The Coroner (2 page)

    On
the second day of the inquest, they obliged. On Wednesday 2 May Harry decided
not to hold an inquest into the death of fifteen-year-old drug user Katy Taylor
and instead signed a death certificate confirming that she died as the result
of an overdose of intravenously administered heroin. This was to be his last
significant act as Her Majesty's Coroner. Thirty-six hours later, on waking
from an unusually restful night's sleep, his wife found him lying stone cold next
to her. The family doctor, a long-standing friend, was happy to attribute his
death to natural causes - a coronary - thereby sparing him the indignity of a
postmortem.

    Harry
was cremated a week later, on the same day and in the same crematorium as Danny
Wills. The operative charged with sweeping ashes and bone fragments from the
retort of the furnace into the cremulator for fine grinding was, as usual, less
than conscientious; the urns handed to the respective families contained the
mingled remains of several deceased. Harry's urn was emptied in a corner of a
Gloucestershire field where he and his wife had once courted. In a touching
impromptu ceremony, each of his daughters read aloud from Wordsworth, Tennyson,
Gray and Keats.

    Danny's
remains were scattered in the crematorium's Garden of Remembrance. The marble
plaque set among the rose bushes read 'Beauty for Ashes', but in deference to
every religion except that which had provided these words of comfort and
inspiration, the Bible reference had been chiselled out.

    Harry
would have smiled at that, would have shaken his head and wondered at the
small, mean minds who decreed what portion of the truth others should know.

    Jenny
Cooper, an attractive but not quite beautiful woman in her early forties, sat wearing
her determined, resistant face opposite Dr James Allen. The community
psychiatrist must have been at least ten years her junior, Jenny guessed, and
was trying hard not to be intimidated by her. How many professional women could
he encounter here at the small modern hospital in Chepstow - a one-horse town
by anybody's measure?

    'You've
experienced no panic attacks for the last month?' The young doctor turned
through the many pages of Jenny's notes.

    'No.'

    He
wrote down her reply. 'Have any threatened?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    He
looked up with a patient smile. Noticing the neatness of his parting and his
carefully knotted tie, Jenny wondered what it was about himself that he was
suppressing.

    'Have
you encountered any situations which have triggered panic symptoms?'

    She
scanned back over the last few weeks and months: the tension of the job
interviews, the elation of being appointed coroner, the impulsive decision to
buy a home in the country, the exhaustion of moving without any help, the
overwhelming guilt at acting so decisively in her own interests.

    'I
suppose - ' she hesitated - 'the time I feel most anxious is when I phone my
son.'

    'Because
. . . ?'

    'The
prospect of his father answering.'

    Dr Allen
nodded, as if this was all well within his infinite experience.

    'Can
you be any more specific? Can you isolate exactly what it is that you fear?'

    Jenny
glanced out of the ground-floor window at the patch of garden, the green,
sterile neatness defeating its purpose.

    'He
judges me . . . Even though it was his affairs that ended our marriage, his
insistence that I keep up my career while trying to be a mother, his decision
to fight for custody. He still judges me.'

    'What
is his judgement?'

    'That
I'm a selfish failure.'

    'Has
he actually said that to you?'

    'He
doesn't have to.'

    'You
say he encouraged you in your career ... Is this a judgement you're passing on
yourself?'

    'I
thought this was psychiatry, not psychoanalysis.'

    'Losing
custody of your son is bound to have stirred up all sorts of difficult
emotions.'

    'I
didn't lose him, I consented to him living at his father's.'

    'But
it's what he wanted, though, wasn't it? Your illness shook his trust in you.'

    She
shot him a look intended to signal that was far enough. She didn't need a
thirty-year-old quack to tell her why her nerves were shot, she just needed a
repeat temazepam prescription.

    Dr
Allen regarded her thoughtfully, seeing her as a case - she could tell - to be
cracked.

    'You
don't think that by taking this position as a coroner you're in danger of
overstretching yourself?'

    Jenny
swallowed the words she would like to have hurled at him and forced a tolerant
smile.

    'I
have taken this position because it's predictable, safe, salaried. There's no
boss. I answer to no one.'

    'Except
the dead . . . and their families.'

    'After
fifteen years in childcare law the dead will be a welcome relief.'

    Her
answer seemed to interest him. He leaned forward with an earnest expression,
ready to explore it further. Jenny cut in: 'Look, the symptoms are easing all
the time. I can work, I can function, and mild medication is helping me to
regain control. I appreciate your concern, but I think you'll agree I'm doing
everything to get my life back on the rails.' She glanced at her watch. 'And I
really do have to get to work now.'

    Dr
Allen sat back in his seat, disappointed at her reaction. 'If you gave it a
chance, I'm convinced we could make some progress, perhaps remove any danger of
you having another breakdown.'

    'It
wasn't a breakdown.'

    'Episode,
then. An inability to cope.'

    Jenny
met his gaze, realizing that young and gauche as he was, he was enjoying the
power he had over her.

    'Of
course I don't want that to happen again,' she said. 'I'd love to continue this
discussion another time, you've been very helpful, but I really do have to
leave. It's my first day at the office.'

    Assured
of another date, he reached for his diary. 'I've a clinic here a fortnight
Friday - how about five-thirty, so we can take as long as we need?'

    Jenny
smiled and pushed her dark brown hair back from her face. 'That sounds
perfect.'

    As he
wrote in the appointment he said, 'You won't mind if I ask you a couple more
questions, just so we've covered ourselves?'

    'Fire
away.'

    'Have
you deliberately purged or vomited recently?'

    'You've
been thorough.'

    He
handed her an appointment card, waiting for her answer.

    'Occasionally.'

    'Any
particular reason?'

    She
shrugged. 'Because I don't like feeling fat.'

    He
glanced involuntarily at her legs, reddening slightly as he realized she had
spotted him. 'But you're very slim.'

    'Thank
you. It's obviously working.'

    He
looked down at his notebook, covering his embarrassment. 'Have you taken any
non-prescription drugs?'

    'No.'
She reached for her shiny new leather briefcase. 'Are we finished now? I
promise not to sue.'

    'One
final thing. I read in the notes from your meetings with Dr Travis that you
have a twelve-month gap in your childhood memory - between the ages of four and
five.'

    'His
notes should also record the fact that between the ages of five and thirty-five
I was relatively happy.'

    Dr
Allen folded his hands patiently on his lap. 'I look forward to having you as a
patient, Mrs Cooper, but you should know that the tough defences you have built
for yourself have to come down eventually. Better you choose the time than it
chooses you.'

    Jenny
gave the slightest nod, feeling her heart beginning to thump, a pressure
building on either side of her head, her field of vision fading at the edges.
She stood up quickly, summoning sufficient anger at her weakness to push the
rising sensation of panic away. Trying to sound casual but businesslike, she
said, 'I'm sure we'll get on very well together. May I have my prescription
now?'

    The
doctor looked at her. He reached for his pen. She sensed him reading her
symptoms, too polite to comment.

    Jenny
picked up the pills from the dispensary and popped two with a mouthful of Diet
Sprite as soon as she climbed into her car, telling herself it was only
first-day jitters she was feeling. Waiting for the medication to hit, she
checked her make-up in the vanity mirror and for once was mildly encouraged by
what she saw. Not bad, on the outside at least; wearing better than her mother
was at her age . . .

    After
only seconds she felt the pills begin to work their magic, relaxing her muscles
and blood vessels, a warmth spreading through her like a glass of Chardonnay on
an empty stomach. She turned the key in the ignition and drove her ageing Golf
out of the car park.

    With
Tina Turner blasting from the stereo, she crawled through the queue of traffic
to the roundabout on the edge of town, joined the eastbound M4 motorway and
pressed her foot to the floor. Driving into the sun, she flew across the
three-mile sweep of the old Severn Bridge at eighty miles per hour. The twin
towers, from which the bridge was implausibly suspended by nothing more than
steel cables a few inches thick, seemed to her magnificent: symbols of
unbreakable strength and promise. Glancing out over the bright blue water
stretching to a misty horizon, she tried to look on the positive side. In the
space of a year she had endured an emotional collapse which forced her to leave
her job, survived a bitter divorce, lost custody of her teenage son and managed
to start afresh with a new home and career. She was bruised but not broken. And
determined more than ever that what she had endured would serve only to make
her stronger.

    Jockeying
through the traffic into central Bristol, she felt invincible. What could that
psychiatrist know? What had he ever survived?

    To
hell with him. If she ever needed pills again, she'd get them from the
internet.

    Her
new office was in a fading Georgian town house in Jamaica Street, a turning off
the southern end of Whiteladies Road. Having struggled to find a parking space
nearby, she approached it for the first time on foot. It couldn't be called
grand. Three doors from the junction with the main road, it stood between a
scruffy Asian convenience store and an even more down-at-heel newsagent's on
the corner. She arrived at the front door and looked at the two brass plates.
The first and second floors were occupied by an architect's practice, Planter
and Co.; the ground floor was hers: HM Coroner, Severn Vale District.

    It
sounded so formal, so Establishment. She was a forty- two-year-old woman who
had tantrums, read trashy magazines in bed, listened to reggae and smoked
cigarettes when she'd drunk too much. But here she was, responsible for
investigating all unnatural deaths in a large slice of north Bristol and South
Gloucestershire. She was the coroner: an office which, according to her limited
research, dated back to the year 1194. Feeling the temazepam glow begin to
recede, she fished out the bunch of keys she had received in the post and
unlocked the door.

    The
entrance hall was drab and painted a sickly light green. A dark oak staircase
wound up to the first floor and beyond, its grandeur spoiled by the industrial
grey carpeting which covered the uneven floorboards. The dreary effect was
completed by the wall-mounted plastic signs which guided visitors upstairs or
left to the door, partially glazed with grubby frosted glass, marked 'Coroner's
Office'.

    The
interior of her new domain was even gloomier. Shutting the door behind her, she
flicked on the strip lights and surveyed the large, dingy reception area. She
made a mental note to redecorate as soon as possible. An elderly computer and
telephone sat on a desk which looked older than she was. Behind it stood a row
of grey filing cabinets of similar vintage and a dying cheese plant. On the opposite
side of the room were two sagging sofas set at right angles around a low, cheap
coffee table on which were arranged a selection of tired
Reader's Digest
magazines. The high point was a tall sash window overlooking a spacious light
well in which the architects upstairs - she presumed - had placed two potted
bay trees and a stylish modern bench.