The Redeemed (6 page)

They met in a waterside bar at the harbour and sat at an outside
table overlooking the boats, a warm breeze playing off the water. Joseph, or
Joe, as he preferred to be called, resembled an ageing surfer. Suntanned, with
tousled blonde hair, he wore an open-necked pink shirt under a black summer-
weight suit. He ordered neat vodka with ice and a dash of lemon juice. Jenny
settled on neat tonic, her nerves still held in check by the Xanax she had
taken before visiting the prison.

Keeping to small talk while they waited for their order to
arrive, she asked him about the television business. The small screen was
taking care of itself, Cassidy said, but he already had ambitions for feature
films; he had just discovered a screenwriter who was going to be hotter than
Tarantino. There were plenty doing the rounds who claimed to have mixed with
gangsters, but this young man was the real thing - gold dust - a former drug
dealer who had served time for shooting a rival through the kneecap.

Jenny listened patiently, but was glad when the waiter
arrived with their drinks. Joe waited for Jenny to sip hers before he took a
mouthful of the neat vodka, pretending he could take it or leave it.

Jenny said, 'Tell me about your relationship with Eva.'

More confident now he had a glass in his hand, Joe said, 'I'd
like to know what you've heard about me first.'

'Just what I told you on the phone - that you and Eva had
communicated recently.'

'Yeah, but
who
told you?'

'Paul Craven's solicitors knew about it,' Jenny lied,
instinctively wanting to keep Father Starr's name out of the conversation for
now.

'Hmm.' Joe took a big gulp of his vodka. 'I guess they must
have talked to her lawyers. Trust those bastards to break their word.'

Jenny waited for him to enlarge.

'Does what I say here go any further?'

'That depends on what it is.'

'And if I don't talk?'

'I'd probably have to summon you to my inquest and make you
answer under oath.'

'And this way I don't have to do that?'

'Possibly.'

'The thing is, Jenny—'

'Would you mind if we kept it to Mrs Cooper?'

Cassidy smiled. 'Whatever you like,
Mrs Cooper.
I did have a couple of meetings with Eva at the beginning of
the year, but the matters we discussed were in strictest confidence.'

'Is that still relevant now she's dead?'

'It could be.'

'I don't follow.'

Cassidy pushed his hands through his hair. She noticed it was
thinning at the temples. 'Look, I get that you probably know my history, how
Eva and I met, but we both felt pretty much the same way about the adult
entertainment business. I didn't even make money - girls get five times as much
as guys, did you realize that?'

'No, I didn't.' She took a patient sip of her tonic.

'And if there's one good thing that comes out of all this,
it's that Eva actually achieved something.'

'You mean Decency?'

'Yes. She wanted the law changed and so do I. In less than
two weeks from now the bill gets debated in Parliament. That's what she'd been
working for ever since we split up.'

'You're saying that whatever you discussed could jeopardize
that in some way?'

'It's certainly possible.'

Jenny put her hands on the table. 'Mr Cassidy, we're talking
about a young woman who was murdered. Unfortunately, it seems the police
didn't go as far in their inquiry as they might have done - you're one of the
people they should have spoken to, but didn't. One way or another you will
eventually have to reveal what you know.'

Cassidy emptied his glass and crunched on an ice cube. Jenny
tried to banish the image of him she'd seen on her computer: a still from
Locker Room Orgy.
'Look,' he said, 'it wasn't that
Eva wasn't totally committed to Decency, but she needed to make money. She'd
got used to a certain standard of living, and who can blame her? She'd heard
I'd gone into straight film-making and she came to me in the hope of lining up
some work for later. We talked about using her reputation to pitch a TV series.
It was going to be about these women she used to work with who were trying to
shake free of their pasts and lead ordinary lives. She had a title:
Fallen Angels.
But nothing was going to happen until after the campaign was
over, OK? Decency came first.'

'Did she tell anyone else about these plans?'

'Not as far as I know.

Jenny studied his face and decided he seemed more or less
genuine. He didn't come across as sharp enough to be a good liar. If he were
female, you would have called him a bimbo.

'Tell me, what was Eva's state of mind when you met her?'

'To be honest, I thought she was feeling the strain of being
on show the whole time. She reminded me a little of how she was after the
accident, when she was depressed. She was showing the same signs.'

'Such as?'

'She was jumpy, smoking a lot, and her hand would shake - you
know, like an old person's.'

'Did she have any enemies that you knew of?'

Cassidy glanced up and down the boardwalk, then leaned in
across the table, lowering his voice to a whisper. 'If you're asking do I think
someone other than Paul Craven killed her, I'd say anything's possible. But
what I do know is the porno business, and that the people that run it are far
too rich and clever to get their own hands dirty - you know what I'm saying?
I've thought about it every which way, and if Craven didn't do it, he must have
arrived to find her already dead, right? So it could have been a professional
hit - why not? You should hear the stories this scriptwriter tells me.'

Jenny said, 'Would you like another drink?'

Cassidy said, 'Only if you're having one.'

The second dose of vodka loosened Cassidy's tongue to the
point at which Jenny sensed he was trying to please her. He told her that he'd
met Eva when she'd already been in the industry for some time and they were
cast in the same movie. They'd bonded over their love of sixties music - a time
when pop was a rebellion, not just a business. From the moment he met her,
Cassidy said, he knew she was different from the other girls he worked with;
there was something behind her eyes, an intelligence, depth. It was what made
her so special: her audience wanted to get to know her for more than just her
body. And even though she was making big money, she was always planning for the
future. Way before she found God, he remembered her saying, 'There's no reason
we only have to be one person throughout our lives, we can be as many as we
like.'

Thinking Eva would have been an interesting woman to have
met, Jenny said, 'How did that happen, her conversion?'

'Just like the story goes. "He caught me just as my
fingers were slipping from the edge," is how she described it to me.'

'And you're convinced it was genuine?'

Cassidy grinned, showing off expensive teeth. 'Put it this
way, I hadn't been inside a church since my First Communion. When we met that
second time, in February, Eva said she'd had a word of knowledge - I think
that's what she called it - telling her to tell me to go to Mass. Can you
believe it? Me! But just for her I went four times in a row, confessed my many
sins, and - guess what? - the first channel I talked to about
Fallen Angels
virtually bit my hand off. The only problem was they wanted
someone else to play Eva's part.'

'How did she react to that?'

'Like you'd imagine - she was disappointed, but I kept
telling her she'd have a share of the show and a creator credit. That would
have made her a proper player, part of the business. Pretty actresses are ten a
penny.'

'But it wasn't going to solve her money problems.'

'I told her she should work in PR, cash in on all the skills
she'd learned with Decency.' He stared into his empty glass and shook his head.
'Let me tell you the funny thing about Eva. She could walk naked onto a set and
have sex with six guys in front of a full crew, but ask her to make a simple
phone call, it'd take her half the day to pluck up the courage.'

Jenny said, 'We all suffer from our contradictions.'

'Yeah,' Cassidy said, 'we certainly do.'

Unless the whispers Starr had received from Cassidy's priest
contained something darkly sinister, Jenny couldn't see that Eva having
entertained ambitions to be a straight actress gave her any reason to conduct a
full inquest. Of course it was logically possible that Craven hadn't killed
Eva; he could have gone to her house and, acting on some strange animal
impulse, urinated on her door mat without actually coming into contact with
her, but that wasn't what he claimed. He denied having been there at all. Her
lawyerly instincts, ingrained over fifteen years of practice, told her it was
unethical to explore possibilities that a criminal defendant hadn't suggested
in his own defence, but as a coroner she had to force herself to think
differently. She wasn't bound by any one version of events; she could
investigate and test whatever theory she wished. Her overriding duty was to
uncover the truth. She could feel her conscience drawing her towards holding an
inquest, but at the same time another voice was warning her to beware.

Wrestling with these conflicting thoughts as she walked back
to her car, she passed a fly-poster among the many plastered on the outside
wall of the multi-storey. An attractive young black man pointed out of the
picture above the caption,
I'm on a
mission. Are you?
Beneath the caption, it said:
Come to where the love is. Mission Church of God,
5
Fleetway.

She told herself it was purely idle curiosity that made her
drive across town at the end of the day to see for herself. At the south-east
edge of the city off a busy road through

Bedminster, she turned into the vast and busy car park for
what she had remembered as a multiplex cinema, bowling alley and pizza
restaurant. Ross had had his thirteenth birthday party here. She and her
ex-husband, David, had celebrated the occasion by yelling at each other in
front of all the kids, ensuring Ross never invited any of them home again. The
cinema and alley had now been knocked into one vast barn of a building, in
front of which stood an illuminated white cross which reached higher than the
peak of the roof. The former pizza restaurant, which occupied a separate
chalet-style building opposite, had been re-branded 'McG's'. All the parking
spaces near the building were already taken and the rest were filling quickly.
Slipping into a zone reserved for employees and official visitors, she pulled
up next to a sleek maroon-coloured sports car that made her ten-year-old VW
look like a wreck.

She joined the horde of casually dressed families and groups
of teenagers heading for the main entrance of the Mission Church, unable to
stop herself becoming infected by the excitement in the air. Black and white
kids, parents and infants, all mingled together, eager to join the same party.
Loudspeakers set high up on poles relayed the sound from inside: a big
congregation clapping and cheering as a choir and full band belted out a catchy
gospel number. Jenny found herself alongside a group of lively teenage girls
who swung their bodies in time with the chorus. Straight ahead was the entrance
to the main auditorium. Grinning teenage boys wearing MCG T-shirts shook hands
with the faithful as they went in, saying, 'God bless you, brother,' and
'Welcome to God's house.' To the left was an open- plan retail area that
resembled an airport mini-mall. Jenny's eye was caught by a sign hanging over
one of the aisles that said 'Decency'.

Stepping out of the flow of worshippers, she entered the
shop. One entire centre shelf was filled with Eva Donaldson's scarred face
staring calmly from the cover of
Fallen Angel:
How God Saved a Porn Star.
Jenny picked up a copy and was leafing through the pages of
simply written prose when she became aware of a TV screen further along the
aisle on which an interview between Eva and a young pastor was playing. Dressed
demurely in a dark suit and silk blouse buttoned up to the neck, Eva wore her
hair back from her broken face, proud of the scars that gouged vertically
through the left side of her face leaving her eye partially closed.

The pastor asked her how it felt to know that her films were
still being watched by millions of people on the internet. Eva said, 'Since
coming to Christ and being born again in the spirit, I know that the person
they are watching isn't me. But aside from that, people should know that a lot
of what I did was forced on me by contracts I was too frightened to break. Even
in my state of sin, much of the time I wasn't consenting, I was letting myself
be abused, and anyone who watches those films is a party to that.' Pausing to wipe
away a tear, she collected herself and straightened her shoulders. 'But my real
message is that the dividing line is clear - if you're watching pornography
you're not with God, and if you're not with God, well, I don't have to tell you
whose company you're keeping.'

'Can I help you, madam?'

A slender, red-headed boy of no more than sixteen hovered
nearby. His bright yellow T-shirt read:
TEAM MCG: on
mission for God.

'No thank you,' Jenny said. 'I'm just looking.'

'I can recommend Eva's book. Lots of people say it's changed
their lives. She certainly changed mine.'

Jenny placed
Fallen Angel
back on the
shelf. 'Maybe I'll call by on my way out.'

She turned to go.

'Is this your first visit?' the boy asked.

'Yes,' Jenny answered, more abruptly than she had intended.

Unfazed, the boy said, 'My name's Freddy. Pleased to meet
you.'

He held out a pale, freckled hand.

'Jenny Cooper.'

Freddy gave her a warm smile. 'Welcome to MCG, Jenny. We're a
church, but not as you know it. You'll find everything here's very relaxed.
There are no particular rules about how to behave, but if you've got any
questions just ask anyone wearing a team shirt. Is there anything you'd like to
know?'

Jenny asked, 'Did you say you knew Eva Donaldson?'

'She was one of the first people I met here. She was leader
of my study group.' A hint of sadness entered Freddy's bright expression. 'She
was a beautiful person. We all miss her very much.'

Freddy's sincerity ignited a feeling of maternal warmth
inside her, and Jenny found herself wishing her son could be a little more like
him. 'Why don't I take the book now?' she said. 'I don't suppose you'll be able
to move in here later.'

'You know how many people we're hoping for tonight? Five
thousand.'

'You're kidding. Is it that many every week?'

Lighting up, Freddy said, 'It's usually closer to three but
Pastor Bobby's here - he's on a world tour. He's opening new churches in
Amsterdam, Hamburg, Moscow and Sydney.'

A roar of applause issued from the auditorium as the choir
reached the end of their number. The bookshelves shook with the vibration of
stamping feet.

'We'd better hurry,' the boy said. 'You don't want to miss
the start.'