What to Do When Someone Dies (4 page)

Chapter Four

It was drizzling. Gwen and Mary arrived early, when I was still in my dressing-gown trying to decide what to wear. The pair of them were dressed in almost identical clothes, and I could see they’d been aiming for the casual but smart, sober but not sombre look I was intending for myself. Mary had brought some Danish pastries, which were warm and sticky in their paper bag, and I made us a big pot of coffee. We sat round the kitchen table, dunking the pastries, and I was reminded of when we were students together, sitting just like this in the kitchen of the house we’d shared together in our final year.

‘I’m so glad the two of you could be here,’ I said. ‘It means a lot.’

‘What did you think?’ said Mary, heatedly. Her face was flushed with excitement. ‘That we would let you go through this alone?’

I thought I might cry at that, but I didn’t, although grief felt rather like a fishbone that was gradually working itself loose in my throat. I asked Mary how her son was and she replied in a constrained, self-conscious way, very different from the eager assumption she had made in the past that I would be interested in every belch and gurgle he made. I had crossed into a different country. No one felt able to have an ordinary conversation with me, no one was about to tell me their petty anxieties and daily fears in the way they would have done a week ago.

I went upstairs and chose my clothes: black skirt, stripy grey shirt, black woollen waistcoat, flat boots, patterned tights, hair tied back. I was so nervous that it took me three attempts to thread my earrings through the lobes of my ears; my hands trembled so that I smudged my lipstick. I felt as though I was about to be put on trial: what kind of wife were you, anyway, that your husband was with another woman? What kind of fool, that you never had the slightest idea?

When we reached the coroner’s court, a low, modern building that looked less like a court than an old people’s home, the feeling of unreality continued. At first we couldn’t find the entrance, but pushed uselessly against glass doors that refused to budge until a policeman on the other side mouthed something at us and pointed, indicating we should try further on, the next entrance. We went into a corridor that led through a series of swing doors into a room where lines of chairs faced a long table. The air-conditioning hummed loudly and the fluorescent light shimmered overhead. I had been expecting something impressive, wood-panelled perhaps, with an air of formality, not this blandly cheerful room with louvred blinds. Only the crest of the lion and the unicorn, squeezed between the two windows, gave any hint that this was a court. Several people were already there, including a couple of middle-aged men wearing suits and ties, with folders on their laps, and two police officers in the second row, sitting up stiff and straight.

To one side there was a table with a piece of lined paper taped to it, reading ‘
PRESS
’. Behind it a bored-looking young man was reading a tabloid newspaper.

A grey-haired man in a suit was blocking our way. He had a moustache and the air of a sergeant major. ‘Sorry to bother you. Can I take your names, please?’

‘I’m Eleanor Falkner. I’m Greg Manning’s wife. These are my friends.’

He introduced himself as the coroner’s officer and pointed us to seats in the front row. Mary sat on one side of me, Gwen the other. A middle-aged woman in fawn slacks and a red sweater came to the front of the room and tinkered with a huge old-fashioned tape-recorder. She pushed cables into sockets and fiddled with switches. She looked up at the room and smiled vaguely at us. ‘It’ll be all right on the night,’ she said, and bustled out again, throwing bright, complicit smiles round the room, as if we were all in on a tremendously good joke.

Two women with identical bright-blonde helmets of hair positioned themselves just behind us; they were whispering to each other and occasionally giving discreet chuckles. It was like a register-office wedding, I thought. I wiped my palms down my skirt and pushed invisible strands of hair behind my ears.

Just before ten, the door opened again and a group of three entered and were directed by the coroner’s officer to the front-row chairs a few places along from where we sat. A middle-aged man with corrugated greying hair and a silk tie, a slender young woman, whose pale hair rippled down her back and whose aquiline nose quivered, and a young man with untidy dark hair, untied shoelaces and a stud in his nose. I tensed and clutched Gwen’s arm.

‘That’s them,’ I hissed.

‘Who?’

‘Her family.’

I stared at the man. After a few seconds he turned and met my gaze. Again I felt it was like a wedding: the bride and bridegroom’s families finding themselves in the same room, curious and suspicious. Someone near him murmured something and he turned round. It was his name. Hugo. Hugo Livingstone. The proceedings were late getting under way because the woman couldn’t get her tape-recorder to function. She pushed switches up and down and even banged it with her hand but nothing worked. A couple of men behind me got up and joined her. In the end, they just pushed the plug into another electrical socket and its lights came on. The woman put on some earphones and sat down behind the machine, which almost hid her from view. The court officer asked us all to rise. I had expected a judge in robes and a wig but Dr Gerald Sams was just a man in a suit, carrying a large bundle of files. He sat down behind the table at the front and began to address us in a calm, deliberate tone. He offered his condolences to me and to Milena Livingstone’s husband and two children. ‘
Step-
children,’ muttered one loudly.

He gave a brief talk about the process. He said there might be some details that family members would find upsetting, but that the inquest was often helpful to the next-of-kin, giving a clear account of what had happened and perhaps some sort of closure. He would call witnesses, but this was not a trial. Any interested person could question them and, indeed, ask questions at any point. He also said that he had read through the preliminary material, it seemed to be a straightforward case and we would get through it quickly. He asked if anybody had legal representation. Nobody spoke.

I took a notebook and a pen from my pocket. I opened it and wrote ‘Inquest’ at the top of a blank page. I underlined the word, then turned the underlining into a box surrounding it. Then I turned the box into a three-dimensional box and shaded the top with cross hatching. Meanwhile a police officer had come forward to the little desk and chair at the front of the room and swore, on a tatty copy of the New Testament, to tell the truth. He was an unremarkable young PC, with reddish-brown hair combed flat against his head, but I studied him with fascination and dread. He was the man who had found my husband.

He consulted his notebook and, in a strange monotone, like an unprepared and untalented actor, he gave a halting account of how he had driven to Porton Way in response to a call from a member of the public who had reported seeing a fire.

Dr Sams asked if the officer could describe Porton Way.

He looked puzzled. ‘There’s not much to say, really,’ he said. ‘There used to be factories and warehouses there, but it’s mainly derelict now. They’re starting to redevelop it, though. There are going to be new houses and office blocks.’

‘Is the road busy at that time of night?’ asked Dr Sams. ‘With commuters and suchlike?’

‘No,’ said the officer. ‘It’s not a through route. There are a few construction people during the day but not at that time. Sometimes kids steal cars and drive them round there, but we didn’t see anyone else.’

‘Tell us what you found.’

‘The fire had died down by the time we got there but we could see the smoke. The car had slipped down the embankment and turned over. We scrambled down and we quickly saw that there were people in it but they were clearly dead.’

‘Clearly?’

The officer pulled a face. ‘We didn’t even see there were two of them at first.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘My partner called the fire brigade and an ambulance. I walked round just checking. I couldn’t really get close. It was still hot.’

He was talking as if he had come across a bonfire that had got out of control. Dr Sams was writing notes on a pad of paper. When he had finished he put the end of the pen into his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘Did you form an impression of what had happened?’

‘It was obvious,’ the officer said. ‘The car lost control, came off the road, rolled down the embankment, hit a concrete ridge, burst into flames.’

‘No,’ said Dr Sams. ‘I meant more
how
it had happened,
how
the car lost control.’

The officer thought for a moment. ‘That’s pretty obvious as well,’ he said. ‘Porton Way goes straight and then it suddenly curves to the right. It’s not very well lit. If a driver was inattentive – if he was talking to his passenger, or something like that – he could miss the turn, carry straight on and then be in big trouble.’

‘And you think that was what happened?’

‘We checked the scene. There were no skidmarks, so it looks as if the car left the road at speed.’

Dr Sams grunted, scribbled some more notes, then asked the officer if he had anything else he wanted to add. The policeman looked at his notes. ‘The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. The two bodies were pronounced dead at the scene, but we knew that anyway.’

‘Is there any suggestion that any other vehicle was involved in the crash?’

‘No,’ said the officer. ‘If he crashed because he was avoiding another vehicle, there would have been skidmarks of some kind.’

Dr Sams looked towards those of us in the front row. ‘Does anyone have any questions arising from this statement?’

I had many, many questions buzzing around my head, but I didn’t think that the answers to any would be found in that officer’s little black notebook. Nobody else spoke either.

‘Thank you,’ said Dr Sams. ‘Could I ask you to stay for a few minutes, in case any questions arise?’

He nodded and made his way to his seat, a few rows behind. It occurred to me that this was probably a morning off for him, an escape from the office and having to fill in reports.

Dr Sams then called Dr Mackay. A woman in a trouser suit came forward and sat in the chair. She was about fifty with dark hair that looked dyed. She didn’t swear on the Bible. Instead she read a promise from a piece of paper. I agreed with that in theory, but as she said the words, they sounded thin and unconvincing. I preferred the idea that if you didn’t tell the truth a bolt of lightning would strike you dead and you’d be punished in hell for all eternity.

Dr Sams looked at us again, especially me, the grieving widow, and him, the grieving widower.

‘Dr Mackay carried out the post-mortem examination on Mr Manning and Ms Livingstone. It’s possible that the details in her evidence will be distressing. Therefore some of you might wish to leave the court.’

I felt a hand grip one of my arms. I didn’t look round. I didn’t want to catch anybody’s eye. I simply shook my head.

‘Very well,’ said Dr Sams. ‘Dr Mackay, will you give us a brief account of your findings?’

Dr Mackay laid a file on the table in front of her and opened it. She scrutinized the text for a few moments, then looked up. ‘Despite the condition of the bodies, I was able to undertake a complete examination. The police report stated that the two people in the car were not wearing seatbelts and the injuries were consistent with that: I mean, consistent with the head of each person being thrown forward and striking the interior of the car. The result was massive trauma. Therefore the cause of death was, in both cases, compression of the brain resulting from a depressed fracture of the skull.’

There was a pause as Dr Sams wrote his notes. ‘So the fire was not a factor?’ he asked.

Dr Mackay caught my eye. I saw an expression of sympathy.

‘That was a crucial question in my mind,’ she said. ‘Obviously, in each case there was much destruction of skin, subcutaneous and muscular tissue. I took blood samples from both Mr Manning and Ms Livingstone. Both tested negative for carbon monoxide.’ She looked towards us. ‘That suggests the two of them were not breathing after the fire started. I also checked the airways and lungs and found no traces of carbon. Also, although the bodies had suffered the burns I mentioned, they showed no signs of vital reaction. I can give you the technical details if you want but, broadly speaking, the sites of burning showed none of the signs of inflammation you would expect if it had happened while the person was still living.’ She looked at me once more. ‘It may be of some comfort to the families to know that the deaths must have been all but instantaneous.’

I glanced across at Hugo Livingstone. He didn’t look comforted. He didn’t even look obviously upset. He was frowning slightly, as if lost in thought.

Dr Sams asked Dr Mackay if she had checked Greg’s blood-alcohol level. She said she had and that there was nothing untoward. She said it and glanced at me again, as if that was more good news, another thing for me to be relieved about. Dr Sams asked if anybody had any questions for Dr Mackay and once again there was an awkward pause.

I didn’t really have anything to ask but I had a lot to say. I wanted to say that Greg had always been a careful driver. Blind drunk and engaged in animated conversation, he still wouldn’t have missed a turn in the road. He wore his seatbelt even when moving the car ten feet. I could have announced this to the court, but then I would have been the person with questions to answer: what did I know about the way he behaved when he was with this other woman? Did I not know about this other relationship, this other life? And if I didn’t, what did my knowledge about him count for? I stayed silent.

Dr Sams released Dr Mackay and she went back to her seat. He said he was calling no further witnesses and asked if anybody had any statements to make or any questions to put to the court. I looked at my notebook. Without realizing it, I had drawn little stars around ‘Inquest’. Then I had drawn little circles around the stars and little squares around the circles. But I had not written a single note. I had no questions to ask. Nothing to say.