The Redeemed (5 page)

Telhurst Prison was set anonymously outside a small hamlet on
the southern plain of the Severn estuary. Surrounded by wheat fields, there was
nothing to indicate its presence except a discreet sign directing visiting
traffic from the main road down the narrow lane leading to its front entrance.
Shielded from the surrounding countryside by a screen of poplars, it occupied a
site the size of several football pitches.

The main building was of modern construction, red brick with
tiny windows like the arrow slits in the walls of a medieval castle. The
perimeter was contained by two twenty-foot- high fences studded with cameras
and patrolled by officers with dogs.

Alison had objected on principle to the coroner being
summoned to interview a convicted murderer, and having voiced her objections
sat in stubborn silence for the entire journey. Still suffering the effects of
the previous night's sleeping pills, Jenny was too tired and preoccupied to
attempt talking her round. She was thinking about ghosts, whether they were real
or imaginary, and if it made any difference either way.

Alison broke her silence as they walked across the rain-
spattered tarmac to the prison's main entrance. 'They've got no sense of
perspective, priests. Just because they're governed by conscience they think
everyone else should be, too.'

'I thought you were a believer,' Jenny said.

'I
was
, but things
change. And so do people.'

'How is DI Pironi - are you two still friends?'

'He calls now and again.'

'I see.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Nothing - but I can't help remembering that the two of you
used to go to church together.'

'There was never anything between us, Mrs Cooper. Certainly
not in that way.' Alison tugged indignantly at the strap of her handbag.
'Anyway, I was still with Terry.'

Father Starr was waiting for them inside the door. After a
polite greeting, he led them to the front of a queue of impatient lawyers
waiting to collect their security tags and signed them in. The officer behind
the glass screen treated him with unquestioning respect, as did each of the
guards they encountered on their journey through an unending series of
corridors interrupted by heavy steel gates. Even Alison started to thaw,
calling him 'Father' as if she were a devoted member of his flock.

He explained that Craven was being held in the close supervision
circuit inside the segregation unit while his mental health continued to be
assessed. The stress of being locked in a cell around the clock was
destabilizing him further, but he was caught in a catch-22: the prison
psychiatrist's idea of help was to persuade him to accept responsibility for a
crime he hadn't committed. Protestations of innocence were treated as
delusional.

Jenny said, 'This prison must seem quite tame after La
Modelo.'

Starr smiled, as if she had mildly embarrassed him. 'I see
you've been doing your research, Mrs Cooper.'

'I'm intrigued to know what brought you here.'

'We're an international organization. We go wherever we are
needed.' He attempted a joke: 'And you've been short of Catholic priests ever
since your King Henry decided we lived better than he did.'

He stopped outside a room at the end of a window- less
corridor and knocked on the toughened glass pane. The door was opened from the
inside by a heavy-set prison officer with the flattened nose of an ex-boxer.
Father Starr asked him if he would mind waiting outside during their interview.
The officer glanced dubiously at Jenny and Alison.

'It's perfectly safe,' Starr said. 'You know I trust him like
a son.'

'You're a better man than me, Father,' the guard said, and
stepped into the corridor. He turned to Jenny. 'I'll be right here if you need
me.'

They entered an interview room not much bigger than a cell.
The man sitting at the small table in handcuffs rose to his feet. 'Good
morning, Father.'

'Paul, this is Mrs Cooper, the coroner, and Mrs Trent, the
coroner's officer.'

Craven glanced at them shyly and nodded in a cautious
greeting. He waited for them both to be seated before following suit. Jenny had
read on the file that he was in his upper thirties but his face looked much
younger. A prison- issue navy tracksuit hung shapelessly from his skinny frame.
There were tiny hints of his age in the creases on his forehead, but it was as
if the teenage boy had been held in suspended animation.

Father Starr said, 'As I explained to you, Mrs Cooper has to
determine Eva Donaldson's cause of death. She does this free of the police and
criminal courts and has a reputation for dogged independence.' Jenny shot him a
glance. He ignored her and continued. 'She needs to take a statement from you.
You have to tell her precisely what happened.'

'I'll be taking the statement,' Alison interjected, and
pushed a form across the desk. 'This states that what you have to say is the
truth and that you're liable for prosecution if anything you include in it is
false. Do you understand?'

'Yes.' Craven spoke quietly, looking to Starr for reassurance.

Jenny said, 'You mustn't think of this as being like a police
interview. We're here to listen to what you have to say, not to judge.' She
felt Alison bristle, the detective in her refusing to entertain the idea that
their visit was anything other than a sop to a troublesome and bloody-minded
priest. 'We'll start at the beginning, shall we? Eva Donaldson was killed on
the night of Sunday, 9 May. I believe you were released from prison on
Thursday, the 6th.'

'That's right.'

Alison coughed pointedly. Jenny sat back in her chair and let
her officer take over.

'Where did you go when you left prison, Mr Craven?'

He stalled before answering, requiring a nod from Father
Starr to prompt him. 'The probation service fixed me up with a bedsit.'

'Address?'

'19b
Clayton Road,
Redland.'

Alison wrote it down in laborious longhand, determined not to
put him at his ease.

'And what did you do once you were installed at this
address?'

Craven shrugged. 'I stayed inside mostly, went to the shops
once or twice, saw my parole officer on the Friday - she'd sorted my paperwork
and that, told me where to go to collect my benefits.'

'And on the Saturday?'

'I don't remember ... I think I stayed indoors. And the next
day.'

'Did you communicate with anyone?'

Craven shook his head. 'No.'

Father Starr said, 'Paul lost contact with his family when he
was ten years old. He was taken into care.'

'Where were you on the Sunday evening?' Alison asked.

'Inside. I didn't go anywhere.'

'Were there any neighbours, or anyone else, who might be able
to verify your movements?'

'I never saw them to speak to.'

Alison frowned. 'And when did you make your confession to the
police?'

Craven looked down and shook his head.

'It was on the following Wednesday at about midday,'

Father Starr said. 'I received a phone call here at my office
from Detective Inspector Goodison. He handed me over to Paul, who asked me to
find him a lawyer. I arranged that for him.'

'Why did you turn yourself in to the police, Mr Craven?'
Alison asked.

Jenny watched him twist the fingers of his cuffed hands
together as he struggled to explain.

'I wanted it to go
away ...
I couldn't take
hearing about it any more.'

'What did you want to go away?' Alison said.

'The pictures on the television. They didn't stop. She was
everywhere . . . looking at me.'

Alison carefully wrote down his answer. 'You're saying you
went to confess to Eva Donaldson's murder because you couldn't bear seeing her
picture on television?'

Craven didn't answer, his gaze fixed on the table between
them.

'Did you explain this to the police?'

'I can't remember.'

'What happened when you went into the station? What did you
say?'

He shook his head.

'Do you remember?'

'Kind of.'

'Had you been drinking, taking drugs?'

'No.'

Jenny leaned forward, lightly touching Alison's arm as she
interrupted her. 'We've read your police interview, Mr Craven - was what you
told them true or false?'

He lifted his face and met hers with his child's china-blue
eyes. 'It wasn't true. I didn't kill her, I didn't. I didn't. That's God's
honest truth.'

'Then why tell the police you did?'

Craven's eyes flitted to Father Starr, then back to Jenny.
'Because I was weak. Because I let my faith weaken.'

There were many leading questions Jenny would like to have
asked but they all fell into the category of cross- examination, which wasn't
appropriate unless or until she held an inquest. A statement had to be an
unprompted narrative by the maker, and they had already strayed too close to
putting words into his mouth. But there was one direct question she could
properly ask him: 'You told the police in interview that you urinated outside
Eva Donaldson's house. They later claimed to have found traces of your DNA on
the mat outside her front door. Can you explain that?'

Craven slowly shook his head.

Father Starr said, 'Samples get confused or contaminated at
laboratories, it happens all the time. Even experts can be mistaken.'

Alison said, 'Do you have anything to say about the DNA
evidence, Mr Craven?'

'It's wrong. I never went to her house. The only times I saw
it was on the TV. That's the truth.' Agitated, he turned to Starr. 'That's
right, isn't it, Father? Tell them. That's God's honest truth.'

Starr reached out and put a comforting hand on Craven's.
'That's what Mrs Cooper is going to do, Paul. She's going to find out the
truth.'

Losing patience, Alison kicked Jenny's ankle under the table.

Ignoring her, Jenny said, 'Do you have anything else to add,
Mr Craven? This is your one chance to speak to me directly. We won't be meeting
like this again.'

The prisoner closed his eyes for a moment, as if summoning
the strength to force the words out of his mouth. When they came, it was in a
lucid stream that seemed to bubble up from deep inside him. 'You're right to
think I'm lying to you. I did once murder an innocent young woman and I know
God will judge me for that, but I didn't kill Eva . . . I'm a different person now.
I couldn't do that. I'd kill myself before I'd hurt another human being.'

And as he held her in his innocent gaze, Jenny was tempted to
believe him.

Jenny waited for Alison to stop off in the ladies' room at
reception before turning to Father Starr, who had hardly spoken during the walk
back through the prison. 'There was a question I should have asked him - why
wasn't he at church on the Sunday?'

'My fault, Mrs Cooper. I should have made arrangements. I
was on a study retreat during the week he was released.'

'If I was a more cynical person I'd say you were finding it
hard to accept that a man you'd worked so hard with could have left here and
killed three days later.'

'There is more than likely to be an element of pride. I am only
human.'

'I don't doubt your good intentions, Father, but I'm afraid
that the scales didn't fall from my eyes. I saw a man who needs a psychiatrist,
a priest and a good criminal lawyer, probably in that order.'

'You were touched by him, weren't you?'

'I beg your pardon?'

Father Starr smiled. 'Lack of prejudice is a wonderful gift.
I have had to work hard to try to acquire it. I sense you possess it
naturally.'

'Listen, let's be straight about this now. If I decide to
hold an inquest it'll be because there are issues around the cause of death
that require further investigation, not out of any desire to assist Craven.'

'Of course. I understand.'

'I may even turn up more evidence against him.'

Father Starr turned his gaze out of the rain-flecked window
and up towards a moody sky. 'Do you believe in good and evil, Mrs Cooper, and
that the former attracts the latter?'

'I try not to get too philosophical during business hours.'

'Really? That's not what a mutual friend of ours once told
me.'

Alison emerged from the ladies in a fresh cloud of perfume
and glanced between Jenny and Starr, sensing an atmosphere between them. 'Is
everything all right?'

'Yes, thank you,' Starr said. 'One other thing I should have
mentioned, Mrs Cooper - as far as I know the police neglected to interview Miss
Donaldson's former boyfriend. His name's Joseph Cassidy. He's an actor of
sorts. I understand she and he resumed their acquaintance in the weeks before
her death.'

'How do you know that?' Jenny said, feeling her cheeks flush
with emotions she couldn't yet articulate.

'Craven's lawyer tried to speak to him, but he was reluctant
to cooperate. I contacted his local priest.'

'You're quite the detective, Father,' Jenny said, feeling an
unchristian stab of hostility.

'I try to live by a very simple philosophy: there is that
which is right and just, and that which is not. As convenient a belief as it
may be, there is no middle ground.' He opened his hands in a gesture of
gratitude. 'Thank you both for coming here today. And now I must excuse myself;
I have to conduct Mass.'

With a nod he turned and retreated into the depths of the
prison.

'Didn't I tell you, Mrs Cooper?' Alison said. Jenny scarcely
heard her. She was thinking of their mutual friend, and dared to wonder with
thundering heart if Alec McAvoy might still be alive.