The Innocent: A Coroner Jenny Cooper Crime Short (4 page)

She had visited a coroner’s court once or twice during her career, but always as a lawyer with no personal stake in the proceedings. Only now that she was a potential focus of investigation did she appreciate the full implications of the procedure. A coroner was not a judge who weighed competing cases, but an inquisitor who asked whatever questions he or she wished in pursuit of the truth: the how, why, when and where of an unnatural death. His inquiry wasn’t focused, like that of the police, on criminality; he would, if he was any good, root out all the background facts to establish why a young girl stepped off a platform into the path of an oncoming train. His task was to explain the cause of death in a simple verdict, but the implications of a verdict could be vast. A coroner like Bolter would turn over every stone, unafraid of reducing reputations to dust.

The feeling of dread that had begun to diffuse a little since Reynolds’phone call sharpened once again. Jenny hurriedly turned to her law books, and what she read turned the detective’s words, ‘under review’, into a new and disturbing threat. She realized that what he must have in mind was a charge of manslaughter by criminal negligence. There were three questions, which answered in the affirmative would make her not just careless, but a killer.

Had she assumed a duty of care to Natasha?
Yes. Jenny had told her to call her at any time. She had placed herself squarely in the space where her mother should have been. And who had a greater duty of care than a mother?

Did breaching that duty lead directly to Natasha’s death?
Yes. Natasha wouldn’t have thrown herself onto the rails if Jenny had answered her call. She would have reassured her, distracted her, kept her talking until help came.

Was her breach so ‘gross’, so negligent of the possible fatal consequences, that it could not be excused as having been merely careless?
Only here could her guilt be called into doubt. She hadn’t taken Natasha’s call and ignored her plea for help, or worse, chided her for running away: that would have been
gross
. All she had done was switch off her phone for forty minutes, a purely innocent act. That couldn’t amount to homicide. That would be absurd.

But even as she reasoned with herself, she heard the prosecutor’s speech to the jury:

Mrs Cooper’s relationship with the dead girl, members of the jury, was hardly any different from that of the climber at the top of the cliff who lowers his companion over the edge on a rope. Once such responsibility is assumed, it becomes, by necessity, absolute. He needn’t cut the lifeline with a knife to dash his friend to death on the rocks below; simply letting go would be enough.

Had she let go? Had she, despite the best of intentions, let a precious life slip through her careless fingers?

She feared she might have done.

Jenny seldom entered a court without feeling nervous, but it was the apprehension of the actor waiting in the wings, of the speaker about to step onto the podium. What she was feeling now was something else. It was a fear that gripped like a cold, dry hand around her throat. The coroner had no dedicated courtroom, so the hearing was being held in the hall attached to All Saints Church in Fishponds. This tangle of Victorian terraced streets in the north-east of the city was named in memory of the ponds, long since filled in, that had formed in ancient quarry workings. Jenny imagined the deep, rubble-filled pits holding secrets that were slowly seeping towards the surface.

She was sitting in one of the four rows of uncomfortable chairs, a kind she hadn’t seen since she was at school: olivegreen canvas stretched across battered metal frames. Only a handful of people were scattered around the room. Karen Greenslade sat at the front next to her silver-haired, tattooed father, Jack – welcomed back into her life now, it seemed. Detective Sergeant Peter Murray, almost unrecognizable in a dark navy suit and tie, sat in the row behind them. Elaine Stewart and Natasha’s social worker, Judy Harris, had carefully placed distance between themselves and the foster parents, Frank and Alison Bartlett, whose huddled bodies seemed almost to fuse into a single unit. To Jenny’s left was a bored young man clutching a notebook, who she guessed was a newspaper reporter; and observing them all from her seat at the back of the hall was Detective Constable Clarke.

There was no legal aid for coroner’s inquests, so Karen Greenslade had no lawyer. Elaine Stewart had, however, found money in her overspent budget to instruct a barrister – Samantha Rose, a familiar and feared face in the family courts. She was there to protect the team, and Jenny was in no doubt that that did not include her.

The coroner’s officer, who was serving as an usher for the proceedings, called them to attention: ‘All rise!’

There was a shuffle of feet as the coroner, Henry Bolter, strode in carrying a thick file under his arm. Almost as wide as he was tall, Bolter moved with the force and pugnacity of the rugby player he must once have been. His blunt, bald head shone under the fluorescent light, his huge shoulders strained at the seams of his suit. He took his seat and stared out at the hall.

‘This is an inquest into the death of Natasha Greenslade, aged fifteen,’ Bolter said in a deep Bristolian brogue. ‘It’s not disputed that she fell into the path of a train at Parkway Station at 11.48 a.m. on Thursday 7th September, and that her remains were recovered under the supervision of Detective Sergeant Murray and taken to the Frenchay Hospital, where they were later identified. But as I have explained to Natasha’s family,’ he nodded towards Karen and her father, ‘the fact that she was in local authority care and living with foster parents at the time places a special onus on me to carry out an examination of the surrounding circumstances.’ He glanced at the solitary lawyer and appeared unimpressed. ‘I understand you appear for the local authority, Mrs Rose.’

‘Yes, sir, I do. And it’s Miss Rose.’

‘Very well,’ Bolter grunted. ‘Before we hear from any witnesses, there is CCTV footage of Natasha in Parkway Station in the minutes leading up to and including the moment of her death.’ Jenny felt her diaphragm tighten so that she could barely breathe. ‘If family members or anyone else would like to step outside while it’s shown, please do so now. My officer will inform you when it’s over.’

He glanced at Karen, who shook her head. She was determined to stay.

‘If you’re quite sure, Miss Greenslade.’

He gave the signal to his officer, who tapped on a laptop wired to a large television screen mounted on the wall. A clear, full-colour silent image appeared of commuters milling in the ticket hall at Parkway Station. A small, slight figure dressed in a red hooded top and jeans came through the main door and crossed the concourse.

‘Stop there a moment.’

The image froze.

‘I believe the figure in the red top is Natasha. Does anyone disagree?’

No one demurred.

‘Carry on.’

The film continued. Natasha made her way to the pay phone at the foot of the stairs. Jenny glanced away, not wanting to see the moment when she dialled her number. When she looked back, the location had switched to a deserted finger of platform beyond the station buildings. The timecode, Jenny noticed, had moved on only a little more than two minutes from Natasha’s arrival in the foyer, meaning that she must have walked directly up the stairs from the phone, across the bridge spanning the tracks and down onto the platform without pausing. Natasha appeared from the bottom of the screen, walking purposefully, head down, her hands thrust into the pockets of her top.

An overpowering force held Jenny’s eyes on Natasha as the girl suddenly glanced over her left shoulder, then stepped towards the platform’s edge, where she stood quite still for a second, then leaned forwards. At the moment she tipped beyond the point of no return the train flew in from the left of the screen and consumed her. It thundered past in a blur and left no trace of Natasha in its wake.

Jenny felt nothing except an empty ache. An absence where she should have felt horror and grief. The footage had the same effect on Karen and her father. They sat stiff and upright, showing no emotion.

Jenny saw Bolter make a note with a thick, black fountain pen, then crease his face in thought. ‘I had intended to read the pathologist Dr Markham’s report at this point, but on second thoughts I think I’d prefer to hear from him in person.’ He turned to his officer. ‘Can that be arranged, Mrs Turner?’

‘I’ll try, Mr Bolter.’

He then handed his officer a note and whispered something to her. She reached for her phone and discreetly made a call as Bolter summoned his first witness. Judy Harris came forward to a chair slightly apart from, but angled towards Bolter’s desk. Declining to swear on the Bible, she chose instead to affirm, and from the first word she uttered, proceeded to distance herself as far as she could from the decision to place Natasha with foster parents.

‘You’ll see from the files that on several occasions I recommended that secure accommodation was the appropriate placement for her. But I’m afraid that when it came to the hearing, I was persuaded by our in-house lawyer, Mrs Cooper, that she didn’t meet the criteria. With hindsight I should have put my foot down, but it’s not easy to contradict legal advice.’

Bolter gave an inscrutable nod and turned to look through his file. ‘I can see your June report here. You were worried that Natasha would run away from a foster home, Mrs Harris, not that she would commit suicide.’

‘Yes. She had a history of absconding.’

‘But not of hurting herself, let alone anything more serious.’

‘So far as I am aware.’

Jenny entertained a momentary hope that Bolter would take her side. He certainly wasn’t giving Judy an easy passage.

‘So as her social worker, someone who had dealt with her for more than eighteen months, you had no concern that she would do herself harm?’

‘I was worried that in the wrong circumstances she might put herself in harm’s way.’

Bolter probed further, asking if any evidence had been found that Natasha was depressed, and if not, why not?

‘In truth, she seemed the opposite of depressed in her last weeks of life,’ Judy Harris said. ‘At her grandfather, Mr Greenslade’s, request, I had started arranging contact sessions between the two of them. They had been going extremely well.’

Jack Greenslade nodded his agreement.

‘Were you present at these meetings?’ Bolter said.

‘At all three,’ Judy Harris answered. ‘They both seemed delighted. I had never seen Natasha happier.’

Bolter seemed puzzled. ‘Really? How interesting.’ He made another note.

Elaine Stewart followed Judy Harris into the witness chair and, just as Jenny had anticipated, stuck rigidly to the party line. She was an arm’s-length overseer to the case, she insisted; she had had no personal contact with Natasha, but her instinct at case reviews had always been that she was a prime candidate for ‘a secure care environment’. ‘But family judges and lawyers too often tend to ignore the advice of social workers,’ Elaine added with a note of sadness. ‘They often see care homes as impersonal and inattentive to the child’s emotional needs. A measure of last resort instead of a place of safety.’

‘Your team’s lawyer, Mrs Cooper – she didn’t agree with you at all, did she?’

‘I’m afraid Mrs Cooper may have allowed herself to become closer to Natasha than she ought to have done,’ Elaine said. ‘It can easily happen after extended involvement with a child, but it shouldn’t. We have to remain detached to be effective, no matter how hard that is on occasions.’

‘She was your lawyer; you could simply have instructed her to argue for a placement in a secure home,’ Bolter said.

‘I believe the judge in the care hearing cited the evidence he heard from Natasha as a deciding factor in his decision,’ Elaine said. ‘As you know, the wishes of the child carry considerable weight. She told him that she wanted to go into foster care and promised she wouldn’t attempt to run away as she had in the past.’ She gave a flat, regretful smile. ‘I’m afraid I suspect Mrs Cooper may have had a hand in that.’

‘You believe your own lawyer told Natasha to give evidence against her best interests?’

‘If you put it like that—’

‘I do, Mrs Stewart. I’d like your honest answer, please.’

Elaine folded her hands on her lap. ‘Let’s just say I believe Mrs Cooper was swayed by personal feelings.’

‘I see. Thank you, Mrs Stewart.’ Bolter made a verbatim note of her words. ‘That’s a very serious allegation.’

It was an odd experience for which Jenny wasn’t equipped: like watching a river burst its banks and a wall of water rush towards you; the sense of unreality was more overwhelming than the injustice of it. First Judy Harris, then Elaine Stewart and now Karen Greenslade. Karen dabbed away tears as she narrated a history casting Jenny as a lawyer on a one-woman crusade to prise Natasha from a loving home. At first, Bolter had listened with what Jenny had tried to convince herself was polite neutrality, but the more he heard from Karen, the more sympathetic he appeared to become.

‘How did this
closeness
you say you observed manifest itself, Miss Greenslade?’

‘It wasn’t just the last court case, it was the one before that, too.’ She glanced in Jenny’s direction. ‘She’d have Natasha sit next to her. Always whispering in her ear, touching her,’ she patted her forearm to demonstrate, ‘trying to pretend she was her friend.’

‘Couldn’t it have been perfectly innocent – a way of putting Natasha at her ease?’

‘Everyone who works with kids knows you don’t touch them. Not even teachers are allowed. And I bet she didn’t do it with every kid. I bet it was no accident that Natasha was as pretty as they come.’

‘What are you suggesting, Miss Greenslade?’

‘I’m suggesting she was preying on my daughter.’

‘And your evidence for this is her behaviour during the court hearing in July?’

‘She never missed an opportunity to get her alone in one of those interview rooms. I only wish I’d said something.’ She pressed a soggy tissue to her eyes. ‘But who was going to listen to me?’