The Coroner (35 page)

    They
moved on to the female house unit. The layout was identical, the only
difference being that there were doors on the toilet cubicles long enough to
preserve some modesty and the showers had dividers between them. It wasn't
much. There was no such thing as privacy here; nowhere a child could go and
hide or lose herself to her imagination.

    They
crossed the quadrangle again and passed through the education block, where the
trainees were divided into four classes. Jenny glanced through windows in the
classroom doors: kids dressed in identical navy tracksuits and black plimsolls,
teachers struggling to keep control. They had an energy you could feel: defiant
and hostile.

    Sue
leaned with arms crossed inside the canteen door while Jenny looked around.
Most of the time it was a gym, but at one end tables with benches attached
folded down from the walls. Behind a serving hatch two female cooks, who were
chatting in a Slavic-sounding language, were heating up frozen meals which were
to be served in red moulded plastic trays: big hollow for main course, little
hollow for dessert. Cups and cutlery were made of the same material.

    Through
the serving hatch she noticed a man coming up from under the sink with a
spanner. He had a crew cut and rounded, stocky features, the same look about
his eyes and cheekbones as the cooks. She remembered the maintenance man who
had found Danny's body.

    Jenny
stepped up to the counter. 'Excuse me. You wouldn't be Mr Smirski?'

    The
man looked round. Jenny gave him a disarming smile and saw him run his eyes
over her. 'No. Sorry.' He spoke with a heavy accent.

    'Can
you tell me where I can find him?'

    The
man shrugged. 'He went back to Poland.'

    'When?'

    He
gave her a cautious look.

    'I'm
a coroner. I need to ask him some questions, about a boy who died here in
April.'

    He
turned and said something to the cooks in what Jenny presumed was Polish, who
then discussed it heatedly between themselves. She heard Sue's footsteps plodding
towards her, coming to check what all the fuss was about.

    Jenny
said, 'He can't have been gone that long.'

    One
of the women seemed to win the argument and exchanged more words with the man,
who turned to her and said they thought he left about three weeks ago.

    'Any
idea why?

    The
man translated and the women shook their heads. No one seemed to know. The man
said, 'Polish people always come and go. That's how it is.'

    Sue
arrived at Jenny's shoulder. 'All right?'

    Jenny
said, 'I'll be taking further statements from your staff. I need to speak to
Jan Smirski. He was a maintenance man here in April.'

    Sue
said, 'Maintenance staff are employed by an outside contractor. You'll have to
speak to them.'

    'I
will.'

    Last
stop was the reception and medical centre. The female nurse was sitting behind
the desk reading a magazine when Sue hit the buzzer. She flicked the switch
letting them through, annoyed at being taken away from her celebrity gossip.
Before Sue opened her mouth, Jenny announced herself as the coroner and asked
whether she was Nurse Linda Raven, the person who saw Danny Wills on his
admittance.

    The
nurse, a woman in her upper thirties, was almost good-looking, but she had hard
grey eyes and found it difficult to smile. She said yes, she was, and reached
under the desk, bringing out a file she said was Danny's. She added that the
other coroner, Mr Marshall, had seen it when he came round in April. Jenny
glanced through it, not afraid to let Nurse Raven and Sue wait in silence while
she took her time absorbing the contents. She found nothing new, just the bare
bones of Danny's assessment and the thirty-minute observation log that had been
kept while he was held in an observation cell. The entries were brief and revealed
little:
Trainee sitting on cot bench. Responded to greeting.
There were
lots of questions Jenny would have liked to ask Nurse

    Raven
but they could wait for the inquest, better to leave her guessing.

    She
closed the file and tucked it under her arm. 'I'll keep hold of this. I'd like
to see the cell in which Danny was held.'

    Nurse
Raven looked at Sue, who merely raised her eyebrows. What could she do? The
nurse grabbed her security tag and crossed the tiled floor, swiped it over a
reader and led Jenny and Sue through another secure steel door into a
windowless corridor like those beneath many courts across the country: along
the right-hand side a row of half a dozen cells, each with an observation hatch
and a whiteboard on which the occupant's name was written in felt pen. It was
hot in here, smelling of Jeyes Fluid and unwashed bodies. The male nurse Jenny
had seen earlier examining the young boy was sitting in a glassed-in booth at
the far end of the corridor watching a small television set.

    Jenny
said, 'How many have you got in here?'

    Nurse
Raven said, 'Just one at the moment.'

    Jenny
set off along the row of cells. One, two and three were empty. She stopped
outside the fourth and saw a black boy lying on the cot shelf wearing a white
paper gown that covered his body from neck to knees. Underneath it he was naked
and barefoot, the gown cut off at the shoulders. The cell was empty save for a
toilet bowl and a meal tray which lay untouched on the floor. He was the size
of a man, but his features were still childlike, his skin smooth. He lay
perfectly still, eyes half closed, staring at the ceiling, his hands folded
across his stomach. The whiteboard said his name was 'Med- way, Leonard'.

    Jenny
said, 'Has this young man been seen by a psychiatrist?'

    'Yes.
The contract has been agreed now. He's on antidepressant medication.'

    'What's
wrong with him?'

    'He
made a suicide attempt in a police cell.'

    'What's
he in for?'

    'About
twenty-five TWOCs and assaulting a police officer.'

    'What
happened to the heavy gown Danny Wills was dressed in?'

    'It's
only needed if they're trying to harm themselves. Leonard's no trouble.'

    The
boy reached down under his gown, tugged it up a little and started to
masturbate. Jenny looked away. Sue and Nurse Raven stood and watched for a
moment.

    Sue
said, 'He can't be that depressed.'

    Jenny
left Portshead Farm with a feeling of frustration which, as she drove back
towards town, grew steadily into a rage. She cursed at other cars hogging lanes
on the motorway and honked at drivers slow away from the lights. She didn't
care if they could hear her or see her gestures in the mirror. Screw them all.

    Letting
the anger fill her felt good. All the way through her inspection she had wanted
to protest, to slap that fat, bone- headed moron Sue in the face and tell her,
look, you've got kids held prisoner here, children with the bad luck to be born
to people like Simone Wills. And what do you do? Lock them up and humiliate
them, turn them into bitter, violent young men and women who just want to kick
out and hurt someone, anyone. Dealing with those people, the prick of a
security guy, the self-important Elaine Lewis and the nurse who'd prostituted
her profession to act as jailer, brought back memories of years of impotent
fury. Her mind filled with a procession of long-forgotten faces and buried
grievances: social workers who'd left kids to spend nights alone in police
cells, too lazy to bail them out; staff in care homes who'd looked the other
way while colleagues abused teenagers; judges who'd refused to criticize the
system even when its failings led to violence and death. She knocked the bumper
of the car behind when she parked and heard something crack, but didn't give a
damn. If anyone crossed her now, she'd most likely hit them.

    She
thumped through the door into reception and immediately started dictating
instructions to Alison. The inquest was going to start on Monday, Simone Wills
was to be informed immediately. Elaine Lewis, Nurse Raven, Darren Hogg (the
CCTV operator) and the secure care workers in the male house unit were to be
summoned to attend. Elaine Lewis was to provide Jan Smirski's whereabouts and
details of the trainees occupying the rooms either side of Danny's by close of
business. The company who serviced the security cameras was to nominate a
representative to come to court with a statement giving chapter and verse of
when the cameras in the male house unit were reported faulty. When she had
finished, she shoved through the door into her office and started on the pile
of paperwork that had gathered on her desk, tearing through each death and
post-mortem report like a prize fighter taking on all comers. For a highly
productive two hours she felt furious and invincible. Nothing and no one would
stand in her way.

    Late
in the afternoon Alison knocked cautiously and came in with some messages.
Still pumped with adrenalin, Jenny listened impatiently, firing off responses
as if her officer was wasting her time. Alison dealt with her patiently, wary
of Jenny's dangerous mood. Minor matters dealt with, she said there was good
and bad news from Portshead. The good news was they had provided an address for
a fifteen-year-old burglar called Terry Ryan who had occupied the cell next to
Danny's. She had spoken to Terry's mother, who said he could get to the inquest
on Tuesday if he got bail on Monday - he'd been picked up on a bench warrant.
The cell on the other side had apparently been empty. The bad news was that the
company who employed Jan Smirski had no idea where he had gone. He had handed
in his notice three weeks ago saying he had family business back home. He left
no forwarding address. She'd tried googling him, but there were a lot of Jan
Smirskis in Poland and the few she'd phoned didn't speak English. Jenny said to
try harder, get his bank details out of the employer, do whatever a policeman
would to find someone. Alison nodded, a touch resentful, then said she'd had an
email from Grantham threatening to cut off their funding unless Jenny returned
a full set of accounts within seven days.

    'Why
the hell haven't we got an accountant?'

    'He
won't pay for one.'

    'Well,
phone him up and tell him we're having one anyway.'

    'I'd
rather you made that sort of call, Mrs Cooper.'

    'I'm
not asking you, Alison, I'm instructing you. This is business. Just make the
call.'

    'And
I'd rather you didn't speak to me like that, if you don't mind.'

    'Like
what?'

    'As
if I'm some sort of servant. I'm not. And when Mr Marshall ran this office he
never once adopted that attitude.'

    Jenny
took a deep breath. 'I'm not adopting an
attitude,
I'm asking you to
make a simple phone call. I couldn't care less what your relationship is with
Grantham. This is a strictly professional matter and if he takes it personally
it's his problem, not yours.'

    Alison
stood her ground, her expression saying she was going to get something off her
chest. 'It's not about him, Mrs Cooper, it's about you. I don't like having to
say this, but ever since you started I've found you extremely abrupt, and at
times downright rude. You seem to be very angry, and in my experience that's
not a helpful emotion in this job.'

    'Well,
as we're being honest with each other, I have to say I've found you obstructive
and reluctant to take on new ideas, and you give every impression of not
enjoying having me as your boss.'

    'You
haven't gone out of your way to make it a pleasant experience.'

    'Maybe
that's because I'm two weeks in and I've done nothing but shovel up the crap
Marshall left me.'

    'It
was your choice.'

    Jenny
exploded. 'What do you expect me to do? Let it lie? Pretend Marshall did a good
job? I don't care what your feelings were for him, he was negligent, for God's
sake.'

    'Oh,
take a bloody pill.' Alison wrenched at the door handle.

    'What
did you say?'

    Alison
spun round. 'You clearly can't cope. Everyone knows you left your last job
because you cracked up.' She walked out, the door slamming behind her.

    'Come
back here and apologize or you're sacked.'