The Coroner (9 page)

    'Steve
Painter - I live over the hill, Catbrook way. Mike down at the Apple Tree said
you might be looking for a bit of a gardener.'

    'Oh?
Who's Mike?'

    He
made it out of the undergrowth on to the unkempt grass and glanced around.

    'He's
who you go to to find out what you're doing. They talk faster than you can
think round here.' He turned his gaze to her. He wasn't bad-looking close up.
Flat stomach. Strong arms. 'It could certainly do with it. I'm not too
expensive if you're interested. A day or so would deal with the worst of it.'

    Jenny
tried to work out what it was about the stranger that surprised her, and
realized it was his voice. It had a touch of the local accent - a mixture of
Welsh borders mixed with the more rustic Forest of Dean - but sounded educated.
The way he looked at her, too: polite, but on her level.

    'How
much is not too expensive?'

    'Nine
quid an hour.'

    'Nine?

    'Seven
fifty.'

    'All
right. Deal. When do you want to start?'

    'Tomorrow
morning? Early?'

    'OK.
I'm afraid I haven't got much in the way of tools.'

    'I
can bring everything I need.'

    'Great.'
Jenny looked at him, wondering who this man was she had just agreed to employ.
He could be anyone. She'd never even been to the Apple Tree. 'Have you got any
references? Anyone I could call to vouch for you?'

    He
smiled and rubbed his head. His hair was sandy brown, bleached by the sun.
'Someone I haven't robbed? Let's see . .. You could try Mike.'

    She
picked up the phone. 'What's his number?'

    He
shrugged. 'Wouldn't know. I don't have one of those things.'

    'No
phone?'

    'Nope.
I try to live off my bit of land, mostly. It's OK till you need to pay the
council tax or fancy a beer. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.'

    'Sounds
ambitious. What do you grow?'

    'This
and that. Hey, look - I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll see you in the morning.'

    He
turned to go.

    'I'll
probably be gone by quarter to eight.'

    'That's
fine. I won't expect a welcoming committee.'

    He
raised a dirt-brown hand in a lazy wave and drifted back the way he had come, disappearing
around the side of the house. Jenny heard an engine cough reluctantly into
life. The vehicle sounded elderly. She caught a glimpse of it through a gap in
the hedge as it moved off up the lane: an open-topped Land Rover with a
keen-eyed sheepdog riding in the back.

    She
poured another glass of wine. Trying to make it last, she watched the sun go
down and the ash trees stirring in the breeze. She thought about her new
gardener over the hill. Why would an intelligent man live out in the woods without
money or a telephone? What kind of woman would put up with him, no new clothes
or gadgets in the house? She'd only lived in the country for fifteen days and
had already learned two unexpected things: no matter how remote your home there
was no such thing as privacy, and the people were more complex and interesting
than she had imagined. Living with space around them, they seemed somehow freer
to be themselves.

    She
had intended to be in bed with the lights out by ten-thirty, but by ten her
head had started to clear and her thoughts were racing over the events of the
day. With no prospect of being able to sleep without pills which would leave
her groggy in the morning, she sat down in her study, switched on a bar of the
electric fire and took both the Danny Wills and Katy Taylor files out of her
briefcase.

    Flicking
once again through the pages of Danny's file, she began to understand how
Marshall had embarked on a crusade, then gradually lost heart. From the case
worker in the Youth Offending Team through to the director of Portshead Farm,
everyone appeared to have done their job and ticked the right boxes. The fact
that a disturbed fourteen-year-old boy had hanged himself while in state
custody was shocking, but hard to pin on any one individual.

    Jenny
wanted to believe that had she conducted the inquest she would have rooted out
some rotten management practices, but picking through the statements it was
hard to see exactly where fault lay, except with a government that allowed a
child to be imprisoned in the first place.

    And
Simone Wills had to take her share of the blame. How many times in his fourteen
years had Danny felt she cared more about him than smoking a joint or knocking
back a few more vodkas with her latest boyfriend? Maybe this had been
Marshall's thought process, too? Setting out to make a noise, then realizing
that the only person who could really have made a difference was a lost cause;
that he could no sooner get justice for Danny than raise the dead.

    At
least the Katy Taylor file contained a genuine procedural irregularity she
could correct. She would be considerate to her parents, but a full inquest
would have to be held: modern coroners were obliged to act rigorously in the
public not the family's interest.

    For
the second time that day she struggled through the original police report,
written in tortuous longhand by a constable who knew neither punctuation nor
where to place capitals. It mentioned that Katy was suspected by unnamed 'Local
Youths' to have been paying for drugs through prostitution and that she had
cautions for possession of marijuana and shoplifting. Nothing unusual about
that, but the constable didn't seem to have investigated how she had ended up
six miles from home with a syringe full of smack: most addicts would shoot up
down the nearest alley. Plus her sandals had spiky heels - there was no way she
could have arrived there on foot. Even the stupidest policeman must have
suspected that someone had driven her to such a secluded spot.

    The
fact that the report was silent on this matter didn't altogether surprise her.
The cash-strapped police were savvy enough to put their money wherever the
media interest was. A dead celebrity in the bushes would have brought out the
full forensic team; a clean-cut DI would have given hourly updates for the
rolling news. A dead nobody whose parents were happy not to have their grief
paraded on TV got an illiterate PC.

    Still,
it wasn't good enough. Jenny closed the file with a decision to find out who Katy
had been with before she died. If the police didn't like it, tough.

    She
slept badly. Outside, a tawny owl competed with a vixen which screeched like a
screaming baby. She dreamed she was in her childhood home, paralysed by furious
shouting and the crashing of doors; in her dream she pushed her thumbs into her
ears and pressed on her eyelids until she saw stars.

    The
nightmares rolled on through the restless small hours: she started awake as a
faceless murderer unsheathed a knife and thrust it at her guts. Collapsing into
the pillow, her heart thumping against her ribs, she looked over at the clock
and saw it was nearly seven a.m. Slowly coming to, she became aware of a noise
outside the window: metallic scraping.

    She
swung out of bed and anxiously hooked the corner of the blind back with her
finger. Steve, his back to her, stood over by the cart track stroking a sickle
with a sharpening stone. He tested the blade with his thumb and started into
the weeds with big, relaxed strokes. Not a trace of tension in his frame.

    Thank
God for temazepam. She arrived at the office to find Alison agitatedly
directing removal men who had brought in half a dozen filing cabinets and were
now filling the rest of reception with document boxes.

    Jenny
was barely through the door when Alison turned to her accusingly and said, 'I
told you there was nowhere to put it all, Mrs Cooper.'

    'We'll
rent some storage and archive what we don't need.'

    'And
who's going to pay for that?'

    'We
managed to pay for an office at the police station.' She grabbed her mail from
the tray on Alison's desk. 'Could we have a word?'

    Alison
hurled some instructions at the removers and followed Jenny into her office.

    'The
chief super was surprised that you were moving me, to say the least. We've
always found it a mutually beneficial arrangement. My ex-colleagues are often
helping out.'

    'And
what's in it for them?'

    'Mr
Marshall and I uncovered several murders over the years that would never have
got to the police otherwise. There was a man who poisoned his wife with
insulin, a girl who smothered her baby . . .'

    Sorting
her mail, Jenny said, 'The difference between the police and the coroner is
that the police chase convictions, the coroner chases the truth. One doesn't
necessarily follow from the other.'

    'I
was a detective for twenty years and I never saw a false conviction.'

    'But
did you always find the truth? And once you had a suspect, did you even want to
find it?'

    'You're
not a fan of the police, Mrs Cooper?'

    Jenny
opened her briefcase and brought out the Katy Taylor file. She handed it to
Alison. 'Did you read the constable's report before Mr Marshall signed the
death certificate?'

    'I
usually do.'

    'She
was found six miles from home wearing high-heeled shoes. Why wasn't there a
detailed search of the area? Why no forensics? Why no investigation into how
she got there, who brought her, where the drugs came from? And if the police
decided they had other priorities, why didn't Marshall ask those questions'

    'He'd
have had his reasons.'

    'You
were working for him at the time; what do you think they were?'

    Alison
fingered the corner of the file. 'I didn't discuss the case with him in
detail—'

    'He
must have said something.'

    'Only
that Dr Peterson was sure it was an overdose and that Detective Superintendent
Swainton in CID was happy with that.'

    'So
he had a heads-together with the police?'

    'He
would have spoken to them, of course.'

    'And
if Swainton was content to mark it down as accidental that was good enough for
him?'

    'It
wasn't like that. He had a very good relationship with the CID. They trusted
each other.'

    'I
see.' Jenny was getting the picture: Marshall didn't tread on CID's toes and in
return he got an ex-copper with an office at the station to do his legwork. 'In
this case I'm afraid his trust wasn't justified. I'm revoking the death
certificate and starting again, with a proper investigation this time.'

    'What
am I going to tell CID?'

    'It's
nothing to do with them.' She grabbed a legal pad and slotted it in her
briefcase. 'I'm going to pay a few visits, talk to her family. You can stay and
sort this place out. And expect a call from Josh at the Ministry of Justice.'

    'Josh?'

    'He's
setting up our IT. We'll have a brand new wi-fi system up and running by the
weekend.'

    Jenny
pushed out of the door before Alison could protest. She'd give her a week to
see if she was capable of change. If not, she'd have to go.

    The
mortuary assistant said Dr Peterson was mid-autopsy and had another three to
get through by lunch. If she needed to see him she'd have to talk to him from
the viewing gallery while he worked. Jenny said fine, whatever it took to reach
the great man. The assistant directed her to a door along the corridor.

    She
had expected something a little more removed from the action. The gallery was
no more than a raised section of the autopsy room, divided from the dissection
area by a waist-high wall. The smell was overpowering: blood, faeces,
disinfectant and rot. Covering her mouth, she saw Peterson, no more than eight
feet away from her, lifting the heart and lungs from the wide-open chest cavity
of a grossly obese middle-aged man. She looked away, fighting the urge to gag
as he dumped the organs on the stainless-steel counter directly beneath where
she was standing.