The Coroner (11 page)

    'You
met with Mrs Wills yesterday.'

    'I'm
very busy right now. What is it that you want?'

    'She
got the impression that you weren't interested in her son's case.'

    Jenny
stopped writing and tried not to erupt. It was an effort. 'Then she's
mistaken.'

    'But
you're not going to investigate?'

    'Ms
Collins, I have a job to do, so do you. I'm happy to talk to the press on
issues of public interest, but I will not be making daily reports on my
activities. If you'll excuse me — '

    'If
you're looking for new evidence, I can tell you where to start.'

    Jenny
sighed, a whisker away from losing her temper.

    'Darren
Hogg was the security guard responsible for monitoring the CCTV in both the
male and female house units that night. He said in his statement that two
cameras covering the corridor in the male unit had been out for a week and were
waiting to be repaired. Marshall spoke to the repair company, who said the
fault was only reported on the 14th, the morning Danny died.'

    Jenny
didn't remember seeing any such statement. She said, 'I told Mrs Wills I'll be
reviewing the file in detail. Of course I'll look into any anomalies.'

    'It
won't be in the file - Marshall never took a statement from them. And another
thing: Kevin Stewart, the care officer who says he reported Danny's toilet
blocked the night before he died - he wasn't asked why he didn't move him to
another room. There were two free in the male unit that night. When I spoke to
Smirski, the maintenance guy who found him, he said he couldn't remember when
Stewart reported it. Marshall didn't even call Smirski at the inquest.'

    'When
I've had a chance to look at the transcript—'

    Tara
Collins interrupted again. 'The point is, Mrs Cooper, a care officer was meant
to look through the inspection hatch of each child's room every half-hour.
Those allegedly broken cameras could have verified whether the inspections were
made. If the blocked toilet was reported that morning, Smirski was being set up
to find the body.'

    Jenny
knew where Collins was heading: a finding of death by neglect, a gross failure
of the system to provide the basic care which would have prevented Danny's
suicide. The kind of finding that would rock the Ministry of Justice and make
her the most unpopular coroner in the country.

    And
all she'd wanted was a quiet life.

    'I'll
be honest with you, the reason I'm not letting this story go is that I met
Danny Wills a couple of times when I was writing a piece on the Youth Offending
Team. He was a bright kid. He'd come up with these phrases, like he described
himself as a "lost soul". You got the feeling that with a bit of help
he could have pulled himself clear. He was bright . . . Not very professional
of me, but there you are.'

    Jenny
felt her hostility towards Tara Collins begin to subside. 'I've known a lot of
kids like that myself. Look, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.
I'll look into it. I will.'

    'Can
I tell that to Mrs Wills?'

    'I'd
be grateful if you left it to me.'

    Tara
Collins was quiet for a moment, then said, 'I think it's only fair to let you
know this, Mrs Cooper. I've received information that you haven't enjoyed the
best of mental health recently.'

    Jenny
heard herself say, 'I beg your pardon?'

    'It's
one of those difficult judgement calls you have to make as a journalist -
deciding where the public interest lies. Oh, well . . .'

    The
line went dead.

    She
couldn't believe it. Not even the Ministry of Justice knew she'd been seeing a
psychiatrist. If it got out she'd not only lose her job, she'd risk prosecution
for fraud.
Medical conditions that could affect your ability to carry out
the office of coroner
- she remembered writing 'none', convincing herself
that the lie was justified, that a new career was her passport to getting well.

    'Everything
all right, Mrs Cooper? You look a bit dazed.' Alison was standing in the
doorway, studying her with a concerned expression.

    Jenny
replaced the receiver, trying to hide the fact that her heart was racing. 'That
journalist again. Did they bother Mr Marshall much?'

    'He'd
never speak to them. Called them parasites.'

    'I
think I agree.' Jenny needed a temazepam, now, and wished Alison would go so
she could take one.

    'I
hope you don't mind - I probably missed Mike's call. I've been at the station.'

    'Right.'
Jenny masked the anxiety beginning to grip her with a smile. She glanced at her
watch. 'I'm just going out to grab some lunch. How about we get together at
one-thirty and go through what happens next?' She reached for her handbag.

    'Before
you go - I had a chat with one of my former colleagues in the CID about Katy
Taylor.'

    
Shit.
There was nothing for it. 'Yes?' Jenny reached nonchalantly into her bag and
took out a small bottle of Evian and her pills, careful to keep her hand over
the label while she unscrewed the container. She saw Alison observing her in
the way of a police officer, her eyes fixed on her face, watching her hands
with peripheral vision.

    'He
wasn't very happy about the investigation either. It certainly looked like she
might have been with someone when she died, but there was no evidence of force
or assault, and the fact that she was already using meant that proving her
death wasn't an accident was going to be virtually impossible. If there was
even a hint of a struggle it would have been a different story.'

    Jenny
swallowed a pill with a mouthful of water, sure that Alison had noticed the
tremor in her hands. 'What does this detective think should have been done?'

    'For
one thing they had evidence she was on the game, so any punters she'd been with
could have been nicked for sex with a minor. Then there was the fact that there
was no spoon, lighter or ligature found with the body - all things that might
have had someone's dabs on them. All they found was a syringe with her prints
on it.'

    'So
we're pretty sure she wasn't alone?'

    'The
scene could have been disturbed by someone after she died and before the body
was discovered, but my friend's pretty sure there was a man involved. Who
knows, he could even have been a dealer who traded her drugs for sex - out-
of-the-way place like that.'

    Jenny
felt the temazepam seep into her system and her heart start to slow. Her
rational mind began to regain control. 'Suspected underage sex, possible
manslaughter. What more does it take to get an investigation going?'

    'It's
still technically an open file.'

    'Meaning?'

    'They'll
investigate further if evidence comes to light, but no one's being paid to go
looking for it.'

    Jenny
said, 'I met her parents this morning. I don't get the feeling they'd have put
any pressure on for a big investigation. The way Katy had been going for the
last couple of years, I think they were half expecting it.'

    'I
heard she'd been inside for a few months. Same place as Danny Wills, wasn't
it?'

    'Not
that much of a coincidence, considering it's the only secure training centre
this side of the city.'

    'Still,'
Alison said, 'makes you wonder.'

    They
exchanged a look.

    'I
know. But what, exactly?'

    Alison
shrugged. 'Drugs, pimps, gangs ... All the scum that prey on kids like that. They
were both from the same part of town - you can bet there's some connection.'

    'And
it was Detective Superintendent Swainton who made the decision not to look
further?'

    Alison
nodded.

    'And
it was purely about resources?'

    'That
would be the obvious reason.'

    She
was clearly insinuating something that Jenny was meant to get, but didn't.
Another police trait: assuming other people thought as deviously as you did.

    'Could
there be any other?'

    'Not
that I can think of. Unless he was afraid of upsetting another investigation
... or if he'd been sat on for some reason.'

    'Why
would anyone have sat on him?'

    Alison
shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. 'If the person she was with was
an important informer, for example, or someone prominent.'

    'Is
that what you've been told? Don't tell me she was having sex with an MP.'

    'No.
No one's said anything like that, apart from the idle gossip that goes round.
He probably had more work on than his officers could cope with.'

    Jenny
could see the conflict in her, the loyal detective versus the decent, homely
woman as troubled by Katy Taylor's solitary death and the inadequate police
response as she was. Alison probably had children, most likely grown up by now,
but their teens can't have been that long ago. Another thought struck her:
yesterday she had defended the sainted Marshall to the hilt, now she was
intimating that he'd been part of something shady. It would have taken more
than idle gossip to knock him off his pedestal.

    'Then
I suppose,' Jenny said, 'that if for whatever reason the police didn't go after
whoever was with Katy, Mr Marshall must have been persuaded to do the same?'

    Alison
stood very still, then, without warning, her eyes filled with tears. Holding
herself rigid, she said, 'I loved Harry Marshall, Mrs Cooper, not as a lover,
but for three years he was the best friend I'd ever had. Something happened to
him in those final weeks . . . He was in a fury over the Danny Wills case. I'd
never seen him like it. He said he was going to shake the citadel to its
foundations. But when I came back from leave he was so depressed he'd hardly
speak to me.' She paused, collecting herself. 'Then on the Thursday night the
phone rang at home. I answered, but the caller hung up. I checked - it was
Harry's home number. He never called me from home. I should have phoned back,
but I didn't like to - it was nearly midnight . . . And the next morning, he
was dead.'

    The
floodgates finally opened. Jenny guided Alison to a chair and handed her
tissues as six weeks of silent suffering gave way to wails of grief.

    Driving
home at the end of only the second day of her new career Jenny felt the first
twinges of nostalgia for family law. Courts were traumatic but had the virtue of
being impersonal. Her relationship with Alison was already becoming
uncomfortably intimate. And while she was watching her officer weep for her
lover who never was, she had realized that there was now no question of
replacing her, at least not in the short term. Not only had she inherited a
tangled mess of dubious cases, it was left to her to deal with the emotional
fallout.

    The
story of her life: everybody's needs before her own. Surrounded by powerful
personalities - her parents, her husband, numerous bosses and judges over the
years - the real Jenny Cooper had yet to step forward. Forty-two years old and
still no territory to call her own.

    The
train of self-pitying thoughts persisted all the way home and she pulled up to
Melin Bach with a dull headache and a nagging anxiety which would only be cured
by a large glass of wine. She was almost at the front door before she realized
that the front garden was transformed. The weeds had gone, the grass was mown
and the foxgloves and hollyhocks either side of the porch now stood in freshly
dug borders. Lavender and peonies she hadn't known were there had emerged from
the jungle. She dropped her briefcase and wandered around to the back along the
cart track, now tamed and tidy, and found a lawn, a little rough but mown in
stripes, stretching from the back of the house to the stream. A path of evenly
spaced flagstones set into the turf had been uncovered, leading from the
kitchen door to the stream's edge; and by the stone wall bordering the field
going downhill to the left of the house, rosemary, sage and thyme bushes had
emerged from a thicket of briars and nettles.

    She
stood for a long moment and took in her new domain, now seeing it as a working
place where generations of women had walked the path to the stream in all
weathers to fetch water and wash clothes, and with callused hands had gathered
herbs on summer evenings like this. She pictured a mother standing with an
aching back and heavy woollen skirts thinking of the freedom she might have
enjoyed a distant twenty miles away in the city, never imagining that her
homestead would one day be a refuge for a woman who had been given freedoms she
could never have dreamed of.