-working, ambitious people, both pushing careers forward, sometimes left love aside.
    There was a pause. ‘The duck can wait. Won’t spoil,’ said Stella softly.
    Then Phoebe’s voice, deeper and huskier than usual, floated out of the telephone.
    â€˜Sir?’ And into the silence, ‘Sir? Phoebe Astley here. You called?’
    Behind they could hear a female voice proclaiming it was a wrong number and not to answer.
    â€˜Is she still living with that girl who used to run a dress shop and then took a job in the theatre wardrobe?’ Stella allowed herself this query, although she knew the answer was no.
    â€˜Oh, it’s none of our business,’ said Coffin irritably, in an aside.
    â€˜Can you hear a cat crying?’ asked Stella.
    â€˜No,’ said Coffin briefly. ‘Phoebe? The Chief Commander here.’
    As if I didn’t know, thought Phoebe swiftly. And CC too, not just, ‘Coffin here.’ It’s serious then. But it always was, one way and another, with him.
    The voices in the background on both sides died away.
    â€˜I want you to get the forensics team down to the skulls under water. Also a photographer and SOCO.’
    â€˜But I thought,’ began Phoebe . . . She could almost hear
    Coffin saying, ‘Don’t think, just do as I say.’ ‘I thought the archaeologists wanted to be first,’ she persevered.
    â€˜The forensics first, please, Phoebe. I think there may have been a crime.’
    The conversation was over, as Phoebe recognized.
    â€˜No sex,’ she said, turning towards her companion. ‘No sex till morning.’ And possibly not even then. ‘Crime first.’

2
    Thursday, on to Friday. Not Christmas yet, maybe never .
    Phoebe Astley said to the chief of forensics, Dr Hazzard, that yes, she often thought that the Chief Commander had precognition.
    It was late evening, two days since she had passed on Coffin’s request. She had done her bit, but she thought forensics had been slow.
    â€˜You took your time.’
    â€˜I had a lot on hand. If you remember there