The Coroner (8 page)

    'Simone,
I'd like you to think hard about this - do you think the jury were right to
return a verdict of suicide?'

    She
looked puzzled by the question. 'What else would it have been?'

    'You
see, the job of the coroner is to determine the cause of death, and once a
verdict has been given you need a very good reason, usually new evidence, to
reopen a case. Even then you need the High Court's permission. If there was
something badly wrong with the way Mr Marshall handled the case or if some
important new facts turned up, of course I'd do everything I could.'

    'So
you're not going to do anything?'

    'You
told me you thought Danny killed himself. What else do you want to know?'

    'Why
he was left alone. Why they wouldn't let him talk to his mother. Why he was
kept in a cell for three days with no clothes. Why they didn't listen to me
when I told them what would happen . . .'

    All
perfectly good questions, which, Jenny didn't doubt, the transcript of the
inquest would show Marshall had asked. She needed fresh evidence but had no
excuse for spending time and money going to look for it. All she had was a bad
smell and a local journalist in search of a story.

    Jenny
said, 'I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go through Danny's file and make a list
of every question that Mr Marshall should have asked but didn't. We'll take it
from there.'

    Simone
gave her a look of weary indifference. She pushed up from the table.
'Whatever.'

    Jenny
wound down the car windows and let the warm wind blow through her hair as she
crossed the bridge into Wales. Leaving the expanse of the estuary behind her
and driving along the narrow road that snaked seven miles through the forested
gorge from Chepstow to Tintern, she felt the rush of being enveloped by nature
at its zenith. July and August were mellowing and fading months; June was the
pinnacle of life. Through breaks in the trees she caught glimpses of the
woodland canopy on the opposite side of the valley, an undulating sea of every
shade of green.

    Driving
away from her responsibilities for the night, she felt light and liberated.
Simone Wills and all the dead people were safely on the other side of three
miles of water in another country. Another world.

    Shutting
the door at the end of the day was something she'd worked on with Dr Travis.
He'd told her that, in common with so many women, she was a perfectionist who
couldn't rest until everything around her was in order. When work was a daily
round of chaos, loose ends and uncertainties, it was only a matter of time
before a personality like hers would collapse under the pressure. He taught her
techniques to help deal with professional guilt. She had learned to accept that
she was neither indispensable nor responsible for the outcome of every case.

    But
despite all her efforts, the deep-seated unease that seeped up from her
subconscious refused to vanish. Divorce hadn't cured her, nor had removing
herself from the stress of family law. She could take away the anxiety with
pills or retreat to lush countryside, but the root of her problem - though
mostly buried - stuck fast.

    Trying
to concentrate on the moment as Dr Travis had taught her, she rounded the
corner into Tintern to see the ruined abbey casting a majestic shadow over the
meadow. Although only the shell of the building remained, its elegance and
permanence, its resilience nearly five hundred years after Henry VIII sent his
troops to destroy it, never failed to inspire her. Not even the tourist coaches
and cars that swarmed around it on summer weekends could diminish its beauty.
If it could endure against all the odds, so could she.

    Taking
in the view, the splendour of the landscape, its history and vitality, Jenny
momentarily felt the kind of peace and lightness she remembered from her teens.
A high no pills came close to giving.

    She
turned left at the Royal George Hotel and drove the final mile up the
switchback single-track lane lined with
ancient hedgerows
to Melin Bach, Welsh for 'little mill', the two-bedroom stone cottage she had
bought impulsively at auction and moved into only a fortnight ago. The previous
owner was an eighty-five-year-old woman, Miss Preece, who had lived there all
her life and who had changed little since her father died decades before.

    The
cottage was fronted by an overgrown garden in which hollyhocks, leggy lavender
bushes and overgrown roses vied with the weeds and foot-high grass which she
had yet to tackle. The low drystone wall which separated it from the lane was
in need of repair, and her parking spot - the entrance to an old cart track
which led round to the back - was so rutted and full of nettles that she could
barely get across it in heels without twisting an ankle or being stung.

    It
was perfect. Untamed and full of possibilities.

    At
the rear of the house there was a quarter-acre of overgrown lawn, the remains
of a vegetable garden and a roofless stone shed backing on to a brook which had
once been the saw mill. Until the early 1950s, a neighbour had told her, Miss
Preece's father had earned his living working a water wheel- driven bench saw,
turning oak and beech butts from surrounding woodlands into roughly milled
timber. Shire horses hauled in wagons along the track and drank from the
stream. The iron rings where they were tethered could still be seen rusting in
the crumbling mortar of the mill walls. Put a spade in the ground anywhere
nearby and you'd turn up old horseshoes, some of them ten inches across.

    Jenny's
vision was to bring it back to what it once was. To tame the weeds, grow her
own food and maybe rebuild the mill and water wheel to power the house. She
already had a pile of books next to her bed with titles like
Living Off-Line
and
The Smallholder's Guide to Electrical Generation.
Once she had
got the place straight, she saw herself living two distinct lives: one in the city,
surrounded by people and their travails, and the other here, in peace and
fruitful labour.

    Whether
she would ever share this life with anyone, what the ultimate point to it was,
were issues for later. She was in recovery from a failed marriage and a crashed
career and was trying to wean herself off medication. She would take it a step
at a time, enjoy the achievements of each day and hold on to the belief that
eventually the fragments of her life would rearrange themselves into a picture
that made sense.

    With
these hopeful thoughts in mind, she turned a hefty iron key in the front door
and stepped inside. A smell of wood ash from the grate greeted her and she felt
the reassuring solidity of well-worn flagstones beneath her feet.

    The
interior of the cottage was compact, but the ceilings were high enough for a
tall man not to have to stoop under the beams, and the windows were
sufficiently wide to avoid it ever feeling gloomy. In the entrance hall was a
narrow staircase leading up to the two bedrooms and bathroom. The former
parlour, which she had already arranged as a study, was through a door to the
left. To the right was a snug sitting room leading to the kitchen at the back,
which still had a Belfast sink, solid pine cupboards and a coke-fired range. A
washing machine crammed in by the back door was the only concession to
modernity. Eventually she intended to knock the kitchen and sitting room into
one and build a conservatory, but there was something pleasing about the
quaintness of the current layout. Her ex-husband, an ambitious, intolerant
heart surgeon, would have hated everything about it. An old, unruly,
inconvenient house like this would represent the sum of all his fears. What's
to admire about the past? he'd say. It stank, was full of disease and you were
lucky to make forty.

    David
had always insisted on living in the suburbs in a modern home with a new car on
the drive each year. His idea of heaven would be to live forever in a dust-free
environment. Coming home to Melin Bach, Jenny couldn't understand how it had
taken her sixteen years of marriage to realize that was her idea of hell.

    She
dropped her briefcase in the study, went upstairs to throw on jeans and an old
shirt, then went in search of a glass of Rioja and the last of the evening sun.

    She
sat sipping her wine at the old scrub-top table she had dragged to the spot in
the middle of the lawn from where you could see the sun set on Barbadoes Hill.
She listened to the wood pigeons in the chestnut tree beside the mill and the
sound of the brook chasing over the stones. She couldn't believe her luck. Less
than three weeks ago home had been a rented apartment in a new-build near Aztec
West on the fringes of Bristol.

    She'd
have to get Ross over to stay soon, when the spare room was straight. He'd love
it here once he'd got used to the quiet. He was in the middle of his GCSEs so
she hadn't seen much of him for a couple of weeks. After she split from his
father Ross had been to stay a few weekends at her apartment but had got bored
and they'd argued. That made up her mind to wait until summer before reviewing
the situation. Once he saw Melin Bach she was sure he'd come and live with her
while he was in the sixth form. She could drop him at college on her way into
town and bring him home in the evenings. Unlike his father, she wouldn't mind
if he brought girls back or drank the odd beer. They could relax here together,
finally get to know each other.

    Thinking
about Ross gave her a tight knot in her stomach: a feeling of grief mixed with
unrequited longing. She didn't normally call him on Mondays - Wednesdays and
Fridays at eight were the usual times - but she couldn't wait that long. She
wanted to tell him about her new job and how much she was looking forward to
having him over. She didn't want to seem needy - he hated that - but he'd want
to hear her good news.

    The
third glass of wine gave her the courage to fetch the phone and dial his
mobile. It rang several times, then clicked to voicemail. Damn. She could try
the landline but would probably get David and a slice of his heavy sarcasm.

    What
did it matter? She'd just give it back to him.

    'Hello?'
A cautious woman's voice she didn't recognize answered.

    Assuming
she'd misdialled, Jenny said, 'Oh ... is Ross there?'

    The
voice said, 'I'll just go and see.' She sounded young, but older than a
teenager.

    Jenny
listened to her set down the receiver and call out his name, not like a
girlfriend would, but uncertainly. She heard David, a hurried conversation
between them she couldn't make out, then his voice barking down the line.

    'Jenny?'

    'I
was wanting to speak to Ross - his mobile's off.' She tried to sound calm.

    'He's
over at Max's. They're revising together, or so he claims.'

    'OK.
I'll try him again later.'

    'You
remember it's parents' evening on Wednesday? You are expected.' He spoke to her
how she imagined he spoke to his subordinates in the operating theatre.

    'I'll
be there.' She couldn't resist: 'Who was that who answered the phone?'

    A
pause. 'Deborah. I don't think you've met. I'm sure you will.'

    'She
sounds very young. A nurse, is she?'

    What
else could she be? David hadn't had a life outside the Frenchay Hospital in
nearly twenty years.

    He
sighed impatiently. 'I'm entitled to pursue my life and you yours. I expect
I'll see you on Wednesday.'

    'I
took over as coroner today.'

    'Excellent.
I hope you make a success of it.'

    She
knew she shouldn't rise to it, but his patronizing tone made her want to kick
him, hard. 'If I'm anywhere near as good at my job as you are at bedding young
women, I expect I will.'

    'Move
on, Jenny.'

    He
hung up on her. His dismissal, as ever, absolute.

    She
threw down the phone, cursing him, her eyes filling with angry tears. She
gulped down the rest of her wine, furious that he was still having this effect
on her. She didn't even have feelings for him any more, apart from loathing.

    'Hello
there.'

    She looked
round to see an unfamiliar male figure coming up the cart track, knee deep in
nettles.

    'Mrs
Cooper?'

    'Yes.'
She sniffed hurriedly and wiped her eyes. Shit. A visitor was all she needed.

    He
waded towards her. Somewhere in his upper thirties, his faded red shirt hung
loose over his jeans. His face was weathered and unshaven, a man who worked
outdoors.