The Coroner (30 page)

    'You
know what it's like, you're trying to do a hundred things at once.' Her phone
rang. She pulled it out of her handbag and took a call about a child whose GP
suspected she had been deliberately scalded by her mother.

    Jenny
finished the dregs of her double ristretto and tried not to judge the social
worker too harshly. At least she was still in the system, sticking at it. She
hadn't cracked up and tried to hide away.

    While
Ruth got deeper into her harrowing call, Jenny ripped a corner from a page of
her legal pad and wrote, 'Please could you put what you've told me in writing
and send it over?' She pushed it across the table, together with a business
card. Ruth gave her the thumbs up. Jenny left a five-pound note on the table
and headed out of the door while Dino was busy taking an order. He looked up
and winked at her she passed. Loud enough for him to hear, Jenny said, 'Creep.'

    Alison
was tackling the accounts, her desk swamped with receipts she was attempting to
arrange into piles by month. Jenny hadn't crossed the doormat when she picked
up a thick handful of papers and said, 'Seven today.'

    Juggling
her briefcase, handbag and take-out sandwich, Jenny flicked through the
overnight death and yesterday's post-mortem reports. 'At least Peterson's got
his act together. He's getting his reports out in twenty-four hours.'

    'Too
good to be true. It won't last.' She emptied out another envelope of
miscellaneous receipts, letting Jenny see what she was having to endure.

    'I
appreciate you going through all that stuff.'

    'Someone
has to.'

    Jenny
gave a flat smile and headed to her office.

    'Don't
you want to know how the police are doing, Mrs Cooper?'

    Jenny
stopped at the door and turned. 'Have you heard anything?'

    'Vice
Squad think they might have found some pictures of her hanging around
Broadlands Estate on the Monday. They're not very clear, so CID are going to
send them down to the lab.'

    'Alone
or with someone?'

    'That's
all I know, and I'm not meant to know that.'

    'I
appreciate it. Really.'

    Alison
gave a stoical nod and went back to her receipts. Jenny nudged open the door of
her office with her shoulder, thinking she'd been working with her officer less
than a fortnight and knew only two things about her, that she was married and
had been in love with Harry Marshall. There were lots of questions she ought to
ask her, but Alison never gave her the chance. It seemed deliberate and almost
perverse, as if she was embarrassed by what Jenny already knew about her but at
the same time determined to let her know she was still suffering.

    Jenny's
late lunch was a pill and the last dried-out sandwich in the shop eaten
hurriedly at her desk. Skimming through the early edition of the
Post
she found a two-inch report on Tara Collins's court appearance. It said she had
been remanded on bail on charges of credit card fraud and would appear again in
a fortnight's time. It made no mention that she was a reporter on the paper or
that she violently protested her innocence. Even medicated, reading the article
made her anxious. She hadn't given Tara a lot of thought in the past day, but
there it was in black and white: she was looking at five years in prison. And
for what - investigating two suspicious deaths?

    She
pushed her paperwork to one side and booted up her laptop. After her meeting
with Ruth Turner she had enough to set the procedural wheels in motion to seek
a second inquest into the death of Danny Wills. The law was straightforward.
Under section 13 of the 1988 Coroner's Act the High Court could quash the
verdict in a previous inquest and order a new one if the original was
unsatisfactory through insufficiency of enquiry, or if new facts or evidence
had come to light. That much was simple: Marshall had refused to call a witness
who had vital evidence about the lack of psychiatric care both before and after
Danny was sentenced. There were two obstacles in the way: the court would have
to be persuaded that there would be a different result if the inquest were
reheard in a proper manner, and before she could even get to court, she needed
the Attorney General's permission to proceed.

    This
layer of bureaucracy had to be negotiated carefully. The Attorney General was a
politician with special responsibility for the public, for which read
government
, interest. Any application which smacked of emotion or outrage
or which spelled potential embarrassment wouldn't even make it past the
low-grade civil servant who opened the envelope. Jenny's letter would have to
be as dry as dust and focus on one unanswerable objection: the family social
worker had tried and failed to get a psychiatric assessment for a mentally ill
teenager. He was sent to an institution which placed him on suicide watch but
still did not have him psychiatrically examined. Had this evidence been heard,
a verdict of death caused by gross negligence would have been highly likely.

    She
drafted, then read and re-read her legalistic letter and tried to conceive of
how the Attorney General, part of an administration which claimed to put
children first, could possibly refuse her request. She couldn't. The facts were
too stark; it would have to get through.

    The
grass had started to sprout daisies again and weeds were reappearing among the
herbs. It was gone eight and she could barely pull the cork out of the bottle,
let alone contemplate gardening. As it was Tuesday, she had half expected to
come home and see that Steve had been again. Secretly, she had hoped she would
find him still here, turning to greet her with that smile.

    She filled
the large glass up to the top so she had to sip a quarter-inch off before
lifting it to her lips. A couple of mouthfuls and it was two-thirds empty. What
did it matter? No one was watching. She filled it up again. She'd make the
second glass last. The wine was good. A Chianti. Why not just enjoy it?

    After
another refill she could have been sitting in her own private paradise. The
leaves on the ash trees glittered, the sky was the colour of the Mediterranean.
When you could feel this good on your own, who needed company?

    The
second bottle was a screw top, cheap French red. Not bad, though. She was
relaxed, enjoying herself. She felt like a cigarette and remembered an
emergency pack she kept in the bottom kitchen drawer. She lit one off the electric
stove and wandered back outside, a glass in her hand, not feeling the cold at
all. Sitting in her garden at sunset, her bare feet on the wet grass, a stream
running by, what could beat it? Forget Steve. If she ever wanted a man, she
could do much better.

    She
woke in the semi-darkness. Her skull was splitting and she was shivering. She
looked around, disoriented, and realized she was still at the scrub-top table
on the lawn, two empty bottles in front of her. She lurched inside. Her phone was
blinking on the kitchen counter. She snatched it up and struggled to focus:
Missed call. Ross 20:25.
Shit. How had that happened? What was the time?
She looked over at the clock - ten to four.

    As
she hit the pillow, the birds struck up. Thousands of the little bastards.

    She
made it to her desk by ten a.m., loaded up with aspirin, temazepam and caffeine.
Fortunately, Alison was out of the office, so wasn't there to see what a wreck
she was. Jenny would have been angry with herself had she had the energy, but
she was shattered, every slight movement making her head pound. It was a deep,
rotten hangover that bitter experience told her would last all day and into
tomorrow. Forcing herself to throw up several times had had no effect. She felt
too sick to eat and her lungs were sore from the ten cigarettes she had smoked.
The last time she had been in this state was the morning after she left David.
How had it happened?

    Sitting
on her desk was a print-out of a report Ruth Turner had emailed through,
repeating the story she had told yesterday, a neat stack of receipts
bulldog-clipped together and a manual ledger in which Alison had attempted to
enter them. With it was a long note full of queries which needed answering and
a detailed form which had to be submitted to the council's auditor. She pushed
the accounts aside and turned instead to the fresh stack of reports she had
picked up from Alison's desk. It contained the usual collection of depressing
hospital cases, a woman of ninety who had choked on her dentures and a
thirty-five-year-old farm worker who had fallen into a slurry pit, cracked his
head and drowned.

    Just
what she needed. Reading about death in a cesspool.

    She
tried to lose herself in work, but as she read Dr Peterson's post-mortem
reports she could smell his autopsy room. Fighting a wave of nausea, she headed
out to the kitchenette to make more coffee. While she was leaning against the
counter trying to calculate how many more aspirin she could safely take, Alison
arrived, busy and excited.

    'They
got the tape back from the lab. They think they've got a sighting of Katy at
eleven o'clock on the Sunday evening getting into a blue car, a Vectra.'

    Jenny
tried her best to sound bright. 'They can't be certain?'

    'It's
bit grainy, apparently. A security camera outside some flats.'

    'Any
chance we could get a look?'

    'They
haven't gone public yet. We're not meant to know. You could call Swainton and
ask him how it's going.'

    'I'll
give it some thought. I don't want to make him any more defensive.'

    Alison,
relieved, said, 'I've got a feeling they'll get a result.'

    Jenny
stirred a second spoon of instant coffee into her cup. 'At least we haven't had
any more trouble from Grantham. I don't know what his problem was.'

    'You.
He likes to be in control.'

    'You
sound as if you've heard something.'

    Alison
reached down a mug, not wanting to be drawn.

    Jenny
said, 'What is it?'

    'Nothing
in particular . . . But it just looks bad for him, doesn't it? Everyone knows
he and Harry were close. If there was something wrong with the way Harry
handled Katy's inquest it'll reflect on him.'

    'Too
bad.' Jenny took her coffee and headed for her office.

    'Did
you pick up the message from the Attorney General's office?'

    'No.'

    'I
left it with the accounts. They're sending someone down to talk about your
letter. I booked them in for midday.'

    Her
headache was no better when Adam Crossley arrived five minutes ahead of
schedule; if anything, all the fluids she had taken had made it worse, swollen
her brain. Crossley, an ambitious, ex-military type in his late thirties, was
bright and alert, refreshed after a ride down in first class at taxpayers'
expense. To make the day even jollier he had brought a young colleague. Kathy
Findlay was an attractive, bookish young redhead who sat in a corner taking verbatim
notes. During the obligatory pre-business chit-chat, Crossley explained he was
a criminal barrister who had been headhunted to take a two- year contract with
the AG's department to help steer through a programme of radical change. He
spouted a lot of management speak about 'streamlining' and 'concentrated
focus', but what it amounted to was that the department was being brought under
political control. Forget the law, he could have said, in future politics was
going to come first.

    As
soon as he said 'criminal barrister' Jenny had him pegged. Not bright enough
for commercial law, probably scratching a mediocre living prosecuting and
destined only, if he got lucky, to serve out his final years on the Crown Court
Bench. A low- level lawyer hungry for a fragment of power.

    Niceties
over and already presuming to use her Christian name, Crossley said, 'I've read
your letter, Jenny - it raises some very significant points.'

    'That's
why I wrote it.' Her hangover was making her tetchy.

    'Do you
have a copy of Mrs Turner's evidence?'

    She
handed the statement across the desk. Crossley sat in silence for a full
minute, reading it in detail. Kathy Findlay tapped her pen on her legal pad and
glanced around the room with a look of mild disgust.