The Redeemed

The Redeemed

M.R. Hall

For the Lord
himself will come down from heaven, with a

loud command,
with the voice of the archangel and with

the trumpet call
of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

After that, we
who are still alive and are left will be caught

up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the

air. And so we
will be with the Lord forever.

—1 Thessalonians
4:16-17

The Severn Bridge was all but empty of traffic as Jenny
crossed the mile-wide river into England. Beneath her the tide was chasing out
to sea at a gallop, the best time to jump if you didn't want to be found: you'd
be halfway to Ireland before low water. That's how Alec McAvoy must have judged
it, over three months ago now. She thought of him each time she crossed,
picturing his hair blowing over those moss-green eyes, too young for his face,
as he said his final prayers.

A forensics van, a single squad car and an unmarked pool
vehicle were parked in the quiet road outside the elaborate Gothic church. A
skeleton Sunday crew. A handful of teenagers were loitering on the other side
of the road, a skinny blonde girl talking excitedly into her phone, thrilled
with the drama of it all. It wasn't even a policeman who had been posted at the
churchyard gate, but an overweight community support officer who made a meal
of checking Jenny's credentials before letting her through as if he were doing
her a big favour. She didn't react, the Xanax she had taken with her breakfast
keeping her calm.

The activity was in a far corner beyond the gravestones, an
untended triangle that had been left to grow wild. A plainclothes detective
glanced up and saw her coming but made no effort to step forward to greet her,
his focus switching immediately back to the body. He watched intently while two
men in white overalls, one with a camera, the other with a measuring tape,
recorded every detail of the scene.

She made an effort to sound friendly. 'Good morning. Jenny
Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner.'

'Tony Wallace. DI.'

Somewhere in his late forties, slim and fit, he spoke with
the clipped abruptness of a man who still entertained ambition. He was wearing
what might have been a hand- tailored suit, far smarter than most of the
policemen she had met.

She followed his gaze to the body lying amongst the rye grass
and buttercups. It was that of a naked, well-built man in his thirties. His
head, which was facing towards them, was shaved to a tight crew cut to disguise
his balding temples. He was lying on his back, arms at forty-five degrees to
his torso. Carved into his chest and abdomen, stretching all the way down to
his groin, was the sign of the cross. By the outstretched fingers of his right
hand Jenny caught the glint of a kitchen knife, the blade no more than four
inches long. His skin was waxy yellow and his stomach and face had begun to
bloat; bluebottles were gathering on the eyes, lips and genitals.

'Looks like he's been here a few hours,' Jenny said, familiar
enough with corpses after a year as coroner not to recoil.

'Yesterday evening at the latest, I'd say,' DI Wallace
replied.

The men in white overalls nodded their agreement, the larger
of the two saying, 'Definitely twelve hours plus - you've only got to look at
the colour of his skin.'

'Any idea of the cause of death?'

'Not yet,' Wallace said. 'Apart from the cross, there's no
sign of any injury.'

'Who found him?'

'Couple of kids looking for somewhere to drink their cider.
We found his clothes in the bin over there.' He nodded towards the corner of
the church.

'Do we know who he is?'

'Not for certain, but a woman who lives a couple of miles
down the road reported her husband missing this morning. Sounds like him - Alan
Jacobs, thirty-five, senior psychiatric nurse at the Conway Unit.'

Jenny felt a cold tightness grip her chest. The Conway Unit
was a secure psychiatric facility for the newly sectioned and acutely ill. At
the height of her 'episode' she had once spent a single night there. Dr Travis
had persuaded her it was for the best, but it was the closest thing to hell on
earth she had ever known.

She looked again at the dead man. She didn't recall seeing
him at the unit, though she could imagine him as a nurse. He was big, like so
many of them were, but with gentle hands and a soft face.

'What do you make of the cross?' Wallace said, his tone
softening a little now he could sense she wasn't vying for control.

Jenny shrugged. 'I'd say God was on his mind, or what was left
of it.'

Wallace nodded, making no comment, then said, 'I've got a
busy few days coming up - I persuaded the pathologist to come in and do him
straight away. Is that all right with you?'

'Fine,' Jenny said, surprised he was troubling to ask.
'What's this, be nice to the coroner week?'

'You've earned yourself a reputation, Mrs Cooper,' DI Wallace
said. 'And I'm trying to make Super'.'

'Right - hence the suit.'

He looked at her, puzzled, and pulled out his phone.

'Whatever . . .' She nodded at the body. 'I'll catch up with
him later at the morgue.'

Leaving Wallace to his phone call, she made her way back
across the churchyard.

She had a hectic week in store, too. There'd been a messy
construction accident the previous Tuesday which had prompted five separate firms
of lawyers to bombard her office with demands for all manner of forensic
investigations to which her puny budget wouldn't stretch. The inquest, when it
came, would last the best part of a month. Two workmen and a site supervisor
had been crushed to death in a crane collapse, six others injured. Compared
with that mess, dealing with a simple suicide would be a holiday.

She drove into the city for a light lunch at a new Italian
cafe on the waterfront, sipped her mineral water like a good girl - she'd
managed to stay dry since her little slip-up with Alec McAvoy - and headed out
to the mortuary at Severn Vale District Hospital in time to catch the end of
the autopsy.

Dr Andy Kerr was stooping across the steel counter when Jenny
entered, picking over a portion of viscera. The radio was playing the same kind
of tuneless R & B her teenage son inflicted on her every time they shared a
car. Andy - he had somehow persuaded her not to call him Dr Kerr - was
reluctantly creeping into his thirties and trying to turn the clock back. He'd
recently added a gold stud to his left ear.

She tried not to look too closely at the corpse, which lay
open from neck to navel on the autopsy table. 'Find anything?'

'Hold on . . .' Andy said, concentrating on his delicate
task. With a pair of tweezers he lifted something tiny out from what she could
now see was the dead man's stomach and placed it in a kidney dish. 'Looks like
we might have a cause of death shaping up. He had a belly full of pills.'

'That makes sense. The police think he was a psychiatric
nurse.'

Andy extracted another object, an undigested white tablet,
and held it up to the light. 'PB 60. Phenobarbital, probably. Used to treat
seizures. Depresses respiration and leads to a fairly painless death. And
there's liver inflammation, which would be a side-effect of the overdose.'

'An unequivocal suicide.'

'More or less.'

'There's something else?' She sneaked a glance and wished she
hadn't: the empty ribcage was a sight from a butcher's window.

'Minor lesions on both forearms.' He looked at her over his
mask. 'As if someone had dug their nails in, perhaps.'

'Violently?'

'Hard to say.' Finished with the stomach, he picked it up in
both hands and placed it alongside the other major organs he had examined and
cut into sections. 'You don't know if the police turned him over? Blood had
pooled towards the front of his body but the photos they took at the locus show
him on his back.'

'Unlikely. The DI said some kids stumbled across him - maybe
it was them?'

'Kids? You think they'd touch a stranger's corpse?'

She considered the prospect. 'No, I don't.'

Andy picked up a scalpel and returned to the body. 'Well,
someone did.' He began cutting around the hairline in preparation for peeling
the scalp forwards over the face. It was Jenny's cue to leave.

She telephoned DI Wallace as she stepped out into the welcome
fresh air, the smell of death clinging stubbornly to her clothes. Wallace
listened to Andy's findings and said it sounded as if it would have to remain a
police matter, at least until he'd ruled out the possibility of foul play. He
informed Jenny that Mrs Jacobs had identified her husband's body from a
photograph but had been too emotional to talk. In the meantime he'd been over
to the Conway Unit in Clifton and met Alan Jacobs's line manager, a Mrs Deborah
Bishop. Jacobs had been Senior Staff Nurse in the young persons' ward, dealing
with twelve- to eighteen-year-olds. As far as Bishop had been aware he'd been
in good spirits; she had appeared badly shaken at the news.

'Have you got Mrs Jacobs's address?' Jenny asked.

'39 Fielding Road, Coalpit Heath,' DI Wallace said after a
brief hesitation, the tightness in his voice suggesting that he'd rather she
stayed away from the bereaved until it was her turn.

Jenny's gut told her there was more to his reluctance than
protecting his turf. She wondered if Bishop had told him something he hadn't
let on. A death, however loosely related to vulnerable teenagers, would have
set alarm bells ringing all the way to Whitehall. Senior civil servants in the
Department of Health would already be asking questions of their own.

Jenny thanked him for the information and let him know he
wouldn't be having it all on his own terms: 'I'll have my officer take Mrs
Jacobs through the procedure. Oh, and by the way - did your people alter the
position of the body before I arrived?'

'Not to my knowledge. Seen as found.'

'Let me know if you hear different. Dr Kerr thinks it had
been rolled over.'

The detective gave a dismissive grunt and rang off.

Jenny waited until early evening before calling on the widow.
Technically there was no need for the coroner to disturb the next of kin while
the police were still investigating, but she liked to make contact while
emotions were still raw and before questions had to be thought about before
being answered. And there was something about Wallace that had troubled her.
From the moment she arrived in the churchyard he had seemed distracted and
defensive, a man wrestling with an unspoken problem.

Coalpit Heath was an outlying suburb in the north-east of the
city. She had resolved not to wake the household if she found it in darkness,
but as she drew up opposite number 39 she noticed a crack of light behind the
drawn curtains in the downstairs front room.

A woman in her sixties answered the door on the security
chain, her face set in a hostile frown. 'What is it now?' The sound of a
child's cry carried from somewhere inside the house.

Jenny passed a business card through the crack. 'Jenny
Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner. I'd like to speak to Mrs Jacobs?'

The woman held the card at arm's length, trying to make out
the print. 'I'm her mother.'

'Would it be all right to have a brief word?'

Sighing, she unhooked the chain and opened the door. 'The
police have been here all evening. I thought we'd have some peace.'

'I'll be as quick as I can.'

The woman led Jenny through a short hallway and into a living
room that ran straight through into a modern kitchen. Her daughter, the widow,
was lying on a tan leather sofa wearing pyjamas and a towelling dressing gown.
A waste basket next to a coffee table was overflowing with used Kleenex.

'Ceri? It's the coroner,' the older woman said quietly.
'Don't worry about Josie. I'll see to her.'

Mrs Jacobs lowered her feet to the floor. She was thirty-
five or thereabouts, pale with mousy blonde hair cut in a sensible bob. She
attempted a smile with her 'hello', and Jenny saw in her face that she was
suffering from shame as much as grief.

'Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Jacobs. I know it's a difficult
time.'

'It's all right.' She spoke with a soft Welsh accent.

Jenny sat on a chair that matched the sofa and glanced around
a room that seemed to have been disturbed. The books and DVDs on the shelves by
the television were in a jumble. Toys spilled over the edges of a plastic
crate.

Embarrassed by the mess, Ceri Jacobs said, 'The police were
here most of the evening. They went through everything. I haven't been able .
. .' She swallowed, holding back tears. 'How can I help you?'

'They might have explained that if they don't suspect foul
play it's my job to determine your husband's cause of death.'

Mrs Jacobs nodded and reached for a Kleenex.

'Were they looking for anything in particular?'

'They said it was routine. I can't remember all the things
they took.'

'Computer? Address book?'

'Yes, and some of his clothes.' She pressed the tissue to her
eyes. 'Ones that hadn't been washed. I don't know what for.'

'Computers are always taken as a matter of course. They'll
check the clothes for third-party DNA,' Jenny said. 'Just in case.'

'No one wanted to kill Alan . . . Why would they?' Ceri
Jacobs shook her head with an expression of bewildered incomprehension.

'The pathologist found pills in his stomach, Mrs Jacobs.
Phenobarbital. It's a barbiturate, something he might have got hold of at the
unit.'

Her gaze turned inwards as she seemed to disengage, not yet
ready to absorb this information.

'Was he depressed?'

'No, not that he admitted to me. Work has always been
difficult, but he loved it. It was his vocation.'

'Was he being treated for any psychiatric condition, or had
he ever been?'

She shook her head.

'When did you last see him?'

'Yesterday afternoon. He said he'd had a call from the unit
saying they had several staff sick. They asked if he could cover for the
night.'

'Was that unusual?'

'It happens.'

'What time did he leave?'

'About four o'clock. I thought he'd be back by midnight.
Josie woke me about six and I saw he hadn't been home. I tried to call him but
his phone was
off ...
I don't know
why, but I called the office at the unit. They said he hadn't been in, they had
all the staff they needed.' Her eyes filled with tears. 'That's when I called
the police.' The widow pressed her hands to her face. 'Why? . . . What was he
thinking of?'

Jenny had tried to train herself not to form judgements on
first impressions, yet she couldn't help thinking that Mrs Jacobs's knowledge
of her husband might have been incomplete, to say the least. The house was a
showcase exclusively for their child: framed baby photographs on every surface,
nursery school paintings plastering a noticeboard that took up most of the
kitchen wall, even Ceri's stretchy pyjamas were decorated with purple hippos.
Alan Jacobs left here each day to work with the city's most mentally disturbed
teenagers, a job he could only have succeeded in by winning their respect and
connecting on their level. Yet it was as if his wife had organized her home as
a shield against all that; there was nothing of him or his life outside the
family home on display. It looked as if Ceri had decreed that their child was
all that mattered to them.

Jenny realized that she'd missed something: God featured
here, too. The simple oil painting on the wall behind the sofa was an icon - a
modern rendering of the Virgin and Child - and Ceri wore a silver crucifix
around her neck.

'Did the police tell you anything about your husband's body,
Mrs Jacobs?'

'I know he was -' she could barely bring herself to say it -
'naked.'

'And the cross on his torso?'

She shot Jenny a look she wasn't expecting, a flash of steel
as sharp as a razor. 'What about it?'

'Why might he have done that - assuming it was him.'

'I've no idea.'

'I assume you're a Catholic, was—?'

'No, he wasn't,' she interrupted. 'For most of his life Alan
wasn't religious at all, his family had poisoned him against it. But he had
begun to change. He was an enquirer at St Joseph's. He'd been every Tuesday
night for the last five months.'

'An "enquirer"?'

'The church runs courses for those who want to learn about the
faith.'

'Did he talk to you about it?'

'We talked about everything, Mrs Cooper. We were man and
wife.' She stood up from the sofa. 'I'm sorry, my daughter's still crying. I'd
like to go to her please.'

'Of course.'

'If you wouldn't mind seeing yourself out.'

As Jenny made her way to the front door she felt the coldness
of the widow's disapproval follow her to the threshold and beyond. Driving away
from the house, she was left with an image of Ceri's face, the look she had
given her: like an accusation of heresy. She imagined the dead man mute in the
face of his wife's silent judgement, enduring his suffering alone.

She was reluctant to trust her too-often flawed intuition,
but the visit had left her in no doubt: Alan Jacobs had departed this world
with many dark secrets.