The Redeemed (25 page)

She heard the
telephone ringing from the street outside her office. As she pushed angrily
through the door and made her way along the gloomy corridor it ceased as the
answer- phone cut in, then seconds later it started again. She entered the
empty reception area and glanced at the caller ID screen on the console on
Alison's desk. 'Number withheld.' She flopped into Alison's chair, braced herself
and lifted the receiver.

'Mrs Cooper?
Amanda Cramer here.'

She needn't have
bothered with the introduction. There was no mistaking the owner of the
sinister, robotic voice. Jenny flicked on the monitor of Alison's computer.

'How can I help
you?' Jenny said, checking her email.

'Have you seen
the newspapers?'

'I've glanced at
them.'

'You've
certainly given the press a sensational story.'

'Not me, the
evidence did that.' Her in-box started to load with the day's messages.

'But you called
the evidence, and at a time of your choosing. All matters undoubtedly within
your discretion, but a coroner does have a duty to use her discretion wisely.'

Jenny scanned
the list of forty new messages. 'In what way are you suggesting I haven't,
precisely?'

'It's not just
the specifics, Mrs Cooper, there is a wider public interest to consider - a
highly sensitive bill being introduced to Parliament.'

Jenny struggled
to hold her temper. Still furious with Starr, Amanda Cramer's interference was
making her feel murderous. 'The day causing embarrassment to politicians is a
good reason to soft-pedal an inquest is the day justice has died, don't you
agree?'

'I should have
known you'd be belligerent.'

'Fearless
independence is my legal duty.' She arrived at the end of the list and a
message marked 'urgent' from Bristol CID. She clicked it open.

'All manner of
sins can masquerade as principle,' Cramer said.

'What exactly
are you asking me to do?' she said, her attention shifting to the few brief
lines of text on the screen. A young man's body had been found on the Langan
Estate.

There was a
pause. 'The right thing.'

'Or?' Jenny
stiffened with shock. The brief email ended with: '. . . thought to be that of
missing teenager Frederick Reardon.'

'Let's not be
childish, Mrs Cooper. It's in nobody's interests not to bring this inquest to a
rapid close.'

Jenny didn't
answer.

Amanda Cramer
said, 'Can we expect a conclusion tomorrow?'

'I think that's
very unlikely now.' Jenny put down the phone.

A small rag-tag
crowd of residents had been drawn out of the surrounding tower blocks and stood
at the cordon that marked off a section of the car park and the rough parkland
beyond. Jenny pushed between them and announced herself to the young constable
holding them back.

'Can you wait a
minute? I've been told not to let anyone through.'

'I'm the
coroner.'

'Yeah, but-'

'Do you know
what that means?'

He looked at her
uncertainly. 'Yeah—'

'Dear God.'
Jenny ducked under the tape.

'Ma'am
—
'

'It's all right,
Constable, she's with me.' Alison hurried out from between the assortment of
police vehicles.

'Can you please
explain to this idiot who the coroner is?'

'Sorry,' Alison
said to the young policeman.

'Don't
apologize, tell him!'

She strode off
towards the scene of activity that centred on an area of undergrowth. It was
near the bench on which she'd sat alongside Freddy only a few days before.

Alison caught up
with her halfway across the grass, out of breath and perspiring.

'I only just got
here, Mrs Cooper. I tried to call you.'

Jenny cut
through her lie with a look.

'I was just
about to.' Alison searched for an adequate explanation. 'I was trying to find a
way of breaking it to you.'

'Because I'm so
unused to people dying.'

'No. I just
thought you might feel—'

'What?
Responsible?'

'He hanged
himself, Mrs Cooper. Some time last night they think.'

Jenny felt
nothing. A complete absence.

'Does anyone
know why?'

'There was a
note in his pocket,' Alison mumbled. 'It said, "I'm no good.'"

They approached
a thicket of spindly birch and hazel clogged with nettles and bindweed. Two
officers in white overalls emerged from a break in the undergrowth, peeling off
their masks and hoods.

'Jenny Cooper,
Severn Vale District Coroner,' Jenny snapped at them and pushed past with
Alison at her heels.

DI Wallace was
standing in his shirt sleeves talking into his phone as two officers dressed in
white overalls zipped the body into a nylon bag. Directly above it a length of
blue plastic washing line hung limply from a branch.

Wallace
hurriedly ended his call as Jenny approached.

'Hello again,
Mrs Cooper,' he said, a trace of apprehension in his voice.

'May I please
see him?'

Wallace gestured
to his officers to comply.

The zip came
down to reveal Freddy's swollen face. A purple welt where the line had cut into
his flesh circled the front of his neck and rose vertically behind his jawbone.
He was dressed in the same yellow T-shirt he had been wearing the afternoon
they had met at the Mission Church.

'Time of death?'

'Between one and
three this morning.'

'Where's his
mother?'

'In her flat.
Family liaison's with her now.'

'Have you spoken
to her yet?'

'No.' He was in
a hurry to get on. 'Seen enough?'

Jenny nodded.
'What about the note?'

'I'll get you a
copy sent over.' He gestured to the body. 'To the Vale, is it?'

'Yes.'

The two officers
hoisted the stretcher and pushed out of the thicket. Jenny looked up at the
dangling length of line.

'Any idea why?'
Wallace asked.

Jenny pictured
Freddy stooped forwards on the bench only yards from where they were standing,
the way he'd gripped on to his cuffs with clenched fists as he told her, 'God
changes people. Not just a little bit, completely. And for ever. All you have
to do is let him.' It was the one thing he had seemed certain of, and the one
thing that had reassured her.

'He was
fragile,' Jenny said, 'with a history of psychiatric problems. I don't think
his grip on life can have been very strong to begin with.'

'I'll tell you
what, I'm happy to treat this one as suicide for now,' Wallace said. 'This
looks more like your territory than mine.' He turned to Alison. 'You'll drop me
a copy of the p-m report?'

'Of course.'

Wallace glanced
up at the line. 'I'll have someone take that down.' Dipping his head to avoid
the low branches, he pushed his way out to the light.

Alison said,
'You really mustn't blame yourself, Mrs Cooper. If he's had mental problems—'

'I don't,' Jenny
said. 'When you lift stones you find worms. That's just the way it is.'

Several ragged
bunches of flowers wrapped in cellophane lay on the dirty tiled floor outside
the door to the Reardons' flat. Jenny pushed them gently aside with her foot
and lifted the knocker. A female liaison officer who didn't look any older than
her son answered. Jenny asked to see Mrs Reardon alone, leaving the girl to
dither over whether to bring the flowers in or to leave them outside. Were
these unsolicited offerings which had become part of the modern death ritual, a
private gift or a public memorial? It was hard to say.

Eileen Reardon
was sitting with the curtains drawn in the airless sitting room. It reeked of
stale smoke. Sniffling into a grubby handkerchief, she looked up at Jenny with
eyes that seemed to have sunk into her face. Propped up against the empty
cigarette packets littering the coffee table was a photograph of a smiling
Freddy in front of a roller-coaster.

'That was on a
trip last year,' Eileen said. 'He went with the church.'

Jenny sat on the
edge of the sofa opposite, trying to tolerate the foul-smelling air.

'I'm sorry, Mrs
Reardon. I truly am.'

Eileen lowered
her chin, her exhausted marbled features telling Jenny that Freddy's death was
less a complete surprise than a tragic conclusion to events she had been powerless
to influence.

'How had he
been?'

'Quiet.'

'Last night?'

'Went to church,
came home about half-past ten. I left him in here watching the television.'

Jenny tried to
imagine what it must have been like for Freddy returning from an evening of
euphoria to this pit of despondency.

'When did you
notice he was gone?'

'He gets up
before me in the mornings, you know, takes himself to school.'

'Did he mention
the inquest?' Jenny asked. 'I'd asked him to give evidence today.'

'I didn't know a
thing about it.'

'There would
have been a letter in the post.'

She shook her
head.

'The police came
here today—'

'I don't talk to
the police.' She glanced at the partially open door. 'Rotten, hypocritical
bastards.' She looked at Jenny. 'They can't do enough for you when they're
dead.'

'You've been
told there was a note in his pocket?' Jenny ventured.

Eileen nodded.

'This probably
isn't the right time, but if there's anything you want to tell me—'

The corners of
Eileen's mouth twisted downwards as she seemed to struggle against a feeling of
overwhelming revulsion. 'He'd talk to me about Jesus. Walk with Jesus, love
Jesus. Jesus is going to save you. Jesus is going to heal you. All that crap.'
She spat out the words. 'I told him I didn't do bullshit any more. I'd had
enough of that from his father and every other man I'd ever known. If there are
answers in this world you find them yourself, you don't get taken in by some
church that wants to send us back to the Dark Ages.'

'When I spoke to
you before, I got the impression that you respected his belief.'

'Sometimes I'd
pretend to. I know you've got to try to let them have a mind of their own, but
all this religious stuff . . .' Running out of words, she shook her head.

'Did he ever
talk to you about Eva Donaldson?' Jenny asked.

'She's sitting
at the right hand of God, isn't she? I'd rather he'd been watching her movies,
if I'm honest.'

'Did he ever
talk about her death, the way she died?'

'It was the
devil, you know. He did it. And it was unbelievers like me who were helping
him, of course.'

'Freddy never
talked about her wavering, losing her faith?'

'Was she now?'
Eileen laughed, stirring the mucus in her rattling lungs. 'Oh, my God.'

'He never
mentioned that?'

'I think I would
have remembered. Oh, yes.' Her smile contorted into a mask of pain. 'He
worshipped those people. But I was the one who got him out of hospital, it was
me who nursed him and got him back to school.' She pounded her fist into her
chest. 'But I was the one who was damned because I wasn't with Jesus!'

It was called
the Eagle's Nest, a man-made balcony seven hundred feet above the western side
of the Wye valley, midway between Chepstow and Tintern. Jenny pulled on the
walking shoes and jeans that now lived permanently in the boot of her car and
made the climb up the three hundred and sixty-five steps and narrow paths that
snaked through the woods and traversed the jagged cliffs. The fading evening
sun filtered through a dense canopy of ivy-choked oak and beech; ancient yews
clung implausibly to the rocks, their gnarled roots strangling boulders like
the slow-moving tentacles of sea monsters. In damp hollows and dark corners
untouched by summer light, moss grew six inches deep in a carpet of emerald
velvet.

It was a
mythical place, like the forests of her childhood storybooks, where the trees
came to life and spirits flitted between the shadows; a netherworld through
which she ascended up ringing iron steps to the clearing on the summit. There
she was met by the sight of twenty miles of patchwork countryside beyond the
gorge. She stood at the railing, gazing out over a landscape slowly descending
into twilight, and wondered, not for the first time in her brief career, why it
was that she felt as if she had one foot in the place where the dead went when
they were wrenched unwillingly from this world. The living part of her wanted
to close the door on them, to bring her inquest to a rapid end and to deal with
Freddy's death with one of the discreet thirty-minute hearings her colleagues
managed to conduct without a trace of guilt. But try as she might, she couldn't
force the door shut; hollow, frightened faces peered at her from the darkness,
silently pleading.

She had hoped
that the exertion of the climb and the majestic view would have cured her of
her maudlin thoughts, but they merely brought her dread into sharper focus. For
the first time since McAvoy, it had happened again: she could no sooner walk
away with the truth half told than leave a grave half filled. Eva, Jacobs and
Freddy felt close enough to touch; it was their voices she heard on the breeze,
their faces she saw among the scattered clouds in the pink-tinged sky.