Coffin’s Game
Gwendoline Butler
‘ inventiveness never seems to flag; and the singular atmosphere of her books, compounded of jauntiness and menace, remains undiminished’ Patricia Craig, TLSIn the aftermath of a terrorist explosion in London’s Second City, a woman’s battered corpse is found in a damaged building. But it is soon evident that this is no bomb victim. A sadistic killer has mutilated the remains, removing the fingertips and leaving the face unrecognizable. The only clue to the dead person’s identity is a handbag found on the scene. Its owner: Stella Pinero, actress wife of Chief Commander John Coffin.The investigation which follows is complicated by Coffin’s refusal to believe that the remains could be Stella’s, and Chief Superintendent Archie Young faces the unenviable task of questioning a superior officer as to the sort of men his wife was in the habit of associating with. Meanwhile, the secretive Inspector Lodge of the Terrorist Investigation Squad harbours fears of his own.When a second body is discovered, Coffin finds himself drawn into a nightmarish game. The murder inquiry reveals terrible truths as it unfolds, bringing pain and bitterness to John Coffin as he is forced to confront death and treachery in his own backyard.
GWENDOLINE BUTLER
COFFIN’S GAME
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_1d0b813c-661c-5d65-bfd4-b19e2e59564e)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1997
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780006510116
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545483
Version: 2014–07–08
DEDICATION (#ulink_f7c73cfb-0497-5e2b-9814-9daf646dc0ac)
My thanks to Professor Geoffrey Lee Williams for help about terrorism and terrorists, and to Inspector Euan Forbes and John Kennedy Melling for details of technical procedures.
CONTENTS
Cover (#u862bba3d-974c-5270-a4d3-6ffcbdd70b8c)
Title Page (#ud5436624-c88f-56a9-aa88-aa8316cfdd09)
Copyright (#ulink_c5ac6b2e-fdb7-544e-bc57-6e631b93c8bb)
Dedication (#ulink_63341935-f07b-51ea-9265-260e269d6b4f)
Prologue (#ulink_a428024b-ba55-57fd-9b01-8f3790abc3b3)
Prelude (#ulink_dfe18ffa-c734-5bc2-bc56-81e208075601)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_75552aea-3c62-5f0a-938d-8cd836395bb3)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_b7cdb842-c376-5a22-b75a-93f62c09ae65)
PROFILE OF THE AVERAGE TERRORIST (#ulink_6f33ef1e-3ac7-52e3-87d1-e0bee3b60b44)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_2a514233-28e7-55f3-bff5-29ec26c44ceb)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_c43d04ab-403d-539c-b32b-b4c656f56640)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_ae72ef29-32b5-5f7c-87f7-2127ab73b3b9)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_7c1da413-3b0a-5573-a31b-5f82466da399)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_bd1318f1-c9ed-5272-bc6c-f3369bc7645f)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_2e191107-1ba7-5863-b815-bcfe5d1ae145)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_88365405-7629-5a62-85a4-66576c0e196c)
Chapter 10 (#ulink_c83a6a4b-0da3-5802-9f46-50ad0830b5d7)
Chapter 11 (#ulink_d7e768b3-d0b1-50cb-88f1-fb25f4bf3568)
Chapter 12 (#ulink_11fa3ef8-188f-58c2-a2c9-d1429ebf1b33)
Chapter 13 (#ulink_ffae2e9a-249e-5abf-ae65-3c3cf75f8327)
Chapter 14 (#ulink_34b927ba-ee32-586d-b683-42c5ddce98f8)
Chapter 15 (#ulink_90bf3c8e-22f0-5004-9bc5-c92d77a3d8b0)
THE CASE OF ALICE YEOMAN (#ulink_3aad8206-4cd1-5b6d-a652-c1ccad75558a)
Keep Reading (#uda4eb590-02a8-524d-925c-08a596fb7fe4)
About the Author (#ulink_283c361f-4fc5-53fe-9e31-b9983a1f65e8)
Author’s Note (#ulink_b761b352-d500-5f4d-af55-24b5816b694e)
Also by the Author (#ulink_2a5b915f-7ed0-5a3e-9a3b-6d632b1681d9)
About the Publisher (#ulink_2e368225-7ab2-5bcd-85a9-453b989a2fd0)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_10a77c60-932b-5461-8912-84992494e97a)
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.
For the urban terrorist, logistics are expressed by the formula MDAME.
Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla
Carlos Marighella
Despite the popular image there is no reliable archetype of terrorist personality. While they are undeniably cruel, virtually none has been found to be clinically mad. But there are always exceptions.
A recurring syndrome is what psychiatrists call externalisation, coping with failure by blaming an outside source.
Terrorism
Professor Geoffrey Lee Williams
Alan Lee Williams
Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies
PRELUDE (#ulink_3e0a5852-14dc-5f57-81ab-dfc7703dea56)
‘The Chemin des Dames, that’s the name,’ said Charles. ‘Do you know that in 1917 the whole French Army was in revolt because of the terrible deaths on the Chemin des Dames. That wonderful army that Napoleon built, reduced to chaos and despair … that’s the mood I want to create with our bombs. Then we can rebuild society.’
Not me, thought Jerry. I’m a soldier, I get instructions from above, I do the job, and walk away. Also, I get paid.
There were three of them in the rented room above an empty shop in Mordecai Street; the neighbours, such as took any interest, thought they were charity workers helping Africa or Tibet.
Present were Jerry, the supreme professional, the leader and the technician on the bomb, Andrew, an old colleague on the bomb run, and Charles, the college graduate, the sort to go out on a crusade. Jerry found him useful, but did not trust him.
Nor did he trust the fourth member of the team, known as the Secret Card, brought in by Pip for local knowledge and inside information on the Second City Police.
None of them used their own names, not even Jerry and Andrew. Only Jerry knew and had contact with the man next in the chain of command, and he knew him only as Pip. Jerry knew that they were only the second team, not entrusted with the bigger bomb, but they were operators.
The local knowledge of the Card had told them which street was strategically placed for a bomb, near a big supermarket for maximum damage, yet neutral; a thorough-fare where people took not much notice of each other and where cars and vans could park unnoticed. Arch Road, with Percy Street, in which many houses were empty, just round the corner. Arch Road – put the bomb there.
‘Cameras, videos?’ Jerry had queried, having observed the police cameras going up on street corners in the Second City.
‘None in Arch Road, nor Percy Street yet. The city has to persuade local businesses to come up with the cash.’
That was where the Card’s knowledge of the police had come in useful.
The Card was not present at this last meeting before the bomb. Might be due for a quick exit. Jerry would decide.
In any case, the group (and there were others of whom this little coterie knew nothing) would soon split up and disappear.
Job done.
But Jerry had not quite taken in the tricky character Pip had enlisted in the Card.
Pip could have enlightened him, but saw no reason to do so.
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