The Redeemed (15 page)

DI Vernon Goodison was a hard man to get hold of. It took
three separate calls to track him down to a CID office in Trinity Road police
station, and impatient threats to a junior detective to extract his mobile
number.

'Jenny Cooper, here. Severn Vale District Coroner. I
understand you led the investigation into the murder of Eva Donaldson.'

'Ah, the infamous Mrs Cooper.' She could picture his
patronizing smile. 'I was the interviewing officer. DI Wallace was heading up
the investigation.'

'It's your signature certifying that the unused material
handed to Craven's solicitors was complete.'

'I think I remember that.'

'There appear to be documents missing.'

'Then I suggest you contact the solicitors. We had no reason
to hold on to anything.'

'They're missing from your lists. You can't tell me you
didn't find mobile phone bills or bank statements after January. It looks as if
the deceased had a computer, but there's no mention of you having seized one.'

'Have another look at the exhibits list. Have you got a
copy?'

'Fire away.'

'Top of the second sheet, as I recall.'

Jenny turned the page and read, 'Item: document shredder.'

Goodison said, 'A woman with a bit of a past, you might say.
Wouldn't want things falling into the wrong hands I expect. You can understand
why.'

Jenny said, 'How far did you dig?'

'We don't spend money for prurience alone, Mrs Cooper. Once
we'd established Craven was our man, we moved on.'

'What happened to the computer?'

'As far as I know, we never found one. You know as well as I
do it'd be the first thing in the bag.'

'Did you check her email server?'

'We searched her one known address. There should be a
statement in the file covering that. She was a scrupulous woman, liked to cover
her tracks. I suppose she had plenty to cover.'

Jenny opened the file containing the prosecution statements.
She must have missed it the first time she skimmed through. A single paragraph
from DC Anya Singh recorded the fact that a search had been made of Eva's only
known email account and that it had been closed down at the request of Eva
herself on 12 February. There was no surviving record of her previous email
correspondence on the operator's server.

'Did you find out why she closed the account?'

'No. The best guess is that she was doing a spot of
housekeeping before this bill came before Parliament. You can imagine the kind
of press attention she would have attracted.'

'And ditched the computer for safe measure?'

'Put it beyond reach, that's for sure.'

Jenny instinctively mistrusted the DI and had to remind
herself to remain objective, to remember that the police had no interest in
gleaning the whole truth, only in gathering sufficient evidence for a
conviction. Once they had a confession, details such as Eva's tattoo or why
she might have dumped her computer would be of no concern to them.

But she couldn't resist a final dig. 'I read your interview
with Craven. Seems like you had to tease it out of him.'

Goodison laughed. 'Not at all, Mrs Cooper. He couldn't wait
to put his hands up. He was good as gold.'

No money. No phone. No computer. A contractual dispute with
an adult movie company and a new tattoo two weeks before she died. Eva had been
in a mess and Jenny felt a sudden and profound shift in her feelings towards
her. She wasn't a porn star or an evangelist, she was a lonely and frightened
young woman whose short life was heading for disaster. If she didn't try to
understand her, no one ever would. But why Eva more than a drowned boy or the
innocent victims of a crane collapse? Jenny didn't have an answer, only a
powerful feeling that if she were to turn her back on Eva now, she wouldn't be
able to live with herself.

Alison bustled in with coffee from their local Brazilian cafe
balanced on top of a tray of mail. Ever since the good- looking new waiter had
greeted her as 'my pretty lady' she had been making daily trips.

'Good weekend, Mrs Cooper?'

'Yes,' Jenny lied. 'You?'

'Oh, all right.' There was something uncharacteristically
girlish in Alison's non-committal reply.

'Not too lonely without Terry?'

'Goodness no. I think it's probably been good for both of us.
Things get a bit stale after thirty years. We probably both felt like a bit of
excitement, only he was the one who acted on it.'

'Do you think you'd have him back?'

'I'm not sure, Mrs Cooper. I suppose it depends what happens.
People change.'

Jenny sensed she was being asked to delve deeper. Too proud
to gush, Alison's way of revealing herself was invariably to drop tantalizing
hints that she was supposed to pick up on. Something of the parent and teenage
child had developed in their relationship, Alison craving Jenny's approval but
never daring to let down her defensive guard.

'Have you met someone?' Jenny ventured.

'Me?' Alison said, feigning surprise. 'I've had a few dates.
Why not? Terry's certainly making hay.'

With a knowing look, Jenny said, 'What's his name?'

'Who?'

'The man you were meeting on Friday night?'

'Oh, him,' Alison said casually. 'That was Martin. A friend
put me on to one of these dating sites. It was the last thing I'd have done if
she hadn't suggested it, but he turned out to be rather charming. Very
gentlemanly.'

Jenny smiled. 'Sounds promising. What does he do?'

'He's a consultant, advising companies on their security,
that sort of thing.' Alison's cheeks coloured. 'He's only forty-three. He
thinks I'm forty-nine.'

Jenny had never seen her look this excited. 'Just dinner, was
it?'

'Mrs Cooper. What do you take me for?'

Jenny offered absolution: 'I'm happy for you, really. You
deserve some fun.'

Alison gave a grateful smile, knowing it wasn't just her
wayward husband Jenny was referring to, but also Harry Marshall, Jenny's
predecessor as Severn Vale District Coroner. Twelve months had eased the pain
of his sudden passing, but during their five years working alongside each
other, Alison had come to idolize him. In an unguarded moment, Alison had
confessed that Harry had once tried to seduce her and that she had shied away.
She regretted it still, and probably always would.

'I'm afraid there's not much fun in your postbag this
morning,' Alison said. 'You might want to read that email first.' She handed a
printout across the desk.

It was from Patrick Derwent, the father of the girl who had
hanged herself in the Conway Unit. He was angry, and had been moved to write
after reading local newspaper reports of the proceedings at Jacobs's inquest.
Why was the truth of Jacobs's wholly inappropriate behaviour towards his
daughter skimmed over, he asked? It wasn't just a matter of him attempting to
subvert her psychiatrist's diagnosis; he had pestered her with his simplistic
religious beliefs, plied her with evangelical literature and even forced her to
pray with him, promising her that being born again could open the door to her
recovery. It was bad enough that all this had been hushed up until after the
cursory inquest into his daughter's death. It was unforgivable that it hadn't
even been exposed following Jacobs's obvious suicide. Did Deborah Bishop's
unit have something else to hide? How many other needless deaths had it
contributed to?

'What do you think?' Alison said. 'His wife never mentioned
any of that, did she?'

'I'd better talk to the coroner who dealt with Emma Derwent's
death.'

'It would have been Mr Rogers. Do you want me to call him?'

'I'll do it.'

As Jenny picked up the phone to call her colleague in Bristol
Central, she found herself wondering what it might do to Ceri Jacobs to reopen
the wound. Who would it serve to go back and heap more ignominy on her dead
husband's name? Weren't some things better left undisturbed?

Nick Rogers was of the curt, ruthlessly businesslike school
of coroners, notorious for conducting his inquiries by the letter of the law
and with the minimum display of compassion for the bereaved. Jenny secretly
suspected the gruff exterior disguised a delicate soul, but Rogers would have
scoffed at the notion and accused her of being a bleeding heart.

The girl never complained about Jacobs, Rogers said. As far
as he had been able to ascertain, she had merely mentioned the prayer incident
to her parents in passing. It wasn't strictly NHS practice, but it was hardly a
crime in his book. It was only after the girl had hanged herself that the
parents said anything to Deborah Bishop, and it was the first she'd heard of
it.

'Did Jacobs give evidence at the inquest?' Jenny asked.

'Oh yes,' Rogers said. 'Poor man was visibly distressed.

He said the prayer incident was all at her request. They got
chatting about this and that and she found out he was a believer. As far as I
could tell it was all perfectly innocent. There was no doubting she was very
sick. She killed herself during a major psychotic episode. I found no reason to
suggest that he had contributed to it in any way.'

'The father says he pressed literature on her.'

'I felt he was wrong about that. Jacobs was a Catholic, or
trying to be. What Emma Derwent had got hold of was some hardcore evangelical
tracts from that bloody great place with posters all over town.'

'The Mission Church of God?'

'That's the one. Jacobs said other kids in the unit had
brought it in. It was nothing to do with him.'

'Did you believe him?'

'I had no reason not to.'

Not altogether convinced by Rogers's bluff certainty, Jenny
sent Alison to talk to Patrick Derwent. Her mind had moved on to Eva Donaldson.
She needed Jacobs laid conclusively to rest.

Michael Turnbull's assistant offered Jenny a meeting with him
at five p.m., informing her that he was attending a House of Lords committee
all morning and had to chair a Decency board meeting back in Bristol during the
afternoon. This was intended to impress, perhaps even to intimidate her;
Turnbull's staff seemed to relish their connection with a powerful man. Jenny
had read that he shuttled around the country in a helicopter, relentlessly
spreading the word like some latterday apostle. His campaign was certainly
gathering strength: the latest newspaper polls put public support for the
Decency Bill at 74 per cent. Not for nearly two hundred years, the leader
writer commented, had the country's mood jolted so radically in a puritanical
direction. Why it had happened was a source of fevered debate. Some claimed it
was a fearful retreat from modernity, others that society was finally striking
a sane balance between permissiveness and personal responsibility. Jenny was
torn on the issue. The pornography she had seen was crude and brutal, but she
had always believed that censorship, too, bred hypocrisy and shame.