The Coroner (39 page)

    'I
was afraid he'd been mixed up in some sort of corruption. He was always
complaining he didn't make enough money.'

    'How
did he get hold of this?'

    'I've
no idea. It's meant to be confidential between the tenderer and the Youth
Justice Board. Someone must have leaked it.'

    'And
he never mentioned it to you?'

    She
shook her head. 'I've written you a letter of resignation.' She reached into
her briefcase and brought out an envelope.

    'What
good will that do?'

    'A
young boy died and I've withheld evidence.'

    'You
want UKAM to finish your career as well?'

    'How
could you trust me now? I can't even trust myself.'

    'You
gave me this, didn't you?'

    Alison
looked at her, disbelieving. 'Don't you want me to go?'

    Jenny
said, 'I'll make a deal with you. You keep my secrets and I'll keep yours.
Everyone else's are fair game.'

    The
events of the day turned and twisted in her mind. UKAM's dirty tricks and
careful coaching of the witnesses had destroyed her every attempt to lay blame
at their door. What she hadn't thought through were the lengths to which an
aggressive commercial enterprise would go to protect itself. A verdict of
neglect wouldn't just result in the rearranging of the furniture as it would in
the state prison system, it could threaten tens of millions of pounds' worth of
business.

    The
tender sat in the passenger seat of her car like an unexploded incendiary.
Marshall, like her, had read it and realized that the life of a
fourteen-year-old criminal was nothing to UKAM compared with the business at
stake. He had read it and become enraged, he was going to shake the citadel to
its foundations, but instead it shook him. Something happened between him
receiving the tender and conducting the sham of an inquest which had destroyed
him. Alison was frightened he had been corrupted, but Jenny didn't believe that
- UKAM wouldn't have risked him going to the police, they'd have been smarter.
Whatever they had come up with, Marshall had been crushed. Simone Wills had
been vilified in the press and her house turned over on the eve of the inquest
on a malicious tip- off, and Tara Collins, who had tried to make the connection
between Danny's death and Katy Taylor's, had found herself on fraud charges
that could potentially land her in a US jail.

    What
was coming her way? she wondered. The tranquillizers she'd ordered illegally on
the internet? Her medical history? Threats to her son?

    Jenny
gripped the steering wheel with hands slippery with sweat and tried to stay
alive as she crossed the Severn Bridge, jammed in between the central
reservation and an angry row of articulated lorries. With her heart racing and
all her old anxiety symptoms raging, she feared she was falling apart.

    She
rolled up the bottoms of her old jeans and waded barefoot into the stream. The
stones were sharp against the soles of her feet but they were soon numbed by
the freezing water. Standing in the middle, thigh deep, she looked up into
waving leaves of the ash trees and asked the God she'd always tried to believe
was there how someone who should feel so free could be so trapped inside
herself.

    She
remained there until she trembled, until her whole body was feeling something
more powerful than the grip of intangible fear. When her teeth were chattering
so hard she could no longer clamp them together, she struggled back to the edge
and sat down at the scrub-top table. In her cold wet clothes, barely able to
hold a pen, she started to make notes in a legal pad. She stayed there,
shivering, refusing to be beaten, until it was too dark to see.

    She
woke feeling detached, as if she didn't belong in her body. The face that
looked back at her in the bathroom mirror seemed unfamiliar. She had to press
her fingers down hard on the wash-hand basin to feel them. Dr Travis had once
given this symptom a technical name which she had deliberately chosen to
forget. All she knew was that it was part of the syndrome and it frightened
her.

    As
she dressed and breakfasted the sensation began to recede and feeling slowly
returned to her fingers, but paranoid, unwanted thoughts slid in to take its
place. She didn't like to touch the bread knife; she found herself avoiding
treading on the cracks between the flagstones on the kitchen floor. She
repeated to herself she had been here before, that these were just symptoms of
simple stress that she could weather and overcome if she could force herself through
the next few days, but another voice told her that this was it, that she was
going down properly this time. For good.

    She
took control in the only way she could, by planning the day's medication
meticulously. A pill now, one just before court, another before the afternoon
session. To cover emergencies she repeated the Polo mint trick with four
half-tablets, which she placed back in the wrapper. During the drive into the
city she rehearsed a selection of the exercises Dr Travis had taught her and
managed to force her most bizarre and disturbing thoughts back beneath the
surface. She remembered him saying that when she felt like this the important
thing was to keep her emotions under control, not become angry or riled. If she
could manage to stay level she might just get through the day, and after
succeeding once, each subsequent day would be easier. She knew that. She'd
climbed this mountain before.

    Stepping
through the judge's door and once more taking her seat on the throne of
justice, she felt almost herself again. Just the right amount of temazepam,
twenty minutes of relaxation exercises and no caffeine in her system. She was
steady. Coping. The same could not be said for Simone Wills, who looked angry
and tearful and was shooting vicious looks in the direction of the huddle of
UKAM executives who seemed to be enjoying the break from their usual office
routine. Tara Collins was sitting next to her, offering words of reassurance.
The woman in the 'Porn Star' T-shirt and most of her other friends hadn't
reappeared, leaving gaps on the public benches. The reporters, too, were
thinner on the ground, but the two suited officials were in their same places
at the back, notebooks out, pens poised. Hartley was reclining in his seat,
sharing a joke with his solicitor. The QC's body language said he was feeling
supremely confident and expected his day to pass off without a hitch. Resolving
to disappoint him, Jenny called her first witness.

    Elaine
Lewis took several moments to respond to Alison's call. She entered from the
lobby and walked at a measured pace to the front of the room, giving every
impression of owning the court as absolutely as she did her prison. Dressed in
an immaculate trouser suit with only a subtle hint of jewellery, she stepped elegantly
into the witness box and read the oath without a flicker of nervousness; her
every word and gesture was crafted to assert unwavering, understated
confidence. Simone Wills glared murderously at her, but she remained aloof.
Regal. Aware of the tension gathering in her own body, Jenny felt a stab of
envy.

    'Mrs
Lewis, in your capacity as director of Portshead Farm, you accept ultimate
responsibility for all operational decisions?'

    After
a beat, Elaine Lewis said, 'Of course.'

    'Let's
chart Danny's progress through your institution and the decisions that were
made about him, shall we? Before he even arrived on your premises your office
had been telephoned both by his mother and by the family's social worker
warning that he was in a vulnerable mental state.'

    'Yes.
We have rigorous procedures for assessing trainees on their arrival and these
are designed to detect such vulnerabilities. In Danny's case that is exactly
what happened.' She spoke in a soft, moderate tone, saying
Danny
as if
he were her own nephew.

    'Who
took those calls?'

    'My
assistant takes all my calls. I don't have a direct line.'

    'Did
she convey those messages to you?'

    'I am
notified of all relevant communications. There was nothing unusual or out of
the ordinary about those from Mrs Wills and Mrs Turner. While we try to be
responsive to families, Portshead Farm
is
a penal institution.'

    'Are
you saying you have a policy of not answering calls from concerned family
members or professionals?'

    'It
would be unusual for me to respond personally, yes.'

    'Did
you do anything with the information in those calls? Contact the medical
staff?'

    'No.
I have every faith in the professional judgement of all our staff, and it was
more than justified in this case.'

    'So
you dismissed the calls as hysterical nonsense?'

    'Those
aren't words I would ever choose to use. What I would say is that once a
trainee is received into Portshead

    Farm,
he or she is our responsibility. We take that duty extremely seriously.'

    Jenny
paused to make a note, deliberately dictating the pace. After a long moment,
without looking up, she said, 'What effect do you consider dressing a naked,
mentally disturbed fourteen-year-old boy in a thick gown that resembles a horse
blanket and locking him in a cell for three days might have had on him?'

    'I am
not a medical professional. I wouldn't like to comment. However, it is an
authorized procedure designed to ensure the child doesn't hurt himself.'

    'It's
designed to ensure the child
can't
physically hurt himself, isn't it? It
doesn't address his psychological state at all.'

    'Our
first priority is to ensure the
physical
well-being of each trainee.'

    'He
was placed in the cell because it was felt he was at risk of self-harm. That is
a psychological disorder, yet he wasn't seen by a psychiatrist. There wasn't
one available.'

    'You
have seen the protocols which by law we are forced to follow. We followed them.
In an ideal world Danny would have been seen by a psychiatrist, but due to
circumstances beyond our control, none was available during that period.'

    'You
could have paid for one to come in.'

    'If
it was considered necessary, of course we would have done that. But Danny had
no history of mental illness and was perfectly behaved during his period on
observation. He was not in the categories of trainees for whom we would
normally have called a psychiatrist.'

    'Doesn't
it trouble you that he wasn't seen?'

    'The
entire adult and youth custody system is imperfect. At Portshead Farm we do the
very best we can on the budget the government makes available to us. Every
aspect of our procedures is strictly controlled and reviewed.'

    Elaine
Lewis's rehearsed answers were starting to get under her skin, but Jenny told
herself to relax, to go at her without emotion, to let the smooth-talking
executive hang herself.

    'Mrs
Lewis, how do you explain the fact that the camera in the male house unit was
broken for a week? Aren't cameras subject to your strict controls?'

    'That
should not have happened. Steps are being taken to make sure that in future all
faults are remedied within twenty-, four hours.'

    'You
don't consider it a coincidence that the one camera on site that was broken
could have told us whether or not Mr Stewart made the half-hourly checks as he
claimed?'

    'No,
I don't. And Kevin Stewart is one of our most experienced and dependable
members of staff.'

    Jenny
glanced at the jury. Their faces were set and stony. Despite Elaine Lewis's
polished performance they weren't warming to her.

    'And
you don't consider it odd that one of your most experienced members of staff
should have failed, not once, but nine times, to spot a body hanging from the
window?'

    'I am
satisfied with his explanation that it wasn't visible, and that unfortunately
he was tricked into believing Danny was in bed. It's perfectly possible to have
cameras in cells, but I don't think any of us would like that.'

    'You
don't accept that your systems in any way contributed to Danny's death?'

    'No.'