The Coroner (15 page)

    She
folded her hands neatly in front of her. Her nerves were holding steady. 'Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen.' She glanced at the note of the counsel's name
Alison had left on her desk. 'I understand you're here on behalf of the Severn
Vale Constabulary, Mr Hartley.'

    Giles
Hartley QC rose to his feet at a measured, theatrical pace and addressed her in
precise, public school tones. 'Yes, ma'am, and I am instructed by Mr
Mallinson.' Mallinson, his instructing solicitor, gave the customary nod. 'But
before we begin, ma'am, might I raise a question of law?' He continued without
waiting for an answer: 'If my understanding is correct, the unfortunate death
of Katy Taylor was, following a postmortem examination on Tuesday i May,
certified as being due to an overdose of the drug commonly known as heroin. A
finding having been made, one questions the validity of this hearing, pleasant
though the journey here this morning was.'

    A
ripple of sycophantic laughter travelled round the hall.

    Jenny
was expecting a shot across the bows and was ready and primed. 'I'm sure you've
read the 2001 case of
Terry
v
Craze,
Mr Hartley, in which the
Court of Appeal held that a coroner is entitled to hold an inquest even after a
death certificate has been issued, where evidence gives rise to reasonable
cause to suspect the deceased died an unnatural death.'

    'That
is precisely the issue, ma'am. The death was unnatural and the coroner, Mr
Marshall, certified it as such. He may have erred in failing to hold an
inquest, but that does not give you jurisdiction to hold one now. The correct
procedure must surely be for you to request leave of the High Court before
embarking on this fresh inquiry.'

    Hartley
had a point, but only a slender one. Jenny had read and re-read the authorities
and was prepared to stand her ground. Let Hartley run off to the Court of
Appeal if he wanted, she wasn't going to be strong-armed into abandoning now.
'Mr Marshall was indeed wrong to sign a death certificate and I consider it
void. No formal finding of fact having been made, I am therefore not only
entitled, but legally
obliged,
to hold this inquest. I will not be
persuaded otherwise. Thank you, Mr Hartley.'

    She
turned to Alison, who looked impressed at her opening salvo. 'May we have a
jury please, Usher?'

    Disgruntled,
Hartley resumed his seat. While Alison called up the eight jurors from the back
of the room, he leaned over to Mallinson and whispered instructions. The
younger lawyer scuttled to the door and disappeared outside, pulling out his
phone.

    Jenny
scanned the faces in what passed for the public gallery while the jurors took
their places in a row of seats along the wall opposite the lawyers' table.
There was no sign of Peterson or any police officers. Mallinson must have gone
to let them know that they would have to come to court after all. Jenny looked
over at Hartley impatiently tapping his fountain pen on a legal pad. Did he
really think she would be derailed that easily? She watched him crane round and
exchange a glance with Grantham, and, as if sensing that he'd been caught out,
pick up some papers and pretend to read.

    She'd
won the first skirmish, but was under no illusions that Grantham and his
friends planned to make her life as difficult as possible. She felt a knot of
tension in her chest, then fear. The one time Marshall had dug too deep, she
reminded herself, he hadn't lived to tell the tale.

    The
first, and only, witness to have answered his summons at the allotted hour was
Justin Bennett, a young social worker attached to the Severn Vale Youth
Offending Team. Jenny's son would have called him a crusty. He was white,
twenty- four, no more than five seven and wore his dark hair in matted,
shoulder-length dreadlocks which he had tied back into a ponytail for the
occasion. He had several rings in each ear, a nose stud and another ring
through his bottom lip which either caused or enhanced his lisp. He sat
uncomfortably in the witness chair in a khaki-coloured suit and open-necked
shirt. A young man, Jenny thought, in a state of some confusion: working for
the forces of law and order but trying to pass on the street for a drug dealer.

    She
questioned him in the same patient manner she would have done a surly teenager:
'In early March of this year Katy Taylor received a twelve-week detention and
training order for mugging an eighteen-year-old woman.'

    'Yes.'
Justin mumbled his answer, looking anywhere but at her.

    'Could
you try and speak up please, Mr Bennett. The jury needs to hear you.'

    He
gave a defensive nod, his cheeks flushing.

    'In
the course of the attack she broke the victim's nose and stole thirty pounds to
buy drugs.'

    'That's
right.'

    'After
six weeks in Portshead Farm Secure Training Centre she was released from
detention on 17 April and placed under your supervision for the remaining six
weeks of her sentence.'

    'Yeah.'

    'What
did that supervision involve, exactly?'

    'She
had to go to school every day, she was on a seven p.m. curfew and she was meant
to go to RA twice a week.'

    'RA?'

    'Recovery
from Addiction. She came out of Portshead clean and she was meant to stay that
way.'

    'How
were these conditions enforced?'

    'She
was on voice verification. She'd get a phone call on her home number at
seven-fifteen every night and the computer would check the voice print to make
sure it was her.'

    'Did
she have to attend personal meetings with you?'

    'Twice
a week after school before RA.'

    'Sounds
like a tough regime.'

    Justin
didn't answer. Jenny suspected he didn't know what
regime
meant.

    'But
she was only out five days before she went missing.'

    'Yeah.'

    'How
many times did you see her in person during this period?'

    'Twice.
On Wednesday the 18th for an appointment, and just in passing on Friday before
her RA. She was due to see me again on the Monday, the 23rd.'

    Jenny
wrote down his reply and in brackets added ('well rehearsed').

    'Did
she stick to her curfew?'

    'Mostly.
She was late in on the Friday night, I think.'

    'But
she turned up for RA?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did
you know or suspect that she had been prostituting herself to buy drugs?'

    'I
did read that on her file.'

    'Did
you discuss it with her during the Wednesday appointment?'

    'No,
I don't think so.'

    'What
did you talk about?'

    'I
explained the terms of her contract to her, took her voice print and gave her
all the information about the course. It was more admin than anything.'

    'Admin?
Weren't you meant to be there as an emotional support, Mr Bennett? Surely
discussing the reasons for her previous offending and prostitution was pretty
fundamental, especially given that she was only fifteen.'

    Justin
turned a darker shade of pink. 'It was just an initial meeting.'

    'I
see. And do you have any knowledge of any friends, acquaintances or anyone who
might have supplied her with heroin?'

    'No.'

    'You
never asked who she bought from?'

    'We
never ask young offenders to inform. It's our job to win their trust.'

    In
five minutes of questioning she felt she had extracted all she ever would from
Justin Bennett. He reminded her of so many social workers she had encountered
in family law - a couple of years into the job they realized their struggle to
right the wrongs of society was futile, got compassion fatigue and turned into
clock watchers. Ask the requisite questions, tick the boxes and get out of the
office by five. Justin showed every sign of fitting the mould.

    'Thank
you, Mr Bennett, no more questions.' She looked over at Hartley, who shook his
head. 'You may stand down. Leave the building if you wish.'

    Justin
bolted from his seat and straight for the exit, avoiding the gaze of Mr and Mrs
Turner. He was already shrugging off his suit jacket as he pushed out of the
door.

    The
only other witness to have arrived was Police Constable Helen Campbell, a
nervous, overweight young woman who had trouble moving one thigh in front of
the other; she didn't look capable of tackling determined criminals. Her hands
shook as she read the oath, stumbling over the words. Several members of the
jury looked surprised at this and exchanged glances. Jenny knew how the young
officer felt, and, adopting her most unconfrontational tone, proceeded to
question her gently.

    PC
Campbell had been first on the scene at nine a.m. following a call from a
member of the public. She was alone in the patrol car as her partner had rung
in sick. Still alone, she taped off the immediate area around the body and
called in CID, who arrived an hour later with a small forensics team. It was
raining hard and had been for several days previously. By one p.m. forensics
had drawn a blank and she was given the job of arranging an undertaker to
remove the remains to the Vale mortuary. Later that afternoon she met Mr and
Mrs Taylor at the hospital and arranged for them to identify their daughter's
body. Before ending her shift she wrote a longhand report of the day's events
which she handed to Detective Superintendent Alan Swainton, the officer in
charge of the investigation. She heard no more about it until two days later, 2
May, when she learned that CID were satisfied the death was due to an
accidental overdose and that the coroner had released the body for burial.

    Jenny
paused for a moment and considered the evidence PC Campbell had just given. A
young, clearly substandard officer had been first to arrive at a potential
murder scene. It had taken an hour for detectives and scenes of crime officers
to arrive. Although Campbell was barely literate, she had been charged with
writing the report to the coroner. Jenny made a note of these thoughts, then
turned back to the police constable.

    'Would
you consider it unusual for an officer of your relative inexperience to be left
in charge of a potential murder scene for a full hour and to have been given
the responsibility of writing the report to the coroner?'

    'Not
really, ma'am.' PC Campbell spoke in her thick Bristol accent, growing a little
more confident now. 'We were that stretched, it was a question of whoever was
free to do it.'

    'Did
you offer to write the report or were you asked to?'

    'I
had to write a statement about finding the body anyway. It was Detective
Superintendent Swainton who asked me to send it to the coroner's office.'

    Out
of the corner of her eye, Jenny noticed Hartley listening closely to this
exchange. Alison, too, was on the edge of her seat. Jenny recalled her
speculation in the office before she broke down: that Swainton had been sat on,
that Katy might have been consorting with someone prominent, or even a police
informer, someone neither the police nor Marshall wanted - or dared - to touch.

    'Constable,
could you tell the jury exactly how and by whom Katy's body was discovered?'

    'A
woman walking her dog, a Mrs Julia Gabb, found her. Actually the dog did. He'd
run off and the lady found him by the body.'

    'Did
she walk her dog there every day?'

    'She
said she hadn't been to that spot for a week.'

    'Presumably,
a lot of other people walk there too?'

    'A
few do, yes.'

    'So,
even though the body was out of sight of the road and the footpath above, it
might be considered strange that it wasn't discovered before?'

    PC
Campbell shrugged. 'I couldn't say.'

    Jenny
picked up her copy of the police photographs of Katy's body at the scene and
studied them again. The corpse was under the cover of a large shrub, a laurel
or a rhododendron. She recalled from her childhood haunts on the north Somerset
coast that such shrubs appeared impenetrable from the outside, but once you
were through the outer leaves, there was invariably a secret den in the middle.
How would Katy, a thoroughly urban girl, know that? Why go to such lengths to
find somewhere to take drugs?