The Coroner (7 page)

    She
parked outside the Wills's address, checked the car doors were locked and
walked up the short path to the front door. A broken baby buggy and faded plastic
toys littered the tiny front lawn.

    A
bony coffee-coloured man with beads in his hair answered the door in a grubby
T-shirt and boxers. A powerful waft of marijuana followed in his wake.

    Jenny
glanced over his shoulder at two pre-school children still in their pyjamas,
both of them white. 'I'm Jenny Cooper, the new Severn Vale coroner. I'm looking
for Simone Wills.'

    The
man stared at her with swollen, bloodshot eyes. 'She's not here.' He moved to
shut the door.

    Jenny
stuck her foot over the threshold. 'I just want to talk to her for a minute.
It's important.'

    'Piss
off.'

    He
kicked out at her foot with his bare toes, misfired and caught them on the
corner of the jamb. 'Shit.'

    Jenny
suppressed the urge to smile.

    'Who is
it, Ali?' The woman's voice called through from the back. Jenny saw her shape
appear in the doorway at the far end of the hall, stick thin, a joint in her
hand.

    Ali,
rubbing his stubbed toes on the back of his bare calf, said, 'Bitch here for
you says she's the coroner.'

    Jenny
called through, 'I just need a few minutes, Mrs Wills. Sorry to disturb you at
home.'

    Simone
disappeared for a moment, then came back down the hall minus whatever she had
been smoking, stepping over the kids. She yelled at Ali, 'Get those two
upstairs and changed.' He backed off, giving Jenny a look that said he wouldn't
forget.

    Simone
stepped out on to the doorstep in bare feet beneath her frayed jeans saying,
'You can't come in now. It's a mess.' She glanced up and down the street,
checking for who might be watching. She had dark rings around her eyes but
still managed to be pretty, a vulnerable look about her. Built like a bird, the
loose flap of skin showing over her belt the only sign she had borne six
children. 'What do you want?'

    'You
heard Mr Marshall died shortly after the inquest?'

    'Yeah.
Can't say I'm that sad about it.'

    Jenny
watched her run nervy fingers through her hennaed hair. 'I picked up the
answerphone messages you left him. Didn't he call you back?'

    Simone
shook her head. 'Didn't want to know me, did he? Before the inquest it was all
promises, then nothing. I never even got to speak in court.'

    'What
would you have said?'

    'Like
I kept telling him - I phoned the centre the day Danny went down. I called five
times to tell them he wasn't right. He'd never been inside before. I knew he
couldn't take it.'

    'That
was in your statement, at least. Did Mr Marshall put it to the director when
she gave evidence?'

    'Yeah.
She said she never knew about the calls, her secretary must have taken them.'

    'Is
that who you spoke to?'

    'I
guess.'

    'Did
she say that even if she had received your calls Danny wouldn't have been
treated any differently?'

    'Yeah.
She was a bitch. A real hard fucking bitch.' Simone ran her eyes over Jenny's
suit. 'Dressed like you. What do you want anyway?'

    Jenny
said, 'Would you like to talk somewhere more comfortable, Mrs Wills? I'll buy
you coffee. Why don't you put on some shoes?'

    Simone
chose a coffee chain in the mall at Cribbs Causeway. Jenny followed her along
the walkways and up escalators, thinking she could have found her way around
the shopping centre blindfold. Simone looked at all the shop windows, checking
out the new season's clothes in Next and some coloured plastic orbs in the
Gadget Shop she said were the iPod speakers Ali wanted. He wasn't exactly her
partner she said, more of a friend she was still getting to know, though she
wasn't sure how much he liked kids.

    Being
in the mall seemed to relax her. Stopping to take in a display outside
Knickerbox, she said she felt like a different person whenever she got away on
her own - free.

    Jenny
bought them cappuccinos and muffins in Soho Coffee, a cafe decorated to look
like it belonged in Manhattan. They sat opposite one another at a table beneath
a poster of the Empire State Building, Simone sucking the froth off her coffee
with a spoon.

    She
told Jenny that Danny was her oldest. His dad was a Trinidadian guy from St
Pauls she went out with when she was fifteen. Getting pregnant was the reason
she left home and went to live in a flat on her own. She'd tried to bring him
up right, but different men kept letting her down, nothing in her life ever
seemed to get set and Danny didn't cope well with change. He'd calmed down for
a while when she got married to the father of her fourth, but Jason, her now
ex-husband, got hooked on crack and was in and out of prison. With no man
around, Danny fell in with boys on the estate who were always out thieving. By
the time he was nine he was too strong for her to stop him going out of the
door. Trapped at home with the young ones, what could she do?

    Most
of the times Danny went to court it was for stupid things. He wasn't a wicked
boy, he was just out to impress the other kids. It was either that or get
beaten up by them. His problem was he always got scared when he got arrested
and would put his hand up to anything to get bail. The police took advantage:
half his record was for things he hadn't done.

    When
the court tagged him, she remembered him starting to fret that the other kids
were calling him gay for staying at home. He came back from school with a black
eye and two cracked teeth and wouldn't leave his room all evening. That's when
he cut off the tag. He was arrested next morning.

    He
was scared shitless spending a weekend in the police station - though he'd
never admit it - but once he'd got bail he was OK again: a couple of nights
inside had earned him respect. Simone had hoped the shock would bring him to
his senses. Justin, his case worker from the Youth Offending Team, talked about
community service or a supervision order, maybe spending Saturdays on a
mechanics course, but the magistrates wanted him assessed for custody. Danny's
brief said it was just to scare him. It worked - that's when the real change in
him happened.

    'What
kind of change?'

    'He
went quiet, wouldn't talk to Ali or me, kept fighting with his younger
brothers. He was smoking a lot, couldn't stop him, but I saw he'd been burning
himself.'

    'With
cigarettes?'

    'Yeah.
Scabs all up the inside of his arms.'

    'Did
you speak to him about it?'

    'I
tried. He hit me. Never done that before. Ali weighed in and he smacked him,
too. Nearly broke his nose. That was the night before he was sentenced - had to
threaten him with the police to stop him breaking his curfew again. He was
crazy, but I guess he was afraid.'

    'Of
what?'

    Simone
looked down at the table and pushed some spilled grains of sugar around with a
teaspoon. 'What no one got was that Danny was just a little kid. He'd fight and
curse, but I know all he wanted was for things to be right . . . And I never
gave him that.' She lifted her dark green eyes. 'He knew he couldn't handle
going away. The thought of it terrified him.'

    'You
were his mother, what did you think would happen to him?'

    Simone
drew a careful circle in the sugar. 'What would you think?'

    'You
were there in court when he was sentenced?'

    'Course.'
She set the spoon down on her saucer. 'But he never said a word to me. I tried
to see him before they put him in the van, but they said I wasn't allowed.' She
paused and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm. 'I knew there was
something wrong with him. I knew he'd try to hurt himself . . . I just knew.'

    Jenny
handed her a clean napkin and waited while she blew her nose, thinking about the
director of Portshead Farm, Elaine Lewis, telling her secretary she didn't take
calls from mothers. She imagined an unmarried woman on the lower rungs of the
corporate ladder, the secure training centre her testing ground: make it run
under budget for two years, get promotion, then try to knock out a baby before
the hormones dried up.

    When
Simone stopped sniffling Jenny asked whether she saw or spoke to Danny during
his time at Portshead Farm.

    'They
wouldn't let me the first weekend, they said he was being assessed. So I fixed
to go the next Saturday afternoon, the 14th. Justin said normally kids could
make phone calls home, but getting a phone card was a privilege you had to earn
- that's why Danny couldn't call that week.'

    'So
you had no contact at all?'

    Simone
shook her head.

    'Did
Danny know you were coming on the Saturday?'

    'I
don't know. No one could say ... I don't think he'd've done it on the Friday
night if he did know.'

    'Why
do you say that?'

    She
twisted the napkin in her fingers. 'It's a feeling. I can't explain it. Like he
wouldn't have done it if he hadn't felt so alone.'

    'A
mother's instinct?'

    'If
you had kids you'd know what I mean.'

    Jenny
said, 'I have a teenage son,' but didn't add that he had chosen to live with
his father.

    Moving
on, she asked when Mr Marshall had first got in contact. Simone said it was
late Saturday morning, only about an hour after two policemen came to the house
to tell her that Danny was dead. She couldn't remember much about it except
that he'd said something about a post-mortem. She didn't get to see his body at
the hospital mortuary until Monday morning. They hadn't even dressed him in his
own clothes: he was in the crappy blue tracksuit they must have given him at
Portshead.

    It
was some time on the Tuesday when she met with Marshall in his office. He gave
the impression he was very sorry, made her a cup of coffee himself and asked
her lots of questions about Danny's past, how come he'd ended up in custody.
Marshall said Portshead Farm should have taken very special care of a boy that
young and he wouldn't rest until he knew every single detail of what had
happened, from the moment he was sentenced until the moment he died.

    'Did
you meet with him again before the inquest?'

    'No,
but he called me several times, said he was making progress.'

    'Did
he give you any details?'

    'He
said it would all come out at the inquest. He promised me he'd get justice for
Danny.'

    'He
used those words?'

    'Yeah.
"J
promise
." And he said I could give evidence about the phone
calls.'

    'Then
what?'

    'You
tell me. Didn't hear from him again.'

    'Any
idea why?'

    Simone's
gaze drifted off across the cafe to the shops beyond. 'The papers started
writing things about me, said I was a bad mother. Reporters were phoning the
house with all sorts of lies. One of them asked was it true Danny was a crack
baby. Another one said I was lying about my age and I'd got pregnant with him
when I was thirteen. They were just making it up.'

    'When
exactly did these calls start coming?'

    'The
middle of that week.'

    'But
Marshall wouldn't have known about them.'

    Simone
shrugged.

    It
made no sense. Why get enthused about a case, then back off so dramatically?

    Jenny
said, 'A journalist named Tara Collins called my office today. She seemed to be
on your side.' . Simone lightened a little. 'She's OK. At least she came and
talked to me.'

    'She thinks
the inquest left a lot of questions unanswered.'

    'It
was all over in a day and a half. Didn't answer anything.'

    Jenny
sat back in her chair and studied Simone's tired face, blotches showing under
the harsh fluorescent light. A welfare-dependent, dope-smoking mother of six
whose idea of a good time was a shopping mall. But something about this young
woman had touched her. At the very least she deserved some closure, some peace
of mind.