A Cold Coffin
Gwendoline Butler
The discovery of a pile of infant skulls and a grisly triple murder are just the start of Chief Commander Coffin’s worries in this gripping crime novel from one of the most universally admired English mystery writers.London’s Second City has been the scene of many a terrifying crime, but the discovery of a pile of infant skulls unearthed near police headquarters is particularly horrifying. Another major worry for John Coffin, Chief Commander, is a triple murder on his patch, that of a midwife and her two daughters. The obvious suspect is her son, Black Jack Jackson, a local villain, but both Coffin and DI Phoebe Astley are reluctant to accept his guilt.Two further murders add renewed urgency to both investigations: one of a doctor, discovered in a hospital laboratory surrounded by grisly trophies, might well be connected to the disinterring of the children’s skulls; the other, of a notorious Second City criminal, with the brutal midwife killings. Coffin is able to take all this in his stride, however, until the growing violence comes closer to home – directly threatening the safety of his wife, the actress Stella Pinero.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_1aa3f5c1-8ca9-5099-957c-9de139776aed)
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime in 2000
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 2000
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
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.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007106448
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007553907
Version: 2014-07-08
CONTENTS
Cover (#u36abb900-1fd9-500d-9b67-ccfc2ef70e11)
Title Page (#u2a567eb1-09e0-5233-b8d7-bd2be7e08ec6)
Copyright (#ulink_feb98386-0beb-5f9d-aa1e-286ee6e3e927)
Prologue (#uc29bd08b-a8cc-557b-b3d0-65db57a4eeeb)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_635246f5-f659-5f96-95fd-807f7f680783)
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Keep Reading (#u8c9d692b-5560-550f-94a4-f33dd37aa3d3)
About the Author
Author's Note
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE (#ue7178b77-8d31-5eea-9603-a54c8ca9ad01)
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 and was very quickly promoted to inspector a year later. Ten years later, he was a superintendent and then 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 spell in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when the Second City of London was being formed and he became Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, an old love, Stella Pinero, who is herself a very successful actress. He has also discovered two siblings, a much younger sister and brother.
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