The Coroner (47 page)

    She
brought out the container and pressed slowly down on the cap: twist and
release. A bottle of sparkling water in the glove box, maybe dissolve them in
it first and then drink it, the bubbles helping to make it work faster. No,
better to put the pills in your mouth and rinse them down. The choice was
frustrating. She wanted the solution to be elegant. Effortless.

    A
Subaru pulled off the road ahead of her. An outdoorsy couple in their early
thirties emerged in matching walking boots, rainproofs tied around their
waists. He looked like a professional, a dentist Jenny guessed, from the neat
smiles they both had. As they walked past, she holding his hand, he looked in and
met Jenny's eyes, holding them for a moment as if he knew. As they turned down
the track, he glanced back over his shoulder, sensing something.

    Shit.
Just the kind who'd get involved.

    She
shot the woman a smile and turned the key in the ignition. Turning out of the
lay-by and heading back to Melin Bach, she thought, what's the hurry, why not
have a nice glass of wine first?

    The
telephone's persistent ringing entered her incoherent dreams and dragged her
back to consciousness. She was bunched up on the sofa with a vicious crick in
her neck. Light leaked around the closed curtains. On the rug covering the
flagstone floor were two empty bottles of red and a wine glass with an inch
still in the bottom, next to it two neat rows of pills, their empty containers
and an untouched tumbler of water. She stared at them, her eyes slowly coming
into focus, dimly recalling the ritual of laying them out late the previous
night, remembering how she had done it: imagining herself as a child counting
out sweets; then crawling on to the sofa to savour her final glass.

    Aching,
she swung her feet on to the floor, becoming aware of a dull sensation like
waking up to grief or the loss of a lover. Slowly the pieces of the previous
day reassembled themselves: her arrest, her suspension, David's call, and the
urge to escape, which had seduced her away from anger. Her body was a lead
weight, her mind even heavier.

    The
phone persisted, the caller determined to rouse her. She heaved herself across
the room and lifted the cordless receiver, pushing her tangled hair back from
her face.

    'Hello.'
Her voice was thick and croaky.

    'Mrs
Cooper?'

    She
cleared her throat. 'Yes.'

    'Professor
Lloyd, Newport General. I tried calling Mrs Trent but she's not answering her
phone.'

    Jenny
glanced at her watch and saw that it wasn't yet eight. 'Oh-'

    Lloyd
paused, as if embarrassed. 'I heard about what happened yesterday, but I didn't
know who else to call. I've had some more thoughts about Katy Taylor, you see.'

    He
waited for Jenny to respond, putting the onus on her. She tried to think, her
head throbbing now with every heartbeat as the undigested alcohol started to
recirculate through her system.

    'I've
been suspended from my post. I'm not sure there's much point talking to me.'

    Another
pregnant silence, then: 'But is it justified, Mrs Cooper?'

    There
was a knowingness in Lloyd's tone. It jolted her like a slap on the face,
snapping her reluctant mind back into her complaining body. It was her turn to
consider her words carefully.

    She
said, 'You're a Home Office pathologist, Professor. You know the system better
than I do.'

    'Quite.
Perhaps we could meet and talk, seeing as you've time on your hands.'

    'What
for?'

    'Perhaps
that had better wait. What do you say?'

    The
memory of her dream of dark rooms and ghosts dripped back into her
consciousness as she drove up over the hill, taking the winding road to Usk and
from there the dual carriageway to Newport. The images were sketchy - dark
inchoate figures with a brooding menace in an even darker space - but they
stuck like a stubborn stain. She felt the texture of the wheel beneath her
fingers, flicked the wipers when a shower scattered the windscreen, but her
nose was filled with the smell of damp brick and mouldering plaster, and
despite her breakfast-time pills her pulse thumped in anticipation of an unseen
predator. The jagged entrance to the secret room of her nightmares had opened a
little wider, what lay within tantalizingly close. Part of her wanted to stop
everything and journey into it, try to isolate and capture the monster, but
still the fear was too great, her instinct to medicate and push it all from
view stronger than her need to know.

    Once off
the country roads with their high, containing hedges and safely surrounded by
other vehicles, she allowed herself to recall the events of the previous
evening. Her memory of them seemed more remote than her intervening dreams. She
saw herself in the lay-by, a pale figure in a nondescript car fingering a
bottle of pills, tempted by the prospect of release yet strangely removed from
the source of her pain. The unreality of the images told her that this was how
it happened: how the suicidal managed to cross the threshold. Sitting
cross-legged on the rug, counting out the beta blockers, the thought of leaving
had been as comforting as the smell of church incense on a winter's evening.
The word death hadn't figured, only
peace.

    She
arrived at her destination still locked in a waking dream. She walked from her
car towards the Celtic Manor, the large hotel resort set incongruously at the
edge of the M4 on the outskirts of Newport, without feeling her feet on the
ground. Her voice was someone else's as she asked directions from the reception
clerk to the Forum cafe. She told herself it was a combination of her
medication and a deep hangover, but as she passed a happy party of hotel guests
on their way to the golf course and saw in their smiles something forbidding,
she knew it was more. Many times Dr Travis had told her that the psychotic
would project their disturbed emotions on to others - that madness could be
averted only by confronting those feelings before they became fully
disassociated from the self and all means of conscious control.

    Searching
for the health club coffee bar, humming inanely to the muzak, she accepted that
at last, after all these years, she was finally entering the end game; the
moment she had always dreaded had arrived. She had perhaps a few days to summon
the courage to plunge into the dark place inside her. And if she couldn't. . .
last night had shown her the route she might take; or which might take her.

    Professor
Lloyd was seated at a coffee table next to the glass screen overlooking the
hotel pool. He smiled brightly as she approached and rose to shake her hand.

    'So
glad you could make it, Mrs Cooper.' He gestured her to the low-slung chair
opposite his, wicker with tartan cushions. There was a pot of tea with two cups
waiting. 'This is the closest I've got to a club, I'm afraid, but it does the
job. I often steal away here on a rainy afternoon.'

    Jenny
glanced approvingly at the calming decor. 'Good for you.'

    She
lowered herself into the chair, which forced the occupant to recline. Professor
Lloyd stretched out opposite, maintaining a view of the cafe entrance, his body
relaxed but his eyes alert. She gave a noncommittal smile, happy for him to
take the lead. With no badge of office, she was only here for curiosity's sake,
after all.

    'Well
then, Mrs Cooper, I've been reading all about you, and hearing the odd word on
the grapevine. Two controversial inquests in your first fortnight. . .'

    'I
didn't go looking for them.'

    'I'm
sure you didn't.' He shook his head. 'No, I'm sure. Would you like some tea?'

    'Please.'

    He
carefully lifted the pot and poured her a cup, considering his angle of
approach as he stirred in the milk. He hesitated with the wet spoon, then laid
it on a paper napkin. 'I hate a drip on my saucer, don't you?'

    'Detest
it.'

    Jenny
sipped the tepid liquid. He watched her, as if searching for some clue in her
expression. 'I understand both inquests are currently adjourned.'

    'Again,
not my choice.'

    'No,
so I gather.' He took a drink from his own cup, buying a final moment before
committing himself. 'My thoughts about Katy, you see, were to a certain extent
prompted by what I read of your death-in-custody case - Danny Mills?'

    'Wills.'

    'Yes.
The poor boy who hanged himself while Katy was in the same institution.' He
gave her a look of innocent enquiry. 'You don't think there's any reason to
suppose their deaths were connected in any way?'

    Jenny
became aware of the feel of the cup in her hands, the smell of chlorine in the
air, her drifting spirit returning to her body as Professor Lloyd's words
concentrated her attention.

    'Why
do you think there was a connection?'

    He
brought his two hands together and rested them on his chin, as if in prayer.
'Before I go any further, Mrs Cooper, perhaps you could tell me what happened
to you, or what you
think
happened to you. I hate to give credence to
conspiracy theories, but I'm a man not far off his pension, with grown-up
children who shouldn't be still sadly dependent on him.'

    'Why
should I trust you? You could be part of this for all I know.'

    'Part
of what?'

    'The
reason my boyfriend and I were arrested the day after I discovered there
was
a connection.'

    'Do
you know if there was a tip-off?'

    'There
was more than that, there was a set-up. I have reason to suspect the company
that runs Portshead Farm Secure Training Centre has form for this sort of
thing. They may hold prisoners but they certainly don't take them.'

    Professor
Lloyd brought his hands up to cover his nose and eyes. If he wasn't a good
actor he was carrying out a serious and painful calculation. After a long
moment of reflection, he began to speak quietly, while looking steadily at
Jenny. 'Then you'll understand that what I'm telling you is off the record, at
least for the time being. This meeting never happened.'

    'Whatever
you want. There's nothing I can do anyway. Whoever they appoint after me is going
to bury both cases so deep they'll never see daylight again.' She shrugged and
took another sip of her tea.

    Lloyd
nodded, coming to a decision. 'What I have to say is rather speculative in any
event, but may be of interest.' He glanced towards the door to satisfy himself
he had an audience of only one. 'I've done a little reading. The literature on
ruptures of the glenohumeral ligament confirms that such injuries usually arise
from the arm being forced up behind the back, but it seems this mostly happens
in the case of arrest or where C and R methods are used in custodial
institutions.'

    'C
and R?'

    'Control
and restraint. Prison officers or medical orderlies in secure hospitals are
taught techniques to bring their non- cooperating charges to heel. They mostly
involve locking the elbow, forcing the subject to the ground, kneeling on the
spine and pushing the hand up the back. Once the prisoner is face down on the
floor, the officer can contain him or her with one hand, leaving the other free
to apply handcuffs or whatever else.'

    'Inject
something?'

    'Of
course. Sedatives, usually.'

    'You
think Katy's killer used C and R?'

    'Statistically
there's an eighty per cent likelihood, and her chipped front tooth would be
consistent with her face being pushed to the floor. The fact the chip was still
in her mouth suggests it happened almost immediately before death, perhaps even
in the final throes.'

    'If
she was the passenger in a car? Could the driver have pulled over and done this
inside the vehicle?'

    'She
was only very small, so I don't see why not.'

    'What
about the clump of hair ripped from the back of her head?'

    He
raised his eyes to the ceiling, imagining the scene. 'I suppose if her attacker
didn't have room to get his knee into her back he could have pushed her wrist
up far enough to get a handful of hair to anchor his grip, held her steady with
his left, injected her with the right.'