The Innocent: A Coroner Jenny Cooper Crime Short (11 page)

‘Ah, Mrs Cooper. I was just about to call you.’

She closed the door behind her, shutting out the worst of the mortuary’s nauseating aroma.

‘Did you find anything? His wife’s outside – I wanted to check.’

‘Nothing. That’s the oddity. No alcohol in the blood, no sign of drugs in the stomach. I got hold of his medical records, but apart from some harmless anti-malarials, he’s had nothing prescribed in five years. No depression either, as far as I can tell.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Massive crushing injuries, and multiple haemorrhages. I’d say there’s more than a sporting chance he struck a vehicle before he hit the road.’

‘Had he eaten?’

‘A few hours before – maybe three. All that was in his stomach was water.’

Jenny pictured the empty bottles on the passenger seat. ‘How much water?’

‘A cupful. It’s hard to say. It can take time to be absorbed after death.’

‘He’d walked a mile and a half from his car. There were two empty 300ml water bottles in it. Does that make sense?’

‘That seems about right.’

Biologically perhaps, but Jenny wondered about a sober man who calmly drank water before hurling himself from a road bridge. The two actions seemed incompatible somehow.

‘He was an aid worker. He’d spent a lot of time in Africa, apparently. Might that make you look for something out of the ordinary?’

Dr Kerr shook his head. ‘Forensically, all I found was trauma. Injuries aside, he was a perfectly healthy specimen.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘The boys have tidied him the best they could.’

‘Thank you,’ Jenny said. ‘I know you’re crowded, but if you don’t mind, I shan’t be releasing the body for burial just yet. Not until I have some answers.’

He gave a resigned smile. ‘What possible difference could one more make?’

Jenny led Mrs Jordan in from the main entrance. The long walk down the corridor to the refrigeration unit took them past trolleys stacked two, sometimes three deep. At times such as this, when the mortuary was overwhelmed, the technicians employed what they called a carousel, giving each body that was more than a day old a turn in the fridge until it chilled down to below five degrees. Mrs Jordan passed them without a sideways glance, the light stolen from her eyes by sedating drugs.

They arrived at the fridge. Joe, the junior technician Jenny had met at the door, slid open a tray on the bottom stack of three and gave Jenny a look, awaiting her instruction.

Jenny turned to Mrs Jordan. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to identify your husband facially. I’d like to ask you to do it from his hands, if that’s possible.’

Karen Jordan shook her head. ‘I want to see all of him.’

Jenny glanced at the technician. ‘Can you show us the hands, please?’

He leaned down to pull back the flap of plastic at waist level.

‘I said, I want to see all of him,’ Karen Jordan insisted.

‘I really wouldn’t advise—’

‘Are you telling me I can’t see my husband’s face?’ She spoke with a level and determined assurance that didn’t seem to come from the same woman that Jenny had met outside the paediatric ward. It was as if the drugs had allowed only the coldest part of her to remain conscious.

‘If you’re absolutely sure.’

‘Show me.’

Jenny nodded to the technician, who pulled the flap back a little more.

‘All the way,’ Mrs Jordan said.

The hands and arms came into view, and then the savage, crudely stitched autopsy scar than ran from neck to navel along the midline. A separate, oval-shaped piece of plastic covered the staved-in features.

‘I said
all
,’ Mrs Jordan said. ‘Do I have to do it myself?’

She moved half a step forward. Jenny touched her arm, holding her back, and indicated to the technician to do as she requested.

He lifted the covering clear. Jenny glanced away, but Mrs Jordan’s gaze held steady. She took in every detail, forcing herself to record the image that would never leave her.

‘It’s Adam,’ she said, then dipped at the knees and touched his still-perfect fingers with a whispered goodbye. As she straightened, she turned to Jenny and said, ‘I suppose we should talk. You probably know more than I do.’

They sat in the staff section of the hospital canteen where they served strong, rich Italian coffee that wasn’t for sale at the public counter. Karen Jordan glanced out of the window, her expression saying she was trying to find something that would make sense of it all.

Jenny said, ‘I spoke to a girl called Eda – at the office in London. She said your husband was there last week and in good spirits.’

‘He always was,’ Karen said. ‘He was laughing and fooling about with Sam when I left yesterday morning. He doesn’t—’ She paused to correct herself: ‘Adam
didn’t
get depressed. It wasn’t in his nature.’

‘Nothing had upset him recently?’

She shook her head. ‘Not that he told me.’

‘No arguments?’

‘No … No more than usual.’ She pushed her hair back from her forehead, a nervous gesture. ‘We’re both busy with work, we’ve a young child – you know how it is.’

‘Was Adam good with your little boy?’

‘Always.’

They lapsed into silence, Jenny beginning to feel that maybe it was too soon to push Karen for reasons. She had yet to encounter a suicide of a grown man that defied explanation, but sometimes it took a bereaved wife a little while to admit to herself that she hadn’t read the signs. The best Jenny could do was to ease the process along.

‘You should understand, Mrs Jordan, that people determined to kill themselves don’t want to be stopped. The pathologist found no alcohol or drugs in your husband’s system. He died in full control of himself.’

‘He hardly drank anyway. He certainly didn’t touch drugs.’ Karen Jordan seemed offended at the suggestion that he might have done.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything.’

‘We’ve known each other four years, been married for two, and for half that time he’s been in South Sudan. When he’s home we get along, and when he’s away …’ She faltered, aware that she’d mixed up her tenses again. ‘We didn’t know everything about each other, but who does? We didn’t choose to live in each other’s pockets, but Adam was very committed – to his work and to me. We trusted each other completely. We had no reason not to.’

‘And your marriage—’

‘We didn’t sleep with other people, if that’s what you mean,’ Karen Jordan said sharply.

‘It isn’t.’

‘Really?’ Karen looked at her accusingly. ‘It didn’t happen. The plan was that when I’d finished my PhD we were going to find an African project to work on together. We didn’t choose to live apart deliberately, it was just how things worked out.’

She felt guilty. Jenny could feel it seeping its way out from beneath the chemical layers.

‘Eda Hincks told me your husband had been working with a man called Harry Thorn.’

‘That’s right,’ Karen answered flatly.

‘Were they close?’

‘They’d worked together for the best of three years. Ethiopia, then Sudan.’

‘You sound a little …’ Jenny searched for the appropriate word, ‘ambivalent.’

Karen shrugged. ‘There’s no rule saying that only saints can work in the aid business.’

‘Would you like to tell me about him?’

‘About Harry? What for?’

‘I ought to talk to him, Mrs Jordan. It would help me to have some background.’

She gave a reluctant sigh. ‘He’s worked in the field for over twenty-five years—’ She stopped herself mid-sentence. ‘I don’t want to talk about him. You can judge for yourself.’ She turned her gaze out of the window, retreating inwards again.

Jenny said, ‘There was a wooden figurine hanging up in the car your husband was driving.’

‘What about it?’ she said, from far away. ‘It was just something Adam brought back from Africa.’

‘The police haven’t given it to you?’

She shook her head, still distracted.

‘Does it hold any significance?’

‘It’s just a Dinka doll. I think someone out in South Sudan gave it to him.’ She breathed out sharply.

‘Do you know who?’

‘No. He didn’t say.’ She was growing impatient. ‘I should be with Sam now. I have to go.’

‘Of course.’

Karen pushed unsteadily to her feet, leaning on the table for support as she fought against the light-headedness caused by the drugs.

‘What’s “Dinka” mean?’ Jenny asked.

‘They’re a race of people who live in South Sudan.’

‘I suppose I should know that.’

The widow looked at her for a moment as if there was something more she wanted to say but couldn’t find the words. And then, just as they seemed to form, a silencing shadow appeared to pass over her. She turned away, and walked quickly to the exit.

Jenny had become used to sleeping alone. During the rare nights Michael stayed over she would often find herself lying awake, disconcerted by his presence and unsettled by his fitful dreams. But after several weeks without his company the lonely ache returned and she wished he were next to her again. They had never settled anything that could be called an ‘arrangement’, but had simply fallen into an irregular routine of spending the odd night at each other’s homes, and somehow it seemed to work. Dr Allen had, of course, isolated the one problem that was nagging at her during their final appointment: she and Michael didn’t talk, or at least not in the way that lovers were meant to. When she had been married to David they had found themselves with less and less to say to each other except during their frequent and eloquent arguments. Her former lover, Steve, had been the opposite: sensitive and concerned, almost too eager to prise her open and share her most intimate thoughts. Michael was neither intrusive nor hostile; like her, he was naturally self-contained. And there was the nub: they ran on parallel rails. Both damaged goods, both healed just enough to get by, but both frightened of taking the next step for fear of missing it and finding themselves floundering in midair.

Drawing back the curtains, Jenny blinked in the piercing morning light and looked out over the valley falling away from her window all the way down to the River Wye. Here and there clusters of stone-walled fields interrupted the ancient woodlands that had hugged the hills for millennia. A memory surfaced: she had been looking out at the same view on another summer morning with Steve.
It’s all there waiting for you, Jenny, you just have to reach out and take it.
For a moment she could almost feel his hands resting on her hips and the warmth of his breath on her neck, and she wished she had never let him go. He was living happily in France now with a beautiful young wife and a newborn; he had moved on, but she remained behind the same glass, still looking out. She caught her reflection ghosted in the pane: time was tugging at her face. She stiffened with defiance. She had to resist; she had to do something.

‘Michael? It’s Jenny. Are you free this evening?’

‘Mmm? I think so …’ Hisvoice was still thick with sleep.

‘Sorry. Have I woken you?’

‘It’s all right, I should be up. I’ve got a round trip to Le Mans.’

In the height of summer he was at his busiest. As a pilot for a small commercial firm, when he wasn’t flying jockeys between race courses, he was ferrying wealthy businessmen and their over-indulged families between their summer playgrounds and the city. It was hardly the adrenalin rush he had experienced in his twenty years flying RAF Tornadoes, but it had its dramas. When the phone rang at unexpected times, she would often find herself worrying that it was a call to say his Cessna had failed to arrive at some obscure airfield, that he was missing.

‘You won’t be able to come to dinner then?’

‘I didn’t know I was invited.’

‘I’m picking Ross up from university today. He’s staying for a couple of weeks. I thought you might start getting to know each other.’

Jenny waited for his excuse, expecting him to avoid anything that sounded like a dangerous step on the road to commitment.

He surprised her. ‘Sounds good to me. Is eight all right?’

‘Great.’ She hesitated. ‘And you’ll stay over?’

‘With your son there?’

‘He won’t mind.’ She added, ‘It’s been ages.’

‘Nearly two weeks.’

He’d been counting. She was touched.

Jenny had arranged to collect Ross from the Goldsmiths student halls at four, and planned to spend the early afternoon shopping for clothes in Covent Garden, a luxury so rare and indulgent, the prospect felt almost sinful. She told herself she would be looking for a suit to replace the tired two-piece she wore to court, but as she headed out onto the motorway, she was already putting together the outfit she would surprise Michael with: she pictured herself slim, stylish and elegant, looking ten years younger. Absorbed in the fantasy, she didn’t notice the miles passing. Alison’s several phone calls barely registered as she enjoyed the heady rush of a day unchained from the office. Freedom. As she approached Heathrow the phone rang again. She glanced at the caller display, expecting another query from Alison designed to make her feel guilty for deserting her post, but it was a number her phone didn’t recognize.

‘Hello. Jenny Cooper.’

‘Are you the woman who left a message this morning?’ The man spoke with a thick, deep South African accent.

‘I’m the Severn Vale District Coroner. Who am I speaking to?’

‘Harry Thorn. I worked with Adam Jordan.’

‘Ah yes. I did leave a message.’ She proceeded delicately. ‘I presume you’ve heard what’s happened to him.’

‘Of course. What do you want from me?’

‘I spoke with Mrs Jordan yesterday,’ Jenny said tactfully. ‘I’ll be conducting an inquest into her husband’s death. When you’re able, I was hoping to meet with you – to get a picture of what he’d been doing recently, his state of mind, whether anything had been troubling him. Might tomorrow suit you?’

Thorn said, ‘I’ve no fucking clue why he jumped off a bridge, if that’s what you’re fishing for.’

‘I appreciate now’s not the time.’

Thorn gave a low grunt. ‘Your office said you’re in London today. Why don’t we get it over with?’

‘If you’re sure.’ Jenny felt her day darken. ‘Where will I find you?’