The Redeemed (20 page)

It had been there
all along. Buried in the police files was a rough photocopy of a barely legible
handwritten list entitled, 'Persons spoken to informally'. All the big names at
the Mission Church of God were listed: Bobby DeMont, Michael and Christine
Turnbull, Lennox Strong, Joel Nelson, and more than twenty others. Two-thirds
of the way down she made out Frederick Reardon and, a little further on, Alan
Jacobs.

Jenny had called
DI Goodison, who made no attempt to disguise his annoyance at being troubled by
her a second time. He had had a team of five detectives going through the
church, he said. In the two day after Eva's death they spoke to whoever they
could find who had been associated with her. They stopped when they did because
Craven had come forward and confessed. There was no particular significance in
the names on the list.

'But are they
all people connected with the Mission Church?' Jenny had asked.

'As far as I
recall,' Goodison answered, and made his excuses. He was far too busy to waste
his time on a nitpicking coroner.

She had tried DI
Wallace, but he was no more forthcoming. There was no evidence of any
connection between Jacobs and the Mission Church, he said dismissively, and
even if there was, it would do nothing to shake his belief that Jacobs had killed
himself.

The two
policemen probably occupied next-door offices, but might as well have inhabited
separate continents. Each had their own teams and caseloads and seemed to run
their fiefdoms with no interest in their colleagues except in beating them to
their clear-up targets. In the race for results, the truth was an inevitable
casualty.

The prospect of
meeting Mrs Jacobs again filled Jenny with a dread she could only suppress with
another Xanax. The one mercy was that the widow had insisted on coming to see
her at her office rather than have her daughter's routine disrupted by the
appearance of another sombre stranger. She arrived a little after five, but
when Alison brought her in, it was with a companion. Jenny recognized him as
the priest who had sat at the back of the inquest.

'Good afternoon,
Mrs Cooper,' Ceri Jacobs said stiffly. 'This is Father Dermody from St
Xavier's. I asked if he'd come with me. I trust you don't have a problem with
that.'

'I've no
objection,' Jenny said.

'I'm very
grateful to you, Mrs Cooper,' Father Dermody said, and gave a kindly smile as
he shook her hand.

The widow and
her priest settled into their chairs as much at ease with each other as man and
wife. Jenny observed their exchange of glances and decided that Ceri Jacobs
trusted him more than she trusted herself.

'I'm sorry to
trouble you again, Mrs Jacobs,' Jenny said, 'but it's not so much your
husband's death I need to ask you about, as what he may, or may not, have known
about someone else's. I presume you've heard of Eva Donaldson.'

Ceri glanced
nervously at Father Dermody, who answered for her. 'Of course we have. What
about her?'

Jenny opened a
file and extracted the list. She passed it across the desk, placing it between
them.

'After she was
killed the police informally questioned a number of people at the Mission
Church of God who had been in contact with her. You'll see your husband's name
appears on it, towards the bottom of the page.'

Ceri Jacobs
shook her head. 'I don't know anything about this.'

Jenny said,
'I'll try to find out which detective it was who spoke to him, but I was
wondering if he said anything about this to you.'

'No.'

Father Dermody
frowned. 'Where would this questioning have taken place?'

'If wasn't at
your home, Mrs Jacobs, then I assume it was at your husband's workplace, or
perhaps at the Mission Church itself.'

'Why would he
have been there?' Mrs Jacobs said with a note of panic.

Jenny said, 'I'm
conducting an inquiry into Miss Donaldson's death. Since the inquest into your
husband's death there have been several separate indications that he was
connected with the Mission Church in some way—'

'He bought one
book, that's all,' Mrs Jacobs protested. 'He didn't go to that church, he went
to St Xavier's.' She appealed to her priest. 'Father, tell her.'

'He was with us
every Wednesday evening, Mrs Cooper, at our enquirers' class.'

'I made some
calls this afternoon,' Jenny said. 'During the last two months he was also
attending a study group at the Mission Church. He'd signed up to the mailing
list using his work address, and also to their email newsletter.'

'He can't have
done. He wouldn't have gone behind my back. We told each other everything.'

'Calm yourself,
Ceri,' Father Dermody said gently. 'It's hardly a grave sin.'

'What day of the
week was he meant to have been going there?' Mrs Jacobs demanded.

'Fridays, it
seems,' Jenny said.

'He told me he
was working late, the staff shortages. Why would he lie? He never lied to me.'

Father Dermody
laid a hand on her arm. 'The poor man was suffering, Ceri. He didn't want to
burden you. We prayed for him, we did what we could.'

Fighting angry
tears, Ceri Jacobs said, 'Please tell me you're not going to open this up
again. I couldn't face that.'

'I don't think
that would help anyone. But so that I can rule him out, I would like to know
where he was on the night Eva Donaldson died. It was Sunday, 9 May.'

'He worked an
extra half-shift Sunday evenings,' Ceri Jacobs said. 'He had done for several
months.'

Jenny stepped
outside into reception to make the call. She caught Deborah Bishop just as she
was leaving the office and persuaded her to return to her computer to check
staff rosters. The answer was as she expected: Alan Jacobs hadn't worked on a
Sunday evening all year, and on Fridays he had worked one hour of agreed
overtime and clocked off at six.

Ceri Jacobs
listened to the news wearing a look of pure contempt, not for her husband, but
for Jenny for shattering her already fractured illusions beyond any hope of
repair.

Father Dermody
did his best to soften the blow. 'I know how much you wished for him to enter
the faith, Ceri, but there are other types of Christian.'

Deaf to his
soothing words, Mrs Jacobs said, 'You won't stop here though, will you, Mrs
Cooper? You won't be happy until every last sordid detail is dragged out and
paraded in public. Can't you let the poor man rest in peace?'

How can there
ever be peace without truth? Jenny wondered, but kept the thought to herself.
Now was not the time for preaching.

Pushing open the
creaking door to the former Severn Beach and District Working Men's Club, Jenny
couldn't be sure if this was progress or not. Before her 'episode', the formal
beginning of which she marked as the day she dried up and broke down in the
middle of a family court hearing, she had been a well-respected lawyer running
an entire local government department. Colleagues told her she could have
applied to any of the big London law firms specializing in millionaire divorces
and negotiated a six-figure salary with prospects for an equity partnership. By
the time she was forty-five she could have been earning more than David and
heading for a place at the top of her field.

Instead she was
a local coroner making just enough to get by, and surviving on ever-increasing
doses of anti-anxiety medication. Ignoring Dr Allen's warnings, she had been
taking double doses for most of the past week and was still starting at
shadows and imaginary phantoms. Entering the clammy, featureless room that had
once been the club bar felt strangely like reaching the end of a long road. As
soon as this was over, she told herself, she would take a holiday. Then she
would attempt to drain the poison once and for all.

She retreated to
the former committee room which would serve as her office, while Alison
directed workmen arriving with hired-in chairs and trestle tables to set out
the main room in a way that vaguely resembled a court. In between sips of
coffee from a Thermos flask, she touched up her make-up with shaky fingers and
tried to resist the temptation to swallow another Xanax.

Even with her
lipstick perfect and all her lines concealed, she remained too edgy to rehearse
the questions she had planned for her first witnesses. Unable to relax, she
closed the tatty brown curtains, leaving a tiny gap through which she watched a
steady stream of people start to arrive. Despite the sign saying CORONER'S
COURT Alison had planted outside, prospective jurors, witnesses, press and lawyers
all appeared equally baffled by the incongruous building. Jenny smiled to
herself as she watched Ed Prince and his entourage disembark from a
chauffeur-driven Mercedes van and drag their smart pull-along briefcases across
the rough gravel between a jumble of parked cars. The squalid building had one
virtue: it would be a great leveller.

Alison knocked
shortly before ten and announced that Dr Kerr and all the police witnesses were
present.

'What about
Craven?'

'The prison has
promised to get him here later this morning. That's the best they can do.'

'Then we'd
better make a start,' Jenny said with starchy formality, but under her tightly
buttoned jacket her heart was racing. The air felt suddenly muggy, a bead of
perspiration trickled down the centre of her chest.

Alison stepped
out in front of the now crowded courtroom. 'All rise.'

There was an
obedient scraping of chairs and a subdued chorus of coughs.

Jenny entered
and took her place at the head of the room at a table which had been draped
with green baize. Fifty people waited obediently for her to sit before they
resumed their seats. She picked out the face of Eva's father, Kenneth
Donaldson, sitting alone at the end of a row, surrounded by a brood of
journalists eager for a titillating story. From the brief statement he had
reluctantly tendered, Jenny knew that he was sixty-six years old and the
recently retired managing director of a respected and successful local company
which engineered aircraft parts. Sitting stiffly in a pinstriped suit, he looked
every inch a man used to being in command who wasn't going to let his suffering
show in public. Three rows behind him, also unaccompanied, sat Father Starr. He
fixed her with a still, penetrating gaze designed to remind her that she was
answerable to only one authority, of whom he was the official representative.

No fewer than
eight lawyers were spread across the two rows of tables ranged opposite
Jenny's. The most senior of them, Fraser Knight QC, rose to make the formal
introductions. A tall man with elegant features and an aristocratic bearing,
he had earned a formidable reputation representing the Ministry of Defence in a
succession of awkward inquests involving the deaths of badly equipped British
soldiers in Afghanistan. An eloquent advocate whose deadliest weapons were
studied charm and feigned deference, he greeted her with a courtly nod and
declared that he represented the Chief Constable of Bristol and Avon police.
Two further members of his team sat behind him: junior counsel and a young instructing
solicitor. Representing Kenneth Donaldson was Ruth Markham, a solicitor from
Collett Abrahams, one of the oldest and most prestigious firms in Bristol,
though one noted for its expertise in wills and probate rather than coroners'
inquests. In her late thirties, expensively dressed and with a slender figure
of which she was evidently very proud, she exuded confidence. In a team of one,
Ruth Markham gave the impression of being more than able to cope alone. Decency
and the Mission Church of God were jointly represented by a pugnacious rising
star of the criminal bar, Christopher Sullivan. Good-looking in a slightly
rough-hewn way, and supported by Ed Prince and two further junior solicitors
armed with laptops and imposing piles of textbooks, Jenny recognized Sullivan
from a recent article in the
Law Society
Gazette.
Tipped to become the youngest Queen's Counsel of his
generation, Sullivan had battled his way up from tough working-class roots in
Bradford to a Cambridge scholarship. But rather than turn his skill into
millions at the commercial bar, he had chosen criminal law and become a
notoriously fearless prosecutor. The pundits said he was certain to make a move
into politics before he was forty.

It was an
impressive array of legal talent and the nods and smiles they exchanged amongst
themselves told Jenny that despite representing different clients they were
united in wanting the same result, and quickly. Her suspicious were confirmed
when, as Alison swore in the eight jurors who had been chosen by lot from a
pool of fourteen, the lawyers huddled and whispered to one another, as if
finalizing battle plans.

The
preliminaries dealt with, Jenny turned to address the newly empanelled jurors,
who sat in two rows of seats to her left positioned at ninety degrees to her
and the advocates' desks. In an arrangement far more intimate than that found
in a regular courtroom, the six women and two men would sit in the thick of the
action, almost within touching distance of the small table and chair which
would serve as a witness box; close enough to Jenny and the lawyers to spot
every tic and gesture.

Hoping that only
she was aware of the hint of a nervous tremor in her voice, Jenny explained to
the eight puzzled faces that a coroner's jury had a completely different task
from that in a criminal case. Their job was to listen to all the evidence
called concerning the violent death of Eva Donaldson, a twenty-seven-year-old
former adult movie actress whom they had doubtless known as the public face of
Decency. At its conclusion they would be asked to use their common sense and
good judgement in completing a questionnaire known as a 'form of inquisition'.
The most important questions they would have to answer were when, where and
precisely how she died. Finally, Jenny reminded them that there had already
been a brief but well-publicized criminal investigation into Miss Donaldson's
death, which had concluded with Paul Craven's confession and subsequent guilty
plea to her murder. Given that fact, they might be forgiven for thinking there
was nothing more to be investigated, but, she stressed, the coroner's court
had a duty to look at the evidence independently from the criminal court. What
had gone before must not influence them in any way.

Sullivan
couldn't contain himself. 'With respect, ma'am,' he said in a thick, combative
Yorkshire accent, 'the jury must be reminded that they have no power to
contradict the finding of the criminal court. Craven has been properly
convicted of Miss Donaldson's murder and therefore this tribunal cannot, under
any circumstances, contradict that finding.'

His aggression
hit her like a fist. Battling a fresh eruption of anxiety, Jenny said, 'I don't
agree, Mr Sullivan. The law is very clear on the point. In the
Homberg
case the High
Court said, "The coroner's overriding duty is to enquire how the deceased
died, and that duty prevails over any other inhibition."'

'As I understand
the law, ma'am, the only verdict this jury is entitled to return is one of
unlawful killing. And with all due respect, given Craven's conviction, it could
be argued that these proceedings are of doubtful legitimacy at best.'

Jenny's
apprehension was overwhelmed by a rush of anger. 'I will forgive you for not
being familiar with the status and procedures of the coroner's court, Mr
Sullivan, but you should know that it is neither inferior nor superior to the
Crown Court. Although there are many who wish it were not so, a coroner has an
entirely separate jurisdiction and must conduct her inquiry in a spirit of
uncompromised independence. Is that understood?'

Rocked by the
ferocity of her response, Sullivan was briefly silenced. 'We'll have to agree
to differ,' he muttered, and returned slowly to his seat with a look to the
jury as if to warn them that they were being sorely misled.

With adrenalin
now coursing through her veins, Jenny informed the jury that despite what Mr
Sullivan might believe, their duty was only to the truth, whatever they found
that to be. They would spend the morning hearing from police witnesses and the
pathologist who had most recently examined Eva Donaldson's body. Later in the
proceedings they would hear from her friends and colleagues, and finally from
Paul Craven himself.

Sullivan and
Fraser Knight exchanged a glance. They were looking forward to that.