A Cold Coffin. Gwendoline Butler

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, because she always did.

      But she got there first. ‘Miss Pinero’ll miss the Jackson twins.’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘Mind you, I can’t believe the brother did it. I didn’t like the man, who could, although most of the things he claimed to fancy doing, I never believed in. One of those fellers who likes to be thought wicked. Not the only one I’ve known. A bit of an actor.’

      ‘He had a key,’ said Coffin. ‘Looks as though whoever killed them had a key.’

      Mimsie nodded and pursed her lips, but all she said was, ‘See the flowers have a good drink.’

      Stella was already at home when he got back. In the beginning of his life in the Second City he had just had one flat, but as money got easier and Stella became his wife, the whole tower became their home. Stella had made it beautiful, elegant, liveable, with a slight yet attractive touch of theatricality. She came up to him and kissed him on the cheek.

      ‘You’re actually home when you said you would be. And with flowers. Beautiful ones.’ She carried the bunch through to the kitchen, where she began to arrange them in a crystal vase.

      Coffin followed her in. ‘Mimsie says the flowers need a good drink.’

      ‘She always says that. And I always take it she means water, not black coffee followed by a strong brandy.’

      For once, Coffin did not laugh at her little joke. ‘Have you got dinner arranged?’

      Stella opened her mouth to explain, no, not really, not yet, but . . .

      Before she could speak, Coffin said, ‘Let’s go to eat at that place in Greenwich that we both like . . . I can ring up and book a table. And then we can go for a drive.’

      Stella opened her mouth, but once again Coffin got in first, ‘It’s stopped raining, and there’s a moon.’

      She could see in his face that he wanted to go. ‘Greenwich it is then.’ She was not always a sympathetic wife but she was one who could read his face. ‘Farmers?’

      ‘Yes, I feel like a nice straightforward English meal.’

      Farmers was a small restaurant not far from Greenwich Park that they had discovered together. It had a faithful and discriminatory clientele.

      ‘We haven’t been for a bit. We used to take Gus there.’

      ‘When he was up to it.’

      ‘Oh, he will be again.’ Gus was the dear old dog who had just undergone a triple bypass in the local pet clinic, his heart attack brought on, so they thought, from shock at finding the body of their cat, who died peacefully and quietly in Gus’s bed. Coffin’s bed too, as it happened.

      ‘They liked him and brought him his special meal on a special dish. And he could eat under the table if he was quiet. They’ll remember us.’

      They’ll remember you all right, thought Stella. The last time you were in there you went away to a quiet corner and on your mobile phone arranged the arrest of one of our fellow diners. He went quietly too, no trouble to anyone.

      ‘If I see you pick up your mobile, I shall scream. Loudly.’

      Coffin smiled at her. He knew Stella had a good, strong, theatrical scream. Learnt, so she said, from Edith Evans.

      ‘I’d forgotten that episode.’

      ‘No, you haven’t. You never forget anything.’ Except anniversaries and my first nights. ‘But it’s why we haven’t been there for some time.’ But he grinned; they knew each other well enough and had loved each other long enough to know when to laugh. It was one of the reasons their union had survived.

      ‘I will now admit that I hoped that man, Jordan, would be there when I suggested we eat there.’

      Stella absorbed this, but said nothing until they were on the way there, driving through the tunnel. ‘So, what’s planned for this evening? Don’t tell me it’s just the pleasure of my company?’

      ‘Trust me.’

      ‘Did you book a table?’

      ‘No. They’ll squeeze us in, I’m sure. Let’s go for a drive first.’

      This was the second occasion he had mentioned going for a drive through South London, but Stella did not say so.

      The streets were not crowded with traffic, but there were delivery lorries, the odd bus, private cars, none very new or smart, all edging forward.

      Through Greenwich and into Deptford, down Evelyn Street and towards Rotherhithe.

      ‘I miss the docks,’ said Coffin. ‘And the sound of the ships on the river.’ He was driving slowly. ‘Of course, it’s not a working river any more, not upriver anyway.’

      Stella kept silent.

      ‘It was all flooded down here once . . . Every twenty-five years they fear a flood.’

      ‘Should be due one soon,’ said Stella. ‘Who was it said that this part of England sinks a centimetre every year?’ She sounded comfortably unbelieving.

      ‘There’s the Thames barrier now. With that in place, statistically it should be one thousand, five hundred years before a huge tide comes over the top.’

      ‘You can’t believe in figures,’ said a sceptical Stella. ‘Après moi le déluge . . . Who said that? Some king, wasn’t it?’

      ‘He must have been a French king,’ Coffin answered absently. He had turned the car before it got into Bermondsey and was driving back. ‘I used to live down here once . . . Just wanted to look around. All changed. Great big housing blocks instead of little streets.’

      ‘What is all this about, love?’

      ‘I had a feeling I wanted to see all these streets again. Nostalgia, I suppose.’

      And something else, she thought. You are sad about something. Those infants’ skulls?

      Across the river, in the streets that they had left behind them, the University of the Second City had all its lights on because a number of its students worked all day and studied at night. The Second City now had three universities, but the USC (which was how students and staff spoke of it) was the most crowded. As with the police Headquarters, it was made up of older buildings and very new ones. Cleaning was done on a shoestring because money for books was accepted as more important, which meant that some of the older buildings, if they had a voice, would have cried out: Remember me, here I am, give me a dust.

      Also attached was the Second City University Hospital, which had an important role since it was an old establishment with a long history of teaching and training doctors and nurses. It was very academic.

      Joseph Bottom, deputy head cleaner, did a lot of extra work, some in the hospital, some in the university proper, without worrying about it. He was proud of working in the University Hospital, so close to the university itself, where his elder daughter was now an assistant professor. Joe was a tall, thick-set man in whom so many nationalities had come together over the generations, London near the docks and the ships in the old days being that sort of city; he used to call himself a walking advertisement for the United Nations. His daughter Flora had creamy dark skin, red hair and bright blue eyes, and was one of the beauties of the university, much loved by her students. She liked work, as did Joe, and both of them worked as