The Coroner (6 page)

    To
cope with the ever-rising numbers, the government had created the Youth Justice
Board, a quango charged with commissioning places for young offenders. Private
companies would bid to build and run new secure training centres and the board
would pick the winners. Portshead Farm was owned and run by UKAM Secure
Solutions Ltd, a company with a portfolio of correctional facilities across the
USA and now the UK. UKAM's business was security: concrete, bars, wire, cameras
and attendant personnel. Catering, cleaning, laundry, healthcare and education
were all subcontracted out. For this burgeoning industry the growing army of
young inmates was very good news indeed.

    In an
uncharacteristic fit of conscientiousness, Marshall had written a longhand note
listing the salient points in Danny Wills's recent history. Jenny worked her
way through it.

    Danny
came from a large and dysfunctional low-income family. His mother seemed to be
the one constant, but had numerous drugs convictions of her own. His own lengthy
record began at ten - the age of criminal responsibility - suggesting that he
had started lawbreaking well before.

    He
had convictions for possession of marijuana, amphetamines and crack cocaine,
ABH, criminal damage and a violent disorder. Two weeks before his death he had
been given an Antisocial Behaviour Order and ordered to wear an electronic tag
to enforce a curfew. Three days in, he cut the tag off 'as a prank' and was
hauled before the Youth Court for breach. The Youth Offending Team recommended
community service; the court gave him four months' detention and training.

    On 4
April Danny was received into Portshead Farm. The medical examiner, Nurse Linda
Raven, noted that he was 'difficult, obstructive and offensive' and during the
standard strip search he had threatened 'to fucking kill himself'. Judged a
potential suicide risk, he was placed in an observation cell, dressed only in a
sturdy, one-piece gown which Marshall described as 'like a horse blanket',
where he remained for three days before being introduced to the male house
unit.

    Once
transferred, Marshall recorded that Danny refused to attend classes and was
reduced to the lowest level of privileges, bronze, which meant only three pairs
of underwear per week, no television or confectionery. He lived this way for
six days, only leaving his room to eat in the canteen and to shower. It was on
his seventh night in the house unit that he died.

    A
final note, added in a different pen, recorded the fact that Danny's mother had
telephoned the director's office several times immediately after the sentencing
hearing to express her concern about her son's state of mind. Marshall's last
note read: 'Director failed to respond to calls.'

    Jenny
flicked back through the file and found the director's statement. Mrs Elaine
Lewis, MPhil, MBA, wrote that Danny had been subjected to the same rigorous and
thorough-going checks as all other new trainees, and had benefited from the
special attention of the highly trained secure care officers on his house unit.
She regretted not having responded to Mrs Wills's 'alleged' telephone calls,
but emphasized that in any event there was nothing more that she or her staff
could or would have done for him.

    Jenny
closed the file with the same feeling of depressed resignation she had felt
countless times during her years dealing with the troubled, self-destructive
young. She could picture Danny vividly: violent, struggling, spitting, lashing
out at and abusing the staff, consumed with self-loathing. Shoved in a tiny
cell without clothes or dignity, a plastic meal tray passed through the
inspection hatch, an uninterested face glancing in each half-hour, a tick in
the box: a claustrophobic nightmare.

    What
the system did to young offenders was, in her long experience, far more
calculatedly brutal than anything most of them had done on the outside. To
remove all love, affection and human contact from kids at their most vulnerable
was barbarism of a kind she had never begun to understand. She let out a weary sigh.
Having staked her future on leaving all things child-related behind, the irony
of being pitched straight into an adolescent's death wasn't lost on her.

    So
much for moving on.

    She
heard Alison arrive back in the outer office and exclaim in surprise. She
appeared in the doorway clutching a sheaf of papers. 'Didn't you see this on
the fax, Mrs Cooper? It's the Katy Taylor post-mortem report.'

    She
handed the still-warm sheets of paper across the desk.

    'About
time,' Jenny said, and glanced at Peterson's conclusion: heroin overdose.

    'I
shouldn't count on him making a habit of it. Just trying to impress you, I
expect. What would you like me to do first? I was thinking of clearing out
those old filing cabinets.'

    'That'd
be good. But before you do - I had a call from a Tara Collins at the
Bristol
Evening Post.
Ring any bells?'

    Alison
thought for a moment and shook her head.

    'She
covered the Danny Wills inquest. She seemed to know quite a lot about Mr
Marshall's investigation.'

    'He
never mentioned her.'

    'What
was your involvement with the case?'

    'Very
little really. I was on leave the last week of April - my husband was poorly.
My first day back was the start of the inquest.'

    'How
did Mr Marshall seem?'

    'His
normal self. A bit quiet, I suppose. Why? What was this reporter saying?'

    Jenny
considered her words carefully. 'She had the impression he conducted a very
thorough investigation but hurried the inquest rather. She seemed to think
there was something suspicious about it.'

    'He
didn't like to make a meal of inquests. Never did. He said it only upset the
family.'

    'You
knew him better than anyone else - was there anything about the case that was
troubling him?'

    'Like
what?'

    'I've
only looked through a few of his files, but he does seem to have worked quite
hard on this one. And from the messages the mother left on his answerphone it's
clear she felt let down. He seems to have gone back on a promise to let her
give evidence.'

    'I
can't imagine him making promises. That just wasn't in his nature. He gave
relatives sympathy, that's all. He was very skilled at dealing with the
bereaved.'

    'You don't
think that in this case he might have made an exception, decided to get a
little more involved than usual?'

    'I've
no reason to think so. You've seen the papers - there's nothing improper, is
there?'

    Jenny
shrugged. 'Nothing obvious.'

    'That's
what I thought.' Alison seemed twitchy. The subject had stirred something in
her, Jenny could feel it.

    'This
reporter clearly thinks there's an untold story and I got the impression she
intends to pursue it. If there is anything to be unearthed I'd rather get to it
first.'

    She
met Alison's gaze, no doubt in her mind now that her officer had something to
tell her.

    Alison
looked down at the floor. 'I want you to know that in all the time I knew him,
Mrs Cooper, I only had respect for him. He put people first. He could be almost
too kind to them. Sometimes the phone in here would never stop ringing - I
suppose because he was so calm and reassuring . . . He was always professional,
but now and again, I saw it in him, he'd get involved. He'd start to brood, go
into himself. That's partly why I took my leave when I did: he'd become grumpy
as hell, quite honestly. Snapped my head off one day; I answered him back, I'm
afraid.' She faltered, only just holding at bay the tears Jenny could see were
close to coming.

    'You
were fond of him, weren't you?'

    Alison
flashed her a look. 'Not like that, Mrs Cooper.'

    'I
didn't mean—'

    'We
were good friends, that's all. We were getting on each other's nerves, so I
took my holiday.'

    'And
when you came back?'

    'He
was quiet. . . but I could tell he was sorry for losing his temper. We just
carried on where we left off.'

    'He
didn't talk to you about the case?'

    'He
mentioned how upsetting it was. The mother was very distressed in the courtroom,
of course - kept calling out. I had to escort her outside at one point.'

    'He
didn't express any feelings about the verdict?'

    'Only
that it was what he expected. For what it's worth, I don't think the jury could
have done anything else.'

    Jenny
glanced around her dreary office, beginning to get a sense of how Marshall
might have been feeling in his last days. Stuck in here by himself, wanting to
help a grieving family but frightened to put his head above the parapet. A wife
and four daughters at home, and dealing with Alison, who clearly had feelings
for him beyond the professional. A lot of competing emotions. Men weren't good
with those.

    Jenny
said, 'And you're quite sure that there was no connection between the Wills
case and Mr Marshall's death?'

    'What
kind of connection?'

    'I
don't know.'

    'Harry
had a heart condition, we all knew that. You only have to work here for a few
months to realize how many men in their fifties drop dead without warning.
Anyway, reporters are all vermin in my experience. Ignore her, that's my
advice.'

    'I
think I ought to have a word with Mrs Wills, at least. If only to check that
nothing was missed.' She saw Alison stiffen with indignation. 'I'm not
suggesting for a moment—'

    'I
can assure you, Mr Marshall would have done everything he could.'

    Realizing
there was nothing more to be gained from the conversation, Jenny said, 'I'm
sure you're right. I do appreciate how difficult the last few weeks must have
been.'

    Her
placatory tone caused Alison's eyes to redden. Embarrassed, she hurriedly
excused herself, saying she was going to make tea.

    If,
after Tara Collins's call, Jenny needed further evidence that there was
something amiss about the Wills inquest, the atmosphere in the office at that
moment was it. She listened to Alison stifling quiet sobs as she busied herself
in the kitchenette, filling the kettle and clattering cups. Her grief was
palpable.

    Coroner.
The title sounded so grand, so removed from the ordinary. But sitting at her desk,
the air thick with suppressed, painful emotion, she could have been a child
again, hiding in her bedroom, trying to shut out the sound of her parents'
incessant arguing.

    Why
did life always pitch her into the middle of other people's crises?

    Jenny
had always resisted notions of fate, but reaching again for Danny Wills's file
she felt that somehow this was meant to be; that the dead boy was touching the
deadness in that secret part of her where the darkness lay.

    If
she had learned one thing from her 'episode' it was never to ignore her
instincts. Turning once more through the pages, she knew that while their bones
had been ground to dust, neither the young prisoner nor Harry Marshall was yet
at rest.

    The
Broad lands Estate was a network of tired-looking streets. Prefabricated houses
dominated, built some time postwar with little care and even less thought to
future residents. Now nestled in the crook between the M5 motorway to the west
and the M4 to the north, the low distant rumble of traffic was ever present.

    As
sinks go, Jenny thought, it was not too bad. If the high- rises of east London,
Birmingham and Glasgow were the seventh circle of hell, this was only the
second or third, but it smelt of poverty. Not a single dwelling was maintained.
Litter hung in the breeze and collected under bushes, slouching kids buried in
sweat-top hoods clustered on corners smoking, the schools they should have been
attending an irrelevance to their lives of drugs, sex and petty crime.

    While
practising childcare law Jenny had visited many such places and she always came
away shocked by the narrowness of the inhabitants' world. It was as if the
streets immediately around them were the limits of the far horizon. She had
long since concluded that it was the simple crushing boredom of life on estates
like these which sucked the hope out of people. There were no challenges, only
the law to kick against.