B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (16 page)

‘It’s the damaged section of hull near the bow of the boat – the front, if you prefer – just about where the aircraft, assuming that’s what it was, struck.’

‘I think we can safely assume it was the aircraft,’ Jenny said. ‘What I’d like you to comment on is what appears to be evidence of scorching – the insulating foam between the inner and outer hull appears burnt.’

‘I would agree with that.’

‘Caused by what, in your opinion?’

‘The aircraft’s four engines are sited beneath the wings, so I’m prepared to speculate that it was one of those which made impact.’

‘What sort of temperatures are required to scorch insulating foam and timber?’

‘The ignition point of timber is around 250 degrees centigrade.’

‘You would agree, then, that whatever hit it was very hot.’

‘That would be a safe assumption.’

Jenny glanced across at Rufus Bannerman QC, counsel for Sir James Kendall, and saw him poised, ready to intervene should her questions start to intrude on the condition of the aircraft. Tempted as she was, she resisted, and moved on.

‘In your inspection of the vessel, Mr Corton, did you examine the rudder mechanism?’

‘I did.’

‘And did you find anything to be wrong with it?’

‘No, ma’am. The rudder was undamaged and the steering couplings were in good order.’

Mrs Patterson was busy whispering to her lawyers again. Her husband looked weary and embarrassed.

‘Picture number six, Mr Corton – what does that show?’

‘It’s a section of the deck by the stern, ma’am. The deck boards have been ripped out, I assume by the naval team that salvaged the vessel.’

‘And why might they have done that?’

‘It would be perfectly routine to check the voids,’ Corton said.

‘For what, precisely?’

‘Anything. It was the only vessel in the area. You would want to examine it closely.’

Jenny turned to the jury and explained as neutrally as she could that while Sir James Kendall, the coroner charged with investigating the deaths in the aircraft, had reserved all members of the salvage crew as witnesses to his inquiry, he had written to confirm that nothing of relevance to her inquest had been found in or around the wreck of the yacht.

Experienced as she was in dealing with the demands of an irrational client, Rachel Hemmings nonetheless coloured with embarrassment as she commenced her cross-examination.

‘Mr Corton, you are an experienced mariner yourself, aren’t you?’

‘I am.’

‘You spent twenty-five years in the merchant navy and latterly skippered cargo vessels.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Tell us, if you can, why so few yachts are to be seen in the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel – the area to which we also refer as the Severn estuary.’

‘It has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world – as much as fifty feet in places.’

‘Meaning that it’s an exceptionally treacherous stretch of water?’

‘For the inexperienced, most certainly.’

‘The area of water in which the
Irish Mist
went down is only navigable at high tide – is that correct?’

‘You would have to sail in on the rising tide, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Thank you for correcting me, Mr Corton. But my point is that Mr Brogan would have to have been navigating according to a carefully prepared plan.’

‘Either that or he was fortunate with his timing.’

She paused briefly to take a sip of water. Behind her, Mrs Patterson was waiting, her eyes fixed on Corton.

‘Let’s assume it wasn’t luck – there was nothing wrong with his rudder, after all. High tide occurs roughly once every twelve hours – is that correct?’

‘More or less.’

‘And it was some sixty minutes before high tide when the accident happened.’

‘Fifty-seven.’

‘Mr Brogan knew he was going to be in that spot at the time, didn’t he?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Doesn’t it strike you as more than mere coincidence that a man with his history was the only person at the scene of an aircraft disaster?’

Corton frowned. ‘I couldn’t possibly speculate.’

Jenny cut in just as Rufus Bannerman QC was squaring himself to object. ‘Miss Hemmings, please restrict your questions to the physical evidence.’

She continued regardless. ‘Contrary to every rule of good seamanship, Mr Brogan was wearing no lifejacket. That can only be because he intended to fire a gun.’

‘Don’t answer, Mr Corton,’ Jenny said. ‘Miss Hemmings, I have warned you—’

‘Mr Corton,’ Hemmings persisted, ‘have you been told to tell only partial truth to this inquest?’

‘No, ma’am, I have not.’

‘You’re lying, aren’t you, Mr Corton? What was in that boat? What aren’t you telling us?’

‘Miss Hemmings, that’s enough. You may stand down, Mr Corton.’

Corton gratefully stepped away from the chair.

Hemmings was in full flow. ‘Ma’am, you expressly stated that this inquest exists to uncover the truth. I am doing no more or less than that requires.’

‘That does not include making unfounded allegations.’

‘I am entitled to ask the witness if he is withholding information.’

‘And you got your answer. Please sit down.’

‘With respect, ma’am, I did not get an answer. You discharged him before he could reply.’

Jenny was pulled up short. Hemmings was right. In her haste, no, her
fear
of trespassing across the boundaries she had been set, she had denied Mrs Patterson her chance to have her questions put. It was a new and disconcerting experience: she was usually the one sniffing out unlikely conspiracies. She needed time out to reconsider, and decide how far she could let Hemmings go before the Ministry of Justice pulled the lever and let her swing.

‘We’ll adjourn there until two o’clock,’ Jenny said, and stood up from her desk.

Mrs Patterson’s voice cut through the sound of scraping chairs as she turned on her lawyers. ‘What was wrong with the question? The man had a gun. He was a known terrorist . . .’

Greg Patterson tried to calm her, but her voice rose in indignation. ‘Why can’t we ask about that? What’s she hiding, Greg?’

Jenny walked quickly to the office and closed the door, Mrs Patterson’s words ringing in her ears like an accusation. It was at moments like this that she envied her tough-skinned colleagues who remained immune to the emotions of grieving familes; she felt Mrs Patterson’s grief like a physical force.

‘Mr Bannerman would like to see you,’ Alison announced, as she appeared a short while later with coffee. ‘I think he’s got a message from the Ministry.’

Jenny would normally have refused to see counsel in private during an inquest, but on this occasion she decided to make an exception. It wasn’t cowardice, she told herself, it was merely the sensible thing to do. Just as Dr Allen had instructed, she was no longer acting on whims and hunches, but reasoning her way to answers. It was as if Mrs Patterson had held a mirror up to her: the sight of a formerly rational woman collapsing so spectacularly under the weight of emotion was no more or less than had happened to her. But while Michelle Patterson had only just begun her descent into madness, Jenny was on the last leg of the journey home and had no intention of retracing her steps.

‘How can I help you, Mr Bannerman?’ Jenny asked, as he sat in the plastic chair opposite hers.

‘It’s not so much a case of helping me, perhaps, as helping yourself, Mrs Cooper.’ Bannerman spoke with a kindly smile that must have disarmed many opponents in a long and successful career at the Bar. Up close, he looked even softer and more benign than he had across the hall. ‘You will be aware that the Ministry of Justice is understandably most anxious that your inquest doesn’t intrude on Sir James’s territory, so to speak. It’s no reflection on your abilities, of course; the concern is merely that were you inadvertently to make any premature findings of fact, it would play havoc with the eventual inquest into the plane crash. You can imagine what fun we lawyers would have if his findings threatened to contradict yours. He could find himself snagged up in judicial reviews for years. That surely wouldn’t be in anybody’s interests, least of all those of the families of the dead.’

‘What do you suggest?’ Jenny said, trying hard to reveal nothing in her expression.

‘As you might expect, I have briefed both Sir Oliver Prentice at the Ministry and Sir James Kendall on this morning’s proceedings, and Sir Oliver is very much of the view that you have already called sufficient evidence to return a verdict. On the narrow issue of what caused Mr Brogan’s death, I can’t imagine there is any more to be said.’ Bannerman took a measured sip of coffee. ‘And as regards Mr Ransome, I have to inform you that he will not be attending, and that Mr Hartley and his team are poised to go to the High Court should you attempt to force the issue.’

Up until recently Jenny would have told Bannerman exactly what she thought of a man such as him, who was prepared to sacrifice the principles of his profession to suppress the process of justice and to hell with the consequences. But something had changed; her newly manifesting survival instinct told her to hold fire.

‘Won’t his absence merely add to the speculation, Mr Bannerman? Isn’t that what you’re seeking to dampen?’

‘How shall I put this, Mrs Cooper?’ He pushed his small, round spectacles up his short beak of a nose. ‘It has come to my notice – I have to admit through conversations I have overheard, rather than been party to – that Mrs Patterson is under the impression that she has struck some sort of bargain with you. “She promised us we’d get to ask about the plane,” to quote her directly. “She told us there would be no cover-up on her watch.” ’ He smiled at her over the rim of his cup. ‘I can’t for a moment imagine that that is true, but she does rather seem to have got hold of the idea that you assumed the mantle of her personal champion.’

Jenny didn’t permit the uncomfortable irony of the moment to show on her face. She realized now that she had truly done Mrs Patterson a disservice in promising her an inquiry she knew in all but the most irrational parts of her would not be permitted to happen. She had allowed herself to be swayed by a mother’s grief and by her own selfish need to atone for ancient sins. Far from being noble, she had been weak.

‘Sudden tragedy can unbalance the sanest of people,’ Jenny said.

Bannerman nodded, assuming that they had reached an understanding. ‘I can tell Sir Oliver that proceedings will be concluded swiftly?’

Jenny thought she had made up her mind, but felt a sudden and powerful tug in the opposite direction; as if the dead were imploring her. She resisted it.

‘I intend a verdict to be delivered this afternoon.’

Bannerman smiled. ‘A very wise decision, Mrs Cooper.’

Jenny had written her lines on her legal pad and carefully prepared her response to Rachel Hemmings’s protests and the inevitable outburst from Mrs Patterson. Her justification would be firmly rooted in the law: her decision to limit the evidence framed as being in the overall interests of justice. By the time she had mentally rehearsed her speech several times over, she was almost convinced by it.

She remained calm even as she heard the lawyers reassembling and Mrs Patterson issuing instructions to Rachel Hemmings to stiffen her spine and remember she was being paid to get answers. Jenny felt strangely powerful, as if in one short lunch hour she had finally become absorbed into the great legal machine against which she had so often imagined herself to be opposed.

Alison’s unmistakable tap-tap-tap sounded on the door. ‘We’re ready for you, Mrs Cooper.’

As Jenny made to leave, she felt the silent buzz of her phone in her pocket. She reached for it by reflex. The name on her screen was that of Owen Williams, the Chepstow detective with a hatred for the English. They hadn’t spoken in months.

Jenny called through the door. ‘Won’t be a moment.’ She answered his call. ‘Sergeant Williams?’

‘Inspector Williams now, if you please. Even I still don’t believe it.’ He sounded more sing-song Welsh than ever, his voice rising and falling between baritone and soprano. ‘You’re conducting the inquest into the death of that sailor, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said, straining to hide her impatience. ‘Right now, in fact.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Only I think we’ve found his lifejacket. I thought you might want to pop down and claim it.’

H
ARTLEY AND
B
ANNERMAN HAD LOOKED
appalled when Jenny announced that the hearing would be adjourned while further evidence was obtained. They had demanded full particulars of precisely what had been discovered, Rachel Hemmings adding her voice to the clamour, but Jenny had told them only that a lifejacket had been discovered, not by whom or where. All parties insisted they be granted the right to have their experts inspect it simultaneously. Jenny refused, asserting her right to have evidence tested first and as she saw fit.

Leaving the building, she saw Greg Patterson and Nick Galbraith steering Mrs Patterson away from predatory news cameras. No wonder Bannerman was nervous: a forceful woman with a fearsome intellect – there could be no one harder to contain.

Jenny headed north across the Severn Bridge into Wales with her conscience clear. She had come close to being compromised, but had found the courage to resist at the last minute. Her search was still on.

She followed Williams along the corridor of the quaint, stone-built police station in the main street of the little market town of Chepstow, and into a locked evidence room. The few rows of aluminium shelving were decidedly bare. Business was slack at the moment, he was pleased to report. And as far as Williams was concerned, trouble usually came in the form of foreign – invariably English – interlopers who had dared to venture onto the wrong side of the border.

He handed Jenny the orange lifejacket in the clear plastic evidence sack in which it had been stowed. It was deflated and smeared with mud.

‘It was one of the boys from the sailing club who found it. It was washed up on the shore opposite the castle. Must have come right up the mouth of the Wye on the tide. You can see it’s been tampered with.’