The Redeemed (23 page)

Detective
Constable Ray Stokes immediately struck Jenny as the safe pair of hands DI
Goodison would have needed to organize the investigating team on the ground in
a sensitive case. Well into his fifties, he was a solid, reassuring character
who had managed to maintain a sense of humour after nearly thirty years of
front-line police work.

Alison handed
him the handwritten list of people spoken to at the Mission Church of God on
Monday, 10 and Tuesday, 11 May.

'Yes. I wrote
that,' he answered.

'Did you make
any more detailed notes?'

'Individual
officers might have done, but if they didn't form any part of the investigation
they wouldn't have made it into our files.'

'What sort of
notes might they have made?' Jenny asked.

'I had a team of
half a dozen detectives. I sent three of them into the church to ask anyone who
knew her if they had heard anything of interest, whether she was having a
problem with anyone, that sort of thing.'

'And this is a
list of people they spoke to?'

'It is. And we
didn't get anything out of it as I recall. We'd already established from Mr
Strong that she'd stayed at home on the Sunday evening feeling tired, but that
was about all of any use we learned there.'

'Why was that
useful?'

'It wasn't
particularly. It just served to rule out everyone who was at the service. We
had a time of death at about eight or nine p.m. The service wasn't over until
nearly ten.'

Jenny said, 'One
of the names on the list is Alan Jacobs. Do you know who questioned him?'

'It was me. I
had a list of people in her study group. There were about four or five names. I
spoke to each of them.'

'Do you recall
the conversation with Mr Jacobs?'

'Yes. I caught
him at work, up at the Conway Unit. He was very helpful as I recall. He said
that he had met Miss Donaldson a number of times in a group at the church, and
that he'd been at the service on the Sunday night.'

'Were you able
to verify that?'

'I think he gave
a few names, people who confirmed he was there.'

'You
think
?'

'It was early
days. If Craven hadn't come forward so soon the investigation would have dug
deeper. As it turned out, it wasn't necessary.'

'Would you have
made a note of the names he gave you?'

'If I did,' DC
Stokes said, 'I'm afraid I haven't got it now. It was just preliminary stuff,
running around. You scribble something down or make a note on your phone and
don't necessarily hold on to it.'

'You didn't
follow up on his movements or those of anyone else at the church?'

'Not in detail,
no, ma'am,' the detective said with a shrug. 'Like I said, we talked to lots of
people.'

Jenny considered
what a study group might mean. She assumed it was a sociable gathering and that
the conversation must have drifted to the group's families and work. It was
hard to imagine Alan Jacobs and Eva Donaldson not having found each other
interesting. It must have occurred to Jacobs that Eva could have served as an
inspiration to many of the kids in his care, particularly the drug-addled
teenage girls who'd have sold themselves for their next fix. And she in turn
must have been intrigued by a man who worked with young people of precisely the
sort her church was setting out to reach and help.

Jenny said, 'It
must have struck you that professionally at least, they had much in common. Did
you ask him if he discussed his work with Eva?'

'No. We didn't
get much beyond the basics I'm afraid.'

Ed Prince and
his team were in whispered conversation with Fraser Knight and his solicitor.
What the hell is she driving at? Prince was undoubtedly asking. Nobody seemed
to have any answers. Neither did Jenny. There was only a hunch, a vague, uneasy
suspicion that two deaths in one study group amounted to more than mere
coincidence. She knew there were many more answers to come - her problem was
finding the right questions. From his seat at the back of courtroom Starr held
her in his calmly critical gaze, judging, assessing, and fiercely willing her
on.

Michael Turnbull
returned to the hall accompanied by his wife and Lennox Strong. The three
seemed inseparable. As he came forward and prepared to testify, Jenny could
tell that it wasn't facing the court that daunted him, but the fact that his
words would be broadcast around the world within moments of him uttering them.
There was no room for error.

The consummate
professional, Turnbull sat angled towards the jury, speaking to them as if
they were concerned friends. Jenny wanted them to hear Eva's story from his
perspective and led him through the chain of events which had brought them
together. Turnbull began by describing the occasion when Pastor Lennox Strong
first introduced her to him. He had been wary at first, he admitted, but over
the course of several discussions in the following weeks Eva convinced him that
she had been led to the Mission Church for a reason: to combat the industry
that was corrupting a generation. He offered up many prayers before presenting
her to Decency's board as a potential ambassador, but they were unanimous in
their decision to take her on.

'She made me
rethink the whole issue,' Turnbull said. 'Before I met Eva, my focus had been
on the damage done to consumers by this material, how it engendered brutal
feelings towards women and led to a spiral of dishonesty and guilt. But I
always struggled against well-intentioned, liberal-minded people, both men and
women, who said the effect was the opposite; that tolerating pornography was a
necessary part of a free and honest society. Eva's argument was simple: no one
can be set free by watching men and women debase themselves. To obtain pleasure
from that is to be corrupted. That is how corruption works - by preying on our
greatest vulnerabilities.'

Eva's media
appearances, Turnbull said, took the Decency campaign from a fringe group
treated as an object of derision by the popular press to the heart of the
mainstream. Here was living, breathing proof of the damage the so-called 'adult
entertainment' business wrought. Without Eva Donaldson, he conceded, he would
not, in only a few days' time, be faced with the realistic possibility of
taking the first steps to passing a stringent anti-pornography law. Her contribution
had been nothing short of miraculous.

'This was a
multi-billion-pound business you and she were attacking,' Jenny said. 'You must
have collected enemies.'

'There was a
steady stream of abusive correspondence, certainly.'

'Were you aware
of Eva receiving threats to her personal safety?'

'Quite the
contrary. Eva was deluged with messages of support. Much of it from men
addicted to pornography. They wanted to be set free.'

'But what about
the vested interests, the companies such as the one Eva used to work for?'

'They're very
sophisticated. Like the tobacco business, they hire lobbyists and seek to
persuade politicians with the economic arguments. And no doubt they've
prepared amendments to our bill designed to allow material which has passed certain
ethical standards. If they play the politics right they could still be the big
winners. Instead of a ban they would get regulation in exchange for
legitimacy.'

'So you're
saying they had no motive for silencing Miss Donaldson?'

'I'm sure they
would have loved her to support their compromise position, but I don't think
for a moment they thought she ever would.'

'Do you think
they might have tried to win her over?'

'I can guess
what you're driving at,' Turnbull said. 'But I can assure you Eva was as
committed as it was possible to be. No amount of money would have bought her.
Ask anyone - once Eva was set on a course there was no persuading her from it.
She had a will of iron.'

Jenny saw
Kenneth Donaldson nodding in agreement.

She moved on,
touching briefly on Eva's financial problems, but Turnbull was dismissive,
saying that if she had needed more money there were any number of PR companies
who would have paid her many times the salary she earned from Decency. She was
acting out a vocation; money wasn't her focus.

She broached the
issue of the tattoo, but Turnbull denied all knowledge and refused to speculate
on her state of mind. He was her employer, not her confidant, he insisted.

'Are you
honestly saying you have no thoughts on what might have motivated her to have
that tattoo?' Jenny asked.

'Yes.'

'No insight into
her state of mind at the time?'

'As far as her
work was concerned, she remained determined and focused. That's all I can tell
you.'

'You didn't
notice her showing signs of strain?'

'She seemed to
be coping well. But you have to understand: ours was a professional, not a
personal, relationship.'

Resigned to the
fact that Turnbull wouldn't deviate from a well-rehearsed corporate line, Jenny
moved on to the night of Eva's death. Turnbull explained that he and his wife
had been in London the previous day. Christine had caught the train home to
Bristol on the Sunday morning. He had meetings to attend and had followed later
in the afternoon. His driver delivered him straight to the Mission Church, where
they met at approximately six-thirty. There were more than four thousand in the
congregation that evening and the service lasted for several hours. It was
after ten when he and his wife finally got to leave.

'I understand
Eva stayed at home that evening,' Jenny said.

'Yes. We'd hoped
she'd say a few words about the campaign, but I got a message from the office
to say she was feeling too tired after a weekend on the road.'

'Who gave you
the message?'

'That would have
been our administrator, Joel Nelson. I think he took Eva's call.'

'Did anyone else
apart from you and Mr Nelson know that Eva was at home that evening?'

'The entire
congregation. As I recall, Lennox Strong made an announcement explaining that
she couldn't be with us.'

'Had she done
this before?'

Turnbull had to
think before answering. 'No, I don't remember her having missed an important
engagement.'

'So this was a
formal engagement?'

For the first
time since he started giving evidence, Turn- bull glanced at his lawyers,
looking for a prompt. Jenny's eyes were on Sullivan before he could offer one.
Turnbull was left to answer alone.

'Not formal in
the sense that she was being paid for it,' he said without conviction.

'But she was
expected to address the crowd?'

'She had offered
to.'

'And instead she
stayed at home and opened a bottle of wine.' Jenny picked up the booklet of
police photographs and turned to a shot with a clear view of the bottle. 'It
looks as if she had drunk about two-thirds of it by the time she died.'

Turnbull made no
comment.

'Was she much of
a drinker, do you know?'

'Not that I was
aware of.'

Jenny studied
the photograph again. There was a single, partially full glass of wine on the
counter, and next to it a corkscrew and an ashtray containing several butts. On
the counter opposite, a peninsula unit, was some broccoli wrapped in
cellophane. There was no sign of cooking in progress. It looked as if Eva had
opened the bottle and stayed at the counter drinking.

'Lord Turnbull,'
Jenny said, 'are you aware of any reason, other than the one Miss Donaldson
gave, as to why she might have stayed at home that night?'

'No.'

'I see,' Jenny
said, leaving him in no doubt that she wasn't persuaded. Up to her eyes in
debt, alone, traipsing around the country delivering the same lines for an employer
who refused to give her a rise: it was impossible not to suspect that Eva was
becoming more than a little resentful. Added to the fact that two weeks before
she'd had her crotch tattooed, it painted a picture of a young woman who was
going through a rough patch of turbulence, to say the least.