The Redeemed (24 page)

Sullivan was the
only lawyer to cross-examine. 'Miss Donaldson's indebtedness has been alluded
to. Am I right in saying she wrote to you in November of last year asking for a
pay rise?'

'She did. I put
the request to the board and they decided it would be inappropriate, given the
fact that she had been employed for less than a year.'

'How did she
react to that refusal?'

'She understood
the reasons and accepted them.' He turned to the jury. 'Look, I think we have
to acknowledge that we are talking about a fallible human being here, not a
saint. Eva came under the same pressures as the rest of us.'

'One more
thing,' Sullivan said, with a dismissive glance in Jenny's direction, 'I think what
Mrs Cooper may have been intending to ask, but didn't quite, is whether to your
knowledge Miss Donaldson was planning to meet someone at her home the evening
she was killed.'

'I don't know of
any such arrangement.'

'And she's not
the only one of us to have had a glass of wine alone at the end of a hard day.'

'Quite.'

Jurors smiled.
They liked the idea of Eva having an Achilles heel.

Christine
Turnbull was just as skilful as her husband at evading the issue of Eva's state
of mind. Composed and dignified, she described a purely professional, arm's
length relationship between them. In her capacity as a member of Decency's
board, she met Eva mostly to discuss forthcoming engagements and to plan
strategies with their media consultants. Eva had impressed everyone with her
ability to operate under pressure without letting emotion intrude, which was a
remarkable feat given her painful history. Their social contact had been
limited to a few dinners and the odd cocktail party Decency had hosted at the
Houses of Parliament. Even on these occasions their conversation had rarely
become personal, let alone intimate. 'I got the impression that in public she
was above all concerned to maintain her dignity,' Christine said. 'To have
discussed intimacies would have been out of the question. I'm sure there were
people with whom she did have such discussions, but they weren't with me. I
think she saw me very much as an employer. She was comfortable with that, and
so was I.'

Jenny said, 'You
didn't try to establish a personal relationship?'

'No,' Christine
replied. 'Much as I liked her, it didn't seem right. I'd go so far as to say
that Eva preferred to have purely working relationships that didn't cross
borders. She had a very strong sense of propriety. It was one of the things I
admired about her.'

Jenny could
quite believe their relationship was a distant one, but not for the reasons
Christine Turnbull gave. Surely they would have been wary of each other: Eva
intimidated by Christine's age and experience, Christine both intrigued and
repelled by Eva's years in front of the camera. Christine wouldn't have been
human if she hadn't wanted to know what it was like for a young woman to walk
onto a crowded set and copulate with half a dozen men before lunchtime.

Wearing an
open-necked ivory-coloured silk shirt beneath his black suit, Lennox Strong
looked more like a TV host than a man of God. But Jenny's hopes of getting him
to shine a light on the Eva Michael and Christine Turnbull claimed not to know
were soon dashed. He happily described the night when Eva first came forward to
give herself to Christ, how he had laid hands on her and seen the burden lifted
from her shoulders, but when Jenny asked him what they had discussed in
subsequent conversations he answered with a phrase that had Ed Prince written
all over it: 'You'll understand I'm not able to repeat things said to me in
confidence in my role as pastor.'

'Even after the
subject is dead?' Jenny pressed.

'A confidence
doesn't end with the confider's death,'

Strong said with
a patient smile, 'not unless that was her request. Eva never made such a wish,
so her confidences go with me to my grave.'

For nearly half
an hour Jenny pushed and probed for the slightest detail to prise open Eva's
mind. There were hints at her complexity - Strong described how writing their
book on forgiveness had pushed Eva back to the brink of depression - but for
the most part he described her as a woman who had embraced a simple,
uncomplicated faith which she used to banish her past. She didn't discuss her
time in the porn business, Strong explained, because she didn't want to dwell
on it. 'Through my own experience I was able to prove to her that God gives you
the freedom to move on. You don't have to drag the past around behind you like
a ball and chain: that's what being born again means.'

'Can you say how
having the tattoo squares with leaving the past behind?' Jenny asked.

'I don't have an
answer, but I do have a theory. It's not breaching a confidence to say that Eva
and I had been talking about her future. She was thinking of coming to work for
the Mission Church full time after the Decency campaign had finished. It was a
huge step for her. The one bit of security she'd had in life was money. Working
for the church would have meant she had enough to survive, but no more. When
you're making that sort of commitment you're tested in all sorts of ways you're
not expecting. It's as if you're questioning every aspect of your character,
peering into every dark corner. You ask yourself, am I truly worthy of this?
Can God really want
me
,
of all people? And that rebellious part of your spirit, it's going to show
itself one last time before you can put it away. That's what was happening to
Eva.'

'Did you see any
evidence of this "rebellious spirit" in her?'

'Not explicitly,
no.'

'Had you noticed
any change in her, anything of the mood Mr Turley detected when she came to his
studio?'

'Eva was just
like the rest of us. Some days she was full of enthusiasm, other days the world
got on top of her.'

He fell silent.

'Mr Strong?'

'You know, I
don't know if this is the right place to say it, but the reality for Eva was
that she was in the middle of a battle. It doesn't matter how hard you try to
surround yourself with good and trustworthy people, evil's always going to come
and seek you out. That's why we pray, every day, "deliver us from
evil"; having faith alone is no protection, in fact it puts you on the
front line. She was caught off her guard. She made one bad call and that was
all it took; the enemy got her.'

There was a
moment of stillness as all in the courtroom seemed to share in his grief; all
except Father Starr, whose features remained as hard-set as the concrete in his
cathedral.

As the pastor
stepped away from the witness box and made for the exit with Michael and
Christine Turnbull, Alison came and whispered to Jenny that police had gone to
Freddy Reardon's address but no one had answered; did she want to issue an
arrest warrant? Jenny pictured officers arriving at the flat and staving in the
door to drag a frightened Freddy to court.

'We'll leave it
for now,' Jenny said. 'I may not need him.'

Joe Cassidy was
the final witness of the day and, save for Freddy Reardon, the last on Jenny's
list. He had cut his hair for the occasion and was dressed in a movie star's
suit, but beneath the slick exterior he was edgy and impatient and cast nervous
glances at the lawyers, who whispered to each other behind their hands.

He stated his profession
as company director and claimed to have known Eva for over five years. 'We
acted together, then we lived together,' he said. 'We broke up after her car
accident, when she became depressed, but we stayed friends.' He spoke directly
to the jury. 'I might not have been on the same religious kick, but no one
could have known her better than I did.'

Jenny was taken
aback by his abrasive tone. He was hardly recognizable as the tousle-haired TV
producer who had tried to flirt with her over drinks.

Jenny said,
'Shall we rewind a little and hear how you and Miss Donaldson met?'

'Can I say
something first?' Cassidy asked. 'In all the time I worked with Eva, she never
once failed to turn up for work, even when it was the last place she wanted to
be. I've heard a lot of speculation about her today, but one thing I guarantee
is that she wouldn't have let down four thousand people without one hell of a
reason.'

Anticipating
Sullivan's objection, Jenny said, 'Do you have any evidence for this, Mr
Cassidy?'

'Yes. This is a
woman I've seen climb out of a sickbed at dawn and scrape the ice off her
windscreen to shoot a gang bang with a bunch of strangers.'

'I meant, do you
have any evidence that she was told not to come to the Mission Church the night
she was killed?'

'I don't know
who told her to stay away,' Cassidy said, 'but I'm pretty sure I know why.' He
aimed his last remark at the press. 'I don't think Eva believed any more.'

She emerged
twenty minutes later to find Alison straightening the empty rows of chairs.
She didn't have to say I told you so - it was written in her every pernickety
gesture, restoring order where Jenny had unleashed chaos.

'Has everybody
gone now?' Jenny asked.

'All except
him
,' Alison said,
nodding towards the exit.

'Who?'

'Who do you
think? The Grand Inquisitor. I asked him to wait outside.'

'Oh . . . Did he
say what he wants?'

'That'd be far
too polite.' She crossed to her desk and tidied her papers. 'Are you planning
on calling any more witnesses tomorrow? We'll save fifty pounds if we're out of
this place by lunchtime.'

'I haven't
decided. I might have to call Michael Turnbull back to answer Cassidy's
allegations.'

Alison looked up
with a worried frown.

'Why would you
do that? There's not been one shred of evidence that's made me doubt for a
second that Craven killed her. Don't take this the wrong way, Mrs Cooper, but
if you keep on, it's just going to make you look worse.'

'Worse than
what, exactly?'

'Than you do
already. Someone has to tell you - that priest thinks you're an easy touch. He
preyed on your conscience because
he's
feeling guilty for what Craven did. It's not your job to make him feel better.'

Jenny picked up
her briefcase and marched to the door.

He was waiting
in the car park, standing with his back to the building and looking out across
the choppy estuary to the shadowy Welsh hills ghosted on the horizon. He turned
slowly, unsure of himself as he addressed her.

'Am I permitted
to speak to you during the proceedings, Mrs Cooper?'

'I don't see why
not. I've no plans to call you as a witness.'

'Then I'll be
brief.'

He moved towards
her, hands clasped awkwardly behind his back. 'You're going to pursue this
allegation of Cassidy's?' he asked.

'I doubt it. My
job is to determine cause of death, not to pick over her relations with her
employer.'

'If she was
asked to stay at home that evening, it surely raises a number of questions.
Other suspects may emerge—'

'I can't drag
respectable people through the mud without a very good reason, you must
understand that.'

'She was clearly
unbalanced. Perhaps they were frightened she would say something inappropriate,
or damaging?'

Jenny said, 'My
apologies, Father. I made a mistake. This isn't an appropriate conversation
after all.' She started to unlock the car door.

'I see you have
lost faith, too.'

'I beg your
pardon?'

'It was our
friend Mr McAvoy who once told me that, for a lawyer, believing in a client's
innocence is like a priest believing in the possibility of redemption. No
matter what the outcome, it is the pursuit of that belief that brings us closer
to—' He checked himself. 'That dignifies us.'

Jenny rounded on
him. 'Is that your trump card, mentioning his name again? Do you really think
I'm that stupid? I know what you want, Father. You want to believe your faith
in Craven wasn't misplaced. Because if you're wrong about that you can be wrong
about anything. Am I right?'

He looked at her
defiantly. 'I am not wrong about Paul Craven.'

'Because he said
some prayers and told you so?'

'No.'

'Oh, yes. I
remember, God told you.'

'Is it so
ridiculous? It's my job to act to the full extent of my faith, yours to act to
the full extent of the law.'

'There are
limits. For both of us.'

She yanked open
the car door and threw her handbag onto the passenger seat.

'If it's of any
interest, I had a word for you, too, Mrs Cooper.'

'Really?' She
climbed in and reached for the door handle to pull it closed. Starr put out a
hand and held it open. 'Please let me go,' Jenny said.

'I was told
you're carrying a terrible burden and want to be set free. Am I right, Mrs
Cooper?'