The Coroner (33 page)

    Jenny
glanced beyond him to the door of the bar. 'I think I'm OK now.'

    'Sure?'
He tossed his barely smoked cigarette aside, took a step towards her and looped
his arms around her shoulders. 'I don't think you are.'

    She
leaned against his chest and felt his hand stroking the back of her head. 'I
don't know what I am.'

    'I've
had too much to drive anyway. Give me a ride to your place, I'll be halfway
home.'

    It
happened without either of them saying a word. She'd reached for his hand as
they walked towards the front door, a gesture that let them both know what was
coming next.

    Afterwards
they'd lain in the dark for a long while, their fingers touching. Then Steve
had said, 'Has the ghost gone now?'

    Jenny
had said, 'I think so.'

    'Good.'
He'd eased out of bed and pulled on his Cargoes, his strong back to her in the
moonlight. 'I'll be going, then. If I don't feed the dog first thing he'll eat
my chickens.'

    'You
don't expect me to drive?'

    'I'll
walk. It's only a mile through the woods. I like listening to the owls.'

    Then
he'd pulled on his shirt, bent over and kissed her on the mouth. His last words
to her before going: 'You're a beautiful woman, Jenny, you just don't know it.'

    She
listened to his footsteps as he set off up the lane and thought about what he'd
said. With her illness, the joy in her had gone. She remembered the sensation as
a prisoner might freedom, a past, unattainable thing. She wanted it back. She
wanted out of the cell.

    At
least she was alive and could still lose herself in sex. At least she wasn't
like Danny Wills, dead on the end of a knotted sheet. She pictured him, his
boyish features, and Katy Taylor and Marshall. Three of them dead, hers the
only heart still beating. She put her hand to her chest and felt the life in
her.

    She
offered silent thanks and slipped into restless sleep.

    The
note on the kitchen counter said:
Not the answer to your problems but maybe
a step on the way. Your call. Steve.
She read it over and over as she drank
her coffee, trying to figure out what he meant, what she wanted him to mean.
She decided he was probably as confused as she was, but more used to this kind
of situation. Smart enough not to stay the night and have to face the awkward
conversation in the morning.

    'Your
call'. The fact he put the responsibility back on her said that he didn't want
it, that he was happy to be friends -
fuck buddies,
kids called it now -
but not to think he was looking for anything more. But at the weekend he'd
talked about his karma, wanting to help her, as if he felt fate had blown her
his way. She didn't believe in karma, a
system-,
life was more random than
that. She believed in good and evil, spirits that drifted in and out of
people's lives, perhaps for a reason, perhaps not.

    She
folded the note into her handbag, too superstitious to throw it away, deciding that
she had enough on her plate without a relationship. Having a man in her bed was
fun, a distraction. If she could choose the time it would be a good
arrangement. Why not enjoy it for a while?

    She
took this thought with her into the car and was nearly at the bridge before she
realized she hadn't taken a pill. Wow. Last night had really hit the spot.

    David
called her while she'd hit the stop-go into the centre of town. For once the
sound of his voice didn't make her chest tighten. It helped that he sounded
almost reasonable.

    'Thanks
for bailing Ross out yesterday. The Head just called me - he's technically
suspended, but as it's exam time it won't make much difference. If we can
reassure her it won't happen again she won't expel him.'

    'That's
something. How is he?'

    'OK.
We had a long talk last night... I didn't realize quite how badly the divorce
had hit him. I suppose it's natural for kids to feel responsible in some way.'

    'What
did he say?'

    'That
it had upset him, left him feeling unsure of himself.'

    'There's
a lot we could do . . .'

    David
paused. 'I told him to get through the next few days and promised him the three
of us would sit down together to talk about what happens next.'

    The
humble note in his voice amazed her. She couldn't remember the last time she
had heard it. 'Where is he now?'

    'Studying.
Head down all day, he promised me. Look, I'd better go, I'm in theatre in ten
minutes. Bye, Jenny.'

    She
pushed the red button on her phone, feeling a pang of jealousy. Ross had hardly
spoken to her but had spent the evening opening up to David. Why couldn't he
have told her about his insecurity? Did he see her as the sole cause of it? . .
. Of course he did. She was the one who broke up the home, who had screaming
fits and threw crockery. It made her want to cry, but that was precisely the
reaction Ross would recoil from. He needed her to be strong, to get back fully
in control of herself.

    From
now on she resolved to make that her task: to get a grip.

    She
arrived at the office shortly before Alison and found that their new desks had
been neatly arranged and everything cleaned and tidied. It looked more
professional already. She booted up Alison's vintage computer and checked her
emails. First was a formal message from Adam Crossley saying that the Attorney
General had considered her application for leave to apply to the High Court for
a rehearing of the inquest into Danny Wills's death and decided to grant it,
but on the strict understanding that it would be held in a professional
courtroom in Bristol Law Courts. Crossley signed off with a veiled threat: 'I
trust that your investigation will be reasonable, thorough and temperate. We
will observe with interest.'

    Jenny
dealt with her minor admin, then drafted the application to the High Court for
an order to quash the verdict in the Danny Wills inquest and to mount a
rehearing. She called the court offices in the Strand and badgered an official
in the list office to fix an appointment before a judge for two days' time.
With the Attorney General's leave, the hearing would be more or less a
formality. She'd send junior counsel down to a judge in chambers who would read
her affidavit and make the order.

    She
handed Alison the formal documents with instructions to have them couriered to
the Royal Courts of Justice immediately. She planned to open the inquest first
thing on Monday morning, taking everyone by surprise. Alison said she had
already had a call from an administrator at the Bristol Law Courts saying he'd
been contacted by the Attorney General's office, asking if a court could be
made available.

    It
felt as if the system had decided that if they couldn't stop her, they would
keep her under close scrutiny. Coroners had caused a lot of headaches in the
recent past: the Princess Diana inquest had dragged on for more than ten years
and got through five coroners, and the Oxfordshire coroner who dared to
investigate the deaths of British servicemen whose bodies were flown back to
his patch from Iraq found that the bodies were instead landed in the
jurisdictions of colleagues more willing to accept the army's explanations.
Jenny was not going to be forced into ignoring the ugly truth; she would expose
it, but keep her poise and dignity. If the media latched on to her, she would
present herself as elegant, determined and intellectual, never more than a
trace of concerned emotion in her voice.

    She
asked Alison if she had heard any more about the police investigation into Katy
Taylor's death.

    'Only
that they're still looking for the car. Could be false plates, which means
they'll be trawling through every blue Vectra in Bristol. Could take days.'

    'Have
they got hold of any of Katy's friends? She won't have been out on the street on
her own.'

    'Not
that I know of. Groups of kids are the toughest of all to get into.'

    'There
must be prostitutes working that area. If Katy was on the game—'

    'They'll
be trying, believe me, but there's no love lost there, either. You've got to have
at least three girls killed before they'll start talking. Mostly they're glad
the competition's thinning out.'

    'Really?'

    'Spend
a few months on the street, Mrs Cooper, you'll be surprised how cheap life is.'

    Jenny
returned to her office with the overnight death reports but couldn't
concentrate. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the teenagers whose paths must
have crossed with both Katy and Danny Wills. Someone out there must know if
there was a connection between them, or if Marshall had touched on something
big enough to put him in water so deep death was the only way out. She turned
over several morbid possibilities, but none of them squared the circle. If
crime was at the bottom of this, why did Marshall baulk?

    The
only lead she had was the girl Tara Collins had mentioned, Hayley Johnson.
After Tara had come to meet her at the inquest she'd been expecting a call but
had heard nothing. The rational thing to do would be to mention Hay- ley's name
to the police, but she still had a nagging distrust of them. She didn't
fundamentally trust Tara either - for all she knew, she could be a credit card
fraudster, and she hadn't flinched from threatening to expose Jenny's medical
records - but to get to talk to Hayley she'd have to plump for one of them.

    She
decided to call the mobile number Tara had left with her at the village hall.
It rang seven, eight times before a cautious voice answered.

    'Tara?'

    'Yes?'
She sounded terrible.

    'Jenny
Cooper. How are you?'

    'Not
too good . . .' Her voice was shaky, all the confidence bled from it.

    'The
charges?'

    'That
and getting mugged last night. Somebody jumped me.'

    'Who?'

    'I
didn't see. Stepped out behind me in the dark, hit me over the head right
outside my house. I think there were two of them.'

    'Any
witnesses?'

    'No.
None that'll say anything.'

    Jenny
paused, weighing what she was hearing, careful to keep a distance, wary in case
Tara was leading her on. 'What do you think they were after?'

    'I
had a bag. They didn't take it. All I can think is I've been trying to find out
where these credit card transactions came from. A computer guy I've got on it
thinks my ISP address was hijacked.'

    'Someone
stole your identity?'

    'My
online identity, at least. Stole some money, then dumped the evidence on my
computer. I know it's what happened, but proving it's going to be tough.'

    'Who
do you think's behind this?'

    'Put
it this way, it was when I started asking questions about Katy Taylor that I
got hit with the charges. Someone doesn't want me to make a connection.'

    'Do
you think it's safe to talk on the phone?'

    'I
doubt it.'

    'Maybe
we'd better meet.'

    She
pulled up in the supermarket car park in Bradley Stoke, the 1970s new town, now
a suburb on the north-east fringe of Bristol. After five minutes a white Fiat
Panda cruised past with Tara at the wheel. She spotted Jenny and pulled up in a
space opposite, walking over with a limp, the left side of her face swollen up.
Jenny leaned across and opened the door.

    Tara
climbed in with some effort. 'Must've cracked my hip when I fell.'

    'Your
face doesn't look too good, either.'

    'Wrecked
my chances of pulling for a couple of weeks.' She gave a painful half-smile.

    Jenny
wondered if men or women were her preference. An instinct told her the latter.
There was nothing feminine about Tara and she had that distance some gay women
have, emotionally at arm's length.