The Coroner (19 page)

    The
bar was pleasantly busy. No music, a relaxed hum of conversation. The decor was
basic but pleasant, wood floors, upturned barrels serving as tables at which groups
of men stood with pint glasses, several private booths where couples were
eating hearty meals. She moved unselfconsciously through the friendly crowd and
approached the bar. She squeezed into a space next to two jovial, sturdy men
who looked and smelt as if they had spent the day with cattle. She caught the
eye of a young, dark-haired woman who was taking money at the far end of the
bar. She noticed that the customer, whose face was hidden behind a vertical
beam, reached out and touched her hand as the transaction took place, the young
woman not resisting, rather letting his fingers linger, as if reluctantly
accepting a gesture of apology. As she turned, pensive, Jenny saw that it was
Steve she had been serving. He saw her and raised a hand in greeting, his eyes
flitting between Jenny and the girl. She sensed a situation, or at least an
awkward frisson between them.

    Jenny
asked for a bottle of red wine, whichever was one up from the cheapest, and
studied the girl as she fetched it from a rack under the counter. There was
none of the joy of youth about her. Her body was slender, but not well looked
after; her hair, which could have been a feature, was scraped back behind her
ears. She sketched an imaginary biography: locally raised, bright enough for university
but in love and pregnant at eighteen. Ten years later she was single,
struggling, desperate for a man to rescue her but too proud to acknowledge the
fact.

    Jenny
noticed the girl looking her over as she came back with a bottle of Chilean
red, wondering what a woman in a city suit was doing in here alone. The look
said this was her territory and other women who might be after the same prize
as her weren't welcome.

    But
maybe she was just imagining it. Her mind was still racing. It was going to
take most of the bottle to calm it down. Jenny thanked her politely and
threaded her way back towards the exit.

    'Hey!'

    She
glanced back and saw Steve coming after her, a half- empty pint glass in his
hand. He caught up as she reached the door. 'Hi.'

    'Steve.'
She noticed the girl behind the bar look over at them as she took another
customer's order.

    'I
promised a mate of mine I'd pass a message on to you. Name's Al Jones - he's got
a load of flagstones would make a great patio for you at the back. They just
came out of an old chapel.'

    'I'm
not sure I can stretch to a patio right now. I'm happy enough with the grass,
especially now I can call it a lawn.'

    'He'll
do you a good price. Fifteen quid a flag - you won't beat that.'

    'You
do a pretty hard sell for a man who doesn't work.'

    'Just
a thought. No pressure.' He took a mouthful of beer. 'Can I get you a drink?'

    'Maybe
another time.'

    'It's
your money. You might as well get the benefit.' He noticed her unconscious
glance towards the bar. 'Annie's an old friend of mine. Not the friendliest -
had a rough time with her ex, drank the mortgage money and knocked her about.'

    'Does
anyone have any secrets around here?'

    'Nope.
And what they don't know they'll only make up.' He smiled. 'We're already up to
God knows what as far as the gossips are concerned, so there's no point turning
me down on their account.'

    'Great.
I thought this was a friendly place.'

    'No
one means any harm.' He nodded towards a spare booth. 'Indulge me. I want to
hear about this job of yours.' He smiled, innocent and engaging.

    'I
can't stay long.'

    'Drink?'

    'Bloody
Mary. A large one.'

    She
sat with her back to the bar, out of Annie's line of sight. Her touch of hands
with Steve was more than old friends give each other, it told a whole story:
Annie wanting more than occasional sex from a part-time boyfriend and Steve,
addicted to the single life, in no mood to commit.

    He
came back with her drink and a whisky for himself and slid into the seat
opposite, close to the wall, she noticed, where Annie would strain to see. 'So,
you spend your days finding out how people died.'

    'Sort
of. But, come to think of it, I don't recall telling you what I do for a
living.'

    'You're
still not catching on, are you? I knew who you were a fortnight before you
moved in.
Attractive divorcee from Bristol, just appointed coroner.'

    'What
else did they say about me?'

    'You really
want to know?'

    'Try
me.'

    'Husband's
a fancy doctor, ran off with a nurse.'

    'Wow.
Almost right.' She rolled the ice cubes around her glass and took a large gulp.
'It was nurses, actually.'

    'They
got some things wrong - said you had kids.'

    'I do
have a son. He's fifteen, lives with his dad in Bristol.'

    'Oh.
Sorry.'

    'It's
OK. It's no secret. It just suited us that way. He's got exams, didn't seem
right to move him.'

    'Must
be tough.'

    'Of
course.'

    'Look,
I didn't mean to —'

    'Forget
it. Actually I'm hoping he'll come and live out here soon. I think he'll like
it.'

    'There
aren't many nightclubs.'

    'Bristol
isn't far, and he can have his friends over to stay. Maybe I'll turn the old
mill building into a bunkhouse.'

    'I
know a good builder.'

    'I'm
sure you do.' She took another sip, the vodka finding its way into her system,
beginning to take the edge off.

    'I
asked her to make you a good one.'

    'She
did.'

    His
eyes flicked in the direction of the bar. 'We're not an item. Just friends.'

    Jenny
nodded, unsure how to respond.

    'You
can imagine what it's like in a small village. Easy for things to get intense.'

    'So
I'm learning.' It began to dawn on her that he was actually quite drunk, not so
that he was slurring his words, but the brakes were definitely off.

    'We
went out a few times after she split with her husband but it was never going to
work. She wants
stuff.
I'm not interested in that. That's why I live up
in the woods. Keep things simple.'

    'Do
you think you ever can?'

    'You
don't know if you don't try. You must have come out here looking for
something.'

    'I
guess.'

    'Have
you found it?'

    'Too
early to say. I hope to.'

    He took
a glug of whisky and looked at her over the rim of his glass. 'Do you mind if I
say something personal to you, Jenny?'

    She
was sure he was going to say it anyway, so why bother to object. 'Go ahead.'

    'There's
something sad about you. I saw it in your face in the garden.'

    'I'd
just been on the phone to my husband.'

    'Still
in love with him?'

    'No.
And it's none of your business.' She meant to sound serious, but it came out
tongue-in-cheek. She blushed, then laughed, trying to cover the fact.

    'Just
a bit then, huh?'

    'No.
Not at all. He's an arrogant sod.'

    'I
get the picture.'

    He
was teasing her now. She couldn't work out how she'd let herself get so
friendly with someone she hardly knew.

    'We
have nothing in common. He spent years stifling and judging me and all the time
he was bedding any woman who'd say yes.'

    'Sounds
like a real gentleman.'

    She
took another large mouthful. 'And still he expects me to tip up at his house
for lunch this weekend and sit there while his twenty-five-year-old girlfriend
simpers around him like a grateful servant.'

    'That
was heartfelt.'

    'You
did ask.' Jenny looked at her glass: it was empty.

    'Another?'

    'Better
not.'

    'You
look like you could do with it.'

    'I've
got a bottle of wine to sink in front of the TV.' She started to slide out of
the booth.

    Steve
said, 'Do you believe in karma?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'Annie
over there's been telling me for months I'm storing up bad karma, never doing
anything for anyone else.'

    'Tell
her you made a good job of my garden.'

    'I'll
make a confession - I took a long look at you before I came over. I was
standing over there in the weeds while you were on the phone. You're right, he
does sound like a bastard.' He looked at her curiously, as if she posed him
some kind of challenge. 'How about if I offered to come with you to your
husband's?'

    'Why
would you do that?'

    'Moral
support. Might even earn me some good karma.'

    'You
hardly know me.'

    He
swallowed the last of his whisky. 'It doesn't feel that way to me. Does it to
you?'

    Jenny
said, 'I'll think about it.'

    She
took her bottle of wine and made for the door.

    Steve
called after her, 'Give me some notice if you want me to shave.'

    Thin
rain slanted out of a moonless sky and beat down on the gaudily decorated
graves in the new arrivals section of the public cemetery. Several policemen in
uniform stood at the locked gates. An undertaker's van and a number of private
vehicles, one containing a miserable-looking clergyman sipping tea from a
Thermos flask, were parked on the access road near to where the excavator was
working. The whole scene was illuminated by an array of temporarily erected arc
lights.

    While
she waited, Jenny walked along the row of fresh tombstones under cover of an
umbrella. Some of the graves were staked out with mini picket fences and
in-filled with coloured gravel; most bore photographs of the deceased. It had
been nearly twenty years since she had spent any time in a cemetery and things
had changed. Religious messages had all but disappeared; the memorials were
shrines to ordinary lives with golf clubs, favourite pint pots and statuettes
of Frank Sinatra cemented to them. The afterlife, where it was referred to, was
envisaged as a kind of Disneyland with an easy-listening soundtrack, a place where
the departed would forever mingle in a cosy lounge bar.

    No
fear of God or the devil here.

    Alison
approached, wrapped up in an ankle-length Driza-Bone and matching hat. 'We're
about ready for the final removal, Mrs Cooper.'

    Jenny
followed her back along the row of headstones as two of Dawes's men lowered a
nervous young gravedigger into the oversized hole and handed him a spade. He
thrust it into the sticky soil and hit the coffin lid with a hollow,
splintering thud. Dawes, a drawn-looking man in a black suit and raincoat,
called out to him to be careful, and motioned him to scrape the soil off
gently, miming how it should be done. The young man's courage failed him
briefly, and then, averting his eyes, he drew his spade cautiously across the shiny
veneer lid. There was scarcely room for him to stand clear of the coffin at the
sides; no one seemed to have worked out how big the hole would have to be in
order for the gravedigger to get straps underneath to lift it. As the
undertakers discussed their dilemma, Jenny noticed the car headlights drawing
up at the cemetery gates. A policeman approached the driver's window.

    Alison
said, 'Oh no. Please don't let it be the parents.'

    The
policeman stepped back to the gate and unlocked it, waving the driver through.