The Coroner (58 page)

    She
reached for her temazepam and shook out another dose. It would dull her, but
she had to make a calculated risk of her own: to find the strength to beat something
out of the two remaining witnesses Williams's men had rounded up and hauled to
court just before the lunch break: Kevin Stewart and Darren Hogg. If she didn't
make headway with one of them, the jury would still be left with no alternative
but to return a verdict of suicide. She would have failed, with only herself to
blame.

    She
looked at the single tablet in her hand and wondered what it said about her,
the fragility of life and the elusiveness of truth that any hope of justice
depended on her swallowing it.

    Darren
Hogg, the Portshead Farm CCTV operator, claimed a drunk housemate had answered
the door to the process server on Saturday night and had forgotten to hand him
the papers. It raised a laugh from the jury. Unsmiling, Jenny pushed him to
recall any incidents he may have seen in the days leading up to Danny's death
where forcible restraint was used on him. Hogg said he hadn't seen any and
reminded her that the camera covering the corridor in the male house unit was
down. She asked whether he had seen any incidents where restraint was used on
any of the inmates in any part of Ports- head Farm in the days leading up to
Danny's death. Again, she met with denial. If restraint was used, he insisted,
he hadn't seen it.

    Losing
patience, she said, 'Tell me about an occasion,
any
occasion, when
you've seen members of staff forcibly restrain an inmate.'

    Hogg,
dressed in his brown uniform, his thin tie done up tight to his collar, didn't
appear fazed. 'It happens now and again, someone kicks off, they've got to be
brought under control.'

    'Tell
me what you have seen, a typical incident.'

    Hogg
scratched his acne-scarred neck, which was red with shaving burn. 'They just
keep the kid up against the wall or whatever, wait till he calms down.'

    'Have
you seen inmates pushed to the floor, officers kneeling on their backs, hands
forced up to their necks?'

    He
gave a noncommittal shake of his head. 'Can't say that I have, ma'am.'

    'Never?'

    'No.'

    Jenny,
at boiling point, paused for a moment to calm down. 'Mr Hogg, I'll accept that
for a man who spends his life looking at CCTV monitors you are extremely
unobservant, but surely you can tell me the name of one officer you have seen
using a forcible restraint technique on a trainee.'

    'Sorry.'

    'How
long have you worked at Portshead Farm?'

    'Three
years.'

    'And
you can't give me the name of one single officer?'

    'Not
so that I could be sure, no.'

    Her
patience gave way. 'You're lying to this court, aren't you?'

    'No,
ma'am.'

    'What
you're asking us to believe is so incredible it simply cannot be true.'

    'No.'

    'And
if you've lied about one thing, nothing else you have told us can be trusted
either, can it? We can't believe you when you say the camera was down in the
male house unit.'

    'It
was.'

    'Or
that Kevin Stewart made regular thirty-minute checks on all occupants of the
unit throughout the night.'

    'He
did.'

    Hartley
rose to his feet. 'Ma'am, merely in a spirit of assistance to the court, I
would remind you of the coroner's obligation to avoid any appearance of bias.'

    'Mr
Hartley, I would like to remind this witness that he has sworn to tell the
whole truth, something I am quite satisfied he has failed utterly to do.'

    Hartley
exchanged a surprised glance with his fellow counsel and sat back in his seat
to add another heading to his swelling grounds of appeal.

    Jenny
turned to the witness. 'I have no further interest in you, Mr Hogg, other than
to order you to pay a fine of five hundred pounds for contempt in failing to
attend court this morning.'

    
'Five
hundred?
I can't afford that.'

    'Then
you'll go to prison for five days.' She turned to the constable who had brought
him to court. 'Make sure Mr Hogg doesn't go anywhere. I'll deal with him at the
end of the day.'

    It
was Golding's turn to interrupt in the spirit of assistance. 'Ma'am, shouldn't
Mr Hogg at least have been given the opportunity to seek legal representation
before being sentenced to imprisonment?'

    'Are
you offering, Mr Golding?'

    He
looked over at the security guard. 'Well, I—'

    'I
can assure you, I intend to be even-handed. All the witnesses who failed to answer
their summons will receive the same punishment.' She turned to Hartley. 'Except
Mrs Lewis, of course.'

    Golding
sat back down and conferred with Pamela Sharpe, who picked up a textbook,
flicking urgently to the relevant law. Their solicitors rushed to the back of
the hall to reassure Grantham and Peterson they wouldn't be going to prison.
The constable stepped forward and led Hogg, complaining loudly, to the side of
the room.

    Ignoring
his protests and fired up by her show of strength, Jenny ordered Kevin Stewart
to the witness chair.

    The
Scot was even more intransigent than Hogg. His explanation for not answering
his summons was that he assumed there had been a mistake - he had said
everything he had to say last week. He denied being involved in any use of
forcible restraint on Danny and had no knowledge of any occasion on which he
had been brought physically to heel.

    'Are
you telling me that in the six days Danny was in the house unit, you don't
recall him having been physically restrained once?'

    'Not
on my shifts.'

    'So
it could have happened during the day when you weren't there?'

    'I
wouldn't know.'

    'No
record is kept if there is a violent altercation with a trainee?'

    'Not
unless it's something serious.'

    'Danny
had major bruising and a patch of his hair ripped out.'

    'No
one said anything to me. And he never gave me any trouble.'

    'Mr
Stewart, we have evidence from the pathologist that at some time shortly before
his death, Danny was involved in a violent struggle which bore all the
hallmarks of him being subjected to control and restraint procedures. Are you
asking me to believe you have no knowledge of that?'

    'Yes,
I am.'

    'There
was no gossip in the house unit, no talk about it?'

    'None
that I heard.'

    'Your
colleagues on the earlier shift didn't tell you to keep an eye out for him
because they'd had trouble?'

    'No,
ma'am.'

    Jenny
glanced at the jury and sensed they were with her, suspicious of Stewart's
evasiveness, asking themselves what he was hiding.

    'How
often do you have to use forcible restraint?'

    'Every
week or so. Not that often.'

    'And
would you force a trainee face down on the floor and push his arms up his
back?'

    'Very
rarely.'

    'But
it happens.'

    'If
there's no other way, you have to.'

    'If
it's that rare, it's all the more surprising that no one mentioned it to you.
It's just the kind of thing you'd talk about with colleagues, isn't it?'

    Stewart
looked straight at the jury and answered with the same emotionless
matter-of-factness he'd shown in the witness box the week before. 'I don't know
how Danny got those injuries. Perhaps he'd had a run in with staff I didn't
know about, perhaps it was with some of the other boys. All I know is that he
was fine at lights out, and as far as I was aware nothing untoward happened
after that time.'

    Jenny
said, 'Dr Peterson says that it's possible Danny was unconscious or only
partially conscious when the sheet went around his neck.'

    'He's
wrong.'

    'And
we're not to read anything suspicious into the fact that the camera wasn't
working in the corridor?'

    'You
can read into it what you like. It was nothing to do with me.'

    'Don't
be insolent, Mr Stewart, we are dealing with a child's death.'

    He
folded his hands on the table in front of him, not offering any apology. More
so than for the halfwit Hogg, she felt contempt for this man. He was not
obstructive out of stupidity, but out of calculated self-interest. She could
have balled up her fists and hit him hard in the face until he bled; she could
have thrashed him senseless and dug her nails into his eyeballs until he
spilled his dirty secrets.

    Instead
she forced herself to keep her voice level. 'Do you feel any remorse at all for
what happened to Danny Wills?'

    'I'm
sorry he hanged himself, of course.'

    'Then
why haven't you offered a single word of assistance? Why haven't you offered
any suggestion of who might have inflicted those injuries?'

    'I
don't know who.'

    'Mr Stewart,
you work in that institution. You knew all the staff and all the male trainees
at the time of Danny's death. Either you have made a personal decision
deliberately to withhold information from this inquest or you have been
instructed by your employers to do so. Which is it?'

    Hartley
objected. 'Ma'am, I resent the implication of that question. No evidence
whatsoever has been offered that suggests my clients have sought to suppress
relevant information.'

    'What
other conclusion can I draw, Mr Hartley? This witness clearly isn't being
completely honest and nor was Mr Hogg. And Mrs Lewis was so intent on avoiding
this inquiry she left the country. It doesn't take a highly educated legal mind
to realize that your clients are terrified of anything approximating the truth
being heard in this court.'

    'Are
you sure you meant to express yourself in quite that way, ma'am?'

    Kevin
Stewart laughed, only a short derisory burst, but enough to snap her last
strands of self-control. She railed at Hartley. 'I am sick of hearing your
sneering, sarcastic tone. I have no doubt that you were personally involved in
the decision to allow Mrs Lewis to flee the court's jurisdiction and I will be
asking the police to investigate. I will also be asking them to look into who
instructed Mr Hogg and Mr Stewart not to cooperate with this inquest. Your
clients may think that enough money spent on organized obfuscation can get them
the outcome they want, but I will not,
I shall
not allow that to
happen.'

    Her
outburst rang around the courtroom. In the silence that followed, Hartley
tapped the tips of his fingers together, then closed his notebook and replaced
the cap on his fountain pen. He looked up with a pained, regretful expression.

    'I'm
afraid, ma'am, that your remarks leave me with no option other than to go to a
higher court to seek an order quashing whatever verdict this inquest may arrive
at, if indeed it proceeds that far. The erratic nature of your conduct of this
case, your clear indications of bias, not to mention the bizarre events of last
week, leave me with no other option.'

    He
picked up his file and, followed by his solicitor, made his way through the
astonished public gallery towards the door. Golding and Pamela Sharpe exchanged
a look. Pamela rose uncertainly to her feet. 'Mr Golding and I also share my
learned friend Mr Hartley's sentiments, but will remain in the interests of our
clients.'

    Jenny
gazed out over the sea of stunned faces. She had given the journalists their
moment of drama and the evening headlines had already been written:
Lawyers
Walk Out on Drugs Shame Coroner.
Moreton would pick up the first stories on
his email this evening and read another slew in the morning. The call would
come before she sat at ten a.m. She'd had her chance and she'd blown it. She
wanted to apologize to Simone Wills, who was looking across at her with a
perplexed expression: she'd like to say she'd tried her best, but deep down she
knew she hadn't.