The Coroner (60 page)

    'What
happened after that?'

    'It
was all quiet . . . Mr Stewart didn't go up and down again till about six.
That's when he saw Danny.' Before Jenny intervened, he said, 'It wasn't
unusual. He didn't really bother when the kids were asleep.'

    Jenny
said, 'Mr Hogg, tell me how often you saw trainees being forcibly restrained by
staff at Portshead Farm.'

    'Every
day. They have to. Some of them are like wild animals. How else are they going
to control them?'

    She
eased back in her chair and allowed herself a moment to take in the full sweep
of the courtroom: Alison pulling tissues from her sleeve to hand to Simone;
Hartley and his crew in a desperate huddle; Williams, quietly smiling;
Peterson, pensive, staring into space; Sharpe and Golding, their clients momentarily
forgotten, as gripped and horrified by what they were hearing as the jury.

    Jenny
turned to Hogg for one last question. 'Tell me, do you recall what kind of car
Sean Loughlin drove?'

    Hogg pushed
up his chin in a strange contortion as he tried to picture it. 'Yeah ... I
think it was a Vectra. A blue one.'

    It
was during the brief adjournment Jenny called for both herself and the jury to
absorb the full impact of the afternoon's evidence that Alison knocked on her
office door and came in with the news that she had used Williams's laptop to go
online and check the itemized office phone bill for the months of April and
May. She handed her a streaky printout which showed Marshall had gone into the
office on the morning of Saturday 21 April and made numerous calls to Portshead
Farm and to numbers which tallied with those on the staff roster he'd been
working through. Jenny noticed that Loughlin's name did not appear on this
document. Between these calls Harry had tried unsuccessfully to get through to
Katy Taylor's mobile, but at 12.52. he had connected with her number for three
and a half minutes. What was said, they would never know, and the jury could
not be allowed to speculate, but if she had mentioned Loughlin, Marshall had
left no record of it among his papers. It was a detail Harry had taken with
him, but Jenny could imagine him, frantic, after first receiving the
photographs, then hearing of Katy's death, weeding Danny's file for anything
which could later incriminate him; but as he tipped into despair, succumbing to
an overwhelming conscience and locking Katy's file in the drawer in the
desperate hope of posthumous redemption. She could tell from Alison's fixed,
though pained expression that her policeman's mind was playing through a
similar scenario, but this was not the occasion for such conjecture: grief was
enough to cope with for now. There would be plenty of time for her to deal with
Harry's shame.

    She
summed up the evidence to the jury until past five o'clock, then carefully
explained the range of potential verdicts open to them. To return a verdict of
suicide or unlawful killing, they had to be satisfied to the criminal standard
of proof: beyond reasonable doubt. For all other potential verdicts -
accidental death, misadventure, neglect or an open verdict - the civil standard
- the balance of probabilities - applied. And although they had no eyewitness
account of what happened at the precise moment of Danny Wills's death, they
were entitled to form an opinion from the patchwork of circumstantial evidence.
How credible they found each of the witnesses and what weight they chose to
give their testimony were matters for them to decide, applying common sense.
Lastly, she told them to be as precise as possible in their findings: a
coroner's jury had to determine in as much detail as the evidence would justify
the exact time, cause and circumstances of death.

    The
jury retired to the only available room - the one Jenny had used as an office -
leaving her to hover alone in the only other private space: a small, windowless
kitchen that smelt of ageing lino. Arvel had thoughtfully erected a folding
table and chair but it was a long way from what she'd pictured when she'd
thought of a coroner's chambers. Yet its cosy, communal domesticity somehow
seemed to fit the intimacy of her task. Her job was not to judge and condemn a
criminal, but to discover, in so far as was possible, what had caused a young,
vulnerable and confused soul to make an unhappy and untimely departure from his
earthly body.

    The
jury took less than forty minutes to reach a verdict. There was a respectful
silence as they filed back into the hall and resumed their seats.

    Jenny
said, 'Could the foreman please stand?'

    A
confident young woman in the back row stood up, holding the completed form of
inquisition.

    'Madam
Foreman, have you reached a unanimous decision to all the questions on the form
of inquisition and have you put your signatures to the same?'

    'We
have.'

    'So
that those answers may be heard, could you please state aloud the name of the
deceased.'

    'Daniel
Wills.'

    'Injury
or disease causing his death.'

    'Asphyxiation
due to strangulation.'

    'Time
and place in which injury was sustained.'

    'Daniel
Wills died shortly after two a.m. on 14 April in his cell at Portshead Farm
Secure Training Centre.'

    'Conclusion
of the jury as to the cause of death.'

    'Daniel
Wills was unlawfully killed by Sean Loughlin, a nurse at Portshead Farm.
Loughlin placed him in forced restraint, causing him injuries which rendered
him unconscious. Believing he was dead, Loughlin hanged his body by a sheet
from the bars of his cell window to give the appearance of suicide.'

    Over
the sound of Simone Wills's tears Jenny thanked the jury for their efforts and
informed them that she would be handing her file immediately to the police,
recommending that Sean Loughlin be investigated for murder. Without missing a
beat, she ordered Grantham and Peterson to the front of the court and sentenced
them both to five days' imprisonment for contempt. Their lawyers would scurry
to a High Court judge to appeal, but at least they'd taste a night in prison.
Williams had told her he'd have a car outside ready to drive them to Swansea, a
jail that never liked to let an Englishman go.

    Amid
the ensuing uproar she met Alison's steady gaze and mouthed a heartfelt thank
you.

    It was
late afternoon. She pulled up on the newly mown cart track and came around the
back of the house to find Steve in flip-flops and cut-offs, his shirt soaked
through with sweat, admiring the wide stripes he'd made on the lawn with an old
iron roller. Alfie was lying, stretched out on his side, in the shade by the
back door.

    Jenny
said, 'What have you done? It looks like the suburbs.'

    'It
appeals to my sense of order.'

    'Since
when did you have one of those?'

    'Six
years of architecture can't have been for nothing.'

    She
dumped her briefcase on the scrub-top table and took off her suit jacket. After
a rainy June, July had at last brought out the sun.

    'You
never told me what stopped you finishing, apart from the crazy girlfriend.'

    'Fear
of becoming a man in a suit, I suppose. Wife, kids, mortgage, all that.'

    'There
are worse things.'

    He
turned to look at her, his eyes drifting over her blouse, the two buttons
undone at the top. 'I know.' He started to push the roller back to the mill.
'You had a call from Alison a while ago. Said she'd been trying to reach you
for the last two hours.'

    'I've
been busy. What did she want?'

    'She
got the DNA results - the hairs they found in Loughlin's car turned out to be
Katy Taylor's. I think she said they're charging him with murder.' He
disappeared into the tumbledown building. Jenny heard him moving sheets of
corrugated iron and pieces of timber.

    'That's
all you've got to say? . . . How about a well done for single-handedly finding
a double killer?'

    'Single-handed,
huh?'

    She
started after him, her heels sinking into the grass. 'What's that supposed to
mean?'

    'It
was Alison and that journalist who found the Clayton boy.'

    'I'd
have got to him. It was me who unearthed the photographs.'

    'And
who got hold of the pathologist's files?'

    She
came to the open space where the doorway once was. 'I was there.'

    'With
the kid.'

    He
pushed the roller under the makeshift shelter he'd erected against the side
wall.

    'What
is this, your attempt to diminish me because I've got status and you haven't?'

    Steve
looked at his filthy, rust-stained hands and strolled back towards her. 'You
know your problem, Jenny? All you seem to want to be is alone.'

    'That's
not
true.'

    'Except
when you're so successful at it you scare yourself.'

    'You
don't even know me.'

    'Sometimes
strangers see more clearly.'

    'Really.'

    'Look
at you, Jenny. You're a beautiful woman dressed like an undertaker.' He planted
his dirty hands around her middle.

    'What
the hell are you doing?'

    'It's
hot. You bought a house by a stream. Aren't you ever going to swim in it?'

    'Get
off
me.'

    He
let her go. 'Whatever you want.' He pulled off his shirt and waded out into a
spot where it almost reached his waist and plunged in head first. He came up
laughing, shook his head and rolled over, kicking his bare feet in the air.
'This could be you, Jenny ... This could be you.'

    She
watched him for a moment, paralysed - realizing she had always been frightened
of water - then slowly kicked off her shoes and unhooked the catch on her
waistband. Maybe it was time to get over it.

    'Listen
for it again. Tell me what kind of sound.'

    'It's
the door ... fists on a door. Violent, pounding—'

    'And
then?'

    '...
A voice ... an angry voice. Shouting ... Louder than shouting.'

    'Yes?'

    'I
don't know ... I can't—'

    'Try,
Jenny. Stay with it. Your father's voice?'

    'No,
it's not him . . . Oh, God . . .'

    'Whose
voice? .. . It's all right, you can let the tears come . . . Just stay there.'

    '. .
. My grandfather . . . He's screaming ... I can't. I can't.'

    She
opened her streaming eyes and took another Kleenex from the packet Dr Allen
held out for her. 'I'm sorry ... I can't get any further.'

    'You've
taken another big step - your grandfather's voice. Do you have any idea what
the shouting was about?'

    She
shook her head. 'No.'

    'Maybe
it'll come to you. I think we're going to get there very soon.' Making a note
in his pad, he said, 'Tell me what it made you feel when you heard your
grandfather.'

    Another
river of salt water ran down her face. 'I don't know where this is coming
from—'

    'Try
to think of a word, a feeling.'

    'I
can't.'

    'Just
try. The first thing that comes to you.'

    '...
Death.'

    'Good.'
He wrote it down. 'Did someone you know die around that time?'

    'No.'

    'Try
looking back over some old photographs, letters, anything. I've a feeling we're
really close.' He looked up from his notes. 'Now tell me, how are you coping
with this high- pressure job of yours?'

    She
dried her eyes. 'The new drugs are just about getting me through.'

    'From
what I've read in the papers you've managed a good deal more than that.'