The Coroner (3 page)

    There
were three internal doors: one led to a functional, recently modernized
kitchenette, another to the cloakroom and the third, a solid, original feature,
to her office.

    The
modest fifteen by fifteen room could only have belonged to a middle-aged man.
In the centre sat a heavy Victorian desk scattered with files and documents.
More files and disorganized papers were stacked on the floor. A dusty Venetian
blind hung over what should have been a splendid shuttered window overlooking
the street.

    Two
walls were taken up with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined with the
All
England
and
Weekly Law Reports.
The remaining wall space was hung
with traditional prints of rural and golfing scenes and a matriculation
photograph from Jesus College, Oxford, 1967. Jenny studied the faces of the
longhaired students dressed in their academic gowns and white bow ties and
picked out Harry Marshall - a slim, playful teenager pouting sideways-on to the
camera like the young Mick Jagger.

    She
spotted a half-drunk cup of coffee sitting on the mantelpiece above an elderly
gas fire. Some ghoulish instinct made her pick it up and study the thin film of
mould floating on the surface. She imagined Harry, heavy, breathing through his
mouth, sipping from it hours before his death, and for a fleeting moment
wondered what the bookends of her own career might be.

    Her
eye was caught by a blinking light on the desk. An answerphone which looked
like a relic from the 1980s had two messages. She put down the cup and pressed
the play button. The voice of a distressed young woman fighting tears crackled
out: 'It's Simone Wills. The things they said about me in the paper aren't
true. None of it's true ... And I
did
call the Centre and tell them how
Danny was. That woman's lying if she says I didn't. . She broke off to sob,
then continued tearfully, 'Why didn't you let me give evidence? You told me I'd
have my say. You
promised—''
The machine bleeped, cutting her off short.

    The
next message was also from Simone Wills. In a much more controlled, determined
voice, she said: 'You got it wrong, you
know
you did. If you haven't got
the guts to find out what happened, I'll do it myself. I'm going to get justice
for Danny. You're a coward. You're as bad as the rest of them.' Clunk. This
time Simone beat the machine to it.

    Danny
Wills. Jenny recalled reading about the young prisoner who had died in custody.
She had the idea that his mother was a drug addict, one of the feckless
underclass she had grown so accustomed to in her previous career. Hearing her
angry voice brought an unwelcome sense of d
é
j
à
vu. As a lawyer whose daily routine consisted
of wresting neglected children from their incapable and occasionally abusive
parents, she had had her fill of hysterical emotion. As coroner, Jenny had
hoped she would be at a dignified arm's length from the distressed and
grief-stricken.

    'Hello?'
A female voice called out from reception. 'Is that you, Mrs Cooper?'

    Jenny
turned to see a woman in her early fifties with a neat bob of dyed blonde hair
standing in the doorway. She was short, substantial without being overweight,
and wore a beige raincoat and smart navy business suit, her skin suntanned
against her white blouse.

    'Alison
Trent. Coroner's officer.' The woman gave a guarded smile and offered her hand.

    Jenny
smiled back and shook it. 'Jenny Cooper. I was beginning to wonder if you were
still here.'

    'I
haven't like to come here since Mr Marshall died. I didn't know if I should
disturb anything.'

    'Right.'
Jenny waited for further explanation, but Alison offered none. She sensed
awkwardness, hostility even, coming from her. 'So, if you haven't been here,
who's been handling the caseload for the last four weeks?'

    'I
have,' Alison said, sounding surprised and a little indignant. 'I don't work
from here. My office is at the police station. Didn't they tell you?'

    'The
police station? No. I just assumed—'

    'I'm ex-CID.
Perk of the job - they give me an office. A bit nicer than this one, I'm
afraid.'

    Jenny
looked at her with a half smile, realizing that here was an employee who
thought she was returning to business as usual. From what she had already seen,
that couldn't be allowed to happen.

    'I
suppose I should let you settle in before dumping any files on you,' Alison
said. 'Not that there's much on at the moment - just the usual from the
hospital, a couple of road deaths.'

    'You
can't have been signing death certificates?'

    'Not
personally. I phone Mr Hamer, the deputy in Bristol Central. He's been giving
me the OK and I pp them for him.'

    'I
see,' Jenny said, forming a picture of this cosy arrangement. A deputy coroner
in another part of the city, not even troubling to look at the files, taking
the word of a retired police officer that no further investigation was
required. 'I don't know what you've been told, Mrs Trent, but it was made plain
to me by the Ministry of Justice that I was to overhaul this office and make it
part of the modern Coroner's Service. The first step will be to bring it all
under one roof.'

    Alison
was incredulous. 'You want me to work from here?'

    'That
would make sense. I'd like you to fetch over whatever you have at the station
as soon as possible. Make sure to bring the file on Danny Wills. And I'd like
to see any current files this morning - get a taxi if needs be.'

    'Nobody
said a word to me,' Alison protested. 'I can't just leave. I've been there five
years.'

    Jenny
adopted her most formal tone. 'I hope you won't find this process too trying,
Mrs Trent, but it has to be done. And quickly.'

    'Whatever
you want, Mrs Cooper.' Alison turned abruptly, marched out into reception and
headed for the outer door.

    Jenny
leaned back against the desk and took stock. Another thing she hadn't counted
on: a difficult subordinate, doubtless jealous and aggrieved for a hundred
different reasons. She resolved to stamp her authority from the outset. The
very least she needed to get the job done was the unquestioning respect of her
staff.

    Time
to prioritize. The office was badly in need of a clean, but that would have to
wait. The most pressing task was to wade through Marshall's papers and see what
needed attention.

    First
she needed coffee. Strong coffee.

    She
found a Brazilian cafe around the corner on Whiteladies Road, Carioca's, which
sold take-out ristretto and small, bite- sized custard tarts. She bought one of
each and was back in harness within ten minutes.

    Next
to the desk on the floor she found a stack of twenty or so manila case files,
each of which contained a death certificate signed in the last few days of
Marshall's life. They all seemed to be routine cases, mostly hospital deaths,
waiting to be absorbed into whatever manual filing system Alison operated.

    On
the surface of the desk were two disorderly heaps of files. The first contained
papers and receipts relating to the office accounts. A letter from the local
authority - the body which, due to a quirk of history, employed the coroner and
paid his or her salary and expenses - reminded Marshall that this year's
figures were overdue.

    The
second consisted of a random selection of cases, some of them years old. On top
of the pile was a clear plastic wallet stuffed with newspaper cuttings dating
back to the early 1990s, all reporting on cases Marshall had investigated. He
had marked passages on most of them. Some were carefully cut out, others roughly
torn, but all were dated.

    In
the midst of all this Jenny unearthed a collection of personal correspondence
weighted down by a crusty bottle of writing ink: credit card bills, bank
statements, a reminder from the dentist. She weeded out the junk, gathered the
rest together and searched for an envelope large enough to take it. She
rummaged through the untidy desk drawers, finding broken pencils, paperclips
and accumulated detritus, but no envelopes. Having ransacked all of them and
ready to give up, she noticed a further shallower but much wider drawer set
back under the lip of the writing surface. She tugged at the handle. It was
locked. She glanced around for a key and spotted the plastic desk tidy, which
held a selection of chewed ballpoints. She upended it and among the dust and
small change found what she was looking for.

    She
pulled the drawer open. There were envelopes sure enough, in all manner of
sizes, but also one of the now familiar manila files. She quickly stuffed a
Jiffy bag with the correspondence, scribbled 'Mrs Marshall' on the front, then
opened the file.

    Uppermost
on the slender pile of documents was a copy death certificate dated 2 May. It
was a Form B: notification by the coroner to the Registrar of Births and Deaths
and Marriages that, having held a post-mortem, an inquest was not considered
necessary. The deceased was named as Katherine Linda Taylor, aged fifteen years
and three months, of
6
Harvey Road, South- mead. Place of death was
recorded as Bridge Valley, Clifton - the spectacular gorge spanned by the
Clifton Suspension Bridge. Jenny's immediate thought was of the many suicides
who jumped from it each year, but cause of death was recorded as 'intravenous
overdose of diamorphine'. The Certificate for Cremation section had been left
blank save for the word 'burial'.

    Intrigued,
Jenny turned over to find a two-page police report handwritten in turgid,
ungrammatical prose by a Police Constable Campbell. A member of the public had
chanced on Katy's partially decomposed body in shrubbery some thirty yards from
the main road. She was found in a seated, hunched position with an empty
hypodermic syringe at her side. The dead girl had been reported missing by her
parents seven days previously and had a history of truanting, absence from home
and minor crime.

    She
wasn't prepared for what came next: a Xeroxed copy of a police photograph
picturing Katy's body where it was found. A small, slender figure dressed in
jeans held up by a wide, white belt, high-heeled sandals to match and a short
pink T-shirt. Her delicate hands, mottled with decay, hugged her bony knees. A
mop of untidy blonde hair hung forward, obscuring her face. Her chin rested on
her chest.

    Jenny
gazed at the image for a long moment, horrified, absorbing every detail. It was
the colour of the teenager's skin which fascinated her: the brilliant white of
her sandals against the mouldering flesh. Her mind created a picture of the
scene had the body not been found until weeks later: would there still be
tissue, or just a skeleton inside the clothes?

    Banishing
the image, she turned the page, expecting to find a copy of the post-mortem
report, but there was none. Strange. The pattern in every other file she had
seen so far was the same: police statements, post-mortem report, death
certificate. And why was the file locked away in a drawer?

    Although
she had spent the best part of the last three weeks boning up on coronial law,
Jenny felt in uncertain territory. She opened her briefcase and brought out her
already well- thumbed copy of Jervis, the coroner's standard textbook and
Bible. It confirmed what she had suspected. Section 8(1) of the Coroner's Act
1988 required an inquest to be held where the death was violent or unnatural.
There was no more unnatural death than a possible suicide or accidental
overdose, so how could Marshall have certified it without going through the
lawful procedure?

    She
checked the dates: body discovered 30 April, police report 1 May, death
certificate signed 2 May. She recalled that Marshall died later in the first
week of May. Perhaps he was already feeling unwell and was cutting corners. Or
maybe he simply wanted to spare the dead girl's family the ordeal of an
inquest. Either way, failing to hold one was a flagrant breach of the rules.
Just the sort of practice all coroners were being instructed by the Ministry of
Justice to stamp out.

    Alison
returned an hour later. Jenny felt the waves of resentment crashing over her
even before she pointedly knocked on the partially open door.

    She
tried to sound cheerful. 'Come in.'

    Alison
hefted a heavy nylon holdall into her office and dropped it on the floor.

    'That's
everything I could find that's been dealt with since he died. The ones in the
blue files at the top are still open. We get about five deaths a day on
average, sometimes more.'