Cold Coffin by Gwendoline Butler Page A

day. In those days, a pub behind Fortnum’s called the Flower of the Forest had been a chosen venue if you were looking for that sort of activity.
    No words had been exchanged, no recognition admitted, none claimed. After all, the man was off duty.
    Stella had laughed when he told her the story and asked what had happened to the man. Coffin had admitted that he had become Chief Constable – after all, he was a Scot – in a Scottish force. Presumably wearing a kilt.
    He had not told her about Anthony/Antonia, and hoped the story was wrong.
    Now he finished reading the report on Crime in the Inner City, initialled it and set out to to meet CI Astley.
    You could walk from Coffin’s office through gardens to the quiet building that housed the post-mortem suite, passing as you did so the hospital in which Black Jack now lay.
    Coffin debated going in to the hospital to see how the man was doing. He had the sort of sneaking liking for Black Jack that he had had long ago for his sergeant in skirts.
    The hospital building dated back to the beginning of the twentieth century, but it had recently had a wash and brushup. Everything that could be repainted had been repainted. The whole building had been rewired and bits of smart, new equipment installed. But somehow it smelt the same.
    Coffin knew enough about how things went to know that Jack Jackson was being nursed in high security, one constable outside the room and another by the bed. If Jack came back to life, he was a valuable witness.
    Coffin knew where this room would be, third floor, but he checked at the central desk first. Yes, said the pretty young woman by the computer, he had it right. She looked at him with interest.
    He made his own way up in the lift. The man sitting on the chair outside Jack’s room was looking bored, but he knew Coffin and decided to jump up and look alert.
    Coffin nodded at him, then went into the room. Jack lay in the bed, tethered to it by tubes and a machine with a flashing red light. He had seen it all before. He had never seen Black Jack look like this though: white and shrunken, yet with his face oddly puffy. His eyes seemed to be submerged in swollen flesh.
    What thoughts are you having, Jack, if you are thinking at all?
    He turned to the constable who had been sitting by the door. ‘Has he said anything?’ Coffin looked at him. ‘Denton, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, sir . . . No, he hasn’t spoken. Muttered a bit, just sounds and grunts, nothing you could make anything of.’
    A nurse appeared through the door, a tall thin girl with spectacles and bright red hair. She gave Coffin a disapproving look. ‘It’s the Chief Commander? Would you like to see the doctor? I can get Dr Peters.’
    Coffin refused this offer. From what he knew of hospitals, he guessed that a busy young doctor would not want to add a visit from the Chief Commander to his day. In any case there was little to say about Black Jack, whose hold on life seemed tenuous. The only thing in his favour that Coffin knew from experience was that you could not trust him to go either way. Unpredictable was what he was.
    A trolley escorted by a nurse and pushed past him by a man in a pale blue tunic went down the corridor. The occupant of the trolley had closed eyes. Coffin hoped he was still alive. As they passed, the nurse gently drew the sheet over the patient’s face.
    The trio got to the row of lifts well before Coffin, who decided to use the stairs. There seemed less morbidity there.
    Three flights to the ground floor, as he knew well. He was not alone: on every floor down he passed nurses and the hurrying figures of doctors who, he was interested to see, no longer wore the white coats as seen in films and soap operas. Time moves on.
    Each floor was noisier and livelier than the last. Clearly if you were about to die, you went up to the top floor to be quiet about it.
    He would probably be transported up there himself one