A Coffin for Charley
Gwendoline Butler
When three young women are murdered, Inspector John Coffin must investigate the past to unravel the present. From one of the most universally praised English crime writers, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie.Annie Briggs, whose evidence as a child was responsible for convicting two killers, feels a sense of unease and fears she is being watched. She then discovers that the murderers have been released and are living nearby. Annie is terrified and dreads the revenge she knows will come. When three young women are murdered, Inspector John Coffin is challenged to connect the present-day incidents to the past.
GWENDOLINE BUTLER
A Coffin for Charley
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_373b7653-5535-5350-9940-ab938003de4f)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishersLtd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1993
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780006478904
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007545421
Version: 2014-07-02
‘So I said to Charley …’ Traditional theatrical cover-up when the speech drops dead.
CONTENTS
Title Page (#uf55245c3-ddcb-572d-968e-a6368454012b)
Copyright (#ulink_7cc3f4f1-a0d4-547a-aaf6-da5faa51c45d)
Dedication (#ulink_9afbe62b-56f4-57d7-a4d3-3f2890f19a1d)
Prologue (#ulink_f3020d8d-cc27-5e37-9f72-5c75913fc2bf)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_b784e347-faa7-5c9f-92a6-07da1de674d6)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_a317e348-9135-5d44-b6bf-8ae58feeb65e)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_02b27c1c-bb98-5124-a602-8792e2bbd369)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_dfc4c762-9f1a-5acd-938e-af7dc597cfce)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_15495077-cd8a-5ada-93a0-c2688cd3bf5a)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_321b6458-17e2-55d5-86df-db6a375885b2)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_49472ac4-2995-5154-adbe-91bbd34ec720)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_faff2de6-d9ce-5b91-a80c-49ff4a197a1f)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_aedac5c2-9bec-5167-a249-b4476228d376)
Chapter 10 (#ulink_da20f46f-2374-5024-b3e2-5bf9ade6b781)
Chapter 11 (#ulink_60d7aaf9-acef-5dee-93a5-e1e3594d1524)
Chapter 12 (#ulink_bd00126c-ca08-5c5e-834c-1f8830b2eb12)
Chapter 13 (#ulink_ee79deb8-e49c-5bf0-9ca5-5b6f98b11991)
Chapter 14 (#ulink_2426f39b-1905-5e48-8830-cca867785618)
Chapter 15 (#ulink_d0d87886-fb3e-5991-ad37-678de6e1771d)
Chapter 16 (#ulink_7e414314-b534-5c3d-b82c-70045758b02a)
Chapter 17 (#ulink_a6766c85-a134-515b-95a3-c8b5e1840691)
Chapter 18 (#ulink_7889dbd3-1ffb-5a8f-8813-b3893d2a29fc)
Chapter 19 (#ulink_5c3d4d62-d8a3-555e-9467-18edf30c47e5)
Chapter 20 (#ulink_2234d341-19ef-5a28-a8d7-cceba9a56bd8)
Chapter 21 (#ulink_013eba4a-db81-5c45-a493-55410de24864)
Keep Reading (#u8351e1fc-6485-5ee5-b82b-e69c58b05ae1)
Also by the Author (#ulink_1df9e5b2-45fd-55ba-a48a-22260f631cb5)
Author’s Note (#ulink_eacf738c-b670-5ff0-bcb5-b3f8e0634df8)
About the Author (#ulink_b77a9e1b-d94b-5e9a-89fd-e02aa9109f34)
About the Publisher (#ulink_2b72aed5-3309-57ca-9953-04562c751fdd)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_73695b85-8e8a-5af7-89d0-7ad94b6fa21c)
A brief Calendar of the life and career of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police
John Coffin is a Londoner by birth, his father is unknown and his mother was a difficult lady of many careers and different lives who abandoned him in infancy to be looked after by a woman who may have been a relative of his father and who seems to have acted as his mother’s dresser when she was on the stage. He kept in touch with this lady, whom he called Mother, lodged with her in his early career and looked after her until she died.
After serving briefly in the army, he joined the Metropolitan Police, soon transferring to the plain clothes branch as a detective.
He became a Sergeant in 1958, and was very quickly promoted to Inspector a year later.
By 1969 he was a superintendent and nine years later became Chief Superintendent.
There was a bad patch in his career about which he is reluctant to talk. His difficult family background has complicated his life and possibly accounts for an unhappy period when, as he admits, his career went down a black hole. His first marriage split apart at this time and his only child died.
From this dark period he was resurrected by a longish period in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when, in the late 1980s as the Second City of London was being formed, he became the Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, very happily, to an old love, Stella Pinero. He has also rediscovered two siblings, a sister and a brother.
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